Mid-east policy cooked up ISIS

Once upon a time, there was the Arab Spring … and they lived unhappily ever after. On 18 March 2011, Syrian youth ignited a revolution with graffiti in Dar'aa – the regime must fall. The inferno has now killed over 200,000 people and displaced nearly four million.

It is easy to blame IS militants for the problem, but they are the symptom of foreign policies that resemble BBQ knobs. Power brokers are upgraded and degraded to achieve the desired temperature and power balance.

Three years ago, Mother Agnes Miriam visited Australia from Syria and warned about the emptying of Christians in the Middle East. She predicted that Christians would be the casualty of the Arab Spring. Enough beheading videos have been posted online to bring home this tragic truth.

She also warned that the "Arab Spring" had been "hijacked by foreign Islamist mercenaries, with strong support from Western countries."

Indeed, the Syrian youth who started the revolution were hijacked by the Free Syrian Army who were in turn hijacked by the non-Syrian Salafists who were in turn hijacked by the foreign fighters of al Qaeda and their offshoot the 'Islamic State.' There is nothing civil about the war in Syria.

Arab strongmen and 'flames' are treated like burners of a BBQ, to be ignited then extinguished, armed then disarmed, elevated then bombed, allies then enemies.

The US backed coalition, including Australia, will keep adjusting the BBQ knobs to ensure their two main allies remain protected: Israel and Saudi Arabia. The same two countries that the US dares not criticise for their human rights violations.

So long as the Arabs are fighting each other, and their flames become weaker, they should not pose any threat to Israel's military supremacy in the neighbourhood.

Why have al Qaeda and all its offshoots, jihadists and mercenaries flocked to fight alongside their Sunni brothers in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, and in the Levant, but they have never rushed to rescue their Sunni brothers in Palestine, especially in Gaza?

On the eve of Sept 11 last year, US President Barack Obama condemned ISIS and its "acts of barbarism", referring to it as a "terrorist organisation, pure and simple." So why vow to gradually degrade and ultimately destroy rather than immediately destroy?

The black box of the BBQ reveals the history of those playing with the temperature control knobs.

On 20 December 1983, when Iraq fought Iran after the Islamic revolution, US special envoy Donald Rumsfeld did a handshake deal with Saddam Hussein. Iraq was upgraded.