The war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is well progressing and the defeat of one of the most extreme organizations in the Middle East is hopefully close. Nevertheless, the question which remains unanswered is what will happen next?

To answer this important question which is rarely addressed by both politicians and the media, it is worthy to look at what happened after eliminating similar organizations in the past. Lessons learned would hopefully help avoiding repeating the same costly mistakes.

It was in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support the allied socialist regime ruling it at that time. As it was the Cold War, the United States was ready to do anything to support the military opposition and defeat its communist enemy. For that, it encouraged the friendly regimes in the Middle East to send volunteers and money to support the military resistance to the Soviet’s invasion. Those countries sent thousands of volunteers for “Jihad” and provided them with financial support while the United States provided the military equipment and necessary training. Among those volunteers was a young Saudi man named Osama Bin Laden. Some reports claim that he played an important liaison role between the volunteers and the CIA to facilitate the supply of arms and training.

What the United States failed to recognize was that those volunteers did not collaborate with America by admiration of its liberal model and hate to the communist ideology of the Soviet Union. For them, both Americans and Russians are “Atheists” and an enemy of their model of Islam. Thus, as soon as they got rid of the Red Army, they did not hesitate to turn their weapons against their previous sponsors. In addition, they found themselves trapped in Afghanistan as the regimes back home that encouraged them to go to Afghanistan became afraid of them after acquiring military competencies and extremist views. Consequently, Bin Laden was able to gather them in the Al Qaeda organization. Afterward, it became the number one enemy of the United States after the tragic 11 September terrorist attacks.

In order to correct their mistake and eliminate Al Qaeda, the United States declared war against them in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, they declared the war against Saddam Hussein too for reasons which were very vague. They claimed that Iraq possessed Nuclear weapons and supported Al Qaeda; both claims were later found to be untrue. In fact, Saddam Hussein was a bloody dictator who committed more crimes and killed more people than what Al Qaeda did. Even so, he was a secular dictator closer in his ideology to Stalin rather than to Bin Laden.

Although removing Saddam from power was rather an easy mission for the strongest army in the world, the task of managing the country and establishing a friendly democratic regime was much more complex. In fact, the Iraqi people were very keen to get rid of the dictator but not necessary to accept the American occupation. Of course, the misbehavior of some American soldiers revealed by the photos of Abou Ghraib jail did not help at all. After several years of civil war with all its atrocities, the scene was set for the birth of the worst terrorist organization in modern history called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the beginning, the atrocity of ISIS was targeting local civilians in Iraq and Syria. After several bloody attacks in Europe and the US, the United States and its western and local allies in the Middle East declared the war against ISIS. The United States sent military forces, mainly its air force to avoid the human casualties which cause a major uproar on the domestic front. As they did previously with Al Qaeda, they will most probably weaken ISIS to the point that it is no longer able to organize large scale terrorist attacks in the US and Europe. Nevertheless, it is not certain that they will be able to eradicate it completely as they are not able to eradicate Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, after all these years.

The main question is at which price the United States and its Allies will remove the threat of ISIS to their home countries? Which monster will they create while defeating ISIS?

The world sadly witnessed the awful actions of ISIS which at many levels exceeded the atrocities committed by Al Qaeda. Thus, we as ordinary citizens of this world are very concerned that history will repeat itself, as it usually does. We would find ourselves facing a new terrorist organization as a result of poor strategic thinking and ill-informed actions of the United States and its allies.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this article then feel free to share it within your network.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —If you like this article, you might like to read my other article: The Single Most Important Reason for Terrorism in Arab World