Middle East conundrum

S P SETH

The Middle East remains a complex amalgam of civil wars, sectarian strife, and a battlefield for regional and global rivalry overlaid by the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Often all these factors fuel each other. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War (WW1), the British and the French divided much of the Middle East into their virtual territory/kingdoms, thus creating artificial borders and divisions. After the Second World War, these became part of the Cold War between the west and the Soviet Union. And into it was added the newly created state of Israel, with the US and its allies, turning it into it its political and security fortress as well as an advanced outpost in what was considered a volatile region. The imposition of Israel was resented and opposed by the Arabs and led to the 1948 War between the newly created state of Israel and a coalition of Arab states. The Arab coalition was defeated but the region was plunged into perpetual conflict, with Israel expanding its territory and control of Palestine, particularly after the 1967 Six–Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states with Israel coming out much stronger from this.

It put an end to the then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser-led project to create a pan-Arab consciousness transcending national boundaries, of which opposition to the creation of Israel was a central element. There was another Arab-Israeli war in 1973. Despite some spectacular initial advances by Egypt, Israel finally prevailed. Not surprisingly, the US supported Israel in all sorts of ways. Eventually under considerable US persuasion/pressure, the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was signed in 1979 with Cairo recognizing Israel. It was one of the great game changers in the region with Egypt, the largest and leading Arab country, virtually abandoning the Palestinian cause. Which caused great disappointment and anger for which Egypt’s then President, Anwar Sadat, paid with his life. His successor, Hosni Mubarak, was committed to keeping Egypt out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel continued its policy of occupying and expanding its settlements, thus encircling what was left of Palestine, and following it up with military raids and attacks, as if to periodically demonstrate its military and political prowess. The Oslo Accords of 1993, which laid down a peace process for an eventual two states solution, didn’t work as Israel was never serious about a Palestinian state and did everything to sabotage the process.

This short history of the Palestinian issue is an important backdrop to understand the frustrations of the Arab people, also called the Arab street. The Arab street, in a sense, represented the volatility of the region. And it was sought to be tackled with the repressive regimes of dictators like Hosni Mubarak who, in turn, got all the necessary help from the United States and largely followed US regarding the primacy of Israeli interests by downgrading/ignoring the Palestinian question.

Another element of the Middle East conundrum was the region’s monarchies, with Saudi Arabia as the most important. Saudi Arabia was important because it was (and is) the largest producer of oil in the world, with the US becoming increasingly dependent on imports from that source, until only recently when its dependence is lessening. Being the largest producer of oil, Saudi Arabia also played an important role in setting the price of oil internationally. Saudi Arabia’s strategic importance couldn’t be over-emphasized. Indeed, Saudi Arabia also played a significant role in the Cold War by financing and arming Afghan Mujahedeen and Pakistan’s role in it which, in no small degree, contributed to the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

And that in turn led to the rise of al Qaeda, with Afghanistan becoming the incubator of radical/extremist Islamic elements from all over the world. The 9/11 terrorist attacks followed, which led to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In all this progression, the repressive regimes of the Middle East, like that of Egypt and the Gulf monarchies, became even more important to the US. The popular frustration and anger with some of the autocratic Arab rulers burst out into the open with the Arab Spring, starting in Tunisia in 2011, which led to the fall of its dictator, Ben Ali. It also brought down Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, led to the overthrow of Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, with military help from the west, and started a full-scale insurrection against Bashar-al-Assad regime in Syria. In Saudi Arabia, it led to serious protests in the Shia-majority oil-bearing eastern province, which were crushed brutally. For the rest of its Sunni citizens, the Saudi ruling dynasty bribed them into submission with even more financial goodies. And in Bahrain, where its majority Shia population rose in revolt against the ruling Sunni monarchy, the Saudis and some of its Gulf allies sent armed forces to crush the movement.

