The Law of Unintended Consequences

In the years leading up to 1989, my gardener, Abd'l Aziz, used to take a three monthly sabbatical during which he would travel to Afghanistan to kill Russians. Abd'l Aziz was ethnically a Tajik and benefitted from the supply of American weapons from the Yemeni, Osama bin Laden, who organized supply from money received from the Saudis.

In 1989, a great change occurred. The Russians gave up in Afghanistan and the resistance morphed into a civil war with Osama, the leader of the newly formed AlQaeda and the ethnic Pashtun Taliban fighting against the Tajiks and the United States. The airliner attacks in 2001 was a direct result and the US is still fighting in Afghanistan some sixteen years later. I reflect that the British fought three wars in Afghanistan at the height of their imperial power and lost every one of them. One result of the subsequent compromise result was the recognition of tribal areas of the Durand line which still enable problems some 120 years later.

So there can be unintended consequences modified by a persistence of political memory. 

The striving of national consciousness of the Kurds and Palestinians and the creation of Kingdoms in Syria and Iraq at the end of WWI are good examples. 

And now the rebellion of Sunnis in Syria against the tyranny of Hafez , and later Bashir, Assad are others.

It is within the dynamic of this latter rebellion we have seen the phenomenon of foreign fighters appearing both in the ranks of AlQaeda and in Daesh (Isis). Fighters have appeared from Tunisia (6,000), Saudi Arabia (2,500), Jordan (2000), Russia and the Central Asian Republics (7,000), and Turkey (2,000).

The unintended consequences will probably be pressure on the  fragile autocratic regimes of the countries of their origin when the hardened warriors (that survive) return home.

Turkey will not only have its Kurds to worry about, but also Salafi ethnic Turks. Saudi Arabia and Russia will also have to deal with experienced fighters and the rest of us will continue to face a wave of terrorism...