The harm before the storm: Army battles to expel resurgent al-Qa’ida from Iraq

[سيف الله]

Salaam

An update on the situation in Iraq

The Iraqi army is planning to storm the city of Fallujah 40 miles west of Baghdad that has been taken over by fighters from al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which is part of the umbrella organisation, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). They have torn down Iraqi national flags and raised the black al-Qa'ida flag over captured police stations, set fire to military vehicles on the road to Baghdad and captured 75 government soldiers.

The Iraqi government's control in overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province, which covers much of western Iraq, is in the balance.

Al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which was seen as largely defeated three years ago, has staged a dramatic resurgence thanks to Isis, seizing significant parts of northern and eastern Syria. Some of the fighters now holding central Fallujah are reported to be Syrians who have come across the 373-mile long border. The wars in Syria and Iraq are increasingly turning into a single conflict.

The decline in the Iraqi government's position began in December as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stepped up the pressure on Sunni protesters in Anbar who have been demonstrating for a year against persecution. The government is under pressure from its supporters to stem a wave of devastating bombing attacks by a rejuvenated Isis in 2013 that killed 8,000 civilians and 1,000 police and army. A further 15 people were killed in Baghdad on Sunday.

Mr Maliki was eager to show political and military strength by a more assertive policy in Anbar and other Sunni-majority provinces in the lead up to the parliamentary elections in April, when he hopes to win a third term. Little has gone well for Mr Maliki in the last two weeks, however. On 21 December, an Isis ambush in Anbar killed 24 Iraqi army officers and tension increased a week later when the government arrested a powerful Sunni MP, Ahmed al-Alwani, whose brother was killed by security forces.

On 30 December, the long-standing encampment of Sunni protesters in Ramadi was closed but the following day Mr Maliki reversed course in the face of an outcry from Sunni leaders and withdrew the army from the cities of Anbar, notably Ramadi and Fallujah. These were occupied by Isis fighters, though they have not been able to hold Ramadi in the face of counter-attack by government-allied tribal militiamen.

A problem for the government is that Mr Maliki is engaged in a three-cornered struggle in which he faces, as well as Isis, Sunni tribal leaders who were part of the Sahwa (Awakening) movement which turned on al-Qa’ida with support from the US army in 2006. These Sunni notables have supported the protest movement, but Mr Maliki has made few concessions to the Sunnis, whom many Shias see as ultimately aiming to over-turn the post-Saddam Hussein political settlement that gave power for the first time to Iraq's Shia majority allied to the Kurds.

The government's intransigence has led a peaceful protest movement to mutate into armed resistance led by al-Qa'ida in Iraq. The latter, badly battered in 2010, has enjoyed a swift resurgence launching devastating bombings mostly targeting Shia civilians. The response to the Sunni protests and the return of al-Qa'ida has been a self-defeating mix of harshness and conciliation.

Mr Maliki promised reforms but in April his forces stormed a protest camp in Hawija, south-west of Kirkuk, killing 53 people. Sunni people in and around Kirkuk, who had previously looked to Mr Maliki as an ally against the Kurds, demanded that Iraqi army units be withdrawn from their areas. Politically, the rise of Isis, with its hatred of the Shia as heretics deserving death, is not against Mr Maliki’s interests since it solidifies the Shia vote behind him. The threat of al-Qa'ida also brings more US support in the shape of helicopters, Hellfire missiles and intelligence.

The Iraqi government may be deeply unpopular in Sunni areas but this does not mean that al-Qa'ida is liked. When it was last at the peak of its power in 2006, its violence and bigotry made it even more unpopular among Sunni than the Americans. Sheikh Abdul Malik al-Saadi, an influential Sunni cleric in Iraq previously known for counselling moderation, now says that Mr Maliki has "brought Iraq nothing but war, poverty and sectarianism. Oh people of Anbar, especially the sheikhs of Anbar, defend yourselves and your people!"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...q-9040155.html

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Junon;

I have always felt the last Iraqi war was a great injustice, Britain and America should not have intervened, we have destabilised Iraq, possibly in a greater way than Saddam did, we have made a peaceful solution very difficult to achieve.

In the spirit of praying for justice for all people

Eric

[Jedi_Mindset]

Its a sunni uprising (many sunni tribes) because of maliki's actions to treat sunni's badly, put them in prisons and even kill them.

[dcalling]

Greetings and peace be with you Junon;

I have always felt the last Iraqi war was a great injustice, Britain and America should not have intervened, we have destabilised Iraq, possibly in a greater way than Saddam did, we have made a peaceful solution very difficult to achieve.

In the spirit of praying for justice for all people

Eric

I remember I was really unhappy that US went to Iraq, and I think if US didn't went into Iraq, there won't be so many fights etc. Saddam is not doing anything bad at the time and Iraq is stable.

Also please don't use "we", it is a bunch of politicians, not the US/UK people.

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[Hemoo]

any one wants to read & hear about the Islamic state in Iraq & Syria.. visit this site and read the DabiQ magazine issues 1 & 2

https://joindiaspora.com/people/46a7...810e60ca654bcf


Dabiq Magazine 1st issue
https://archive.org/download/dbq01_d...desktop_en.pdf

Dabiq Magazine 2nd issue
https://archive.org/download/DabiqEn...Dabiq_en_2.pdf

besides the Islamic State Report (ISR) Issues

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Looks like the American cowboy is riding into town, again. . . . . .

Obama authorises US air strikes to help Iraqis besieged on mountain by Isis

‘We need to act, and act now’ says US president, as military carries out aid drops to Iraqis forced to flee by Islamist group

Barack Obama has authorised targeted air strikes against Islamic militants in Iraq, as the US military began an airborne operation to bring relief to thousands of minority Iraqis driven to a grim, mountain-top refuge.

Describing the threats against stranded Yezidi refugees as holding the potential for “genocide”, the president said he had authorised limited air strikes to help Iraqi forces, to assist in the fight to break the siege and protect the civilians trapped there.

“When we face a situation like we do on that mountain, with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale and we have a mandate to help - in this case a request from the Iraqi government - and when we have unique capabilities to act to avoid a massacre, I believe the United States cannot turn a blind eye,” the president said in a late-night statement from the White House.

“Earlier this week, one Iraqi said no-one is coming to help. Well, today America is coming to help,” he said.

The delivery of humanitarian relief, in the form of air drops by US jets, took place after a day of intense debate at the White House over how to respond to an Isis army that has caused mass civilian displacement as it moves closer to the previously stable Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The air drops represented the first aerial mission over Iraq since 2011 for a purpose beyond conducting surveillance on Isis, providing long-scheduled military sales or transporting the extra hundreds of US special operations “advisers” that Obama ordered into Iraq to help Baghdad confront the threat from Isis. They marked the start of the deepest American engagement in Iraq since US troops withdrew in late 2011 after nearly a decade of war.

The US military was already helping the Iraqi government co-ordinate air drops of vital supplies to at least 40,000 Iraqis, mostly from the Yazidi minority, trapped on top of Mount Sinjar in the northwest of Iraq after death threats from the Islamists who have overrun much of the region.

Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian city, was left all but abandoned as the jihadist group Islamic State (Isis) advanced through minority communities in the country’s north-west and towards the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil. Late on Thursday night the UN security council condemned the attacks and urged international support for the Iraqi government.

Obama said “targeted air strikes” could soon be used to protect American personnel in Irbil, and could also be used to protect Baghdad if it came under pressure. He claimed the steps were a necessary response to a deteriorating humanitarian situation, in which there were “chilling reports” of mass executions and the enslavement of Yezidi women.

“In recent days Yezidi women, men and children from the region of Sinjar have fled for their lives,” he said. “Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands are now hiding high up the mountain with little but the clothes on their backs, they are without food, they are without water. People are starving, children are dying of thirst. Meanwhile Isis forces below have called for the systematic destruction of the Yeziddi people, which would constitute genocide.”

UN officials say an estimated 200,000 new refugees are seeking sanctuary in the Kurdish north from Islamic extremists who have pursued them since the weekend. Qaraqosh, south-east of Mosul and home to around 50,000 Christians, was the latest to fall, with most residents fleeing before dawn on Thursday as convoys of extremists drew near.

Other Christian towns near Mosul, including Tel Askof, Tel Keif and Qaramless, have also largely been emptied. Those who remained behind were reportedly given the same stark choice given to other minorities, including Yazidis: flee, convert to Islam or be killed.

Iraqi troops have concentrated on defending Baghdad and the Shia south, leaving the defence of minorities in the north to the Kurdish peshmurga. However, even the much vaunted Kurdish forces were no match for the heavy weapons wielded by the jihadists as they advanced in recent days.

Without any protection, Yazidis, Christians and Turkmen are being uprooted from communities they have lived in for millennia and the geo-social fabric of Iraq is being rapidly shredded.

The Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, Joseph Thomas, described the situation in northern Iraq as “catastrophic, a crisis beyond imagination”. He demanded urgent intervention to save what remained of the area’s Christian heritage.

Kurdish officials on Thursday demanded more help in catering for refugees. The Kurdish administered areas have seen staggering numbers cross their notional border since the original Isis onslaught two months ago. In the first week alone, some 500,000 people are thought to have fled towards Irbil.

The capital of the Kurdish north is already home to a new Chaldean Christian community, which fled Baghdad in the wake of an Isis-led massacre inside a cathedral in October 2010. Many fleeing Christians have headed for the Ainkawa neighbourhood, which is home to Baghdad’s Christian exiles.

The past 11 years of war and insurrection since the US invasion have led to most of Iraq’s Christians fleeing. Numbers have plummeted starkly from an estimated one million before 2003 to around 150,000 now. A large number of those who remain are now displaced.

Isis has threatened to redraw the unitary borders that were carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire. The group’s rampant insurgency and the inability of state actors to stop it has rendered the frontier between Iraq and Syria evermore irrelevant.

In the absence of central government authority, Shia militias are taking dominant roles, amplifying sectarian enmity between Islam’s two most dominant sects.

Iraq’s beleaguered prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, no longer has the authority to unite the country’s disparate sects. Maliki, a Shia Muslim, had disenfranchised much of the country’s Sunni community over the past three years, some of whom have turned to Isis as a means of reasserting themselves.

After digging in for the past two months, Maliki now faces a desperate battle to form a government, with his key backer Iran understood to have told him that it no longer supports his bid to lead the country for a third term.

Massoud Barazani, a Kurdish leader, has said he is moving towards holding a referendum that could pave the way for an independence bid, a move that could spell the end of Iraq, and unsettle surrounding countries, including Syria, Turkey and Iran.

The UN security council warned that the Isis attacks could constitute crimes against humanity and that those responsible should be held accountable. “The members of the security council also urge all parties to stop human rights violations and abuses and ensure humanitarian access and facilitate the delivery of assistance to those fleeing the violence,” said Britain’s UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, reading from a statement after an emergency consultation requested by France.

White House officials made clear the more aggressive US posture was prompted by rapid Isil advances on Irbil on Wednesday but insisted in a conference call with reporters that Obama did not anticipate a “sustained campaign” against what they called a “sophisticated military force”.

There are already constant US air patrols over Irbil but the US has no plans to evacuate diplomats or military advisers in the city – believing it can keep any further advances at bay with air power alone.

As of Thursday night there had been no offensive air missions. The humanitarian mission involved C17 and C130 cargo planes dropping 5,300 gallons of water and 8,000 ready meals (MREs) intended to provide short-term assistance to 8,000 of the “many thousands” of refugees thought to be trapped on the mountain.

US officials confirmed they were expecting a new Iraqi prime minister to be appointed by Sunday, suggesting the White House believes its precondition for greater political unity in Iraq before military intervention can take place may be within sight.

The White House says it has been consulting with the US Congress over its intervention but does not believe it needs authorisation for military action and merely plans to file a report under the war powers act if air strikes go ahead. Obama’s authorisation for the Pentagon to carry out attacks is “geographically restricted to Iraq” and does not include Syria.

A Lockheed Martin factory in the US that manufactures Hellfire air-to-ground missiles has been operating seven days a week to provide weapons destined for Iraqi government and Kurdish forces under pre-existing support arrangements.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/08/obama-authorises-iraq-air-strikes-against-isis

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

The Cruel Jest of American “Humanitarian Aid” to Iraq

The United States of America has no claim on the language of “humanitarian aid” to Iraq after what it did to that country. It is rather as though Washington should send Meals Ready to Eat to the good people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One is happy that the US has dropped food aid for the Yezidis trapped on a mountain after they escaped the so-called “Islamic State” of self-styled “caliph” Ibrahim. But the US press either has a short memory or is being disingenuous when they talk about a humanitarian mission in Iraq!

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent 8-year military Occupation of that country caused over one million Iraqis to be displaced abroad, especially to Syria and Jordan, but some of them got to Sweden and a few to the US itself.

Further about 4 million Iraqis were displaced internally. Baghdad underwent an ethnic cleansing of its Sunni Arabs, with the proportion likely falling from 45 percent of the city to 15 percent or so of the city. The “Islamic State” push on the capital in concert with other Sunni Arabs is an attempt to recover what was taken from them by the Bush administration. Likewise, the Sunni Turkmen of Tel Afar under the Americans were ethnically cleansed and the town became largely Shiite. Turkmen Shiites are among the northern ethnic groups now menaced by IS.

The US was the proximate cause of a civil war in 2006-2007 in which at some points as many as 3,000 people were being killed each month.

How many Iraqis died because of the US invasion, i.e. the extra mortality rate, is hard to estimate. But likely it was at least 300,000 persons. Typically wounded in war are three times as many as the killed, so that would give us nearly 1 million wounded. Most of the 300,000 who died were men, many of them with families, and in Iraq there were few or no insurance policies. That left 300,000 or so widows and likely 1.5 million orphans.

“Humanitarian mission” may sound good to American ears. But there is no way a few food drops can make up for what the US did to Iraq.

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-cruel-jest-of-american-humanitarian-aid-to-iraq/

[Jedi_Mindset]

A lasting presence for IS in Iraq and Syria: interview with Romain Caillet

On 29 June, after the spectacular takeover of Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. How can the sudden rise to power of IS be explained? What is the future of the caliphate, and of the region as a whole? Romain Caillet provides an assessment. Interview.
About the authors
Christelle Gence is a journalist working for SaphirNews, the first online publication on Muslim issues in France and part of the Saphir Média group.
Romain Caillet (@RomainCaillet) is a historian specialising in contemporary Salafism and currently working as a researcher and consultant on Islamist issues. His research has also focused on the Syrian civil war, and specifically on jihadi groups in the conflict. Romain has lived for the past several years in Beirut and previously lived in Cairo for three years and in Amman for two years.
Christelle Gence conducted the following interview with Romain Caillet in French, originally published on 15 July 2014 by SaphirNews under the title L’Etat islamique va s’installer durablement en Iraq et en Syrie. Due to the dynamic nature of the situation in Iraq, the author later added some paragraphs in August.
Saphirnews: How do you explain the rise of the Islamic State in recent weeks,particularly since the capture of Mosul?
Romain Caillet: The Islamic State (IS) – initially the Islamic State in Iraq, then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and now the Islamic State – has been a state within a state in Iraq for years. It has the support of the majority of Iraq's Sunnis, who feel marginalised by the Shiite regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which they see as sectarian. There was some evidence to suggest that Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was a fiefdom of IS, so it was no surprise to see them take Mosul.
S. What does this indicate about the situation in Iraq?
RC. The collapse of the regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which allowed IS to take many cities, not only in the region of Nineveh, but also in the regions of al-Anbar, Kirkuk, and Diyala, shows two things: the failure of al-Maliki to govern Iraq on the one hand, and the total failure of the Americans to remove the Sunni Arab elite from Iraq’s governance and army. We see the results of this today. Despite the billions of dollars sunk into Iraq, the Americans have been unable to form either a government with the Shiite community or a new army – a strategy that has resulted in the marginalisation of the Sunni community.

S. You say that the majority of Sunnis support IS?
RC. The overwhelming majority of Sunnis supported insurgency against the al-Maliki regime. It turns out that this insurgency is led by IS. Maybe it will not last, maybe people will eventually refuse literalist applications of sharia by IS or find them too authoritarian. However, virtually all Sunnis today support this insurrection. Without an air force, helicopters or any real heavy weapons, and with the means that they do have, IS would have been unable to take all these cities if they did not have the broad support of the population.
It is particularly significant that during a speech on 12 July, one month after the takeover of Mosul, ‘Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, formerly close to Saddam Hussain and current leader of the Iraqi Baathists, paid tribute to IS, characterising its fighters as heroic knights at the forefront of the battle. Never has an Arab nationalist spoken of a jihadi group in such glowing terms, which demonstrates IS’s popularity amongst Sunnis regardless of their ideological affiliation. Following an ultimatum from IS to either convert to Islam or accept the status of dhimmi or non-Muslim citizen (entailing the payment of jizya, a special tax, and accepting an inferior status to Muslims), the Christians of Mosul left in droves on 18 July. This mass exodus has been condemned by the Baathists. However, this development still does not imply a rupture with the Islamic State, since it is the exodus of the Christians that is being condemned; the condemnation at no point explicitly mentions the Islamic State itself.
S. Where does IS derive its means? Who pays for it?
RC. They are self funded. Before taking the oil wells in the region of Mosul, they levied about $100 million per year in tax (extortion, revolutionary tax). Then, there are also the [resources from] the operating oil wells in Syria and Iraq, and the taking of western hostages. IS has virtually no foreign support. Just reading its literature, it’s clear that its worst enemies are Saudi Arabia and the Gulf regimes, which they vilify regularly. Remember as well that most rebel brigades fighting IS in Syria today are financed, armed, and sometimes trained by the Gulf regimes.
S. Why are IS and Saudi Arabia worst enemies?
RC. One of the most famous works in the contemporary jihadist corpus is a treatise entitled, The Shameful Actions Manifest in the Saudi State's Disbelief. The author of this book, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian sheikh of Palestinian origin, outlines three elements justifying the takfir or exclusion of this state from the sphere of Islam, namely: its military alliance with the United States (especially since the Gulf War); Saudi participation in international institutions (as Saudi Arabia is a founding member of the UN); and finally, the increasing use of more systematic positive law in the Saudi court system.
S. For now, IS is accepted by the Sunni population. What could reverse this state of affairs?
RC. The Al-Jazeera journalists were surprised to see people cheering on IS in Mosul; they could not believe their eyes. The allegiance of the tribes in the Syrian Euphrates valley is more volatile [The recent revolt by the Shu’aytat clan, which took hold in a dozen villages between Mayadin and Bukamal in the Deir Ezzor region, confirms the volatility of Syrian tribal allegiances. The revolt seems to have been triggered by IS’s ban the evening before on tobacco and the water pipe for the entire Deir Ezzor region]. But for now, IS is massively supported by the Sunni population of Mosul, which prefers IS to al-Maliki’s Shiite regime.

S. So could IS settle permanently in Iraq?
RC. Yes, I think IS will settle permanently. Sunnis know that IS is their only hope of becoming masters again. They certainly have a demographic disadvantage in Iraq (where they are a minority), but ISIS’s goal is to merge these territories with Syria to reverse this demographic relationship and have a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria. Perhaps eventually, more moderate people than those of IS will take their place. But I think the Middle East as we know it is finished; the regional boundaries from the Sykes-Picot agreement (signed in 1916 between France and Britain to define the borders of the Middle East) no longer exist.
The idea that the borders will disappear is not new. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader, already expressed this idea when the revolution started in Syria in 2011. Robert Fisk reformulated it in an article for The Independent a few weeks ago, when IS bulldozed a wall of sand that served as a border between Iraq and Syria.

S. Will IS manage to establish itself in a lasting way in Syria?
RC. Certainly. Currently, they occupy more than 90 pecent of the area of Deir Ezzor (in eastern Syria). Generally, the Euphrates valley, where the population is culturally very similar to Iraqi Sunnis, is clearly under the control of IS. So there is a historical coherence in a state like that. In Syria, the Euphrates valley is inhabited by tribes that were forcibly settled when the borders were only faintly outlined, and these nomadic tribes were straddling territories in Iraq and Syria. I did interviews with people who are not close to IS, but feel they belong to a tribe, who feel more Bedouin than Syrian. They have always felt closer to Iraqis than to the Syrians of Damascus or the coast – and that’s without even touching upon the religious question. Beyond that, they also share a common culture.
So, does IS have the option of establishing itself further beyond the valley of the Euphrates? I do not know. To the west of Aleppo and in the region of Idlib, where people very much feel themselves to be Syrians, and not at all close to the Iraqis, there is a wholesale rejection of IS.

S. What are Nuri al-Maliki’s responsibilities in the current situation?
RC. He has practiced sectarian policies marginalising Sunnis. He also led many to believe that the fight against IS is a fight between Shia and Sunni. He even said that ISIS was the army of Yazid [who killed Hussein, the son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet during the battle of Karbala in 680], which was shocking even if Yazid is not a positive reference in the Sunni tradition. Nuri al-Maliki systematically refers in his speeches to the Shiite memory and the fight against the Umayyads. This has antagonised the Sunni Arabs, who were the elites of Saddam Hussein’s regime. For decades, they were used to being dominant, but then found themselves in a humiliating situation which they reject. This is rather different to the case of the Sunni Syrians who were subject to 40 years of Alawite power, which explains the resignation of many vis-à-vis the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In contrast, until 2003, the Sunni Arabs in Iraq were the undisputed masters of the country.

Since then, all observers agree that the Sunni community has been marginalised. Until 2003, the army and the intelligence services were held by Sunnis, and all these people were overnight excluded from power, leaving many with a desire for revenge. They had skills, and many joined the ranks of IS. For the first time in history, a jihadist group has leaders at its helm who are former high-ranking officers and former officials of the intelligence services. This organisation has real strategists at its helm. This is key. These are not mere religious [extremists] who have been radicalised and want to blow themselves up. These are professionals of war, intelligence and strategy.

S. Is western intervention feasible?
RC. Western intervention could stop them. But in the current configuration, the west can not intervene in Iraq because all Sunnis are with IS at the moment. If the west intervened in a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, it would be accused of taking sides.
On the other hand, Syria is more complex than being simply a war between Shiites and Sunnis. Since western countries have refused to intervene against the [Alawite] regime of Bashar al-Assad, if the west intervenes in Iraq against the Islamic State which is Sunni, then, Sunnis in the region will view this move as systematically intervening against Sunni interests and always favouring the Shiites. The west would also be accused of playing Tehran’s game, disqualifying the west in the eyes of Iraqi Sunnis, and radicalising Syrian Sunnis. Generally speaking, the Muslim world would have the impression that the west supports Iranian expansionism.