Apart from Tunisia where post-Arab Spring political order is still a fragile work in progress, everywhere else it is either chaos, as in Libya, or seemingly endless civil war as in Syria. In Egypt, another military dictator, almost a successor to Hosni Mubarak, has taken over, and the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi regime and Saudi monarchy are becoming blood brothers of sorts, which means a perpetuation of the decades’ old order responsible for the mess in the Middle East, in the first place, and the rise of Islamic terrorism. It is necessary to point out that Saudi Arabia’s patronage and championing of the Wahhabi brand of Islam has been the ideological foundation of both al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS).

With the collapse of the Arab Spring, the last hope of a possible political transition to secular liberal democracy has died down for the foreseeable future. Which, in turn, has further shifted the pendulum to Islamic extremism reflected in its even more severe form of Islamic State. And the resultant refugee crisis from the exodus of displaced and terrorized people from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East toward Europe, where they are unwelcome and being pushed back, is only compounding the problem. Brutalized and terrorized at home and pushed back from refuge in Europe, some of them at least might fall for the IS’ message.   

 Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times  

Terror in Belgium

S P SETH

Terror struck Belgium recently with more than 30 dead and many more injured. It had happened before in Paris, last November, with 130 fatalities. Both appear to have germinated in Brussels, with its ring leaders/suicide bombers able to plan and move around Belgian/French borders with ease. What has come out is that Molenbeek district in Brussels is a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. And it has been left to fester and grow because of fragmented governance in the country. For instance, Brussels alone is said to have six police departments and 19 mayors. Different intelligence agencies lack focus and intelligence sharing. Molenbeek district is a sort of no go area where police seemed to follow a laissez faire policy of not wanting to know or act whatever was going on. As a report said, “ [It has] Areas where there are close-knit groups of susceptible youth, often lacking a sense of purpose or belonging outside their own circle, have proved to generate a momentum of recruitment that spreads through personal contacts.”

While Molenbeek might be a more extreme case of such concentration of alienated Muslim youth, it seems a fairly representative picture in many European countries. The first generation of migrants simply worked to survive and build up some kind of a future. And they concentrated in ghettos and were largely left to themselves by the mainstream governing institutions. The second, and now into third generations, wanted something more by way of jobs, a vision for future, and above all acceptance. And on all these counts, they felt as outsiders and marginalized, with no real hope for the future. A good number of such youth took to crime by way of drug peddling, burglary and all sorts of criminal involvement. The rate of unemployment has been proportionately very high among Muslim youth in the west, and crime seemed one way of finding some occupation. With a name like Mohammad or Ahmed, breaking into the job market was hard going.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the situation even got worse with racial and religious profiling. At the same time, al Qaeda imbued dissatisfied and alienated western Muslim youth with an ideological and political tool that made them feel empowered. And it also made intelligible in a simple and simplified sort of way-- with most of the onus on the west-- of the desperate situation of the Muslim youth and the Muslims in general. Which, by re-establishing and reviving the so-called caliphate and glorifying the Muslim past in the process, would be rectified. But the problem with al-Qaeda (and as we shall see with IS as well) is that the message of ‘empowerment’ and ‘hope’ is predicated on destroying the western system, culture, traditions and religion (Christianity). The message of 9/11 and the subsequent attacks on the west continue to be one of destruction and savagery.

Take the case of IS which prides itself on being an even ‘better’ killing machine than al Qaeda. Its spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, reportedly told its followers in an audio message in 2014: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European, especially the spiteful and filthy French, or an Australian or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever, kill him in any manner or way however it may be.” And such killing doesn’t exclude Muslims, if they happen to be in the way and, worse still, if they are Shias and do not practice the IS version of Islam.

