Berri, Jumblatt slam anti-ISIS coalition

BEIRUT: Speaker Nabih Berri and MP Walid Jumblatt said Monday that the anti-ISIS coalition did not seriously aim at eradicating the extremist group, highlighting that the Arab region was being fragmented to serve the interests of Israel. Berri said the U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria has not changed the battle on the ground in both countries.

“The coalition led by the United States to combat ISIS has not been serious [considering] the reality on the ground,” Berri said during a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani in Geneva on the sidelines of the 131st General Assembly meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Berri said that Israel was the only beneficiary from ongoing developments in the region, and there were other goals for what was happening which were related to oil.

The international coalition kicked off a campaign against ISIS in Iraq in August and began targeting the terrorist group in Syria the following month.

But despite the sustained airstrikes launched by the U.S., European and Arab states against ISIS in both countries, the militant group is still active and continues to advance in the Syrian Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, also known as Kobani.

Western action against ISIS came after it captured large swaths of northern Iraq early in summer and threatened to take over Baghdad.

“What is happening now is that the already divided [land] is being partitioned again. The [border drawn under] Sykes-Picot Agreement between Iraq and Syria is at an end and efforts are focused now on ending it between Syria and Lebanon, and between Lebanon and Palestine,” Berri said.

The speaker was referring to the 1916 agreement between Britain and France, which split the Ottomans’ Middle Eastern Empire between them and led to the emergence of modern Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Palestine with their current borders.

For his part, Jumblatt described the anti-ISIS coalition as a “lie.”

“The policy of fueling hatred between sects raises questions over the lie, the so-called international coalition to fight terrorism,” Jumblatt wrote in his weekly editorial at the Progressive Socialist Party’s Al-Anbaa newspaper.

According to the PSP chief, the Arab world began to regress with the launch of a conspiracy to undermine the Arab world.

This conspiracy scheme kicked off with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and continued with the fragmentation of Syria, which he argued was carried out to protect Israel.

These developments are not merely accidental or an accumulation of fleeting events, Jumblatt said.

He argued that they were all a part of one conspiracy that seeks to “fragment, divide and destroy” the foundations of nationalist entities in the Arab world.