March 24, 2007
By K Gajendra Singh
"We could expect an epic battle between Shi'ite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists aided by al-Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill out across the country [Iraq] - and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict." President George Bush in his State of union address
" Mr Bush looks increasingly like a general who has run out of ideas, troops and hope ." Commented 'The Guardian '
"From inside Pakistan's border to the Mediterranean, almost every land (Muslim ) is in crisis. Suddenly, all the Western talk of a Sunni-Shi'i war looks troublingly real "(one of the many options now on the table. )
US led western talk of a Shi'i-Sunni war looks troublingly real , although the option is now on slow backburner. The policy of divide and rule is as old as the Roman empire – a constant guide to the Christian West and implemented ruthlessly during its colonial onslaught on the rest of the world. Evolution of Western nationalism based on a narrow definition of shared religion , ethnicity , language , culture or history after centuries of religious and ethnic wars was then employed to divide multi religious and pluralistic empires and kingdoms in the East and South during its crusade of colonial wars and expansion, masked as 'civilizing mission ' or 'white man's burden' 'or 'saving the soul' by converting natives to Christianity .Europe and Orthodox Russia became self proclaimed 'Guardians of Christians' or nationalities like Serbs ,Bulgarians, Greeks , Armenians and others to divide and break up the far flung Ottoman empire which had reached right up to the gates of Vienna. Religious 'millets' had full freedom of faith and Christians and Jews dominated trade and industry in the Ottoman empire.
By now it is crystal clear that the George Bush administration and Tony Blair government invaded Iraq on false claims and sheer lies, which now stand totally exposed .The main objective was to capture and exploit Iraqi oil resources , second only to Saudi Arabia and control the energy resources not only in the Middle East but even of the Caspian basin .Middle East history challenged Neo- Cons and other policy planners perhaps believed that a grateful 60% Shi'i majority of Iraq ruled by 25% Sunni elite would be so grateful for 'liberating' them that US corporate interests will have a run of the place .
So from the very beginning as Scott Ritter , a former UN Chief Weapons Inspector for Iraq, revealed after occupying Baghdad and Iraq (Kurdistan in any case has been a US protectorate since the end of 1991 Gulf War), US and allied special forces provided information on dethroned ruling Sunni elite for taking revenge to the Iraqi exiles ,like Ahmet Chelebi, a convicted embezzler , Iyad Allawi , both intelligence assets of CIA , MIV and others , Shi'i outfits like SCIRI and Badr corps nurtured , nursed and financed by Iran ,opportunists ,carpetbaggers and others who rode into Baghdad on US tanks ,helicopters and F-16s. Scott Ritter also revealed that the Ba'athist regime under President Saddam Hussein was quite realistic about West's objectives and had planned Iraqi resistance much before the invasion.
Later ,Washington , London and Tel Aviv also looked at the option of dividing Iraq into Iraqi Kurdistan , with almost half of Iraqi oil wealth ,which being weak would remain subservient to the West. Its oil can be easily sent to the Mediterranean via the Kirkuk Ceyhan pipe line. Perhaps even a defence alliance could be signed with the Kurds. Washington had in fact planned to have an air base in north Iraq on the pretext of saving Kurds from Saddam's forces in 1991, so an anxious Ankara offered its Incirlik airbase for US-UK jets to patrol over Iraq and bomb it at will.
Of course the grateful Shi'is of South Iraq masters of the remaining oil wealth would fall in line .The disenfranchised Sunni rump without any oil as yet, could stew in its own anger . It was most surprising that, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others were surprised by the Iraqi resistance , which they first tried to wish away as composed of dead enders ,disgruntled remnants of the old regime and in its last throes in Dick Cheney's famous words. Only if they had read long Iraqi resistance to the British colonial rule in 1920s and 30s who finally got rid of the British and killed the Hashemite ruler foisted on Iraq.
The whole process shows total bankruptcy of those who muscled themselves into White House in 2000 fraudily won elections.They would not even make good corporate takeover artists unless it was by force .They could learn a lesson or two in takeovers from the new boys on the block say India's Laxmi Mittal. How he overcame European prejudices and courted the share holders to emerge as the biggest steel producer in the world .Or the House of Tatas , who took over steel conglomerate Corus.
Kemal Ataturk , who forged a modern Turkish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire ,had talked of Turks , Kurds and others in his new Republic but then declared Kurds non-persons perhaps to counteract British machinations and inspired Kurdish rebellions .The British led Allies had imposed the Sevres Treaty on a supine Caliph ( like imposing the Constitution in Iraq and the effort to pass the new oil law to deprive Iraqis of their national wealth ) Ataturk expelled the Greek invaders and other allied occupation forces trashing the Sevres treaty .He then adopted the western model of secular and unitary Turkish nation state.
The continued divisions in and exploitation of the Arabs and Kurdish problems in the region are the consequences of British policy of divide and rule after the First world war , now being pursued by USA. Like the British then ,now George Bush never tires of bringing liberty and democracy to the Arabs .Pentagon even called US led illegal naked 'shock and awe ' invasion of Iraq as 'Operation Iraqi Freedom '- some cheek .Whose intelligence are they insulting ?Their own as no one believed them except the info-challenged Americans .And even they have wised up.
Established to cut into the profitable East Indies trade on silk rotes controlled by Arabs and Turks ,the British East India company ( and others in Europe ) ,having explored new sea routes , first nibbled at the decrepit Moghul empire piece meal and after the Indian war of independence against the English company forces in 1957, most of the Moghul empire passed on to the British crown . In the wake of the rebellion and resistance the citizens of Delhi , specially Muslims ,were treated like those of Fallujah , Tel Afar and Haditha, as in Iraq now. It must be remembered that Marathas , Rajputs, Jats and other Hindu kings , who ruled almost independent fiefs accepted the Moghul emperor in Delhi as their sovereign, before he was exiled by the British.
British historians and colonial rulers then successfully sold the theory to Brahmin and other upper castes Hindus that all their problems could be traced to the rule of Muslims .At least like Hindu Aryans and others from central Asia earlier , Muslims from Turkestan and elsewhere made Hindustan their home. When the European traders arrived in the subcontinent, Hindustan's share in world manufacturing was 24.5 percent (in 1750) and after the British had done with India, the sub-continent's share had fallen to 1.7 percent (in 1900) and that of Britain had increased from 1.9 percent (in 1750) to 22.9 percent (in 1880) - Rise and fall of Big Powers by Professor Paul Kennedy) In these bald figures lie buried multiple famines and deaths of tens of millions of impoverished Indians , when the British exported the food even in times of scarcity. It left the people of Hindustan degraded with deficit not only in calories but proteins and physically dwarfed .After 60 years of freedom and no famines Indians have partially recovered their physical well being and are surging ahead economically and intellectually.( How they dominate the Silicon valley in USA)
After the second world war, the British realized that there was no option but to quit the subcontinent .But India being a vital strategic asset,– "a base for Britain to continue their domination of the Indian Ocean and the oil-rich Persian Gulf with its wells of power," it was partitioned ,as Mahatma Gandhi opposed to violence and war in principle and Jawaharlal Nehru with his idealism and vision of spreading friendship and understanding among colonized and exploited people of Asia , Africa , Middle east and elsewhere , would not join Western military pacts . The aim was to retain parts in the North and West of India, "for defensive and offensive action against the USSR in any future dispensation in the sub-continent".
A retired Indian diplomat has brought to light these British machinations, based on records in London in his book , 'The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition.' The author also traces the roots of the present Kashmir imbroglio and how the matter was distorted in the UN to help Western ally Pakistan.( Like UN resolutions now against Iran for its enrichment of nuclear power fuel ) But Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Islamabad now hover between the deep sea and the devil ie threat to be bombed back to stone age or a civil war between its troops and Pushtoons and other fierce tribes in its north west region and Afghanistan ,if they do not obey US dictates.
Following the second world war President Marshal Joseph Tito created a composite secular and socialist state of southern Slavs and others in Yugoslavia , with natural affinity to Orthodox Russian Slavs , but after his death and the collapse of the Soviet Union , the multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multilingual state was broken apart by West Europe and USA, by sheer aggression .The last word in this bloody dissolution is yet to be written , now centred in Kosovo ,where north European diplomats have ruled as in old colonial era .
When the fulcrum of imperialism shifted from London to Washington and New York after the second world war , exploitation of the East and South was continued through IMF , IBRD and now after the fall of the Berlin Wall by Globalisation and WTO , with struggle over control over energy pipelines instead of over sea trade routes earlier. Western troops would now guard the energy pipelines , like the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan one.
Four years of US led occupation of Iraq;
'After centuries of vibrant interaction, of marrying, sharing and selling across sects and classes, Baghdad has become a capital of corrosive, violent borderlines. Streets never crossed. Conversations never broached. Doors never entered.
"Sunnis and Shiites in many professions now interact almost exclusively with colleagues of the same sect. Sunnis say they are afraid to visit hospitals because Shiites loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr run the Health Ministry, while Shiite laborers who used to climb into the back of pickup trucks for work across the Tigris River in Sunni western Baghdad now take jobs only near home. Baghdad is increasingly looking like Sarajevo in the 1990s", said Damien Cave in International Herald Tribune in early March.
Real violence and fear has led to internal migrations .Displaced Sunnis push out Shias, who in turn push out the Sunnis in their areas. While three million have been internally displaced ,almost 2 million have left Iraq to live in Syria, Jordan and elsewhere, USA the creator of the biggest refugee crisis in the middle East since the creation of Israel , has accepted few. The displacement is carried out by attacking a mosque or a grenade is thrown at a house, men kidnapped and killed, a few houses burnt - the message is clear - get out. Then there are instances of rapes of women of one community by another .It is the same pattern of killings and migration as after India's partition in 1947 or break up of Yugoslavia in early 1990s. The Kangroo Court trial of President Saddam Hussein and other Baathist leaders against international law and outcry from the world and his lynching under US occupation and watch clearly are intended to inflame Shia-Sunni hatred and conflagration .
Who is responsible for this civil war and Shia and Sunni conflict. If you watch CNN or other US Channels and even BBC or glance through western media , the emphasis is on Iraqis on Iraqis. They do not deserve democracy .Just more lies and spins
Those who believe so might ponder that if some rampaging and barbaric 'extra-territorials '(ETs) were to invade America and by their superior destructive power nuke a major city , threaten others and then enforce ' equity and justice' and weighted elections and more rights to the Blacks and Hispanics to compensate for their past inhuman treatment and exploitation .What would be the reaction of these anger seething communities against Jewish and white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) ruling oligarchy . After all, are not US allies only doing something like that for the historically oppressed Shia and Kurdish populations of Iraq. But producing terrible results .Even those Iraqis who were misguided into believing Western propaganda and US promises in 2003 now say that they were much better off under Saddam Hussein, even those who were jailed and their family members killed or even tortured.
Middle East Quagmire !
No wonder Patrick Cockburn said in Counterpunch last month , "The U.S. has a very weird policy--the Shia and Iran are the enemy, suddenly. But the government of Iraq is Shia--it's led by the Shia and the Kurds. Bush seems to be trying to create a common front of Sunni states--Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan--against the Shia and Iran."
A fascinating revelation concerns the 'disappearance' of billions of US dollars in Iraq to create "pots of black money" for covert purposes - with echoes of the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. And even help Fuad Siniora's beleaguered pro-western government in Beirut "to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shia (Hezbollah and Amal ) influence" by funding Sunni radical groups with ideological ties to al-Qaeda. Walid Jumblatt, the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Druze leader, was quoted telling Cheney to support the banned Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and undermine the Bashar Assad regime in Damascus.
