For the teenagers of 1980s, John Rambo was a fascinating character. Hollywood projected Rambo as the ‘invincible’ US soldier who could do no wrong. In the movie Rambo III, John Rambo went to Afghanistan to fight against ‘evil’ and ‘ruthless’ Soviet Army. Rambo had ‘innocent’ Afghans by his side to take on the mighty Soviet war machinery. At least that was how it was projected by Hollywood.
Little did most then, and even now, realise that John Rambo was a CIA operative, hobnobbing with Mujahideens, who came from all across West Asia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. They were armed, trained, indoctrinated and funded, to the hilt by the US to fight the proxy war against Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Those Mujahideens later on, much with the support of Pakistan, a close ally of the US, gave rise to modern day terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, and the most infamous of all, Al Qaeda. Osama Bil Laden, himself was a product of that ecosystem of Islamist radicalisation that the US perpetrated in Af-Pak region for its ulterior motives.
American Patronage to Pakistani Extremism
From late 1970s Gen Zia-Ul-Haq, with approval of theUS, started the process of inculcating extremism and religious indoctrination in Pakistani society, which gave rise to countless radical seminaries across Pakistan that generated an unending supply of radicalised elements, ready to die for ‘Jihad’. This was first used for sinking Afghanistan into a bottomless pit of conflicts. The radicalised army of dispensable foot soldiers were then channelised for creating mayhem in India, a nation that was democratic in nature, believed in pluralism and rule of law, and was striving hard to unshackle its colonial past to embrace modernism.
For decades India combatted the unending wave of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, whose seeds were sown with American help. For decades, the West, and especially the US, remained non-committal in acknowledging that the ecosystem of radical extremism in Pakistan is a potent threat. Pakistan, after all, was a time-tested friend for giving shape to ‘dirty’ games of West. It took a horrendous day of unprecedented terror attacks on 9/11, for Washington to wake up to the reality of the threat that now spares not even the US.
Over the years, threat of Islamist terrorism and its deep connect with Pakistan became so profound and synonymous that it eventually started biting Pakistan as well. So much so that Hillary Clinton once remarked about Pakistan, ‘You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only to bite your neighbors’. Words of wisdom indeed, even though Hillary Clinton, like the rest in US conveniently forgets who helped Pakistan incubate and nourish those snakes. Most terror attacks anywhere in West Asia, North Africa, Europe, the US, and needless to say, in India, more often than not, have always had a Pakistan connection.
Yet, the US did not learn lessons. On the contrary, it moved beyond use of non-state actors, and mastered the art of weaponisation of mob through various other means to trigger regime change, wherever it suited them. Civil unrest became a potent tool to disrupt nations, topple governments and stymie progress of any nation that posed a threat to their stranglehold on world affairs.
The Arab Spring Saga: ‘War by Other Means’
From 2010 onwards, Arab Spring became a new tool to dismantle the structure of governance in various West Asian and North African countries. In the name of ‘freedom of speech’, ‘democracy’, ‘free world’, ‘humanity’ and ‘equality’, country after country was sunk into an unending saga of conflicts. Social media was used as a manipulative tool to trigger human emotions and make people of MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region revolt against their respective governments. Civil unrest gave way to civil wars. Students’ protests that started in universities of Syria or Tunisia, eventually got hijacked by radical extremist groups.
The Iraq Debacle of US and Rise of ISIS
Post Saddam Hussein’s execution, Iraq became totally out of control for US. In fact, the entire US invasion of Iraq was a dubious affair. Out of the chaos, sectarian violence, free availability of weapons, and violent social media activism, gave rise to armed groups that started waging wars against their own states and often against each other. From all of it, violent radical organisations like ISIS, Al Nusra and many others were born. Their acts of brutality, attempts to create parallel economies and their own aspiration to create an Islamic State, resulted in significant portion of MENA getting into a quagmire of violence that destroyed city after city, nation after nation. From Syria to Libya, from Iraq to rest of North Africa, no place was spared. Only the likes of Suadi Arab, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, and a few more emerged relatively intact but not without major bloodshed.
