NEW YORK, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - Western powers have created the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in order to destabilize the region and provide a pretext for the current Iraq and Syria bombing campaigns, expert on Islam and the Arab world Kevin Barrett has told RIA Novosti.
"The West and its allies and proxies in the Islamic world created al-Qaeda to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Likewise, the IS group was created by Western efforts to destabilize Syria and provide a pretext for bombing," Barrett said Wednesday.
A vocal critic of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Barrett went further by comparing the IS to the Frankenstein's monster, threatening its creator.
The scholar also argued the West plays a "double game" around the terrorism problem.
"The issue of Islamic extremist terrorism has been hyped to replace the lost communist enemy that united the West during the Cold War," he said.
The IS Sunni extremist group has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate on the controlled areas in June. Following the group's advance in northern Iraq, Washington started carrying out airstrikes against the insurgents on the Iraqi soil back in August. The attacks were extended to Syria last week.
The military action in Iraq and Syria is conducted within the strategy, outlined by US President Barack Obama, which involves the establishment of a broad international coalition. America's Arab allies, as well as France and the United Kingdom, have taken part in the airstrikes targeting the IS and other militant groups in Syria.