Seymour Hersh revealed last month that US military and special operations teams have escalated activities in Iran, entering from Iraq to gather intelligence etc, confirming allegations made by Tehran. Iran has accused the US, Britain and Israel of fomenting separatist attacks in Arab-majority Khuzestan in the south-west of Iran, in Baluchi province bordering Pakistan and in Azeri and Kurdish border regions.
In Riyadh, the emergence of a "Shia crescent" from Tehran to Damascus and Hezbollah in Lebanon ( and Hamas in Palestine) raises the nightmare of a shift in the balance of power not only in the Arab world but also in the Middle East and beyond "That Iran should control Lebanon through Hezbollah is a red line that Arabia cannot accept," say Saudi officials .This was also echoed by Hashemite King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at the time of the Israeli/Hezbollah war last year .Hezbollah's victory and crescendo of popularity for Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah and Mahmud Ahmedineijad caused fears of Arab street turning against the conservative and unpopular Sunni rulers in the region .
The warm reception and contracts for economic and even defence cooperation during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Riyadh ( and Doha and Amman) last month is another card Riyadh with its cheque book diplomacy would play .Tehran needs Russian support and good will for its nuclear power plants and the Uranium fuel enrichment issue in UN and arms supply , specially missiles to defend itself .To begin with Moscow might use it to expedite payments for the nuclear power plant under construction and making itself indispensable to the US led West in the UN Secrity Council . As usual the notorious New York Times tried misinformation ie that Moscow is with Washington on the enrichment issue. Russia denied these reports .China is deeply interested in Iran's stability and development for its energy needs .
In the Shia-Sunni stand off being promoted by the West , aging King Abdullah is cautious but younger princes are pushing him to adopt "a more aggressive posture." All are agreed that Iran's influence will increase while over time the American presence and 'protection' will diminish. The King sent his hot headed nephew Prince Bandar to Tehran many times in recent months for discussions with his counterpart ,Iran's National Security Adviser Ali Larijani before Ahmadinejad visited Riyadh. "We know about your clandestine activities in Iraq; it's time to put an end to them," the Saudis tell Iran, "otherwise, we'll react" by helping Sunni groups confront the "Shia death squads". This was made public last November in the Washington Post oped , by Nawaf Obaid, who then was dismissed from his post of advisor at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Saudis tell the Americans "Don't leave Iraq; we'll suffer the consequences." The Saud dynasty is worried .
There is little doubt that Saudis , certainly the rich ones are privately financing armed Iraqi groups. But if Iraq falls apart, anything is possible. One "worst case scenario": is Shia region in the south ( rich in oil ) tries for autonomy with Iran's help; al-Qaeda and the Sunnis join in , and the civil war becomes an all-out conflagration. And what about repressed and restive Shias in adjoining oil rich areas of Saudi Arabia itself .Then "the Saudi government would have a hard time convincing the Sunni tribes in the North - which stretch into Iraq - to not go to the armed defense of their cousins on the other side of the border," acknowledges a European diplomat in Saudi Arabia, who adds: "The greatest danger to the Saudis is to see certain Iraqi Sunni tribes at their borders rally to the cause of al-Qaeda," which has been responsible for numerous attacks in the Kingdom itself.
Some in Riyadh suggest inviting Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Iraqi cleric and make some concessions ( financial) to Iraq and overtures to Tehran. Inviting Ahmadinejad was one such step. But say the Saudi hardliners "What good is it to negotiate with Ahmadinejad, when the real power in Tehran is in the hands of the Guide and the pasdarans."
Iran- Saudi Summit in Riyadh
It was to bridge the Shia-Sunni confrontation that the first official visit to Riyadh of Iranian President Ahmadinejad came about after months of diplomatic efforts to ease the political standoff in Lebanon between Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, and the government of Fouad Siniora, supported by the United States, France and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni regimes.
Earlier, to counter Tehran's growing influence in the region, Riyadh hosted the warring Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fateh, in Mecca to resolve their differences and to reach an agreement on the formation of a government of national unity ,which has since been done.
Both sides want to calm the sectarian violence in Iraq .Riyadh certainly does .But did they discuss frankly US efforts to exploit the Shia-Sunni divide.
Skeptics point out the absence of any tangible resolutions or initiatives after the visit. But at least the ice was broken. "The two parties have agreed to stop any attempt aimed at spreading sectarian strife in the region," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al- Faisal, told Reuters.
"Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are aware of the enemies' conspiracies," Ahmadinejad put it more colorfully . "We decided to take measures to confront such plots, and hopefully this will strengthen Muslim countries against oppressive pressures by the Imperialist front."
Saudis did not comment on this, instead official Saudi Press Agency claimed that Iran expressed support for the Saudi proposal based on land-for-peace which would lead to Arab states recognizing Israel in return for a Palestinian state in the lands occupied by Israel since 1967.Tehran even denied that the proposal was even discussed.
The Sunni-Shi'i Divide;
It is necessary to look at the historic Shi'i-Sunni divide in depth to comprehend the problem and the inherent dangers .Not only Christians , even many Sunnis know little about Shi'is and their history.
The fissures in Islam are almost as old as the faith itself. In the Muslim community (Ummah) of over a billion faithfuls spread almost all around the world nearly 12 % are Shias. Majority of Shias are Twelvers – believers in 12 Imams (as in Iran, in a majority ), but there are others too, like the Ismailis (of Agha Khans, Mohammed Ali Jinnah), from whom emerged the "Assassins" in early 2 nd millennium, Alevis in Turkey (around 15%), ruling Alawite elite ( 12%) in Syria, Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon( over 40%), and Bahrain ( perhaps a majority), Kuwait , UAE, Saudi Arabia , Pakistan . In Iraq nearly 60% of its population are Shias, the rest are mostly Sunnis.There are some very extremist groups too , spread all over the Islamic world.
India has a large Shia population of about 25 million in a total Muslim population of 130 million, making it perhaps the 2 nd largest Shia community in the world after Iran. After the US attacks in Najaf in 2004, Muslims of Lucknow ( India ) , a big Shia centre ,had declared that Americans were not welcome there.
Tangled Sunni-Shi'i history ;
The Shias emerged out of seeds of disunity in the embryonic Muslim Ummah , sown as soon as Prophet Mohammed lay dead in Medina. While his cousin and son in law Ali and the family were preparing the body for the burial, another clan of the Quraysh tribe elected Abu Bakr as the first Caliph ie Prophet's deputy, countering also the claims of Ansars of Medina, who had welcomed the Prophet (in Hijra) .Abu Bakr's supporters claimed that he was closer to Mohammed, one of the very first converts to Islam and was from Mecca's Quraysh tribe. His daughter A'isha was wedded to the Prophet.
According to Shias, Prophet Mohammed had given enough indications for Ali to be his successor and cite many hadiths in support of this claim. The Prophet had lived with his uncle Abu Talib, Ali's father and Mohammed's only child Fatimah was married to Ali .Ali also became Muslim before Abu Bakr and had decoyed for the Prophet when he escaped from Mecca .Ali was perhaps his most trusted and the closest companion, even though he was much younger than the Prophet.
Ali's election as the Caliph would have denied a chance to the older generation of power brokers, so they played politics and got their way. Ali was overlooked twice with Omar and Uthman succeeding Abu Bakr in cleverly manipulated successions to keep Ali out. As a result Ali mostly kept to himself and stayed aloof.
Following the murder of Uthman, Ali was invited by the Muslims of Medina to accept the Caliphate; reluctantly, he agreed but only after long hesitation. His brief reign was marked by problems of inheriting a corrupt state, as the Quran and the traditions of Mohammed had been neglected .Ali based his rule on the Islamic ideals of social justice and equality which clashed with the interests of the Quraysh aristocracy of Mecca grown rich through the Muslim conquests. A rebellion was instigated against him .Ali was victorious in many wars, but was trapped into an arbitration. He was assassinated by a Kharijite and Mu'awiya of the Umayyads established the dynasty at Damascus.
Ali was a devout Muslim with an outstanding reputation for justice, unlike Uthman or the Umayyad dynasty that followed him, mired in nepotism with worldly and autocratic ways. Many Muslims feel this way about the Umayyad Caliphs except for Omar II. To many it was a betrayal of the Quran, which enjoins creation of a just and equal society as the first duty of Muslims.
Those opposed to Umayyads called themselves the Shia't-Ali (partisans of Ali) and developed a doctrine of piety and protest, refusing to accept the Umayyad Caliphs, and regarded Ali's descendants as the true leaders of the Muslim community. This schism became an unbridgeable chasm and remains so, when in 680, Shias of Kufa called for the rule by Ali's second son Hussein and invited him. Hussein set out for Iraq with a small band of relatives and followers (72 armed men and women and children) in the belief that the spectacle of the Prophet's family, marching to confront the Caliph, would remind the regime of its social responsibility.
But Umayyad Caliph Yazid dispatched his army, which slaughtered Hussein and most of his followers on the plain of Karbala with Imam Hussein being the last to die, holding his infant son in his arms. This event is now commemorated as Muharram. Both Karbala and Najaf, where Imam Ali is buried are very holy places specially for Shias.
For Shias, the Karbala tragedy symbolizes the chronic injustice that pervades human life. Shia Islam provides spiritual solace and shelter for the poorest and the deprived among the Muslims, as in as- Sadr city in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Muslim world. In almost all Sunni majority countries Shias are ill treated and persecuted.
Imagery and this Shia passion informed Khomeini's Iranian revolution, which many experienced as a re-enactment of Karbala - with the Shah Reza Pehlavi cast as a latter day Yazid.
There is no agreement among Muslims on the Caliphs. Shias do not recognise the first three and in many places curse them. For them Ali is the first rightful Caliph and the Imam. For Sunnis, Imam is only a prayer leader and could be any one. But for Shias, he is a spiritual leader with the divine spark and juris-consult (Vilayet-el-Faqih) .The sacred Islamic law Sharia enacted under different situations and times has many schools among Sunnis, who unlike the Shias have closed ijtihad, independent reasoning in Islamic Law to meet new situations .The Shia Iranians (Aryans) perhaps created the office of Imam (like Shankaracharya among Indo –Aryan Brahmins) as only an Arab from the Quraysh tribe could become a Caliph. Later the Turks, who came as slaves or warriors to the Arab lands, captured power by the sword and raised the minor office of the Sultan to a powerful one, by now protector of a hapless Caliph. Then Turkish Ottoman Sultans in Istanbul appropriated the title of Caliph for themselves.
After the first dynastic Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus ended, another branch of Quraysh tribe, Abbasids took over and shifted to Iraq in 750, but after having made false promises of installing the Prophet's family as the Caliph. Muslim Ummah's unity under the Sunni Caliph was finally broken when Fatimids anointed their own Caliph first in Tunisia, then in Egypt in 10 th century. So an Umayyad prince in Cordoba too declared himself the third Caliph.
Evolution of Shiism:
There are two things to note. First, political Shi'ism indicates a belief that members of the Hashim clan in the Quraysh tribe are the people most worthy of holding political authority in the Islamic community, but has no belief in any particular religious position for the family. As for religious Shi'ism, it is about the belief that some particular members of the house of Hashim were in receipt of divine inspiration and are thus the channel of God's guidance to men whether or not they hold any defacto political authority. This view was augmented by the Iranians who believe in the tradition that the mother of fourth Imam Zaynul- Abdin was Shahrbanu, the daughter of Yazdigird, the last Sasanian King of Iran.