It must be remembered that from Saddam Hussein to Bashar Al Assad, and Muammar Gaddafi, each of them may have been dictators with not much regard for democracy, but at the same time, their respective countries, be it Iraq, Syria or Libya, were relatively modern nation states. Women in their countries had freedom, and were not subjugated to restrictive, regressive or repressive laws. The education system was vibrant, and each in their own sphere had strived to create welfare states. Even the ardent critics of Saddam Hussein, or Gaddafi cannot deny that. Interestingly, each of them was vehemently against radical extremist groups like Al Qaeda. Yet in the end, each was targeted. Libya and Iraq were decimated, while a severely wounded Syria somehow survived aided by Russian and Iranian interventions. Each of them was proponent of the Baathist ideology of Arab nationalism. They may have had its own set of issues but no doubt they were at the forefront of fight against Islamist terror groups. The US interventions essentially dismantled the fight against such radical Islamist terror groups there.
Did Regime Change Games Help MENA?
The moot question is this. Did the uprisings in Middle East backed by Arab Spring, supported by West, help MENA region become better? Could the US make Iraq or Libya better by destroying Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi? Can anyone deny that Libya was once one of the economically better off countries of Africa? Today Libya, like Iraq, has been sunk into a never-ending civil war. The internal turmoil started the moment Gaddafi was killed by US backed forces. Even though the US kept on claiming that end of Gaddafi era would usher a new dawn for Libya, the very opposite, as usual, happened there. Worse, less than a year after Gaddafi was killed, US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi in Libya by terror group Ansar-al-Sharia, a vindication of the mess and void Gaddafi’s removal created in Libya. Dusk of chaos on Libya was now permanent.
From Gaddafi, who dreamt of creating a United States of Africa, to Saddam Hussein who wanted to dump Dollar in favor of Euro, as the base currency to trade oil, apparently many do conclude that the real reasons for their downfall had little to do with USA genuinely wanting to bring democracy there. That was a mere ‘window dressing’ to hide the real intentions of ensuring that Gaddafi did not become the flagbearer of a strong and united Africa, lest it becomes difficult to exploit its resources, or Saddam Hussein does not end up becoming the pied-piper to show the rest how to dump Dollar in favor of other currencies for oil trade.
Triggering Anarchy is the New Hybrid War
Sadly, with time, weaponization of mob to usher in civil disobedience and eventually plunging a nation into anarchy has been mastered even more profoundly by the West, and by US in particular, as is often alleged by many. A plethora of NGOs, think-tanks work in tandem with tech media giants to slowly inject the poison of galvanizing anti-establishment resentment into anarchist rage. Use of algorithms and artificial intelligence, aided by the proliferation of social media has ensured that that West can bypass states to often make the people of a country believe in a specific narrative that is pushed relentlessly and amplified, to pit people against their nation. Any contrary view is termed as ‘fascist’, ‘hegemonic’ or ‘authoritarian’, and is shunted out. The mob is put into a frenzy to believe that overthrowing their own government would be panacea for all the ills.
Arab Spring template saw application in Ukraine as well. From Orange Revolution to Euromaidan, Ukraine witnessed mass uprisings against its own Government that essentially was not Pro-West. As usual, saga of regime change followed. After the initial euphoria, Ukraine eventually got sucked into a conflict with Russia. It is literally fighting a war on behalf of the US and NATO. A conflict that NATO members themselves would avoid against Russia but is using Ukrainians as dispensable pawns to fight on their behalf. A conflict in which Ukrainians die and the military industrial complex of West, especially that of US, benefits immensely due to limitless supply of weapon systems that the US Government is procuring from its defense companies to fuel the Ukraine-Russia war. Here too, the same excuses of ‘free world’, ‘democracy’, ‘humanity’ have been used so that Ukrainians keep on fighting and dying. So much so that the US has no problem even in backing Nazi supporters and white supremacist entities like Azov Brigade, a controversial paramilitary organisation of Ukraine. It is perhaps only a matter of time that the war in Ukraine would have devastating consequence in rest of Europe.
Arab Spring and Mass Migration into Europe
Worse, the conflicts engineered in MENA region through Arab Spring, was followed by facilitating mass migration of Muslims from Middle East and North Africa into Western Europe, resulting in large scale demographic change, and resultant social turmoil, as is evident now in France, Germany, Spain, UK and many others. Many fear that such endless mass migration facilitated by EU, and backed by the likes of US based George Soros, and many other front organizations, would only result in deep conflicts between Islamists and predominantly Christian population of Europe. Nevertheless, coming back to the issue of regime change, very rarely it happens that a former head of state would openly blame US for her ouster from power. Sheikh Hasina, the now deposed former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, who had to exit her country amidst a violent student protest that engulfed her nation, had squarely blamed US Government for engineering her ouster from power. She even claimed that she was ousted for refusing to hand over sovereignty of the strategically located St. Martin Island to US for setting up a military base there.
