Until 1991, governments of Middle East states could switch their loyalties between US and USSR. Overall, or issue by issue. Depending on what they thought served their interests.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed. Only two years after the end of their failed invasion of Afghanistan. Leaving a power vacuum only partially filled by an uneasy trading truce between the Russian Federation and the EU.

(2/?)

Side note: Middle East militants are often referred to as "Islamic". But Islamists represent the average Muslim about as well as the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation (Aryan Nations) represent the average Christian.

Like the Aryan Nations, and Likud, they are fascist groups that use religious dogma and iconography as it suits them. Like all fascists, their focus is on taking control of a perceived national "homeland". So it can be subject to thorough "ethnic cleansing" (genocide).

(3/?)

Like all fascists, Middle East militant groups have both a heightened sense of being threatened by The Other. As well as a heavily inflated sense of their own importance.

The first explains why their take on Islam is so aggressively fundamentalist and xenophobic. Because of the second, they figured it was their role in the defence of Afghanistan that had defeated one of the world's great empires.

If they could bring down one, why not the other?

(4/?)

But the US had cleared what its strategists thought was its last barrier to becoming the first global empire. So for a while it mostly turned to economic conquest. The so-called "globalization" and "Structural Adjustment" of the 1990s.

This economic expansion of empire was challenged by a global network of civil society groups labeled by news media as the "antiglobalization" movement. After the 'Battle of Seattle' closed down the WTO meeting in Nov 1999, imperial progress halted.

(5/?)

Meanwhile the Islamist groups had been increasing their influence in the Middle East. Especially in states threatened by Israel's periodic wars of expansion. Or weakened by decades of proxy wars, like Afghanistan, where the Islamist Taliban ruled.

Islamist groups have been known in the anglophone media by many names, including Al-Qaeda and IS/IS/IL. But among their leaders were veterans of that CIA-trained Mujahedeen, including a younger son of a Saudi oligarch, one Osama Bin Laden.

(6/?)

The second Cold War could be said to have begun on 9/11, 2001.

Regardless of what you believe about the events of that day, what we do know is that US warhawks used it as an excuse to begin boot on the ground invasions of Middle East territories. Since a number of them share borders with Russia, it was inevitable that some of them would become proxy wars, notably Syria.

(7/?)

9/11 was also used as an excuse for a growth in state-corporate surveillance networks, both domestic and global. With Israel acting as a Middle East proxy, their spies have become increasingly essential to the US, and other anglophone and EU powers. Which brings us back to the jumping off point.

Phew!

(8/?)

It's worth noting that Afghanistan also shares a border with Xinjiang in northwest China, on the ancient Silk Road. Also that Islamists calling themselves Al-Qaeda were used as proxy troops in Syria.

So there's a good chance that during the US occupation of Afghanistan, Islamists were being armed and trained by the US - Mujahedeen style - and sent into northwest China. If for no other reason than to get them out of the way. But also perhaps, to get the CCP onboard with Cold War II.

(9/?)

Which seems to have worked a little too well. The CCP having declared their own US-style "War on Terror".

I support calls to respect human rights in China, including for Uighurs in Xinjiang, and other Islamic minorities in northwest China. But it's a bit rich when the US tries to occupy the moral high ground on that issue. Given that they and their allies have spent decades doing the same sorts of things in the Middle East (remember Abu Grahib, and the casual killing of journalists?).

(10/?)

The US have no right to condemn what the CCP are doing to Muslims while they continue to make excuses for what the IDF have done to Muslim civilians, and continue to do. Not to mention continuing to send them US weapons with which to do it, and treating Mossad propaganda as "intelligence" about the Middle East.

Isn't there a biblical saying about taking the log out of your own eye before commenting on the twig in someone else's?

(11/11)