by Hussein Ibrahim
On social media, and some on mainstream media, many have raised the possibility of Islamist fighters arriving in Ukraine to fight against Russian forces, whether from Europe or the Middle East, especially after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, announced the formation of a corps of foreign fighters, recalling memories of the “Afghan jihad” against The Soviets, in the eighties of the last century. Although the “Ukrainian jihad” scenario may not be so easy because it requires many conditions, and has many caveats, there are many similar circumstances, between yesterday and today, the most important of which is the presence of some Islamist sympathy with Ukraine against the Russians, and the tremendous American supportive momentum for this country.
The Afghan model was present, even before the start of the war in terms of the American desire to involve and exhaust the Russians. However, the world has changed a lot from those days. Neither the Reaganism that paved the way for America’s rise to world leadership has returned, nor is Saudi Arabia, which was the most important mediating link in the Afghan war against the Russians, in the same conditions it was in in the 1980’s when it took charge of part of the funding and provision of the ideological background to the jihadists.
The Americans and their Europeans would prefer to rely first on Ukrainian nationalists, but this may not suffice, especially since the conflict, in its main justification, is based on differences over Crimea and the Donbas, with which Ukrainian nationalism has nothing to do with. Likewise, it becomes clear to many in Ukraine that nationalist sentiments are a card for foreign political investment and exploitation by the corrupt at home, and before this and that, nationalist sentiments in the whole world declined, as did ideologies, with the emergence of global economic groupings, liberalization of trade and opening of borders, and this applies to Europe more than others.
The strongest incentive for Ukrainians to fight is the promise of prosperity in the event of them joining the European Union and “NATO”. But if the price for this is the destruction of their country, and a large number of victims, injured and disabled, as is the case in long wars, the matter may turn into an incentive for not fighting.
But if such an option fails, it may not be far for the United States to return to the option of jihad, especially since global jihad has received almost fatal blows from America in particular, and its threat has subsided. Washington has an opportunism that makes it differentiate between one threat and another. When the communist threat was before it, it resorted to Islamist jihad against it; and when jihad became the threat, it had no objection to Russia being given the opportunity to deal a painful blow to the Islamists in Syria. Now, on the threshold of the world’s return to multipolarity, whether through the Ukraine war or the growing Chinese threat, once again swallowing the medicine of an alliance with the jihadists, may be one solution.
Despite the anti-Muslim propaganda injected by the American media machine, since September 11, 2001, Washington has never stopped using Islamists to achieve specific goals, as it raised the derivatives of the “Muslim Brotherhood” to power in more than one Arab country, after the movements that began in Tunisia in late 2010, based on the installation of stable regimes, to replace the rickety military systems based on imposing emergency states, to serve the American interest. The accusation of former President Donald Trump of the administration of his predecessor Barack Obama of creating the “ISIS” organization, also indicates some American function for this organization. But the secret nature of the American alliance with the Islamist trend imposes ups and downs in the relationship, which sometimes collides with facts that are not easy to jump over, such as the absolute American support for Israel, and the American arming of the Arab regimes, especially the Gulf, which suppress the Islamists.
From the war in Afghanistan to Yugoslavia and Chechnya, there are many examples of the American alliance with the Islamists, but the Syrian war in particular drew the limits of that relationship. The most important thing that it revealed is the great willingness of those allied with Washington to blame it for not supporting them strongly enough to overthrow the regime in Damascus. Instead, they argue, Washington’s willingness to allow Russia to deal a major blow to Islamists, despite providing them with various types of assistance, especially in the beginnings of the war. Now, Russia is back as a common enemy. Will this lead to the establishment of a new American-Islamist alliance, which translates into a fight against the Russians in Ukraine, becoming the new land of jihad?
The main missing link to return to such an alliance is Saudi Arabia, which has so far chosen to remain silent about what is happening, which is a position in itself. In recent years, Riyadh has become very close to Russia, and this cannot be justified only by the dispute between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the administration of President Joe Biden, as the historical relationship between the two countries has become controversial in the American domestic sphere, to the extent that it can be said that the majority of American political circles and the concerned elites hate it. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, there is an undisguised old Saudi anger against the Americans,; recall the latter were forced in the mid-1990s to evacuate their bases in the Kingdom and move to other places in the Gulf, especially to the Al Udeid base in Qatar.
Bin Salman, who so far apparently refuses to change his oil policy in the “OPEC Plus” based on an understanding with the Russians on production levels, which pushed oil prices to exceed $100 a barrel, which greatly harms Western economies, is taking a position of waiting for opportunities to come. And if he will ally himself with the Americans, he undoubtedly wants a great price from them for that. Otherwise, his interest remains with President Vladimir Putin, with whom the agreement provides, at least, to fill Saudi coffers with funds that will be necessary to use them to arrange the rule of the Crown Prince, when the time comes for that.
On the Ukrainian side, the options are not many for Zelensky, who realizes that nationalities do not fight each other, fighters will not come to support him on national grounds, and the time of mercenary fighters is over. Therefore, when he announced the formation of the Foreigners’ Brigade, he had in mind the Islamist fighters, whether in Europe or the Middle East, and especially that reservoir of fighters in the Syrian province of Idlib who are running out of options after they had been brought from all of Syria to be crammed into it, with no work prospects.
In any case, the greatest similarity between the “Afghan jihad” and what circumstances may intersect to turn it into a “Ukrainian jihad” remains the arrival of the first Stinger missiles, which played a major role in the first Afghanistan war, to Ukraine.
