Sunni-Shiite Wall Construction Halted
Sunday , April 22, 2007
AP
CAIRO, Egypt —
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Sunday that he has ordered a halt to the construction of a barrier that would separate a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shiite areas in Baghdad, saying there are other ways to protect the neighborhood.
The U.S. military announced last week that it was building a large concrete wall in the northern Azamiyah section of Baghdad in an effort to protect the minority Sunnis from attacks by Shiites living nearby.
The decision drew sharp criticism from residents and Sunni leaders who complained it would isolate their community.
In his first public comments on the issue, al-Maliki said he had ordered the construction to stop.
"I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop," al-Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with the Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa in Cairo, Egypt. "There are other methods to protect neighborhoods."
He did not elaborate but added "this wall reminds us of other walls," in an apparent reference to the wall that divided the German city of Berlin during the Cold War.
Showing posts with label Shia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shia. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Ridiculous NYT and Pentagon claims of Shiite Iranian arms going to Sunnis
April 18, 2007
When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)
Posted by Scott Harrop at April 18, 2007 11:47 PMMatters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been "captured," supposedly on their way to the Taliban? It sounds suspiciously like the tired old formula; when matters go really bad somewhere in the Middle East, change the subject and blame Iran.
Michael R. Gordon today is competing yet again to be chief salesman for such ominous news. Media bloggers have taken to deeming him the resident "ghost of Judith Miller" at the New York Times, the journalist most willing to "take out Cheney’s trash."
Lately, Gordon has been quite active in reviving support for getting tougher on Iran.
Last week, I commented here on the Pentagon's odd claim that Iran was now not only supporting Iraqi Shia insurgents, but Sunni fighters as well. On February 10th, it was Michael R. Gordon who had started the latest round of Iran-as-the-source-of-trouble-in-Iraq" with a front-page "scoop" that breathlessly cited un-named US sources to contend that Iran was intentionally providing deadly munitions to kill Americans. Gordon's follow-up report generously allowed his sources to defend their claims amid the "controversy," which even a NYTimes editorial criticized. (Amazingly, that editorial neglected to mention that it was their own reporter - Gordon - who catalyzed the controversy).
Like Judy Miller, Gordon has long specialized in providing red meat for neoconservative circles.
Last November, it was Michael R. Gordon reporting that "Iran-backed" Hizbullah was training Iraqi Shia fighters. And throughout the fall, Gordon filed one “report” after another citing "experts" and "analysts" cautioning against quick withdrawal from Iraq, then condemning the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group (particularly the idea to talk to Iraq’s neighbors), and then advocating a "surge" of more troops into Iraq.
Back in 2002, it was Michael R. Gordon who wrote regularly with Judith Miller about Iraqi WMD capabilities, most infamously about the aluminum tubes presumed for Iraq's nuclear program. The obvious intent of such articles was to drum up support for invading Iraq sooner rather than later.
The New York Times flagellated itself last year for such bad reporting, and specifically cited the Miller-Gordon "tubes" story as one of the worst examples. Yet Michael R. Gordon remains the Times' lead "military" correspondent.
In a contentious interview last year with Amy Goodman, Gordon curiously claimed that he was merely a recorder of the best intelligence and analysis available (pre-Iraq invasion) and that later "dissenters" had not contacted him.
That's a curious defense. Shouldn't the reporters be the ones casting about for different views?
Gordon may have thought himself funny when he told Goodman: "I'm actually not Judy Miller." !
Really?
Today, the NYTimes designates none other than Michael R. Gordon to tell us that Iran is supporting the Taliban (sic) in Afghanistan. That's right, Iran is now accused of sending arms to the Taliban, Iran's mortal arch-enemy.
In 2000, then Bush advisor Condoleze Rice well-illustrated her lack of Middle East credentials (coming into office) when she confidently told the Washington Post that the Taliban were "clients" of Iran. The media has largely forgotten that absurd gaffe.
Now, thanks to Michael R. Gordon, we have insinuations floating that by golly, maybe Condi Rice was “right” all along.
Not!
By Gordon's (very low) "standards," his report on the alleged Iran-Taliban link is relatively tame:
First, this time he has a named source at the top: Joint Chiefs’ Chair, Peter Pace, who said simply, “We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran.” Gordon also included Pace's caution that, “It’s not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible.”
About half of Gordon’s report about Iran in Afghanistan repeats Gordon's claims about Iran's alleged involvement in Iraqi (sic) mayhem. But Gordon lamely notes that Iran's role in Afghanistan has been more "complicated," noting past Iranian clashes with the Taliban, Iran's support of the Afghan Northern Alliance (which resisted the Taliban), and Iran's firm, cooperative role establishing the current Karzai government.
Gordon manages to find one scholar, Barnett Rubin, to lend a plausible, yet highly speculative argument that Iran, or some element therein, might be consciously interested in supporting their mortal foe - the Taliban.
"The Iranians believe the No. 1 threat is an American attack to overthrow their government. They may do anything it takes to make the United States and its allies uncomfortable there.”
Gordon doesn't bother quoting any of those observers who would counter that Iran has little, if any, interest in supporting the Taliban or the Iraqi Sunni insurgents. No doubt Gordon might again disingenuously claim that no such "dissenters" contacted him.
AP even worse:
Robert Burns, an AP military correspondent, has the "distinction" for out-hyping Gordon. Burns cites two unreliable sources to magnify the Pace claim. First, Burns quotes Mohammad Mohaddessin, a spokesman for the "National Council of Resistance of Iran" (aka the "People's Mujahedin") who claims that,
"Export of fundamentalism and terrorism to neighboring and Islamic countries has been one of the pillars of the clerical regime's foreign policy - something that the Iranian resistance has warned about for the past two decades."
