Tag: Iraq

LEBANON AND THE NEO-CON ENDGAME

by Sarkis Pogossian, WW4 REPORT

There have been signs over the past three years, as the debacle in Iraq has gone from bad to worse, that the so-called “neo-cons”—the Pentagon-connected policy wonks with traditional ties to the Israeli right and ultra-ambitious schemes to remake the entire order of the Middle East—have been taken down a peg. With the US actually in danger of losing control of Iraq, the notion of attacking Iran, or even plotting against supposed allies like Saudi Arabia, is starting to look more dangerous than attractive to Washington pragmatists.

The turning point would seem to have been in March 2003, when US troops were still advancing on Baghdad. At this decisive moment, Pentagon official Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a high-level group that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on policy issues. On March 27, the same day he resigned, Perle told BBC: “This will be the short war I and others predicted… I don’t believe it will be months. I believed all along that it will be a quick war, and I continue to believe that.”

Stepping down as chair, Perle would remain on the board until 2004. Also serving on the Defense Policy Board at this time were former CIA director James Woolsey, former Vice President Dan Quayle, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Perle had become increasingly identified with a maximalist agenda to go beyond mere “regime change” in Iraq to topple regimes and even redraw borders throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds. On Oct. 1, 2002, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on a recent meeting in which Perle told Pentagon officials that Iraq was just a tactical goal, while Saudi Arabia was the strategic goal and Egypt was the great prize. Other ideas he reportedly put forth included permanent Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territories, a Palestinian state in Jordan, and a restored Hashemite monarchy in Iraq.

Many analysts say the strategy for US domination of Iraq originated in a plan drafted in 1997, when the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) sent a letter to then-President Clinton urging him to take action to oust Saddam Hussein. The group also called for the “democratization” of Syria and Iran. Among the 40 neo-conservatives in the think-tank, 10 would go on to become members of the Bush administration–including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle.

With Perle’s optimistic prediction about Iraq now proven so horribly wrong, the administration pragmatists (mostly in the State Department) seemed poised to seize the initiative and start bringing US policy back towards the center.

Then, on July 12, 2006, the Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, and Israel responded with massive air-strikes on Lebanon–ostensibly aimed at crushing Hezbollah, but actually widely targeting the country’s infrastructure. Hezbollah has been striking back with missile attacks on Israel, but has no capacity to inflict anywhere near equivalent damage. Some 600 are believed dead in Lebanon (compared to 50 in Israel), at least some 500,000 have been displaced, and there is no end in sight. A week into the campaign, the US Congress passed a resolution (unanimously in the Senate) endorsing Israel’s aggression.

Lebanon was actually something of a showcase for the neo-cons, a model for their vision of pro-Western revolutionary change in the region. Following the February 2005 car-bomb assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a longtime opponent of the Syrian presence in the country, a wave of protest was unleashed. In what would become known as the “Cedar Revolution,” a new government was elected and Syrian troops, which had occupied the eastern part of the country since 1976, were finally called home.

But the victory was incomplete. Power was still uneasily divided between the West-backed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. And Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, was allowed to maintain a virtual army within Lebanon’s borders.

Israel has been quick to portray the Lebanon campaign as a proxy war in which Syria and Iran are the real enemies. “This is about Iran as much as it is about Hezbollah or Lebanon‚” Lt. Col. Amos Guiora, the former commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ School of Military Law and currently a law professor at Western Reserve University, told New York’s Jewish weekly The Forward July 14.

Such statements imply that Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution cannot be successfully consolidated unless there is a general re-shaping of the Middle East political order. And the American neo-cons who share this agenda have once again been on the offensive since Israel’s new war on Lebanon.

Return of the Prince of Darkness

Richard Perle was so strongly opposed to nuclear arms control agreements with the USSR during his days as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, that he became known as ”the Prince of Darkness.” Since leaving the Defense Policy Board, he has carried on a political blog for the Washington Post. On June 25, just before the Lebanon conflagration began, he wrote a piece that took on the State Department pragmatists for backing down from expansion of Washington’s war beyond Iraq. Unsubtly entitled “Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi),” it stated:

“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad… President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the ‘expansion of freedom in all the world’ and victory in the war on terrorism. The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations… And now, on May 31, the administration offered to join talks with Iran on its nuclear program. How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch ‘the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands,’ has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?”

Perle perceives that the White House has capitulated to the appeasement-oriented Europeans—and clearly places the blame with Rice’s promotion to Secretary of State. He laments that “the geography of this administration has changed. Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom… [S]he is now in the midst of—and increasingly represents—a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.”

Oblivious to the torture state that has consolidated power in Iraq since its “liberation,” Perle portrayed the issue in terms of human freedom, and played openly to Reagan nostalgia:

“In his second inaugural address, Bush said, ‘All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you.’ Iranians were heartened by those words, much as the dissidents of the Soviet Union were heartened by Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ speech in 1983…. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) tried two weeks ago to pass the Iran Freedom Support Act, which would have increased the administration’s too-little-too-late support for democracy and human rights in Iran. But the State Department opposed it, arguing that it ‘runs counter to our efforts…it would limit our diplomatic flexibility.’ I hope it is not too late…to give substance to Bush’s words, not too late to redeem our honor.”

Since the Lebanon explosion, Rice has tilted back to the neo-con position, with rhetoric pointing to a fundamental power shift in the entire region as the only acceptable requisite for peace. She has argued against the international community demanding an immediate ceasefire, calling for a more “enduring” arrangement that would end Hezbollah’s presence in southern Lebanon and further diminish the influence of Syria and Iran in Lebanon’s affairs.

She told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur July 28 that the US would only support a ceasefire that “does not return us to the status quo ante. We cannot return to the circumstances that created this situation in the first place.”