The IS arose out of the disastrous military intervention in Iraq, supposedly for Saddam Hussein’s alleged links with al Qaeda and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was no angel. In fact he was a maniac and a monster but he was not inclined to be subverted by an ideology or cause that was not centred on him and his power machine. In that sense, he was an obstacle for any grand Islamic vision sponsored by the likes of al Qaeda. The prolonged tragedy in Iraq is now being played out, with even greater destruction, by a revived and expanded version of al Qaeda but with a new brand that has taken on the name of Islamic State (IS), and has managed to capture a fair chunk of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared itself a caliphate. In other words, they are pretending continuity with Islam’s glorious historical past and calling upon Muslims all over the world to rally around the ‘caliphate’ and do and die for it. And this ‘do and die’ call has meant expanding their domain and spreading terror.

And it worked as IS captured Mosul and made some significant gains in Syria, some of them now reversed. They were able to create a financial base for their new state through the illicit sale of oil, by taxing the population under its control and looting the treasury. In the process, IS managed to create an image of a ‘successful’ and ongoing enterprise, which further increased its appeal as committed to the cause of Islamic resurgence and revival it professed. This was happening at a time when al Qaeda increasingly looked marginalized with no territorial base. Not surprisingly, IS was able to attract marginalized Muslim youth in the west, especially with the skillful use of the Internet. And these alienated young people sought to channel their energy into an ‘ideal’ and a cause that seemed noble in a weird sort of way, especially as some of them were simply involved in crime like peddling drugs, burglary and the like and being in and out of jail. It didn’t seem all too hard to create terror and mayhem in Brussels, Paris and elsewhere when they were willing to die.

And if the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is right, the situation in Europe was (is) soft for such incidents of terror. According to Turnbull, “European governments are confronted by a perfect storm of failed or neglected integration, foreign fighters returning from Iraq and Syria, porous borders, and intelligence and security apparatus struggling to keep pace with the scope of the threat.” And he quotes Bernard Squarcini, a former head of France’s internal intelligence, who “described these factors in Belgium as creating a favourable ecosystem for an Islamist milieu.” 

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

Russia and the Syrian situation

S P SETH

Russia’s surgical military intervention in the Syrian conflict by way of bombing rebel and terrorist targets, starting September 30, has bolstered up the Assad regime’s position, giving it an advantage in any kind of parleying for a political solution. Before the Russians intervened in a big way, the Assad regime was looking increasingly shaky losing territory to disparate rebel and jihadi groups, including IS. That situation has been reversed and Damascus has recovered fair bit of its lost territory, thanks to the Russian aerial bombing and support on the ground. Having retrieved and, possibly, reversed the military situation to the Assad regime’s advantage, Moscow suddenly announced, as suddenly as they had earlier started their military intervention in September, that it was curtailing and withdrawing bulk of its military activity having largely achieved its objectives against Islamic extremists and terrorists. But that this could easily be reinstated if the situation so warranted. Indeed, Russia continued to help the Assad regime to capture from the IS the historically and strategically important area of Palmyra, which has further bolstered its position.

It is interesting to note that the drawdown of Russian military activity coincided with the starting of the political process in Geneva for a possible political solution. Russia’s action seemed aimed at multiple constituencies in the Syrian conflict from the Assad regime to rebel/jihadi groups, their regional supporters like Saudi Arabia, as well as the US. Above all, it was meant to convey that Russia was a determining force in the Syrian situation intending to help the political process rather than hinder it. For instance, it seemed to convey that Russia was not simply there in Syria to support the Assad regime at any cost. It would be willing to support any viable alternative to stabilize the situation. But at the same time, it would not ditch the Assad regime to make things worse to the advantage of extremists and jihadists of varied persuasions.

Moscow’s determined intervention in Syria is not the result of any kind of idealism. It is part of its policy of bringing Russia back into a global role after the cavalier fashion in which its interests have been treated since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990s. The expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organization right on to its borders created the crisis in Ukraine, where it supported and fostered the rebellion in eastern Ukraine, which is still unresolved. And that has brought on Moscow a sanctions regime from the US and its European allies. In the Middle East, Russia found itself sidelined largely until it dealt itself into a determining role by intervening in Syria and virtually changing the internal balance of power in favour of the Assad regime.

