Iraq: a rolling tragedy

S P SETH

Iraq is one rolling tragedy after another. A hodgepodge of a country created by the British, after the First World War, out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire to serve their own economic and strategic interests, Iraq has struggled to find its new national identity. And this is not surprising because it was and has been an artificial creation clubbing together disparate regions, tribes, ethnicities, superimposed with the oldest sectarian schism in Islam between the Sunnis and Shias. Out of a welter of bloody power struggles, Saddam Hussein finally prevailed and went on to build a state of fear with all power virtually invested in him. After consolidating his power by eliminating all his real and imagined enemies, he sought to terrorize the country’s Shia majority and Kurdish minority, fearing them as his natural enemies. He was a feared leader at home and was not much of a hit with most of his Arab neighbours.

But following the 1979 revolution in Iran, he was increasingly seen as a useful counterweight to Iran’s new clerical regime that was on a political warpath with the United States. The US embassy and its personnel were under siege, regarded as ‘a nest of spies’ working for the now toppled Shah of Iran who was the US’ trusted ally in the region. The new political order in Iran led by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was also causing nervousness in the Sunni Arab world. At the same time, Saddam’s Iraq had its own scores to settle involving maritime and territorial disputes with Iran. The US seemed more than happy to help Iraq with weapons and intelligence to start and prosecute its war against Iran. The long war that ensued between the two countries, with Iran suffering tremendous loss of life, was fought to a stalemate and ended after eight years of carnage (1980-88).

Even though Iran suffered heavy losses, it was Saddam who emerged from it considerably weakened. He had got much encouragement and help from the US and funding from the Gulf monarchs as they all wanted the new Iran contained, if not destroyed. But they didn’t have much sympathy for him when he failed so badly in his and their shared objective. His Arab creditors, the Gulf rulers, wanted their money back as they had liberally advanced him loans, but Saddam’s treasury was virtually empty after the long and disastrous war with Iran. He, therefore, sought to retrieve and even benefit from his planned invasion of the oil rich Kuwait. A successful military invasion and occupation of Kuwait would give Saddam’s Iraq all the oil revenue from that oil rich country, strengthening his position in the Arab world and in the regional oil cartel. He apparently raised the issue with the then US ambassador and heard no specific objections to his ambitious plan to invade Kuwait. And it was only when his forces were in Kuwait with its annexation, more or less, accomplished that the US realized the enormity of the Saddam adventure that could change the regional geostrategic situation to its detriment and that of its regional allies like Saudi Arabia and other Arab monarchs.

The resultant Gulf War (1990-91), under the US leadership, was disastrous for Saddam and he would have been easily toppled but for the then President George Bush senior’s decision to instead strangulate Iraq politically and economically. In the decade or so that followed the first Gulf war, Iraq bled under UN sanctions with its children and sick suffering the most. A number of powerful Republicans thought that Bill Clinton’s presidency, that followed Bush senior’s electoral defeat, had wasted America’s unparalleled opportunity as the world’s only superpower to expand its horizon and power. In 1997, a small group of them, that included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, promulgated the “The Project for the New American Century” for doing just that keeping in view the 2000 presidential elections. Its wide-ranging agenda included encouraging an invasion of Iraq to restructure the Middle Eastern geostrategic map to strengthen the US and Israeli power. And as it happened George Bush junior, their own man, won the 2000 presidential election presenting opportunities to roll out their plans.

Even as the Republicans were relishing their election victory, the country was unexpectedly hit by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. While the US went after Afghanistan to hunt out the al Qaeda leadership, the blueprint for the new American century as it related to Saddam’s Iraq appeared tantalizingly promising. Iraq seemed to fit neatly into the larger al Qaeda picture and was also accused of producing weapons of mass destruction. The US cobbled together a ‘coalition of the willing’ to get rid of Saddam. Whether or not Saddam’s Iraq was guilty as charged was immaterial. The act of toppling Saddam was considered good enough to ‘liberate’ Iraq and usher in ‘democracy’ in that country that would serve as an example for the entire region.