Just as the United States’ unconditional support of Israel feeds anti-American sentiment, the west’s unconditional support for Iranian expansionism would feed Sunni resentment well beyond the case of Iraq.
In Iraq, the overflow of the Islamic State's offensive towards Kurdistan, an area of importance to Washington and other Western countries, has forced the US to intervene militarily, striking the positions of jihadists near Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where many American and European companies are established. Moreover, in Erbil, only the jihadists oppose the Kurdish forces, making things simpler for the US than in the rest of Iraq, particularly in the Sunni Arab areas.
In those areas, the Americans would like to obtain a political solution by bringing together certain actors of the insurgency into a national unity government, which would initially involve the departure of Nuri al-Maliki, and then open up to independent Sunni tribes and different Islamist actors. Will these actors accept abandoning their alliance with IS in favour of the promise of a new place in Iraqi institutions? While the emergence of a new sahwa or awakening movement in Iraq is a case not to be ignored, key stakeholders feel they have been abandoned by the Americans. After being used to fight the jihadists in 2007, these stakeholders were put under the tutelage of al-Maliki without any political autonomy when the Americans left Iraq in 2011.
S. Who then could intervene?
RC. As soon as the population is no longer on IS’s side, there could be an intervention by the Kurds, assisted by other anti-IS forces within the Sunni community. This could take many forms: through perhaps considerable western support to the Iraqi government involving continuous aerial bombing; or simply Sunni forces revolting against IS with support from the Kurds. However, in both cases, intervention would require that the Sunni population is no longer on the side of IS, and I do not know if that will happen.
https://opendemocracy.net/arab-awake...qJh_KY.twitter


Note: I am neutral, i myself am confused about what is truly going on, nor do i follow the media (Alhamdulillah). Just posted this interview because i found it interesting to read, but then again this could also be far from the truth. May Allah guide us to the truth and see through the amount of deceptions we are facing. Ameen

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

Another war in Iraq won’t fix the disaster of the last

The Yazidis need aid, but military intervention by states that destroyed Iraq will deepen the crisis now tearing it apart

They couldn’t keep away. Barely two years after US forces were withdrawn from Iraq, they’re back in action. Barack Obama has now become the fourth US president in a row to launch military action in Iraq.

We’re now into the sixth day of US air attacks on the self-styled Islamic State, formerly known as Isis – the sectarian fundamentalists who have taken over vast tracts of Sunni Iraq and are carrying out vicious ethnic cleansing against minorities in the north.

The media and political drumbeat is growing louder for Britain to move from humanitarian aid drops to join the military campaign. France has announced it will be arming Iraqi Kurdish forces. There are already 800 US troops back on Iraqi territory.

Without a trace of irony, Colonel Tim Collins, who famously claimed on the eve of the 2003 invasion that British troops were occupying Iraq to “liberate” it, yesterday led the call for yet another military intervention.

If ever there was a case for another Anglo-American bombing campaign, some say, this must surely be it. Graphic reports of the suffering of tens of thousands of Yazidi refugees on Mount Sinjar and the horrific violence that has driven the Christians of Qaraqosh from their homes have aroused global sympathy.

The victims of this sectarian onslaught need urgent humanitarian aid and refuge. But the idea that the states that invaded and largely destroyed Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives should claim the cause of humanitarianism for yet another military intervention in Iraq beggars belief.

If the aim were solely to provide air cover for the evacuation of Yazidis from Sinjar, there are several regional powers that could deliver it. The Iraqi government itself could be given the means to do the job – something its US sponsors have denied it until now. In fact, the force that has done most so far to rescue Yazidis has been the Kurdish PKK, regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU and Turkey.

But after decades of lawless unilateralism, any armed intervention for genuine humanitarian protection clearly has to be authorised by the United Nations to have any credibility. As the Labour MP Diane Abbott put it, that’s what the UN is for – and authorisation could be quickly agreed by the security council.

But of course it’s not just about the Yazidis or the Christians. As Obama has made clear, they’re something of a side issue compared with the defence of the increasingly autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan – long a key US and unofficial Israeli ally – and American interests in its oil boom capital Irbil, in particular.

The US is back in Iraq for the long haul, the president signalled, spelling out that his aim is to prevent IS establishing “some sort of caliphate through Syria and Iraq” – which is exactly what the group regards itself as having done.

The danger of the US, Britain and others being drawn again into the morass of a disintegrating state they themselves took apart is obvious. IS, then known as al-Qaida in Iraq, itself effectively arrived in the country in 2003 on the backs of US and British tanks.

The idea that the states responsible for at least 500,000 deaths, 4 million refugees, mass torture and ethnic cleansing in Iraq over the past decade should now present themselves as having a “responsibility to protect” Iraqis verges on satire.

The majority of Iraq’s million-strong Christian community was in fact forced out of the country under US-British occupation. The state sectarianism that triggered the Sunni revolt and rise of IS in Iraq – the ultimate blowback – was built into the political structures set up by George Bush.

Britain and the US – which didn’t want to “take sides” when Egypt’s coup leaders carried out one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in history last summer – are the last countries on Earth to bring humanitarian relief to Iraq.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t have a responsibility to provide aid. But the record of western humanitarian intervention over the past two decades isn’t a happy one. In 1991, no-fly zones in Iraq allowed massacres of Shia rebels in the south and only functioned with thousands of troops on the ground in Kurdistan, followed by 12 years of bombing raids.

In 1999, Nato’s air campaign in Kosovo, also without UN authorisation, triggered a massive increase in the ethnic cleansing it was meant to halt. In Libya, in 2011, Nato’s intervention ratcheted up the death toll by a factor of about 10 and gave cover for rampant ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate killing. Its legacy today is complete state breakdown and civil war.

It might be said that the latest US bombing campaign in Iraq has greater legitimacy because the Iraqi government appealed for support. But it did so back in June, after which Obama stayed his hand until the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, could be replaced with someone more acceptable to the US.

At the same time, US arms are now being supplied directly to Kurdish forces, independently of the central government, fuelling the disintegration of the Iraqi state. And IS – whose sectarian ideology is in reality only a more violent version of the Saudi regime’s, the west’s most important ally in the Arab world – is consolidating its hold on western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it is in effect allied with the US and its friends.

Its rise is a tragedy for both peoples. But another round of US and British military intervention would only strengthen IS and boost its credibility – as well as increase the risk of terror attacks at home. The likelihood is that it can only be overcome by a functioning state in both Iraq and Syria. That in turn demands a decisive break with the sectarian and ethnic politics bequeathed by a decade of war and intervention.

The urge to play the role of self-appointed global policeman retains its grip on the western world, but experience shows that will do nothing to rescue the people of Iraq. Far more important would be agreement between the regional powers, including Turkey and Iran, on a settlement to allow Iraq to escape from its existential crisis.

Selective humanitarian intervention without UN and regional authorisation is simply a tool of power politics, not solidarity. To imagine that the solution to the disastrous legacy of one intervention is to launch yet another is delusional folly.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/13/war-in-iraq-yazidis-aid-military-intervention

[سيف الله]

Salaam

More analysis.

An article has been published under the Prime Minister's name in the 'Sunday Telegraph' on the current crisis in Iraq.

You can find it here :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11038121/David-Cameron-Isil-poses-a-direct-and-deadly-threat-to-Britain.html

Here I attempt to analyze that article.

My comments are in bold and marked with an asterisk *:

'This poisonous extremism is a direct threat to Britain'

Stability. Security. The peace of mind that comes from being able to get a decent job and provide for your family, in a country that you feel has a good future ahead of it and that treats people fairly.

*Note the Blairite tone, verbless sentences, if sentences they can be called, in an outdated red-top newspaper style from the 1980s.

In a nutshell, that is what people in Britain want – and what the Government I lead is dedicated to building.

Britain – our economy, our security, our future – must come first. After a deep and damaging recession, and our involvement in long and difficult conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising that so many people say to me when seeing the tragedies unfolding on their television screens: “Yes, let’s help with aid, but let’s not get any more involved.”

I agree that we should avoid sending armies to fight or occupy.

*Does he? See if he sticks to this later on, after most readers will have peeled off, reassured that British troops (apparently) won’t be sent back to Iraq.

But we need to recognise that the brighter future we long for requires a long-term plan for our security as well as for our economy.

*Is this in fact true? Surely we only increase or safeguard our security if our actions do not make new enemies, and do not needlessly expose our soldiers to death or injury? He is making the case for intervention before he has explained precisely why it is justified in this place.

True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world. Today, when every nation is so immediately interconnected, we cannot turn a blind eye and assume that there will not be a cost for us if we do.

*What ‘military prowess’ ? Is the Prime Minister unaware of the enormous cuts he himself has made in the Army and the Navy? 'To the bone' is inadequate to describe them. He has cut deep *into* the bone. Does he not realise that many of the most experienced officers and NCOs have left as a result, and that plans to make up the gap with reserves have run into serious trouble?

The creation of an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq and extending into Syria is not a problem miles away from home.

*Actually it may well be such a problem, or at least one we have managed to cope with before. The word ‘extremist’ is notoriously subjective, but many people would regard the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (and of some of the Gulf States too) as being 'extremist’ by the standards of 21st-century western law-governed democracies. A case could be made for classifying the People’s Republic of China as ‘extremist’ , and I personally think the word could be applied to Turkey’s new President Erdogan. Well, Mr Cameron and his colleagues cannot keep away from Peking, and Prince Charles is often in the Gulf. We seem to have found a modus vivendi with Pakistan. Are we as fussy as we claim to be? We have in the past had to come to accommodations with all kinds of people we much disliked, but didn’t have the power to remove, notably the Russian Bolsheviks. Oil-producing countries need customers, and oil-consuming countries need sellers. In the past they have tended to overcome strong dislike.


Nor is it a problem that should be defined by a war 10 years ago.

* This is one of the key points of the article. What it means is ‘because the 2003 Iraq war (which the Tories supported) was a catastrophe, there’s no reason to think that this one will be. Well, the pretext is different – atrocities rather than WMD. But action to prevent atrocities can be limited to that, which is why Mr Cameron is trying to widen the issue to national security.

It is our concern here and now. Because if we do not act to stem the onslaught of this exceptionally dangerous terrorist movement, it will only grow stronger until it can target us on the streets of Britain.

*This is highly questionable. Much the same thing was said for years, to justify our pointless engagement in Afghanistan. Why precisely should the Islamic State want to target the streets of Britain? I'm not saying it won't, just that 'd like to know why it should. Please show your working.

We already know that it has the murderous intent. Indeed, the first Isil-inspired terrorist acts on the continent of Europe have already taken place.

*Could you, or anybody, please say which acts these were?

Our first priority has of course been to deal with the acute humanitarian crisis in Iraq. We should be proud of the role that our brave armed services and aid workers have played in the international effort. British citizens have risked their lives to get 80 tons of vital supplies to the Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar. It is right that we use our aid programme to respond rapidly to a situation like this: Britain has given £13 million to support the aid effort. We also helped to plan a detailed international rescue operation and we remain ready and flexible to respond to the ongoing challenges in or around Dahuk, where more than 450,000 people have increased the population by 50 per cent.

* Excellent. Who could object? But, as we now see, humanitarian relief is somehow not enough.

But a humanitarian response alone is not enough. We also need a broader political, diplomatic and security response.

*Why, exactly? This seems to me to an unsupported assertion.

For that, we must understand the true nature of the threat we face. We should be clear: this is not the “War on Terror”, nor is it a war of religions. It is a struggle for decency, tolerance and moderation in our modern world. It is a battle against a poisonous ideology that is condemned by all faiths and by all faith leaders, whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim.

*In what important way does this differ from the “War on Terror” or a war of religions, except that these ideas are discredited and he does not want to be associated with them?

What is a battle against an ideology? How do you do that? Also, if this ideology is condemned by all faiths (including the one the ISIS militants follow with such zeal and passion), then why do they continue to behave as they do?

Of course there is conflict between Shias and Sunnis, but that is the wrong way to see what is really happening. What we are witnessing is actually a battle between Islam on the one hand and extremists who want to abuse Islam on the other. These extremists, often funded by fanatics living far away from the battlefields, pervert the Islamic faith as a way of justifying their warped and barbaric ideology – and they do so not just in Iraq and Syria but right across the world, from Boko Haram and al-Shabaab to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

*Interesting. Who precisely are these ‘fanatics living far from the battlefield’?

So this threat cannot simply be removed by airstrikes alone. We need a tough, intelligent and patient long-term approach that can defeat the terrorist threat at source.

First, we need a firm security response, whether that is military action to go after the terrorists,

*So military action is, after all, being considered. See above.

international co-operation on intelligence and counter-terrorism or uncompromising action against terrorists at home. On Friday we agreed with our European partners that we will provide equipment directly to the Kurdish forces; we are now identifying what we might supply, from body armour to specialist counter-explosive equipment.

*What about actual weapons? And what about allowing Kurdistan to sell its oil on the world market, which it is presently banned from doing? Could it be that we are coy or reluctant because we are afraid of what will happen if we allow Kurdistan to become fully independent of Baghdad? Not surprising if so. An armed and oil-rich Kurdistan would cause major destabilisation of the whole region. Iran and what is left of Iraq would be very reluctant to allow such a thing, and Turkey’s attitude cannot be predicted. Yet it is hard to see how such a thing can now be avoided.


We have also secured a United Nations Security Council resolution to disrupt the flows of finance to Isil, sanction those who are seeking to recruit for it and encourage countries to do all they can to prevent foreign fighters joining the extremist cause.

Here in Britain we have recently introduced stronger powers through our Immigration Act to deprive naturalised Britons of their citizenship if they are suspected of being involved in terrorist activities. We have taken down 28,000 pieces of terrorist-related material from the web, including 46 Isil-related videos. And I have also discussed the police response to this growing threat of extremism with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. The position is clear. If people are walking around with Isil flags or trying to recruit people to their terrorist cause, they will be arrested and their materials will be seized. We are a tolerant people, but no tolerance should allow the room for this sort of poisonous extremism in our country.

*This is just flailing with gestures, and quite possibly a general threat to civil liberties as well. Laws of this kind are either ineffectual and hard to enforce because they are too vague, or a danger to everyone because they have to contain catch-all clauses which give the police and the courts huge power over the individual.

Alongside a tough security response, there must also be an intelligent political response. We know that terrorist organisations thrive where there is political instability and weak or dysfunctional political institutions. So we must support the building blocks of democracy – the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, the rights of minorities, free media and association and a proper place in society for the army. None of these things can be imposed by the West.

*Well, isn’t it odd, in that case, that we have just collaborated with the Ayatollahs in Teheran, in overthrowing Iraq’s democratically-elected Prime Minister? As for the ‘building blocks of democracy’ where, pray are they now in Libya, the country Mr Cameron so breezily ‘liberated’ a few years ago? And where are they in Egypt, whose hard-faced and repressive military junta we support? I could go on. Surely it is time that this idealist guff was dropped?


Every country must make its own way. But we can and must play a valuable role in supporting them to do that.

*Or we can make a terrible mess, by intervening without understanding or knowledge, and with an exaggerated idea of our skill and power.

Isil militants have exploited the absence of a unified and representative government in Baghdad. So we strongly welcome the opportunity of a new start with Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi. I spoke to him earlier this week and assured him that we will support any attempts to forge a genuinely inclusive government that can unite all Iraqi communities – Sunnis, Shias and Kurds – against the common enemy of Isil, which threatens the way of life of them all.

The international community will rally around this new government. But Iraq’s neighbours in the region are equally vital. So we must work with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey against these extremist forces, and perhaps even with Iran, which could choose this moment to engage with the international community against this shared threat. I want Britain to play a leading role in this diplomatic effort. So we will be appointing a Special Representative to the Kurdistan Regional Government and using the Nato summit in Wales and the United Nations General Assembly in New York to help rally support across the international community.

*Why no mention of Syria? Syria is a vital part of the battlefield against ISIS, and if Syria fell to ISIS the whole politics of the Mediterranean and the Levant would indeed to be transformed. Apart form anything else, ISIS would then have a border with Israel, and incredibly dangerous point of friction.

ISIS is to a great extent our fault. It grew out of the destabilisation of Syria, which Western countries began as long ago as 2011 for reasons best known to themselves, and which was then reinforced by Gulf-supported foreign fighters overwhelmingly made up of Sunni fanatics. The idea that there is a ‘moderate’ rebel force in Syria is a fantasy. Even where the non-Wahhabi rebels disagree with ISIS, they are too weak to resist it, and must do what it says and hand over their weapons to it on demand.

Finally, while being tough and intelligent, we must also be patient and resolute. We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a poisonous and extremist ideology, which I believe we will be fighting for the rest of my political lifetime.

*This prediction is particularly disturbing. Why should this country be committed to a war which our own Premier says cannot be ended in his lifetime

We face in Isil a new threat that is single-minded, determined and unflinching in pursuit of its objectives. Already it controls not just thousands of minds, but thousands of square miles of territory, sweeping aside much of the boundary between Iraq and Syria to carve out its so-called caliphate. It makes no secret of its expansionist aims. Even today it has the ancient city of Aleppo firmly within its sights. And it boasts of its designs on Jordan and Lebanon, and right up to the Turkish border. If it succeeds, we would be facing a terrorist state on the shores of the Mediterranean and bordering a Nato member.

This is a clear danger to Europe and to our security. It is a daunting challenge. But it is not an invincible one, as long as we are now ready and able to summon up the political will to defend our own values and way of life with the same determination, courage and tenacity as we have faced danger before in our history. That is how much is at stake here: we have no choice but to rise to the challenge.

Hitchens’s first rule of political rhetoric is as follows: Whenever a politician says there is no choice or no alternative, he or she means that there is a choice or an alternative, but that they hope nobody will notice. The alternative at the moment is resolute humanitarian action to save the persecuted, combined with extreme and patient caution over deeper involvement. And by patient I don't mean an unending war against an idea we don't like. The more that Mr Cameron talks of our ‘values and way of life’, whatever he means by that, the faster the rest of us should count our spoons. General, foggy dangers of this kind are a) beyond the power of governments to combat or overcome and b) risk a state of permament idealist war in which there is never any objective point at which victory (or defeat) can be declared.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

An interview.

Albert: Some pundits are commenting that the current chaos in Iraq is a result of U.S. forces having left that country too soon. How do you address that argument?

Chomsky: Virtually without exception, the US sledgehammer has severely harmed Iraqi society, going back 50 years to when direct US intervention began with support for a military coup. In the 1980s, Washington strongly supported Saddam’s invasion of Iran, which was highly destructive for both countries. A peculiarly sadistic kind of “dual containment.” US admiration for Saddam was so strong that when the war ended, President Bush I even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the US for advanced training in nuclear weapons production, and in April 1990, sent a high-level senatorial delegation, headed by future Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, to convey his warm regards to his friend Saddam and to assure him that he should disregard hostile comments that appear in the US press. The transcript is available, and is pretty astonishing, which I suppose is why it’s hardly known.

A few months later, Saddam made his first error: disregarding or perhaps misunderstanding orders, and invading Kuwait. Saddam quickly understood his error and sought to find some way to withdraw without being crushed by US attack. Bush was having none of that. As Chief-of-Staff Colin Powell explained in internal discussion, if the US lets Saddam withdraw, he’ll leave a puppet regime, and the Arab states will all be happy. In short, he would do just what the US had done in Panama a few months earlier, except that Latin Americans were very far from happy.

The US then launched a devastating war, destroying much of Iraq, far beyond anything that had to do with driving Saddam from Kuwait – which quite probably could have been achieved through negotiations, though the media were careful to suppress the negotiating options, which were unwelcome to Washington. After the grand triumph, accomplished by such devices as burying poor Iraqi recruits into the sands with bulldozers, Bush was able to triumphantly declare that “What We Say Goes,” and the world had better understand it.

Then came Clinton’s sanctions, which devastated the civilian society further. It had a “humanitarian” component: the Oil for Food program. This program was administered (under UN auspices) by highly regarded international diplomats, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck. Both resigned in protest, describing the sanctions as “genocidal.” Von Sponeck’s very important book on the topic, A Different Kind of War, is under an effective ban in the US (and UK). The sanctions devastated the civilian society, strengthened the dictator, compelled the population to rely on his distribution system for survival, and probably saved him from the fate of a long string of other US-supported monsters who were overthrown from within: Somoza, Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, Suharto, and other pleasant characters – more recently Mubarak and others.

Then came the US-UK invasion, which destroyed much of what was left, and also created a Sunni-Shiite conflict that is now tearing Iraq to shreds and has spread the poison throughout the region. The army that was armed and trained by the US for a decade collapsed when faced with a few thousand insurgents and their local support. Saddam was doubtless a monster, much like others supported by the US when they were useful. But under his rule the society not only functioned, but was advancing considerably, well beyond others in the Arab world.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion of Marine Commandant David Shoup in 1966, referring to the US war in Vietnam: “I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty bloody dollar crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own design and want, that they fight and work for.”

Albert: The mainstream media make ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Iraq seem pretty horrendous, with mass executions taking place. How do you assess these claims?

I think they are pretty accurate.

Albert: What is your view of various actual or proposed U.S. policies in Iraq: sending military trainers, providing arms to the Iraqi government, pressuring the Iraqi government to broaden its base, using drones or air power to support the Iraqi government, and sending in U.S. ground forces?

Iraqis often describe the US invasion as reminiscent of the horrendous Mongol invasions of the 13th century – and with reason. Like many others around the world, the country itself is largely a creation of European imperialism, its boundaries drawn to grant Britain (not Turkey) control of the oil fields in the north, and to block easy access to the Persian Gulf (the reason for establishing the British-run principality of Kuwait). But for better or worse, an Iraqi nationality was forged, and most Arab Iraqis seem to want to keep the country together (the Kurds are a different story). It’s now in really desperate straits. Without some kind of internal political settlement, however tentative and patched together, it’s hard to think of any constructive policy, particularly by those who have wielded the sledgehammer to such destructive effect for many years.

Albert: Obama has announced that he is seeking $500 million in military aid and training for vetted oppositionists in Syria. What is your view of this?

Syria is lurching towards catastrophe. The likely outcome is some kind of partition: a region run by Assad, a Kurdish breakaway region with some degree of autonomy, perhaps linking ultimately to Iraqi Kurdistan, and a region run by warring militias, perhaps with ISIS establishing some measure of control. It’s hard to see how US military involvement can make the horrendous disaster any better, to put it mildly.