With respect to Iran's ties to Afghanistan, such a black and white statement is ridiculous -- as even Michael Gordon's report should demonstrate. Burns also doesn't mention that the NCR/PMOI is still on the State Department's terrorist list.
Burns also trots out Michael Rubin, now of the neoconservative bastion at the American Enterprise Institute. Rubin attempts to debunk any suggestion that Iran might have ever played a constructive role in Afghanistan, deeming any Iranian efforts to increase its influence in Afghanistan as nefariously aimed at America....
"Iran's leadership often strikes pragmatic relationships to further their influence at our expense... A lot of testimonials about Iranian assistance in Afghanistan are based more on wishful thinking than reality."
Rubin thus still sings the rigid tune of the neocon ideologue - that nothing good, by definition, can come out of Iran, short of regime change.
Not surprisingly, these reports from Gordon and Burns make no mention of far more likely and substantial sources of support for the Taliban – namely, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
The Guardian Stands out...:
Curiously, the Washington Post hasn't even bothered to report on the Pace claim - perhaps they saw it for what it was. In my searches thus far, only Britain's Guardian (April 19th edition) has cast a skeptical eye on the intended insinuation. Writing from his base in Kabul, Declan Walsh reports Pace's charge and then (unlike Burns & Gordon) runs a reality check with locals in Afghanistan:
First, he quotes Afghan General Mohiyadeen Ghori, commander of the 205th Corps stationed in Helmand, who said his troops had recovered Iranian-manufactured weapons from insurgents in Farah province, and that Iran was funding insurgents in Garmser district, where several British soldiers have died in heavy fighting.
However, General Ghori also indicates that such funds were being channelled through drug smugglers based in Iranian Baluchistan, and "All they are interested in is money."
Walsh closes his report with the following telling observation:
"Some western officials in Kabul treated the allegations of Taliban support with scepticism yesterday. One said Iranian weapons had been freely available on the black market since the 1990s, when Tehran shipped arms to groups fighting the Taliban. "Out of every 10 Kalashnikovs, one is Iranian," he said. "This is all a war of words. It has very little basis in reality."
Walsh's story also cites western officials suspecting that such charges "coincided with mounting speculation about possible US air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities."
Tehran Radio
Tehran Radio (VOIR in Persian - trans. BBC monitoring) earlier today broadcast a dismissal of the Pace allegations. Apart from noting the strong cultural bonds between Iran and Afghanistan which made an active Iranian presence "inevitable," the commentary noted that,
Iran is one of the few countries that have fulfilled its financial aid promises for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and the measures Tehran has taken for the reconstruction of Afghanistan have all been important and effective.
As for accusations from America to the contrary,
"The military machine of America is stuck in the Afghan mountains and quagmires. In order to justify this situation, American has to blame others and attribute its own problems to foreign countries. There was no mention of Iran up until yesterday, but the more America is frustrated in Afghanistan, the more it focuses its psychological warfare on Iran. The statement of America's chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday is an example of this.
In short, when all else fails, blame Iran.
Tehran Radio also dabbled a bit in analyzing American politics:
The claim is concurrent with the pressures exerted by the Congress and America's public opinion for withdrawal from [Iraq?] and having constructive interaction with Iran. This can be interpreted as a new attempt to cause the Democrats in the Congress to fail in their move to approach Iran.
So that's what it's all about. Senator Webb, take notes.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
On that so-called "Shi'a Crescent"
Beirut Memories (I)
6.4.07
News reports from Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon harp on and on about the emerging "Shi`a Crescent," which now poses an allegedly mortal danger to the West (whatever that is!). In the last 60 years, we have seen the Red Scare, the Green Scare (politicized Sunni Islam), and of course, the Axis of Evil, which still gets a lot of air time. The political "flavour of the month" is clearly Iran, which, after the events of the last week or so, is increasingly in the cross-hairs of those who believe that traditions, societies, and histories can be collapsed into a catchy soundbyte or a caricature of the Evil Other.
The events, actions, assumptions and textures of everyday life in the Middle East rarely attract the attention of pundits and politicians. Unless, of course, they want to attribute some aspect of foreigners' propensity for evil to their "cultural traditions." If I had a dime for every time I've heard anthropology used to justify or facilitate the war on terror, I'd be able to retire 20 years early. (Perhaps opening an anthropological boot camp and requiring politicians and foreign affairs journalists to attend for six weeks would help bring the hysteria and b.s. level in the US down a few notches. But then, without a good "daily hate," the current administration would not last a week.)
[For anyone inclined to do further reading, I'd suggest Mahmood Mamdani's essay, "Good Muslim/Bad Muslim", in which he does a great job of demolishing "culture talk" and other misuses of anthropology by politicians, journalists, and military planners.]
In an effort to take a closer look at supposedly Very Scary People from a different angle, I'll be posting some memories of my five years in Lebanon for the next week. Here is the first installment:
For the better part of the 1990s, my Lebanese-born husband and I lived and worked in Beirut. In 1994, we organized and held an international conference entitled "Lessons from Lebanon" to explore alternative approaches to conflict resolution and post-war reconciliation. The conference brought together dozens of people from all walks of life and all faith communities who had lived through Lebanon's 16 years of internecine violence. Three days of presentations, workshops and discussions culminated in the formation of task forces to deal with post-war issues of particular concern to the conference participants: the fate of the 800,000 war displaced and their reintegration into the communities they had fled, the situation of the war handicapped, and children's attempts to come to grips with the war, as well as state attempts to educate a new generation to avoid war. A very earnest and kind gentleman of 50, Dr. Ahmad, was a key member of the latter task force. A Shi'i Muslim and a former Lebanese Army officer, Dr. Ahmad had taken his family to the UK for five years in the 1980s, where he received his Ph.D. in childhood education.
