WASHINGTON, October 4 (RIA Novosti) - The US is trying to put blame for the rise of Islamic State on the regional states and force them to send troops to fight jihadists, Ivan Eland, American defense analyst and director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, told RIA Novosti Friday, commenting on the recent US Vice President's speech at Harvard University.
"It indicates that the US is desperate to get friendly ground troops to battle ISIS and is saying to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that they caused the rise of ISIS and should provide such forces to help battle the group," Ivan Eland told RIA Novosti, analyzing the US Vice President Joe Biden's speech delivered at John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University on Thursday.
"The US needs to quickly drum up friendly ground forces to battle ISIS without using its own, but the Free Syrian Army, the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Pesh Merga will take a long time to train and equip. So the US is trying to shame these regional countries to send forces to fight ISIS," Eland explained.
At the same time, the US overlooks its own role in making the advent of Islamic State possible.
"What Biden says is essentially true about US allies, but he also neglects to mention the US role in the rise of ISIS. ISIS originated as al-Qaeda in Iraq, which arose to fight the unneeded US invasion of Iraq," Eland said.
"US military actions in the Islamic nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and now Syria have destabilized the Islamic world and exacerbated the rise of radical Islam. Non-Muslim attacks on or invasions of Muslim countries fire radical Islam and aim it at the West. Instead of helping to dampen such Islamic radicalism, US armed attacks in Iraq and Syria further fuels it," Eland concluded.
In his speech at Harvard University on Thursday Joe Biden accused the US key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the Islamic State by providing them with money and weapons, seeking Syria's President Bashar Assad's overthrow.
IS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has been fighting against the government in Syria since 2012 and advanced into portions of northern Iraq in June 2014. IS continues to wage war in an attempt to establish a caliphate in these areas.
Early in September, US President Barack Obama unveiled a strategy to defeat the IS insurgency by creating an international anti-IS coalition and conducting airstrikes against IS targets in Iraq and Syria. The US-led coalition is currently comprised of more than 60 countries, according to the State Department.