If the US (and Israel) had had any real interest in supporting the opposition to Assad, there were some simple measures they could have taken. For example, if Israel had just mobilized forces in the Golan Heights (Syrian territory, annexed by Israel in violation of Security Council orders), Assad would have been compelled to deploy forces to the border, relieving pressure on the rebels. There’s no indication that such thoughts were ever considered.

Israel seems to have no objection to Arabs slaughtering one another. It weakens any regional opposition to Israel’s criminal expansionism in the occupied territories, and also contributes to the treasured image of “a villa in the jungle.” The US probably also has regarded the Assad regime as about the best it could anticipate.

ZCommunications » Iraq

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Salaam

More analysis

Damascene Conversions - Isis, Assad And The Bombing Of Iraq

This time last year, Western corporate media were focused on a single, grave threat to human life and civilised values. An endless stream of atrocity claims – some real, some fabricated with 'evidence' posted on YouTube - depicted President Assad of Syria as the latest incarnation of Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, Gaddafi: namely, the Official Enemy to be targeted for destruction.

Once again, 'quality' media generated a sense of inevitability – this Enemy was also so monstrous that the US-UK alliance had to 'intervene', to 'act'. It later transpired that the plan was to 'completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had'.

The massacre claims were part of a rolling propaganda barrage intended to clear a path through public opposition to an attack. It was a close copy of the 1991 Gulf War media campaign described by the late historian Howard Zinn:

'The American population was bombarded the way the Iraqi population was bombarded. It was a war against us, a war of lies and disinformation and omission of history. That kind of war, overwhelming and devastating, waged here in the US while the Gulf War was waged over there.' (Zinn, Power, History and Warfare, Open Magazine Pamphlet Series, No. 8, 1991, p.12)

This summer, the Assad atrocity stories splashed across newspaper front pages and TV broadcasts for so long have mysteriously dried up. If the BBC website looked like this last year, it now looks like this, this and this. The Independent published an article with a title that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago:

'Putin may have been right about Syria all along - Many cautioned against the earlier insistence of the Obama administration that Assad must go'

Has the man universally loathed and reviled by corporate commentators undergone an appropriately Damascene conversion? A more prosaic explanation was supplied by the Financial Times:

'US and allies must join Assad to defeat Isis [Islamic State], warns British MP' (Sam Jones, Financial Times, August 21, 2014)

The MP in question, Sir Malcolm Rifkind - chairman of parliament's intelligence and security committee, and a former foreign secretary - declared:

'"[Isis] need to be eliminated and we should not be squeamish about how we do it... Sometimes you have to develop relationships with people who are extremely nasty in order to get rid of people who are even nastier."'

One year ago, Rifkind called for a 'military strike' on Syria of 'a significant kind':

'If we don't make that effort to punish and deter, then these actions will indeed continue.'

Richard Dannatt, former head of the British army, observed last month:

'The old saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend" has begun to have some resonance with our relationship in Iran and I think it is going to have to have some resonance with our relationship with Assad.'

Again, unthinkable in the recent past, when Media Lens was smeared as 'pro-Assad' for challenging obviously suspect, warmongering claims.

Fighters hailed by the media last year as heroic 'rebels' opposing Assad's army are now decidedly 'jihadists'. In 2012, the New York Times reported:

'Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists...'.

Assad, it seems, is yesterday's 'bad guy' - Isis is the new 'threat'. On this, almost every media commentator appears to agree. A Guardian leader of August 11, commented:

'President Obama had no real alternative to the air strikes he ordered last week against Islamic State (Isis) forces... Quite apart from the threat to the future of Iraq as a whole, the US and Britain have a humanitarian duty to the endangered minorities, and a debt of honour to the Kurds.'

It is pretty remarkable that journalists are still able to believe (presumably dismissing Gaza as a blip) that US-UK foreign policy is guided by notions of 'duty' and 'honour'. The UK's leading 'liberal-left' newspaper is apparently not appalled by the prospect that the killers of half a million children through sanctions and in excess of one million people as a result of the 2003 invasion are once again affecting to 'help' Iraq. Why, because the editors can perceive 'ignorance and incompetence' in Western actions but not self-interested criminality. Thus, for the Guardian, 'America is right to intervene.'

The editors offered the vaguest of nods in the direction of one of the great bloodbaths of modern times:

'After all that has passed in recent years, hesitation about any kind of intervention in the Middle East is entirely understandable. But the desperate plight of the Iraqi minorities and the potentially very serious threat to the Kurds surely warrants a fundamental reconsideration.'

Alternatively, 'all that has passed in recent years' might provoke 'a fundamental reconsideration' of the idea that the US-UK alliance is guided by concern for the plight of Iraqi minorities.

As Steve Coll wrote in The New Yorker last month:

'ExxonMobil and Chevron are among the many oil and gas firms large and small drilling in Kurdistan under contracts that compensate the companies for their political risk-taking with unusually favorable terms.'

Coll added sardonically:

'It's not about oil. After you've written that on the blackboard five hundred times, watch Rachel Maddow's documentary "Why We Did It" for a highly sophisticated yet pointed journalistic take on how the world oil economy has figured from the start as a silent partner in the Iraq fiasco.'

The conclusion:

'Obama's defense of Erbil is effectively the defense of an undeclared Kurdish oil state whose sources of geopolitical appeal - as a long-term, non-Russian supplier of oil and gas to Europe, for example - are best not spoken of in polite or naïve company...'

'We Tried To Set The Middle East To Rights'

Like the rest of the corporate press, the Guardian view of the world is heavily influenced by structural factors – internal corporate needs conditioned by external political and corporate pressures. On August 15, another Guardian leader commented:

'[R]arely in modern history can military force have been exerted over such an extended period to such little purpose. We tried to set the Middle East to rights, but succeeded only in deepening its divisions and intensifying the violence we had hoped to curb.'

'We' – US-UK state-corporate-military-media power – 'tried to set the Middle East to rights'. For the people, we are to presume, not Big Oil, the 'silent partner in the Iraq fiasco'. However:

'We have been burnt before, we should not be burnt again.'

The great lesson to take from our devastation of an entire country – 'we' suffered.

A further Guardian leader on August 18 opined:

'The situation in Iraq is very threatening. But Britain is only one of many countries under threat.'

According to the FBI and Homeland Security, even the US is not at risk from Isis even after the recent airstrikes. Associated Press reported:

'The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the U.S. homeland from the Islamic State militant group.'

Richard Barrett, who ran counterterrorism operations for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, argues that the latest Western war in Iraq 'does rather play to the [jihadist] narrative that these bad regimes are being supported by outside powers and, therefore, if you get too close to overthrowing them, the outside powers will come and beat you up'. The people who were 'going to fight Assad or [former Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al] Maliki are now seeing a broader enemy' in the form of the US and UK governments. Barrett adds:

'The argument that they could also achieve the same [result] by [conducting] terrorist attacks in Western countries becomes stronger [though] not necessarily inevitable... Their justification will be: "If it hadn't been for air strikes we would be fine, establishing our caliphate [in Iraq].. Why did you mess with us? Now we'll mess with you."'

Barrett suggests that military action should always be a last resort and is not the 'tool that is going to solve the [Isis] problem. Look at Libya, look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq in 2003. It's just reaching for a hammer because it is a hammer and it's to hand'.

The potential for the imagined threat to become real was emphasised by the brutal murder of journalist James Foley captured on an Isis video. A Guardian leader of August 21 observed:

'The video is one of a number of developments that have sharpened our understanding of the risks inherent in a new military campaign in the region, even if limited and carefully conducted – that is, as limited and carefully conducted as an undertaking aimed at blowing up things and people can ever be.'

Presumably the Guardian has inside knowledge indicating that the campaign is 'limited and carefully conducted'. But even the Guardian's own logic suggested Isis would become a threat to the West only when 'we' attack them:

'Bluntly put: if we target them, they will target us.'

So Isis are not in fact 'our' enemy until 'we' make them 'our' enemy! But of course it is 'our' job to sort them out:

'We should not be alone in a contest with Isis. Regional powers should take on a greater role, perhaps even military, but certainly a more coherent diplomatic role.'

At the Guardian's dissident extreme, Owen Jones wrote on August 20:

'Nobody is pretending that Isis is going to be defeated by a few rousing renditions of Kumbaya.'

So we can take for granted that the focus should be on defeating the new enemy identified by Western elites:

'Surely only then can the Iraqi military hope to defeat these sectarian murderers.'

But then should we not also aspire 'to defeat' the notoriously vicious and unaccountable Iraqi military? And Jones quoted veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn to the effect that 'Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies are the "foster parents" of Isis'. So should we not also be focusing on the need 'to defeat' Saudi Arabia and Qatar? And how about the US and UK governments who supply the weapons and other support empowering these tyrannies?

But even dissident 'mainstream' journalists conform to propaganda demanding that Official Enemies be targeted for 'defeat'. Favoured allies, and of course the West, are treated quite differently. The public is to believe that the sheer evil of the Enemy means that negotiation, compromise and accommodation are out of the question – war is often presented as the only option. Why? Because it allows the West to play its trump card, high-tech violence; to get what it wants on its own terms. When negotiation, later is mysteriously found to be possible even with the likes of Gaddafi (2004) and Assad (2014), few ask why it was once declared out of the question.

Jones concluded:

'Because Isis has proved so successful in spreading terror, it will be difficult to have a rational debate about how to defeat them.'

Because Western governments are so successful in spreading terror, it will be difficult for journalists like Jones to have a rational debate focused on something other than defeating the enemy du jour.


Modern Enlightenment Culture

A leader in The Times commented:

'Modern enlightenment culture [sic] finds it hard to grasp the notion of radical evil. When theocratic fanatics destroyed the Twin Towers on 9/11 and bombed the Spanish train network in 2004 and the London Underground on 7/7, the instinct of many western commentators was to wonder what Europe and America had done to provoke such hatred. The correct answer was "nothing".' (Leading article, 'Beating the barbarians,' The Times, August 12, 2014)

Modern enlightenment culture also finds it hard to grasp the notion that it has itself committed crimes of awesome violence.

The Times lamented the failure of 'a decade of efforts to build democracy in Iraq' – a level of wilful blindness that would have stunned the philosophes. Inevitably, The Times supported yet another war as the only enlightened option:

'A coherent strategy of striking jihadist targets, arming the peshmerga and supporting a new, inclusive Iraqi administration could salvage stability in Iraq. Anything less hands victory to barbarians.'

In 2005, journalist Seymour Hersh reported that between autumn 2003 and late autumn 2004, the US 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped '500,000 tons of ordnance [on Iraq], and that is two million, 500-pound bombs'. Perhaps these latest US bombs will do better.

The Times echoed the Guardian on Isis:

'The organisation is a threat to the peoples of the region, to the stability of the Middle East and to Britain directly.' (Leading article, 'State of Violence,' The Times, August 18, 2014)

David Aaronovitch has been playing his usual role of demoniser-in-chief, with his familiar calls for war to prevent - what else? - 'effective genocide', this time in Iraq (Gaza being someone else's problem). As usual, the Nazis are the obvious comparison:

'Isis are very like the SS in occupied eastern Europe. There is the same idea of a mystical destiny that doesn't just permit killing, but demands it... In service of that vision, the pits had to be filled with bodies.' (Aaronovitch, 'Isis will just keep killing - until we stop them,' The Times, August 11, 2014)

And:

'Just like the SS, Isis men will kill more and more... stopping only when they are utterly defeated and every executioner - even if he is such a gentle boy from Purley - is dead or tried.'

Therapists describe a phenomenon called 'projection' – the 'enemy' acts as a screen on which the analysand projects precisely the qualities he or she is unwilling to face in him or herself. Thus, since 1945, the West has endlessly left pits 'filled with bodies' driven by the mystical 'manifest destiny' of 'American exceptionalism'. Aaronovitch himself summed up the thinking on August 14:

'Something broke in western policy when Ed Miliband won the vote preventing action in Syria after the chemical attacks this time last year... The message was clear to everyone and is the worst you can ever send - that the cops have left town.' (Aaronovitch, 'Only military action will defeat the jihadis,' The Times, August 14, 2014)

'We' are 'the cops'. Who voted 'us' Globocop? No-one, 'we' seized the role by right of military might. And so we find that the claim can again be exactly reversed. Are we really playing the role of 'cops'? Well, cops are not supposed to illegally invade countries, overthrow governments, flatten cities, steal resources, commit mass torture. What kind of people do that? Villains, criminals, terrorists.

To look hard in the mirror of the Official Enemy is to see the truth of who 'we' really are.

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2014/773-damascene-conversions.html

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Bombing Syria

The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.

That means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate – after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.

The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).

It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad’s enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters it that it be at war, always and forever.

Six weeks of bombing hasn’t budged ISIS in Iraq, but it has caused ISIS recruitment to soar. That’s all predictable: the U.S. has known for years that what fuels and strengthens anti-American sentiment (and thus anti-American extremism) is exactly what they keep doing: aggression in that region. If you know that, then they know that. At this point, it’s more rational to say they do all of this not despite triggering those outcomes, but because of it. Continuously creating and strengthening enemies is a feature, not a bug, as it is what then justifies the ongoing greasing of the profitable and power-vesting machine of Endless War.

If there is anyone who actually believes that the point of all of this is a moral crusade to vanquish the evil-doers of ISIS (as the U.S. fights alongside its close Saudi friends), please read Professor As’ad AbuKhalil’s explanation today of how Syria is a multi-tiered proxy war. As the disastrous Libya “intervention” should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the U.S. does not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/bombing-syria/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

Back to the Future in Iraq

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered a speech at Riverside Church in New York City titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” In it, he went after the war of that moment and the money that the U.S. was pouring into it as symptoms of a societal disaster. President Lyndon Johnson’s poverty program was being “broken and eviscerated,” King said from the pulpit of that church, “as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war… We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.” Twice more in that ringing speech he spoke of “the madness of Vietnam” and called for it to cease.

Don’t think of that as just a preacher’s metaphor. There was a genuine madness on the loose — and not just in the “free-fire zones” of Vietnam but in policy circles here in the United States, in the frustration of top military and civilian officials who felt gripped by an eerie helplessness as they widened a terrible war on the ground and in the air. They were, it seemed, incapable of imagining any other path than escalation in the face of disaster and possible defeat. Even in the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when there was a brief attempt to paint that lost war in a more heroic hue (“a noble cause,” the president called it), that sense of madness, or at least of resulting mental illness, lingered. It remained embedded in a phrase then regularly applied to Americans who were less than willing to once again head aggressively into the world. They were suffering from, it was said, “Vietnam syndrome.”

Today, almost 25 years into what someday might simply be called America’s Iraq War (whose third iteration we’ve recently entered), you can feel that a similar “madness” has Washington by the throat. Just as King noted of the Vietnam era, since 9/11 American domestic programs and agencies have been starved while money poured into the coffers of the Pentagon and an increasingly bloated national security state. The results have been obvious. In the face of the spreading Ebola virus in West Africa, for instance, the president can no longer turn to civilian agencies or organizations for help, but has to call on the U.S. military in an “Ebola surge” — even our language has been militarized — although its forces are not known for their skills, successes, or spendthrift ways when it comes to civilian “humanitarian” or nation-building operations.

We’ve already entered the period when strategy, such as it is, falls away, and our leaders feel strangely helpless before the drip, drip, drip of failure and the unbearable urge for further escalation. At this point, in fact, the hysteria in Washington over the Islamic State seems a pitch or two higher than anything experienced in the Vietnam years. A fiercely sectarian force in the Middle East has captured the moment and riveted attention, even though its limits in a region full of potential enemies seem obvious and its “existential threat” to the U.S. consists of the possibility that some stray American jihadi might indeed try to harm a few of us. Call it emotional escalation in a Washington that seems remarkably unhinged.

It took Osama bin Laden $400,000 to $500,000, 19 hijackers, and much planning to produce the fallen towers of 9/11 and the ensuing hysteria in this country that launched the disastrous, never-ending Global War on Terror. It took the leaders of the Islamic State maybe a few hundred bucks and two grim videos, featuring three men on a featureless plain in Syria, to create utter, blind hysteria here. Think of this as confirmation of Karl Marx’s famous comment that the first time is tragedy, but the second is farce.

One clear sign of the farcical nature of our moment is the inability to use almost any common word or phrase in an uncontested way if you put “Iraq” or “Islamic State” or “Syria” in the same sentence. Remember when the worst Washington could come up with in contested words was the meaning of “is” in Bill Clinton’s infamous statement about his relationship with a White House intern? Linguistically speaking, those were the glory days, the utopian days of official Washington.

Just consider three commonplace terms of the moment: “war,” “boots on the ground,” and “combat.” A single question links them all: Are we or aren’t we? And to that, in each case, Washington has no acceptable answer. On war, the secretary of state said no, we weren’t; the White House and Pentagon press offices announced that yes, we were; and the president fudged. He called it “targeted action” and spoke of America’s “unique capability to mobilize against an organization like ISIL,” but God save us, what it wasn’t and wouldn’t be was a “ground war.”

Only with Congress did a certain clarity prevail. Nothing it did really mattered. Whatever Congress decided or refused to decide when it came to going to war would be fine and dandy, because the White House was going to do “it” anyway. “It,” of course, was the Clintonesque “is” of present-day Middle Eastern policy. Who knew what it was, but here was what it wasn’t and would never be: “boots on the ground.” Admittedly, the president has already dispatched 1,600 booted troops to Iraq’s ground (with more to come), but they evidently didn’t qualify as boots on the ground because, whatever they were doing, they would not be going into “combat” (which is evidently the only place where military boots officially hit the ground). The president has been utterly clear on this. There would be no American “combat mission” in Iraq. Unfortunately, “combat” turns out to be another of those dicey terms, since those non-boots had barely landed in Iraq when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey started to raise the possibility that some of them, armed, might one day be forward deployed with Iraqi troops as advisers and spotters for U.S. air power in future battles for Iraq’s northern cities. This, the White House now seems intent on defining as not being a “combat mission.”

And we’re only weeks into an ongoing operation that could last years. Imagine the pretzeling of the language by then. Perhaps it might be easiest if everyone — Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, and Washington’s pundits — simply agreed that the United States is at “war-ish” in Iraq, with boots on the ground-ish in potentially combat-ish situations.

http://zcomm.org/znetarticle/back-to-the-future-in-iraq/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

SYRIA: THE EXPANSION OF THE WAR ON TERROR

(London, UK) The start of a war in Syria and Iraq marks the latest chapter in the War on Terror-without-end that began after 9-11. And like the wars that came before it, we are likely to see similar consequences. Asim Qureshi, Research Director of CAGE [1], said:

1. “Bombing Syria and Iraq will unleash more hatred and violence against the West. This has already begun with an IS spokesperson yesterday calling on IS supporters to target Western countries [2], a number of beheadings over the last several weeks, and the continued detention of Briton Alan Henning.

Western foreign policy has been the premier underlying grievance in violence against the West: the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan led to bloodshed on the streets of Britain and America, while it gave rise to groups such as IS; the bombing of Syria and Iraq will only make things worse.”

2. “The freedom of all citizens is at risk: A speech by Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, in which he said that the ‘delicate balance between freedom and security’ [3] may have to shift 'for some time to come' provides a deep insight into what is to come from Western governments: a hawkish foreign policy is often accompanied by a hawkish domestic policy. The bombings of Iraq and Syria will give governments a pretext for trampling on civil liberties and further entrenching the security state, something that has already taken place since the beginning of the War on Terror.

CAGE has already shown how domestic counter-terrorism policy is playing an increasingly important role in the marginalisation of British Muslims [4] - domestic policies are not only being intensified with great impact on the Muslim community, but will also strip long-held freedoms away from all British citizens.”

3. “CAGE continues to call for an end to the War on Terror, a counter-productive campaign of violence that has violated the rights of countless individuals and the norms of international law. Nearly 13 years since the invasion of Afghanistan, the West still continues to open up new fronts in what has become a vicious cycle of violence and suffering.”

http://www.cageuk.org/article/syria-expansion-war-terror

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Sorry to inflict this on you all, Obama at the UN

Obama sends Russia a cold war blast and seeks distance from ‘war on terror’

Analysis: president’s speech at UN general assembly aims to strike delicate balance and rally world to tackle Isis extremism

Barack Obama sought to strike a delicate balance at the UN general assembly on Wednesday. He had come to New York to rally the world for a new struggle against Islamic extremism – but at the same time he had to reassure his global audience it was not about to witness a replay of George W Bush’s “war on terror”.

Moreover, the president had to achieve that feat at a time when the Security Council is at its most divided for over a decade, with deep rifts between the West and Russia over Ukraine and Syria. The tone of Obama’s remarks addressed towards Moscow were as stern as anything heard from an American president since well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an echo of the language of the cold war, he portrayed Russia as the very antithesis of everything America stood for, and invited the world to choose between the two very models they represented.

However, most of the speech was devoted to the new challenges to world order presented by the Isis extremists in Syria and Iraq. He portrayed “the cancer of violent extremism that has ravaged so many parts of the Muslim world” as the most important challenge facing the world as it was “the one issue that risks a cycle of conflict that could derail progress” on all the other challenges facing the international community.

While acknowledging that terrorism was nothing new, the president suggested that the movement’s extreme brutality coupled with its mastery of tools of globalisation such as social media made the group a particularly potent threat.

“With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels – killing as many innocent civilians as possible; and employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities,” he said.

Speaking hours after news broke that the US-led air campaign against the group had been extended from Iraq into Syria, he vowed that the Isis militants (for which he used the acronym Isil) would be degraded and then destroyed.

“We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back Isil. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground. We will work to cut off their financing, and to stop the flow of fighters into and out of the region,” he said. “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort. Those who have joined Isil should leave the battlefield while they can.”

In the tenor of his remarks, Obama made it clear he was aware that his address risked sounding like an echo of UN speeches made over 10 years ago by President George W Bush – an era marked by widespread distrust of the US and its motives. It is an impression deepened by the widespread doubts voiced over the legal underpinning of the campaign in Syria. But Obama tried to distance his campaign against extremism from his predecessor’s “war on terror”.

“I have made it clear that America will not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism,” Obama pledged. With the Bush legacy clearly in mind, he promised: “America will be a respectful and constructive partner. We will neither tolerate terrorist safe havens, nor act as an occupying power.”