As the task forces met and worked, we got to know all the members quite well. Dr. Ahmad invited us to his home for dinner, and we immediately got along with his wife and children. His wife, Lubna, taught Shakespeare in a high school in South Lebanon. She had really enjoyed her time in London and loved English literature and theatre.
Dr. Ahmad's extended family had lost members and houses in the many years of the war, which affected South Lebanon disproportionately, but they expressed no bitterness at all. Although proud to be Shi'a, they were not demonstrably devout. Lubna dressed in blue jeans and kneelength tailored dresses and did not cover her shoulder length brown hair. She had blue-green eyes, as do I, and we joked that maybe we were distantly related. (Many people from Shi'i villages in Southern Lebanon have blue or green eyes.)
In March 1996, as regional political and military events were heating up and anxieties were rising, we learned from a member of the children of war task force that Dr. Ahmad had suffered a cerebral aneurysm while at work. He had had a very bad headache all day, decided to put his head down on his desk to rest, and never awoke again. We immediately went to see him in the hospital, where he was unconscious and breathing thanks to a respirator. Lubna, ashen-faced, was holding his hand and not taking her eyes from his face. I knew he was not going to make it, but asked her if they had given him cumiden and other anticoaglulants, trying to sound confident and sure that technology and modern pharmacology would pull him through.
Two weeks later, we learned that the hospital had turned off the respirator at the family's request and shortly thereafter, Dr. Ahmed had passed away with his wife and children and brothers at his side.
In Islam, one must be buried the same day one has died. But memorial services can take place at any time after the death and burial. There is usually a forty-day memorial service. About a week after his death, a memorial service was held for Dr. Ahmed in early April 1996, about a week before the outbreak of 'Operation: Grapes of Wrath', which was to bring more death and devastation to Lebanon's Shi'i community. George, my former husband, and I were invited to attend the service, held in the southern suburbs of Beirut, home to the city's Shi'a population, as well as some of the armed groups frequently mentioned in news reports, such as Hizbullah and the Amal militia.
We arrived to a large and modern mosque complex on a dismal rainy day. I was dressed in a black, grey, and copper striped blazer covering a black wool turtle neck shirt, a black knee-length skirt, black tights, and black pump shoes. George wore his best black suit and a white shirt with a royal blue tie. As we pulled up to the mosque, we realized that everyone but us was dressed in traditional attire. Some of the men wore turbans, none wore a western suit or tie, and all of the women, old and young, were wearing full black abayas, showing only their hands and eyes.
George and I attempted to enter the building together, but a man stopped us and firmly but politely indicated that I had to enter through the women's door at the other side of the hexagonal building. A crush of people surrounded us. I walked off feeling nervous, alone, and out of place, all the while trying to melt into the stream of women entering the mosque. I felt quite self-conscious about my outfit in this setting, but I was sure that once I entered the building, I'd see Lubna, and that she would be wearing a suit like mine.
But I was mistaken. Once I entered and found a seat I realized I was the only woman in the mosque who was not covered by an abaya. Across the large hexagonal space, I could see George, the only man present in a suit and tie.
My excruciating self-consciousness about being abaya-less soon diminished as speakers got up to recall the wonderful qualities of Dr. Ahmad and his contributions to his family, faith and society. All the women around me were crying, and young girls were coming through the crowd with decorative boxes of tissues and glasses of water. After an hour, the women around me and I became a small community of mourners, sharing tissues, handing one another water, and crying anew each time another speaker began eulogizing Dr. Ahmed and spoke of his young children.
After an hour and a half, some women in front of us got up and left. An older woman seated next to me said "shu!? felleen bakir!" ("What's this, they are leaving too early!") I agreed with her and she clasped my hand in hers until the mourning ceremony ended nearly an hour later.
Once we were all standing up and about to leave, she asked me who I was and how I came to be there. It turned out she was the eldest sister of Lubna, and she took me straight to her sister, the widow, who was wearing a black abaya. Lubna looked at me, her blue eyes red from crying and framed by her black headdress. She seemed happy to see me, abaya-less or not, and hugged me, kissing my face several times and thanking me for coming to the ceremony, and telling me she felt I was "like her sister." Her older sister, whom I'd been sitting next to for the last two hours, also began to hug and kiss me and thanked me for coming. We all started crying again.
I found George outside in the parking lot waiting for me near the car. "How come you didn't tell me that I was wearing the wrong thing?!"
He said "I had no idea; even though I grew up here in Lebanon, I was always in the Christian community. I have never been to a Muslim wedding or funeral until today."
We drove home through a grey and misty rain, listening to BBC reports that left little doubt that Lebanon would see more deaths, more mourning, more funerals, in the coming weeks. Thinking about Dr. Ahmed's memorial service, I realized it was not a "Muslim" or a "Shi'i" event, and that attire did not really matter. Though I'd walked into the mosque feeling so different and isolated, I came out feeling privileged that I had been able to participate with a community mourning the loss of one of its own. Being a Muslim and wearing an abaya had not really mattered; showing up and being there, open to the feelings of those present, did.
Lebanon Beirut 
Cultural Anthropology
Middle East
Politics
War and conflict Wednesday, March 28, 2007
British pawns in an Iranian game
The Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors may be much cleverer than it appears. Oil has moved above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident. And if Tehran drags out proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation, and even start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance.