A day earlier in Rome, she said: “Syria has a responsibility. And we are deeply concerned, as we have said, about the role of Iran. It is high time that people make a choice.”

Hindsight may reveal Israel’s Lebanon campaign as the strategic masterstroke that will force the Bush administration’s hand and put the neo-cons back on top.

Gingrich Sees World War III

Commentator Bill Berkowitz, a left-wing watchdog on the conservative movement, has been keeping close tabs on the ominous rhetoric emanating in recent weeks from Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, whose “Contract with America” legislative package provoked a shutdown of the federal government in 1995.

In a July 16 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gingrich said that the US should be “helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force.”

A day earlier, the Seattle Times reported that during a fund-raising trip in Washington state, Gingrich was even more bellicose. “This is World War III,” Gingrich said. “Israel wouldn’t leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts.”

Gingrich openly maintained that the use of the term “World War III” could re-energize the base of the Republican Party. He said that public opinion can change “the minute you use the language” of world war. “OK, if we’re in the third world war,” he asked, “which side do you think should win?”

On July 17, Gingrich restated his World War III contention on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”

Berkowitz notes that the watchdog website Media Matters for America has documented a number of recent “World War III” references by cable television’s conservative commentators. On the July 13 edition of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” host Bill O’Reilly said “World War III… I think we’re in it.” On the same day’s edition of MSNBC’s “Tucker,” a graphic read: “On the verge of World War III?” On July 12, “CNN Headline News” host Glenn Beck began his program, featuring an interview with former CIA officer Robert Baer, by saying “We’ve got World War III to fight,” while also warning of “the impending apocalypse.” Beck and Baer had a similar discussion the next day, in which Beck said: “I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.”

Back in May, even President Bush told the CNBC cable TV network that the action taken by the passengers on the hijacked Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 was the “first counter-attack to World War III.”

Bush said that he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in an April Wall Street Journal commentary that the act was “our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war—World War III.”

Woolsey Weighs in for World War IV

Writes Bill Berkowitz: “Hyping World War III isn’t new to conservatives. Some have even argued that the real World War III was the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and that now the US is engaged in World War IV.”

Berkowitz notes that the idea that the Cold War was World War III originates from PNAC, and that the concept has taken on growing currency among the neo-cons since 9-11. In April 2003, at a teach-in at UCLA sponsored by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, James Woolsey, the former CIA director and founding member of PNAC, told the audience: “This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us; hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War.”

Appearing on Fox News’ “The Big Story” this July 17, Woolsey weighed in on the Lebanon crisis in frighteningly bellicose terms.

“I think we ought to execute some air-strikes against Syria, against the instruments of power of that state, against the airport, which is the place where weapons shuttle through from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas,” Woolsey said. “I think both Syria and Iran think that we’re cowards. They saw us leave Lebanon after the ’83 Marine Corps bombing. They saw us leave Mogadishu in ’93.”

The former Central Intelligence director, now a vice president at the global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, flatly rejected calls for a cease-fire in Lebanon. “I think the last thing we ought to do now is to start talking about cease-fires and a rest,” he said.

Iran, of course, did not escape Woolsey’s ire either: “Iran has drawn a line in the sand. They’ve sent Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel. They’re pushing their nuclear weapons program. They’re helping North Korea, working with them on a ballistic missile program. They’re doing their best to take over southern Iraq with [radical Shiite cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr and some of their other proxies. This is a very serious challenge from Iran and we need to weaken them badly, and undermining the Syrian government with air-strikes would help weaken them badly.”

Asked by host John Gibson if he also advocated air-strikes against Iran, Woolsey replied: “One has to take things to some degree by steps,” Woolsey responded. “I think it would be a huge blow to Iran if the Israelis are able after a few more days’ effort to badly damage Hezbollah and Hamas as they are doing, and if we were able to help undermine the continuation of the Assad regime [in Syria] – without putting troops on the ground, I wouldn’t advocate that. We’ve got one major war in that part of the world on the ground in Iraq and that’s enough for right at this moment I think.”

The “Clean Break”

Joseph Cirincione, writing for the ThinkProgress blog, traces the plan for Lebanon to a controversial document prepared in 1996 by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith (undersecretary of defense for policy until last year) and David Wurmser (former American Enterprise Institute wonk and now Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser). They document was prepared for the newly-elected Likud government in Israel, and called for “A Clean Break” with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace.

According to the document, the problem could be solved “if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon.” The document also called for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and “reestablishing the principle of preemption.” It anticipated that the successes of these wars could be used to launch campaigns against Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reshaping “the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly.”

Writes Cirincione: “Now, with the US bogged down in Iraq, with Bush losing control of world events, and with the threats to national security growing worse, no one could possibly still believe this plan, could they? Think again.”

He notes that William Kristol, neo-con editor of the Weekly Standard, wrote in a column entitled “It’s Our War” July 24 that Hezbollah is acting as Tehran’s proxy and that the US should respond with air-strikes against Iran: “We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions—and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.”

Cirincione concludes: “The neoconservatives are now hoping to use the Israeli-Lebanon conflict as the trigger to launch a US war against Syria, Iran or both. These profoundly dangerous policies have to be exposed and stopped before they do even more harm to US national security then they already have.”

Among the most ambitious of the neo-con voices demanding a reshaping of the Middle East is Michael Ledeen, an American Enterprise Institute wonk and National Review columnist. While Perle advocates restoring a Hashemite king to the throne of Iraq, Ledeen’s personal crusade is a restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran. His writing frequently affects a nervous impatience. In a December 2005 National Review Online column calling for “active support of the democratic forces” in Syria and Iran as a strategy for “regime change in Tehran [and] Damascus,” he concluded: “Faster, confound it.” In August 2002 he wrote in NRO: “One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. That’s our mission in the war against terror.” In a December 2002 piece in the Wall Street Journal, “The War Won’t End in Baghdad,” Ledeen wrote that after taking Baghdad, “we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus… If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support.”

