Desert Storm Research Paper
violent storm blowing its destructive winds from the shores of Syria to the shores of Europe. A storm that begun its path of fury 36 years ago with the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan.
It is 1979 and the soviets have just ordered an operation code named "Storm-333". An operation that in which Soviet Special Forces toppled the Afghan government in just 43 minutes, but has started a war that will last a decade.
Within this trajectory, the Soviet invasion of, and subsequent war with Afghanistan (1979-1989) stands out in particular as a lasting legacy of the Cold War. Globally, its outcome continues to plague international society in the current struggle between the Western liberal democratic order and Islamic extremism.
The Soviet decision to …show more content…
invade Afghanistan was primarily driven by their security concerns of a rapidly weakening Afghanistan, vulnerable to Western intrusion led by the local radical politician Hafizullah Amin. After the failed attempt to stabilize the PDPA's regime (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) from collapse, and consequently facing an increasingly narrowing set of options, military intervention became the favored alternative.
The Soviets proclaimed, that by overthrowing Amin, they would slow down and ease the pace of Afghanistan’s communist revolution and thereby protect the communist regime (PDPA) from collapsing due to its domestic unpopularity, and thereby give in to Islamist and Western forces.
Very few had the understanding that what has started as a local eruption of the Cold War, was perceived by the Muslim world as a direct act of aggression towards the 'Islamic nation'. It has created instability and turbulence in which its vortex will generate a cataclysmic storm.
Casus Belli
Following the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan, local and International religious Islamic leaders were quick to announce a 'fatwa' (Divine commandment) aimed at Muslims all over the world, and commanding them to join the fighting for the liberation of Afghanistan.
Thousands were recruited in the process to join what became the holy war (jihad) against the invading atheist enemy. They were immediately deemed as 'Mujahedeen' - A term reserved to holy warriors for the project of Islamic conquest led by the Caliphates in the early history of Islam during the Medieval era (7th through 9th Century).
Many of these young recruits were drawn into the ideological formation of Jihad and became its symbol. Among these Mujahedeen, a distinctive young man who has shaped his world view and perception of power in the region. Within few years he will become the most wanted man in the world, his name - Osama Bin Laden.
Osama was born to the family of billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, a close friend of the Saudi Royal family. Mohammed was killed in an Airplane crash in 1967 when Osama was thirteen years old. Each of the children from twenty two women he married, was left with a fortune estimated around 100-200 Million dollars. When Osama arrives to Afghanistan in the early eighties with his personal fortune, he is drawn into this landscape, first as a financier and then as a fighter.
From the very beginning the Afghan Jihad was subject to various influences. The CIA, and Pakistani intelligence (ISI), along with the Saudi intelligence, persisted in supporting the most radical islamist groups in battle against the soviets.
The Afghan Jihad became an outlet for Islamist reformers crushed by repressive dictatorships. Rivalry among different groups of Arab volunteers in Afghanistan, the impatience of young men looking for a fight and the availability of funds, created the emergence of new schools of thought in which violence became more important than a political strategy.
Today it may sound strange, but back then, Islamic Jihadists in Afghanistan were considered by the West as 'freedom fighters' and were perceived by many as the oppressed and weak, who are fighting the just cause against the soviet bully. Bin Laden, who has risen up the ranks of Jihadists, was not viewed then as a threat.
In 1988 Osama Bin Laden founded a small organization that included only eight members made out mostly of his friends who accompanied him. Almost immediately it doubled, and within a month increased to one hundred members. At this stage, Osama bin Laden still doesn't view the west as the enemy and tries to formulate his own way and path through the newly created organization.
In the meantime the war in Afghanistan is over and the Muslim fighters that took part in it are strongly infused with Jihadist ideology. Intoxicated with their victory over the communist-Atheist invader, they are now planning how to use their experience gained on the battlefield for other purposes while struggles between groups on control intensify.
Such an opportunity was not long in presenting itself.
It was the Iraqi ruler- Saddam Hussein that provided the impetus (unintentionally might add) to these Islamic Jihadist forces in the Middle East.
The Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation "Desert Storm".
In light of Saddam's invasion Bin Laden offers to help Saudi royal family through his organization and resources, but in return he is rejected ridiculed and treated with ostentatious contempt in his Importance and abilities by the Royal Saudi regime. Instead, the royal family turned to the West in order to protect the 'cradle of Islam'.