From the very beginning all the Shia Imams, descendants of Ali, every single one was imprisoned, exiled or executed or poisoned by the Caliphs, who could not tolerate an alternative centre to their rule. So by 8 th century, most Shias held aloof from politics and concentrated on the mystical interpretation of the scriptures. Says scholar Karen Armstrong " Long before western philosophers called for the separation of church and state, Shias had privatised faith, convinced that it was impossible to integrate the religious imperative with the grim world of politics that seemed murderously antagonistic to it. --
"The separation of religion and politics remains deeply embedded in the Shia psyche. It springs not simply from malaise, but from a divine discontent with the state of the Muslim community. Even in Iran, which became a Shia country in the early 16th century, the ulema (the religious scholars) refused public office, adopted an oppositional stance to the state, and formed an alternative establishment that - implicitly or explicitly - challenged the Shahs on behalf of the people."
The picture of early Shi'ism was created (as not much is available from records) from the point of view of Twelver Shias, ignoring the Ismailis, Mutazilites or orthodox Sunnis. Modern scholars believe that this picture was retrospectively imposed over the facts by historians of 3 rd and 4th Islamic century for doctrinal reasons.
It is only after 6th Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (died 765) that there is any firm evidence that any kind of religious leadership was being claimed for Twelver Imams. He was a well-known and influential figure in the Islamic world. Several of his students later became prominent jurists and traditionalists even among non-Shia Muslims. Jafar a s-Sadiq did not make an open claim to religious leadership, but his circle of students evidently looked to him as Imam, including some leading figures such as Abu'l-Khattab, who held beliefs of a ghuluww (extremist) nature regarding him, indicating that as-Sadiq was a focus of religious speculation and leadership in his own time.
Emergence of Islamic Schools of Thought, Like Shia and Others:
The number of ghulat groups, increased dramatically especially in Kufa during as-Sadiq's lifetime. It is therefore useful to consider the origin of the ghulat. When the Arabs arrived in the Fertile Crescent, they encountered ancient civilisations with sophisticated religious systems. Iraq was already the centre of intense religious ferment with the ancient Babylonian religious systems, Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Manichaeism, Judaism and various forms of Christianity contributing to a kaleidoscope of religious view points, debates and speculation. Islam by comparison was as yet simple and undeveloped. And with the Prophet already dead, there was no one to whom the Muslims could turn for an authoritative ruling on sophisticated religious speculations being posed by the ancient civilisations. There arose a ferment of discussion around some of the concepts introduced by these older religions and philosophical systems.
In the initial years the Arabs lived in their military camp cities and avoided intermingling with the native populations and their disturbing religious speculations but as more of the native populations embraced Islam, such discussions increased. In this spiritual and religious ferment ideas were injected into the Muslim community and intensively discussed by people interested in such matters which could be considered by the majority of Muslims heterodox concepts and called ghulat or extremists.
Among the ideas injected were such concepts as tanasukh (transmigration of souls), ghayba (occultation), raj'a (return), hulul (descent of the Spirit of God into man), imama (Imamate, divinely-inspired leadership and guidance), tashbih (anthropomorphism with respect to God), tafwid (delegation of God's powers to other than God), and bada (alteration in God's will). But the ghulat needed a priest- god figure onto which to project their ideas of hulul, ghayba , etc., a role admirably suited to the persona of' Ali.
While the ghulat adopted Ali and his family as the embodiment of their religious speculation the Shias of' Ali always looked on the ghulat with a certain amount of suspicion. However, the martyrdom of Hussein and the pathos of this event gave the family of Ali a cultic significance. It bestowed on Shias, earlier primarily a political party, a thrust into a religious orientation directing it firmly towards the ghulat, and giving the ghulat milieu a hero-martyr and a priestly family with which they could associate much of their speculations.
Can OIC counter the Western game!
Muslims now gather under the umbrella of Organisation of Islamic Conferences (OIC), Munazamat al-Mutamir al-Islami, to give its full Arabic name, which was institutionalized in 1971 by the Saudis, following the summits of Muslim heads of state and government in 1969, after the fire in the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third most revered Islamic site after Mecca and Medina.
The OIC aims to promote Islamic solidarity by coordinating social, economic, scientific and cultural activities. It is also pledged to eliminate racial segregation and discrimination. Unfortunately, it has not evolved into a responsible and creative body. A main reason for the failure is the location of OIC offices in Jeddah, with Saudi Arabia mostly funding it, and in league with conservative Wahabi elements finances madrassas (religious schools) and fundamentalist organizations not only in non-Muslim but even in Muslim countries.
Many countries like Egypt, Algeria and many in Central Asia and elsewhere are victims of fundamentalist violence incubated and unleashed from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, a monster financially supported and created in the 1980s by Kingdoms and Sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf, with full financial and other support from US led West and even China ,until September 11, when the majority of the hijackers turned out to be of Saudi origin.
The OIC has had little autonomy as the secretary generals were more or less paid employees of Saudi Arabia. Some of them were obscure and not well regarded scholars, which greatly diminished the OIC's objectivity and credibility. Any debate on matters of substance is almost impossible at OIC meetings. Member countries bring chits of paper with grouses against non- Muslims, mostly neighbors, which without any discussion, as is the practice back home, are then put together as final resolutions. Unfortunately, many in the leadership use OIC meetings to let off steam against non-Muslims, which serves like a group therapy session. It brings a sense of wellbeing to many beleaguered regimes; venal, brutal and exploitative back home. The leaders go back flourishing a resolution or two to show to their oppressed masses, hoping that the real problems will be forgotten.
Many members have been accused of conspiring against each other and fought wars with each other. Many OIC members and diplomats from secular countries like Turkey, Syria, Algeria and others feel uncomfortable in the company of delegates from obscurantist regimes. The OIC also speaks on behalf of large Muslim populations in Russia and China, and many other millions in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the US, which has 3 to 5 million Muslims but says little about the conditions of Muslims in these countries. Saudi Arabia used OIC for maintaining its influence by promoting fundamentalism in other countries and generally keeping the Muslims conservative and backward.
Very little is naturally said in OIC resolutions about Turkey , where democracy is shored up by its secular military, which has dismissed Islamist-led coalition governments, closed Islamic parties and even jailed its leadership, till Islamic oriented AKP won two-third seats in the parliament in 2002 albeit with only 36% votes . There has been discrimination and persecution of Kurds in Turkey, Over 37,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, have been killed in a rebellion by Kurdish Labour Party (PKK). Until a few decades ago the Kurds had to be called mountain Turks, and could not use Kurdish for education or in the media. From time to time, Turkey's Shia Alevis have to be protected against persecution and pogroms by the Sunni establishment by the secular armed forces and the judiciary.
The OIC should set its house in order and look at the grievances of Kurds in Turkey , Mohajirs , Shias and others in Pakistan, Christians in Lebanon or South Sudan or the perpetually persecuted Copts of Egypt, or suppressed Shia community in Saudi Arabia , to be taken seriously.
In Cyprus, 18 percent Turkish Cypriot Muslims, recognized as an independent state only by Turkey, has occupied nearly 40 percent of its territory under Turkish guns since 1974. They cannot live with Christian Greek Cypriots, and want a separate state, while almost 50 percent Christian Lebanese who wish forr a state of their own are denied one. There are innumerable such examples all over the Islamic world. Throughout history, Christian and other minorities in Islamic states have been generally oppressed, persecuted and eliminated, beginning with the Jews of Medina in the 7th century.
But then how can any one in OIC anything against USA, which in return for exploitation of Arab oil wealth for decades protects the Saudi dynasty , which itself has a nexus with Wahabbi form of austere and early form of Islam.
OIC has failed to live up to its potential. It is not even all inclusive; it has given Observer status to Russia with 15 millions of Muslims but not to 130 Million Muslims of India, on whose behalf it has the temerity to speak .In spite of Gujarat and Babri Masjid riots ,as a minority ,Muslims exercise real democratic power in Indian democracy , leading to the shrinking role of the rightist Hindutva party. Sectarian or other minorities do not enjoy empowerment in most Muslim countries .In many ways OIC has became a tool for Pakistani propaganda against India , creating a schism between Muslims and Hindus ,a combined population of over two billion , still exploited by the West. Some of the OIC members should look themselves in the mirror before criticising the treatment of Muslims in the West and elsewhere.
Conclusions;
The latest poll on Iraq , rightly finds Iraqis pessimistic at what is being done to them under US led barbaric occupation .It might indicate that they feel that the country is not in a civil war and would remain united after having been a nation for 8 decades .In early 1990s most Yugoslav diplomats said that the country will remain united , mentioning inter ethnic and religious marriages .Many Hindus and Muslims in Hindustan who had lived as neighbours since centuries insisted on staying put after the announcement of the partition , but had to flee when the communal carnage
started. US-led West having failed in its objective of colonizing the proud Iraqi people has done all it could to ignite the historic Shia Sunni schism represented by the political centres of Riyadh and Tehran.
Only the hubris laden arrogance of military power US which spends as much as the rest of the world put together on defence , now mostly financed by trade deficit , made the crazy Neo-cons and former scheming and manipulative CEOs like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld believe in being received with flowers in Baghdad. What does Washington mean when it demands that Tehran and Damascus must help stabilize Iraq ie get US out of Iraqi quagmire , so that US can then bring about regime changes there!
I wrote in my article " Occupation case studies: Algeria and Turkey' of 7 January , 2004, that "while formulating foreign policy options, political leaders also look to history for guidance. Unfortunately, the United State's history is only two centuries old, and to meet the challenge of terrorism, Frankenstein monsters partly of its own creation, the mujahideen, jihadis, the Taliban and al-Qaeda , the US can only recall a long genocidal war against its native Americans.
"Those who resisted were called "terrorists" for defending their native land and way of life against foreign invaders. There are Hollywood films galore that depict the "American Indians" as savages to be hunted down by the US cavalry. The same cavalry units now force Iraqis daily to lie face down in the land of their ancestors and describe those fighting to free their country from the occupying forces as "terrorists". The Iraqis, other Arabs and Iranians are the new "American Indians", and those who collaborate with the Bush administration are like the good Indians who helped the Americans fight and defeat bad Indians
."
In my article of 15 July, 2003 "Iraq's history already written " I said " US chief administrator L Paul Bremer unveiled Iraq's 25-member governing council in Baghdad on Sunday. It now looks like the beginnings of the rule by the British Governor Sir Percy Cox in the 1920s, after the British had carved out three
provinces of the Ottoman empire after its collapse in World War I. After a long national resistance, King Faisal II - of a British-appointed dynasty - and his prime minister, Nuri Al-Said, were overthrown and killed in a 1958 military takeover "
When George Bush along with old chieftains from his father's era and the Neo-cons were beginning to beat the war drums, my article of 27 August, 2002 "
The Bush family's phony wars ' was introduced by Asia Times Editor " An entire region from Jordan to Iran is on the brink of catastrophe as it awaits one man's
decision on how he will pursue his family' vendetta .India's former Ambassador to Jordan looks inside the Pandora's box which George Bush holds in his hands '
Another article of 14 February , 2003 ,' Iraq ;the Middle East kaleidoscope', had warned that Iraq must be handled carefully, -- When a post-Saddam Iraq is discussed in the US, generally not enough thought is given to the ethnic, religious and other differences of the constituents and their tortuous history that make the country the delicate kaleidoscope that it is."
Ambassador Peter Galbraith revealed that in January 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq, Bush had not yet heard of the Sunni-Shia divide within Islam.
"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president: " said Yale Law Prof Jack M. Balkin, on September 22, 2002.