Mar 29, 2007 Publish
THE ROVING EYE
By Pepe Escobar
The 15 British sailors and marines who were patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab - or Arvand Roud, as it is known in Iran - were not exactly indulging in a little bit of Rod Stewart ("I am sailing/stormy waters/to be with you/to be free"). They had their guns loaded. These would certainly have been fired against Iraqi smugglers - or, better yet, the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite. But suddenly the British were confronted not by Iraqi but by Iranian gunboats.
This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.
The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.
Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or "international" waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters). Tehran has accused the British of "blatant aggression" and reminded world public opinion "this is not the first time that Britain commits such illegal acts" (which is true). Tehran diplomats later suggested that the British might be charged with espionage (which is actually the case in Khuzestan province in Iran, conducted by US Special Forces).
Chess matters
The coverage of the sensitive Shatt-al-Arab incident in the Iranian press was quite a smash: initially there was none. Everything was closed for Nowrouz - the one-week Iranian New Year holiday. But this has not prevented radicalization.
Hardliners like the Republican Guards and the Basiji - Iran's volunteer Islamist militia - asked the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad not to release the sailors until the five Iranian diplomats arrested by the US in Iraq were freed. They also demanded that the new United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program be scrapped. And all this was under the watchful eyes (and ears) of the US Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Much of the Western press assumed Iran wanted Western hostages to exchange for the five Iranian diplomats, without ever questioning the Pentagon's illegal capture of the Iranians in the first place. Then the plot was amplified as an Ahmadinejad diversion tactic as the UN Security Council worked out a new resolution for more sanctions on Iran and as Russia told Tehran to come up with the outstanding money or the Bushehr nuclear plant it is building in Iran would not be finished.
The Shatt-al-Arab incident has been linked to an Iranian response to Washington's accusations that Tehran is helping Shi'ite militias with funds, weapons and training in Iraq. For the record, Iran's ambassador in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said there is absolutely no connection: "They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested. It has nothing to do with other issues." Not surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had to take the side of the occupiers who installed him in his post: he said the British were in Iraq invited by the Iraqi government and were operating in Iraqi waters.
This doesn't stop people, especially in the Islamic world, questioning what business the British, as an occupation force, had in the Shatt-al-Arab to start with.
From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world - which is not so fond of Persians - sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East. More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran.
Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move - in which Iranians excel - the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that's good for Iran. It's true that from London's point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.
But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.
If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Mar 29, 2007 Publish
THE ROVING EYE
By Pepe Escobar
The 15 British sailors and marines who were patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab - or Arvand Roud, as it is known in Iran - were not exactly indulging in a little bit of Rod Stewart ("I am sailing/stormy waters/to be with you/to be free"). They had their guns loaded. These would certainly have been fired against Iraqi smugglers - or, better yet, the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi'ite. But suddenly the British were confronted not by Iraqi but by Iranian gunboats.
This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats. From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein. The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed.
The British are adamant that the sailors were in Iraqi waters checking for cars, not weapons, being smuggled. It's almost laughable that the Royal Navy should be reduced to finding dangerous Toyotas in the Persian Gulf. Some reports from Tehran claim the British were actually checking Iranian military preparations ahead of a possible confrontation with the US.
Western corporate media overwhelmingly take for granted that the British were in Iraqi or "international" waters (wrong: these are disputed Iran/Iraq waters). Tehran has accused the British of "blatant aggression" and reminded world public opinion "this is not the first time that Britain commits such illegal acts" (which is true). Tehran diplomats later suggested that the British might be charged with espionage (which is actually the case in Khuzestan province in Iran, conducted by US Special Forces).
Chess matters
The coverage of the sensitive Shatt-al-Arab incident in the Iranian press was quite a smash: initially there was none. Everything was closed for Nowrouz - the one-week Iranian New Year holiday. But this has not prevented radicalization.
Hardliners like the Republican Guards and the Basiji - Iran's volunteer Islamist militia - asked the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad not to release the sailors until the five Iranian diplomats arrested by the US in Iraq were freed. They also demanded that the new United Nations sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program be scrapped. And all this was under the watchful eyes (and ears) of the US Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Much of the Western press assumed Iran wanted Western hostages to exchange for the five Iranian diplomats, without ever questioning the Pentagon's illegal capture of the Iranians in the first place. Then the plot was amplified as an Ahmadinejad diversion tactic as the UN Security Council worked out a new resolution for more sanctions on Iran and as Russia told Tehran to come up with the outstanding money or the Bushehr nuclear plant it is building in Iran would not be finished.
The Shatt-al-Arab incident has been linked to an Iranian response to Washington's accusations that Tehran is helping Shi'ite militias with funds, weapons and training in Iraq. For the record, Iran's ambassador in Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said there is absolutely no connection: "They entered Iranian territorial waters and were arrested. It has nothing to do with other issues." Not surprisingly, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari had to take the side of the occupiers who installed him in his post: he said the British were in Iraq invited by the Iraqi government and were operating in Iraqi waters.
This doesn't stop people, especially in the Islamic world, questioning what business the British, as an occupation force, had in the Shatt-al-Arab to start with.
From the depths of their abysmal, recent historical experience, even the Arab world - which is not so fond of Persians - sees the US-orchestrated UN sanctions on Iran for what they are: the West, once again, trying to smash an independent nation daring to have its shot at more influence in the Middle East. More sanctions will be useless as China and India will continue to do serious business with Iran.
Tactically, as a backgammon or, better yet, chess move - in which Iranians excel - the Shatt-al-Arab incident may be much more clever than it appears. Oil is establishing itself well above US$60 a barrel as a result of the incident, and that's good for Iran. It's true that from London's point of view, the incident could have been arranged as a provocation, part of a mischievous plan to escalate the conflict with Iran and turn Western and possibly world public opinion against the regime.