The rejection on one side and turning to the west for protection on the other shocks Bin Laden as he would describe it as "one of the hardest moments of my life". Angered, humiliated, and feeling betrayed by his Saudi patrons, he leaves for Sudan in 1992 and from there begins his war against the infidels
everywhere.
The Terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and the attempted assassination of Egyptian leader (Mubarak) makes it clear to the west that a new era is beginning to unfold and they do not control it.
Time after time the West is mistaken in reading the Middle East map, and the assessment of the adversary. As in the case of the "Hamburg cell", which its members were under close surveillance by the German intelligence, managed to slip, reach the US and hijack the planes that brought down the Twin Towers in the 9/11 attacks.
A series of intelligence and operational failures, driven by random decisions and maltreatment of intelligence resources in combination of naive perception of the emerging enemy, has allowed terrorist cells to grow, gain operational capability and prepare their attacks from within western cities. Deus Vult
The US declares "total war on the evil forces" and invades Afghanistan, but Bin Laden and Al Qaeda remain elusive and undefeated. In this course of action, public pressure is mounting and there is a need for a concrete enemy that can be Militarily defeated. Within this pretext the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein enters into the equation as the "Axis of Evil" instead of the real enemy - Al Qaeda, and is announced as the main Military target by the US government.
As an outcome of that decision Saddam was toppled. The west celebrates, and with them the Iraqi Shiites, which took power over overnight. The Sunni majority became an oppressed and persecuted group in their own country, and looking for a redeemer - bin Laden and Al Qaeda are offering their services. Providing them with pragmatic solutions, they were now practicing a religious-political ideology based on a belief in "physical" jihadism and the Salafi movement of returning to (what adherents believe to be) "true" Sunni Islam.
Many Arab Sunnis turned to Militarized Jihad groups with Takfiri ideology that formed during the Afghan and Iraqi Wars. One of these prominent Groups was Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Organization of Monotheism and Jihad) led by Jordanian National Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His group declared an "All out war" and set the tone with their grisly acts of violence against other Muslims, which they considered as Kafirs, as well as westerners namely by broadcasted beheadings and car bombings perpetrated against US-Coalition forces and Shiites strongholds and localities. His group would play a major role in the emergence of the Islamic State we know today.
In retrospective, this scenario was so transparent and obvious that one cannot comprehend to this day how the strategic masterminds of the west did not anticipate it.
As an Afterthought wisdom, some will claim that the removal of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not the best idea, and that the USA should have left Iraq intact under his rule. The authoritative governing dam has been breached, and what has started the Arab Spring as a window of hope for democracy, has ended as an Islamist Tsunami.
In the Arab world a Governmental chaos has been created. Within two weeks Hosni Mubarak one of the prominent leaders in Arab countries disappeared. The Egyptian ruler was toppled from his chair in an orchestrated revolution , which created chaos and a power vacuum that was immediately filled by Islamist elements.
Again the west and western perception of the Islamic world has failed in trying to instill the same formula which has been tried, tested, and miserably failed in Iraq. A formula of "Instant democracy" with the flavor of quick democratic elections ,and with ostensibly democratic attributes however not taking into account the dangers of leadership with radical ideologies.
All while the United States continues their hunt for Osama bin Laden, they are finally successful, when a military code-named "Operation Neptune Spear" is carried out. Yet this event marks another milestone which re-shuffled the cards again.
As a realization of the Arab Spring, growing protests against the tyranny of another Arab leader Bashar al-Assad -quickly turns to an all out war in Syria. Sunni-dominated rebel groups battled the forces of the Shiite-Alawaite dominated government. In the midst of this conflict, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rose to power. ISIS is a radical and well-organized Islamist organization that has conquered territory in Iraq and Syria, further driving many Syrians from their homes.
The stated purpose of ISIS is to establish a renewed caliphate, or rule according to the earliest leaders in seventh-century Islam, and to become the highest authority in the Islamic world, destroying everyone it considers the enemies of Islam.
The group is infamous for mass murder of civilians, graphic videos of beheadings of captives, and the destruction of unique archaeological treasures. They have seized a golden opportunity to come into scene as a major player and to declare it as the historical return to the true Islam declaring Oath of allegiance to the Caliph (baay'a) and validating the reason for all Muslims/or converts to join them by fluffing their true identity and purpose of a meaningful life as true Muslim.
