Now Britain Openly Arms Jihadists

In the House of Commons, on Wednesday, UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, admitted that Britain will now be openly arming the jihadists in Syria – BBC News. Okay, they deny its arming them, by saying its only armoured vehicles and body armour – that they are telling us about – but the reality is that these armoured vehicles will be used by fighters, as platforms from which to shoot, and the body armour will similarly be used by fighters. In any case, it is all a sham, and hypocrisy because everyone knows that the jihadists, in Syria, have been supplied with large numbers of weapons, including the most advanced weapons, for at least the last year, via the feudal Gulf Monarchies, that act as proxies for Imperialism.

The irony, which again demonstrates the ineptitude and short sightedness of western policy, is that, on the same day, it was announced that these same jihadists had kidnapped UN Observers On The Golan Heights. Who could be surprised by that? Imperialism created Al Qaeda, and provided it with masses of high-tech weaponry to fight the USSR in Afghanistan, and it was then used to build a bastion for terrorism in that country. Imperialism provided Saddam Hussein with chemical and other weapons, to keep himself in power, and to fight for their interests, and the interests of their Sunni Gulf allies, against Iran. When he proved incapable of achieving that, they sought to remove him, and ended up strengthening the position both of Iran, within the region, and of Al Qaeda more generally. Then they armed, the jihadists in Libya, and when they proved incapable of removing Gaddafi, Imperialism itself used a massive bombing campaign, and thousands of Special Forces troops, to do the job. Now the Islamists have control of Libya, attack US installations, and provide weapons and a base for the spread of jihadism into Algeria and Mali!

Einstein once said that the definition of stupidity was to keep repeating the same experiment and each time expect to get a different result. On that basis, the Imperialists must be pretty stupid! Even their fan club in the AWL seem to have got the message, as far as Syria is concerned. They haven't admitted they got it wrong on Libya, nor admitted that they had it wrong on Syria, until recently. You wouldn't expect anything else from a bureaucratic centrist organisation. Instead, they simply change course with another zig-zag, as though it was a natural continuation of their previous positions. So, now even they admit that it is the jihadists who make up the real opposition in Syria, that they have committed atrocities like the regime, and that if the regime were to fall, it is the jihadists who would come to power – AWL Resolution On Syria.

Of course, given the bureaucratic centrist nature of the AWL, now that Imperialism is coming out more openly in support of the jihadists, the AWL may well change course again. But, Imperialism itself has been forced to confront the jihadis in Mali. The reality, is that Imperialism's real target is Iran, which poses a strategic roadblock for it, and Russia and China, which are Imperialism's global rivals, that stand behind Iran. To that end, it has common cause with the Gulf Monarchies. However, the Gulf Monarchies are tiny. The largest, Saudi Arabia, has a population of only 25 million, half of which is made up of foreign workers. It can make up for that, to an extent, by its large arsenal of the latest weapons, but in order to project its influence across the region, its chosen tool, is the global army of jihadists.

It is that army that was used in Libya, was and is being used in Iraq, and in Syria, and has also been used in Russia's Muslim provinces like Chechnya. Unfortunately, for Imperialism, for whom these are the chosen tool, for fighting its opponents, in the Middle East, they are the same forces supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they are the same forces responsible for carrying out terrorist attacks in Europe and North America and elsewhere, against western targets. And worryingly, for Imperialism, given the latest events on the Golan Heights, they are the same forces who will ultimately, once they have consolidated their position in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria, turn their attention to Israel.

The good news for Imperialism, and probably what they are counting on, is that these jihadists, despite their reputation, appear to be pretty incompetent. Their one major accomplishment was the attack on the World Trade Centre. But, given their ability to recruit thousands of fighters from across the globe, including at least hundreds from Britain, their success rate is pretty abysmal. That can be seen by comparing their successes in Britain, for example, with that of the Provisional IRA in the 1970's and 80's. The reality of the struggle of the Mujaheddin against the USSR in the 1980's, is that they would have been lost without the advanced missiles and other weapons provided to them by the US, via Pakistan. In Iraq, their main success was in attacking Shia Muslims rather than Imperialist forces, and in Libya, even with the supply of advanced weapons, and a massive bombing campaign conducted on their behalf, they were able to make little headway, until Imperialism and the Gulf Monarchies sent in their own Special Forces.

That is not surprising. Undoubtedly, the thought of fighting for an ideal, and the thought of going to heaven, for dying in battle, leads to many of these fighters being characterised by extreme bravery. But, the same thing leads to them also being reckless, and for a modern fighting force, recklessness is an extravagance that cannot be afforded. It means not only recklessness with your own life – and many of them blow themselves up rather than anyone else – but necessarily that of your comrades. The same recklessness means that reverses can quickly turn into a rout, and disorderly retreat. Faced with the French military in Mali, the jihadis quickly retreated.

Having said that, at least the jihadis have been able to mobilise thousands of fighters across the globe to fight for their ideas. That is in stark contrast to the forces of Socialism. The world labour movement, including the representatives of supposed revolutionary socialism, have proved themselves far less committed. Labour Movement's have grown flabby, even compared with the example of the International Brigade of the 1930's. A century of domination of the movement by the ideas of Lassalle and the Fabians, rather than those of Marx, has led the Labour Movement, in its foreign policy as much as in its domestic struggle, to look to the bourgeois state to carry out the tasks of history, rather than to walk up to the plate itself.  That was something Trotsky warned against in his writings on the Balkans.

Perhaps that is why the forces of Political Islamism have been advancing, and those of Socialism have been in steady decline.