There were many learned men and objective experts and analysts in USA, with understanding of history including of the Middle East and ramifications of a real war, in many of its universities , even in the State Department , but they were never consulted by the White House or asked for comments by corporate news networks like CNN and others .The rot in US polity has gone too deep down and become too pervasive .Only a massive restructuring of its polity can save it from a deadly fall as the decline is irreversible. The malaise covers the whole gamut of US way of life, irreverence for its Constitution, electoral law ,its Judiciary, total and absolute domination of money power of military –industry , energy and other corporate interests , which are responsible for this sorry state of affairs. There are many excellent books exposing this malaise which has brought USA to this sorry state in at home and in Iraq . Say .' Iraq, inc-a profitable occupation' written by Pratap Chatterjee in 2004 or "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran of Washington Post recently.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail: Gajendrak@hotmail.com
Showing posts with label Sectarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sectarianism. Show all posts
Monday, March 26, 2007
Muslim Sacrifices at Bush's Temple Alter
Al-Ray Al-Aam, Kuwait
"We kill ourselves by our own hands only to discover that after long years of unprecedented destruction and the loss of millions of innocent souls - the only definite and all-consuming victor is none other than the evil American administration."
By Dr. J. Al Rasheid
Translated By Jack Shuff
March 7, 2007
Kuwait - Al-Ray Al-Aam - Original Article (Arabic)
The sectarian conspiracy that the evil American Administration is planning to spread to the entire Arabic and Islamic region shows a disregard for the human spirit that is beyond contempt. If the war between the [Sunni and Shiite] communities spreads or rather - if it expands to completion - it will lead to one - and only one - inevitable result: It will claim lives amongst both parties.
The strangers will suffer nothing if war breaks between the communities in every Muslim country, because the dead will all be Muslim. The strangers will lose nothing because the victims will be ours - all from amongst our ranks.
We, the Muslims of all sects, of whom it was written would die in the millions when the United States of America "decided" to have its puppet Saddam Hussein launch a criminal attack on sister country the Islamic Republic of Iran, want this newest administration of criminals to abandon its repetition of this selfsame game, which is dirtier than previous incarnations but which it is stubbornly playing once again. It is this all-consuming game of sectarian war that the American Administration of evil wants us to suffer from and confront through years of disaster - and for millions to die so that no sect or faction can overcome, and so that no side can succeed over the other, so as to keep prostrate the entire whole.
We kill ourselves by our own hands only to discover that after long years of unprecedented destruction and the loss of millions of innocent souls - that the only definite and all-consuming victor is none other than the Evil Administration in the Black House [White House]. So will this game from the last century play out again, only this time in even more ugly and bitter fashion leading to a new security crisis in every country of the region? Why is it always "necessary" for us Muslims to be obedient instruments of villains seeking to use us to harm ourselves, and to destroy our own countries and our own homes? Are we destined to be sacrificial lambs at Bush's Temple alter forever?
See Also:
New Middle East' Borders to Be Drawn in Arab Blood,
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Dahr Jamail gives an Iraq update with exclusive video from Iraq
March 25, 2007
Dahr Jamail on Free Speech TV "SouceCode" Gives Iraq Update with Exclusive Video from Baghdad
March, 2007 - Dahr Jamail on Free Speech TV Show "SourceCode"
In this 10 minute piece, Dahr Jamail gives an Iraq update with exclusive video from Iraq. He describes some of the origins of the "sectarianism" that the US corporate media is so apt to point to when discussing the violence in Iraq, and shows how the US has been involved in fueling the sectarian tensions.
See the streaming WMV file (30 megs)
Download the high-res file (100 megs mpeg)
View the Streaming Flash file (30 megs)
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 05:34 PM
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Iraqi risks all for a chance to flee fear
COLUMN ONE
A Baghdad man who worked for The Times takes a nerve-racking journey to safety.
Malmo, Sweden — WHEN we finally reached the Swedish border, the officer at the checkpoint climbed onto our bus and headed toward me, my wife and my daughter all the way in the back.
Our complexions were obviously Middle Eastern, suspicious. My heart jittered. I reminded myself that we had legal passports with legal visas from a European country. But my fears didn't subside. I'd sunk everything I owned into getting me and my family out of Iraq, and I was terrified we'd be sent back.
It was nighttime. The policeman began searching our faces with a flashlight. When he reached me, he stopped.
"Are you alone?" he asked, first in Swedish, then in English.
"No," I answered. "We are a group."
He continued to stare at us. I thought to myself, "That's it, we are finished."
If anyone had asked me a year ago whether I wanted to leave Iraq for good, I might have said yes, but with little enthusiasm. I had a good job as a translator for the Los Angeles Times, my own home, a car, a family and more than enough money.
But since then, violence had become part of my life, just like the darkness that shrouded Baghdad because of the electricity shortage. I walked by bodies that had been left in the streets. I passed burned-out or blown-up cars. I heard explosions and ferocious bursts of gunfire piercing the night, every night.
After the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, I could see the writing on the wall. In glaring red letters it said, "SECTARIAN WAR." A Christian, I had no part in that war.
I had relatives and friends who had fled Iraq, and some of their stories made me hesitate. I heard tales of being lost at sea, walking for days in the mountains to cross borders or being abandoned by smugglers in a no man's land only to be caught and returned to Iraq.
I casually started asking around among friends, distant relatives and even online about escape routes.
It wasn't easy. No one was willing to talk in detail. Every path had its advantages and disadvantages, and you needed to pay a smuggler to lead you in your journey to the unknown.
I contacted a lot of shady people. Some promised me a visa within 14 days for $4,000. But who would assure me that the visa was genuine? I didn't know what a legitimate visa looked like. Who could assure me that I wouldn't be caught and sent back to Iraq?
The questions kept turning over and over in my mind whenever I spoke to smugglers. Despite their reassurances, I knew that their main goals were getting ahold of my money and saving their own skins. I knew they'd abandon us anywhere and anytime.
My anxieties grew. The violence was swelling. Clashes between Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods increased. Men in uniform or in street clothes appeared at phony checkpoints, stopping cars and buses, taking away people of the wrong sect to be tortured and killed.
My Iraqi friends at work noticed my restlessness. I admitted I was trying to get out of the country. They understood. They all had the same misgivings about staying.
When my boss found out I was trying to leave, he was not at all upset. "I don't want to lose any more members of the staff," he said. "But I don't blame you for trying to get out of here."
After months of searching, worrying and running into dead ends, I had a breakthrough. My brother, who has lived for years in Sweden, ran into two distant relatives who had just arrived from Iraq. They had paid a smuggler $8,000 each. Their trip was smooth and they got European visas from an embassy in Jordan.
I got the smuggler's contact number and met the guy. He said he could get visas and transportation to a European country for me, my wife and my daughter. Let's call it Country X, because I've promised not to mention its name. I'd get a legitimate visa for some kind of European training program as an employee of an Iraqi government ministry. From there, because of the borderless European Union, I could go to Sweden and apply for asylum.
The price tag was steep: $25,000 for all of us. But I told him I'd do it. He said he needed a little time to make sure we weren't on any terrorist watch lists.
Ten days later he told me to be ready to go to Amman in two weeks to wait for my visas. He also demanded cash upfront.
Here I faced a problem. I didn't have all the money. I needed more time, maybe a few more months. But I also knew that if I scrapped the deal, another chance like this might not come along.
So I started selling our stuff — my wife's jewelry, our furniture, appliances, car. I borrowed some cash from relatives abroad. I didn't dream of selling our house, only because if word spread that a sale had gone through, armed men might kidnap me and demand ransom. Instead I found a family to stay in my home and guard it, rent-free.
Even under Saddam Hussein's rule, I never thought things could go so bad. After the Americans came, I always managed to convince myself that the warring factions would at some point use their common sense to stop killing each other and use Iraq's oil revenues and international aid to rebuild the country. As I scoured a devastated city looking for people to buy my couches and washing machine, I realized how deluded I had been.
*
WE went early to the airport. It would have been cheaper to take the road, but far less safe. Our heavy luggage made it obvious we were leaving Iraq for good, so we had to pay the customs officer a bribe.
In Amman we booked a motel and waited. I phoned our contact in Baghdad, but he kept putting us off. I decided to rent a small flat, which turned out to be smart because we wound up staying in Amman for 10 weeks, getting the runaround.
There were five others in our group. The head of the smuggling ring, a man we never saw who called himself the Doctor over the phone, gave excuses for the delay: a name was misspelled or a passport number was wrong or his man in the embassy was on holiday.
But we could do nothing. We had paid in advance.
At long last, the Doctor gave us the green light to go to the embassy to apply for the visas. He faxed us documents saying we were Iraqi government employees going to Europe for training. The Doctor instructed us to go to the embassy of Country X well dressed, "as if you are going to a wedding."
The men went to the embassy in suits and ties. One hadn't brought a suit with him from Baghdad, so he bought a new one and went to the embassy with the price tag still attached. We took it off for him, and then we submitted our applications.
The visas came two weeks later. I was relieved, but still nervous. We bought round-trip tickets for Country X.
The Doctor and a man who called himself Mohammed were waiting at the airport in Country X. I wanted to head to Scandinavia, to join my brother, the next day, but the Doctor demanded our passports, and shook us down for more cash. I argued, but even my wife told me to not to rock the boat. I was confused and angry but complied.
Five days later, Mohammed gave us back our passports and advised us to head to Scandinavia by bus. He escorted us to the station to make sure we boarded the bus. The Doctor's main concern, it turned out, was that we might try to seek asylum in Country X.
On the bus at the Swedish frontier, the officer with the flashlight moved on. I relaxed a bit. But my heart jolted again when another guard came on board.
In my confusion, I didn't notice that the second guard had a dog. It began stepping on my feet, sniffing me and my bags.
Later, I learned the guard was a customs officer and far more interested in halting alcohol and drugs than illegal immigrants.
We were in!
*
MY first impression of Sweden was a bad one — a bus station in the south after midnight. There was no one there except us and drunks and homeless people seeking warmth until daybreak. What had I gotten myself into?
But on the bus ride the next morning to Stockholm, I discovered the real Sweden. The landscape was fabulous, studded with trees and covered in green meadows. Lakes spread across the land. Even though I was tired, I couldn't take my eyes off the window. It wasn't even very cold, although it was winter. After a lifetime in steamy Iraq, I found the morning chill refreshing.
"I think I'm going to love this country," I thought.
When I saw my brother and other relatives waiting for us in Stockholm, it was like a mountain had lifted off my chest.
My brother took us to the cavernous hall of the main immigration office the next morning. We took a number and waited for our turn. There were a few people ahead of us, but others started coming. I estimated of the 100 or so people who came in that day, more than half were from Iraq. Many were Christians like me, wearing crosses on their chests.
When our turn came, they took our names, addresses, heights, weights, fingerprints and photos. They gave each of us a piece of paper with our name and photo saying we had reported to the immigration office.
A few weeks later, we were told to report to the immigration office again. They read us our rights as asylum seekers. We were given special IDs and a per diem of about $9 for food.
Now we are attending classes to learn Swedish. There are many words similar to English, but they always change a letter or two and pronounce it a different way. Nine of the 12 students in my class are Iraqis.
It's cold, and life is hard. We were practically rich in Iraq, and our living standards have plummeted here. I have worked for private companies and owned my own businesses in Iraq, so it's painful for me to be a ward of the state, hoping to receive asylum just so I can start looking for any little job.
The other day, my wife, daughter and I were walking back to the apartment under our first snowy sky ever.
"It's much better to walk beneath the snow here," my wife said, "than walk among car bombs and roadside bombs."
In this northern land, we are living without a lot of things: the warmth of the Iraqi sun, money, friends and family. But we are also living without fear.