But from Tehran's point of view, for all purposes British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a soft target. The episode has the potential to paralyze both President George W Bush and Blair. Neither can use the incident to start a war with Iran, although Blair has warned that his government is prepared to move to "a different phase" if Iran does not quickly release the sailors.
If the Tehran leadership decides to drag out the proceedings, the Shi'ites in southern Iraq, already exasperated by the British (as they were in the 1920s), may take the hint and accelerate a confrontation. Strands of the Shi'ite resistance may start merging with strands of the Sunni resistance (that's what Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has wanted all along). And this would prove once again that you don't need nuclear weapons when you excel at playing chess.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Iraqi police shoot Sunnis in 'revenge attack'
Staff and agencies
Wednesday March 28, 2007Guardian Unlimited
At least 45 Sunni men have been killed by off-duty police officers enraged at bombings targeting the Shia community, police and security officials said today.
The shootings in Tal Afar, a city in the north-west of Iraq, were an apparent revenge attack for yesterday's bombings that killed at least 63 people in a Shia district.
The officers were said to have started roaming around Sunni neighbourhoods on foot early in the morning, shooting at Sunni residents and homes, the Associated Press reported.
The shootings continued for more than two hours, officials said, before Iraqi army troops moved into the Sunni areas to stop the violence.
Police said dozens of Sunnis were killed or wounded, but they had no precise figures. A senior hospital official in Tal Afar said at least 45 men aged 15 to 60 were killed with shots to the back of the head, and four others were wounded.
"I wish you can come and see all the bodies. They are lying in the grounds. We don't have enough space in the hospital," a doctor at Tal Afar's main hospital told the Reuters news agency.
The Iraqi army has placed a curfew on the entire town, according to Wathiq al-Hamdani, the provincial police chief and his head of operations, Brigadier Abdul-Karim al-Jibouri.
"The situation is under control now," said Mr Hamdani. "The local Tal Afar police have been confined to their bases and policemen from Mosul are moving there to replace them."
Brig Jibouri said he was heading to Tal Afar to take charge of the situation.
Two truck bombs hit markets in Tal Afar yesterday killing at least 63 people and injuring some 150 more. The attacks were part of an upsurge in violence in Baghdad and outside the capital in recent days.
Tal Afar is 260 miles north-west of Baghdad and is in the province of Ninevah, of which Mosul is the capital.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Four Years of US-Led Occupation of Iraq: Playing the Shi'i-Sunni Divide
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
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
Sunday, March 11, 2007
A response to Time magazine's "Why they hate each other"
Iraq
Sunday, March 11, 2007
"Sunnis vs. Shi'ites, Why they Hate each other. What's really driving the civil war that's tearing the Middle East apart."
So proclaims the cover of the March 5th, 2007, issue of Time magazine, U.S and Pacific editions. Presumably, they know better than to put it on the cover of the European edition.
It reminds me of the "Iraq at war with itself" cover of The Economist, May 2006, which featured the face of a bawling Iraqi man. I commented on it here.
Then it was the face of grief. Now it's the face of hate.
In both cases, Iraqis are portrayed as unfortunately emotional before the typical reader of Time, whose "person of 2006", let us recall, was You, the face of which is rationality itself, a computer.
Note the shades of "Why do they hate us?" which followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Beyond this (staged and unconvincing) image of these two hate-ful Iraqis, we find the now familiar American explanation of these 'hateful warring sects', in Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide.
The lead-in from the contents page gives the gist:
The war between the two Islamic sects has left the U.S.'s hopes of building a stable Iraq in ruins. A look at the roots of the struggle —and whether anything can stop it.
This must be such a comfort to American readers. The guerrilla war against their soldiers, which is intensifying even during the present security crackdown, is not mentioned in this Time article.
Thus, in the space of a year the "narrative" has been transformed from the Iraq which America has ruined to the ruins of the "U.S.'s hopes". So it's Americans we should empathize with. If it wasn't for these over-emotional Iraqis, they'd have rebuilt the country, packed up and gone home by now.
No wonder they didn't run this cover in the European edition. They think little enough of America as it is.
Rather slap a declaration on its cover, and then presuming to clear up any lingering misunderstanding in the actual news story, Time would do better to form the words into a question: Why do they hate each other?
It's a good question, because until recently, whether Iraqis were Sunni or Shi'ite was not the defining feature of their identity.
To be sure, the common view that Sunnis, though a minority, controlled Iraq and discriminated against Shi'ites, who deeply resented their treatment, is amply supported by the historical record.
But it wasn't the doing of Saddam Hussein. It goes back to the days of the Ottoman empire (1534-1918), when Sunni Arabs from around Baghdad were placed in positions of power to ward off the threat of Iran connected Shia clerics.
The British continued this practice during the first half of the last century when they took control of the region. Integration of Sunnis and Shi'ias began as soon as the British left (although their monarch remained) and it continued under the Baathists.
