News

  The flood of western money, supplies, intelligence agents, satellite and drone monitoring and promises of every kind has been lavish everywhere in the Arab Spring. They have been serving outside interests in the time-honoured way of all revolutions: identifying new clients for backroom deals, playing on big-man ambitions, fostering cupidity where it was only a seed, manipulating jealousies and fears, playing off old internecine vendettas and, the new favourite, heating up sectarian bigotry. If these machinations are more low-profile in Syria, this doesn't mean they aren't operating. And yes, it's a reckless strategy, as Iraq's splitting along ethnic and sectarian lines has created an incubator for al-Qaeda. But security-services exporters like the US and Israel are raking up big bucks in the war on terror, so a rosy aura of dollar signs hovers even over that grim prospect. Otherwise, any chance of Iraqi civil strife morphing into an independent military role for Iraq on the regional stage is securely blocked by a thick net of US arms deals and private contracts.