*
In September, Aziz wrote anonymously about the toll that the violence was taking on him and his family. He described how he and others watched a man dying on a Baghdad street, but did nothing to help.
To read Aziz's first-person account of life in Baghdad, go to
latimes.com/aziz.
Our complexions were obviously Middle Eastern, suspicious. My heart jittered. I reminded myself that we had legal passports with legal visas from a European country. But my fears didn't subside. I'd sunk everything I owned into getting me and my family out of Iraq, and I was terrified we'd be sent back.
It was nighttime. The policeman began searching our faces with a flashlight. When he reached me, he stopped.
"Are you alone?" he asked, first in Swedish, then in English.
"No," I answered. "We are a group."
He continued to stare at us. I thought to myself, "That's it, we are finished."
If anyone had asked me a year ago whether I wanted to leave Iraq for good, I might have said yes, but with little enthusiasm. I had a good job as a translator for the Los Angeles Times, my own home, a car, a family and more than enough money.
But since then, violence had become part of my life, just like the darkness that shrouded Baghdad because of the electricity shortage. I walked by bodies that had been left in the streets. I passed burned-out or blown-up cars. I heard explosions and ferocious bursts of gunfire piercing the night, every night.
After the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, I could see the writing on the wall. In glaring red letters it said, "SECTARIAN WAR." A Christian, I had no part in that war.
I had relatives and friends who had fled Iraq, and some of their stories made me hesitate. I heard tales of being lost at sea, walking for days in the mountains to cross borders or being abandoned by smugglers in a no man's land only to be caught and returned to Iraq.
I casually started asking around among friends, distant relatives and even online about escape routes.
It wasn't easy. No one was willing to talk in detail. Every path had its advantages and disadvantages, and you needed to pay a smuggler to lead you in your journey to the unknown.
I contacted a lot of shady people. Some promised me a visa within 14 days for $4,000. But who would assure me that the visa was genuine? I didn't know what a legitimate visa looked like. Who could assure me that I wouldn't be caught and sent back to Iraq?
The questions kept turning over and over in my mind whenever I spoke to smugglers. Despite their reassurances, I knew that their main goals were getting ahold of my money and saving their own skins. I knew they'd abandon us anywhere and anytime.
My anxieties grew. The violence was swelling. Clashes between Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods increased. Men in uniform or in street clothes appeared at phony checkpoints, stopping cars and buses, taking away people of the wrong sect to be tortured and killed.
My Iraqi friends at work noticed my restlessness. I admitted I was trying to get out of the country. They understood. They all had the same misgivings about staying.
When my boss found out I was trying to leave, he was not at all upset. "I don't want to lose any more members of the staff," he said. "But I don't blame you for trying to get out of here."
After months of searching, worrying and running into dead ends, I had a breakthrough. My brother, who has lived for years in Sweden, ran into two distant relatives who had just arrived from Iraq. They had paid a smuggler $8,000 each. Their trip was smooth and they got European visas from an embassy in Jordan.
I got the smuggler's contact number and met the guy. He said he could get visas and transportation to a European country for me, my wife and my daughter. Let's call it Country X, because I've promised not to mention its name. I'd get a legitimate visa for some kind of European training program as an employee of an Iraqi government ministry. From there, because of the borderless European Union, I could go to Sweden and apply for asylum.
The price tag was steep: $25,000 for all of us. But I told him I'd do it. He said he needed a little time to make sure we weren't on any terrorist watch lists.
Ten days later he told me to be ready to go to Amman in two weeks to wait for my visas. He also demanded cash upfront.
Here I faced a problem. I didn't have all the money. I needed more time, maybe a few more months. But I also knew that if I scrapped the deal, another chance like this might not come along.
So I started selling our stuff — my wife's jewelry, our furniture, appliances, car. I borrowed some cash from relatives abroad. I didn't dream of selling our house, only because if word spread that a sale had gone through, armed men might kidnap me and demand ransom. Instead I found a family to stay in my home and guard it, rent-free.
Even under Saddam Hussein's rule, I never thought things could go so bad. After the Americans came, I always managed to convince myself that the warring factions would at some point use their common sense to stop killing each other and use Iraq's oil revenues and international aid to rebuild the country. As I scoured a devastated city looking for people to buy my couches and washing machine, I realized how deluded I had been.
*
WE went early to the airport. It would have been cheaper to take the road, but far less safe. Our heavy luggage made it obvious we were leaving Iraq for good, so we had to pay the customs officer a bribe.
In Amman we booked a motel and waited. I phoned our contact in Baghdad, but he kept putting us off. I decided to rent a small flat, which turned out to be smart because we wound up staying in Amman for 10 weeks, getting the runaround.
There were five others in our group. The head of the smuggling ring, a man we never saw who called himself the Doctor over the phone, gave excuses for the delay: a name was misspelled or a passport number was wrong or his man in the embassy was on holiday.
But we could do nothing. We had paid in advance.
At long last, the Doctor gave us the green light to go to the embassy to apply for the visas. He faxed us documents saying we were Iraqi government employees going to Europe for training. The Doctor instructed us to go to the embassy of Country X well dressed, "as if you are going to a wedding."
The men went to the embassy in suits and ties. One hadn't brought a suit with him from Baghdad, so he bought a new one and went to the embassy with the price tag still attached. We took it off for him, and then we submitted our applications.
The visas came two weeks later. I was relieved, but still nervous. We bought round-trip tickets for Country X.
The Doctor and a man who called himself Mohammed were waiting at the airport in Country X. I wanted to head to Scandinavia, to join my brother, the next day, but the Doctor demanded our passports, and shook us down for more cash. I argued, but even my wife told me to not to rock the boat. I was confused and angry but complied.
Five days later, Mohammed gave us back our passports and advised us to head to Scandinavia by bus. He escorted us to the station to make sure we boarded the bus. The Doctor's main concern, it turned out, was that we might try to seek asylum in Country X.
On the bus at the Swedish frontier, the officer with the flashlight moved on. I relaxed a bit. But my heart jolted again when another guard came on board.
In my confusion, I didn't notice that the second guard had a dog. It began stepping on my feet, sniffing me and my bags.
Later, I learned the guard was a customs officer and far more interested in halting alcohol and drugs than illegal immigrants.
We were in!
*
MY first impression of Sweden was a bad one — a bus station in the south after midnight. There was no one there except us and drunks and homeless people seeking warmth until daybreak. What had I gotten myself into?
But on the bus ride the next morning to Stockholm, I discovered the real Sweden. The landscape was fabulous, studded with trees and covered in green meadows. Lakes spread across the land. Even though I was tired, I couldn't take my eyes off the window. It wasn't even very cold, although it was winter. After a lifetime in steamy Iraq, I found the morning chill refreshing.
"I think I'm going to love this country," I thought.
When I saw my brother and other relatives waiting for us in Stockholm, it was like a mountain had lifted off my chest.
My brother took us to the cavernous hall of the main immigration office the next morning. We took a number and waited for our turn. There were a few people ahead of us, but others started coming. I estimated of the 100 or so people who came in that day, more than half were from Iraq. Many were Christians like me, wearing crosses on their chests.
When our turn came, they took our names, addresses, heights, weights, fingerprints and photos. They gave each of us a piece of paper with our name and photo saying we had reported to the immigration office.
A few weeks later, we were told to report to the immigration office again. They read us our rights as asylum seekers. We were given special IDs and a per diem of about $9 for food.
Now we are attending classes to learn Swedish. There are many words similar to English, but they always change a letter or two and pronounce it a different way. Nine of the 12 students in my class are Iraqis.
It's cold, and life is hard. We were practically rich in Iraq, and our living standards have plummeted here. I have worked for private companies and owned my own businesses in Iraq, so it's painful for me to be a ward of the state, hoping to receive asylum just so I can start looking for any little job.
The other day, my wife, daughter and I were walking back to the apartment under our first snowy sky ever.
"It's much better to walk beneath the snow here," my wife said, "than walk among car bombs and roadside bombs."
In this northern land, we are living without a lot of things: the warmth of the Iraqi sun, money, friends and family. But we are also living without fear.
*
In September, Aziz wrote anonymously about the toll that the violence was taking on him and his family. He described how he and others watched a man dying on a Baghdad street, but did nothing to help.
To read Aziz's first-person account of life in Baghdad, go to
latimes.com/aziz.
Monday, February 26, 2007
IRAQ: Sparks Rise From a Time Bomb
Mohammed A. Salih
ARBIL, Feb 26 (IPS) - The security situation in Iraq's northern oil rich-city Kirkuk has deteriorated over the past few weeks as a constitutional deadline approaches to determine the fate of the city.
The city is home to a mix of Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs, with the population of each hotly disputed.
Bombings on Feb. 3, 6 and 16, and three more Feb. 21 rocked the disputed city. The bombings coincided with a move by an Iraqi government committee to implement Article 140 of Iraq's constitution that seeks to reverse demographic changes brought about in Kirkuk by the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.
Under Saddam, tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkomens were deported from Kirkuk and were replaced by Arab settlers from the south to tighten the regime's control over the northern oil fields of the country.
That move eroded the traditional dominance of Kurds. But the new move to reverse the changes threatens also the Turkomens, a local people of Turkish origin.
"Without doubt the situation is very bad, and it has been become worse recently," Nazhat Abdulghani, a senior official of the Iraqi Turkomen Front (ITF) told IPS.
Iraq's new constitution sets out a three-phase plan to "normalise" the situation in Kirkuk.
In the first phase, Kurdish and Turkomen refugees will return to Kirkuk, and Arab settlers will be given financial incentives to return to their areas of origin. The Iraqi government is offering each of these Arab families 15,000 dollars and a piece of land. The returning settlers can transfer jobs to the areas they return to.
Also, in this first phase, predominantly Kurdish districts that were cut off from Kirkuk, like Kalar, Chamchamal and Kifri east of Kirkuk, will be re-attached to Kirkuk province. This phase is due to be completed by April this year.
Those settlers who do not want to leave will not be forced to, but will lose the right to vote, and denied other forms of participation in official decision-making.
The second phase provides for a census. That will then be followed in the third and last phase by an official referendum by the end of this year in which the population will vote on the destiny of the province.
Officials told IPS that the questions to be raised in the referendum have not been agreed yet. Some speak of a choice whether Kirkuk should be a part of the northern autonomous Kurdistan region or under the central government. Others say there must be a third choice whether Kirkuk should stand as a separate federal region similar to Baghdad.
The International Crisis Group, an international organisation that works on conflict resolution, recommended in a report released last summer that Kirkuk must stand "as a stand-alone federal region falling neither under the Kurdish federal region nor directly under the federal government for an interim period."
Based on Article 53 of Iraq's post-war interim constitution, many Turkomens and Arabs also demand the status of an independent federal region for Kirkuk. But that is strongly opposed by Kurds.
The debate on Kirkuk's fate has gone beyond Iraq's borders. Turkey, that has a sizeable Kurdish population, vehemently opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk, fearing it would embolden its own Kurds.
At a meeting with Iraq's Shia vice-president Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Teyyip Erdogan called for postponing the referendum on Kirkuk. "The conditions for holding the referendum in Kirkuk have not materialised yet," Erdogan told Abdul-Mahdi.
With outside and inside pressures increasing, some Kurdish circles now speak of a compromise to appease the city's Turkomens, who would be the second major ethnic group after Kurds if and when Article 140 is implemented.
"We are ready for dialogue with the ITF or any Turkomen party on Kirkuk," Arez Abdullah, member of the Kurdistan regional parliament in Arbil told IPS.
