Iraqi offensive against IS

S P SETH

There is a general view that Iran is at the forefront of the offensive against the so-called Islamic State (IS). The Iraqi forces had simply fled last June when the IS almost walked into Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. This is not to suggest that Iranian forces are actually doing the fighting against the IS. What they have done really is to put together Shia militias, trained them and even equipped them in some cases, with some of its commanders in the field leading them. There are, of course, the Iraqi armed forces also in the field, but the sea change was the involvement of Iran and militias backed by it. And that was showing results as IS was reportedly pushed back in some parts of Tikrit, the birth place of the former dictator Saddam Hussein, thus improving the morale of Iraqi troops. But the situation now appears to be stalemated (despite recurrent unconfirmed reports of Iraqi victory in Tikrit), leading the Iraqi government to enlist US help with aerial bombardment of IS positions. That created its own complications as some of the leading militias in the field didn’t like US involvement as they had hoped to take back Tikrit from the IS on their own. But that was sorted out, and the US aerial assistance is now an integral part of the battle against IS. But that doesn’t mean that the Iraqi army and its allied militias are about to overrun Tikrit. Even if that were to happen, that wouldn’t be the end of the IS in Iraq. There are several components that complicate Iraq’s story.

The Iraqi state, as it emerged from the decade long US military intervention, was transformed from a Sunni-dominated machine under Saddam Hussein into a Shia-controlled instrumentality. And its brief under the then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seemed largely to hunt its Sunni citizens. Maliki’s Iraq was a state of revenge, and there was no pretense of creating a cohesive nation based on inclusion. How far have things changed since Maliki’s replacement? Before we examine this, there is a bit of recent history that is relevant.  The IS grew out of the al Qaeda in Iraq that was defeated by an alliance between the Sunni tribes and the US forces. The al Qaeda in Iraq had itself emerged out of the ruins of the Saddam’s machine. But as it started to turn on the Iraqi Sunni tribes, they made a common cause with the US military. At this point the interests of the US forces in Iraq tended to converge with the Sunni tribes. And they coopted them into a shared armed struggle against the al Qaeda. They were assured that in the new Iraq the US was creating these Sunni tribal fighters, paid and armed by the US, would become part of the new Iraqi armed forces.

But when the Shia-dominated state emerged, the US was unable to have this undertaking enforced by the Maliki government. The Maliki government and the country’s Shia-majority didn’t want any Sunni armed group (s) become part of the country’s armed forces, regarding it as a threat to its new power structure. On the other hand, as pointed out earlier, the new Shia state apparatus turned on the Sunni minority to remind them brutally that the country now had a new power structure more interested in excluding the Sunnis than creating an inclusive democratic state catering to all people and interests. Living in fear of their lives and many experiencing torture, they aligned themselves with the Sunni IS when its forces moved into Mosul and elsewhere. They obviously forgot that the IS was a later-day incarnation of the al Qaeda in Iraq against which they had collaborated with the American forces. But that was in the past and now the new Shia-dominated Iraq was the greater danger.

Iraq’s new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi might succeed where Maliki failed but it is still too early to say; though there are reports that some Sunni tribal leaders are willing to make a common cause with the Iraqi armed forces. Whether even this will turn the tide against the IS would remain to be seen. One important reason why it might not work is that while the Iranian-trained militias are helping to push back the IS forces in some areas, Tehran’s leading role in Iraq is not going to be welcome, over medium and long term, signifying its domination, especially by the country’s Sunni population. In other words, the underlying sectarian and regional divide in Iraq is likely to remain a destabilizing factor providing ammunition for the IS at critical times.

And this divide has an important destabilizing dimension in the region as well. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are deeply concerned about Iran’s perceived regional influence already exercised, as they see it, in Tehran’s support for the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and its Hezbollah connection, with the latter fighting for the Damascus regime. (The developments in Yemen have added a more dangerous dimension that might be examined in a separate article.)  And it is making Riyadh and other Gulf states very nervous as the US appears supportive of Iran’s role against IS, even as the former remain mindful of the threat to their monarchies from IS as the vanguard of new Islamic revival and resurgence. The announcement of the so-called Islamic caliphate is a strong indication of it. And it is already drawing foreign jihadists, even from western countries, to its banner. In other words, there are no easy solutions to untangle the present mess and put together a new cohesive political architecture in Iraq and Syria and the region.

