When chaos is the strategy of global powers – Firstpost

The Tinderbox Explodes

At some level it is bizarre, unbelievable — that Israel, a country facing existential threats, was surprised for the second time at the same place after 50 years. Egyptian and Syrian regular troops had surprised Israel on the Yom Kippur day of October 7, 1973. Commemorating this day, the Gaza-based Hamas, carried out a brutally violent attack, smashing through the supposedly impregnable Israeli barriers. The Hamas attackers were well equipped, well-armed, mobile and seemed to know where to go as they picked up their quarries.

In about six hours Hamas had slaughtered more than 1,200 men, women and children, including 46 Americans and citizens of more than 30 countries, and kidnapped more than 250 men and women. The carnage was horrendous by all accounts and intelligence failure was the headline on the channels, media and political opposition.

Meanwhile, it seemed inexplicable that the much-vaunted Israeli defence system known to be capable of instant and forceful reaction had remained paralysed during the Hamas orgy of violence. The Israeli Air Force did not fly, the counter-terror forces did not emerge; there were no drones flying in. The instant narrative was that Hamas were able to carry out their horrendous attack because the security agencies were caught napping. Yet somehow, this general belief of total intelligence failure seemed unreal. It seemed to many as if the Israeli state had disappeared. No one really knows what happened.

It is not easy to accept that the entire Israeli security system — the Mossad, Aman and Shin Beth — had completely failed to pick up any intelligence about the massive raid being planned by Hamas. Intelligence agencies do not act on their own intelligence especially when foreign powers are involved or when counteraction lies outside the country’s boundaries. There have been political decisions that do not accept intelligence assessments or those of the defence forces. Intelligence is ignored or on occasions even doctored. It was not fair to conclude that inaction was because of intelligence failure even though it might seem so.

US-Israel relations are very close and there is a steady exchange of intelligence between their intelligence services. The massive American intelligence apparatus of 17 agencies, including the NSA and CIA, with their multi-billion-dollar budget, covers the Middle East minutely, especially the volatile areas surrounding Israel. Earlier in the summer, American authorities had issued a travel advisory cautioning their citizens in Russia about an impending terror attack in Moscow. They did not issue any such warning to American citizens in Israel ahead of the October 7 attack. It is not known if they had the intelligence about Hamas’ plans and shared it with the Israelis. Nor did the British.

Also recall the Egyptians had passed on some intelligence to the Israelis but perhaps it was discarded or was not very specific. Does this imply that all American, British and Israeli intelligence agencies had been simultaneously blindsided? It is difficult to accept that the world’s best intelligence services had been blinded simultaneously.

Therefore, most probably it was a political decision to ensnare the Hamas into Israel by reducing security presence on the border for a few months, pretend indecision and divisiveness, react slowly when the Hamas took the bait. Hamas action created an appropriate narrative for Israel to hit back ruthlessly till the complete physical destruction of Hamas all over Gaza.

Israel needed a strong enough narrative to hit back to attack places like hospitals, schools and other public buildings, which the Hamas was using as a cover for its arsenals and command structures. Merely launching pre-emptive attacks on Hamas in Gaza were an inadequate deterrent. Hamas would keep coming back at them. the credo in the corridors of Israeli security policy must have been that Hamas had to be demolished completely.

The Israelis conceivably had intelligence for a long time about the use of hospitals by Hamas as arsenals and as command headquarters and the various tunnels that had been built. Ehud Barak, former Prime minister pointed out, that it was well known that the bunkers under the Al Shifa hospital were built by the Israelis but for years had been used as a command post. Tunnels moving north-south were the most lethal for Israel. Their destruction required hitting hospitals, schools and such. For that a narrative was needed and the Hamas carnage became the much-needed narrative. Probably the scale of Hamas atrocities was a surprise.

The Middle East Reshaped

Netanyahu and Hamas have had a long and tortuous relationship dating back ever since he became prime minister for the first time in 1996, defeating Shimon Peres by a narrow margin. Speaking to the NPR (National Public Radio) in November 2023, Netanyahu (prime minister since 2009) stressed Israel had to eliminate Hamas to avoid further disaster. “But once we defeat Hamas, we have to make sure that there’s no new Hamas, no resurgence of terrorism” — this was his theme. When Netanyahu came back to power in 2009 Israeli media reported it was Netanyahu’s policy to keep Hamas alive to preserve his own rule. Qatar began to finance Hamas in 2012, and Netanyahu started this in 2018, despite opposition by the security establishment and $30 million in cash crossed the Rafah crossing every month till October 2023. Apparently, it was done to weaken the Palestinian Authority, but it worked differently.

Eventually Yahya Sinwar, who had planned the attack was the first Hamas leader killed by the Israelis. Israelis began to target not only Hamas leaders but also Hezbollah. Leaders assassinated including Ismail Haniyeh, when he was a state guest in Tehran in July 2024. Haniyeh had been visiting Iran to attend the swearing in of the new Iranian president and was a state guest. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut in September. Earlier, Fuad Shukr, a founder member of Hezbollah, was killed in an air strike in July. In March, an airstrike killed Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas military commander closely associated with the October Hamas plan. In July, a massive Israeli airstrike killed Mohammed Deif, Sinwar’s closest aide after several unsuccessful attempts. Quite obviously, Israeli intelligence and defence forces had specific intelligence and capabilities to take out the targets, thus reestablishing their professional credentials.