A Kurdish compromise with Turkomens could be in the form of some power-sharing formula and "safeguarding their national and cultural rights," Abdullah said.
"For example, they can run the administration in the areas where they constitute the majority of the population...and can have more effective participation in Kurdistan government institutions and parliament."
Kurdistan parliament speaker Adnan Mufti said last year that Turkomens should be given autonomy in areas where they make up most of the population. That statement was intended to encourage Turkomens to vote for bringing Kirkuk within the Kurdistan region.
With ethnic tensions rising, and given the short period of time left and the security problems on the ground, many doubt the Iraqi government's ability to implement Article 140.
"From a practical point of view, implementing Article 140 is impossible; there are many technical problems on the ground which have to be worked out," said Abdulghani.
He said his party is working "first for annulling, second postponing and third modifying" the constitutional article.
Many Iraqis see Kirkuk as a time bomb that might go off at any moment and drag Iraq into a real civil war. Several urge a delay in implementing Article 140. Kurds see it differently. "The real bomb will explode if Article 140 is not executed," said Abdullah.
ARBIL, Feb 26 (IPS) - The security situation in Iraq's northern oil rich-city Kirkuk has deteriorated over the past few weeks as a constitutional deadline approaches to determine the fate of the city.
The city is home to a mix of Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs, with the population of each hotly disputed.
Bombings on Feb. 3, 6 and 16, and three more Feb. 21 rocked the disputed city. The bombings coincided with a move by an Iraqi government committee to implement Article 140 of Iraq's constitution that seeks to reverse demographic changes brought about in Kirkuk by the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.
Under Saddam, tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkomens were deported from Kirkuk and were replaced by Arab settlers from the south to tighten the regime's control over the northern oil fields of the country.
That move eroded the traditional dominance of Kurds. But the new move to reverse the changes threatens also the Turkomens, a local people of Turkish origin.
"Without doubt the situation is very bad, and it has been become worse recently," Nazhat Abdulghani, a senior official of the Iraqi Turkomen Front (ITF) told IPS.
Iraq's new constitution sets out a three-phase plan to "normalise" the situation in Kirkuk.
In the first phase, Kurdish and Turkomen refugees will return to Kirkuk, and Arab settlers will be given financial incentives to return to their areas of origin. The Iraqi government is offering each of these Arab families 15,000 dollars and a piece of land. The returning settlers can transfer jobs to the areas they return to.
Also, in this first phase, predominantly Kurdish districts that were cut off from Kirkuk, like Kalar, Chamchamal and Kifri east of Kirkuk, will be re-attached to Kirkuk province. This phase is due to be completed by April this year.
Those settlers who do not want to leave will not be forced to, but will lose the right to vote, and denied other forms of participation in official decision-making.
The second phase provides for a census. That will then be followed in the third and last phase by an official referendum by the end of this year in which the population will vote on the destiny of the province.
Officials told IPS that the questions to be raised in the referendum have not been agreed yet. Some speak of a choice whether Kirkuk should be a part of the northern autonomous Kurdistan region or under the central government. Others say there must be a third choice whether Kirkuk should stand as a separate federal region similar to Baghdad.
The International Crisis Group, an international organisation that works on conflict resolution, recommended in a report released last summer that Kirkuk must stand "as a stand-alone federal region falling neither under the Kurdish federal region nor directly under the federal government for an interim period."
Based on Article 53 of Iraq's post-war interim constitution, many Turkomens and Arabs also demand the status of an independent federal region for Kirkuk. But that is strongly opposed by Kurds.
The debate on Kirkuk's fate has gone beyond Iraq's borders. Turkey, that has a sizeable Kurdish population, vehemently opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk, fearing it would embolden its own Kurds.
At a meeting with Iraq's Shia vice-president Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Teyyip Erdogan called for postponing the referendum on Kirkuk. "The conditions for holding the referendum in Kirkuk have not materialised yet," Erdogan told Abdul-Mahdi.
With outside and inside pressures increasing, some Kurdish circles now speak of a compromise to appease the city's Turkomens, who would be the second major ethnic group after Kurds if and when Article 140 is implemented.
"We are ready for dialogue with the ITF or any Turkomen party on Kirkuk," Arez Abdullah, member of the Kurdistan regional parliament in Arbil told IPS.
A Kurdish compromise with Turkomens could be in the form of some power-sharing formula and "safeguarding their national and cultural rights," Abdullah said.
"For example, they can run the administration in the areas where they constitute the majority of the population...and can have more effective participation in Kurdistan government institutions and parliament."
Kurdistan parliament speaker Adnan Mufti said last year that Turkomens should be given autonomy in areas where they make up most of the population. That statement was intended to encourage Turkomens to vote for bringing Kirkuk within the Kurdistan region.
With ethnic tensions rising, and given the short period of time left and the security problems on the ground, many doubt the Iraqi government's ability to implement Article 140.
"From a practical point of view, implementing Article 140 is impossible; there are many technical problems on the ground which have to be worked out," said Abdulghani.
He said his party is working "first for annulling, second postponing and third modifying" the constitutional article.
Many Iraqis see Kirkuk as a time bomb that might go off at any moment and drag Iraq into a real civil war. Several urge a delay in implementing Article 140. Kurds see it differently. "The real bomb will explode if Article 140 is not executed," said Abdullah.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque; one year later
Feb 12, 2007
By Mike Whitney
According to the Muslim calendar, today--February 12--is the one year anniversary of the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Dome Mosque. The blast is frequently pointed to as the event which transformed the conflict from an armed struggle against foreign occupation into a civil war. This change in the narrative has had some real benefits for the Bush administration by diverting attention from the nonstop fighting between American troops and the Sunni-led resistance.
The notion that Iraq is in the throes of civil war is rarely challenged in the western media despite the fact that Iraq has no history of the type of sectarian violence which is now ripping the country apart. Veteran journalist Robert Fisk put it this way:
“Iraq is not a sectarian society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other…Some from the militias and death squads want a civil war (but) there has never been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke a civil war? The Americans will say that it’s al Qaida or the Sunni insurgents; it is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do; the occupation authorities.” (Robert Fisk, “Somebody is trying to provoke a Civil War in Iraq”)
So, if we accept the idea that Iraq is in a civil war, aren’t we ignoring the fact that other forces may be at play just below the surface?
There’s no doubt that the Bush administration is engaged in a secret war in Iraq. A great deal has already been written about “the Salvador Option” which involves the arming and training of death squads for spreading terror among sympathizers of the resistance. But it is also likely that many of the bombings we see are, in fact, false flag operations intended to pit Arab against Arab, and thereby undermine the greatest threat of all, Iraqi nationalism.
False flag operations are commonplace in foreign occupation. Robert Fisk cites a few examples in his article, “All This Talk of Civil War, Now This” (UK Independent, 2006):
“I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.”
It’s impossible to know how much of the violence we see is real and how much is “black-ops”. Divide and rule is an adage that is as old as war itself and it is certainly being used in Iraq. In fact, the Bush administration commissioned the Rand Corporation to draw up a plan which promotes this very strategy.
The Rand Study was called: “US Strategy in the Muslim World after 9-11”. The document provided “A framework to identify major ideological orientations within Islam, examines critical cleavages between Muslim groups.” The goal of the paper was to develop a Shaping Strategy for pacifying Muslim populations where the US has commercial or strategic interests. The conclusions of the document are enlightening. Rand suggests the US, “Align its policy with Shiite groups who aspire to have more participation in government and greater freedoms of political and religious expression. If this alignment can be brought about, it could erect a barrier against radical Islamic movements and may create a foundation for a stable U.S. position in the Middle East.”
Clearly, the administration is following the recommendations Rand study and has decided elevate the Shiites over the previously dominant Sunnis.
The Bush administration also appears to be applying parts of another theory which was conjured up by the fiercely nationalistic, Oded Yinon, in his “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East”. Yinon said:
"It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly mass movement among them... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking Iraq up into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon... Syria will fall apart."
Similar to the Rand study’s recommendations, Yinon’s strategy is to pit Sunni against Shiite in a way that destroys Arab unity and to leaves the country weak and fragmented.
Again, there’s nothing new in these theories, but we should realize that much of the media narrative is crafted in a way that conceals the truth while promoting the objectives of the US occupation. Beyond the smokescreen of “civil war” (some of which is real, of course) is a coherent and carefully articulated plan to quash the resistance and steal Iraq’s resources. That is the real force which is generating much of the violence that we see on the ground.
In practical terms, Robert Fisk provides a credible description of how these black-ops are executed in Iraq. In his article, “Seen through a Syrian Lens” (UK Independent 4-29-06) the Fisk gives the details of a conversation he had with a trusted “security source” who told Fisk that: (the US) “is desperately trying to provoke a civil war around Baghdad in order to reduce its own military casualties.”
"I swear to you that we have very good information," Fisk recounts, "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."
As incredible as it seems, Fisk assures us that he’s heard the same story many times from different sources.
Again:
"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."
Fisk is a hardnosed journalist not easily given to exaggeration. His account of these incidents simply adds to the growing body of “hearsay” evidence that US intelligence agencies are directly involved in inciting sectarian violence. These stories cannot be corroborated, but, of course, that hasn’t stopped many Iraqis from believing that the US is behind the daily bombings.
Of course, the question of “who” is funding and facilitating the terrorism in Iraq presents a serious challenge to an administration that has based its foreign policy in terms of a war on terror. Public support would quickly erode if the American people knew that Bush was directly involved in the same activities as our nemesis, al Qaida.
Traditionally, the United States has no problem supporting Islamic extremists as long as they serve our overall foreign policy objectives. The CIA funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) in Kosovo, and now provides material support and weaponry to the MEK Mujahideen-e- Khalq; a Marxist militant group which is on the State Dept list of terrorist organizations. What matters is not ideology but whether or not the groups can advance Washington’s imperial aspirations.
This demonstrates that Bush’s finger-wagging against “ideological extremism” or “radical Islam” is just more empty rhetoric. Ideology plays a very small part in the current war. Dick Cheney’s comments in a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London in 1999 may shed a bit of light on this point. He said, “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? ... While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
While depletion of oil reserves have accelerated beyond Cheney’s expectations at the time ;( the world’s 4 largest oil fields are in a state of irreversible decline) the facts remain the same. The world is running out of oil and the US intends to deploy its military to seize vital reserves wherever they may be. The war on terror is simply the mask that conceals this ongoing struggle.
The Bush administration seems less and less concerned that their “divide and rule” strategy remains hidden from the public. There’ve been a number of articles in the mainstream press about Bush’s $86 million gift to Mahmoud Abbas’ to train and equip special shock-troops to crush the democratically-elected Hamas government. And, there’s been ample coverage of the CIA’s covert operations in Lebanon that are directed against Hezbollah. The only conclusion we can draw from this, is that Bush really doesn’t care anymore if the world knows that the US is purposely fueling the anarchy which is quickly spreading across the entire Middle East. (The latest accusation that Iran is supplying roadside bombs to the Iraqi resistance just shows how sloppy the administration has gotten in managing its propaganda. Iran, of course, is Shiite, whereas, the Iraqi resistance is predominantly Sunni. The likelihood that Iran is providing roadside bombs to the former members of Saddam’s army is remote to say the least.)
Bush’s “dirty war” in Iraq has become increasingly violent and confused. The neocon trust in “creative destruction” has succeeded in fragmenting Iraqi society, but the long-term prospects for normalization (or resource extraction) appear bleak. At this point, it seems irrelevant whether the bombing of the Golden-dome Mosque was the work of Sunni extremists or the US intelligence agencies. After all, propaganda may be useful for shaping public opinion but it cannot win wars. And that is the dilemma that Bush now faces.