The tragedy now being enacted in Iraq, with the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militants rushing in to turn much of Iraq and the neighbouring region of Syria into a terrorist haven, might prove more lethal than Afghanistan. All this follows from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Having announced the ‘mission accomplished’ following Saddam’s fall and the US occupation, the next blunder was the dismantling of the Baath party and all the existing state structures, including the Iraqi army. This turned the country into a veritable state of anarchy. And when the US occupation sought to create some semblance of order, there was no effective leadership material at hand. They chose Nouri al-Maliki to run the country. This selection process is a story by itself as recounted by Dexter Filkins in a recent issue of the New Yorker. And Maliki became Iraq’s Prime Minister (American support helped him elected by the new parliament) and still continues in that position, though his position seems increasingly shaky.

Maliki is an unreconstructed die-hard politician with scores to settle with the country’s old Sunni establishment—what is left of it.  Maliki was one of the targets of Saddam’s megalomania and power craze but he managed to escape to Iran to live another day to even become Iraq’s Prime Minister. Unlike Saddam who was no sectarian zealot but a tyrant with an eye on power, Maliki has been determined to exclude Sunnis from any power sharing. When the US was the occupying power they had, at one point, largely succeeded in defeating the al Qaeda insurgency with the help of Sunni tribal militias they had created, mobilized and financed. And these militias were supposed to be integrated into the new Iraqi national army. But Maliki would have none of it. He not only excluded Sunnis from power sharing, but his new regime went on a killing spree targeting Sunnis. No wonder that many Sunnis are sympathetic, if not collaborating, with ISIL. And we now have the spectacle of regional and international intervention to further fuel an already burning fire.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushipseth@yahoo.com.au

  

          

Sisi and new/old Egypt

S P SETH

The former Egyptian army strongman, General Abdel Fattah el Sisi, is now the country’s new President, which formalizes his position as Egypt’s real ruler since the army coup last year. At the time of deposing Mohamed Morsi as the country’s elected President, Egypt’s military was very sensitive about its characterization as a military coup. From the beginning the army had sought to unsettle the new Muslim Brotherhood government, but Morsi managed to last a bit longer than the army would have liked. The Morsi administration had sought to coopt the army and made Sisi the defence minister, as well as head of the army, because of his good Islamic credentials.  They believed that he would, over time, fit into their ideological mould, but it didn’t happen for a number of reasons. First, the army, now led by Sisi, was not willing to become subservient to the Muslim Brotherhood’s scheme of things. Having got rid of Hosni Mubarak by throwing their support behind the protesters, they didn’t want to become a tool of an Islamist Mubarak in the person of Morsi and the Brotherhood. From the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s military had strongly distrusted the Muslim Brotherhood with its messianic Islamist agenda. Nasser had shown no mercy in dealing with the Brotherhood, throwing them into jails in large numbers. Against this backdrop, Morsi and the Brotherhood were wrong to think that they might, over time, bend the army to serve its ideological and political agenda. But, this time, they believed that the country’s transition to democracy with Morsi’ in the presidential seat gave them the right credentials. As we know this didn’t work.

Second, in their hurry to establish political dominance and pursue an Islamist agenda, the Brotherhood started to lose the support of the idealist, secular and young pioneers of the revolution that brought down Hosni Mubarak. In the process they started behaving like the Mubarak regime by issuing arbitrary decrees and creating a climate of fear. Which gave the army a civilian popular base with large-scale anti-Morsi demonstrations. Therefore, there was some truth to the army’s claim that their coup, calling it another revolution, was people’s will of sorts. However, not long after the coup the army also went after the secular youth when they started criticizing the military, realizing that they had been cheated of their revolution to be replaced with another dose of military rule.

As for the Brotherhood, the army was on a mission to destroy the organization by branding it terrorist and banning it. As part of its crackdown, it put thousands of its supporters behind bars and more than a thousand were summarily sentenced to death though some had their sentences commuted to long jail terms. The entire leadership of the Brotherhood is behind bars. It is reported that its spiritual guide, Dr Mohamed Badie and 182 supporters had their death sentences confirmed by an Egyptian court. The army let loose a volley of violence killing 1000 people. Some militant groups also targeted the army and police forces, identifying themselves as an al Qaeda offshoot, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, from northern Sinai.