Acknowledging that “no external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds”, the president said that the rejection of sectarianism and extremism was a “generational task” for the people of the Middle East. He emphasised that Washington was now seeking as wide a coalition as possible to combat the influence of Isis, starting in the Islamic world. “It is the task of all great religions to accommodate devout faith with a modern, multicultural world,” he says, calling for the battle of ideas to be taken online.

“That means contesting the space that terrorists occupy – including the Internet and social media. Their propaganda has coerced young people to travel abroad to fight their wars, and turned students into suicide bombers. We must offer an alternative vision,” he said, and he praised the #notinmyname campaign launched by young British Muslims.

Obama addressed head-on the deep divide between the West and Russia that has threatened to paralyse the work of the UN Security Council. He laid out the details of Moscow’s intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine saying its actions in Ukraine represented a threat to the international order established after the second world war and symbolised by the UN.

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right – a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilised people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed,” Obama said. “America stands for something different. We believe that right makes might – that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future.”

Obama stressed that the US was willing to cooperate with Moscow on the pressing global challenges of the day, such as climate change and the spread of the Ebola virus, but only “if Russia changes course.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/24/barack-obama-un-speech-warn-russia-fight-isis-analysis

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Bombing will make ISIS problem worse say MPs, trade unionists, campaigners, writers, filmmakers, actors

Bombing will make the ISIS problem worse

Along with most British people, we opposed an attack on Iraq in 2003. The brutal reality of the invasion and occupation confirmed our worst fears. At least half a million died and the country was devastated.

Now, less than three years after US troops were pulled out, the US is bombing again. The British government is considering joining military action, not just in Iraq but in Syria too.

All the experience of the varied military action taken by the west in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya shows that such interventions kill innocents, destroy infrastructure and fragment societies, and in the process spread bitterness and violence.

While we all reject the politics and methods of Isis, we have to recognise that it is in part a product of the last disastrous intervention, which helped foster sectarianism and regional division. It has also been funded and aided by some of the west’s allies, especially Saudi Arabia.

More bombing, let alone boots on the ground, will only exacerbate the situation. We urge the government to rule out any further military action in Iraq or Syria.

http://stopwar.org.uk/news/bombing-will-make-the-isis-problem-worse

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Ten reasons why the British parliament should vote no to bombing Iraq

On Friday 26 September, David Cameron will ask MPs to vote in favour of joining the US bombing campaign in Iraq and take the UK into yet another Middle East war.

Ten reasons why MPs should vote no

1) The West's last operation in Iraq ended just three years ago. For those with a short memory it didn't go well. More than half a million people died, millions fled the country and Iraq's infrastructure was devastated. The operation generated deep resentment against the West.

2) The current chaos in Iraq - including the rise of the reactionary Isis - is largely the result of the eight years of that occupation. On top of the trauma of the assault, sectarian division was built into the operation. Elections were organised along communal lines and the authorities used sectarianism to undermine resistance. By 2006, Baghdad had been turned from an integrated, modern city into a patchwork of ruined communal ghetoes.The open discrimination of the Western-backed Maliki government detonated a Sunni insurgency last year that helped fuel the rise of Isis in Iraq.

3) Bombing always kills and terrorises civilians. Recent coalition bombing raids on Raqqa in Syria have brought death and panic to its residents. One civilian there told western reporters 'I would not wish them on my worst enemy'.

4) All three of Britain's major military interventions in the last thirteen years have been disasters. In 2001 we were told an invasion of Afghanistan would rout the Taliban. Thirteen years and tens of thousands of deaths later the Taliban have grown in strength and the country is broken. The bombing of Libya in 2011 was justified as essential to stop a massacre by Gaddafi. After it began an estimated 30,000 were killed in a terrifying cycle of violence. The country is now a failed state with no real government.

5) The coalition that has been put together for the bombing of Syria - apparently in an effort to give the attacks legitimacy - comprises some of the most ruthless and benighted regimes in the region. Human Rights Watch reports that nineteen people were beheaded in Saudi Aarbia in August. Qatar and UAE have notorious human rights' records that include the use of forced labour. All three have funded violent Jihadi groups in the region.

6) Bombing raids will increase hatred of the west. One of the wider results of the 'War on Terror' has been to spread Al- Quaida and other terrorist groups across whole regions of the world. In 2001 there were relatively small numbers of such militants, centred mainly on Pakistan. Now there are groups across the middle east, central Asia and Africa.

7) The timing is cynical. David Cameron has recalled parliament to debate an attack on Iraq just two days before the start of the last Tory Conference before the general election. This at a time when he is engaged in pushing a right wing, nationalist agenda for party political purposes.

8) Mission creep is almost inevitable. There are already more than a thousand US military active in Iraq and senior US military figures are arguing they should now be openly involved in fighting. In Britain a growing number of voices from Tony Blair to Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb are recommending British boots on the ground.

9) The attack will cost money much needed for other things. One Tomahawk cruise missile costs £850,000, enough to pay the annual salary of 28 NHS nurses. The US has already fired about 50 of these missiles at Isis targets in Syria. It is estimated Britain spent between £500 million and one billion pounds bombing Libya in 2011. This was roughly the same as the savings made by ending the education maintenance allowance (EMA); or three times the amount saved by scrapping the disability living allowance.

10) The vote will have a global impact. On Friday, MPs have a chance to make a real difference on matters of peace and war. The US wants Britain on board to prove it is not isolated. When MPs blocked Cameron's last push for airstrikes, on Syria a year ago, they stopped Obama launching attacks too. A no vote could help reverse the drift towards another full scale western war in the middle east.



Ten reasons why the British parliament should vote no to bombing Iraq - Stop the War Coalition

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Looks like we've been brainwashed into another war

How Obama and Cameron set themselves up for a punch in the mouth from ISIS

As the UK prepares for another war in Iraq, David Cameron has no more idea of what he is getting into in this war than Tony Blair did in 2003, says Patrick Cockburn.

On 26 September 2014, MPs in the UK parliament voted 524 to 43 in favour of taking Britain into another Iraq war.

BRITAIN IS SET to join the air campaign against Isis in Iraq, but, going by David Cameron’s speech to the UN General Assembly, the Government has no more idea of what it is getting into in this war than Tony Blair did in 2003.

Mr Cameron says that there should be “no rushing to join a conflict without a clear plan”, but he should keep in mind the warning of the American boxer Mike Tyson that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.

The Prime Minister says that lessons have been learned from British military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan but it is telling that he did not mention intervention in Libya for which he himself was responsible.

In fact, there is a much closer parallel between Britain joining an air war in Libya in 2011 than Mr Blair’s earlier misadventures which Mr Cameron was happy to highlight.

In Libya, what was sold to the public as a humanitarian bid by Nato forces to protect the people of Benghazi from Muammar Gaddafi, rapidly escalated into a successful effort to overthrow the Libyan leader. The result three years on is that Libya is in permanent chaos with predatory militias reducing their country to ruins as they fight each other for power.

Whatever the original intentions of Britain and the US, their armed intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 has been to produce devastating conflicts that have not ended.

It has become common over the years to describe Iraq as a quagmire for foreign powers and it is no less so today than when President Bush and Mr Blair launched their invasion 11 years ago.

Mr Cameron draws comfort from the fact that the UN Security Council has received “a clear request from the Iraqi government to support it in its military action” against Isis. But this is a government who lost five divisions, a third of its army of 350,000 soldiers, when attacked by 1,300 Isis fighters in Mosul in June. Its three most senior generals jumped into a helicopter and fled to the Kurdish Iraqi capital Arbil, abandoning their men. It was one of the most disgraceful routs in history.

Mr Cameron blames all this on the mis-government of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose sectarian and kleptocratic rule has just ended. But it is doubtful if much has changed since Mr Maliki was replaced by the more personable Haider al-Abadi, whose government is still dominated by Shia religious parties. Mr Cameron’s stated belief that he is supporting the creation of a government that is inclusive of Sunni, Shia, Kurds and Christians is a pipe dream.

It is important to stress that there is little sign that US air strikes in Iraq, which Britain is planning to supplement, will be able to turn the tide against Isis. There have been 194 US air strikes in Iraq since 8 August but the militants are still advancing six weeks after the first bombs and missiles exploded.

In a little reported battle at Saqlawiya, 40 miles west of Baghdad, last Sunday, Isis fighters besieged and overran an Iraqi army base and then ambushed the retreating soldiers. An officer who escaped was quoted as saying that “of an estimated 1,000 soldiers in Saqlawiya, only about 200 managed to flee”.

Surviving Iraqi soldiers blame their military leaders for failing to supply them with ammunition, food and water while Isis claims to have destroyed or captured five tanks and 41 Humvees. The message here is that if the US, Britain and their allies intend to prop up a weak Iraqi government and army, it is misleading to pretend that this can be done without a much more significant level of intervention.

In 2003, Mr Bush and Mr Blair claimed to be fighting only Saddam Hussein and his regime and were astonished to find themselves fighting the whole Sunni community in Iraq. This could very easily happen again in both Iraq and Syria.

Many Sunni in Mosul and Raqqa, Isis’s Syrian capital, do not like Isis. They are alienated by its violence and primaeval social norms such as treating women as chattels. But they are even more frightened of resurgent Iraqi or Syrian armies accompanied by murderous pro-government militias subduing their areas with the assistance of allied air strikes. The Sunni will have no option but to fight or flee.

The US is hoping that it can split the Sunni community away from Isis in a repeat of what happened in 2007 when many Sunni tribes and neighbourhoods took up arms against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). But this is less likely to happen this time round because Isis is stronger than its predecessor and takes precautions against a stab in the back. Mr Cameron cited the example of the al-Sheitaat tribe in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, who rose up against Isis only for their rebellion to be crushed and 700 of their tribesmen to be executed.

Mr Cameron produced a laundry list of four measures that will make the present intervention in Iraq different from past failures. They are a ragbag of suggestions, high on moral tone but short on specificity and give the impression that Tony Blair may have been looking over the shoulder of Mr Cameron’s speech writer.

For instance, we should defeat “the ideology of extremism that is the root cause of terrorism”, but there is nothing concrete about the origins of this narrow and bigoted ideology which condemns Shia as heretics and apostates, treats women as second-class citizens and maligns Christians and Jews.

In fact, the belief system of Isis is little different from Wahhabism, the variant of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Supported by Saudi wealth, Wahhabism has gained an ever-increasing influence over mainstream Sunni Islam in the last 50 years. Politicians like Mr Cameron are much happier condemning school governors in Birmingham for religious extremism than they are complaining to the Saudi ambassador in London about the virulent sectarianism of Saudi school books.

The US and British alliance with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan – all Sunni monarchies – creates other problems. It is hypocritical for Mr Cameron to pretend that US and UK intervention are in support of democratic, accountable and inclusive governments when he is in a coalition with the last theocratic absolute monarchies on earth.

But the most short-sighted and self-defeating part of Mr Cameron’s justification for British intervention is to do with the war in Syria. He still claims he wants to change the government of Syria, a policy in which there is “a political transition and an end to Assad’s brutality”. He adds the shop-worn observation that “our enemies’ enemy is not our friend. It is another enemy.”

Since Mr Assad controls almost all the larger Syrian cities, he is not going to leave power. What Cameron is in practice proposing is a recipe for a continuing war and it is this that will make it impossible to defeat the jihadi militants, for Isis is the child of war.

Its leaders have been fighting for much of their lives and are good at it. They and their followers interact with the rest of the world through violence. And so long as the wars in Syria and Iraq continue, then many in their Sunni Arab communities will fear the enemies of Isis even more than Isis.

What the plans of President Obama and Mr Cameron lack is a diplomatic plan to bring the war between the non-Isis parties in Syria to an end. The two sides fear and hate each other too much for any political solution, but it may be possible for the foreign backers of the two sides to pressure them into agreeing a ceasefire. Neither is in a position to win against each other, but both are threatened by Isis, which inflicted stinging defeats on both Assad and anti-Assad forces in the summer.

Britain should press for such a truce even if it is only engaged militarily in Iraq, because it is the outcome of the war in Syria that will determine what happens in Iraq. It was the Syrian war beginning in 2011 that reignited Iraq’s civil war and not the misdeeds of Mr Maliki.

If Isis is to be combated effectively, then the US, Britain and their allies need to establish a closer relationship with those who are actually fighting Isis, which currently include the Syrian Army, the Syrian Kurds, Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iranian-backed militias and Iran itself. The necessity for this is being made tragically clear in the Syria Kurdish enclave of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border, where Isis fighters have already driven 200,000 Kurds into Turkey.

If Mr Obama and Mr Cameron genuinely intend to rely on plans to combat Isis that they have just outlined, then they are, as Mike Tyson would have predicted, setting themselves and their countries up for a punch in the mouth.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/how-obama-and-cameron-are-setting-themselves-up-for-a-punch-in-the-mouth-from-isis

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

Dragged into a war by clowns who can't even run a railway

Wars cause far more atrocities than they prevent. In fact, wars make atrocities normal and easy. If you don’t like atrocities, don’t start wars. It is a simple rule, and not hard to follow.

The only mercy in war, as all soldiers know, is a swift victory by one side or the other. Yet our subservient, feeble Parliament on Friday obediently shut its eyes tight and launched itself yet again off the cliff of war. It did so even though – in a brief moment of truth – the Prime Minister admitted that such a war will be a very long one, and has no visible end.

The arguments used in favour of this decision – in a mostly unpacked House of Commons – were pathetic beyond belief. Most of them sounded as if their users had got them out of a cornflakes packet, or been given them by Downing Street, which is much the same.

Wild and unverifiable claims were made that Islamic State plans attacks on us here in our islands. If so, such attacks are far more likely now than they were before we decided to bomb them. So, if your main worry is such attacks, you should be against British involvement.

The same cheap and alarmist argument was made year after year to justify what everyone now knows was our futile and costly presence in Afghanistan. Why should the Afghans need to come here to kill British people when we sent our best to Helmand, to be blown up and shot for reasons that have never been explained?

Beyond that, it was all fake compassion. Those who favour this action claim to care about massacres and persecution. But in fact they want to be seen to care. Bombs won’t save anyone. Weeks of bombing have already failed to tip the balance in Iraq, whose useless, demoralised army continues to run away.

A year ago, we were on the brink of aiding the people we now want to bomb, and busily encouraging the groups which have now become Islamic State. Now they are our hated foes. Which side are we actually on? Do we know? Do we have any idea what we are doing?

The answer is that we don’t. That is why, in a scandal so vast it is hardly ever mentioned, the Chilcot report on the 2003 Iraq War has still not been published. Who can doubt that it has been suppressed because it reveals that our Government is dim and ill-informed?

As this country now has hardly any soldiers, warships, military aircraft or bombs, Friday’s warmongers resorted to the only weapon they have in plentiful supply – adjectives (‘vicious, barbaric’, etc etc). Well, I have better adjectives. Those who presume to rule us are ignorant and incompetent and learn nothing from their own mistakes. How dare these people, who can barely manage to keep their own country in one piece, presume to correct the woes of the world?

Beforethey’re allowed to play out their bathtub bombing fantasies, oughtn’t they to be asked to show they can manage such dull things as schools (no discipline), border control (vanished), crime (so out of control that the truth has to be hidden), transport (need I say?) and hospitals (hopelessly overloaded and increasingly dangerous)?

None of them will now even mention their crass intervention in Libya, which turned that country into a swamp of misery and unleashed upon Europe an uncontrollable wave of desperate economic migrants who are now arriving in Southern England in shockingly large numbers.

We have for years happily done business with Saudi Arabia, often sending our Royal family there. It is hard to see why we should now be so worried about the establishment of another fiercely intolerant Sunni Muslim oil state, repressive, horrible to women and given to cutting people’s heads off in public. Since we proudly tout our 1998 surrender to the IRA as a wonderful and praiseworthy peace deal, it is hard to see why we are now so hoity-toity about doing business with terror, or paying ransom.

We gave the whole of Northern Ireland to the IRA, to ransom the City of London and to protect our frightened political class from bombs. Why can we not pay (as other NATO members do) to release innocent hostages? We conceded the principle of ransom years ago. Talk about swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.

How is it that we have allowed our country to be governed by people so ignorant of history and geography, so unable to learn from their mistakes and so immune to facts and logic?

Can we do anything about it? I fear not.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another perspective.

Statement regarding UK military action in Iraq 2014

London, UK, September 26th 2014 – The UK parliament has today voted to join US led air strikes in Iraq. In light of this we would say the following:

Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain, made the following points:

1. Western intervention will only cause more problems

The only confirmed fact about Western intervention in the Muslim world is that is has caused chaos and destruction for decades.

Britain and France drew the fault lines and schisms – that they called borders – almost a century ago. They, along with the United States have installed and sustained most of the despots who have ruled the region since then.

The first Gulf War in 1991 and subsequent sanctions led to the death of hundreds of thousands of children and a humanitarian crisis, only to be followed by war that is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands more.

The US/UK led Iraq war in 2003 led to the current violence, ethnic and sectarian strife in Iraq, and its break up in all but name.

We believe the prospect of another Iraq war – the third in two decades – will only act as a catalyst to sending the Muslim world into further free fall.

2. More Western bombing is the not the solution to the problems of the Middle East

The addiction of the US/UK to bombing the Muslim world – whether with Tornado aircraft or unmanned drones – is clear for all to see. The numbers of innocent men, women and children killed by their interventions is too many to count.

It is clear that as Western powers see Sykes-Picot borders breaking down, they have looked for an excuse to reshape the Middle East in an image that maintains their interference.

Yet they created the condition for chaos and have no place in providing a solution.

3. The Rulers in the Muslim world are shameless hypocrites who care nothing for the Ummah

Whilst the Gulf States have run to fulfil the West’s interests in bombing Iraq, they remained mute over the massacre of Muslims in Gaza. They did nothing to intervene effectively when Assad was massacring his population over the last three years.

This episode merely exposes their shamelessness, their true loyalties and their inability to act independent of their paymasters and puppet masters.

4. ISIS has much to answer for

ISIS has much to answer for its false declaration of Khilafah (Caliphate) and its rampage through Ash-Shaam causing more conflict with other Muslim groups than against the Assad regime.

It is clearly not a threat to the integrity of any Western state, yet its indiscriminate killings and creation of chaos give an excuse for military intervention and allows Islam to be demonised across the globe.

5. A Message to Muslims

The idea that Muslims are either with ISIS or with the West is absurd. A Muslim, wherever he or she is, should understand what is right and wrong from an Islamic perspective and be steadfast on the true position – not choosing sides as if this were a football match!

We must not be blind to the colonial agenda at play here and become sheep who side with the West just because this week they decided ISIS is the most important issue in the world.

Moreover, it is sad that some Muslims fuel the war propaganda by coming out shouting louder about ISIS’s crimes now than they did when there was in-fighting between ISIS and the other Islamic brigades, or than they did about Assad’s larger crimes or those of the Zionist occupiers of Palestine.

At the same time it is clearly not our place to make excuses for ISIS when they have done wrong and should realize it is a symptom of a wider destabilization of the Middle East over decades.

Muslims should be principled against Western military intervention and we should be principled in calling for the Islamic alternative that would end the decades of chaos and insecurity – that is a real Khilafah Rashidah that would be a beacon of justice not persecution, and to reject the false claims of those who have usurped its name.

http://www.hizb.org.uk/press-releases/statement-regarding-uk-military-action-in-iraq-2014

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update. One of the saner contributions in the parliamentary debate.

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece.

Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world?

Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East

Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed?

How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis. Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August. They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure” once Isis has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida”.

What humanitarian principle instructs you to stop there? In Gaza this year, 2,100 Palestinians were massacred: including people taking shelter in schools and hospitals. Surely these atrocities demand an air war against Israel? And what’s the moral basis for refusing to liquidate Iran? Mohsen Amir-Aslani was hanged there last week for making “innovations in the religion” (suggesting that the story of Jonah in the Qur’an was symbolic rather than literal). Surely that should inspire humanitarian action from above? Pakistan is crying out for friendly bombs: an elderly British man, Mohammed Asghar, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, is, like other blasphemers, awaiting execution there after claiming to be a holy prophet. One of his prison guards has already shot him in the back.

Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?

The humanitarian arguments aired in parliament last week, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East and west Asia. By this means you could end all human suffering, liberating the people of these regions from the vale of tears in which they live.

Perhaps this is the plan: Barack Obama has now bombed seven largely Muslim countries, in each case citing a moral imperative. The result, as you can see in Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia and Syria, has been the eradication of jihadi groups, of conflict, chaos, murder, oppression and torture. Evil has been driven from the face of the Earth by the destroying angels of the west.

Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success. Yes, the agenda and practices of Isis are disgusting. It murders and tortures, terrorises and threatens. As Obama says, it is a “network of death”. But it’s one of many networks of death. Worse still, a western crusade appears to be exactly what Isis wants.

Already Obama’s bombings have brought Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, a rival militia affiliated to al-Qaida, together. More than 6,000 fighters have joined Isis since the bombardment began. They dangled the heads of their victims in front of the cameras as bait for war planes. And our governments were stupid enough to take it.

And if the bombing succeeds? If – and it’s a big if – it manages to tilt the balance against Isis, what then? Then we’ll start hearing once more about Shia death squads and the moral imperative to destroy them too – and any civilians who happen to get in the way. The targets change; the policy doesn’t. Never mind the question, the answer is bombs. In the name of peace and the preservation of life, our governments wage perpetual war.

While the bombs fall, our states befriend and defend other networks of death. The US government still refuses – despite Obama’s promise – to release the 28 redacted pages from the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, which document Saudi Arabian complicity in the US attack. In the UK, in 2004 the Serious Fraud Office began investigating allegations of massive bribes paid by the British weapons company BAE to Saudi ministers and middlemen. Just as crucial evidence was about to be released, Tony Blair intervened to stop the investigation. The biggest alleged beneficiary was Prince Bandar. The SFO was investigating a claim that, with the approval of the British government, he received £1bn in secret payments from BAE.

And still it is said to go on. Last week’s Private Eye, drawing on a dossier of recordings and emails, alleges that a British company has paid £300m in bribes to facilitate weapons sales to the Saudi national guard. When a whistleblower in the company reported these payments to the British Ministry of Defence, instead of taking action it alerted his bosses. He had to flee the country to avoid being thrown into a Saudi jail.