Until the time that Israel was retaliating only in Gaza, and Israeli reaction was seen as part of a massive revenge against the Hamas. Once the attacks spread into Lebanon and against the Hezbollah with an occasional strike against Iran, and later the Houthis in Yemen, it meant that there was a larger game plan.

The war is now a fight to the finish. Hezbollah was defeated in Lebanon, and Syria has been defeated by a conglomerate of Islamic terrorists, much in the pattern of the ISIS in Iraq in 2014. Clearly a synchronised attack by Islamist terrorists, with Turkey and Israel and the US, surely keeping a benign eye, puts the October 7 ‘failure’ in a different context.

The Israeli Airforce wiped out the Syrian Airforce and Army has captured more territory in the Golan Heights. A regime change had taken place in Syria where the new ruler was an Islamic terrorist, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Despite having bounty of $10 million on his head and being a known terrorist, Turkey, the US and Israel helped him establish a government of terrorists in Damascus. At some stage one could even conclude that this was, yet another proxy multilateral Islamic force put together by the US after their successful arrangement with the Afghanistan Mujahedeen against the Soviets. Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS were subsequent incarnations of the same theme.

A Long Shadow of History

To control oil flows and the geopolitics of the Middle East, US engagement from after WWII involved propping up despots and monarchs that toed the American line. When leaders like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi fell out of favour or adopted a mind of their own, they were removed and replaced. Numerous regime changes supported forever wars that advanced American economic and strategic interests. This a region critical to containing Russia south of the Caucuses traditionally, and China’s expanding sphere of influence more recently.

American activity in the Middle East was not random. General Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander had learnt soon after 9/11, that the US had plans to take out seven countries in the Middle East as part of a grand five-year plan. These were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. The plans for six have been executed and only Iran is left. The neo-con hardliners have been at work since the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to William Pfaff, a well-known author and columnist, writing in 2005, a new bureau of Reconstruction and Stabilisation had been constituted in the State Department for organising the reconstruction of countries where the US deemed it necessary to intervene to convert them into market democracies. The bureaus had 25 countries under surveillance as possible candidates for Defence Department deconstruction followed by State Department reconstruction. Either way, the US economy gained.

There are as many outside forces in Syria adding to the troubles and a heterogenous insurgent force now pretending to be liberators today. The US support for Israel has enabled an aggressive posture in the region. For the moment, Russia and Iran are bystanders. Turkey is on the side of the insurgents who include Al Qaeda/ISIS clones like the HTS, with their well-known views on supremacy of Islam. The Free Syrian Army is backed by the West, Turkey and the Gulf countries. The Syrian National Army is also backed by Turkey, other Al Qaeda affiliates, the Salafists, the Uighurs in the Turkestan Islamic Party, some Iranian backed militias and the Kurds and their affiliations.

In a recent interview with a Lebanese channel, Al Jadeed, one of the HTS spokespersons, made it quite clear that women had a very limited role in their governance and societal system. The presently favoured Islamist group, HTS, could morph into something else for use elsewhere as an extension of global jihad, as in the past. Similarities with the Afghan jihad and the Taliban are evident. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Al Qaeda are examples of how Islamists groups morph.

Recall, Osama bin Laden had been an old ally during the Afghan War and helped build the tunnels in Khost, Afghanistan until he became a villain in 2001. Soon after Osama was killed in 2011, his successor Zawahiri seemed amenable to American overtures. This had prompted Jake Sullivan, Foreign Policy Advisor to Hillary Clinton in February 2012 to exult to her that Al Qaeda was on their side in Syria. The ISIS in Iraq and Syria in 2014 was a sudden amalgam and Al Qaeda had in the past morphed into Al Nusra.

One will have to see how various alignments and loyalties work out in Syria as they have changed in the past in the Middle East. American interests gave the world the first Islamic jihad in Afghanistan, followed by radical Islamist militias like the Taliban. Any deal of a joint operation with a terrorist/insurgent organisation has grave implications. It legitimises the terrorist apparatus. It acts as an inspiration. It provides resilience to other terrorists that can work out a deal.

For the present, secularism in Syria is dead; its future is uncertain and minorities in the country are unsafe. The choice could be between Al Aqsa or the Wailing Wall; Erdogan is already talking about Jerusalem being “their city” as Israel increases its footprint in Syria. This new Syria-based jihadi conglomerate could be used later elsewhere, in Central Asia, for instance. Today Jolani may look dapper in a tie and blazer, but he remains a radical Islamist who believes in the ultimate global conquest by Islam and is willing to fight for that goal, mostly many thousands of kilometres away from American shores.

Quite apparently, the world has not yet heard the last word on Syria, and Iran is yet to be. The year is coming to an end and wars abound in Ukraine, Israel-Lebanon-Syria-Yemen, Islamist extremists are clearly visible and triumphant, and the Middle East could see Turkey and Israel confronting each other in Syria. Chaos seems to be the strategy of global powers.

Welcome to 2025.

The writer is the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), and an advisor to the Observer Research Foundation, an independent public policy think tank in New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.