More recently:
The real tension in Iraq in the latter 1980s was between the majority of the population, Sunnis as well as Shias, for whom religious belief and practice were significant values, and the secular Baathists, rather than between Sunnis and Shias. Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields. Their advancement in other areas, such as the opposition parties, was such that in the years from 1952 to 1963, before the Baath Party came to power, Shias held the majority of party leadership posts. Observers believed that in the late 1980s Shias were represented at all levels of the party roughly in proportion to government estimates of their numbers in the population. For example, of the eight top Iraqi leaders who in early 1988 sat with Husayn on the Revolutionary Command Council--Iraq's highest governing body-- three were Arab Shias (of whom one had served as Minister of Interior), three were Arab Sunnis, one was an Arab Christian, and one a Kurd. On the Regional Command Council--the ruling body of the party--Shias actually predominated. During the war, a number of highly competent Shia officers have been promoted to corps commanders. The general who turned back the initial Iranian invasions of Iraq in 1982 was a Shia. [Helen Chapin Metz. ed. Iraq: A Country Study, 1988]
During the Presidency of Saddam Hussein, integration of Sunnis and Shi'ites continued. Most of his government were Shi'ia. As I recall, the majority of those "most wanted" depicted on playing cards by the U.S. Department of Defense, are Shi-ites, not Sunnis.
They married each other and lived together as Muslims and Iraqis. A little over a year ago they were fighting together side-by-side in the resistance to the occupation.[Link]
So well might we ask, Why all the sectarian killing now?
Most basically, if someone tries to kill you and yours, the emotions of anger and hate are a normal response. When there is no State justice system and given Iraqis tribal sense of honour, that those who are attacked will retaliate should surprise no one—least of all those inciting this civil war.
There is now a rat's nest of attacks and retaliation, causes and effects. But let's start with the event which seems to have transformed a united Iraqi resistance to the occupation into a civil war, the bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a little over a year ago.
My own thoughts on this at the time are in The al-Askari mosque: who were those masked gunmen?
Is it true that the mood on the street following the destruction of the dome was anti-Sunni? Not according to Sami Ramadani, writing in The Guardian: The word on the street was (and is) that this was the work of the U.S. and its allies—U.S. and Israeli flags were burned in protest—not Sunni extremists. The mood was anti-occupation, not sectarian.
So who were those masked gunmen who took around 12 hours to plant the explosives under that dome, in the then U.S. controlled Samarra?
It's a question many Iraqis are asking even now. It underlies Akram Abdulrazzaq's Iraq's Car Bombers—Who are They? Why is it that of the thousands of car bombs, not a single owner of these cars has been identified?
He goes on:
Before Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, the country had a sophisticated car registration system, and the authorities were able to identify the owner of any wrecked vehicle in a matter of minutes.
So why not now?
Don't these cars have registrations and serial numbers? We have yet to hear of the authorities identifying the owner of a single vehicle used in a car bombing or even where it came from.
Iraqis, he argues, are not persuaded by the authorities' "naive excuses".
They need the Americans and the Iraqi authorities they support to tell them where in the world all these car bombs are coming from. How is it that they manage to sneak through so many American and Iraqi checkpoints and road blocks, especially in Baghdad?
With more than 80,000 American troops now in Baghdad, and every modern means of technology available to them, how indeed.
Amin al-Hashmee, in Hiding Iraq’s Death Squads is No Game, asks:
How can one ignore the fact that with all of their capabilities, the occupiers and the government failed to prevent a vehicle carrying hundreds of kilos of explosives from freely crossing the border, traveling the streets and passing through check point after check point? On top of that, the authorities have been unable to identify even a single car bomb or person who prepares them; and they have failed to inhibit their passage through government checkpoints on their way to park amid shops and innocent people.
Wouldn't you think that the "security services" would make a special effort at the February 12 ceremony at the Shorja market to mark the one year anniversary of the bombing of the al-Askari mosque? Two car bombs. At least 80 people killed. [Link]
Where did these cars come from? Who owned them? How is it that the perpetrators of these car bombings are always "unknown"?
A lot of the cars used as car bombs, you may be surprised to learn, come from the United States. So argues Debbie Hamilton of Right Truth. She believes that they are supplied by "Muslim/Arab used car dealers", in support of the "terrorists", but a rather more obvious conclusion is possible.
Consider also Are the 70,000 Pentagon Mercs in Iraq killing Shias, Sunnis? published in Aljazeera, a review of Robert Pelton's book Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror:
Could some of the Pentagon’s hired Mercenaries be the real perpetrators of the daily bombings and assassinations of Sunnis and Shias in Iraq?
Is the current disaster taking place in the war-torn country part of a wider plot to provoke a U.S./Israeli planned civil war that will dismember Iraq?
Just who is accountable for this privatized war machine?
And while we're on this topic, whatever became of those two British SAS soldiers, disguised as Arabs, caught about to plant a bomb near a religious festival in Basra? John Pilger's account is here. My own is here. See also Steve Watson's Who are the Real Terrorists in Iraq?
Why isn't Time magazine asking questions such as these? Americans (and the British, come to that) have such an exaggerated opinion of themselves that they don't believe "they" could have a hand in inciting this civil war.
If the recent BBC World Service poll, which evaluates the USA alongside Iran, Israel and North Korea, is any guide, the rest of the world appears not to have this problem.
Links
Ali Al-Hamdani, An "Open Letter" to the Iraqi Resistance; Call for "Joint Action"
Fred Halliday, Sunni, Shi'a and the "Trotskyists of Islam" Open Democracy, 9-2-2007
Jessica Long Analyzing the pandemic of global American hatred.
Jan Morris Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Slouching toward D-day
The battle for Baghdad has officially begun. It's a double bill involving suppression of Sunni militants and defanging Sadr City, the vast Shi'ite enclave that staunchly backs cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army. This counterinsurgency against classic guerrilla tactics with popular support is doomed. Inevitably, Iran will be blamed.
Feb 9, 2007
THE ROVING EYE
By Pepe Escobar
The war clock is ticking for the United States, both in Iraq and with Iran. The US-maneuvered United Nations deadline for Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program is now less than two weeks away. On February 21, the UN's nuclear watchdog will report on whether Iran has heeded the Security Council's demand to stop enriching uranium - to date it has not.