There are no good solutions that military intervention by the UK or the US can engineer. There are political solutions in which our governments could play a minor role: supporting the development of effective states that don’t rely on murder and militias, building civic institutions that don’t depend on terror, helping to create safe passage and aid for people at risk. Oh, and ceasing to protect, sponsor and arm selected networks of death. Whenever our armed forces have bombed or invaded Muslim nations, they have made life worse for those who live there. The regions in which our governments have intervened most are those that suffer most from terrorism and war. That is neither coincidental nor surprising.

Yet our politicians affect to learn nothing. Insisting that more killing will magically resolve deep-rooted conflicts, they scatter bombs like fairy dust.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/30/isis-bomb-muslim-world-air-strikes-saudi-arabia

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece.

Is There a Plan B?

The Futility of Bombing ISIS

Is there a “Plan B” in Barack Obama’s brain? Or in David Cameron’s, for that matter? I mean, we’re vaguely told that air strikes against the ferocious “Islamic State” may go on for “a long time”. But how long is “long”? Are we just going to go on killing Arabs and bombing and bombing and bombing until, well, until we go on bombing? What happens if our Kurdish and non-existent “moderate” Syrian fighters – described by Vice-President Joe Biden last week as largely “shopkeepers” – don’t overthrow the monstrous “Islamic State”? Then I suppose we are going to bomb and bomb and bomb again. As a Lebanese colleague of mine asked in an article last week, what is Obama going to do next? Has he thought of that?

After Alan Henning’s beheading, the gorge rises at the thought of even discussing such things. But distance sometimes creates distorting mirrors, none so more than when it involves the distance between the Middle East and Washington, London, Paris and, I suppose, Canberra. In Beirut, I’ve been surveying the Arab television and press – and it’s interesting to see the gulf that divides what the Arabs see and hear, and what the West sees and hears. The gruesome detail is essential here to understand how Arabs have already grown used to jihadi barbarity. They have seen full video clips of the execution of Iraqis – if shot in the back of the head, they have come to realise, a victim’s blood pours from the front of his face – and they have seen video clips of Syrian soldiers not only beheaded but their heads then barbecued and carried through villages on sticks.

Understandably, Alan Henning’s murder didn’t get much coverage in the Middle East, although television did show his murder video – which Western television did not. But it didn’t make many front pages. Mostly the fighting between jihadis and Kurds at Ein al-Arab (Kobane) and the festival for the Muslim Eid – and the Haj in Saudi Arabia – dominated news coverage. In general, the Arab world was as uninterested in Henning’s murder as we have been, for example, in the car bomb that killed 50 Syrian children in Homs last week. Had they been British children, of course…

But I’m struck by friends who’ve asked me why we are really carrying out air strikes when we won’t put soldiers on the ground. They have noted how the families of American hostages – fruitlessly seeking mercy for their loved ones – keep repeating that they cannot make Obama do what they want him to do. Yet, don’t we claim that our democratic governments can be influenced by individuals, that they do what we want?

And watching David Cameron on my Beirut television last week, I asked myself why it was really necessary for the RAF to bomb the “Islamic State”. He knows very well that our four – or is it two? – clapped-out Tornadoes are not going to make the slightest difference to any assault on jihadi forces. Indeed, he was prepared to delay RAF strikes until the Scottish referendum was over. If so, why did he not defer them altogether to save British lives?

But it was obvious at the Tory party conference that Cameron’s greatest threat came not from a man in Mosul called Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, but from a man in Bromley called Nigel Farage. Thus he waffled on about how Britain would “hunt down and bring to justice” Henning’s killers and do “everything we can to defeat this organisation in the region and at home”, using “all the assets we have to find these [remaining] hostages”. By “all the assets”, he must mean ground troops – because the RAF is already being used – and this we are not, I think, going to do. “British troops held hostage by Islamic State” is not a headline he wants to read. Thus I fear we are going to do nothing except bomb. And bomb. And bomb. Farage can’t beat that.

Like all Western leaders faced with a crisis in the Middle East, Cameron does not want to deal with it – or explore why it happened. He wants to know how to respond to it politically or, preferably, militarily. Our refusal to broadcast the “Islamic State” beheading videos is understandable – absolutely in the case of the actual murders – but by preventing Brits from actually seeing these horrors, the Government avoids having to respond to the public’s reaction: either a call for more air strikes or to demand their annulment.

This secrecy means the hostages do not exist in our imagination; they only emerge from the mist into the horrible desert sunlight when that grisly video arrives. In the region itself, hostages become public property at once, relatives giving interviews and demanding action from their governments. As I write, the families of 21 captured Lebanese soldiers faced with beheading are blocking the main Damascus- Beirut highway. A Qatari envoy has arrived to help (presumably with lots of cash).

Perhaps we need to reframe our understanding of the “Islamic State”. British Muslim leaders have said, quite rightly, that Muslims show mercy, and that the “Islamic State” is a perversion of Islam. I suspect and fear that they are wrong. Not because Islam is not merciful, but because the “Islamic State” has nothing at all to do with Islam. It is more a cult of nihilism. Their fighters have been brutalised – remember that they have endured, many of them, Saddam’s cruelty, our sanctions, Western invasion and occupation and air strikes under Saddam and now air strikes again. These people just don’t believe in justice any more. They have erased it from their minds.

If we had not supported so many brutal men in the Middle East, would things have turned out differently? Probably. If we had supported justice – I hesitate to suggest putting a certain man on trial for war crimes – would there have been a different reaction in the Middle East? In the Syrian war, they say that 200,000 have died; in Gaza more than 2,000. But in Iraq, we suspect half a million died. And whose fault was that?

The “Islamic State” are the real or spiritual children of all this. Now we face an exclusive form of nihilism, a cult as merciless as it is morbid. And we bomb and we bomb and we bomb. And then?

http://normanfinkelstein.com/2014/the-islamic-state-has-nothing-at-all-to-do-with-islam-it-is-more-a-cult-of-nihilism-their-fighters-have-been-brutalised-remember-that-they-have-endured-many-of-them-sad/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Isis fighters capture Jordanian pilot after plane came down over Syria

Jordanian authorities confirm capture of pilot after first coalition warplane lost since air strikes began in Syria three months ago

Fighters of the Islamic State (Isis) in Syria have scored a major propaganda coup by capturing a Jordanian air force pilot whose plane came down on Wednesday during an air raid by the international coalition near the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto jihadi capital.

Images posted on social media showed jubilant Isis gunmen, some of them masked, with a clearly frightened man, naked from the waist down and being dragged out of a lake. He was identified as the downed pilot and named on Twitter, which displayed his military ID card, as First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh, 26. The Jordanian military immediately described him as a “hostage”.

The F-16 was the first warplane lost since the US-led coalition began air strikes against Isis in Syria three months ago. Both the jihadists and activists reporting to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the plane had been hit by an anti-aircraft missile.

But the US military dismissed the claim, saying “evidence clearly suggests that Isil [Islamic State] did not down the aircraft”. Another image on social media showing the plane’s intact cockpit canopy suggested that the pilot might have ejected.

Hundreds of coalition air attacks have helped stem Isis advances – though more successfully in Iraq than in Syria, where they have been criticised for weakening more moderate rebel groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

The Jordanian military issued a statement confirming the capture by Isis and saying it “holds the group and its supporters responsible for the safety of the pilot and his life”. It did not name him. “During a mission on Wednesday morning conducted by several Jordanian air force planes against hideouts of the IS terrorist organisation in the Raqqa region, one of the planes went down and the pilot was taken hostage,”, the Petra news agency quoted a source from the military’s general staff as saying. The Jordanian government went into emergency session to discuss its response.

The pilot’s father, Yousef al-Kasasbeh, appealed to Isis in an interview with a Jordanian website, Saraya, saying: “May Allah plant mercy in your hearts and may you release my son.” He also urged King Abdullah to bring him home.

Jordan is one of four Arab countries – the others are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – which have been taking part in coalition attacks. Qatar is providing logistical support. But Jordan is in an especially vulnerable position: it is the only one of what the US calls the Arab “partner nations” which borders on both Syria and Iraq. It has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and there is sympathy and even support among Jordanian extremists for what is seen as an Isis fightback against Assad, Iran and Shia sectarianism.

An estimated 2,000-2,500 Jordanians are known to be fighting with Isis – the third largest foreign Arab contingent after Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

King Abdullah has been an enthusiastic participant in the coalition, describing an elemental struggle between Muslim moderation and jihadi extremism. Jordan’s much-vaunted intelligence service is thought to be playing an important clandestine role in the anti-Isis campaign. But the Jordanian government has not advertised its military involvement, perhaps fearing revenge attacks by Isis or a domestic backlash. The capture of the pilot and his obvious propaganda value to the jihadis may well now highlight the risks involved.

Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and UK have joined the US in conducting air strikes on Isis in Iraq. The US and its four Arab allies, flying sorties in Syria, will all be concerned about any new Isis capability to bring down their planes.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...warplane-syria

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Pilot’s murder may weaken Jordanian support for role in anti-Isis campaign

It is hard to see Jordan withdrawing from the US-led coalition, but King Abdullah may now become more cautious despite public’s calls to avenge Muadh al-Kasasbeh’s death

The brutal murder of Muadh al-Kasasbeh, the pilot who was captured by the Islamic State (Isis), is likely to have a devastating impact on Jordan and may in the long term undermine its role in the US-led coalition attacking jihadi targets in Syria.

The Jordanian government and its citizens will be horrified by this exceptionally cruel killing. King Abdullah will be concerned that it will weaken the already lukewarm support for the country’s military participation in the fight against Isis. That was without doubt the intention of the group, which often singles out the Hashemite monarch in its venomous rhetoric, calling him the “Jordanian tyrant”.

Even before the shock of Kasasbeh’s death, opposition to Jordan’s anti-Isis role was on the rise. It is hard to see Jordan suddenly withdrawing from the coalition, but the king may become more cautious, while appealing to his people’s sense of patriotism and injured national pride.

Calls for revenge were quickly voiced by those who had been chanting the slogan “We are all Muadh” in recent weeks.

Jordan is one of four Arab countries – the others are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – that have been taking part in anti-Isis attacks in Syria since they began last September.

But the western-backed kingdom is in an especially vulnerable position: it is the only one of what the US calls its Arab “partner nations” that shares borders with both Syria and Iraq. It has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and there is sympathy and even support among Jordanian Sunni extremists for what is seen as an Isis fightback against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.

About 200,000 people, the majority of them Sunnis, have been killed since the uprising erupted nearly four years ago. Assad is also bracketed with his close ally Iran and Shia sectarianism more generally. According to a poll last September by the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, only 62% of Jordanians consider Isis to be a terrorist organisation.

Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, a direct forerunner of Isis. The 2005 hotel bombings the group carried out in Amman, killing 60 people in what is often called Jordan’s 9/11, are a terrible reminder of the risks of homegrown fanaticism.

An estimated 2,000-2,500 Jordanians are known to be fighting with Isis – the third largest foreign Arab contingent after Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Many come from impoverished no-hope towns on the East Bank, a world away from the sophistication of Amman.

King Abdullah, who was informed of the grim news about Kasasbeh while on a visit to Washington, has been a keen participant in the anti-Isis effort. He has emphasised the need to fight the group’s extremism and brutality and its claim to be Islamic.

A government information campaign echoes the king’s message about the values of moderate Islam and the rejection of the takfiri school that Isis uses to sanction the often sectarian killing of so-called apostates. But the campaign generated mixed feelings at home from the start. A popular Twitter hashtag #thiswarisnotourwar makes the point succinctly.

“Isis sympathisers feel injustice and anger at America and Israel and always felt that Islam was under attack by Crusaders,” Muin Khoury, a leading Jordanian pollster, told the Guardian recently. “And now they don’t agree with Jordan being involved in the coalition.”

Adnan Abu Odeh, a former minister, said the government was “walking a tightrope”. Other critics suggested that Jordan had been somehow blackmailed by Washington into taking part.

Discontent became more voluble after Kasasbeh’s capture when his F16 came down near Raqqa on Christmas Eve, especially among his powerful tribe, one of several which form the loyal backbone of the Jordanian armed forces and security services. In his home town of Kerak, dozens of people protested, chanting anti-coalition slogans and calling on the king to pull out of the campaign against Isis.

Abdullah moved quickly to reassure the pilot’s family that everything was being done to secure his release. But even as he comforted Kasasbeh’s parents and wife in the royal palace in the capital, demonstrations took place outside without the police intervening – something that would be unthinkable in normal times.

Kasasbeh’s capture, one MP complained to the BBC, was “making it harder to convince Jordanians that we should be in this war in the first place”.

Official nervousness has been evident from the beginning. The Jordanian government did not advertise its military involvement, perhaps fearing revenge attacks by Isis or a domestic backlash. It had been assumed before the campaign began that Jordan would offer to use its highly regarded intelligence services rather than get involved in armed action.

Abdullah, like his father, King Hussein, is close to the US and has maintained Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in the face of domestic opposition. But the present monarch’s critics sometimes describe him as impetuous. Observers have made the comparison between the anti-Isis campaign and King Hussein’s decision to stay out of the US-led coalition that came together to eject Iraq forces from Kuwait in 1991.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/03/pilot-murder-jordan-anti-isis-campaign

[Pygoscelis]

So terrorism and intimidation and murder works in Jordan. That's what I got from the above. This only serves to encourage more barbarism. At least this time it was a pilot (solider?) instead of a reporter (civilian).

[Abz2000]

Although his takfiri "hi-ness" of jordan seems to want to portray himself as being in a position of defensible grievance, in love with his "subjects", the facts say otherwise. He hasn't been getting popular support in jordan for his illegal aggression and now the pilot incident seems to be causing a stronger galvanization on both plains.

A sifting of hearts either way,
a yawm-al-furqan.
You're either with God or you're with the Satan.

Musa (Moses) said: "Lord of the east and the west, and all that is between them, if you did but understand!"
Fir'aun (Pharaoh) said: "If you choose an*ilah*(god) other than me, I will certainly put you among the prisoners."
Quran 26:28-29

Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis

Thursday 27 November 2014*
13.24*GMT

“We are with the Islamic State and you are with Obama and the infidels,”
Ahmed Abu Ghalous a big, angry-looking man in blue prison overalls, shouts after being sentenced to five years in jail for “promoting the views of a terrorist group” on the internet. The outburst earns him a further 50 dinar (£45) fine for contempt of court....

It is a sunny morning in Amman and the three uniformed judges in Jordan’s state security court are briskly working their way through a pile of slim grey folders on the bench before them.....

....Arrests and prosecutions intensified after Isis captured Mosul in June,
but the groundwork had been laid by an earlier amendment to Jordan’s anti-terrorism law. It is estimated that 2,000 Jordanians have fought and 250 of them have died in Syria – making them the third largest Arab contingent in Isis after Saudi Arabians and Tunisians.

.......“Jordan has made a mistake entering into an international coalition,”
he argues. “The US put huge pressure on Jordan because they don’t want Isis to reach the borders of Israel.”

Muin Khoury, a professional pollster, has reached a similar conclusion about motives.
“Isis sympathisers feel injustice and anger at America and Israel and always felt that Islam was under attack by Crusaders, and now they don’t agree with Jordan being involved in the coalition.”

Adnan Abu Odeh, a respected former minister, describes the government as “walking a tightrope”....

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...h-support-isis

DESPITE ALL THE PROPAGANDA:

Oct 20 2014

....not everyone in Jordan supports membership in the coalition.
According to a poll*published*last month by the Center for Strategic Studies at University of Jordan, only 62 percent of Jordanians consider IS—and a mere 31 percent the Syria-based Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra—to be terrorist organizations.
Even more stunning, just 44 percent of Jordanians surveyed say that Al Qaeda is a terrorist group.*

But King Abdullah’s considerations extend beyond Jordan’s borders. In addition to the threat posed by IS and its ilk in Iraq and Syria, Washington—the Kingdom’s leading benefactor—has undoubtedly made clear that participation in the coalition is a necessity.
*Given the stakes, Jordan is unlikely to reverse course anytime soon. But should air operations persist in the coming years, Jordan’s coalition activities could eventually join the economy and Syrian refugees as a locus of popular frustration and discontent in the Kingdom.
*Regardless of how continued coalition participation plays out on the streets of Amman, the Center for Strategic Studies poll suggests that the war in Syria—in which a nominally Shiite regime has slaughtered nearly 200,000 mostly Sunni Muslims—remains an emotionally evocative issue for Jordanians and a font of sympathy for IS and Jabhat Al Nusra.

Of course, should these organizations perpetrate attacks in Jordan—like the 2005 Al Qaeda hotel bombings in Amman—local support for these groups could plummet.*

In the meantime, as the Palace dispatches bombing sorties and mitigates immediate threats posed by IS, the ongoing dynamic in Syria guarantees a growing and potentially destabilizing reservoir of popular support for terrorists in the Kingdom..

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119909/islamic-state-isis-support-jordan-worrying-poll

How can you dare to call it terrorism when you know about the farce the american infidels created in iraq, and which his hi-ness of jordan supported and backed - against the will of his people. And probably against his own will- just shows his impotence.

The shepherd of jordan along with every other shepherd in the region needs to understand that they will only betray themselves if they continue to support satanic infidel capitalist racist colonialism while brutalising their own people, they already know after the "arab springs" that the americans wouldn't blink twice in dropping them like hot coals if they found them to be lacking credibility amongst their populations, the best thing would be for all to submit to a united Islamic State where sovereignty is acknowledged as belonging to Almighty God.
In the current age of information, subjugating masses as slaves to the will of imperfect men, and pretending to represent democracy which never existed in reality doesn't work.

The mantra “No taxation without representation” was begun and the Stamp Act was repealed.
Two years after the Stamp Act, Charles Townshend submitted a series of acts to Parliament known as the Townshend Acts.
Once again the colonists rebelled in the form of the*Boston Massacre*and the Townshend Acts were repealed.*

After the Boston Tea Party, the British passed a series of acts known as the Intolerable Acts. These acts would push the colonists further into rebellion and create the Continental Congress

...Men were led by their own commanders and were not familiar with falling in line with a commander-in-chief of the entire army.
These are just some of the problems that Washington faced and certainly not a comprehensive list.

As the British retreated back to Boston, thousands of militiamen attacked them along the roads, inflicting heavy casualties before timely British reinforcements prevented a total disaster.
With the*Battles of Lexington and Concord, the war had begun. The militia converged on Boston, bottling up the British in the city. About 4,500 more British soldiers arrived by sea, and on June 17, 1775, British forces commanded by*General William Howe*overtook the Charlestown peninsula at the*Battle of Bunker Hill. The provincials, under William Prescott fell back, but British losses were so heavy that the attack was not followed up.

Gage was replaced and General Howe had a new respect for the provincials.

Cornwallis was running out of options.
He tried to evacuate his troops and mach to New York, but that attempt failed.

On October 17, 1781 Cornwallis prepared for surrender.

Cornwallis refused to meet formally with Washington and did not attend the surrender ceremony. Instead he sent his Brigadier General Charles O’Hara.

O’Hara offered the sword of surrender to Rochambeau who refused and pointed to Washington. O’Hara then offered the sword to Washington who refused and pointed to Benjamin Lincoln. Benjamin Lincoln accepted.

Of a certainty you'll offer the right to representation of surrender to God's judgement to Adam, who'll refuse and point at Noah, who'll point at Abraham, through Moses, and when you reach Jesus, he'll point at Muhammad pbuh, and once you've accepted Muhammad pbuh, you'll receive representation before God.

[Abz2000]

By*William Booth*and Taylor Luck*

June 27, 2014*

MAAN, Jordan —*Demonstrators angry with Jordan’s government have unfurled in this desert city the black battle flags of the al-Qaeda-inspired extremists now in control of large swaths of Iraq, stirring fears that support for the group is growing in Jordan.

At two rallies in Maan this week, scores of young men, some in black masks, raised their fists, waved home-made banners bearing the logo and inscriptions of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and shouted, “Down, down with Abdullah,” the king of Jordan.

Abdullah II, a close U.S. ally, is widely viewed as a moderate in a country considered an*oasis of stability*in the Middle East.The demonstrations have been the first public displays of support for ISIS in Jordan.Abdullah’s government has put the country’s border guard*on alert, reinforced troops along its 125-mile frontier with Iraq and added tanks and armor to thwart any move into Jordan by the*ISIS militants, who, along with Sunni insurgents, have seized a string of cities from northern Syria to western Iraq.

But more troubling to the Amman government than the possibility of*an ISIS invasion*are signs that support for the group may be expanding here and that homegrown recruits could take action in Jordan, according to former military officers, security analysts and members of Jordan’s jihadist movement.Shiite Iraqis prepare to fight Sunni militants


“We no longer trust or respect the government and have been searching for an alternative that ensures our basic rights,” said Mohammed Kreishan, one of the marchers. “In the Islamic State, we have found our alternative.”

On Wednesday, anti-government demonstrators gathered at the mosque in central Maan and marched toward the courthouse with gasoline bombs, but they were deterred by the presence of Jordanian riot police in armored personnel carriers.

A symbol of Jordan’s monarchy and central government, the charred and bullet-riddled courthouse has been the scene of near-nightly gunfire in recent weeks.

ISIS banners were briefly raised on the mosque’s roof and still fly from flagpoles at traffic circles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...e41_story.html

.
I don't pretend to know for sure if anyone in I.S is acting as an atheist false flag in order to cause mischief by appearing between iraq and shaam, regardless of the pretences, the plain facts are that people are sick and tired of being abused by secular systems and want Islam.
even if it were the case that I.S is being used as a tool to cause confusion, it would give relevance to the hadith of jassassah, who points towards dajjal, who points towards Muhammad pbuh.

The truth marches on.

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

ISIS has no patent on burning people alive, as US and Israeli history shows

Denunciations of ISIS are worse than worthless, says Glenn Greenwald, when they are used to make us forget or further obscure our own governments’ brutality.

The latest ISIS atrocity – releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive – prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable – and deliberately achieved – in all sorts of other ways:

Burnt alive by US drones in Pakistan

The most immediate consequence of drone strikes is, of course, death and injury to those targeted or near a strike. The missiles fired from drones kill or injure in several ways, including through incineration, shrapnel, and the release of powerful blast waves capable of crushing internal organs. Those who do survive drone strikes often suffer disfiguring burns and shrapnel wounds, limb amputations, as well as vision and hearing loss. . . .