It has been exactly one year since the Askirya Mosque was flattened. Most Americans now believe that we are mired in an "unwinnable" war. Public support is eroding, the violence is escalating, the administration is drifting sideways, and the end is nowhere in sight. The inability of the administration to think politically or change course has thrust America to the brink of its worst defeat in history.
By Mike Whitney
According to the Muslim calendar, today--February 12--is the one year anniversary of the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Dome Mosque. The blast is frequently pointed to as the event which transformed the conflict from an armed struggle against foreign occupation into a civil war. This change in the narrative has had some real benefits for the Bush administration by diverting attention from the nonstop fighting between American troops and the Sunni-led resistance.
The notion that Iraq is in the throes of civil war is rarely challenged in the western media despite the fact that Iraq has no history of the type of sectarian violence which is now ripping the country apart. Veteran journalist Robert Fisk put it this way:
“Iraq is not a sectarian society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other…Some from the militias and death squads want a civil war (but) there has never been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke a civil war? The Americans will say that it’s al Qaida or the Sunni insurgents; it is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do; the occupation authorities.” (Robert Fisk, “Somebody is trying to provoke a Civil War in Iraq”)
So, if we accept the idea that Iraq is in a civil war, aren’t we ignoring the fact that other forces may be at play just below the surface?
There’s no doubt that the Bush administration is engaged in a secret war in Iraq. A great deal has already been written about “the Salvador Option” which involves the arming and training of death squads for spreading terror among sympathizers of the resistance. But it is also likely that many of the bombings we see are, in fact, false flag operations intended to pit Arab against Arab, and thereby undermine the greatest threat of all, Iraqi nationalism.
False flag operations are commonplace in foreign occupation. Robert Fisk cites a few examples in his article, “All This Talk of Civil War, Now This” (UK Independent, 2006):
“I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.”
It’s impossible to know how much of the violence we see is real and how much is “black-ops”. Divide and rule is an adage that is as old as war itself and it is certainly being used in Iraq. In fact, the Bush administration commissioned the Rand Corporation to draw up a plan which promotes this very strategy.
The Rand Study was called: “US Strategy in the Muslim World after 9-11”. The document provided “A framework to identify major ideological orientations within Islam, examines critical cleavages between Muslim groups.” The goal of the paper was to develop a Shaping Strategy for pacifying Muslim populations where the US has commercial or strategic interests. The conclusions of the document are enlightening. Rand suggests the US, “Align its policy with Shiite groups who aspire to have more participation in government and greater freedoms of political and religious expression. If this alignment can be brought about, it could erect a barrier against radical Islamic movements and may create a foundation for a stable U.S. position in the Middle East.”
Clearly, the administration is following the recommendations Rand study and has decided elevate the Shiites over the previously dominant Sunnis.
The Bush administration also appears to be applying parts of another theory which was conjured up by the fiercely nationalistic, Oded Yinon, in his “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East”. Yinon said:
"It is obvious that the above military assumptions, and the whole plan too, depend also on the Arabs continuing to be even more divided than they are now, and on the lack of any truly mass movement among them... Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking Iraq up into denominations as in Syria and Lebanon... Syria will fall apart."
Similar to the Rand study’s recommendations, Yinon’s strategy is to pit Sunni against Shiite in a way that destroys Arab unity and to leaves the country weak and fragmented.
Again, there’s nothing new in these theories, but we should realize that much of the media narrative is crafted in a way that conceals the truth while promoting the objectives of the US occupation. Beyond the smokescreen of “civil war” (some of which is real, of course) is a coherent and carefully articulated plan to quash the resistance and steal Iraq’s resources. That is the real force which is generating much of the violence that we see on the ground.
In practical terms, Robert Fisk provides a credible description of how these black-ops are executed in Iraq. In his article, “Seen through a Syrian Lens” (UK Independent 4-29-06) the Fisk gives the details of a conversation he had with a trusted “security source” who told Fisk that: (the US) “is desperately trying to provoke a civil war around Baghdad in order to reduce its own military casualties.”
"I swear to you that we have very good information," Fisk recounts, "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."
As incredible as it seems, Fisk assures us that he’s heard the same story many times from different sources.
Again:
"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."
Fisk is a hardnosed journalist not easily given to exaggeration. His account of these incidents simply adds to the growing body of “hearsay” evidence that US intelligence agencies are directly involved in inciting sectarian violence. These stories cannot be corroborated, but, of course, that hasn’t stopped many Iraqis from believing that the US is behind the daily bombings.
Of course, the question of “who” is funding and facilitating the terrorism in Iraq presents a serious challenge to an administration that has based its foreign policy in terms of a war on terror. Public support would quickly erode if the American people knew that Bush was directly involved in the same activities as our nemesis, al Qaida.
Traditionally, the United States has no problem supporting Islamic extremists as long as they serve our overall foreign policy objectives. The CIA funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) in Kosovo, and now provides material support and weaponry to the MEK Mujahideen-e- Khalq; a Marxist militant group which is on the State Dept list of terrorist organizations. What matters is not ideology but whether or not the groups can advance Washington’s imperial aspirations.
This demonstrates that Bush’s finger-wagging against “ideological extremism” or “radical Islam” is just more empty rhetoric. Ideology plays a very small part in the current war. Dick Cheney’s comments in a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London in 1999 may shed a bit of light on this point. He said, “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? ... While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
While depletion of oil reserves have accelerated beyond Cheney’s expectations at the time ;( the world’s 4 largest oil fields are in a state of irreversible decline) the facts remain the same. The world is running out of oil and the US intends to deploy its military to seize vital reserves wherever they may be. The war on terror is simply the mask that conceals this ongoing struggle.
The Bush administration seems less and less concerned that their “divide and rule” strategy remains hidden from the public. There’ve been a number of articles in the mainstream press about Bush’s $86 million gift to Mahmoud Abbas’ to train and equip special shock-troops to crush the democratically-elected Hamas government. And, there’s been ample coverage of the CIA’s covert operations in Lebanon that are directed against Hezbollah. The only conclusion we can draw from this, is that Bush really doesn’t care anymore if the world knows that the US is purposely fueling the anarchy which is quickly spreading across the entire Middle East. (The latest accusation that Iran is supplying roadside bombs to the Iraqi resistance just shows how sloppy the administration has gotten in managing its propaganda. Iran, of course, is Shiite, whereas, the Iraqi resistance is predominantly Sunni. The likelihood that Iran is providing roadside bombs to the former members of Saddam’s army is remote to say the least.)
Bush’s “dirty war” in Iraq has become increasingly violent and confused. The neocon trust in “creative destruction” has succeeded in fragmenting Iraqi society, but the long-term prospects for normalization (or resource extraction) appear bleak. At this point, it seems irrelevant whether the bombing of the Golden-dome Mosque was the work of Sunni extremists or the US intelligence agencies. After all, propaganda may be useful for shaping public opinion but it cannot win wars. And that is the dilemma that Bush now faces.
It has been exactly one year since the Askirya Mosque was flattened. Most Americans now believe that we are mired in an "unwinnable" war. Public support is eroding, the violence is escalating, the administration is drifting sideways, and the end is nowhere in sight. The inability of the administration to think politically or change course has thrust America to the brink of its worst defeat in history.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Bush's Iran madness
By demonizing Iran and stirring up sectarian hatred against it in the region, Bush is pouring gas on the fire he started in Iraq -- and empowering al-Qaida.
By Gary Kamiya
Feb. 06, 2007 | You wouldn't think that the masterminds who dreamed up the Iraq war could possibly match that grand plan, but they have. The ignorant ideologues who brought us Iraq have learned nothing. They are still reading from the same delusional neoconservative script. So, with Iraq a bloody nightmare, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process dead, Lebanon and Gaza on the brink of civil war, the entire Middle East dangerously unstable, and America's standing in the Arab/Muslim world at an all-time low, the Bush administration geniuses have come up with another grand plan: demonize Iran, push it to the brink of war, strong-arm U.S. allies into confronting it, and whip up sectarian hatred in the region.
In his State of the Union address, Bush singled out Iran as a hostile troublemaker in Iraq and promised to attack its "networks," which U.S. officials have claimed are supplying advanced weaponry to Shia militias who kill American soldiers. He then threatened to "kill or capture" any Iranian intelligence agents found in Iraq. American aircraft carriers have moved menacingly into the Gulf. U.S. troops seized six Iranian officials in northern Iraq, accusing them of spying. U.S. officials darkly conjectured that Iran was responsible for the abduction and killing of five U.S. soldiers in Karbala. At the same time, the Bush administration is twisting the arms of its "moderate" Sunni allies to take a hard line against Iran.
Some see this gambit as representing a welcome return to coldblooded, "Great Game" realism after the wishful thinking that led to the Iraq debacle. But this is a superficial misreading. Bush's Iran ploy reeks of desperation and shortsightedness; it is no more "realistic" than his Iraq strategy. It may briefly postpone the day of reckoning by diverting Americans' attention and providing a temporary bad guy, one Bush is sure to blame when his Iraq venture completely falls apart. But it flies in the face of a historical shift, the rise of Shia and Iranian power, that Bush himself rashly set in motion, and cannot now be undone. It could lead to a shooting war, which would be utterly disastrous for U.S. interests and would set back the cause of reform in Iran by years. And by further exacerbating sectarian and ethnic tensions in the Middle East while denying, in time-honored neocon fashion, that there are actual causes for what Bush simplistically labels "extremism," it is likely to further destabilize an already-chaotic region -- and empower al-Qaida, which thrives on hatred and chaos.
In effect, the Bush administration is trying to put out the flames of sectarian and ethnic hatred in Iraq, while pouring gasoline on them everywhere else. Somehow, despite the charred horror of Iraq, it does not seem to have realized that once the wildfire of sectarian hatred spreads, it is very hard to extinguish it.
For Bush neocons, whose mantra is "Anyone can go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran," Iran has always been the perfect boogeyman. It is run by an intolerant fundamentalist Islamist regime. Its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is an ignorant and bigoted blowhard who questions the Holocaust. Along with the much smaller and weaker Syria, it is the only remaining state that carries the banner of Arab/Muslim nationalism and refuses to kowtow to America. It takes a hard line against Israel and supports Hezbollah and Hamas. Best of all, from the rolling-out-a-product point of view always so vital to the Bush administration, Iran is still widely hated by Americans because of memories of Ayatollah Khomeini and the 1979 hostage crisis.
Bush has been rattling his saber against Iran ever since his infamous "Axis of Evil" speech after 9/11. But now he has taken things to a whole new level.
Bush's charges against Iran are painfully reminiscent of his fearmongering about Iraq. Let's leave aside the laughably obvious fact, which Juan Cole and many other analysts have pointed out, that Iran is closely tied to America's Shiite allies in Iraq, and has nothing to do with the Sunni insurgents who are responsible for almost all the killings of American troops. Let's simply look at the claim that Iran is providing advanced weaponry to rogue Shiite militias who attack Americans. The actual evidence for these supposed misdeeds has yet to be produced, and U.S. officials keep postponing their presentation of it. So far, the charges consist almost entirely of vague speculation. The most egregious piece ran in the New York Times, under the headline "Iran May Have Trained Attackers That Killed 5 American Soldiers, U.S. and Iraqis Say." After noting that "Officials cautioned that no firm conclusions had been drawn and did not reveal any direct evidence of a connection," the Times story contained this curious sentence: "Tying Iran to the deadly attack could be helpful to the Bush administration, which has been engaged in an escalating war of words with Iran." This is apparently the newspaper of record's post-Judy Miller way of saying, "This may all be bullshit, and we're probably carrying the administration's water by running it, but at least we warned you in a weird, Rosetta Stone-like way." Considering the Times' prewar record of itself being "helpful" to the Bush administration by repeating its propaganda about WMD, many readers may wonder whether the paper should continue to run stories containing unsourced allegations that just happen to support Bush administration spin.