The fragmentation of Iraq, Syria and the neighbouring Lebanon has its roots in the arbitrary reconfiguration of these territories as separate states by Britain and France as colonial powers after the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire in the wake of WW1. Some have suggested that Iraq might be better off if divided along sectarian and regional lines. Will that solve the problem? It doesn’t look like because that will simply externalize the existing conflicts along the boundaries of new states thus created. This could even make things worse. Besides, the conflict in Iraq, Syria and, by extension, in Lebanon is also regional, with Iran, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies fighting proxy wars. The only possible solution is a regional one with neighbouring countries facilitating and underwriting a new agreement rather than aggravating the conflict. In other words, the offensive against IS has to be both political and military. And that, if at all feasible, will be a long process. In the meantime, there is unlikely to be much respite for Iraq and Syria.

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au 

  

Iran's nuclear deal?

Iran’s nuclear deal?

S P SETH

Of late there has reportedly been some exchange of correspondence, though not officially acknowledged, between US President Barack Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. It is said to relate to the ongoing nuclear negotiations, and the prospect of cooperation between the two countries against ISIS, especially in the event of a successful nuclear deal. The March 31 deadline for the end of talks is fast approaching. If there is no deal by then, it is possible that talks might be extended. But Obama has indicated that, “I don’t see a further extension being useful if they have not agreed to the basic formulation and the bottom line that the world requires to have confidence that they’re [Iranians] not pursuing a nuclear weapon.”

On the Iranian side, although the supreme leader has authorized the talks he hasn’t been confident about a successful outcome because he too doesn’t trust the US, going back at least to the 1979 Iranian revolution. In other words, there is a trust deficit on both sides. Despite this they still managed to sign an interim agreement earlier that was extended to continue talks for a longer and durable deal. And this is where the situation stands, though there are reports that a medium term deal might be in the offing.

As far as Iran’s Five-plus-one negotiating partners (US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany) are concerned, they would like to cap Iran’s uranium enrichment capability preferably below 5 per cent to prevent it from a 12-month “breakout” period to make a bomb. And with an international regime of on site inspectors with access to open, as well as secret, facilities, it is hoped that Iran will be adequately policed in regard to its nuclear programme. The interim deal as well as the on-going negotiations appears to have established one thing. Which is that Iran has the sovereign right to pursue a peaceful nuclear programme, as long as it is not covertly or overtly linked to making a bomb. Iran denies strongly that its nuclear research and facilities are weapons oriented. But Israel, supported by a very powerful political lobby in the United States across party lines, simply do not buy Iranian peaceful protestations.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has called the Iranian President Hasan Rouhani a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ for his country’s nuclear diplomacy. And Netanyahu has so much clout in the US’ political establishment that Speaker John Boehner of the US House of Representatives has invited him to address the US Congress on Iran’s nuclear question without prior reference/clearance from the White House. Usually, in diplomatic parlance, such prime ministerial visits are arranged through regular diplomatic channels with the involvement of the White House staff and a pre-arranged itinerary.

The Republican Speaker Boehner discarded all these avenues to enable Netanyahu to directly canvass opposition to any nuclear deal with Iran. Apparently, during his visit to address the Congress this month, Netanyahu will not be received at the White House, which is the least that Obama administration can do to show their displeasure. Indeed, the relationship between the Netanyahu regime and the Obama administration has deteriorated to the point where Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, described it as “destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”

But assured of the support within the US across party lines, Natanyahu is determined to torpedo any agreement that might allow Iran to continue its nuclear programme even under the strictest international inspection regime. Fearing that an agreement is in the making, he said recently that in this way, “…Iran will gradually, within a few years, develop capabilities to produce material for many nuclear weapons.” For the Netanyahu government, the only solution to stop any “breakout” to Iranian bomb making is to launch an all-out attack to destroy its nuclear facilities. And if the US wouldn’t do, Israel is ready but it would need US backing and military support to handle any aftermath. Which is not forthcoming so far, at least.