In addition, because the Hellfire missiles fired from drones often incinerate the victims’ bodies, and leave them in pieces and unidentifiable, traditional burial processes are rendered impossible. As Firoz Ali Khan, a shopkeeper whose father-in-law’s home was struck, graphically described, “These missiles are very powerful. They destroy human beings . . .There is nobody left and small pieces left behind. Pieces. Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth.” A doctor who has treated drone victims described how “[s]kin is burned so that you can’t tell cattle from human.”

Burnt alive by US drones in Yemen

Mousid al-Taysi was travelling in a wedding convoy celebrating a cousin’s marriage when a missile slammed down from the sky. All he remembers are bright red-and-orange colours, then the grisly sight of a dozen burned bodies and the cries of others wounded around him.

Mousid survived the December 12 attack in Yemen’s central al-Baydah province, apparently launched by an American drone, but his physical and psychological recovery process is just beginning. If confirmed, it would be the deadliest drone attack in the country in more than a year. . . .

After talking with victims and family members in the area, it was clear a majority of civilians were among the carnage of the targeted wedding convoy. . . .

Civilians living under drones said they live in constant fear of being hit again. “Many people in our village have expressed terror at the thought of another strike,” Sulaimani said. “When the kids hear a plane they no longer climb the trees searching for where that noise came from. They each immediately run to their houses.”

Burnt alive by US phosphorus shells in Iraq

Ever since last November, when US forces battled to clear Fallujah of insurgents, there have been repeated claims that troops used “unusual” weapons in the assault that all but flattened the Iraqi city. Specifically, controversy has focussed on white phosphorus shells (WP) – an incendiary weapon usually used to obscure troop movements but which can equally be deployed as an offensive weapon against an enemy. The use of such incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by international treaty. . . .

The debate was reignited last week when an Italian documentary claimed Iraqi civilians – including women and children – had been killed by terrible burns caused by WP. The documentary, Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, by the state broadcaster RAI, cited one Fallujah human-rights campaigner who reported how residents told how “a rain of fire fell on the city”. . . . The claims contained in the RAI documentary have met with a strident official response from the US . . . .

While military experts have supported some of these criticisms, an examination by The Independent of the available evidence suggests the following: that WP shells were fired at insurgents, that reports from the battleground suggest troops firing these WP shells did not always know who they were hitting and that there remain widespread reports of civilians suffering extensive burn injuries. While US commanders insist they always strive to avoid civilian casualties, the story of the battle of Fallujah highlights the intrinsic difficulty of such an endeavour.

It is also clear that elements within the US government have been putting out incorrect information about the battle of Fallujah, making it harder to assesses the truth. Some within the US government have previously issued disingenuous statements about the use in Iraq of another controversial incendiary weapon – napalm. . . .

Another report, published in the Washington Post, gave an idea of the sorts of injuries that WP causes. It said insurgents “reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns”. A physician at a local hospital said the corpses of insurgents “were burned, and some corpses were melted”. . . .

Yet there are other, independent reports of civilians from Fallujah suffering burn injuries. For instance, Dahr Jamail, an unembedded reporter who collected the testimony of refugees from the city spoke to a doctor who had remained in the city to help people, encountered numerous reports of civilians suffering unusual burns.

One resident told him the US used “weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud” and that he watched “pieces of these bombs explode into large fires that continued to burn on the skin even after people dumped water on the burns.” The doctor said he “treated people who had their skin melted.”

Jeff Englehart, a former marine who spent two days in Fallujah during the battle, said he heard the order go out over military communication that WP was to be dropped. In the RAI film, Mr Englehart, now an outspoken critic of the war, says: “I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it’s known as Willy Pete … Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone … I saw the burned bodies of women and children” . . . .

Napalm was used in several instances during the initial invasion. Colonel Randolph Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11, remarked during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003: “The generals love napalm – it has a big psychological effect.”

Burnt alive by Israeli phosphorus bombs in Lebanon

Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory. . . .

During the war several foreign media outlets reported that Lebanese civilians carried injuries characteristic of attacks with phosphorus, a substance that burns when it comes to contact with air. In one CNN report, a casualty with serious burns was seen lying in a South Lebanon hospital.

In another case, Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal hospital in Ba’albek, said that he had received three corpses “entirely shriveled with black-green skin,” a phenomenon characteristic of phosphorus injuries.

Lebanon’s President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.

Burnt alive by US napalm in Vietnam

The girl in the photo — naked, crying, burned, running, with other children, away from the smoke — became emblematic of human suffering during the Vietnam War. Kim Phuc was 9 then, a child who would spend the next 14 months in the hospital and the rest of her life in skin blistered from the napalm that hit her body and burned off her clothes. She ran until she no longer could, and then she fainted. . . .

Phuc went outside and saw the plane getting closer, and then heard the sound of four bombs hitting the ground. She couldn’t run. She didn’t know until later, but the bombs carried napalm, a gel-like incendiary that clings to its victims as it burns.

“Suddenly I saw the fire everywhere around me,” she remembers. “At that moment, I didn’t see anyone, just the fire. Suddenly, I saw my left arm burning. I used my right hand to try to take it off.”

Her left hand was damaged, too. Her clothes burned off. Later, she would be thankful that her feet weren’t damaged because she could run away, run until she was outside the fire. She saw her brothers, her cousins, and some soldiers running, too. She ran until she couldn’t run any more. . . . Two of her cousins, ages 9 months and 3 years, died in the bombing. Phuc had burns over two-thirds of her body and was not expected to live.

Main article

Unlike ISIS, the US usually (though not always) tries to suppress (rather than gleefully publish) evidence showing the victims of its violence.

Indeed, concealing stories about the victims of American militarism is a critical part of the US government’s strategy for maintaining support for its sustained aggression. That is why, in general, the U.S. media has a policy of systematically excluding and ignoring such victims (although disappearing them this way does not actually render them nonexistent).

One could plausibly maintain that there is a different moral calculus involved in (a) burning a helpless captive to death as opposed to (b) recklessly or even deliberately burning civilians to death in areas that one is bombing with weapons purposely designed to incinerate human beings, often with the maximum possible pain.

That’s the moral principle that makes torture specially heinous: sadistically inflicting pain and suffering on a helpless detainee is a unique form of barbarity.

But there is nonetheless something quite obfuscating about this beloved ritual of denouncing the unique barbarism of ISIS. It is true that ISIS seems to have embraced a goal – a strategy – of being incomparably savage, inhumane and morally repugnant. That the group is indescribably nihilistic and morally grotesque is beyond debate.

That’s exactly what makes the intensity of these repeated denunciation rituals somewhat confounding. Everyone decent, by definition, fully understands that ISIS is repellent and savage.

While it’s understandable that being forced to watch the savagery on video prompts strong emotions (although, again, hiding savagery does not in fact make it less savage), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the ritualistic expressed revulsion has a definitive utility.

The constant orgy of condemnation aimed at this group seems to have little purpose other than tribal self-affirmation: no matter how many awful acts our government engages in, at least we don’t do something like that, at least we’re not as bad as them.

In some instances, that may be true, but even when it is, the differences are usually much more a matter of degree than category (much the way that angry denunciations over the Taliban for suicide-bombing a funeral of one of its victims hides the fact that the U.S. engages in its own “double tap” practice of bombing rescuers and funeral mourners for its drone victims).

To the extent that these denunciation rituals make us forget or further obscure our own governments’ brutality – and that seems to be the overriding effect if not the purpose of these rituals – they are worse than worthless; they are actively harmful.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/isis-has-no-patent-on-burning-people-alive-as-us-and-israeli-history-shows

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Private donors from Gulf oil states helping to bankroll salaries of up to 100,000 Isis fighters

Islamic State is still receiving significant financial support from Arab sympathisers outside Iraq and Syria, enabling it to expand its war effort, says a senior Kurdish official.

The US has being trying to stop such private donors in the Gulf oil states sending to Islamic State (Isis) funds that help pay the salaries of fighters who may number well over 100,000.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President, Massoud Barzani, told The Independent on Sunday: “There is sympathy for Da’esh [the Arabic acronym for IS, also known as Isis] in many Arab countries and this has translated into money – and that is a disaster.” He pointed out that until recently financial aid was being given more or less openly by Gulf states to the opposition in Syria – but by now most of these rebel groups have been absorbed into IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate, so it is they “who now have the money and the weapons”.

Mr Hussein would not identify the states from which the funding for IS comes today, but implied that they were the same Gulf oil states that financed Sunni Arab rebels in Iraq and Syria in the past.

Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran member of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership who recently retired from the Iraqi parliament, said there was a misunderstanding as to why Gulf countries paid off IS. It is not only that donors are supporters of IS, but that the movement “gets money from the Arab countries because they are afraid of it”, he says. “Gulf countries give money to Da’esh so that it promises not to carry out operations on their territory.”

Iraqi leaders in Baghdad privately express similar suspicions that IS – with a territory the size of Great Britain and a population of six million fighting a war on multiple fronts, from Aleppo to the Iranian border – could not be financially self-sufficient, given the calls on its limited resources.

Islamic State is doing everything it can to expand its military capacity, as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, and the US Central Command (CentCom) threaten an offensive later this year to recapture Mosul. Regardless of the feasibility of this operation, IS forces are fighting in widely different locations across northern and central Iraq.

On Tuesday night they made a surprise attack with between 300 and 400 fighters, many of them North Africans from Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, on Kurdish forces 40 miles west of the Kurdish capital, Irbil. The Kurds say that 34 IS fighters were killed in fighting and by US air strikes. At the same time, IS was battling for control of the town of al-Baghdadi, several hundred miles away in Anbar province. Despite forecasts by a CentCom spokesman last week that the tide has turned and that IS is on the retreat there is little sign of this on the ground.

On the contrary, IS appears to have the human and financial resources to fight a long war, though both are under strain. According to interviews by The Independent with people living in Mosul reached by phone, or with recent refugees from the city, IS officials are conscripting at least one young man from every family in Mosul, which has a population of 1.5 million. It has drafted a list of draconian punishments for those not willing to fight, starting with 80 lashes and ending with execution.

All these new recruits receive pay, as well as their keep, which until recently was $500 (£324) a month but has now been cut to about $350. Officers and commanders receive much more. A local source, who did not want to be named, says that foreign fighters, of whom there are an estimated 20,000 in IS, get a much higher salary – starting at $800 a month.

“I know three foreign fighters,” said Ahmad, a 45-year-old shopkeeper still working in Mosul. “I usually see them at checkpoints in our neighbourhood: one is Turkish and the others are Europeans. Some of them speak a little Arabic. I know them well because they buy soft drinks from the shops in our neighbourhood. The Turkish one is my customer. He says he talks to his family using the satellite internet service that is available for the foreigners, who have excellent privileges in terms of salaries, spoils and even captives.”

Ahmad added: “Isis fighters have arrested four high-school teachers for telling their students not to join Isis.” Islamic State fighters have entered the schools and demanded that students in their final year join them. Isis has also lowered the conscription age below 18 years of age, leading some families to leave the city. Military bases for the training and arming of children have also been established.

Given this degree of mobilisation by Islamic State, statements from Mr Abadi and CentCom about recapturing Mosul this spring, using between 20,000 and 25,000 Baghdad government and Kurdish forces, sound like an effort to boost morale on the anti-Isis side.

The CentCom spokesman claimed there were only between 1,000 and 2,000 Isis fighters in Mosul, which is out of keeping with what local observers report. Ominously, Iraqi and foreign governments have an impressive record of underestimating Isis as a military and political force over the past two years.

Mr Hussein said at the end of last year that Isis had “hundreds of thousands of fighters”, at a time when the CIA was claiming they numbered between 20,000 and 31,500. He does not wholly rule out an offensive to take Mosul but, as he outlines the conditions for a successful attack, it becomes clear that he does not expect the city to be recaptured any time soon. For the Kurdish Peshmerga forces to storm Mosul they would need far better equipment “in order to wage a decisive war against Isis and defeat them”, he says. “So far we are only defeating them in various places in Kurdistan by giving our blood. We have had 1,011 Peshmerga killed and about 5,000 wounded.”

The Kurds want heavy weapons including Humvees, tanks to surround but not to enter Mosul, snipers’ rifles, because Isis has many highly accurate snipers, as well as equipment to deal with improvised explosive devices and booby traps, both of which Isis uses profusely.

Above all, Kurdish participation in an offensive would require a military partner in the shape of an effective Iraqi army and local Sunni allies. Without the latter, a battle for Mosul conducted by Shia and Kurds alone would provoke Sunni Arab resistance. Mr Hussein is dubious about the effectiveness of the Iraqi army, which disintegrated last June when, though nominally it had 350,000 soldiers, it was defeated by a few thousand Isis fighters.

“The Iraqi army has two divisions to protect Baghdad, but is it possible for the Iraqi government to release them?” asks Mr Hussein. “And how will they get to Mosul? If they have to come through Tikrit and Baiji, they will have to fight hard along the way even before they get to Mosul.”

Of course, an anti-Isis offensive has advantages not available last year, such as US air strikes, but these might be difficult to use in a city. The US air force carried out at least 600 air strikes on the Isis-held part of the small Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani before Isis finally retreated after a siege of 134 days. In the most optimistic scenarios Isis splits or there is a popular uprising against it, but so far there is no sign of this and Isis has proved that it exacts merciless vengeance against any individual or community opposed to it.

Mr Hussein makes another important point: difficult and dangerous though it may be for the Kurds and the Baghdad government to recapture Mosul, they cannot afford to leave it alone. It was here that Isis won its first great victory and Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi declared the caliphate on 29 June last year.

“Mosul is important politically and militarily,” he says. “Without defeating Isis in Mosul, it will be very difficult to talk about the defeat of Isis in the rest of Iraq.”

At the moment, Peshmerga forces are only eight miles from Mosul. But Isis fighters are likewise not much further from the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk, which Isis assaulted last month. Given the size of Iraq and the small size of the armies deployed, each side can inflict tactical surprises on the other by punching through scantily held frontlines.

There are two further developments to the advantage of Islamic State. Even in the face of the common threat, the leaders in Baghdad and Erbil remain deeply divided. When Mosul fell last year, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claimed that the Iraqi army had been stabbed in the back by a conspiracy between Kurds and Isis. The two sides remain deeply suspicious of each other and, at the start of last week, a delegation led by the Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani failed to reach an agreement in Baghdad on how much of Iraq’s oil revenues should go to the Kurds in exchange for a previously agreed quantity of oil from Kurdish-held northern oilfields.

“Unbelievably, the divisions now are as great as under Maliki,” says Dr Othman. Islamic State has made many enemies, but it may be saved by their inability to unite.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/private-donors-from-gulf-oil-states-helping-to-bankroll-salaries-of-up-to-100000-isis-fighters/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

War with Isis: Iraq's Government Fights to Win Back Tikrit from Militants - But Then What?

Some 60 miles from his office in the capital of Iraq’s oil-rich province of Kirkuk, a battle is raging for control of Tikrit. It might seem a hopeful sign that Baghdad is finally attempting to win back a key city from the control of Isis, the jihadist group that swept into a great swathe of Iraq last year. But Kirkuk’s governor, Najmaldin Karim, is not optimistic about the long-term outcome.

It is not the military but the political consequences of the fighting that worry him. “What are you going to do after you liberate these areas… are the people who fled from there going to be able to go back?” In other words, is the war in Iraq now so pervasively sectarian that Sunnis can no longer accept rule by a Shia Muslim-dominated central government?

Before the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as Isis) captured Tikrit on 11 June last year, the city had a population of about 260,000, almost all of them Sunni. The offensive to drive out Isis that is now under way is very much a Shia affair with 30,000 soldiers, half from the regular army and half Shia militias. Significantly, it is taking place with the support of Iran and without the backing of US air strikes. Iran and the US may have a common enemy in Isis, but in Iraq they are fighting two very different wars.

Dr Karim says there is no alternative for the Baghdad government but to rely on the Shia militiamen. “The army is pretty well incapable of taking on major operations, while the militias are better equipped and probably have better fighters,” he told The Independent in an interview at his Kirkuk office.

He said the largely Shia army that disintegrated last year when it lost northern and western Iraq to Isis “wasn’t a real army, but a corrupt bunch of guys at checkpoints who had no training”. Nor does he think the situation is much better today. Kirkuk is relatively safe because it is defended by Kurdish Peshmerga, he says, but even they suffered heavy losses when Isis broke through the nearby frontline on 30 January. “It was a rainy, foggy night and our people were too lax,” he admitted.

Dr Karim’s career is a blend of professional success and Kurdish nationalist commitment. Born 65 years ago in Kirkuk, he trained as a doctor then became a Peshmerga, or fighter, in 1973, a couple of years before a Kurdish rebellion against Baghdad collapsed after the US and Iran cynically withdrew support.

After that defeat, Dr Karim accompanied the exiled Kurdish leader, Mulla Mustafa, to Washington, and remained there for 30 years as both a highly regarded neurosurgeon and a lobbyist for the Kurdish cause. He recalls giving evidence to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 1990 about Saddam Hussein’s genocide against Kurds. But the administration of the day, six weeks before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, asserted that Saddam was “a force for moderation”.

When I last saw Dr Karim two years ago, he was realistically sceptical and even contemptuous of the capacity of Baghdad to fight the growing threat from Isis and other jihadist groups. But he was also confident and enthusiastic about his achievement in developing Kirkuk city and the surrounding province.

These days, he looks worn down and is gloomy about the future. Kirkuk may be safe from Isis attack, but it is filled with signs of calamity. In the past year some 350,000 displaced people, almost all Sunni Arabs running for their lives, have swamped the city which previously had a population of 950,000.

And the money has run out. The violence has been accompanied by a collapse in the price of oil – which Kirkuk is now unable to export. Before Isis swept in, Kirkuk used to send 150,000 barrels a day of crude to the Baiji refinery north of Tikrit; but that complex has been at the centre of a battle for months. Now, in the heart of the great Kirkuk oilfields, shops are reduced to selling plastic containers filled with black market petrol.

“It has been terrible,” said Dr Karim. “It is not just a matter of expelling Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Isis] from Tikrit and Mosul. We are not receiving any funding from Baghdad – nothing for reconstruction or the IDPs (internally displaced persons) using our schools, water and electricity.”

Iraq’s central government is so detached from Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk that Baghdad officials in charge of these services no longer visit the city. Asked if Kirkuk could be described as running on “empty”, Dr Karim replied simply: “And on flat tyres.”

Is there any solution to the convulsive violence in a country as divided as Iraq is, both by ethnicity and by religion? Dr Karim says that the replacement of Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister – notorious for his confrontational policies towards Sunnis and Kurds – with Haider al-Abadi last year had made only a superficial difference. “Abadi may have more support internationally, but on Shia-Sunni issues and Kurdish-Baghdad issues nothing much has changed,” he said.

In his view, the only solution is to divide Iraq into regions, with geographic power sharing, granting separate Sunni and Shia regions the same autonomy already enjoyed by the Kurds. It seems a long shot, but Dr Karim is conscious that no single Iraqi community has the strength in the long term to dominate the others by force. “You must resolve things politically,” he said. “You can’t resolve them militarily by just killing people.”

He is scornful of US-backed plans to raise yet more security forces, such as a new National Guard, that would be more inclusive of Sunni Arabs “Soon we are going to have 1.5 million people under arms which will impose a tremendous strain on the economy,” he said.

Since the breakdown in Baghdad’s control, Iraq is already effectively divided into regions which not only behave like independent statelets, but like independent statelets at war. Iraq’s Sunnis – a fifth of its population – have no leadership other than Isis, which Dr Karim says has absorbed Saddam’s old Baathist leaders.

Sunni members of the Baghdad government have no popular support, he says. They are the same old faces playing musical chairs as they vie for jobs. “Among the Sunni, there is a sense that whoever cooperates with the government in Baghdad automatically ceases to represent them,” he said.

As for Isis, he sees it as strong, not necessarily in numbers but in the faith of its fighters, as well as in their training. Isis leaders successfully conscript recruits where they are in control: their fighters who died after killing two senior Peshmerga officers in recent fighting near Kirkuk appeared to be locally recruited Iraqis. “When you look at the corpses of their dead you can see they are very young – in their late teens or early twenties,” he said. “They suffer huge losses, but they don’t seem to care.”

No single Iraqi community has ever succeeded in permanently forcing its rule on the other two. Saddam failed against the Kurds before he was ousted in 2003 and the Shia have failed against the Sunni since then.

Dr Karim’s vision of Iraq divided into regions may be inevitable, but those regions may well be at war with each other, not at peace.

http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/war-with-isis-iraqs-government-fights-to-win-back-tikrit-from-militants-but-then-what/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

‘Islamic State’ as a Western Phenomenon?

No matter how one attempts to wrangle with the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) rise in Iraq and Syria, desperately seeking any political or other context that would validate the movement as an explainable historical circumstance, things refuse to add up.

Not only is IS to a degree an alien movement in the larger body politic of the Middle East, it also seems to be a partly western phenomenon, a hideous offspring resulting from western neocolonial adventures in the region, coupled with alienation and demonization of Muslim communities in western societies.

By “western phenomenon,” I refrain from suggesting that IS is largely a creation of western intelligence as many conspiracy theories have persistently advocated. Of course, one is justified to raise questions regarding funds, armaments, black market oil trade, and the ease through which thousands of western and Arab fighters managed to reach Syria and Iraq in recent years. The crimes carried out by the Assad regime, his army and allies during the four-year long Syria civil war, and the unquenchable appetite to orchestrate a regime change in Damascus as a paramount priority made nourishing the anti-Assad forces with wannabe ‘jihadists’ justified, if not encouraged.

The latest announcement by Turkey’s foreign minister Meylut Cavusoglu of the arrest of a spy “working for the intelligence service of a country participating in the coalition against ISIS” – presumably Canada – allegedly for helping three young British girls join IS, was revealing. The accusation feeds into a growing discourse that locates IS within a western, not Middle Eastern discourse.

Still, it is not the conspiracy per se that I find intriguing, if not puzzling, but the ongoing, albeit indirect conversation between IS and the West, involving French, British and Australian so-called “Jihadists,” their sympathizers and supporters on one hand, and various western governments, intelligence services, rightwing media pundits, etc on the other.

Much of the discourse – once upon a time located within a narrative consumed by the “Arab Spring,” sectarian divisions and counter revolutions – has now been transferred into another sphere that seems of little relevance to the Middle East. Regardless of where one stands on how Mohammad Emwazi morphed into a “Jihadi John,” the conversation is oddly largely removed from its geopolitical context. In this instance, it is an essentially British issue concerning alienation, racism, economic and cultural marginalization, perhaps as much as the issue of the “born, raised and radicalized” attackers of Charlie Hebdo is principally a French question, pertaining to the same socioeconomic fault lines.

