Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on google More Sharing Services 12

The Islamic State Iraq and Syria

Did Bin Laden Win?

by ERIC WALBERG

Osama Bin Laden’s goal in 9/11 was to suck the US into Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking a regional conflagration that would sweep away the imperial legacy and establish a new caliphate. Over a decade later, this plan is still on track. As he led his jihadists triumphantly into Mosul and declared an emirate on Iraq-Syrian territory, ISIS ‘caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain, France and imperial Russia was at last being dismantled.
The US and Saudis now face an intractable dilemma.

• For the US, allowing the local al-Qaeda rebels to consolidate their hold on Sunni Iraq and northern Syria means the complete failure of their post-9/11 strategy of creating a new Middle East under their hegemony.
• For the Saudis, it means risking the very existence of the Saudi state itself.

Sykes-Picot and Saudi Arabiahttp://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/10/did-bin-laden-win/