The terrorist organization “Islamic State” will soon cease to exist. The main forces of jihadists are defeated, and the threat, as it may seem, has passed. However, another foreign policy slip by Washington can turn back the clock, writes columnist David Gardner in an article for the British edition of the Financial Times.
The journalist noted that no trace left from the former power of the Islamic state. The United States Air Force ruthlessly strikes the Syrian cities, where the remaining terrorists hide themselves among the civilians, and the pro-American Syrian democratic forces beat the IS from the village of Baghouse. Surviving jihadists abandon everything and flee. Soon, Donald Trump will have the opportunity to once again declare “victory over the IS”, but then, as the author notes, we need to remember what led to the emergence of a radical current that has grown into a terrorist threat on a global scale.
Thus, the US intervention in Afghanistan, writes Gardner, marked the beginning of the “war of the Mujahideen against the infidels.” Then there were still many mistakes of the US leadership, and the brightest of them was the invasion of Iraq, which only showed the weakness of Washington. Its policies allowed Shiites to come to power in the country, and then a religious confrontation began in Iraq, which continues to this day. Then Syria was already under attack, where the United States and the European Union — the personification of adventurism and indecision — took the side of the militants who challenged the government of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, with the efforts of the West, chaos began in the country, which attracted jihadists, the journalist said.
And now, when the IS is almost defeated, we must understand that the West needs to seriously revise its foreign policy so that such situations do not recur in the future, the author stated.