As America began its air campaign in Syria earlier this week, it bombed numerous ISIS targets killing a large number of militants as well as multiple civilians. It also attacked another group located west of Aleppo, which it called “the Khorasan group.”  “Strikes were undertaken,’ the US Department of Defense said, “to disrupt imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western targets.”

So who is “the Khorasan group?” Khorasan, like “al-Sham” in ISIS’ name, is a historical geographical location that now comprises regions of modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. It is from Khorasan that a Muslim army is prophesied to rise out of and conquer Jerusalem. From a Western perspective, it’s about as threatening as a historical name can be.

US officials say it is a small, al-Qaeda affiliated organization comprised of highly skilled al-Qaeda veterans, including experts in bomb-making from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It was suggested that they posed an imminent threat to the West, as they were in the final stages of plotting an attack, with what some hypothesize were new non-metallic explosives. The suggestion made by US officials is that Ayman al-Zawahiri (the leader of al-Qaeda) requested that Musin al-Fadhli (a confidante of Bin Laden and a veteran al-Qaeda leader) go to Syria to form an executive cell amidst Syria’s chaos, where Fadhli could embed among the Syrian rebel group Jabahat al-Nusra (JAN), another al-Qaeda affiliate, and recruit Western jihadists from its ranks to attack their homelands.

Forget selling newspaper headlines, let’s sell the movie rights to this story! A super-secret terrorist organization with al-Qaeda affiliations? Rooted in Islamic prophecies of Armageddon?! With new age plastic bombs that are going to be used to attack the West???

This has all the makings of the narratives that the West loves to fear. And that’s exactly what it is. Following Saddam’s WMDs, and more recently ISIS’ inflated threat to world peace, we now have “Khorasan,” the newest term of the day to toss around the kitchen table at home and the water cooler at work, evoking wide eyes and whispers of why we need to keep fighting the war on terror. Just try whispering it. Khorasan. Doesn’t it sound scary?

As someone who has been following the Syrian civil war since its beginning, I was surprised when I heard that the US had bombed targets of an organization I had never heard of. This was because no one had heard of Khorasan until a few weeks ago. Currently there is great debate as to whether or not they are a real organization. I suggest that they are not real, and that the US has simply renamed an old enemy for political gain.

By suggesting that Khorasan is an al-Qaeda affiliate which poses an imminent threat to America, Obama legitimizes his war in Syria, one which is argued by some as unconstitutional and illegal.

“Under the post-9/11 authorization provided by Congress in 2001,” says McLaughlin and Liebelson, “the president is allowed to use force against ‘those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.’ And senior administration officials contend that this authorization covers Khorasan, given its connection to Al Qaeda.”

Further reason to present Khorasan as an imminent threat is the guise it provides, under which the US can strike the terrorist organization it is imbedded within, Jabhat al-Nusra. An al-Qaeda affiliate that has been fairly successful in fighting the Assad regime in Syria, JAN’s Islamist views are too radical for the US’ view of a more Western-friendly future for Syria.

“[The JAN occupied region] is an area where the United States and its allies seek to support rival rebel forces, in order to gradually squeeze out the hardline jihadis and reshape the insurgency against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad,” said Aaron Lund of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

My suggestion then is that Khorasan is simply JAN rebranded. Similarly the Washington Post says, “what’s disputed is whether the Khorasan group is really any different from Jabhat al-Nusra, or whether it can even constitute a distinct entity at all.”

This is supported by the fact that after the US airstrikes allegedly against Khorasan, Syrian opposition forces said as many as 50 JAN fighters were killed. In addition, al-Nusra itself reported that the same strikes had killed one of their leaders, Abu Yousef al-Turki.

“’Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,’ added Abdel Rahman,” quoted by Newsmax, “[Khorasan]… should not be considered a new or distinct group as such.”

Even if they did exist, Khorasan presents little to fear. In fact, the US has nearly said as much. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper said earlier, “in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a threat as the Islamic State.” This is an odd statement in light of Barack Obama’s statement that, “there is “no credible information” that the militants of the Islamic State were planning to attack inside the United States.”