Anyway the Obama administration has made it clear that in the event of Iran opting for a nuclear weapons path, the US would keep all options open, including the military one. Obama’s former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, a likely presidential candidate in 2016, believes that an Iranian nuclear weapons programme would threaten ‘Israel, their neighbours and the world’, warning that in the event of an Iranian nuclear strike on Iran, ‘we would be able totally to obliterate them.’ All these threats are responding to an imaginary situation where Iran is supposedly a full-fledged nuclear power with an arsenal of nuclear weapons and a sophisticated delivery system. The fact is that even US intelligence agencies do not believe that Iran has or will have such capability any time soon, even if they were so inclined.

In other words, Iran’s presumed or intended nuclear weapons programme is more like shadow boxing, with Israel pulling strings to make it look real. If any country in the Middle East has an impressive and dangerous nuclear arsenal, it is the state of Israel but that is not considered relevant. This is the politics of hypocrisy and double standards. Which is not to suggest that Iran should go ahead and build up nuclear weapons. What it suggests is that how come Iran’s non-existent nuclear status is more dangerous than Israel’s very potent nuclear arsenal in the Middle East’s volatile mix.

But coming back to the ongoing negotiations between Iran and its five-plus-one negotiating partners, any respite from a comprehensive sanctions regime, were Iran to accept US terms for virtually mothballing its nuclear programme, would be incremental. And it will be tied to Iran’s performance as judged by its interlocutors. In other words, the US will be at liberty to reward or punish Iran at its whim. In any case, with hawks in the US political establishment dead set against Iran, a durable resolution of the nuclear issue is quite challenging. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the armed services committee, reportedly said recently that, “There’s a delusion that somehow we’re going to have an agreement with Iran…[and] that we’ll all be working together.” He added, “Iranians are on the march in the Middle East.” Alan Dershowitz, an influential commentator, recently opined that, “Iran and the mullahs are not rational calculators… This is a suicide nation controlled by suicidal leaders.”

Against such a noxious backdrop, even an agreement at the Geneva talks will face the wrath of the Congress with more sanctions likely. And with the Congressional platform at his disposal, Netanyahu will do his best to work up the Congress and the Zionist lobby to a fever pitch to torpedo any nuclear deal between Iran, and the five-plus-one powers. President Obama has reportedly said that he would veto a Congressional rejection of a prospective deal. This is United States’ politics at its worst. In all this, one sometimes wonders who is the real President of the United States: Obama or Netanyahu?

Saudi Arabia’s fragile monarchy

S P SETH

The recent death of 90-year old Saudi king Abdullah added another dimension to an already volatile Middle Eastern powder keg. The old king was considered adept at managing multiple issues impacting on the monarchy and the country during the worst period for the region, arising out of the so-called Arab Spring that erupted early in this decade. The new King Salman, 79, is promising a continuation of the old policies. He is said to have health problems, some even suggesting that he has some form of early dementia. The next in line, Crown Prince Muqrin at 69, is rather young which tells something about the aging of the Saudi monarchy. The founder of the Ibn Saud dynasty King Abdulaziz, who died in 1953, fathered 45 sons and a good number of daughters from 22 wives but the daughters don’t count. Of his 45 sons, only five are said to have ascended the throne so far. Which leaves a lot of scope for intrigue and infighting in the vast royal household, so far kept out of public scrutiny. But that might not last.

Even as this process of succession rolls on into the future, all the royal hopefuls will be pretty old; some of them reaching their use-by-date even before their time comes. In other words, the kingdom is entering a period of even greater uncertainty. It is not just the complexity of the royal household that is problematic, the monarchy is also underpinned by a pact of sorts with the clerical establishment and tribal leaders designed to keep the kingdom under wraps from political, social and cultural challenges. In other words, it is, more or less, frozen in time, with no institutional and popular consensual process for its periodic renewal. Which means that its longevity can only be ensured by systemic oppression now and into the future. And this is a recipe for eventual disaster.   

As it is, Saudi Arabia has too much on its plate. One of its singular features has been to largely support the continuation of the status quo at home and in its neighborhood with friendly and trusted authoritarian regimes. Indeed, one important reason for emerging tensions in the US-Saudi relations early in the decade was Riyadh’s displeasure at Washington’s indifference to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s fate when he was overthrown and put in jail during the revolutionary fervent of the Arab Spring. Even though the successor Muslim Brotherhood regime was much more Islamic in ideology the Saudi monarchy was deeply unhappy, as it tended to upset not only the Egyptian political landscape but was also regionally disruptive.