The conventional analysis on the rise of IS no longer suffices. Tracing the movement to Oct 2006 when the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), uniting various groups including al-Qaeda was established, simply suggests a starting point to the discussion, whose roots go back to the dismantling of the Iraqi state and army by the US military occupation authority. Just the idea that the Arab republic of Iraq was lead from 11 May, 2003 until 28 June, 2004 by a Lewis Paul Bremer III, is enough to delineate the unredeemable rupture in the country’s identity. Bremer and US military chiefs’ manipulation of Iraq’s sectarian vulnerabilities, in addition to the massive security vacuum created by sending an entire army home, ushered in the rise of numerous groups, some homegrown resistance movements, and other alien bodies who sought in Iraq a refugee, or a rally cry.

Also conveniently missing in the rise of “jihadism” context is the staggering brutality of Shia-dominated governments in Baghdad and militias throughout Iraq, with full backing by the US and Iran. If the US war (1990-1), blockade (1991-2003), invasion (2003) and subsequent occupation of Iraq were not enough to radicalize a whole generation, then brutality, marginalization and constant targeting of Iraqi Sunnis in post-invasion Iraq have certainly done the job.

The conventional media narrative on IS focuses mostly on the politicking, division and unity that happened between various groups, but ignores the reasons behind the existence of these groups in the first place.

The Syria civil war was another opportunity at expansion sought successfully by ISI, whose capital until then was Baquba, Iraq. ISI was headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a key player in the establishment of Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front). The highly cited breakup between al-Baghdadi and al-Nusra leader Mohammed al-Golani is referenced as the final stage of IS’s brutal rise to power and ISI becoming ISIL or ISIS, before settling finally at the current designation of simply “Islamic State,” or IS.

Following the division, “some estimates suggest that about 65% of Jabhat al-Nusra elements quickly declared their allegiance to ISIS. Most of those were non-Syrian jihadists,” reported Lebanon’s al-Safir.

Militants’ politicking aside, such massively destructive and highly organized occurrences are not born in a vacuum and don’t operate independently from many existing platforms that help spawn, arm, fund and sustain them. For example, IS’ access to oil refineries says nothing about its access to wealth. To obtain funds from existing economic modes, IS needed to tap into a complex economic apparatus that would involve other countries, regional and international markets. In other words, IS exists because there are those who are invested in their existence, and the highly touted anti-IS coalition has evidently done little to confront this reality.

Particularly interesting is the rapidly changing focal point of the debate, from that pertaining to Syria and Iraq, to a western-centric discussion about western-styled jihadists that seem removed from the Middle East region and its political conflicts and priorities.

In a letter signed by over a hundred Muslim scholars that was published last September, the theologians and clergymen from around the Muslim word rightly disowned IS and its bloodthirsty ambitions as un-Islamic. Indeed, IS’ war tactics, are the reverse of the rules of war in Islam, and have been a God-send to those who made successful careers by simply bashing Islam, and advocating foreign policies that are predicated on an irrational fear of Muslims. But particularly interesting was the Arabic version of the letter’s emphasis on IS’s lack of command over the Arabic language, efficiency which is a requirement for making legal Islamic rulings and fatwas.

The letter confronts the intellectual arrogance of IS, which is based mostly on a misguided knowledge of Islam that is rarely spawned in the region itself. But that intellectual arrogance that has led to the murders of many innocent people, and other hideous crimes such as the legalization of slavery – to the satisfaction of the numerous Islamophobes dotting western intellectual landscapes – is largely situated in a different cultural and political context outside of the Middle East.

In post-September 11 attacks, a debate concerning Islam has been raging, partly because the attacks were blamed on Muslims, thus allowing politicians to create distractions, and reduce the discussion into one concerning religion and a purported “clash of civilizations.” Despite various assurances by western leaders that the US-led wars in Muslim countries is not a war on Islam, Islam remains the crux of the intellectual discourse that has adjoined the military “crusade” declared by George W. Bush, starting with the first bomb dropped on Afghanistan in 2001.

That discourse is too involved for a transitory mention, for it is an essential one to the IS story. It is one that has involved various schools of thought, including a breed of Muslim “liberals,” used conveniently to juxtapose them with an “extremist” bunch. Yet between the apologists and the so-called Jihadists, a genuine, Muslim-led discussion about Islam by non-coopted Muslim scholars remains missing.

The intellectual vacuum is more dangerous than it may seem. There is no question that while the battle is raging on in the Middle East region, the discourse itself is growingly being manipulated and is becoming a western one. This is why IS is speaking English, for its language complete with authentic western accents, methods, messages and even the orange hostage jumpsuits, is centered in some other sociopolitical and cultural context.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/islamic-state-as-a-western-phenomenon/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another viewpoint

How Saddam Hussein's former military officers and spies are controlling Isis

When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join Isis, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe.

Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an "Islamic State" meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through the proceedings, listening and taking notes.

Abu Hamza, who became the group’s ruler in a small community in Syria, never discovered the Iraqis’ real identities, which were cloaked by code names or simply not revealed. All of the men, however, were former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein, including the masked man, who had once worked for an Iraqi intelligence agency and now belonged to the Islamic State’s own shadowy security service, he said.

His account, and those of others who have lived with or fought against the Islamic State over the past two years, underscore the pervasive role played by members of Iraq’s former Baathist army in an organisation more typically associated with flamboyant foreign jihadists and the gruesome videos in which they star.

Even with the influx of thousands of foreign fighters, almost all of the leaders of the Islamic State are former Iraqi officers, including the members of its shadowy military and security committees, and the majority of its emirs and princes, according to Iraqis, Syrians and analysts who study the group.

They have brought to the organisation the military expertise and some of the agendas of the former Baathists, as well as the smuggling networks developed to avoid sanctions in the 1990s and which now facilitate the Islamic State’s illicit oil trading.

In Syria, local “emirs” are typically shadowed by a deputy who is Iraqi and makes the real decisions, said Abu Hamza, who fled to Turkey last summer after growing disillusioned with the group. He uses a pseudonym because he fears for his safety.

“All the decision makers are Iraqi, and most of them are former Iraqi officers. The Iraqi officers are in command, and they make the tactics and the battle plans,” he said. “But the Iraqis themselves don’t fight. They put the foreign fighters on the front lines.”

The public profile of the foreign jihadists frequently obscures the Islamic State’s roots in the bloody recent history of Iraq, its brutal excesses as much a symptom as a cause of the country’s woes.

The raw cruelty of Hussein’s Baathist regime, the disbandment of the Iraqi army after the US-led invasion in 2003, the subsequent insurgency and the marginalization of Sunni Iraqis by the Shia-dominated government all are intertwined with the Islamic State’s ascent, said Hassan Hassan, a Dubai-based analyst and co-author of the book Isis: Inside the Army of Terror.

“A lot of people think of the Islamic State as a terrorist group, and it’s not useful,” Hassan said. “It is a terrorist group, but it is more than that. It is a homegrown Iraqi insurgency, and it is organic to Iraq.”

The de-Baathification law promulgated by L.* Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American ruler in 2003, has long been identified as one of the contributors to the original insurgency. At a stroke, 400,000 members of the defeated Iraqi army were barred from government employment, denied pensions — and also allowed to keep their guns.

The US military failed in the early years to recognise the role the disbanded Baathist officers would eventually come to play in the extremist group, eclipsing the foreign fighters whom American officials preferred to blame, said Colonel Joel Rayburn, a senior fellow at the National Defense University who served as an adviser to top generals in Iraq and describes the links between Baathists and the Islamic State in his book, Iraq After America.

The US military always knew that the former Baathist officers had joined other insurgent groups and were giving tactical support to the Al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate, the precursor to the Islamic State, he said. But American officials didn't anticipate that they would become not only adjuncts to al-Qaeda, but core members of the jihadist group.

“We might have been able to come up with ways to head off the fusion, the completion of the Iraqisation process,” he said. The former officers were probably not reconcilable, “but it was the labeling of them as irrelevant that was the mistake.”

Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, the former officers became more than relevant. They were instrumental in the group’s rebirth from the defeats inflicted on insurgents by the US military, which is now back in Iraq bombing many of the same men it had already fought twice before.

At first glance, the secularist dogma of Hussein’s tyrannical Baath Party seems at odds with the Islamic State’s harsh interpretation of the Islamic laws it purports to uphold.

But the two creeds broadly overlap in several regards, especially their reliance on fear to secure the submission of the people under the group’s rule. Two decades ago, the elaborate and cruel forms of torture perpetrated by Hussein dominated the discourse about Iraq, much as the Islamic State’s harsh punishments do today.

Like the Islamic State, Hussein’s Baath Party also regarded itself as a transnational movement, forming branches in countries across the Middle East and running training camps for foreign volunteers from across the Arab world.

By the time US troops invaded in 2003, Hussein had begun to tilt toward a more religious approach to governance, making the transition from Baathist to Islamist ideology less improbable for some of the disenfranchised Iraqi officers, said Ahmed S. Hashim, a professor who is researching the ties at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

With the launch of the Iraqi dictator’s Faith Campaign in 1994, strict Islamic precepts were introduced. The words “God is Great” were inscribed on the Iraqi flag. Amputations were decreed for theft. Former Baathist officers recall friends who suddenly stopped drinking, started praying and embraced the deeply conservative form of Islam known as Salafism in the years preceding the US invasion.

In the last two years of Hussein’s rule, a campaign of beheadings, mainly targeting women suspected of prostitution and carried out by his elite Fedayeen unit, killed more than 200 people, human rights groups reported at the time.

The brutality deployed by the Islamic State today recalls the bloodthirstiness of some of those Fedayeen, said Hassan. Promotional videos from the Hussein era include scenes resembling those broadcast today by the Islamic State, showing the Fedayeen training, marching in black masks, practicing the art of decapitation and in one instance eating a live dog.

Some of those Baathists became early recruits to the al-Qaeda affiliate established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Palestinian Jordanian fighter who is regarded as the progenitor of the current Islamic State, said Hisham al Hashemi, an Iraqi analyst who advises the Iraqi government and has relatives who served in the Iraqi military under Hussein. Other Iraqis were radicalised at Camp Bucca, the American prison in southern Iraq where thousands of ordinary citizens were detained and intermingled with jihadists.

Zarqawi kept the former Baathists at a distance, because he distrusted their secular outlook, according to Hashim, the professor.

It was under the watch of the current Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that the recruitment of former Baathist officers became a deliberate strategy, according to analysts and former officers.

Tasked with rebuilding the greatly weakened insurgent organization after 2010, Baghdadi embarked on an aggressive campaign to woo the former officers, drawing on the vast pool of men who had either remained unemployed or had joined other, less extremist insurgent groups.

Some of them had fought against al-Qaeda after changing sides and aligning with the American-backed Awakening movement during the surge of troops in 2007. When US troops withdrew and the Iraqi government abandoned the Awakening fighters, the Islamic State was the only surviving option for those who felt betrayed and wanted to change sides again, said Brian Fishman, who researched the group in Iraq for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and is now a fellow with the New America Foundation.

Baghdadi’s effort was further aided by a new round of de-Baathification launched after US troops left in 2011 by then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who set about firing even those officers who had been rehabilitated by the American military.

Among them was Brigadier General Hassan Dulaimi, a former intelligence officer in the old Iraqi army who was recruited back into service by US troops in 2006, as a police commander in Ramadi, the capital of the long restive province of Anbar.

Within months of the American departure, he was dismissed, he said, losing his salary and his pension, along with 124 other officers who had served alongside the Americans.

“The crisis of Isis didn't happen by chance,” Dulaimi said in an interview in Baghdad, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “It was the result of an accumulation of problems created by the Americans and the [Iraqi] government.”

He cited the case of a close friend, a former intelligence officer in Baghdad who was fired in 2003 and struggled for many years to make a living. He now serves as the Islamic State’s wali, or leader, in the Anbar town of Hit, Dulaimi said.

“I last saw him in 2009. He complained that he was very poor. He is an old friend, so I gave him some money,” he recalled. “He was fixable. If someone had given him a job and a salary, he wouldn't have joined the Islamic State.

“There are hundreds, thousands like him,” he added. “The people in charge of military operations in the Islamic State were the best officers in the former Iraqi army, and that is why the Islamic State beats us in intelligence and on the battlefield.”

The Islamic State’s seizure of territory was also smoothed by the Maliki government’s broader persecution of the Sunni minority, which intensified after US troops withdrew and left many ordinary Sunnis willing to welcome the extremists as an alternative to the often brutal Iraqi security forces.

But it was the influx of Baathist officers into the ranks of the Islamic State itself that propelled its fresh military victories, said Hashem. By 2013, Baghdadi had surrounded himself with former officers, who oversaw the Islamic State’s expansion in Syria and drove the offensives in Iraq.

Some of Baghdadi’s closest aides, including Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, his deputy in Iraq, and Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, one of his top military commanders in Syria, both of them former Iraqi officers, have since reportedly been killed — though Dulaimi suspects that many feign their own deaths in order to evade detection, making its current leadership difficult to discern.

Any gaps however are filled by former officers, sustaining the Iraqi influence at the group’s core, even as its ranks are swelled by arriving foreigners, said Hassan.

Fearing infiltration and spies, the leadership insulates itself from the foreign fighters and the regular Syrian and Iraqi fighters through elaborate networks of intermediaries frequently drawn from the old Iraqi intelligence agencies, he said.

“They introduced the Baathist mind-set of secrecy as well as its skills,” he said.

The masked man who ordered the detention of Abu Hamza was one of a group of feared security officers who circulate within the Islamic State, monitoring its members for signs of dissent, the Syrian recalled.

“They are the eyes and ears of Daesh’s security, and they are very powerful,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

Abu Hamza was released from jail after agreeing to fall into line with the other commanders, he said. But the experience contributed to his disillusionment with the group.

The foreign fighters he served alongside were “good Muslims,” he said. But he is less sure about the Iraqi leaders.

“They pray and they fast and you can’t be an emir without praying, but inside I don’t think they believe it much,” he said. “The Baathists are using Daesh. They don’t care about Baathism or even Saddam.

“They just want power. They are used to being in power, and they want it back.”

Whether the former Baathists adhere to the Islamic State’s ideology is a matter of debate. Hashim suspects many of them do not.

“One could still argue that it’s a tactical alliance,” he said. “A lot of these Baathists are not interested in ISIS running Iraq. They want to run Iraq. A lot of them view the jihadists with this Leninist mind-set that they’re useful idiots who we can use to rise to power.”

Rayburn questions whether even some of the foreign volunteers realise the extent to which they are being drawn into Iraq’s morass. Some of the fiercest battles being waged today in Iraq are for control of communities and neighborhoods that have been hotly contested among Iraqis for years, before the extremists appeared.

“You have fighters coming from across the globe to fight these local political battles that the global jihad can’t possibly have a stake in.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/how-saddam-husseins-former-military-officers-and-spies-are-controlling-isis-10156610.html

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Isis seizes Ramadi: After Iraq’s worst defeat in the war with the Islamic militants, battle is on to defend the road to Baghdad

Shia militiamen will now attempt to block the road to Baghdad after Isis fighters defeated elite units of the Iraqi armed forces and captured the city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital.

The fall of Ramadi is the worst military disaster suffered by the Iraqi government since it lost the north of Iraq to an Isis offensive almost a year ago. One local councillor in Ramadi described the situation as “total collapse”.

Burnt bodies litter the streets and there are reports of massacres of policemen and tribesmen opposed to the self-proclaimed “Islamic State”.

Armoured vehicles belonging to the Iraqi army’s so-called “Golden Division”, considered its best unit, could be seen streaming out of Ramadi in a retreat that looked, at times, as if it had turned into a rout. Heavy equipment, including armoured Humvees and artillery, was abandoned.

Some 500 soldiers and civilians have been killed in fighting in Ramadi over the past few days as Isis closed in on the remaining government outposts, suicide bombers destroying fortifications by ramming them with vehicles packed with explosives.

Around 25,000 people who lived in Ramadi have fled, though they have had difficulty getting past army and militia checkpoints in Baghdad where displaced Sunni are suspected of being Isis sympathisers. Omar, a journalist from Ramadi, told The Independent that Isis fighters regard the majority of people in Ramadi as hostile to them and were telling them: “Get out! We don’t need you!”

He blamed the fall of his city on the failure of Baghdad to send military aid. “For a year-and-a-half we have been calling for help from Baghdad,” he said.

The fall of Ramadi may turn out to be a decisive event, changing the political and military landscape of Iraq and Syria. In some respects, it is a worst defeat for the Iraqi government than the capture of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in a surprise Isis attack last year.

The Isis pressure on Ramadi has been ongoing since April and a further assault was fully expected. Moreover, the garrison of the city consisted of some of the best troops in the Iraqi army and they were supported by US air strikes.

US generals have been downplaying the extent of the calamity, but the US policy of rebuilding the Iraqi army and aiding it with US air power is in ruins.

The Baghdad government now has little choice but to deploy the Hashd Shaabi, the Shia paramilitaries which the US sees as being under Iranian influence and has not wanted to see in the frontline fighting in Sunni areas like Ramadi, the capital of the giant Anbar province.

The latest victory of Isis, which had been portrayed inside and outside Iraq as having lost momentum since a run of victories between June and October last year, will strengthen its appeal to Sunni people as a winner.

It is already causing dismay among the opponents of the Sunni jihadists who had hoped that the military situation had stabilised and Isis was on the retreat.

Isis lost Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, earlier this year and failed to take the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani in a 134-day siege despite suffering heavy losses.

Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to President Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said he was concerned at what the fall of Ramadi meant for the Kurdish region and the rest of Iraq. He was particularly worried that Isis would follow up its latest victory by attacks on the vast Iraqi army base at al-Assad, which is full of weapons, as well as the Haditha Dam that controls the water level of the Euphrates.

Isis has been fighting for Ramadi since early 2014 when it took over much of Anbar province, including the city of Fallujah. Five Iraqi army divisions were unable regain the province, but government forces still held on to the central administrative complex in Ramadi. After a carefully planned assault that began on Thursday, the last pockets of government resistance were eliminated on Sunday with an attack on the Malaab district of south Ramadi.

Four suicide bombers killed at least 10 police and wounded 15, including Colonel Muthana al-Jabri, the chief of the Malaab police station. Later in the day, three suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives into the gate of the Anbar Operation Command, the military headquarters for Anbar province, killing a further five soldiers and wounding 12.

A police officer who was stationed at the headquarters said retreating troops left behind about 30 army vehicles and weapons that included artillery and assault rifles. The best Iraqi military units such as the Golden Division and Swat forces number perhaps 5,000 men and have been rushed from crisis point to crisis point over the past year and are reported to be suffering from desertions.

Iran has offered to aid the Baghdad government in its hour of need. A senior Iranian official said his country would provide any help necessary.

The US has conducted 19 air strikes in the vicinity of Ramadi in the last 72 hours. But the most crucial development could be comments from Ali al-Sarai, a spokesman for the Shia militia, Hashid Shaabi.

He told Reuters in Baghdad that “the Hashid has received the order to march forward, they will definitely take part. They were waiting for this order and now they have it”. However, it is doubtful if the Hashid have the strength to recapture Ramadi.

Among senior Shia leaders in Baghdad there is a growing feeling that they have no choice but to look to Shia militias for their salvation, even if this angers the Americans and alienates the Sunnis.

One former minister said: “I think there is growing pressure to throw away the straitjacket that the US has imposed on the government’s relationship with the Hashid. It is pretty clear that they are the only fighting force that can confront Isis.”

The US has said that Iranian-backed militias will be denied air support and intelligence.

After a series of setbacks, success at Ramadi will be welcome to Isis because it has portrayed its victories as proof of divine support.

It is in triumphant mood, saying that in Ramadi it has seized tanks and killed “dozens of apostates”, while other police and soldiers are being urged via loudspeaker to throw away their weapons if they want to be shown mercy.

The defeat at Ramadi is likely to prove an important staging post in the break-up of Iraq because the Shia majority may decide they are getting very little from the Kurds or the anti-Isis Sunni politicians.

The former minister said that there is a perception among Shia at all levels that the Kurds should go their own way, but in that case should leave the central government.

The Sunni leaders should “stand up and be counted” as active supporters of the government or be seen as covert enemies and supporters of Isis. Many Shia feel that the Sunni in the government have been having it both ways as theoretical opponents of Isis, but without giving real backing to the government and hampering its efforts to defend itself.

Three key battles in the war with Isis

Mosul

Isis seized Iraq’s second city, Mosul, in June last year. The city of 1.4 million people, garrisoned by a large Iraqi security force, was captured with as few as 1,300 jihadists. A joint Iraqi-Kurdish military force of up to 25,000 fighters was reportedly being prepared to retake the Iraqi city this month before the defeat at Ramadi.

Kobani

Kurdish fighters drove Isis militants out of Kobani, in Syria near Turkey’s border, in January, ending a four-month fight for the town. Kobani was seen as a major test of the US-led coalition’s strategy to combat Isis in Syria with air strikes. The fighting forced thousands to flee across the border.

Tikrit

In late March, aided by Shia militia and US air strikes, Iraqi security forces retook Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit after it fell to Isis last year. Tikrit, 90 miles north of Baghdad, was captured by Isis in June as they swept south from Mosul.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-seizes-ramadi-after-iraqs-worst-defeat-in-the-war-with-the-islamic-militants-battle-now-is-to-defend-the-road-to-baghdad-10259457.html

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Isis seizes Ramadi: Iraqi government deploys Shia militiamen to assist in counter-offensive to retake city from jihadists

Shia militiamen and Iraqi government forces are preparing to launch a counter-offensive to recapture Ramadi as Isis fighters tighten their control of the city after seizing it in a three-day battle.

The loss of Ramadi has discredited the Baghdad government and US policy of relying on the regular army backed by US air strikes to hold back and ultimately defeat Isis.

The first contingents of Shia paramilitaries from the al-Hashd al-Shaabi (“Popular Mobilisation”) are assembling at Habbaniyah military base 20 miles east of Ramadi. In total the paramilitaries are reported to number between 100,000 and 120,000 men, though only a small number of these are in Anbar province – of which Ramadi is the capital – while the regular army has only a maximum of five brigades or 15,000 soldiers who are effective in combat.