It might be tempting to see detente in the air. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was assured by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the White House will not attack Iran. Early this week in Tehran, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said in a joint press conference with the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, that Iraq fully supports direct talks between the US and Iran.
In reality, the mood in Tehran is increasingly grim. Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, positively scared state-TV viewers - a rarity in media-controlled Iran - when he said the US will try to strike Iran and he's willing to "become a martyr". It's as if Tehran has finally drawn the implications of a two-pronged hardcore militarization of the eastern Mediterranean region. On the one hand there is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allied with Israel against Syria, on the other the Persian Gulf, where the US is lining up against Iran.
The mood in Iraq may be even grimmer as the will of the US, through the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, is imposed over Baghdad. In official spin, the Iraqi police and the army, under a joint Sunni-Shi'ite command, have begun the much-anticipated double bill of attacking Sunnis and Sadr City, the vast Shi'ite enclave in Baghdad that staunchly backs cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army.
The trouble is, the police are heavily infiltrated by the Mehdi Army and the national army is basically staffed by the SCIRI's Badr Organization.
"The implementation of the prime minister's plan has already begun and will be fully implemented at a later date," US military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said on Wednesday.
Additionally, the Maliki government cynically toes the Bush administration line, accusing Syria of allowing Sunni jihadis to cross the border and perpetrate at least half of the current carnage.
Al-Zaman daily in its Iraqi edition informed that all non-Baghdadi combatants in these same Iraqi police and army - ie the Kurds, as well as southern Shi'ites - will be showered with cash to make sure they do their job. In essence, the stage in Iraq is being set for the first widespread battle of the "Shi'ite crescent" against the "axis of fear" (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates).
Mistah Kurtz he not dead
The Pentagon's new batch of "warrior intellectuals" and counterinsurgency aces dripping with PhDs have begun their Baghdad strike - but so has the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance), which, according to the Islammemo website, is now polishing its own counter-plan against "Safavid-American aggression". "Safavids" is a common Sunni reference to the Persian dynasty that converted Iraq to Shi'ism in the 16th century.
The resistance plan is a mirror image of the Pentagon's. It also divides the capital into military sectors under a central command. Shoulder-fired missiles will be downing more CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in (still Sunni) western Baghdad - as happened on Wednesday.
Joint army checkpoints are now in place under dozens of flyovers, protected by tanks and barbed wire - not to mention those provoking extra traffic jams in Baghdad's scarred boulevards. Nobody can drive from central Baghdad to Sadr City without passing through a massive checkpoint swarming with army and police commandos. Sadr City is under police commandos. Most bridges over the Tigris River are blocked.
The US risks a worse fate than Captain Benjamin Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Its Colonel Walter Kurtz is the heart of darkness itself, the haunting face of wasteland Baghdad. There's no way these counterinsurgency aces will win against classic guerrilla tactics with popular support - especially on two fronts (the muqawama and the Sadrists). Iraqis will never accept foreign occupation or "redeployment". They know this war was never about "democracy". So whatever the US does - with or without airborne hell - it is already a failure.
Which brings us back to the whole point in this folly: Iran.
Since 2004, inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been able to "go anywhere and see anything" in Iran - according to the agency's own assessment. This includes the latest visit this past Saturday to the uranium-conversion plant in Isfahan. Visitors this time included members of the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 developing nations, the Arab League and, for the first time, journalists. In sum, that was a real sample of what otherwise passes for the "international community". The visitors were in synch: an attack on Iranian nuclear installations would be catastrophic.
But even coyotes in the Mojave Desert now know that Admiral William J Fallon, the new head of CentCom, a specialist in planning air/sea warfare, may be itching to set fire to the Strait of Hormuz. They also know that US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hold constitutional power to order a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran.
It may be dawning on the nationalist theocracy leadership in Tehran how perilous Iran's position really is. Tehran has to be extra-careful not to fall into Washington's trap of scrapping the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether - or, in exasperation, throwing out IAEA inspectors. Tehran knows it must counter at every stance the trap of "Iranian networks" inside Iraq. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now alleges, without proof, that 70% of the improvised explosive devices killing US troops are Iran-connected. And Tehran has also to counterpunch the massive Israeli propaganda of "a second Holocaust".
Every major player also knows that the chain of pretexts is already established: the shaky Maliki government fails to meet the United States' security "benchmarks" (as it certainly will); Iran is set up for the fall; Washington engineers a provocation in the Persian Gulf; the path is cleared for a Congress-approved "defensive" US strike. Democrats in Congress are doing little to prevent the escalation, when they could at least organize themselves to torpedo the "use of force" authorization for Iraq and pass a law preventing the Bush administration from attacking Iran. Russia, China and the European (dis)Union also remain paralyzed.
In Iraq, Muqtada is in a win-win situation (and so is the SCIRI's Badr Organization: its death squads may take a nap during the US surge to wake up stronger than ever in a few months).
Sadrism cannot be wiped out by any escalation: as a nationalist movement, it will always thrive. The Mehdi Army has more fighters in Baghdad than the US - with or without the surge of 21,500 troops. In the event the Sadrists are heavily bombed by the US in the Battle of Sadr City, Muqtada has the luxury of ordering a counterpunch as soon as he's secure of being supported by enough Sunni tribal sheikhs (he has been courting them for months).
And as US casualties skyrocket, Bush will inevitably blame Tehran. We're back, ominously, once again, to the heart of darkness: the path cleared for a US "defensive" strike against Iran.
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Feb 9, 2007
THE ROVING EYE
By Pepe Escobar
The war clock is ticking for the United States, both in Iraq and with Iran. The US-maneuvered United Nations deadline for Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program is now less than two weeks away. On February 21, the UN's nuclear watchdog will report on whether Iran has heeded the Security Council's demand to stop enriching uranium - to date it has not.