Predictably, Ledeen sees the current Lebanon crisis as good news for his agenda. On July 25, he wrote on his National Review Online blog: “Remember that the Iranians believe(d) that we (US and Israel) are hopelessly internally divided, politically paralyzed, and hence unable to take a difficult decision and react forcefully. Ergo they thought they had a free hand. A few days ago I compared the attack on Israel to the same blunder Osama made on 9/11. If only we take full advantage.”

Redrawing the Map

In another sign of revived neo-con ambitions, the June 2006 edition of Armed Forces Journal, a private publication that cultivates a high-level Beltway readership, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters called for actually redrawing the map of the Middle East “according to the situation of the ethnic minorities.” This echoes a periodically re-emergent neo-con strategy of exploiting the real grievances of ethnic minorities in the Islamic world to affect not only “regime change” but an actual dismantling of the major states of the Middle East.

The Kurds are of course particularly strategic because giving them a unified national state would diminish both Syria and Iran, as well as Iraq, where it seems increasingly likely anti-Western forces could once again gain the upper hand. Peters does not seem bothered by the fact that such a state would also diminish US ally Turkey. He wrote that a Kurdish state “stretching from Diyarbakir [in eastern Turkey] through Tabriz [in western Iran] would be the most pro-Western state between Bulgaria and Japan.”

In Peters’ vision, Iran would also lose territory to a Unified Azerbaijan in the north, an Arab Shia State in the west and a Free Baluchistan in the east.

Peters also suggested a break-up of Saudi Arabia, with the Saudi family continuing to rule the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the west as a sort of Muslim “super-Vatican,” but a Shi’ite rebellion bringing a separatist, pro-Western state to power in the east—where the oil is.

This idea has been heard before in neo-con circles. In July 2002, a Rand analyst presented a briefing in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s private conference room titled “Taking Saudi Out of Arabia.” Assembled members of the Defense Policy Board were told that the US should demand Saudi Arabia stop supporting hostile fundamentalist movements and curtail the airing of anti-US and anti-Israel statements—or face seizure of its financial assets and oilfields. A month later, Max Singer of the Hudson Institute gave a presentation to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment advising the US to forge a “Muslim Republic of East Arabia” out of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

Peters, predictably, is also heartened by the bloodbath in Lebanon—and only fears it won’t go far enough. In his July 28 column in the New York Post, he chastised Israel for its perceived restraint: “Yesterday, Israel’s government overruled its generals and refused to expand the ground war in southern Lebanon. Given the difficulties encountered and the casualties suffered, the decision is understandable. And wrong. In the War on Terror—combating Hezbollah’s definitely part of it—you have to finish what you start. You can’t permit the perception that the terrorists won. But that’s where the current round of fighting is headed.”

What is truly amazing about these schemes is the assumption, even after disastrous results in Iraq, that the break-up of the Middle East’s states would be in the US interest. The US has played a Shi’ite card in Iraq against the Sunni Arabs–and is consequently in danger of losing control of southern Iraq and even the Baghdad government itself to Iran. Peters would have the US replicate this strategic blunder in Saudi Arabia—forgoing Washington’s most strategic ally in the Arab world.

Similarly, Peters would forgo Washington’s traditional alliance with NATO-member Turkey to gamble on a Kurdish state which could ultimately come not under the control of Iraq’s US-aligned Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), but of the radical Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)—one of the State Department’s official “terrorist organizations,” but the group which has actually made significant inroads in fomenting Kurdish separatism in Turkey and, more recently, Syria and Iran. The PKK, ironically, has even found haven in “liberated” Iraq for its guerilla attacks on US ally Turkey.

In another indication of how the Iraq adventure could ultimately prove disastrous for US interests in the region, on July 18, the Turkish government summoned the US and Iraqi ambassadors in Ankara to the Foreign Ministry, and warned: “Our patience is not endless. Root out Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerillas immediately, otherwise, we will be forced to resort to our right of self-defense.” The statement from the Turkish government said Ankara will wait for the US and Iraq to take “necessary steps”; and if they fail to do so, Turkey might resort to a “cross-border operation.”

Not only is the specter of Kurdish separatism pitting US ally Trukey against US proxy state Iraq, but it is even leading to a rapprochement between Turkey and Iran. The Iranian Ambassador to Ankara, Firouz Dowlatabadi, has said Iran will support Turkey in the event of a military operation against the PKK in northern Iraq. “Turkey has the right to annihilate terrorists wherever they are found,” Dowlatabadi told Turkish television July 19. “Iran is ready to do its best to help Turkey.”

Sykes-Picot Revisited

Commenting on Perle’s purported October 2002 meeting with Pentagon officials to chart the future shape of the Middle East, Egypt’s Al-Ahram weekly opined the following February: “What all this makes clear is that the future map of the region is a subject of discussion in Washington and dialogue with Israel. The Arab countries are not party to the talks. The scene brings to mind the events of World War I and how the victorious countries reshaped the region after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat, divvying it up among themselves in a secret deal by the name of Sykes-Picot in 1916.”

The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, codified by the League of Nations in 1920, divided the crumbling Ottoman Empire’s holdings in the Arab world between Britain and France, which then drew the new boundaries in the interests of control of oil. The Sykes-Picot boundaries, calling for a British-controlled Iraq and a French-controlled Syria, were actually redrawn after World War I, when it became clear that the Ottoman province of Mosul, originally apportioned to French Syria, was a source of much oil wealth. Britain threatened war with France to have Mosul attached to Iraq rather than Syria.