And when the Sisi-led coup overthrew the elected Brotherhood government inviting US displeasure, including temporarily withholding some aid, Saudi Arabia came to its rescue with a $12 billion aid line. The Sisi government is determined to crush all opposition, throwing most of the top leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood into jail with long prison sentences and death sentences for many of its supporters. But it has the support of the Saudi monarchy, willing to bankroll the new/old order. Indeed, the Sisi government has freed Hosni Mubarak’s two sons from jail and Mubarak should also be a free man soon. It would please the Saudi regime to see their old friend rehabilitated, with Arab Spring increasingly becoming a distant memory.

However, things haven’t gone all the way for the aging Saudi monarchy. For instance, they haven’t been able to bring down the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria they detest with a passion despite all the money and military aid committed by Riyadh to the rebels in Syria. Indeed it has contributed to creating a bigger monster in the so-called Islamic caliphate proclaimed by the ISIL. Besides posing a security threat to the Saudi regime, it has put up its own claim as the ‘legitimate’ leader and guardian of the Islamic world with its so-called caliphate. The situation in Syria and Iraq is now so toxic that the Saudis cannot count on their old methods of throwing money and weapons at their favoured proxies to deliver desired results.

Which brings us to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing strategic and sectarian rivalry with Iran, of which the Iranian-supported Assad regime is a by-product. The rivalry with Iran, though, goes back to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which brought into power the clerical Shia regime regarded with apprehension in the majority Sunni Arab world. The US, Saudi Arabia’s top strategic ally, shared this hostility to the new Iranian regime, and was to keen roll back and/or overthrow Iran’s new clerical political order. And they found in the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a willing collaborator. Supported with Gulf money and US arms, he started the Iran-Iraq war of the eighties. The war was fought to a stalemate, with Iran suffering huge casualties. Saddam failed to deliver. Instead he became a threat to the Gulf region by invading Kuwait. Which led to the first Gulf War with Saddam-led Iraq comprehensively defeated by the US. In the second Gulf War started by George Bush as part of his global war on terror, the invasion of Iraq went disastrously wrong over time, creating conditions contributing to the emergence of the so-called Islamic caliphate.

Such are the incongruities of the Middle Eastern strategic landscape that the US and Iran now have a shared interest in destroying ISIL. As earlier noted, Saudi Arabia made its own unintended contribution to ISIL’s rise out of all the money and weapons it supplied to rebels with some, if not much of it, making its way to this overarching enemy. Riyadh recognizes this new danger, thus now becoming part of the US-led coalition against the ISIL. But its hostility to Iran is so entrenched that the two countries are unlikely to come together to face, what looks like, a common threat. Saudi Arabia is also not taking kindly to any US endorsement of Iran’s positive role against ISIL. 

Even in the midst of such a dire threat from the so-called Islamic caliphate Riyadh still espouses the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus by arming the anti-Assad rebels, though it is problematic how to vet who is who in the complex web of rebels, radical Islamists, ISIL, al-Nusra front and any number of other militant groups on the ground. And this is mainly because Saudi Arabia regards the Bashar regime as an Iranian proxy in the region. Coincidentally, it shares with Israel a determination to oppose Iran’s nuclear programme that might give it even additional leverage to work its influence in the Gulf and the region.

If this were not enough, Houthi rebels of Shia persuasion, believed to have Iranian support, have overthrown the Yemeni government and taken over in the capital. The situation in Yemen is so complex with an interplay of Houthis, al Qaeda in Yemen, with US using drones targeting al Qaeda leadership, and a separatist movement in parts of the country. And this is all happening right close to Saudi borders. Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman will need all the wisdom and expertise to insulate the country and its aging monarchy from all its internal and external challenges.

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

Contact" sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

 US failure in Afghanistan

S P SETH

Now that the US-led Afghan operations are winding down substantially with about 13,000 troops still to remain in a largely advisory and training role, there is no doubt that the west has failed disastrously even after 13 years of high intensity warfare in a country where the enemy was anywhere and everywhere; but with nowhere near the military capability and weaponry wielded and used by the allied forces. It raises an important question, which is:  why is it that the US-led operations in Afghanistan failed so miserably? After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US linked to the al Qaida organization in Afghanistan under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, the US launched the global war on terrorism with Afghanistan as its epicenter where al Qaeda was based under the protection of its Taliban regime. Not surprisingly, with the deployment of massive US military power the al Qaeda in Afghanistan was soon in disarray and retreat, and the Taliban leadership running for cover finally found a home of sorts in Pakistan. The US was able to install Hamid Karzai as the country’s president. The process was given some legitimacy through a constitution and follow up elections that returned Karzai, though the whole process was flawed and rigged by the Karzai administration. And this has continued to this day, though there is now a new president of the country.

