ISIS AND THE IMPLOSION OF IRAQ: AN INDICTMENT TO AMERICAN UNILATERALISM.
"Al Qaeda's trainers are proving the truth of bin Laden's late mentor Shaykh Abdullah Azzam's assertion that the Koran and the AK-47, together, yield the levels of lethality needed for Islam to triumph."- Michael Scheuer "ANONYMOUS", Imperial Hubris - Why the West Is Losing The War on Terror, 2005, page 76.
INTRODUCTION
I use three prisms through which I see the precipitious tumble of the Middle East's Levant region into Dante's Inferno of bloody and murderous terrorism.
The first one is a personal prism.
The first diplomatic tour of duty of the western Middle East (or otherwise known as Levant), including Iraq under Saddam Hussein, I undertook happened in September 2000, not long after I was promoted to the position of Director for the Levant in the then South African Department of Foreign Affairs, now the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO).
Then I was able to hold discussions with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv and west Jerusalem, was transferred by car to Ramallah, the capital of Palestinian West Bank. After discussions there with Palestinian officials, we drove by car from Ramallah, where South Africa maintains a diplomatic office, we drove to Gaza by car across much of southern Israel. Following the Gaza visit, it was time to travel to Amman by car, across the river Jordan for further consultations with my Jordanian counterparts.
From Jordan I took a road trip to Damascus, the capital of Syria, through much of the eastern province of Syria, for consultations with my Syrian counterparts. We then returned by car to Amman, where we prepared for our trip to Baghdad, Iraq's capital under chocking and severe western sanctions. It was a road trip of about twelve hours through much of south-western Iraq. After our stay in Baghdad, we return by car to Amman, a trip through much of Iraq's Sunni heartland and the Anbar province.
In subsequent many visits to the Levant between 2001-March 2003, I would often travel from Israel, to Ramallah, to Jordan, to Syria and ultimately to Lebanon, via the Lebanon's Bekaa valley and high mountains hugging Beirut, Lebanon's capital, all done by car.
My road travels across the Levant at the time were some of the most beautiful, peaceful, emotional and informative travels I ever did anywhere in the world.
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