For generations thereafter, Britain looked to the Sunni Arabs of central Iraq to hold the oil-rich north around Mosul and the oil-rich south around Basra together in one national state, suppressing Kurdish national aspirations in the north and Shi’ite ambitions in the south. The US inherited this strategy when it groomed Saddam Hussein as a proxy in the 1980s. It has only been since Desert Storm and, more significantly, since 9-11 and the neo-con revolution that Washington has reversed this strategy. But already the Shi’ites are showing unambiguous signs of being unreliable proxies, and the Kurds could easily follow suit. Having already dismantled or radicalized virtually all the Sunni Arab leadership, the US could be left with no effective proxies in Iraq at all before too long.

If the Lebanon crisis spins out of control and is further internationalized—as Perle, Woolsey, Gingrich, Ledeen and Peters so ardently hope—Washington could a year or two hence be facing a similar situation throughout the Middle East. Taking the war to Syria and Iran could leave those countries yet further radicalized, the authoritarian but stable regimes there subsumed by ethnic warfare and jihadist terror.

Even Bush seems to be at least vaguely aware of the risks. His one caveat in supporting the Israeli aggression is that it not destabilize the government of Fouad Siniora and wipe out the gains of the Cedar Revolution.

And in Washington itself, a backlash against the hubristic neo-cons is virtually inevitable sooner or later. But if the chaos goes on long enough and reaches sufficiently apocalyptic proportions, the likelihood increases that it will come not from pragmatists and technocrats but nativists and anti-Semites.

The Lebanon crisis represents a tipping point. If voices for peace across ethnic, national and sectarian lines cannot be brought to bear, and quickly, the Middle East—and, indeed, the planet—could be going over the edge into something that will make all the horrors that have unfolded since 9-11 seem a mere prelude.

RESOURCES:

“Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi),” by Richard Perle,
Washington Post, June 25, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301375_
pf.html

“GOP Tests How ‘World War III’ Sounds to Voters,” by Bill Berkowitz,
PNS, July 20
http://www.wbai.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=8897&Itemid=2

“Bringing on ‘World War III’,” by Bill Berkowitz,
Working for Chnage, July 27, 2006
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=21146

“Ex-CIA chief: Bomb Syria!” WorldNet Daily, July 17, 2006
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51114

“Ex-CIA Director: US Faces WWIV,” CNN, April 3, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war/

Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/

“Neocons Resurrect Plans For Regional War In The Middle East,” by Joseph
Cirincione, Think Progress, July 17, 2003
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/17/neocons-middle-east-war/

The “Clean Break” document, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political
Studies, Jerusalem
http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

“It’s Our War,” by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard, July 24, 2006
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/433fwbvs.asp

“How a Better Middle East Would Look,” by Ralph Peters
Armed Forces Journal, June 2006
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

“PKK Warning to US and Iraq: We are Losing Patience,” Zaman, July 18, 2006
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20060718&hn=34872

“Iran: We Support Turkey’s Possible Cross-Border Operation,”
Zaman, July 19, 2006
http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=34901

See also:

“Hezbollah: Iran’s proxy?”
WW4 REPORT, July 16, 2006
/node/2205

“Eastern Anatolia: Iraq’s Next Domino,” by Sarkis Pogossian
WW4 REPORT #115, November 2005
/node/1238

“Lebanon’s Post-Electoral Crossroads,” by Bilal El-Amine
WW4 REPORT #111, July 2005
/node/744

“Welcome to World War IV,” by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT #106, January 2005
/worldwar4

“‘Three-State Solution’ for Iraq’s Future?”
WW4 REPORT #93, December 2003
/static/93.html#iraq11

“Prince of Darkness Perle Resigns”
WW4 REPORT #79, March 31, 2003
/static/79.html#shadows1

“New Imperialist Carve-Up of Middle East Planned”
WW4 REPORT #63, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#greatgame1

———————–
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingLEBANON AND THE NEO-CON ENDGAME 
Iraq

More US troops to Iraq

We noted in March 2005, when US troop levels in Iraq were boosted to around 150,000 ahead of the elections, that they were up from 123,000 a year earlier, and were supported by some 26,000 more coalition troops. This was… Read moreMore US troops to Iraq

ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI: THE MAKING OF THE MYTH

BOOK REVIEW:

INSURGENT IRAQ: AL ZARQAWI AND THE NEW GENERATION
by Loretta Napoloeoni
Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005

by Chesley Hicks

Published before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death, Insurgent Iraq, by Italian scholar-author Loretta Napoleoni, is an information-heavy treatise that traces the path that the iconic Islamic militant took from his childhood slum of Zarqa, Jordan, through a dense and evolving web of Muslim militancy and Middle Eastern politics, to modern-day occupied Iraq. Following al Zarqawi’s singular transformation from petty criminal to larger-than-life terrorist leader, Napoleoni demonstrates the broad ways that myth, as spun in both the East and West to suit religious ideologies and political agendas, has overwritten history to create a new, convoluted global reality.

Napoleoni’s unraveling of the myth begins in Zarqa, where al-Zarqawi was born Ahmad Fadel al-Khalayash, in 1966, to a family of Bedouin heritage. He was raised with little education in a ghetto that the author describes as being caught in a discordant clash between traditional, tribal values and rapidly developing Arab-Western consumerism. This was during the years when Jordan accepted a huge influx of Palestinian refugees from the Israeli conflict, creating a friction that, Napoleoni says, arose from the “speed with which the Palestinian diaspora tore into the Bedouin way of life.”

Against details of the larger geo-political shifts happening at the time, Napoleoni traces Zarqawi’s course as a discontent teenager; he drops out of school, joins a gang, and is imprisoned for minor crimes.

