The public designation by the UAE authorities of 83 organisations as terrorists is a landmark decision in the global fight against the fanatic grey pest that threats humanity.
The very comprehensive list while including Sunni Jihadi organisations already designated by most Western authorities makes three dramatic breaks with Western misguided practices:
- It does not spare the Jihadi front organisations acting on Western soil. The West has spared and sometimes even engaged with Western based Jihadi organisations that promote the same ideology and often run the logistics of the armed wings of the organisations that devastate the Muslim World. Although the West often covers this attitude with a legalistic reasoning, this policy rather reflects an appeasement strategy that intends to buy a non-belligerent attitude of the organisations on their own turf. This duplicity of the West is quite detrimental to the fight against terrorism;
- It does not spare the Jihadi organisations acting under the thumb of the Iranian authorities. The West for the purpose of appeasing the Iranian clerical regime has not listed them. Organisations linked to both Iraqi and Syrian governments under Iranian clerical influence such as Abu Dhar al-Ghifari Battalion in Syria, The Badr Organisation in Iraq, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq (The Leagues of the Righteous) or Iraqi Hezbollah are listed by UAE. The Sunni jihadi terrorist network operating with the support of the Iranian authorities – Al Qaeda in Iran – is not spared either. However, neither the Iranian Revolutionary Guards nor the Lebanese Hezbollah are listed, in spite of being by far the most powerful terrorist organisations within the Iranian clerical sphere, and most likely at the World level. This might mean that the tiny UAE boldness has its limits and UAE does not want to confront directly the head of the monster.
- The list does not include organisations that the West had listed to appease authoritarian regimes. Western government’s appeasement policy has reached the point where not only the sponsors of terrorism are excluded, but, on the contrary, those who resisted terrorism were blacklisted. This despicable appeasement policy was only reversed by successive judicial Courts orders in the case of the main Iranian opposition organisation.
The attitude of the UAE authorities has a tremendous impact on the global fight against jihadism.
To start with, Western islamophobia and bigotry receives a severe punch. An Islamic state – and quite an orthodox Islamic state – had the courage to set a clear policy of combatting the abuse of the Muslim religion by those who want to exert a totalitarian power under its banner. So, the idea that all Muslims are alike, Jihadism is a consequence of the Quran or other misguided popular ideas in the West, all receive a tremendous blow.
Secondly, those Jihadists who have covered their criminal ideology under the name of Islam and have falsely accused those who oppose their criminal intentions as “Islamophobes” receive an equivalent blow. To claim that the UAE is Islamophobe, as stated by some Jihadi apologists lobbying for Jihadi front organisations in the West, is just laughable.
Thirdly, the Western appeasement policy is put under high pressure. European citizens will now raise ever more the question: why are Western governments protecting – and sometimes even financing – organisations that were identified by moderate Muslim states as terrorists? Why does the West cooperate with terrorist organisations such as the Badr brigades in Iraq, that now control the Ministry of the Interior of this country?
I believe that the West should act in a less arrogant way and should learn the lesson given by UAE. Terrorism that is now devastating the Middle East will eventually come to the core of the Western World if it succeeds there. The Western appeasement policy towards religious fanaticism is a delaying tactic that endangers Western security in the long run.
Brussels, 2014-11-18
(Paulo Casaca)
