What if the so-called Islamic State did not exist?

In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines.

Many in the media (Western, Arab, etc.) use the reference “Islamist” to brand any movement, be it political, militant or even charity focused.

If it is dominated by men with beards or women with headscarves that make references to the Holy Koran and Islam as the motivator behind their ideas, violent tactics or even good deeds, then “Islamist” is the word of choice.

According to this logic, a Malaysia-based charity can be as “Islamist” as the militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria.

When the term “Islamist” was first introduced to the debate on Islam and politics, it carried mostly intellectual connotations.

Even some “Islamists” used it in reference to their political thought.

Now, it can be moulded to mean many things.

This is not the only convenient term tossed around deliberately in the discourse pertaining to Islam and politics.

Many are already familiar with how the term “terrorism” manifested itself in the myriad of ways that fit any country’s national or foreign policy agenda — from US’ George W. Bush to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In fact, some leaders accused each other of practising, encouraging or engendering terrorism while positioning themselves as crusaders against terror.

The American version of the “war on terror” gained much attention and bad repute because it was highly destructive. But many other governments launched their own wars, with various degrees of violent outcomes.

The flexibility of the usage of language very much stands at the heart of the IS story.

We are told the group is mostly made of foreign jihadists. This could have much truth to it, but this notion cannot be accepted without much contention.

Why does the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad insist on the “foreign jihadists” claim, and did so even when the civil war plaguing his country was in its infancy, teetering between a popular uprising and an armed insurgency?

It is for the same reason that Israel insists on infusing the Iranian threat and its supposedly “genocidal” intents towards Israel in every discussion about the Hamas-led resistance in Palestine, and Hizbollah’s in Lebanon.

There are examples of governments in the Middle East that employ the “foreign menace” factor when dealing with solely internal phenomena, violent or otherwise.

The logic for this is simple: If the Syrian civil war is fuelled by foreign fanatics, then Assad can act violently against rebelling Syrians in the name of fighting the foreigners/jihadists/terrorists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains the master of political diversion.

He vacillates between peace talks and Iran-backed Palestinian “terror” groups in whatever way he finds suitable.

The desired outcome is placing Israel as a victim of and a crusader against foreign-inspired terrorism.

Just days after Israel carried out what was described by many as a genocide in Gaza — killing over 2,200 and wounding over 11,000 — Netanyahu once more tried to shift global attention by claiming that the so-called Islamic State was at the Israeli border.

For the US and its Western allies, the logic behind the war is hardly removed from the war discourse engendered by previous US administrations, most notably that of George Bush and his father.

It is another chapter in the saga of unfinished wars that the US unleashed in Iraq over the last 25 years.

In some way, IS, with its brutal tactics, is the worst possible manifestation of American interventionism.

In the first Iraq war (1990-91), the US-led coalition seemed determined to achieve the clear goal of driving the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and to use that as a starting point to achieve complete US dominance over the Middle East.

Back then, George Bush feared that pushing beyond that goal could lead to the kind of consequences that would alter the entire region and empower Iran at the expense of America’s Arab allies.

Instead of effecting regime change in Iraq, the US opted to subject Iraq to a decade of economic torment — a suffocating blockade that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

That was the golden age of America’s “containment” policy in the region.

However, the US policy in the Middle East, under Bush’s son, W. Bush, was reinvigorated by new elements that somewhat altered the political landscape, leading to the second war on Iraq, in 2003.

First, the attacks of September 11, 2001, were dubiously used to mislead the public and drag it into another war by linking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.

Second, there was the rise of the neoconservative political ideology that dominated Washington at the time. The neocons strongly believed in the regime-change doctrine that has since proved to be a complete failure.

It was not just a failure, but rather, a calamity. Today’s rise of IS is in fact a mere bullet point in a tragic Iraq timeline that started the moment Bush began his “Shock and awe campaign”.

This was followed by the fall of Baghdad, the dismantling of the country’s institutions (the de-Baathification of Iraq) and the “missions accomplished” speech.

Since then, it has been one adversity after another.

The US strategy in Iraq was predicated on destroying Iraqi nationalism and replacing it with a dangerous form of sectarianism that used the proverbial “divide and conquer” stratagem.

The US has indeed succeeded in dividing Iraq, maybe not territorially, but certainly in every other way. Moreover, the war brought Al Qaeda to Iraq.

The group used the atrocities inflicted by the US war and invasion to recruit fighters from Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

The US wreaked more havoc on Iraq, playing around with sectarian and tribal cards to lower the intensity of the resistance and to keep Iraqis busy fighting each other.

When the US combat troops allegedly departed Iraq, Al Qaeda was supposedly weakened.

In actuality, on the eve of the US withdrawal, Al Qaeda had branched off into other militant manifestations.

It was able to move with greater agility in the region, and when the Syrian uprising was intentionally armed by regional and international powers, Al Qaeda resurfaced with incredible power, fighting with prowess and unparallelled influence.

Despite the misinformation about the roots of IS, this group and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the same.

Their differences are an internal matter, but their objectives are ultimately identical.

US-Western and Arab motives in the war against IS might differ.

But both sides have keen interest in partaking in the war and an even keener interest in refusing to accept that such violence was not created in a vacuum.

The US and its Western allies refuse to see the obvious link between IS, Al Qaeda and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Arab leaders insist that their countries are also victims of some “Islamist” terror, produced not of their own anti-democratic and oppressive policies, but by Chechnya and other foreign fighters who are bringing dark-age violence to otherwise perfectly peaceable and stable political landscapes.

For the US-led coalition, IS must exist, although every member of the coalition has his own self-serving reasoning to explain his involvement.

And since IS is mostly made of “foreign jihadists” from faraway lands, speaking languages that few Arabs and Westerners understand, somehow no one is guilty, and the current upheaval in the Middle East is someone else’s fault.

Thus, there is no need to speak of Syrian massacres or of Iraq wars and its massacres, for the problem is obviously foreign.

If the so-called Islamic State did not exist, many in the region would have been keen on creating it.