CHILLING reports of massacres are pouring from Iraq. Hundreds of civilians are gruesomely killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants. ISIS is an outfit created, funded and armed by the US to destabilise the region. The declared goal of the ISIS is the creation of an Islamic state in Syria (and Iraq) and the return of the Islamic caliphate, which ended after the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1924. In an offensive that took the world by surprise, the ISIS militia ran amok over vast swathes of Iraqi territory, stomping over Mosul, the second most important city of Iraq. Less than 100 kilometres away from Baghdad, they are engaged in a severe battle with the Iraqi armed forces, joined by the Shiite civilians who have been called to take up arms in defence. Militants belonging to the ISIS also referred to as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) are chillingly demonic in their execution – photographing the massacre and putting it all over the media to send a dire message. This group is considered to be the most cold-blooded and brutal that even al-Qaeda is said to be frightened to be associated with. In the areas that they have gained control in Iraq, they had looted millions of dollars from the banks and captured large stockpiles of arms and ammunition. They declared the imposition of 'sharia' and an administration model they had been following in Syria. In leaflets distributed during Friday prayers, titled 'City Charter' they announced prohibition of civic displays and imposed a ban on smoking and consumption of alcohol. Women, as was the case with all such fundamentalist groups, were high on target and were ordered to be “decent and refrain from going out”. They are banned from wearing “loose or tight clothes”. PRE-PLANNED ATTACKS Though the attack by the ISIS is sudden and intense, it did not come out of the blue. There were indeed reports warning against such an attack. The events unfolding also point out to the months of preparation and planning that might have gone into the attacks. It would be really a surprise, if the US – a country that spies and snoops on a majority of world citizens – claims that it too was caught unawares by the attack. Moreover, one should not forget that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki went to the US and requested the administration to help the Iraqi government fight the growing threat of the ISIS. The Obama administration not only ignored his appeal, but has virtually snubbed him for not completely toeing their line in governing Iraq. While the US government had refused to help the Iraqi government to strike at one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations in the world, it is doing the same in eight other countries, overriding the concerns of the respective governments, all under the guise of fighting terrorism. The natural question that emanates is why is the US suddenly acting dove? The reasons become clear when we look beyond the boundaries of Iraq. The US, blinded by its avocation of impacting a regime change in Syria, is nurturing many fundamentalist organisations including the ISIS. It is by now an established fact that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, some of the most trusted allies of the US in West Asia are pumping in millions of dollars to all those terrorist organisations fighting against the Syrian government and this includes the ISIS. As one of the journalists covering West Asia has recently commented, “ISIS now controls or can operate with impunity in a great stretch of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, making it militarily the most successful jihadi movement ever”. Governing the US foreign policy direction in West Asia is its plan of reshaping the entire map of the region to dovetail its strategic interests. Working closely with the US is its lackey Israel. Both of them are one in trying to break the sovereign States in the region on ethnic and sectarian lines. In fact, the idea that all the Arab states should be broken down into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz writes: “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi'ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha'aretz February 6, 1982) as something best that can happen for Israeli interests. This is in consonance with an Israeli policy document, which states: “The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run...” Further, “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria...In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarisation”. Though sounding contemporary, this is, in fact, written some thirty years ago by Oded Yinon in A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. This strategy was elaborated and put into practice by the US since the start of the new millennium. Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in New York Times (November 25, 2003) what the US should do in Iraq: “The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution: Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south”. This was further elaborated as a policy perspective by the then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who termed it as a project for 'New Middle East'. This project consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and Afghanistan. This was introduced during the Israeli aggression on Lebanon in 2006. Introducing the project 'New Middle East', Rice had pointed out that “Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of 'constructive chaos'”. Addressing a press conference she continued, “what we’re seeing here (the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon), in a sense, is the growing – the ‘birth pangs' – of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do, we (the US) have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East and not going back to the old one”. It is according to this plan that they have unleashed 'constructive chaos' in the entire West Asian region, to subsequently divide the existing countries on sectarian lines and gain access to their rich natural resources. This project was supported by both the Republicans and the Democrats. The Washington Post, (September 26, 2007) approvingly reports about a debate in the US Senate: “Showing rare bipartisan consensus over war policy, the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country into three semi-autonomous regions. The plan, conceived by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden...envisions a federal government system for Iraq, consisting of separate regions for Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations”. It is the same Biden who is now the vice president of the US. Peter Galbraith, senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, was more forthright in an interview (November 12, 2008): “Of course, it's very encouraging to me that Joe Biden is the incoming vice president. He has been the prime proponent of a decentralised Iraq...it is in fact what the Bush administration has done in part. The Bush administration, in 2007, decided to finance a Sunni army, which is the Awakening. And that's why we've had success. Biden would only take this a next step and encourage the Sunnis to form their own region, which would control that army just as the Kurdistan region controls the Peshmerga, which is the Kurdistan army”. DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES Ralph Peter (who retired as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence and one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors on strategy for military journals and US foreign policy), drew a new map (in the maps given, notice how the boundaries of many countries in the region are re-drawn, including Pakistan) for the region to correct the mistakes committed by “self-interested Europeans”. Stating that “international statecraft has never developed effective tools, short of war, for readjusting faulty borders”, he explains: “The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East...the unjust borders in the Middle East – to borrow from Churchill – generate more trouble than can be consumed locally...without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East”. It is thus to 'correct' such mistakes that the US took upon itself the task, read, to gain unhindered control over the region rich in oil and other natural resources. All those chickens it had reared had come to roost, with disastrous consequences both to the local populations and the entire world. Irrespective of the fact, whether US sends its troops to Iraq or not, it should be noted that what is happening in the region is to the interests of the US. Secular states in the region, Iraq, Syria and Libya, were dismantled and sectarian animosity was fueled, threatening the very existence of these states. The US wanted weak states in the region to establish its unchallenged hegemony over the region and its resources. The US always looked at West Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as 'stepping stones' for extending its influence into the 'former Soviet Union'. How the US invasion of Afghanistan and intervention in Pakistan ruined these countries is well before us. With 'constructive chaos' unleashed even in Ukraine, the signals are indeed ominous.