This has marks another starting point in the Radical-Jihadist Islam as it is now declared War on the whole world.
It is 1979 and the soviets have just ordered an operation code named "Storm-333". An operation that in which Soviet Special Forces toppled the Afghan government in just 43 minutes, but has started a war that will last a decade.
Within this trajectory, the Soviet invasion of, and subsequent war with Afghanistan (1979-1989) stands out in particular as a lasting legacy of the Cold War. Globally, its outcome continues to plague international society in the current struggle between the Western liberal democratic order and Islamic extremism.
The Soviet decision to …show more content…
invade Afghanistan was primarily driven by their security concerns of a rapidly weakening Afghanistan, vulnerable to Western intrusion led by the local radical politician Hafizullah Amin. After the failed attempt to stabilize the PDPA's regime (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) from collapse, and consequently facing an increasingly narrowing set of options, military intervention became the favored alternative.
The Soviets proclaimed, that by overthrowing Amin, they would slow down and ease the pace of Afghanistan’s communist revolution and thereby protect the communist regime (PDPA) from collapsing due to its domestic unpopularity, and thereby give in to Islamist and Western forces.
Very few had the understanding that what has started as a local eruption of the Cold War, was perceived by the Muslim world as a direct act of aggression towards the 'Islamic nation'. It has created instability and turbulence in which its vortex will generate a cataclysmic storm.
Casus Belli
Following the Soviet invasion to Afghanistan, local and International religious Islamic leaders were quick to announce a 'fatwa' (Divine commandment) aimed at Muslims all over the world, and commanding them to join the fighting for the liberation of Afghanistan.
Thousands were recruited in the process to join what became the holy war (jihad) against the invading atheist enemy. They were immediately deemed as 'Mujahedeen' - A term reserved to holy warriors for the project of Islamic conquest led by the Caliphates in the early history of Islam during the Medieval era (7th through 9th Century).
Many of these young recruits were drawn into the ideological formation of Jihad and became its symbol. Among these Mujahedeen, a distinctive young man who has shaped his world view and perception of power in the region. Within few years he will become the most wanted man in the world, his name - Osama Bin Laden.
Osama was born to the family of billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, a close friend of the Saudi Royal family. Mohammed was killed in an Airplane crash in 1967 when Osama was thirteen years old. Each of the children from twenty two women he married, was left with a fortune estimated around 100-200 Million dollars. When Osama arrives to Afghanistan in the early eighties with his personal fortune, he is drawn into this landscape, first as a financier and then as a fighter.
From the very beginning the Afghan Jihad was subject to various influences. The CIA, and Pakistani intelligence (ISI), along with the Saudi intelligence, persisted in supporting the most radical islamist groups in battle against the soviets.
The Afghan Jihad became an outlet for Islamist reformers crushed by repressive dictatorships. Rivalry among different groups of Arab volunteers in Afghanistan, the impatience of young men looking for a fight and the availability of funds, created the emergence of new schools of thought in which violence became more important than a political strategy.
Today it may sound strange, but back then, Islamic Jihadists in Afghanistan were considered by the West as 'freedom fighters' and were perceived by many as the oppressed and weak, who are fighting the just cause against the soviet bully. Bin Laden, who has risen up the ranks of Jihadists, was not viewed then as a threat.
In 1988 Osama Bin Laden founded a small organization that included only eight members made out mostly of his friends who accompanied him. Almost immediately it doubled, and within a month increased to one hundred members. At this stage, Osama bin Laden still doesn't view the west as the enemy and tries to formulate his own way and path through the newly created organization.
In the meantime the war in Afghanistan is over and the Muslim fighters that took part in it are strongly infused with Jihadist ideology. Intoxicated with their victory over the communist-Atheist invader, they are now planning how to use their experience gained on the battlefield for other purposes while struggles between groups on control intensify.
Such an opportunity was not long in presenting itself.
It was the Iraqi ruler- Saddam Hussein that provided the impetus (unintentionally might add) to these Islamic Jihadist forces in the Middle East.
The Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation "Desert Storm".
In light of Saddam's invasion Bin Laden offers to help Saudi royal family through his organization and resources, but in return he is rejected ridiculed and treated with ostentatious contempt in his Importance and abilities by the Royal Saudi regime. Instead, the royal family turned to the West in order to protect the 'cradle of Islam'.