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union Moscow still maintained military interests and ties following from the Soviet time by way of a naval base and other strategic interests. Moscow has also been trying to cultivate Egypt’s president/dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, seeking to revive, in some ways, Soviet Union’s special ties with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, in power during the fifties and sixties. Putin’s Russia would like to have a broad-based Middle Eastern policy but has found its options rather limited as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are US’ strategic allies and they would rather prefer Moscow to ditch Syria and Iran, where Russia has created strategic stakes.

As pointed out earlier, even though Moscow has scaled down its military involvement to facilitate a political solution, it is retaining the option to up scale it if necessary. And as things stand, the Geneva peace process is not making much headway. Syria’s opposition high negotiating committee’s emphasis remains on creating a transitional political regime minus Assad. Which would basically mean a political order opposed to the existing ruling system. In other words, it would mean installing some sort of a hybrid regime that is difficult to even figure out because of the disparate elements involved with varying ideological, sectarian and regional interests. And this is without even thinking how an alternative (to the Assad regime) political system will deal with the IS and other terrorist outfits that are excluded from any political solution, if a solution were possible at all.

Even as the so far non-existent political permutations and combinations are imagined, the Assad regime is not willing to sign off its death warrant, and what for in any case. There is no visible alternative, even more so now that the Assad regime has further consolidated its territorial control with considerable help from Russian intervention. In this situation, even though Moscow might be willing to entertain a political transition minus Bashar al-Assad, a viable and effective alternative is not around. The US and its regional allies would very much like Moscow to facilitate a Bashar al-Assad alternative but they don’t seem to have any clear alternative. And without that, it would simply be adding further to Syrian chaos and misery. In other words, with all the will in the world, there doesn’t seem, in the foreseeable future, any resolution of the Syrian situation.

The Assad regime is likely to hang around, but with continued help from Russia. As of now, having propped up the Assad regime, Moscow is in a strong position among international players. And that is so because its surgical military intervention has produced results on the ground to make the Assad regime a credible ---some might even say legitimate—stake holder. However, if Russia were to stay around long to prop up the regime, that might be counter-productive because, however strong and decisive it might appear, its economic situation is quite fragile.

It continues to face a comprehensive sanctions regime from the west over the situation in Ukraine, and its major source of revenue from oil and gas exports has been hit hard with falling international prices. And to carry with it the economic burden of military intervention in Syria for an extended period of time will simply make things worse. So far Putin’s popularity at home from action in Ukraine and intervention is Syria has been quite spectacular. But if the Syrian situation drags on, as it looks more likely, Russia could find itself into a quagmire. But so far it is playing its cards well and would hope that it all ends well. 

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

Turkey and its Kurdish obsession

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to believe that not only is he is  the country’s strongman but also its savior. And that image was further reinforced when his ruling AKP won the November 1 parliamentary elections. Earlier, on June 7, the ruling party had lost its parliamentary majority, though it still had the most seats with 41per cent of the vote. The victory on November 1 was engineered by creating an image of a security crisis for the country from the separatist Kurdish militant movement, PKK. The period between the June and November elections saw an explosion of violence with two suicide bombings, one on July 20 in the border town of Suruc that killed 33 people, and the second in the capital Ankara on October 10 killing 102 people during a peace march. In both cases, the IS was believed to have been behind the explosions and most of the victims were Kurds.

Before the November 1 elections last year, the Erdogan government blamed it all on PKK and the Kurds in general and started a crackdown in the predominantly Kurdish populated area of southeastern Turkey. And it continued even after the ruling AKP won its parliamentary majority. In the November election, even though the predominantly Kurdish party, HDP, still managed to secure just over 10 per cent of the votes as mandatory requirement for parliamentary representation, it wasn’t able to hold on to the 13 per cent it had won with the support of some non-Kurdish minority votes, as Erdogan sought to paint them as well as a security threat.