From this flowed much of the country’s manifold problems. The new government appointed its own provincial and local administrative agencies and officials. And with so much money available from the central coffers filled by foreign ‘development’ funds, there was lot more scope for corruption at all levels from top to bottom. With new government, new funds and new powers, there was lot of misuse in all sorts of ways to pursue old vendettas against tribal, regional and sectarian enemies, some of them ending up in Guantanamo Bay reported to the Americans by their local enemies as top notch terrorists. The corruption became so rife that some American contractors too became enmeshed, and the projects they and their local collaborators were entrusted with often remained either half-finished or simply vanished along with the funds allocated for them. In other words, it was a free for all and there was nothing much to show by way of real development benefitting the people.

And the beneficiary of this, in a perverse sort of way, were the Taliban not because they were popular, indeed their own administration was pretty horrific, but because the new order—rather disorder—was making them look not so bad. And they started to gain ground in some regions. The counter-insurgency operations against them were designed to achieve three objectives: protecting the population, improving governance and developing the country. In neither of these areas, there was any significant advance, thus facilitating or forcing local elements to either make peace with the Taliban, or be coopted into their game plan. In other words, even though the Taliban might have lain low for a while after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, they were never out. And this was greatly helped when its leadership was able to operate from across the border in Pakistan under the quiet patronage of the Pakistani military intelligence services, ISI.

It would appear, however, that Pakistan was not aware precisely of what was cooking in the al Qaeda pot just across the border in Afghanistan when the 9/11 happened. But after it happened Pakistan was sucked into the US anti-terror campaign, trying to strike a balance between maintaining ties with the Taliban leadership in its backyard and, at the same time, cooperating with the US and ending up as a vast base for US operations. Which brought it into conflict with the tribal leaders and jihadist elements operating from Waziristan. In the midst of all these currents and cross currents of rebel and terrorist activities there emerged the TTP and other associated militant groups lunging into some of the settled areas and almost succeeded in carving out, what looked like, a mini-Islamic state as a base for further incursions against the Pakistani state. Which led the army into large scale military operations successfully launched against these forces.

At the same time, the situation in North Waziristan was becoming increasingly worrisome, engaging the army into large-scale operations against such elements. In other words, Pakistan’s ambiguous, though quietly supportive relationship with the Taliban leadership in Pakistan hemmed it in with some confusion about its medium and long-term strategy. While it went after the TTP, it continued to support some other militant groups with much of the same Islamic agenda as the former. The upshot of it all has been that this has generally aided the Taliban in Afghanistan, with border crossings back and forth between Pakistan and Afghanistan and its top leadership sheltering in Pakistan. It must be said though that it has done immense harm to Pakistan by turning its body politic and society upside down. At the same time, it harmed the allied forces’ operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, thus contributing to their failure in Afghanistan.

Another contributing factor for the US and NATO failure has been that many Afghans saw them as a foreign invading force, which Taliban played to the hilt in their propaganda. Adding to this was a lack of knowledge and understanding of the Afghan society by the US and NATO forces with its intricate mix of tribal traditions, sectarian and regional divide and so on. In the absence of such understanding and knowledge it was not surprising that they thought it their mission to impose western values and governance on a society that had its own code of honour, tribal hierarchy and no real tradition of governance from a central power structure, as with Karzai as the country’s president.

Therefore, there was an inbuilt contradiction between the western system the Afghans were offered and their own way of managing their affairs. And their experience of British invasion twice in the 19^th century was enshrined in the Afghan psyche as an example of foreign intervention, which in any case didn’t go well for the British. It should have been a salutary lesson for the US and NATO but they apparently ignored it, as part of their general lack of interest in Afghan history and tradition. And as they exit Afghanistan, keeping a presence of about 13,000 troops down from about 140,000 at the peak of the military operations, the prospects for Afghanistan do not look bright, to put it mildly. 

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au