Political analyst: US Employs "Divide and Rule Strategy" to Wage Sectarianism

In an interview on Saturday, the political commentator who is based in Leuven, Belgium, spoke about the Pentagon's recent deployment of 100 American troops to the Middle East.

According to the Pentagon, the special operations troops are expected to establish training sites for the Syrian opposition forces which the US claims will fight against the ISIL terrorists.

The Pentagon also announced last week that it was planning to deploy about 1,000 troops to train the so-called moderate Syrian militants to fight against the ISIL Takfiri group.

“This is a real joke,” said Adriaensens about the US efforts to combat extremists in the region while media reports revealed that 3,000 so-called "moderate rebels" defected to the ISIL last week.

The foreign-backed militants, including the thousands of defectors, carry with them weapons, cash, equipment, and training provided by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, and the UK, according to reports.

Thus, the US is in effect arming and training the Takfiris. As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in a 2007 article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?", the US and its regional allies use al-Qaeda and other extremist groups to wage a proxy war on Iran, Syria, and resistance movement Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The rise of ISIL “has offered a pretext for the launch of a new era of endless war, I believe, and a specter of prolonged US-led military presence in Persian Gulf,” Adriaensens noted.

Divide and Rule strategy

In 2008, Adriaensens said, “there was this Rand Corporation report that advocated Divide and Rule strategy” by the US as a means to further its interests in the region.

He was referring to the lengthy report called “Unfolding the Future of the Long War” prepared for the United States Army by RAND Corporation, which according to the preface “explores how the ‘long war’ might unfold in the coming years.”

The report suggested that the US could foster conflict between Salafi militants and Shia fighters “by shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf,” Adriaensens noted.

The Rand Corporation report has long sections on the pros and cons of creating “Sustained Sunni-Shia Conflict” in the Middle East and the strategy of divide and rule.

“Divide and Rule at the strategic level would be an inexpensive way of buying time for the United States and its allies until the United States can return its attention fully to the long war,” says one of the sections about this strategy, which "would rely heavily on covert action, IO (Information Operation), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces to achieve its goals.”

The report continues, “Divide and Rule is also a possible strategy the United States could adopt for this trajectory. Here US leaders could choose to capitalize on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shia empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”