Iraq: what next?

S P SETH

Where will Iraq go from here? During his recent parleys with Iraqi and regional leaders, as well as western allies, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, sought to convey US thinking on it. The first and the foremost message was that the US wouldn’t let Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) run havoc with Iraq and become the hub of terrorism in the region posing a threat not only in the Middle East but also to the United States. As President Obama told the West Point military academy graduates in a recent address, “…for the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism….” But to confront this, the US would like to “more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold.” At the time of his address, the ISIL’s advance into northern and western Iraq hadn’t been envisaged. And now that it has happened, and considering that terrorism is a major threat, the US would need to tailor its counterterrorism strategy to deal with, perhaps, the greatest terrorist threat that might emerge over time. We are talking here of the potential of a vast swathe of Iraq and Syria becoming the operational headquarters of a movement that even the al Qaeda regards as vicious.

The new caliphate and the Islamic caliphate, as proclaimed by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, if it manages to consolidate and expand its hold, and with its own economic and military assets, might become the magnate of militants from all over the world. Baghdadi has indeed asked Muslims all over the world to rally around the new caliphate as the dawn of a new Islamic era in which they can hold their heads high. He personally gave a sermon to this effect at a Mosul mosque to this effect.

Not surprisingly, with the ISIL challenge and a good part of Iraq and Syria under their control, the Iraqi government approached the United States for military help. But in the light of its past bitter experience, Washington apparently is not keen to rush in, though they have sent a small contingent of special troops reportedly to evaluate the Iraqi military and protect the US embassy in Baghdad. Whatever the role of this new contingent, said to be between 300-500 strong, the US would seek to rally regional countries in its efforts to contain and isolate the ISIL. But there are some problems here. First, some of the regional countries, like Saudi Arabia and Gulf kingdoms, have been funneling money and arms to different militant outfits in Iraq and Syria, including the ISIL operating on both sides of the Iraqi and Syrian border. After the proclamation of the Islamic state and the caliphate and Baghdadi’s direct appeal to the Muslim masses, the ISIL is now emerging as a possible threat to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. No wonder that Saudi Arabia has reportedly moved 30,000 troops to its border with Iraq. The threat from the new Islamic state should become the basis for a regional coalition.

But it is easier said than done. Because, ever since the clerical revolution in Iran in 1979, these countries have regarded Shia Iran as their major threat and enemy, sharing this perception and strategy with the US.  And suddenly to change that course and focus on ISIL as their primary concern and threat will not be easy. Saudi Arabia and its regional allies have been nurturing these militant outfits from, at least, the time of the Syrian insurrection, if one discounts the original al Qaeda. A good number of original al Qaeda operatives had their baptism in or from Saudi Arabia. Much of the money to propagate and fund madrassas, where some of the hard line militants have emerged from, has come from Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf neighbors. And now all this might come to haunt the Saudi kingdom.

While regional cooperation/collaboration to confront ISIL is yet to emerge, pressure has been mounting for Maliki’s replacement as Prime Minister and the formation of an inclusive unity government. That would mean sharing power with the Sunnis, who have been at the receiving end of sectarian killings by the Maliki government. Indeed, the Sunni tribal militias, mobilized and financed by the US in 2007 and 2008, played an important role in crushing the then-powerful al Qaeda insurrection in Iraq. And there was an expectation that they would be integrated into the new Iraqi national army. Maliki saw to it that this wouldn’t happen. His removal as Prime Minister will be a step in the right direction. It is not just the Sunnis but the Kurds also have found him an obstacle in the way of their political aspirations.

The Kurds already have virtual autonomy but are now heading for separation. The Kurdish army has occupied much of the oil rich Kirkuk region and plans to keep it. Maliki is also facing a call for his replacement from some within the Shia ranks, as from Muqtada al-Sadr who has emerged from political hibernation, as if, calling for for the inclusion of Sunnis in a new unity government. Even as all this was going on, the ISIL upped the ante by declaring an Islamic caliphate. This declaration of the new caliphate is designed, among other things, to create a global centre for Islamic militants to supersede al Qaeda’s role as the legitimate authority for such groups around the world. The point to make is that the situation in Iraq is highly complex and not given to any easy solution, if there is a solution at all.

To further complicate the picture, there are all sorts of external factors. The US is already there in a limited role, so far. The Iraqi government is seeking further US involvement by way of air strikes on ISIL positions. They want American military hardware and equipment. The Maliki government has also bought some Russian military aircraft for aerial strikes on the ISIS territory, and Russian technicians are reportedly training the Iraqis to operate them. Maliki welcomed the bombing of ISIL positions across the Syrian border by the Bashar regime. Iran undoubtedly will play an important role against the ISIL.  How will all this play out in the end is anybody’s guess? But to think that the removal of Maliki, and the formation of a unity government, will be a game changer is an oversimplification. The fault lines in Iraq between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds are too deep to be bridged with political games.

Saudi Arabia, other Gulf monarchs and Turkey must be deeply worried about the turn of events in Iraq, and likely will make their own moves at some point of time. Whatever the internal and external permutations and combinations against the ISIL, it has established strong roots in both Iraq and Syria. Any aerial bombardment will certainly do some serious damage to the ISIL, but the resultant civilian casualties, mostly of the Sunni population, is likely to make them even more popular. The mess in Iraq is not easy to fix and likely will make the region even more combustible. 

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

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