Prisons in the Middle East, Napoleoni describes, turn an already restless underclass into a captive audience that is ripe for indoctrination. “In Zarqa, as across the Arab world,” she writes, “the networks of petty crime and of revolutionary Islam constantly criss-crossed, especially in prison; both existed on the margins of Arab society, constituting a web of illegality.”

In the 1970s, the mounting Islamic rebellion questioned the legitimacy of the region’s Arab regimes. Religious leaders challenged ruling authorities, loaning general criminality against the state a religious-political dimension. “The illegitimacy of the Arab state blurred the boundaries between crime and insurrection,” Napoleoni writes.

When al-Zarqawi first entered prison he was not politicized. But in prisons, malcontents found shared purpose with political dissidents. Throughout the book, Napoleoni offers many examples of Islamist leaders who used prison time to hone their focus, study, write tomes, and issue edicts. Over the course of his various incarcerations, prison radicalized al Zarqawi and set him in pursuit of jihad as he romantically envisioned it during the early days of the Mujahedeen-Soviet war.

During his lifetime journey from Jordan to Iraq, al-Zarqawi underwent several transformations, each reflecting the times. The author describes how most Muslims grow up amid violence, a condition perpetuated by the failure of local governments, entrenched corruption, and war. In the beginning, al-Zarqawi found a religious focus for his youthful alienation and angst, but as the geopolitical backdrop changed, his religious focus adopted more political tones. He changed his name several times: from his birth name to “The Stranger”, to Abu Muhammad al Gharib, and, finally, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. During this conversion, Zarqawi longed to join the Afghan Mujahedeen, but never made it. But he became, along with the Islam he was immersed in, ever more politicized.

Eventually Zarqawi made it to Afghanistan, but, as Napoleoni writes, “Once again, al Gharib [the named he’d taken at the time] missed the opportunity to become a warrior.” He wanted to join the Mujahedeen, but by the time he reached Afghanistan, the Soviets were long gone and battle was Muslims fighting Muslims—the Taliban versus the Northern Alliance—which was very different from fighting the Soviets, an infidel invader. Nonetheless, he offered his services to the Taliban and established training camps.

By this point, according to Naopleoni, Zarqawi had became a charismatic but small-time leader. He found fertile ground among Afghanistan’s discontent population, who were often just looking for a purpose in a repressed, violent environment. This is a familiar refrain in the book: relationships of convoluted convenience, whereby belligerents find new, nearby enemies to fight, and ideologues find new allies within nearby lost populations to convert.

Eventually Zarqawi’s parochial vision of jihad encountered the global battle against the West, which was taking figurehead shape in Osama bin Laden.

Napoleoni says that al Zarqawi was, at first, not interested in pursuing al Qaeda’s global jihad. “The nature of the modern jihad appears ambiguous. Is it a counter-Crusade, an anticolonial fight, or a revolution?” she writes. “This dilemma of definition is at the heart of modern Islam and at the core of the ideological differences that characterized the relationship between Osama bin Laden and Abu Mo’sab al Zarqawi.” Zarqawi’s interests lay largely with confronting local Muslim leadership to protect Islam. But in his pursuit of this local and limited jihad, al-Zaqawi entered into an arena where the vagaries and vastly manipulated interpretation of jihad spread both deep and wide.

“From the outset, the dilemma of the Islamist insurgency is strategic. It boils down to the question of how to fight two enemies: one near and the other remote. The former is represented by the Muslim regimes, illegitimate because they originate from military coups or because they are takfir, corrupt, and repressive. The distant enemy is the West, which is represented in the Middle East by the state of Israel, the occupying power in Palestine and the holy sites. [T]oday the distant enemy includes Coalition forces in Iraq. Western countries are equally responsible for backing infidel Arab and Muslim regimes, such as Mubarak’s Egypt, the House of Saud, and democratic Iraq.”

Naopleoni writes that this dilemma plagued the jihadist movement until 2003, when the Coalition invasion merged both the domestic and international fronts in Iraq. Before that, the author portrays a wide rift existing between the privileged, upper-class, global attack machinations of bin Laden’s al Qaeda and Zarqawi’s more local-minded jihadist pursuit.

In the introduction to Insurgent Iraq, Napoleoni writes, “Islamist terrorism is a weak enemy. It can be defeated by the instruments of democracy. New technology makes it difficult to suppress its propaganda, but meaningful engagement with moderate Muslims and continued commitment to the rule of law will greatly degrade the appeal of the Islamist jihad among European [Muslim] youth. To depart from these methods is to threaten our greatest achievement: societies ruled by justice and freedom.” Taking her at her word, she believes in the creed and greater practice of Western democracy. She concludes her book on a similar, hopeful note. But, first, she outlines just how badly things can go wrong with the system.

Colin Powell’s speech on February 5, 2003 changed things for al-Zarqawi. “Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network,” Napoleni quotes Powell, “headed by Abu Mos’ab al Zarqawi, an associate collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Queda lieutenant.” Powell portrayed Zarqawi as the go-between linking Saddam and Osama, and also linked him to a supposed ricin terrorist plot in England. Napoleoni writes that all these claims have been pretty decisively disproven.

This is a central point in Insurgent Iraq. According to Napoleoni, prior to Powell’s proclamation, Zarqawi had been a minor force in Middle Eastern dissent. But in seeking a new demon to further justify its plan to attack Iraq, the Bush administration conjured a fulcrum for connecting Iraq to terrorism, and alighted upon Zarqawi. The media attention subsequently paid him gave al-Zarqawi more clout than he’d ever had.

And as al-Zarqawi really did find his way into Iraq, the Western-conjured grandeur around him provided a rallying point that galvanized legions searching for a leader. Even though he wasn’t yet an al-Qaeda chief, this attention, Napoleoni writes, “helped keep al Queda in the limelight.”

