[The two pieces reproduced below are slightly dated, even more so, given the breakneck pace of events unfolding. So, to an extent, events have overtaken these analyses - the launching of US air strikes against the ISIS targets and its significant intensification since the removal of al-Maliki as the Iraqi PM, in particular - and some of the predictions made have not exactly clicked. (But that's a rather routine hazard.) Nonetheless both, in their own ways, challenge a few lazy shibboleths, highlight some vital aspects, provide some useful insights, and enrich our understanding of the prevailing situation.
The overwhelming salience of a national reconciliation government in Baghdad in a successful attempt to suppress the ISIS is a subterranean running thread.] I/II. http://redflag.org.au/article/old-certainties-turned-upside-down-middle-east Old certainties turned upside down in Middle East01 July 2014 | Corey Oakley The map of the modern Middle East is being ripped apart. The border between Iraq and Syria no longer exists. After routing the "Iraqi army" (in reality, little more than a Shiite militia) in Mosul, Sunni rebels, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), symbolically dismantled the border posts between the two countries as their supporters triumphantly took to the internet with the hashtag #SykesPicotOver. That is a reference to the secret agreement between French diplomat François Georges-Picot and the British Sir Mark Sykes in 1916 that was the first step towards the creation of the modern states of Iraq and Syria, and the broader carve-up of the region by the victors of World War One. The border between Iraq and Syria has been a fiction for at least a year. But the stunning speed with which the revolt has swept across Iraq has shaken the entire region to its core. In the weeks since the takeover of Mosul, ISIS-led forces have consolidated their power over large parts of northern and western Iraq. It is now clear that this is not simply a rebellion by a few thousand fighters from the jihadist group ISIS, but a broad-based Sunni rebellion involving a wide range of political forces, including former Baathists, tribal groups and many others who are far from sympathetic to ISIS's reactionary politics. The rebels now control an enormous swath of territory stretching from the outskirts of Aleppo in Syria to just west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Rebels have taken control of strategically crucial cities and towns on, over or near the borders of both Jordan and Saudi Arabia, raising fevered speculation about whether they too will succumb to the tide of revolt. The fallout from these events is extraordinary. Tehran and Washington have both been gripped by debate about the possibility of Iranian-US cooperation to fight ISIS. When the neocon hawks, consumed by bloodstained hubris in the weeks after the 2003 Iraq invasion, declared "real men go to Tehran", they little imagined that a decade later the US would indeed be headed to Tehran - not to invade, but cap in hand, pleading with the Iranians to help them restore order in an Iraq they are now almost helpless to affect. An indicator of the erosion of US influence in Iraq was the reception given to John Kerry when he flew into the country in late June. He visited Kurdistan President Mahmoud Barzani in Erbil, asking him to help form a united government in Baghdad to stand against ISIS. Instead, Barzani all but said he was on the verge of seceding from Iraq. Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk and consolidated their position throughout what was already a de facto state in northern Iraq. When Kerry went to Baghdad to demand that Nouri al-Maliki step aside in favour of a "broad-based inclusive government", Maliki told him to go jump. In a television address the following day, Maliki rejected any idea of a national unity government. He later announced that he was buying used fighter jets from Russia because F-16 fighter jets ordered from the US had still not arrived. The Iranians, who have more influence over the situation than the US, are backing Maliki, but there are no guarantees this will continue. The break-up of the country, which Maliki's approach makes almost inevitable, would likely result in a sectarian Sunni state blocking the land route Iran relies on to move weapons and aid to the Syrian regime and to Hezbollah, which Iran considers to be a crucial element of its ability to project power. At least two battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are already active in Iraq fighting ISIS, and Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds force and the man in charge of the Iranian units fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, has been in Baghdad coordinating the operation. US and Iranian interests only partially overlap, but it is increasingly clear to US strategists that Iran is the only power with a chance to stabilise the situation. The prospect of further US-Iranian rapprochement has sent US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel into a panic. Saudi Arabia has been involved in furious behind the scenes action to derail the process, including holding talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The Saudi position is mired in intractable contradictions. While hostile to Iran, Saudi Arabia also knows that ISIS is its bitter foe. Claims that the Saudi monarchy backs ISIS are unsubstantiated. It is, however, true that ISIS is backed by sections of the Saudi bourgeoisie cut off from the narrowly based regime that rules the country. One of the reasons they back ISIS is that they support one of its core aims - the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy. Indicating the level of concern among Saudi rulers, in late June King Abdullah summoned a National Security Council meeting to order a general call-up of all military units and institute "all necessary measures to protect the kingdom against terrorist threats". And demonstrating the extent to which this crisis is drawing in countries across the region, reports suggest that Egypt is assembling an expeditionary commando force to fly to Saudi Arabia to bolster its border defences. Israel is now being forced to contemplate whether it is prepared to intervene militarily to defend the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan if it comes under serious threat - an action that would put it in a de facto military alliance with Tehran. Meanwhile, the Syrian regime, which hardly fired a shot at ISIS as it consolidated its position in eastern Syria over the last 12 months, has finally decided to bomb the ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, and has also bombed Sunni rebel-controlled airports taking