In other words, all Kurds in Turkey, constituting 15 to 20 per cent of its population, were suspects of some sort or the other. And it has destroyed a political process that was going on, before violence erupted recently, that had sought to accommodate some of the Kurdish cultural and political sensitivities without making them sound anti-national. Erdogan declared, soon after the parliamentary elections, that his government would go after the PKK “until all its members surrender or are eliminated …” He added, “The period ahead of us is not one of talks and discussions.” And now the Kurdish southeast region of Turkey is turned into a battle zone and the region is under seize.

And why has Erdogan gone back on this path, which had marred Turkey in a prolonged bloody conflict with the Kurds costing about 45,000 lives and causing devastation to much of the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region? And there hangs a tale that keeps getting more tangled and dangerous. When IS emerged as a major regional threat after the fall of Mosul in June 2014, Ankara was shaken when its 40-odd consulate staff was taken hostages. But, despite the IS’ usual barbarity in disposing of their hostages, in this case they released their Turkish hostages without any harm, and that was a welcome surprise. When asked about how it happened, Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the hostages were freed through the Turkish intelligence agencies’ “own methods.” It certainly wasn’t done through any rescue operations. It would, therefore, appear that there was some tacit understanding/agreement that Turkey would refrain from becoming part of the US-led aerial operations against IS. That received credence when Turkey kept out of the military coalition against IS, nor did it grant the use of its bases for bombing IS targets and territory even though it is a NATO ally. This, though, changed a little later, as we shall see.

During the US-led operations against IS, Kurds emerged as a very effective force on the ground to fight IS, making them a virtual US ally. Ankara saw this as a threat to Turkish national unity, as YPG (Syrian Kurdish movement) virtually carved out an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria on the Turkish border. The Assad regime, overstretched as it was, had earlier withdrawn from Syria’s Kurdish region. And YPG are the ones fielding their fighters on the ground successfully pushing back IS, as the US keeps bombing IS positions. The US supports YPG fighters in Syria that are engaged against IS, while it goes along with Turkey which has outlawed militant PKK.  But Turkey doesn’t make any distinction between the two-- Turkish-based PKK and Syrian-based YPG. They are both terrorists.

Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davotoglu reiterated his country’s position during a recent visit of the US Vice President Joe Biden. Which is that YPG in Syria is part of the larger PKK movement. He also reportedly said that YPG had become an increasing threat to Turkey and it would attack its positions in northern Syria. And this Turkey is doing now so that they don’t consolidate their hold on northern Turkish border. While Turkey is firing at YPG positions, it fears that a recent bomb explosion in the Turkish capital, Ankara, might have been the handiwork of the Kurdish YPG. It could as well be IS as was suspected in earlier bombings, but Ankara is inclined to put it YPG.

For quite sometime now, Ankara has been pushing US to put up a no fly zone over northern Syria to both frustrate the Kurdish designs as well as to deter Russian bombing missions. In other words Turkey would like NATO to be drawn into the whole complicated business of fighting its multiple enemies. The question is: will the US and its NATO allies widen the stakes to make it into anti-Russian operations and in the process be distracted from the main game of destroying IS? So far, Turkey is not succeeding in this.

There are two problems with Erdogan and his administration. First: He sees Turkey in his own larger-than-life image where he is the new Sultan and wants the world to recognize and respect him in that role. And if and when this doesn’t happen, he tends to overshoot, so to say. Its most blatant example was the shooting of a Russian plane to force Moscow to stop propping up the Assad regime, which has backfired. At the same time, it hasn’t been happy with the US for not getting rid of the Assad regime when it used chemical weapons on its citizens.

President Obama had promised, more or less, to do this, as it was tantamount to crossing his ‘red line’. And Erdogan showed his annoyance by keeping out of the military coalition against IS, and denying the US the use of its air base for bombing IS positions, until now. But its obsession remains with the Kurds, where YPG in Syria has carved out an autonomous region and its perceived links with the PKK. Ankara sees that its perceived threat is already a reality. Which accounts for a major part of Erdogan’s irrational policies both at home and abroad. 

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