So there you have it – Khorosan is simply the West’s newest bogeyman. By applying a loaded name to a three year old al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the US has created a new external threat that legitimizes its war in Syria, extends its permissible scope of targeted strikes, and sets the groundwork for an extended war in the Middle East. Khorosan is the newest player to fear in the Middle East, the new bad guy in the West’s epic fight against evil.

All of this and for what? Khorosan is not even real.

Note- I don’t expect these updates to be included in the marked work as they were made after the blog deadline, however they do provide interesting context from which to read my post.

Update: Two days later, an article by Greenwald and Hussain. 

Update 2: Three days later, an interview with Hussain on Democracy Now.

Update 3: Four days later, Al Aan TV finds documents at the site of the strike against alleged Khorasan facilities, listing 13 men as being Jabhat al-Nusra operatives. This includes Abu Yousef al-Turki, who I cited as proof that Khorasan was most likely just JAN.

When speaking about his strategy against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS or ISIL), there appears to be a common theme that President Barack Obama stresses – that he will not repeat the mistakes of his predecessor George W. Bush and be dragged into yet another bloody and lengthy war in the Middle East. However if you look closely at his supposedly different strategy, you realize that it is not so different where it counts.

In his Presidential Address on ISIL, Obama said the US military will wage an air campaign against ISIS targets through “a ‘steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our airpower.” He goes on to say this would be done in co-operation with a number of other nations who would form a military alliance. While at first this may sound like a preferable alternative to returning US combat troops to Iraq, Barack Obama is mistaken if he thinks he has learned much of anything from the mistakes of his predecessor Bush when fighting terrorism.  Based on the strategy Obama has laid out, America is doomed to another loss in its battle in the War on Terror.

Obama’s most critical mistake is his reliance on air assault. In recent history America has proved to be very good at bombing things, sometimes using a “shock and awe” technique as a means of gaining military advantage (see the air assaults in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya for example). However in recent history America has also proved to be very poor at dealing with the outcomes of such air campaigns (see the air assaults in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya for example). These failures can be argued as one of the causal factors of the rise in ISIS over the last 5 years.

It is critical when combatting terrorist organizations that a state must not forget the role the local population plays. Terrorist organizations often depend on local populations for things such as, supplies needed to sustain battle, concealment from their attackers, and a source of new recruits. With this in mind it should be clear to many that bombing is one of the surest ways a counterterrorist entity can drive a populace to extremism. Again, the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind, or perhaps consider the state of Israel and its problem with extremism in the occupied territories.

And here rises an issue for America – bombing urban populations is going to become necessary when ISIS fighters congregate in them to shelter from the destruction of their rural bases and training centers. If Obama really wants to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, he will eventually have to strike areas such as Falluja and Mosul in Iraq, and possibly even Raqqa in Syria (this opens a whole other can of worms).

It is truly a shame that Western powers have yet to learn this important lesson – when fighting terrorists hiding in civilian populations, bombing becomes an act of terrorism, and you cannot fight terrorism with terrorism. For every bomb that is dropped, for every militant that is killed, a new one is born. It is laughable that Obama points to “successful” drone programs in Yemen and Somalia, two countries that are actually now seeing a rise in extremism.

Thus, several predictions can be made regarding the outcome of Obama’s air strategy in combatting ISIS. Foreign fighters streaming into the conflict will increase, as the inevitable death of innocent Muslims will boost extremist and anti-Western sentiment abroad. Foreign funding will increase, as Syria and Iraq becomes the next arena for wealthy radical elites to take their jabs at Western forces. Finally and most critically, a new generation of terrorists will be born amongst the rubble and dust of desecrated homes.

Based on his short sighted plan of bombing for peace, it should be clear that Obama is far less different from Bush than he might think. In both leaders’ strategies lies a key realist error in combatting extremism, one which misses the vital role soft power can play in fighting terrorism. America and its allies must wake up to the fact that they cannot solve extremism and fundamentalism by precision airstrike, which continues to breed, and proliferate foreign terrorist organizations.

Until this happens the only remaining question in the War on Terror is this- who do we bomb next?