Zarqawi and bin Laden maybe did or maybe did not meet, but Zarqawi in any case harnessed the mantle of al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq—despite the fact that his original agenda had so greatly differed from al-Qaeda’s.

In ghettos roiling with neglect and lawless discontent, any predisposition toward secularism broke down in post-shock-and-awe Iraq. Napoleoni offers a solid synthesis of just how, just as the democratic-leaning Shi’ite majority lost its faith in the Coalition, al-Zarqawi and his imported jihadists played a pivotal role in keeping Iraq’s Sunnis from uniting with the Shi’ites in a national front against the occupation.

This is where Zaqarwi, with the help of the American myth-making machine, achieved his real power. Maintaining localized fundamentalism as his core aim, Zarqawi’s fear was that “the jihadists would be cut out [of the Iraq insurgency] because they were foreigners and the insurgency would become secular.” So he fervently endeavored to prevent Sunni-Shi’ite unity. According to history so far, he succeeded.

Writes Napoleoni: “Thus the myth of al Zarqawi could mark the future of Iraq. Even if he is caught and killed. The insurgency will not stop. On the contrary, his capture or death would enlarge his myth and strengthen his legacy.”

Napoleoni is a scholar not an investigative, frontline journalist. Her assertions in Insurgent Iraq are based more on second-hand info, quotes, and sometimes conjecture. But given the outcomes as we now know them, these assertions are convincing.

Readers will occasionally get lost in the author’s assertions. Napoleoni sometimes attributes quotes to sources who have not been identified beyond name, and certain arguments—particularly where she tries to proffer evidence of the early Zarqawi’s non-terrorist nature—fall into a void. But with its lengthy appendix, including extensive sourcing, glossary, chronology, and brisk wording, Insurgent Iraq is an excellent and prescient resource.

“The more the United states demonize him, the more he is singled out as the supervillain of terror,” Napoleoni writes, “the more the media broadcast that he has been arrested or cornered by Coalition forces, is injured or even dead, the greater his supernatural myth grows. He is the Arab Zorro…”

She describes the current Iraq insurgency as a Hydra with new heads at the ready. Indeed, following the recent slaying of al Zarqawi, CNN reported that “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice authorized up to a $5 million reward Friday for information leading to the capture of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, believed to be the replacement for the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

In chapter seven, illustrating the hyperbole growing around the myth of al Zarqawi, Napoleoni writes, “As the myth took shape, the life of the man faded into its own legend. He was a chemical engineer, an expert on explosives, a legendary mujahed, a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He lost a leg in battle defending al Queda from US raids, he had been operating in Iraq under the protection of Saddam, and at the same time he had been seen in the Pankisi gorge… It is unreasonable to believe that al Zarqawi had the time or means to build such a global network, or to travel to so many places, whether with one leg or two.”

In its July 3-10, 2006 issue, Newsweek magazine reported: “If you hoped his June 7 death might be the end of the line for Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, you really don’t want to see the newest recruitment videos for the Taliban. Although they never mention the Jordanian-born terrorist by name, the echoes of his Internet videos—and his sheer viciousness—are unmistakable and chilling. The star is Mullah Dadullah Akhund, a one-legged guerrilla commander in southern Afghanistan who now seems bent on matching or exceeding Zarqawi’s ugly reputation.”

The very same article goes on to say that “US commanders downplay the importance of individual enemy leaders. They say the way to win the war is to focus on the big picture, not on personalities.”

Has the government learned from its mistakes, even as the media carry on with the myth-making?

So begins another gruesome chapter…

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From our weblog:

“Abu Ayyub al-Masri: kinder, gentler jihad?” June 17, 2006
/node/2096

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 1, 2006

Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI: THE MAKING OF THE MYTH 

INTERVIEW: SAMIR ADIL

President of the Iraqi Freedom Congress

by Bill Weinberg

Samir Adil is president of the Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC), a new initiative to build a democratic, secular and progressive alternative to both the US occupation and political Islam in Iraq. Adil, who fled Iraq in 1995 after being tortured in Saddam’s prisons, returned after the US invasion to help build a secular resistance movement. He recently traveled to the US in a tour of several cities organized by the American Friends Service Committee, in which he met with numerous anti-war organizations and attended the Labor Notes Conference in Detroit. On the night of May 9, after a presentation at the Paulist Center in Boston, Samir Adil spoke by telephone with WW4 REPORT editor Bill Weinberg over the airwaves of New York’s WBAI Radio.

BW: Samir, what kind of reception have you been getting on your tour?

SA: Well, I came to United States because, as you know, the one picture that’s left in the media, the corporate media, is just the fighting—the American occupation and the political Islamist groups or the nationalist groups. But the other perspective in Iraq—I mean the secular movement—nobody mentions it. Nobody mentions the workers’ movement, the student movement, the women’s movement. All of them now joined under one umbrella called the Iraqi Freedom Congress, the IFC, which I am a representative of. But the people [in the US] haven’t any information about this secular movement.

There is one slogan raised by the anti-war movement: end the occupation. But what is the future of Iraq after the occupation? What do we want? There is a no answer of this question. So this is a great chance to hold presentations and speeches in different cities in the United States.

I met really great people and they told me, “We didn’t know about anything about a secular movement in Iraq.” Not just the secular movement in Iraq but in all the Middle East, too. And I told them, your enemy and our enemy is one, the anti-human enemy: This is what happened on September 11 in New York and Washington, and the same is happening today in Iraq. Innocent people in Washington and New York paid the price, and other innocent people are paying the price now in Iraq. The enemy is the American administration’s policies and the political Islamism policy, and we have to work together to build this front from Washington to Baghdad to end all of these inhuman policies. We believe without this international movement, especially in the United States, we can’t defeat these inhuman policies and establish a secular and non-nationalist government.

