The little USA Today articles in our local paper, that
give some nod to the turmoil in the Middle East, have been hard to follow. There keeps popping up, when the fighting in
Iraq and Syria is the subject, a litany of terms for the groups causing all the
trouble.
Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] *USA
Today’s emphasis
Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]
Islamic State of Iraq and
Greater Syria
Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham
We can leave behind the Sunni / Shiite division. These groups are all Sunni, and in fact, what
is being referred to is basically one and the same group. The term the media seems to like the most is
the first, ISIL, the “Levant,” being a hundreds-of-years-old, Westerners’ term
for the fertile crescent area of present day Iraq and Syria, and a bit beyond. I remember “levant,” from a time when I lived
in southern France, as the name they gave a moist, gentle breeze coming from
the Middle East side of the Mediterranean.
The term obscures the fact that Iraq and Syria together have been
stirred up into a fierce Sunni rebellion.
We need to admit that these current Islamic fighters are
a force born out of our occupation of Iraq--the Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI]. Al Qaeda never was present in Iraq until our
Iraq War. Our war radicalized Iraqi
Sunnis, and was an invitation for some international Islamic fighters to join
in. Now paradoxically they are
complemented by, and themselves are part of as refugees, Sunni fighters in
Syria that we have been supporting and arming to depose the Syrian [Shiite] government,
our current enemy of the day.
They don’t acknowledge the border between Iraq and Syria,
considering it one Islamic state [which historically has some validity.] They call it al-Sham, and themselves Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham. All in Arabic
of course. Their cause has been
strengthened by the civil war in Syria, in which we unwittingly have taken
their side. They’ve just taken over the Iraqi
cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, and the Iraqi [Shiite] government we helped
install may suffer significant further loses. And in Syria the battles rage on in stalemate.
I
t is more complicated than this synopsis [see references
below]. The predominantly Syrian Sunni group,
al-Nusra, is sometimes allied with this Islamic militia, and shares in its
terrorist tactics. There are many more
factions. All armed and dangerous. At times our friends, at times our
enemies. We continue to erroneously
believe that we can get these factions to point their guns in the direction
most favorable to our policies. And
we’re now at the point of sending lots of Apache helicopters and Hellfire
missiles to the Iraqi government to help them quash what we helped create—these
more potent Sunni fighters.
"Darkness
cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and
toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” --
Dr. Martin Luther King
“Modern technological
mass murder is not directly visible, like individual murder. It is abstract,
corporate, businesslike, cool, free of guilt feelings. But this big business of
death and even genocide is all the more effective because it involves a long
chain of individuals, each of whom feels himself absolved from responsibility.”
– Fr. Thomas Merton
We live so far away from the Middle East we talk about it
using words like Levant, fertile crescent, gentle breeze. Shouldn't there be a natural extension of the Good Book's Matthew 25? When
did we see you hungry and not give you to eat, thirsty and not give you to
drink, blasting each other apart in war and not stop selling you bombs …
Please continue to pray for the conversion to peacemaking, and contact
this fairly neutral site, and the Catholic Relief Services site, to take further
action. http://www.avaaz.org/en/syria_ray_of_hope_loc/?bgUeZcb&v=34493
Illumination by Kathy Brahney
References ---
References ---
“ISIS is also known
as the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" and the "Islamic State
of Iraq and al-Sham", al-Sham being a historic Arabic name for the
"Fertile Crescent" area and referring to a region comprising areas of
modern Iraq, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon.
Levant, a Western
term, refers to the same geographic area of the Middle East.”
And ever-spreading collateral damage --
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/world/middleeast/beirut-bombing.html?ref=world&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/middleeast/iraqis-flee-falluja-fearing-more-violence.html?ref=world
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-divided-iraq-sunnis-fleeing-anbar-find-restive-refuge-in-shiite-holy-city/2014/01/21/8fd0d668-8276-11e3-a273-6ffd9cf9f4ba_print.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/world/middleeast/beirut-bombing.html?ref=world&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/middleeast/iraqis-flee-falluja-fearing-more-violence.html?ref=world
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-divided-iraq-sunnis-fleeing-anbar-find-restive-refuge-in-shiite-holy-city/2014/01/21/8fd0d668-8276-11e3-a273-6ffd9cf9f4ba_print.html
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