It might be tempting to see detente in the air. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was assured by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the White House will not attack Iran. Early this week in Tehran, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said in a joint press conference with the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, that Iraq fully supports direct talks between the US and Iran.
In reality, the mood in Tehran is increasingly grim. Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards, positively scared state-TV viewers - a rarity in media-controlled Iran - when he said the US will try to strike Iran and he's willing to "become a martyr". It's as if Tehran has finally drawn the implications of a two-pronged hardcore militarization of the eastern Mediterranean region. On the one hand there is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allied with Israel against Syria, on the other the Persian Gulf, where the US is lining up against Iran.
The mood in Iraq may be even grimmer as the will of the US, through the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, is imposed over Baghdad. In official spin, the Iraqi police and the army, under a joint Sunni-Shi'ite command, have begun the much-anticipated double bill of attacking Sunnis and Sadr City, the vast Shi'ite enclave in Baghdad that staunchly backs cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army.
The trouble is, the police are heavily infiltrated by the Mehdi Army and the national army is basically staffed by the SCIRI's Badr Organization.
"The implementation of the prime minister's plan has already begun and will be fully implemented at a later date," US military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said on Wednesday.
Additionally, the Maliki government cynically toes the Bush administration line, accusing Syria of allowing Sunni jihadis to cross the border and perpetrate at least half of the current carnage.
Al-Zaman daily in its Iraqi edition informed that all non-Baghdadi combatants in these same Iraqi police and army - ie the Kurds, as well as southern Shi'ites - will be showered with cash to make sure they do their job. In essence, the stage in Iraq is being set for the first widespread battle of the "Shi'ite crescent" against the "axis of fear" (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates).
Mistah Kurtz he not dead
The Pentagon's new batch of "warrior intellectuals" and counterinsurgency aces dripping with PhDs have begun their Baghdad strike - but so has the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance), which, according to the Islammemo website, is now polishing its own counter-plan against "Safavid-American aggression". "Safavids" is a common Sunni reference to the Persian dynasty that converted Iraq to Shi'ism in the 16th century.
The resistance plan is a mirror image of the Pentagon's. It also divides the capital into military sectors under a central command. Shoulder-fired missiles will be downing more CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in (still Sunni) western Baghdad - as happened on Wednesday.
Joint army checkpoints are now in place under dozens of flyovers, protected by tanks and barbed wire - not to mention those provoking extra traffic jams in Baghdad's scarred boulevards. Nobody can drive from central Baghdad to Sadr City without passing through a massive checkpoint swarming with army and police commandos. Sadr City is under police commandos. Most bridges over the Tigris River are blocked.
The US risks a worse fate than Captain Benjamin Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Its Colonel Walter Kurtz is the heart of darkness itself, the haunting face of wasteland Baghdad. There's no way these counterinsurgency aces will win against classic guerrilla tactics with popular support - especially on two fronts (the muqawama and the Sadrists). Iraqis will never accept foreign occupation or "redeployment". They know this war was never about "democracy". So whatever the US does - with or without airborne hell - it is already a failure.
Which brings us back to the whole point in this folly: Iran.
Since 2004, inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been able to "go anywhere and see anything" in Iran - according to the agency's own assessment. This includes the latest visit this past Saturday to the uranium-conversion plant in Isfahan. Visitors this time included members of the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 developing nations, the Arab League and, for the first time, journalists. In sum, that was a real sample of what otherwise passes for the "international community". The visitors were in synch: an attack on Iranian nuclear installations would be catastrophic.
But even coyotes in the Mojave Desert now know that Admiral William J Fallon, the new head of CentCom, a specialist in planning air/sea warfare, may be itching to set fire to the Strait of Hormuz. They also know that US President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney hold constitutional power to order a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran.
It may be dawning on the nationalist theocracy leadership in Tehran how perilous Iran's position really is. Tehran has to be extra-careful not to fall into Washington's trap of scrapping the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether - or, in exasperation, throwing out IAEA inspectors. Tehran knows it must counter at every stance the trap of "Iranian networks" inside Iraq. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now alleges, without proof, that 70% of the improvised explosive devices killing US troops are Iran-connected. And Tehran has also to counterpunch the massive Israeli propaganda of "a second Holocaust".
Every major player also knows that the chain of pretexts is already established: the shaky Maliki government fails to meet the United States' security "benchmarks" (as it certainly will); Iran is set up for the fall; Washington engineers a provocation in the Persian Gulf; the path is cleared for a Congress-approved "defensive" US strike. Democrats in Congress are doing little to prevent the escalation, when they could at least organize themselves to torpedo the "use of force" authorization for Iraq and pass a law preventing the Bush administration from attacking Iran. Russia, China and the European (dis)Union also remain paralyzed.
In Iraq, Muqtada is in a win-win situation (and so is the SCIRI's Badr Organization: its death squads may take a nap during the US surge to wake up stronger than ever in a few months).
Sadrism cannot be wiped out by any escalation: as a nationalist movement, it will always thrive. The Mehdi Army has more fighters in Baghdad than the US - with or without the surge of 21,500 troops. In the event the Sadrists are heavily bombed by the US in the Battle of Sadr City, Muqtada has the luxury of ordering a counterpunch as soon as he's secure of being supported by enough Sunni tribal sheikhs (he has been courting them for months).
And as US casualties skyrocket, Bush will inevitably blame Tehran. We're back, ominously, once again, to the heart of darkness: the path cleared for a US "defensive" strike against Iran.
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)