deliveries of weapons near the Saudi border in Iraq. As socialist writer Michael Karadjis has pointed out, this is not likely to be a sign that the Syrian regime is now interested in confronting ISIS in Syria - where the war waged by ISIS on the alliance of Free Syrian Army and Syrian Islamist fighters serves Assad's purposes. Instead, at a time when Iranian troops and Iraqi Shiite militiamen who have been fighting alongside Assad are pouring out of Syria to join the battle in Iraq, air strikes against ISIS are a message to Assad backers Iran and Russia that the Syrian regime is an important and useful ally. *'Anti-imperialist' fantasies unravel* Throughout the three-year civil war in Syria, there has been a fierce debate on the international left between those who backed the uprising against Bashar al-Assad, and those who either defended the regime, or at the very least refused to back the opposition on the grounds that Assad was part of an "anti-imperialist bloc". For leftists in the latter category, like *Counterpunch* writer Phil Greaves, "imperialism" simply means the US and its Saudi and Israeli allies. Syria, Iran and even Russia, whose strategic interests brought them into conflict with the US, are portrayed as playing a progressive role, or at best a benign one. This is the logic that convinced many to rail against "imperialist intervention" in Syria at the slightest whiff of mostly non-existent aid from the US to Syrian rebel forces, while at the same time explaining away the very real imperialist intervention into the war by Iran and Russia, which has played a decisive role in propping up the Assad regime. Events in Iraq over the last month leave such "anti-imperialist" fantasies in ruins. The Saudis are conspiring with the Russians while US diplomats negotiate military tactics with their Iranian counterparts and move towards a détente with Assad in Syria. Israel tries to derail a US alliance with Iran while simultaneously considering whether it needs to intervene in de facto alliance with Iran in Jordan. If your political approach boils down to putting a tick wherever the US and Israel put a cross, you will quickly find yourself tied in knots. The driving force behind the misery inflicted daily on millions of people across the Arab world, brought to fever pitch in Iraq and Syria at the moment, is not an all-powerful US empire, but a complex system of conflict and shifting alliances between the ruling classes of states big and small. All of these ruling classes are driven by the same pragmatic capitalist logic: make alliances and fight wars based on what will improve your geostrategic position and secure the greatest economic and political advantage relative to your rivals. It is true that the divisions that rack the Middle East are as vicious as they are because of the cold-blooded manner in which the old imperial powers divided up the Arab world a century ago, and the endless cycle of interventions from those powers that have followed since. But the British, Russian, French and US imperialists are no longer the only independent powers in the region. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - though all intertwined in alliances with other countries big and small - are powerful capitalist states in their own right, playing the imperialist game, not mere clients of bigger powers. Furthermore, the ruling elites of the many smaller countries fit into the network of alliances and divisions not simply as pawns, but as defenders of their own interests and those of their local capitalist class. But the maelstrom that has descended on the Middle East is not simply a product of conflict between the elites. The most important factor is the enormous and increasing gap between rich and poor in the Arab world, and the tensions and instability that flow from that. The current conflict in Iraq has specific roots in the US war and occupation, but it is also a product of the despair, oppression, displacement and poverty that led to the outbreak of revolutionary struggles across the Middle East in 2011. The fact that the struggle in Iraq is now morphing into a region-wide conflict is indicative of the fact that the old order, characterised by brutal authoritarianism and class divisions, is everywhere cracking apart. Whether this crisis eventually leads to new mass struggles that break through the poison of sectarianism and start to articulate a vision of a new, united struggle of the Arab masses against parasitical rulers of all stripes, or spirals into an even deeper hell of sectarianism and social disintegration, it is impossible to say. But in the darkest hours it is worth remembering the first days of the Arab revolution, the days before it was called a revolution, when the young people who put their bodies against the bullets and the tanks and declared they would bring down dictatorships were dismissed as hopeless dreamers who did not understand the realities of the Arab world. The hope that drove those nameless heroes, and the millions who took to the streets after them, has not yet been realised. But their extraordinary feats counted for more than anyone, friend or foe, ever predicted. It would be a brave person who claimed that sectarian barbarism is the only possible future, and that the day of the Arab revolution has passed. II. https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/romain-caillet-christelle-gence/lasting-presence-for-is-in-iraq-and-syria-interview-w *A lasting presence for IS in Iraq and Syria: interview with Romain Caillet * Romain Caillet <https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/romain-caillet> and Christelle Gence <https://www.opendemocracy.net/author/christelle-gence> 13 August 2014 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.* Iraqis in flight from their homes in Mosul, July 2014. Joseph Galanakis/Demotix. All rights reserved. *Christelle Gence conducted the following interview with Romain Caillet in French, originally published on 15 July 2014 by SaphirNews <http://www.saphirnews.com/> under the title * L'Etat islamique va s'installer durablement en Iraq et en Syrie <http://www.saphirnews.com/L-Etat-islamique-va-s-installer-durablement-en-Irak-et-en-Syrie_a19229.html> .* 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 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEdKWfacCcM> 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 percent 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.* IS with suAs 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 againstpport 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. *This translation is by Laura Mitchell of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF).* -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