BW: Well, what makes this position problematic for a lot of people in the United States, I think, is the perception—which of course both Bush and the jihadists have done their best to cultivate—that they oppose each other, and that you have to be on one side or the other. Whereas you take a position that rejects both of them as representing an “inhuman” policy, as you put it.

SA: Well, unfortunately, the anti-war movement just focuses on the crimes of the occupation. Iraqi society has been suffering from the occupation and from the crimes of the political Islamists and nationalist groups, but the anti-war movement has just one slogan: end the occupation. But today when I am talking about our perspective, our alternative, we get a positive response from the people. I think most of the people in the United States [until now] didn’t face the question about Iraq after the occupation, because the American administration has a campaign of propaganda. They say, “Our forces must stay in Iraq to prevent sectarian war, and there is no alternative for the Iraqi society.”

This is a kind of hypocrisy, because everybody knows the occupation’s policy created this sectarian war, created the situation. They created it by imposing ethnic and nationalist divisions on Iraqi society. And when the people in the United States get the word that there is a secular movement for a democratic society in Iraq, that can rebuild civil society, can bring stability and security and build a brighter future for Iraqi people, build a secular government like in the West—then the American people can join us in this human movement. And we can defeat these policies.

BW: Well, you blame the Bush administration for bringing about the situation of ethnic and sectarian conflict. But I would imagine that even the most hubristic of the neo-cons who literally wanted to divide Iraq up and to Balkanize it into separate mini-states—I would say that the situation is out of their hands at this point, and what’s happening in Iraq now is beyond even what they wanted.

SA: Well, after three years of occupation, we have five million Iraqi people below the poverty level. That is the last report from the United Nations and human rights organizations…

BW: As opposed to how many before the occupation?

SA: Before, we had the sanctions, but the figure did not exceed two million people. Now after three years of occupation, it has increased to five million people. After three years of occupation, now the young people, between 20 to 25, are going to sell their kidney for between 900 to 1,200 US dollars.

BW: Sell their…?

SA: Sell their kidney.

BW: Sell their organs.

SA: Yes, sell their organs. After three years of occupation, if you visit Baghdad, or any city in Iraq, you see a mountain of garbage. Three years of occupation and there is no electricity in many districts in Baghdad, and summer is coming, and the temperature is going up to 50 or 55 Celsius,. After three years of occupation, the number of women selling their bodies to feed their children is increasing day by day. And after the three years of occupation, the Iraqi people are starting to say, “We don’t want freedom, we don’t want prosperity, even if we have to live by bread and water—but we want security. We want our lives, to survive.”

Iraqi society is like a jungle. I swear to you, the Amazon jungle is better than Iraqi society. You can kill anyone, in the front of the police, for 100 US dollars. In just one day in the Ashab area, they killed 14 men, just because their name is Omar, which is a Sunni name. Those people didn’t do anything, just their name was Omar. In Basra, in two days they killed 76 men, women and children, just because they are Sunni. In another part, they kill anyone named Haider or Ali, which are Shi’a names. This is the situation in Iraq. The forces of the interior ministry—they’re attacking places like al-Adamiyya, which they describe as a Sunni area, right in front of American forces… And the people in al-Adamiyya are arming in self-defense and fighting with the police. This is the situation, this is the reality in Iraq.

BW: Where is this taking place?

SA: Al-Adamiyya. An area in the middle of Baghdad. Just two or three days ago, armed groups attacked the hospitals in Baghdad and Basra, killed all of the doctors and the nurses and all of the sick people. This is the situation in Iraq. And now on American [TV] stations they are saying “We must stay in Iraq to prevent sectarian war…” Two years ago, this sectarian war had already started! But they didn’t mention it. Two years ago, they established the organization “To Kill Kurdish People.” That is the name of an organization, announced in a public statement—To Kill Kurdish People! And hundreds of people have been killed because they are speaking the Kurdish language, not Arabic language…

One year ago, the Zarqawi organization began putting up checkpoints on the road north from Baghdad, just 100 kilometers, and they stop the car and ask for the ID. If the ID is Sunni, they can go ahead—if the ID is Shi’a, they cut off his head and throw the body [by the roadside]. And this checkpoint was there for many months, not far from an American base, just a few kilometers–but because those groups didn’t attack Americans, the Americans didn’t get involved in this situation. This is happening every day, and day-by-day it is going worse and worse and worse.

And everybody knows this situation was created by the occupation. Before the war, when they held the London confidence, the American and the British governments brought all of the ethnic and sectarian parties and charted the new division of Iraq’s society—you are a representative of the Shi’a, you are a representative of the Sunni, you are a representative of the Kurdish. And after the occupation they established an ethnic-based government council, and gave legitimacy to this division by the new constitution. Before the last election, we asked that people don’t participate, because this election would only deepen the ethnic conflict; they only take your fingerprints to give legitimacy to all of the crimes committed by the occupation, and to the division, the nationalist conflict. And five months after the election, you can see, there is no government. Before there was no government, too—just in the Green Zone. But now we have a jungle society, and the people are organizing for self-defense, because nobody takes care about them. Every day in Baghdad people are killed because of their ethnic identity, killed by suicide bombings, and all the neighborhoods and workplaces and marketplaces are turned into a battlefield. This is the situation in Iraq. And more than one million have escaped from Iraq to Iran, to Syria, to Turkey, looking for security.

BW: Refugees, you mean? Really, a million?

SA: Yeah, one million, perhaps more. There are 250,000 just in Syria.

BW: Well, there’s very little awareness of this. They’re not, presumably, in camps like traditional refugees as we think of them, so they’re sort of invisible…

SA: Yeah.

BW: Are you able to travel freely around Iraq?