Undoubtedly, there was a swell of support for the army as the Brotherhood-led Morsi government had lost much of the goodwill it had when it came to power. And that was because it refused to be inclusive, committed to pursue its Islamist agenda in the shortest span of time. Having convinced itself of popular support, the army decided to put up Sisi as their candidate to be the country’s civilian president. With the army in virtual total control of the state, Sisi was assured of victory and, lo and behold, he won about 97 per cent of the votes polled, the kind of results Hosni Mubarak used to claim. Even with such exaggerated claims, the legitimacy of the electoral process and its result is less than credible. For one thing, with all the state’s resources to mobilize people for Sisi’s ‘crowning’, less than 50 per cent turned up to vote. And the celebrations of Sisi’s victory were marred with a video of the mass gang rape of a girl (s) in Tahrir Square. To make it worse, some of the official media tried to blame it either on the Brotherhood to mar the celebrations, some calling it even a fake video and so on. It is not a good augury for an administration claiming popular support.

Egypt is a highly polarized country. Even though the Sisi regime is determined to crush the Brotherhood, its history has shown remarkable resilience to maintain its organizational structure through a network of countrywide cells around it. Under sustained army crackdown over a period of time, they might revert to their old role as a network (at local level) of charity and social services organization, to be resurrected into a political role at an opportune time. As things stand, there is no hope that Sisi as President will be able to deliver goods for Egypt’s suffering masses. Apart from ruling with a large stick, and depending on the largess of Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf rulers, the new/old rulers of Egypt have no clear idea or plan to pull out the the country from its deep morass. In some ways, Sisi looks like a newer and younger version of Hosni Mubarak. And we know how Egypt was left behind in everyway under the old dictator.

Egypt is in a terrible shape with its rock bottom economy and broken down social fabric.  Sisi’s dalliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf kingdoms as Egypt’s cash cow will not help much as its problems have deep roots. This might even make things worse by making the country a handmaiden of Saudi interests that are backward looking. They simply look to resurrect a Hosni Mubarak-like strongman hopefully to rule Egypt for another 30 years. And that will be a recipe for disaster. What Egypt needs is an inclusive democracy focusing on the country’s economic recovery. The military, from its position of strength and the great need of Egypt’s people for economic and physical security, can play that role. But will it do by continuing to suppress and repress Brotherhood, as well as its youthful secular critics? And if it does, Egypt will continue to wallow in its sorrows, making things even worse in an already unstable region. 

Note: this article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au   

Palestine's perpetual agony

Palestine’s perpetual agony

S P SETH

The perpetual agony of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli occupiers is likely to get worse. The reason for this is two-fold. First, with the two-state framework talks under John Kerry’s hectic shuttle diplomacy collapsing due to Israeli intransigence, the Palestinians went ahead to sign 15 international conventions they were entitled to under the UN observer-state status accorded them some time ago. They had refrained from doing this under US pressure to facilitate peace talks with Israel. And with no headway in that direction, Palestine has sought to create some international leverage, as some of these conventions might allow it to highlight human rights violations under Israeli occupation. Israel was furious and threatened to withhold taxes it collects in the occupied West Bank for the Palestinian Authority (PA). The US was also not happy because it would further derail the peace talks, which were not going anywhere anyway.

Second, the two main components of the Palestinian movement---the Fatah exercising control in the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza--- have agreed to form a unity government of technocrats to be followed in a few months with new elections. Considering that such agreements in the past have floundered because of deep-rooted differences between them, this new deal too might not go anywhere, considering the pressure that will be brought upon the Palestinian Authority by Israel and the US on for supping with Hamas, regarded as a terrorist organization by much of the west and Israel. Which makes the PA’s agreement for a unity government with Hamas somewhat ‘sinister’ for Israel. At a more practical level, the loss of revenue withheld by Israel as well as possible loss of US aid, might seriously damage the structure of an already shaky Palestinian Authority.

The main reason for the collapse of the peace talks, though, is that Israel is not really keen on a two-state solution. Therefore, they were stalling the diplomatic process while not outrightly rejecting the US initiative to find some sort of a solution to the intractable Palestinian question, which tends to complicate its relations with the Muslim world. Saeb Erkat, the Palestinian negotiator in the talks, is spot on when he says that, “Mr Netanyahu and his government were using Palestinian division as an excuse not to make peace. Now they want to use Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same purpose.” And: “During the past nine months of negotiations, Mr Netanyahu’s government has increased settlement construction, home demolitions, killings, detentions and military raids.”

