Jeffrey D. Sachs

Terrorist attacks on civilians, whether the downing over Sinai of a Russian aircraft killing 224 passengers, the horrific Paris massacre claiming 130 innocent lives, or the tragic bombing in Ankara that killed 102 peace activists, are crimes against humanity. Their perpetrators – in this case ISIS – must be stopped. Success will require a clear understanding of the roots of this ruthless network of jihadists.The West, especially the United States, bears significant responsibility for creating the conditions in which ISIS has flourished. Only a change in U.S. and European foreign policy vis-à-vis the Middle East can reduce the risk of further terrorism.

The recent attacks should be understood as “blowback terrorism”: a dreadful unintended result of repeated U.S. and European covert and overt military actions throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia that aimed to overthrow governments and install regimes compliant with Western interests. These operations have not only destabilized the targeted regions, causing great suffering; they have also put populations in the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the Middle East at significant risk of terror.

The public has never really been told the true history of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda or the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Starting in 1979, the CIA mobilized, recruited, trained, and armed Sunni young men to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA recruited widely from Muslim populations to form the Mujahideen, a multinational Sunni force mobilized to oust the Soviet infidel from Afghanistan.

Bin Laden, from a wealthy Saudi family, was brought in to help lead and co-finance the operation. This was typical of CIA operations: relying on improvised funding through a wealthy family and proceeds from smuggling and the narcotics trade.

By promoting the core vision of a jihad to defend the lands of Islam from outsiders, the CIA produced a hardened fighting force of thousands of young men displaced from their homes and stoked for battle. It is this fighting force – and the ideology motivating it – that still forms the basis of the Sunni jihadi insurgencies, including ISIS. While the jihadis’ original target was the Soviet Union, today the “infidel” includes the U.S., Europe (notably France and the United Kingdom) and Russia.

At the end of the 1980s, with the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, some elements of the Mujahideen morphed into Al-Qaeda. After the Soviet withdrawal, the term Al-Qaeda shifted meaning from the specific military base to the organizational base of jihadi activities.

Blowback against the U.S. began in 1990 with the first Gulf War, when the U.S. created and expanded its military bases in the Dar al-Islam, most notably in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s founding and holiest sites. This expanded U.S. military presence was anathema to the core jihadi ideology that the CIA had done so much to foster.

America’s unprovoked war on Iraq in 2003 unleashed the demons. Not only was the war itself launched on the basis of CIA lies; it also aimed to create a Shiite-led regime subservient to the U.S. and anathema to the Sunni jihadis and the many more Sunni Iraqis ready to take up arms. More recently, the U.S., France, and the United Kingdom toppled Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, and the U.S. worked with the Egyptian generals who ousted the elected Muslim Brotherhood government. In Syria, following President Bashar Assad’s violent suppression of peaceful public protests in 2011, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other regional allies helped to foment a military insurgency that has pushed the country into a downward spiral of chaos and violence.

Such operations have failed – repeatedly and often disastrously – to produce legitimate governments or even rudimentary stability. On the contrary, by upending established, albeit authoritarian governments in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and destabilizing Sudan and other parts of Africa deemed hostile to the West, they have done much to fuel chaos, bloodshed and civil war. It is this turmoil that has enabled ISIS to capture and defend territory in Syria, Iraq and parts of North Africa.

Three steps are needed to defeat ISIS and other violent jihadists. First, U.S. President Barack Obama should pull the plug on CIA covert operations. The use of the CIA as a secret army of destabilization has a long, tragic history of failure, all hidden from public view under the agency’s cloak of secrecy.

Ending CIA-caused mayhem would go far to stanch the instability, violence and anti-Western hatred fueling today’s terrorism.

Second, the U.S., Russia and the other permanent members of the Security Council should immediately stop their infighting and establish a framework for Syrian peace. They have a shared and urgent stake in confronting ISIS; all are victims of the terror. Moreover, military action against ISIS can succeed only with the legitimacy and backing of the U.N. Security Council.

The U.N. framework should include an immediate end to the insurgency against Assad that the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have pursued; a Syrian cease-fire; a U.N.-mandated military force to confront ISIS; and a political transition in Syria dictated not by the U.S., but by a U.N. consensus to support a non-violent political reconstruction.

Finally, the long-term solution to regional instability lies in sustainable development. The entire Middle East is beset not only by wars but also by deepening development failures: intensifying fresh water stress, desertification, high youth unemployment, poor educational systems and other serious blockages.

More wars – especially CIA-backed, Western-led wars – will solve nothing. By contrast, a surge of investment in education, health, renewable energy, agriculture, and infrastructure, financed both from within the region and globally, is the real key to building a more stable future for the Middle East and the world.