As it has launched its media campaign and ratcheted up confrontation with Iran in Iraq, the Bush administration has simultaneously launched a regional diplomatic offensive to isolate Iran. Playing off the long-standing fears of our major allies, and popular anger inflamed by the Shia attacks on Sunni Iraqis (which, of course, America is responsible for), the U.S. has sought to sign up Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Emirates to form a Sunni Arab opposition to Shia Iran. Interviewing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about this strategic "realignment," the Washington Post's David Ignatius wrote, "Rice said the new approach reflects growing Arab concern about Iran's attempt to project power through its proxies: 'After the war in Lebanon, the Middle East really did begin to clarify into an extremist element allied with Iran, including Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. On the other side were the targets of this extremism -- the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Palestinians -- and those who want to resist, such as the Saudis, Egypt and Jordan.'"
The "moderate" Sunni states, angered by the killing of their co-religionists in Iraq's civil war and by the crudely vengeful execution of Saddam, suspicious of the non-Arab Iranians and fearing the erosion of their own power, have begun moving against Tehran. Jordan's King Abdullah warned in 2004 of a "Shiite crescent" stretching from Iran to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, which has been battling Iran for Islamic religious supremacy ever since Khomeini toppled the shah, has provided financial backing for Lebanon's embattled Prime Minister Fouad Siniora against the Iran-backed opposition and may be planning to keep oil prices low to hurt Iran's economy. In an ominous development, it went so far as to accuse Hezbollah of seeking to convert Sunnis to Shia. According to Mideast expert Marc Lynch, a political science professor at Williams College who closely follows the Arab media and Arab public opinion on his valuable site Abu Aardvark, this "Shia conversion meme" is now widespread throughout the Middle East. Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah took it seriously enough to devote a large portion of a recent speech to denying it. And Egypt's semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram suddenly accused Iran, citing "diplomatic sources," of being responsible for the 2005 murder of the Egyptian ambassador in Baghdad -- only to have the Egyptian Foreign Ministry say the story was "invalid." (Shades of "could be helpful"?)
The rising tensions between the Sunni states and Iran have led some analysts to declare that the Bush administration has succeeded, even if only by accident, in pulling off the oldest imperial trick in the book: divide and rule. In the Wall Street Journal, Edward Luttwak wrote, "Just as the Sunni threat to majority rule in Iraq is forcing [the Shiite party] SCIRI to cooperate with the U.S., the prospect of a Shiite-dominated Iraq is forcing Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Jordan, to seek American help against the rising power of the Shiites."
In the happy world imagined by Rice and Luttwak, the Sunni states' fear of Iran would outweigh their dislike of the U.S. and their solidarity with Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran would be contained. Syria would be forced to abandon its designs on Lebanon and its support for the Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups. Deprived of their backers, the militants would exit the scene: Hezbollah would be disarmed and Hamas would be replaced by a defanged Fatah, which would be forced to make peace on Israeli terms. Iraq -- well, there are some happy endings that even dreams can't make happen.
Sound familiar? It's basically the same scenario the Bush administration promised us would happen after it invaded Iraq. It didn't happen then, it's not going to happen now, and it should be amply clear that the longer we base our strategy on this belief, the more damage we will do to our strategic position, the more the Middle East will degenerate and the stronger al-Qaida will become. The reason the neocons continue to cling to this fantasy is that they really believe that the Middle East is divided between "extremists allied with Iran," the "targets of that extremism" and "those who want to resist." Forget history, invasions, occupations, injustice, disenfranchisement -- no, it's all about "extremists" (formerly "terrorists" or "evildoers") battling "moderates."
This delusion would be laughable if it didn't have such grave consequences. The fact is, of course, that by "moderate" and "extremist," the Bush administration really means "those who do what the U.S. and Israel want" and "those who don't do what the U.S. and Israel want." The idea that Saudi Arabia, land of Wahhabism, public beheadings and 15 of 19 9/11 attackers, is "moderate" is ridiculous. Egypt? Back when Bush was still talking about democracy and pressuring President Mubarak to reform his corrupt and autocratic government, it would have taken a face of brass to call it "moderate." But now that we realize that democracy means the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, democracy isn't such a big deal, and U.S.-friendly autocrats are suddenly "moderate."
It's true that the "moderate" states don't disturb the status quo. But it takes a lot of chutzpah for the Bush administration to suddenly begin singing the lofty moral praises of the status quo, just a few years after it bloodily launched a gratuitous war of choice against a major Arab nation so as to upend that status quo.
The "moderate" vs. "extremist" line is the last, rhetorically downsized gasp of the same discredited, moralistic worldview that the neocons used to justify the Iraq war. And it suffers from the same obvious contradictions, bias and historical blindness. Take what Rice called "the targets of this extremism." Are the Lebanese "targets" of Iran and Hezbollah? Maybe, but they don't see themselves that way. In a poll, 64 percent of Lebanese blamed Israel or the United States for the war, while only 18 percent blamed Hezbollah. Does that make the U.S. and Israel the "extremists"? Apparently not. As for the Palestinians, they elected Hamas, so it's a little hard to figure out how they are its "targets."
My point is not to argue whether Rice is right or wrong about who is responsible for the Lebanese war, or the crisis in Gaza. Nor is it to defend the dreadful regime in Iran, which most Iranians would be overjoyed to see end tomorrow. It is simply to point out that the Bush administration's simplistic vision of the Middle East is not shared by the vast majority of the people who actually live there. And pious but false beliefs, as the last five years should have taught us, are not a good basis for foreign policy.
What's really going on here, of course, is the Bush administration's attempt to use sectarian hatred and fear of Iran (the two are inseparable) to make the Arab world do what we want. The deepest desire of the neoconservatives who, incredibly, still drive Bush's Mideast policy is to kill off Arab nationalism, which they see as a threat because of its enmity toward Israel and resistance to American domination. To do this, they're taking the sectarian-war lemons they made in Iraq and trying to make lemonade. This is a very dangerous game. In fact, it is more than dangerous -- it is guaranteed to fail because even victory will amount to failure.
The only way to make the plan work is by whipping up sectarian hatred in Sunni countries. But that is a tiger we don't want to ride. Two words: al-Qaida. By fomenting Sunni sectarian extremism against Shiite Iran, we are rolling out the red carpet for more Osama bin Ladens. As Vali Nasr, author of the excellent book "The Shia Revival," and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., argued in testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "In the Arab world and Pakistan, violent anti-Shiism is the domain of radical pro-al-Qaeda clerics, websites and armed groups. Sectarianism -- especially among Sunnis -- is a driver for radical jihadi ideology."
Nasr argues that Bush is trying to resurrect the old policy of "containment" -- and that it simply won't work anymore. "This policy is reminiscent of the containment strategy of the 1980s and early 1990s when the United States rallied Iran's neighbors to contain the spread of the Iranian revolution. However, at that time, Iran was weaker, and containment of Iran was anchored in Iraq's military capability, and Taliban and radical Sunni ideology's ability to counter Shia Iran's influence. But today the Iraqi military bulwark is no longer there. The task of militarily confronting and containing Iran will fall on U.S. shoulders. Moreover, in 2001 it became evident that the cost of Sunni containment of Shia Iran was the rise of radical Sunni jihadi ideology, al-Qaeda and 9/11."
In other words, in a futile attempt to check Iran's regional ambitions, Bush is reprising the tactics that brought us 9/11. History repeats itself, with Iran now playing the role of the evil Soviet empire, and the "moderate" Sunnis playing the mujahedin.
Bush's plan is dangerous in another way: It will destabilize the very "moderate" states whose arms he is twisting. It is certain to raise internal tensions within those states -- tensions that could boil over, even threatening the regimes themselves, if, say, another war with Israel breaks out. This is because the official position of the paid-off governments is radically different from that of their people. During last summer's Lebanon war, Egypt and Saudi Arabia's leaders, fearful of rising Shiite/Iranian power and no doubt under heavy pressure from the U.S., broke with decades of received Arab political behavior and denounced Hezbollah's cross-border raid as an irresponsible provocation. Neocons and right-wingers in the U.S. went wild with joy, seeing in this development -- to use Rice's now-infamous phrase -- "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." Alas, the baby only lived about a week before enormous public outrage forced the "moderate" states to reverse course, denounce Israel and celebrate Hezbollah. Hezbollah head Nasrallah became the most admired man in the Middle East, the new Nasser. And Iran was admired by many Arabs for its uncompromising stance. (Despite his gross incompetence, Iran President Ahmadinejad probably has held onto power as long as he has largely because he has cunningly played to the Arab/Muslim street by denouncing Israel and Bush.)
Today, the Sunni authorities are whipping up primeval fears to try to change all this. As the veteran Mideast analyst Helena Cobban notes in her must-read blog Just World News, things are changing in the region so fast it is impossible to say just how developments will play out. But one thing can be said: It will be virtually impossible for the U.S. to hold the "moderate" states in line unless there is real progress on the region's most crucial front: the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
There is a reason why the Iraq Study Group insisted that the U.S. must urgently broker a peace deal in the Holy Land. The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia can get away with snubbing Iran and Syria so long as there is real progress on the Palestinian front. If there is none, however, and Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians continue to represent the only resistance to Israel in Arab eyes, then those leaders who oppose them, no matter how much they play the sectarian card, will be regarded as traitors who have sold out the Arab/Muslim world's most sacred cause to curry favor with the increasingly despised Americans. Exactly this sin has caused Arab leaders to be assassinated -- and inspired fanatical jihadis. It is not in anyone's interests, not even ultimately the Israelis', to place either Arab governments or the Arab street in this untenable position. Yet because the Bush administration will do nothing to broker a real Arab-Israeli peace -- it is content to watch the Palestinians devour themselves in Gaza, in a kind of smaller version of divide and rule -- we are headed toward this combustible position. The Sunni states know this and will insist on a quid pro quo. Writing in Haaretz, the well-informed Israeli commentator Zvi Bar'el reported that as the price for their anti-Iranian position, the Saudis will insist that the U.S. and the rest of the "Quartet" recognize Hamas as a legitimate Palestinian negotiating party. (In a typical example of the grotesque disparity between what can be said in the mainstream Israeli press and what can be said in its American counterpart, Bar'el called this a "smart and sober step.")
Finally, there is Iran itself. The United States has real differences with Iran on many issues, including its nuclear ambitions, its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and its alliance with Syria. And it is in our interest, as well as the Iranian people's, to encourage regime change in Tehran. But Bush's pigheaded strategy actually works against our own interests in every one of these cases. It rallies the Iranian people against America, strengthens the nation's hard-liners and turns the people of the Middle East toward Iran -- and against us.
By now, nothing that the Bush administration does in the Middle East should come as a surprise. But its Iran gambit is so delusional that it raises the question of whether Bush is in fact playing an inept game of power politics, as I have suggested, or whether he is half-hoping to provoke open conflict with Iran. In a last desperate bid to save his disastrous presidency, does he actually want to provoke a war with a country three times larger than Iraq? It's hard to believe, but then his whole reign is becoming increasingly phantasmagorical. Unfortunately, this is one nightmare we're not going to wake up from for two more years -- and maybe a lot longer.
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