Several of its best units are exhausted or suffered heavy losses in fighting over the last 18 months with many desertions. An Iraqi government statement said that “severe punishment will be done on those who failed to carry out their duties during the Ramadi battle”. Other units are scattered and 28 soldiers were rescued by government helicopters, the men hugging and kissing each other afterwards in their joy at having survived and in the knowledge that Isis seldom takes prisoners.

Left with no option but to deploy the militiamen, the government and the US would like a swift counter-attack to retake Ramadi. But their first priority may be to defend Baghdad and cities like Samara and Kerbala. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government’s notoriously corrupt and incompetent military administration will struggle to feed and supply with ammunition a large number of men in the front line. On the other hand, it will prove difficult for Isis to advance further in the face of sustained American air attack.

Isis has moved swiftly to secure control and win popularity among the minority of people who have not fled Ramadi by bulldozing concrete blast walls or using cranes to remove them and other fortifications erected by the Iraqi army. These were unpopular because they made it difficult to move around the city.

Isis also released some 70 men and 31 women from Ramadi prison who had been shot in the feet to prevent them escaping by their jailers before they fled. Sunni Arabs in the city had long complained that local police arrested people arbitrarily, tortured them and would only release them after payment of a bribe. Using loudspeakers, Isis told relatives to come to the main mosque to pick up the prisoners.

The militant jihadis have raised their black flag over all public buildings and promised that food, doctors and medicine will be available. But they have also reportedly killed hundreds of members of the local security forces and tribesmen who fought against them.

They have promised to introduce sharia and are already enforcing their extreme conservative social mores. Jasim Mohammed, 49, who owns a women’s clothing shop, told Reuters that an Isis member had told him he must now sell only traditional Islamic garments. “I had to remove the mannequins and replace them with other means of displaying the clothes,” he said. “He told me that I shouldn’t sell underwear because it’s forbidden.”

Even so, the majority of people in Ramadi, which once had a population of 600,000, are fleeing or fled months ago when the struggle for the city started early in 2014. But they are finding it difficult to secure a safe refuge because the security forces in Baghdad 70 miles to the west suspect refugees of being secret members of Isis. They are kept waiting in cars or on foot in daytime temperatures expected to reach 44C. Four people are reported to have died of heat stroke.

The Isis offensives of 2014 and 2015, which either brought Sunnis under the control of the jihadi militants or displaced them from their homes, may turn out to be a long-term disaster for the six million Sunni Arabs of Iraq.

Annas, a journalist from Ramadi whose family has fled, told The Independent: “We Sunni in Iraq are going to end up being forced out of our homes like the Palestinians.” He said it was difficult for a Sunni like him to live in Baghdad which “had become a city of militias”.

There is fear among refugees that Ramadi and the highway linking it to Baghdad will soon be engulfed by fighting. The leaders of the Shia militias such as the Badr Organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the Hezbollah Brigades (different from the Lebanese movement of the same name) will be eager to show that they can succeed where the state security services failed.

Ever since the mass mobilisation of Shia, heeding the call of the immensely influential Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on 13 June last year after Isis took Iraq’s second city, Mosul, there has been rivalry between Shia militias and central government over control of security. Some, but not all, of the militias are under the influence of Iran.

The Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, has sought to bring the militiamen, who receive a monthly stipend of $750 (£484) from the government, under his authority. Backed by the US, he was seeking to build up the regular security services and had some success at Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein captured by Isis, which had first been attacked by the militias but which they were unable to take. It eventually fell to an assault backed by US air strikes, led by the regular army’s “Golden Division”, and on 1 April Mr Abadi visited Tikrit and claimed the victory as his own. But he then overplayed his hand, saying that government forces were going to reconquer Anbar and announcing grandly that “we turn to the west”.

In reality, it was Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, which took the initiative and opened its own offensive in Anbar that concluded with the capture of Ramadi and the ruin of Mr Abadi’s plans.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-seizes-ramadi-iraqi-government-deploys-shia-militiamen-to-assist-in-counteroffensive-to-retake-city-from-jihadists-10262055.html

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq

Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, says Seumas Milne.

THE WAR on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria

Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/now-the-truth-emerges-how-the-us-fuelled-the-rise-of-isis-in-syria-and-iraq

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

Dude, where's my Humvee? Iraq losing US equipment to ISIS at staggering rate

You couldn't make it up: US weaponry is being sent into Iraq to destroy US weaponry previously sent into Iraq.

Iraqi security forces lost 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when Islamic State overran the northern city of Mosul in June 2014, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday in an interview with Iraqiya state television.

Coupled with previous losses of American weapons, the conclusion is simple: The United States is effectively supplying Islamic State with tools of war the militant group cannot otherwise hope to acquire from its patrons.

In addition to the Humvees, Iraqi forces previously abandoned significant types and numbers of heavy weapons to Islamic State. For example, losses to Islamic State include at least 40 M1A1 main battle tanks, as well as small arms and ammunition, including 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer mobile gun systems.

“We lost a lot of weapons,” Abadi admitted.

To help replenish Iraq’s motor pool, the U.S. State Department last year approved a sale to Iraq of 1,000 Humvees, along with their armor upgrades, machine guns and grenade launchers. The United States previously donated 250 Mine Resistant Armored Personnel carriers (MRAPs) to Iraq, plus unaccountable amounts of material left behind when American forces departed in 2011.

The United States is currently in the process of moving to Iraq 175 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, 55,000 rounds of main tank-gun ammunition, $600 million in howitzers and trucks, $700 million worth of Hellfire missiles and 2,000 AT-4 rockets.

The Hellfires and AT-4′s, anti-tank weapons, are presumably going to be used to help destroy the American armor in the hands of Islamic State. The United States is also conducting air strikes to destroy weapons seized by Islamic State.

It’s a surreal state of affairs in which American weaponry is being sent into Iraq to destroy American weaponry previously sent into Iraq. If a new sequel to Catch-22 were to be written, this would be the plot line.

The United States also continues to spend money on training the Iraqi military. Some 3,000 American soldiers are currently in Iraq preparing Iraqi soldiers to perhaps someday fight Islamic State; many of the Americans are conducting the training on former military bases abandoned by the United States following Gulf War 2.0.

In addition, some $1.2 billion in training funds for Iraq were tucked into an omnibus spending bill that Congress passed earlier this year. This is in spite of the sad reality that from 2003 to 2011, the United States spent $25 billion training Iraqi security forces.

The return on these training investments? The Iraqi army had 30,000 soldiers in Mosul, who ran away in the face of about 1,000 Islamic State fighters. The same thing happened just a few weeks ago in Ramadi, where 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, collapsing faster than a cardboard box in the rain, fled ahead of only 400 Islamic State fighters. The Iraqis left behind more weapons.

In an interview with me a year ago, Chris Coyne, professor of economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, predicted this exact scenario well before the United States sent troops back into Iraq:

“The United States government provided significant amounts of military hardware to the Iraqi government with the intention that it would be used for good. However, during the Islamic State offensive, many of the Iraqis turned and ran, leaving behind the United States-supplied hardware. This weapons windfall may further alter the dynamics in Syria.

“Now the United States government wants to provide more military supplies to the Iraqi government to combat Islamic State. But I haven’t heard many people recognizing, let alone discussing, the potential negative unintended consequences of doing so. How do we know the weapons and supplies will be used as desired? Why should we have any confidence that supplying more military hardware to a country with a dysfunctional and ineffective government will lead to a good outcome either in Iraq or in the broader region?”

The impact of all these heavy weapons falling into Islamic State hands is significant for American foreign policy goals in the Middle East. A report prepared for the United Nations Security Council warns that Islamic State possesses sufficient reserves of small arms, ammunition and vehicles to wage its war in Syria and Iraq for two more years.

And that presumes the United States won’t be losing more tools of war to Islamic State, thanks to the Iraqi army.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/dude-where-s-my-humvee-iraq-losing-us-equipment-to-isis-at-staggering-rate

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

Even though we no longer have an Army worth the name, since David Cameron slashed the defence budget to pay for the scandal known as ‘Foreign Aid’, voices are being raised to suggest that we intervene again in Iraq.

This is clueless in the extreme. If we send soldiers there, RAF Brize Norton will soon be welcoming planes loaded with flag-wrapped coffins – and in the end we will leave, beaten, yet again. The rise of Islamic State is the direct result of two disastrous foreign policy mistakes, both so obviously doomed that even I could see it at the time.

The 2003 overthrow of Saddam and the 2011 Western-backed undermining of the Assad government in Syria were both based on the idea that if you get rid of a tyrant, something better will automatically follow.

This isn’t true. In fact both these adventures released forces we barely understand and cannot control. There is no sign that anyone in London or Washington has learned anything as a result.

Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.

You may remember that flags flew at half-mast in London recently to mark the death of the Saudi king, and that British Royalty and politicians are frequent honoured guests in the Saudi capital. I am not against our having good relations with Riyadh. It is a sound principle of wise foreign policy to deal with whatever government is firmly in control of the territory.

We recognise many horrible governments all over the world, and have learned to live happily with grisly Sinn Fein right next door. In which case we may soon have to consider dealing with Islamic State too. Don’t rule it out. It may be better than the alternative.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece

The Dark Saudi-Israeli Plot to Tip the Scales in Syria

A quiet meeting this past March in Saudi Arabia, and a recent anonymous leak from the Israeli military, set the stage for what may be a new and wider war in the Middle East.

Gathering in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh were Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, newly crowned Saudi King Salman, and the organizer of the get-together, the emir of Qatar. The meeting was an opportunity for Turkey and Saudi Arabia to bury a hatchet over Ankara’s support — which Riyadh’s opposes — to the Muslim Brotherhood, and to agree to cooperate in overthrowing the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

Taking Aim at Assad

The pact prioritized the defeat of the Damascus regime over the threat posed by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and aims to checkmate Iranian influence in the region. However, the Turks and the Saudis are not quite on the same page when it comes to Iran: Turkey sees future business opportunities when the sanctions against Tehran end, while Riyadh sees Iran as nothing but a major regional rival.

The Turkish-Saudi axis means that Turkish weapons, bomb making supplies, and intelligence — accompanied by lots of Saudi money — are openly flowing to extremist groups like the al-Qaeda associated Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, both now united in the so-called “Army of Conquest.”

The new alliance has created a certain amount of friction with the United States, which would also like to overthrow Assad but for the time being is focused on attacking the Islamic State and on inking a nuclear agreement with Iran.

This could change, however, because the Obama administration is divided on how deeply it wants to get entangled in Syria. If Washington decides to supply anti-aircraft weapons to the Army of Conquest, it will mean the United States has thrown in its lot with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — and that the “war on terror” is taking a backseat to regime change in Syria.

Not that the Americans are overly concerned about aiding and abetting Islamic extremists. While the U.S. is bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Obama administration is also training Syrians to overthrow Assad, which objectively puts them in the extremist camp vis-à-vis the Damascus regime. Washington is also aiding the Saudis’ war on the Houthis in Yemen. Yet the Houthis are the most effective Yemeni opponents of the Islamic State and the group called Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, against which the United States is waging a drone war.

The Turkish-Saudi alliance seems to have already made a difference in the Syrian civil war. After some initial successes last year against divided opponents, the Syrian government has suffered some sharp defeats in the past few months and appears to be regrouping to defend its base of support in the coastal regions and the cities of Homs, Hama, and Damascus. While the Syrian government has lost over half of the country to the insurgents, it still controls up to 60 percent of the population.

Turkey has long been a major conduit for weapons, supplies, and fighters for the anti-Assad forces, and Saudi Arabia and most of its allies in the Gulf Coordination Council, representing the monarchies of the Middle East, have funneled money to the insurgents. But Saudi Arabia has always viewed the Muslim Brotherhood — which has a significant presence in Syria and in countries throughout the region — as a threat to its own monarchy.

The fact that Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party is an offshoot of the Brotherhood has caused friction with the Saudis. For instance, while Turkey denounced the military coup against the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, Saudi Arabia essentially bankrolled the takeover and continues to bail Cairo out of economic trouble.

But all that was water under the bridge when it came to getting rid of Assad. The Turks and the Saudis have established a joint command center in the newly conquered Syrian province of Idlib and have begun pulling the kaleidoscope of Assad opponents into a cohesive force.

A War on Hezbollah?

Three years of civil war has whittled the Syrian Army from 250,000 in 2011 to around 125,000 today, but Damascus is bolstered by Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters. The Lebanese Shiite organization that fought Israel to a draw in 2006 is among the Assad regime’s most competent forces.

Which is where the Israeli leak comes in.

The timing of the story — published on May 12 in The New York Times — was certainly odd, as was the prominence given a story based entirely on unnamed “senior Israeli officials.” If the source was obscured, the message was clear: “We will hit Hezbollah hard, while making every effort to limit civilian casualties as much as we can,” the official said. But “we do not intend to stand by helplessly in the face of rocket attacks.”

The essence of the article was that Hezbollah is using civilians as shields in southern Lebanon, and the Israelis intended to blast the group regardless of whether civilians are present or not.

This is hardly breaking news. The Israeli military made exactly the same claim in its 2008-09 “Cast Lead” attack on Gaza and again in last year’s “Protective Edge” assault on the same embattled strip. It is currently under investigation by the United Nations for possible war crimes involving the targeting of civilians.

Nor is it the first time Israel has said the same thing about Hezbollah in Lebanon. In his Salon article entitled “The ‘hiding among civilians’ myth,” Beirut-based writer and photographer Mitch Prothero found that “This claim [of hiding among civilians] is almost always false.” Indeed, says Prothero, Hezbollah fighters avoid mingling with civilians because they know “they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators — as so many Palestinian militants have been.”

But why is the Israeli military talking about a war with Lebanon? The border is quiet. There have been a few incidents, but nothing major. Hezbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of starting a war, though it warns Tel Aviv that it’s quite capable of fighting one. The most likely answer is that the Israelis are coordinating their actions with Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Tel Aviv has essentially formed a de facto alliance with Riyadh to block a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany. Israel is also supporting Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen and has an informal agreement with Riyadh and Ankara to back the anti-Assad forces in Syria.

Israel is taking wounded Nusra Front fighters across the southern Syrian border for medical treatment. It’s also bombed Syrian forces in the Golan Heights. In one incident, it killed several Hezbollah members and an Iranian general advising the Syrian government.

The Realm of Uncertainty

The Saudis have pushed the argument that Syria, Iraq, and Yemen are really about Iranian expansionism and the age-old clash between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Hezbollah is indeed a Shiite organization, and the majority of Iraqis are also members of the sect. Assad’s regime is closely associated with the Alawites, an offshoot of Shiism, and the Houthis in Yemen follow a variety of the sect as well.

However, the wars in the Middle East are about secular power, not divine authority — although sectarian division is a useful recruiting device. As for “Iranian aggression,” it was the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States, that started the modern round of Sunni-Shiite bloodletting when Iraq invaded Iran in 1981.

If the Israeli Army attacks southern Lebanon, Hezbollah will be forced to bring some of its troops home from Syria, thus weakening the Syrian Army at a time when it’s already hard pressed by newly united rebel forces. In short, it would be a two-front war that would tie down Hezbollah, smash up southern Lebanon, and lead to the possible collapse of the Assad regime.

As Karl von Clausewitz once noted, however, war is the realm of uncertainty. All that one can really determine is who fires the first shot.

That the Israelis can pulverize scores of villages in southern Lebanon and kill lots of Shiites, there is no question. They’ve done it before. But a ground invasion may be very expensive, and the idea that they could “defeat” Hezbollah is a pipe dream. Shiites make up 40 percent of Lebanon’s sectarian mélange and dominate the country’s south. Hezbollah has support among other communities as well, in part because it successfully resisted the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation and bloodied Tel Aviv in the 2006 invasion.

An Israeli attack on Hezbollah, however, would almost certainly re-ignite Lebanon’s civil war, while bolstering the power of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The Turks might think that al-Qaeda is no threat to them, but recent history should give them pause.

Creating something like the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya is not terribly difficult. Controlling them is altogether another matter.

“It Always Seems to Blow Back”

“Every power in the Middle East has tried to harness the power of the Islamists to their own end,” says Joshua Landis, director of Middle Eastern Studies at Oklahoma University. But “it always seems to blow back.”

The Afghan mujahedeen created the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the U.S. invasion of Iraq spawned the Islamic State, and Libya has collapsed into a safe haven for radical Islamist groups of all stripes. Erdogan may think the Justice and Development Party’s Islamic credentials will shield Turkey from a Syrian ricochet, but many of these groups consider Erdogan an apostate for playing democratic politics in secular institutions.

Indeed, up to 5,000 Turkish young people have volunteered to fight in Syria and Iraq. Eventually they will take the skills and ideology they learned on the battlefield back to Turkey, and Erdogan may come to regret his fixation with overthrowing Assad.

While it hard to imagine a Middle East more chaotic than it is today, if the Army of Conquest succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government, and Israel attacks Lebanon, “chaos” will be an understatement.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/the-dark-saudi-israeli-plot-to-tip-the-scales-in-syria/

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another comment piece.

Iran, Like the Rest, Is Not Blameless

When the United States government declared its war on Afghanistan in October 2001, thus taking the first step in its so-called ‘war on terror’, following the devastating attacks of September 11 earlier that year, Iran jumped on board.

Then Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, dubbed a reformist, provided substantial assistance in the US effort aimed at defeating the Taliban, an ardent enemy of Iran and Afghan Shia. Indeed, the Taliban’s aggressive policies included an anti-Shia drive, which resulted in a massive refugee problem. Tens of thousands of Afghan Shia sought refuge in Iran.

Khatami’s ‘friendly’ gesture towards the anti-terror crusade lead by George W. Bush was not by any means an Iranian departure from a supposed policy of non-intervention in the region. Iran is a country with porous borders, political and strategic interests, serious and legitimate fears, but also unquestionable ambitions.

Iran’s intervention in Afghanistan never ceased since then, and is likely to continue, especially following the US withdrawal, whenever it takes place. Iran’s earlier role in Afghanistan ranged from the arrest of al-Qaeda suspects, sought by Washington, to training Afghan soldiers, to direct intervention in the country’s politics so as to ensure that the country’s politics are aligned to meet Iranian expectations.

None of this should come as a surprise. Iran has been under massive scrutiny since the Iranian revolution in 1979. It has been threatened, sanctioned, punished, and for nearly a decade fought a massive war with Iraq. Nearly half a million soldiers, and an estimated equal number of civilians perished in the ‘long war’ when Iraq and Iran, using World War II tactics, sparred over territories, waterways access, resources, regional dominance and more. Both parties used conventional and non-conventional weapons to win the ugly conflict. Neither did.

But regardless of the thinking behind Iran’s current regional ambitions, one cannot pretend that Iran is an innocent force in the Middle East, solely aimed at self-preservation. This reading is as incorrect as that, championed by Israel and its remaining neoconservative friends in Washington, which see Iran as a threat that must be eradicated for the Middle East to achieve peace and stability.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran immediately moved to rearrange the country’s politics to suit its interests. It poured massive funds and a limitless arsenal to aid its allies, Shia political parties and notorious militias. Expectedly, Iran wanted to ensure that the American debacle in Iraq deepens, so Tehran doesn’t become the next US war destination. To do so, however, Iran, jointly, although indirectly with the Americans, savaged the once strongest Arab country.

The Shia government and its numerous militias killed, butchered, abused and humiliated Sunnis, especially tribes, which were seen as particularity influential following the destruction of the Baath regime and other centers of supposed Sunni seats of power.

That reductionist understanding of Iraqi society was both championed by Washington and Tehran. The horrible consequences of that understanding raised an unprecedented animosity towards Iran, and, expectedly towards Shia in general throughout much of the region.

However, the key role played by Hezbollah, a mainly Shia party and fighting force, in ending the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 2000, and driving the Israelis out once more in 2006, balanced out the damage inflicted by Iran’s destructive role in Iraq. Hezbollah’s ability to keep Israel at bay was more than enough to challenge the sectarian argument.

Things changed however with the arrival of the so-called Arab Spring. Iran and its regional enemies, in the Gulf, and later Turkey, perceived the upheaval in the Arab world as a serious threat, but also an opportunity.

It was a great game par excellence, which is now on full display in Yemen, and of course, Syria and elsewhere.

While one may argue that ultimately the ongoing wars in the Middle East are not rooted in any sectarian tendencies, but the outcome of a political power play that span decades, there is no denial that the sectarian component of the war is now a defining one, and that Iran, like the Gulf, Turkey, Israel, the US and their Western allies, are all implicated.

They may all claim some rational dialectic through which to justify or explain their involvement, but few can claim innocence in the suffering of millions of people.

During the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88), the US stood on the side of Iraq, providing logistical and military support. Iran has no trust of the US or respect for its foreign policy. But Tehran also understands that the US, despite its waning influence, will remain an important party in the Middle East, and therefore has tailored its policies with that understanding in mind. Iran cooperates with the US when its suits both parties interests, as they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS).

From Tehran’s viewpoint, its regional expansion can be partly seen as a defense mechanism: a powerful and influential Iran would decrease the chances of a US-Israeli aggression. Just recently, the European Union top diplomat called on Iran to “play a major, major but positive, role on Syria in particular, to encourage the regime to … (support) a Syrian-led transition.”

For Iran, such statements are political leverage which, to a degree, indicate the success of its strategy in Syria, one that involved major military support of the Assad government, and direct military intervention. It’s irrefutable that Iran’s role in Syria has been following the same sectarian lines that it followed, and continues to adhere to in Iraq. While Iran’s fight against the brutes of IS is undeniable, Iran’s responsibility in the rise of Sunni militarism in the first place must also not be denied.

While Iran is sustaining several fronts in its current role in the Middle East great game, it hopes to translate its palpable regional ascendency into political capital, one that the Iranian government wants to translate to a final nuclear deal before June 30. That deal could spare Iran further conflict with the West, or at least lessen the fervor of war championed by rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.

Current media and political discourses attempting to rationalize the multiple conflicts in the Middle East region tend to invest in one singular reading, which tends to demonize one party and completely spare others. While the role of regional actors in supporting extremists in Syria and Iraq, which lead to the formation of IS is known and openly discussed, Iran cannot be spared the blame.

Iran is part and parcel of ongoing conflicts, has contributed to some, reacted to others; it labored to defeat US ambitions, but also cooperated with Washington when their interests intersected. It is as sectarian as the rest, and abashedly so.

This is not an attempt at implicating Iran, but an attempt at an honest reading into a war involving many parties, whose hands are equally bloody.

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/just-politics-iran-like-the-rest-is-not-blameless/