And why are the Israelis doing it? Because they want to complete their imaginary state of Judea and Samaria through a creeping process of building more settlements and demolishing more Palestinian homes. In Netanyahu’s view, Israel has already made, as paraphrased by Peter Beinart, vast, gut-wrenching concessions by abandoning its claim to Jordan, which by rights should be part of the Jewish state. With this mind-set, the idea that Israel might be receptive to a two-state solution is simply a delusion, nurtured in some realm of the Obama administration. Israel will always find ways of stalling any peace process by blaming its intractability on the Palestinians. For instance, one reason it has generally advanced in the past was the absence of peace partners among the Palestinians. Of course, Hamas is always the problem as a “terrorist” organization, as if Israel is the friendly neighbourhood watch.

And they are getting away with it because they have managed to subvert the US political system through a powerful Zionist lobby. To quote Beinart from his article in New York Review of Books, “… in the United States, groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the Presidents’ Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.” Furthermore: “In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry about only themselves… “ And: “…since Jews are history’s permanent victims, always on the knife-edge of extinction, moral responsibility is a luxury Israel does not have…” In the process, the Palestinians are demonized in all sorts of ways as terrorists, subhuman and whatnot, the way Nazi Germany demonized Jews before seeking to exterminate them in the Holocaust.

In another issue of the NYR, Beinart speaks of the heartache of a woman, a Harvard researcher, whose father and other members of her extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. It was living among Palestinians, she says, that brought her closer to her parents, not because Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians echoes the Nazi treatment of Jews—it obviously does not—but because for the first time she encountered people (Palestinians) utterly terrified of the state (Israel) that enjoyed life-and-death power over their lives. And, as Beinart paraphrases, by seeing Palestinians---truly seeing them—we glimpse a faded, yellowing photograph of ourselves. We are reminded of the days when we were a stateless people, living at the mercy of others.

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is not likely to end anytime soon because the United States, which alone has the power to change the situation, is seriously constrained by the political power wielded by the Zionist lobby. The most recent example of this is the abject apology the US secretary of state, John Kerry, had to make for a rare moment of truth when he said that, if Israel continued on its rejectionist course, it risked becoming an “apartheid” state. In apologizing for the wrong choice of words, Kerry said, “If I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term…is through a two-state solution.”

The point is that Israel is already an apartheid state and wants the Palestinians and the Arab world to recognize it as a Jewish state. This is a relatively new demand designed, at an opportune time, to exclude its Palestinian citizens from exercising their rights. As for the Palestinians in occupied West Bank, they are already living in a state of apartheid. As Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said of Kerry’s apartheid comment, “ He [Kerry] is using the word in the future tense, but [the Israelis] have already created an apartheid state in the West Bank.” Elaborating, she said, “When you build roads for settlers that no one else can use, or have two separate legal systems, what else can you call it?”

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

US-Saudi Rift

S P SETH

It is an open secret that the relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s important strategic allies in the Middle east, have been frayed for some years. Indeed, Riyadh has been quite unhappy about aspects of the US’ policy and let it be known without mincing words. The recent visit to Saudi Arabia of the US President Barack Obama was an attempt to address this and to reassure the kingdom that it still remained one of Washington’s main regional allies, and that its political and security interests featured prominently in US calculus.

The question then is: what are the issues that have put considerable strain on a relationship forged over many decades? It all started with the Arab Spring, especially the popular uprising in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Saudi Arabia wanted Washington to save Mubarak and his political order. Not that the US was too keen on replacing Mubarak with an unknown and unknowable alternative. But by then the popular movement had developed its own momentum and there wasn’t really much the US could have really done to stop it. Even the Egyptian army seemed to recognize that Mubarak’s time had come and he should go.  