That US wants a toehold in the Bay of Bengal, and has been striving to set up a series of ‘Lily-Pad’ bases there is no more a secret. No doubt that there was a certain level of resentment of the general population against Sheikh Hasina Government, which got exacerbated by police firing against protesting students. However, the manner in which that anger was capitalized and channelized to create a nationwide protest, the way social media was imbued with anti-Hasina narrative, the manner in which the nationwide protest was revived with renewed demand for ouster of Hasina Government, even after the Supreme Court there had drastically brought down the quota in government jobs, the conduct of the Bangladesh Army in side-stepping and asking Sheikh Hasina to leave the country in less than an hour’s notice, the manner in which she was not even allowed to give her last message to her fellow countrymen, the way Md. Yunus, known for his proximity to US was made the de facto Prime Minister, the surprising manner in which university students leading the anti-quota movement, with no experience in governance, were hurriedly appointed as top advisors, all of it sound too surreal to have happened in organic manner without any major playing pulling the strings from behind. The spate of violence that followed the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, the targeted killing of Awami League members and supporters, the planned attacks on business organizations owned by Hindus, the destruction of temples, the assault and molestation of Hindu families, all of it have continued unabated by a blood thirsty mob that is now pulling down institution after institution, resorting to arson and ensuring the nation truly gets sucked into anarchy.
Today, as things stand in Bangladesh, top judges of Supreme Court are being forced to resign while the targeted killing of policemen has literally shaken the entire police infrastructure, which is almost dysfunctional now. Policemen are scared to come to work. Meanwhile, Md. Yunus Government has inducted Islamic hardliners with allegiance to organizations like Hefazat-e-Islam, into his team. What this will lead to is anybody’s guess. All this while, US, does not seem to be too perturbed either by the pogrom on Hindus or the potential chances of Islamic hardliners taking centerstage of governance.
What happened in Bangladesh is a classic case of Arab Spring template in action, that apart from ousting a government, has put moderates on backfoot while emboldening the hardliners. While prosperity and peace in Bangladesh is in genuine interest of India, it would be interesting to see how that can be achieved given the present crisis the country now has got engulfed into. Far from the days of Vietnam War, triggering regime change has now become an art of finesse for some in the West, and one in which the Americans need not spill their blood anymore. Now, people of a country are weaponized to destroy their own nation state. No outsider is needed.
However, such dangerous games of regime change have rarely helped countries. After twenty years in Afghanistan and spending more than $2 trillion, Afghanistan is far worse now than what it was before the US ventured there, post 9/11 terror attack. Only the military industrial complex of the US became richer. From Iraq to Syria to Libya, the story is no better. What fate awaits in Bangladesh is a million-dollar question. Meanwhile, Hindus in Bangladesh continue to pay the price, while champions of democracy and human rights maintain a stoic silence in the West on Hindu massacre, even as the likes of The New York Times tried to rationalise such violence by terming them as ‘revenge attack’. American stand on genocide of Hindus during 1971 war, and in subsequent times, was no different than what it is today.
Grand lectures on democracy notwithstanding, it is now pretty clear how the West has continuously tried to stymie India’s growth story. Many apprehend that West does have a problem with India’s rise as a vibrant, culturally rooted, technologically advanced, multicultural democracy, and one which refuses to toe to Western diktats. From turmoil in Af-Pak region to orchestrating uncertainty in Bangladesh that creates major security threat for India, from allegations of foreign interference in Indian electoral process, to Hindenburg type hit jobs against Indian corporate giants, from trying to captalise on India’s fault lines, to project India in all kinds of negativities, no stone has ever been kept unturned by vested interests in the West, to keep India on the tenterhooks, even as India has strived against all odds to emerge as the fifth largest economy of the world during tumultuous times, and combatted the covid pandemic with elan.
Even on issues of terrorism, the blatant double standard of the US led Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance on the issue of Khalistani secessionist groups bares the Western double game against India. The West, especially US, expects the world to rally behind the US in its fight against terrorism but remains completely indifferent to threats of blowing up Air India planes by designated terrorists such as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. On the contrary, some allege that USA protects such assets to sting India from time to time. It is therefore time for West, and especially US to introspect if its interventions, direct or discreet, have helped the world to be a better place or has only helped in creating more mayhem and emboldened extremist groups at the cost of moderates.
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