The rejection on one side and turning to the west for protection on the other shocks Bin Laden as he would describe it as "one of the hardest moments of my life". Angered, humiliated, and feeling betrayed by his Saudi patrons, he leaves for Sudan in 1992 and from there begins his war against the infidels
everywhere.
The Terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania and the attempted assassination of Egyptian leader (Mubarak) makes it clear to the west that a new era is beginning to unfold and they do not control it.
Time after time the West is mistaken in reading the Middle East map, and the assessment of the adversary. As in the case of the "Hamburg cell", which its members were under close surveillance by the German intelligence, managed to slip, reach the US and hijack the planes that brought down the Twin Towers in the 9/11 attacks.
A series of intelligence and operational failures, driven by random decisions and maltreatment of intelligence resources in combination of naive perception of the emerging enemy, has allowed terrorist cells to grow, gain operational capability and prepare their attacks from within western cities. Deus Vult
The US declares "total war on the evil forces" and invades Afghanistan, but Bin Laden and Al Qaeda remain elusive and undefeated. In this course of action, public pressure is mounting and there is a need for a concrete enemy that can be Militarily defeated. Within this pretext the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein enters into the equation as the "Axis of Evil" instead of the real enemy - Al Qaeda, and is announced as the main Military target by the US government.
As an outcome of that decision Saddam was toppled. The west celebrates, and with them the Iraqi Shiites, which took power over overnight. The Sunni majority became an oppressed and persecuted group in their own country, and looking for a redeemer - bin Laden and Al Qaeda are offering their services. Providing them with pragmatic solutions, they were now practicing a religious-political ideology based on a belief in "physical" jihadism and the Salafi movement of returning to (what adherents believe to be) "true" Sunni Islam.
Many Arab Sunnis turned to Militarized Jihad groups with Takfiri ideology that formed during the Afghan and Iraqi Wars. One of these prominent Groups was Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Organization of Monotheism and Jihad) led by Jordanian National Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His group declared an "All out war" and set the tone with their grisly acts of violence against other Muslims, which they considered as Kafirs, as well as westerners namely by broadcasted beheadings and car bombings perpetrated against US-Coalition forces and Shiites strongholds and localities. His group would play a major role in the emergence of the Islamic State we know today.
In retrospective, this scenario was so transparent and obvious that one cannot comprehend to this day how the strategic masterminds of the west did not anticipate it.
As an Afterthought wisdom, some will claim that the removal of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was not the best idea, and that the USA should have left Iraq intact under his rule. The authoritative governing dam has been breached, and what has started the Arab Spring as a window of hope for democracy, has ended as an Islamist Tsunami.
In the Arab world a Governmental chaos has been created. Within two weeks Hosni Mubarak one of the prominent leaders in Arab countries disappeared. The Egyptian ruler was toppled from his chair in an orchestrated revolution , which created chaos and a power vacuum that was immediately filled by Islamist elements.
Again the west and western perception of the Islamic world has failed in trying to instill the same formula which has been tried, tested, and miserably failed in Iraq. A formula of "Instant democracy" with the flavor of quick democratic elections ,and with ostensibly democratic attributes however not taking into account the dangers of leadership with radical ideologies.
All while the United States continues their hunt for Osama bin Laden, they are finally successful, when a military code-named "Operation Neptune Spear" is carried out. Yet this event marks another milestone which re-shuffled the cards again.
As a realization of the Arab Spring, growing protests against the tyranny of another Arab leader Bashar al-Assad -quickly turns to an all out war in Syria. Sunni-dominated rebel groups battled the forces of the Shiite-Alawaite dominated government. In the midst of this conflict, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rose to power. ISIS is a radical and well-organized Islamist organization that has conquered territory in Iraq and Syria, further driving many Syrians from their homes.
The stated purpose of ISIS is to establish a renewed caliphate, or rule according to the earliest leaders in seventh-century Islam, and to become the highest authority in the Islamic world, destroying everyone it considers the enemies of Islam.
The group is infamous for mass murder of civilians, graphic videos of beheadings of captives, and the destruction of unique archaeological treasures. They have seized a golden opportunity to come into scene as a major player and to declare it as the historical return to the true Islam declaring Oath of allegiance to the Caliph (baay'a) and validating the reason for all Muslims/or converts to join them by fluffing their true identity and purpose of a meaningful life as true Muslim.
This has marks another starting point in the Radical-Jihadist Islam as it is now declared War on the whole world.