Riyadh favours strategic stability in the Middle East with trusted authoritarian rulers and monarchs making decisions without popular input, lest it opens up the Pandora’s box of all the unresolved issues. Things can get out of control and they did in Egypt. And when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, with Mohammad Morsi as President, Riyadh didn’t find it a hopeful augury. At some level, Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood should be natural allies as committed Islamists. However, the latter combine political activism with their religious ideology to shape an Islamic society. And that is not good for Arab monarchs and dictators who believe in a compact between religious orthodoxy and political power, with each underpinning the other. The events in Egypt, with Muslim Brotherhood in power, seemed to seriously undermine this compact, being potentially dangerous for Saudi Arabia and its fellow monarchs in the region.

Saudi Arabia is supportive of the new military/political order in Egypt after the military coup that brought down Morsi, elevating General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (now Field Marshal) as the country’s new strongman. He is likely soon to become the country’s new president, having decided to contest the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood will remain banned as a terrorist organization. But this has the potential, indeed already is, deeply polarizing the country with hundreds of Brotherhood supporters thrown into jails, and its leadership languishing there as well. In this situation, even though the US is not a supporter of the Brotherhood, Washington is critical of the ham-fisted approach of Sisi and people around him.

Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf monarchs (and Israel) would be happy to see a strong hand in Egypt, whether an outright general or in civilian garb as president, to keep things under control. And they are prepared to write a cheque of billions of dollars to stabilize the country’s economy (if that were possible), as well as the purchase of weapons for the military from Russia. During his recent visit to Russia, Putin wished Sisi luck in his resolve to “assume responsibility for the fate of the Egyptian people”, referring to his presidential ambitions. Saudi Arabia is no friend or admirer of Russia but seems likely to go along with Egypt in exercising its other options. In other words, the US-Saudi rift over Egypt is quite serious, even more so when read with other developments in the region.

Which brings us to Riyadh’s serious concern over the direction of the US’ opening with Iran over the nuclear question. Saudi Arabia never thought that the US and its European partners will reach a deal with Iran, albeit an interim one, to virtually freeze Iran’s nuclear programme. They had hoped that the US would keep Iran on edge by further expanding sanctions and/or by threatening to attack its nuclear facilities, thus forcing it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But Obama chose a different path of exploring a diplomatic solution for a possible permanent freeze on Iran’s nuclear programme, with negotiations already under way. Which is making the Saudi ruling dynasty extremely unhappy.

Iran’s perceived nuclear ambitions are not the only problem, though they constitute a major hurdle. Iran’s links with the Syrian regime and Hezbollah (in Lebanon) are seen as projection of its larger regional ambition to carve out a determining role in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, increasingly sees itself as the guardian of the region’s Arab interests, and the custodian of Islamic holy sites. Iran represents, both in sectarian and political/strategic terms, a rival centre. While Iran is supporting and actively providing assistance to both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah in their collaborative effort to beat back the insurgents in Syria, Saudi Arabia is doing the same for the insurgents/rebels. Riyadh was terribly disappointed and angry when Obama didn’t go ahead with the planned surgical attack on Syria that might have toppled the Assad regime, instead opting for the Russian proposal for the elimination of its chemical weapons. Which has not only given the regime breathing time but also enabled it to mount fairly effective operations, with Hezbollah, to push back the rebels in key areas. 

With Russia and Iran actively supporting the Assad regime, the Saudi exasperation with the United States has, at times, been quite high. The Saudis would like the US to give sophisticated arms to the rebels in what, they regard, as an uneven and unequal battlefield between the two sides. It is not that the US doesn’t want to get rid of Assad, but it is worried about its arms falling into the wrong hands of the al-Qaeda linked/inspired groups that now outnumber and outgun the moderate and secular rebels fighting Assad. In other words, while the Saudi and US strategic interests still converge broadly, whether it is the nuclear issue or the geopolitical picture, Riyadh is not sympathetic to the need for the US to tread carefully and avoid further overreach in its already overstretched commitments in the Middle East. While Obama’s recent visit might have softened the hard edges, Riyadh is still not convinced that Washington is on the right path.  It would rather want the US to pursue a more assertive policy in the region on par with its own urgent concerns.

An important, though coincidental, factor in the Middle East is the remarkable degree of strategic convergence between Saudi Arabia and Israel, be it on the need for a harder US policy towards Iran, support for the new military order in Egypt and a tougher stance with Assad’s Syria. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au