SA: No, no, I always have a bodyguard with me, and it is not easy. Because I have criticized the political Islamists, the nationalists and their crimes. There is a fatwa from the Sadrist group, for more than one year now, to assassinate me. The leaders of our organization always travel with bodyguards, and the reason is our agenda and our slogan and our perspective.

BW: Tell us about the activities of the Iraqi Freedom Congress and some of the member organizations.

SA: Especially last month, after February 22—I think everybody heard about the explosion of the Shi’a holy places—after that date, all of the leaders of the parties that are pro-America escaped from the cities and went to the Green Zone. Only the leaders of our organization, the IFC, have stayed in the cities to mobilize people. We issued a statement that met with a wide response: “No Sunni, no Shi’a, we believe in human identity.” Ordinary people distributed hundreds of thousands of copies in the streets.

And in many places, we work to prevent ethnic cleansing. We are working in areas like Husseinia in Baghdad, holding meetings where the people announced, under the IFC banner—”Everybody can live in this area, nobody has the right to ask you if you are Sunni or Shi’a or Kurdish, or Christian or Muslim. Everybody can believe anything they want, this is a personal thing, and anybody can believe any religion, or be atheist.” We are also working in Kirkuk and Basra and Nasiriyah. We are starting to establish a presence in Karbala and Najaf, the holy places of the Shi’a. We are working with doctors to establish volunteer clinics in these areas. Because the aim of the IFC is to rebuild civil society. We are organizing people to collect the garbage, all the civil services…

In Basra we just held a meeting with the union leaders. As you know, 40 percent of the leadership of the IFC are union leaders. Maybe you read my open letter to the oil union leaders who joined IFC last month. You can go to our website and see my open letter, sending my congratulations to them because they joined IFC…

BW: Which union is this?

SA: The oil workers union in the south of Iraq. This will bring our movement many steps forward. Because we are the civil resistance, and we are preparing a general strike in the oil sector to confront the occupation policy, and halt this ethnic cleansing in the different cities of Iraq.

BW: So you’re doing both community work, attempting to establish these secular autonomous zones in the cities, and also working with organized labor, particularly in the oil industry. And then student groups are also involved, I believe…

SA: Yeah. Just last year, there was a student uprising against the Sadrists and all of the Islamist groups at Basra University. And now the students’ organization grows more strong day by day. At Baghdad University and other universities many students are joining the IFC—individually or through their student union. We believe students and the youth can be a big force against the occupation and against the sectarian war.

BW: Well I’m sure that you saw today’s news. Quite ironically, they did manage to form a government, they agreed on a new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and I suppose they wanted to put a very optimistic spin on it—and that same day there was a horrific suicide bombing in Tal Afar in the north, 17 civilians blown up at a marketplace. So the IFC is taking a position of not collaborating with the actual government in Iraq. What exactly are your reasons for this position of non-collaboration?

SA: There is no difference between al-Maliki or al-Jaafari. Al-Maliki was the vice deputy of [outgoing prime minister Ibrahim] al-Jaafari, and led efforts to eliminate Sunnis. You can’t imagine anything is going to change. The same characters—[President Jalal] Talabani, the representative of the Kurdish nationalist party, or [Vice President Tareq] al-Hashemi representing the Sunnis. As long as the government is an ethnic and nationalist government, every part of this government will be looking for its interest, not the people’s interest. I can give you one example. You know, last year at the funeral of King Fahd there was a big argument between al-Jaafari and Talabani and [then-Vice President Ghazi] al-Yawar on who was to go to Saudi Arabia and represent Iraq. And in the end, nobody could accept the other and there were three separate delegations…

There will be no security, no stability, without ending the occupation, and without establishing a secular government, a non-nationalist government…

BW: Maliki was involved in paramilitary activities, you say?

SA: Yeah, yeah, he led a committee to eliminate the Sunni people from the society, especially those who supported the Saddam regime.

BW: But his Dawa party is portrayed as a more moderate Shi’ite element, compared to the Sadr and Badr militias…

SA: Yes, al-Maliki and al-Jafari are from the Dawa. But they gave the Ministry of Interior to the Badr group.

BW: That’s right…

SA: So Dawa created this ethnic cleansing in the different cities in Iraq.

BW: But this extremely sinister-sounding committee to eliminate the Sunnis was linked to the Dawa party, or…

SA: Yeah, the Dawa party. It is an official committee.

BW: I would imagine it would have to be clandestine. So you’re saying all the Shi’ite parties were complicit in the attacks on Sunnis…

SA: Yes.

BW: Maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself, Samir. What’s your personal story?

SA: I was born in Baghdad in 1964. After I graduated from the university I began working underground to oppose the Saddam regime. I was captured in 1992. I was in the prison for six months, and after an international campaign to release me, I stayed in Iraq for one more year. I didn’t want to leave Iraq. But Saddam’s regime asked me many times to work with them, and I refused, and I knew they were planning to capture me again. It was then that I escaped from Iraq.

BW: What activities resulted in your being imprisoned?

SA: We established a Marxist organization and we were working underground with the workers at that time, planning for the workers to get their own union. But Saddam’s government, through informants, captured us and six months we stayed in the jail. And because I was one of the founders of the organization, I was for 25 days under torture.

BW: My goodness. What was the name of the organization?

SA: In English, it would be the League for the Liberation of the Working Class.

BW: That was one of the precursor groups to the Worker-Communist Party?

SA: Yes. The Worker-Communist Party would be established July 21, 1993.

BW: So you were trying to organize an independent labor movement.

SA: Yes.

BW: And for this you were arrested and tortured?

SA: Yes. You know, in Iraq at that time, anybody who worked outside the Ba’ath party—this meant you are against the party, and this was illegal. But our friends in the Canadian Labor Congress sent off a letter to Saddam asking that he release us—me and six others I was arrested with. After that campaign, they released us—but then every week I had to go to the main intelligence office in Baghdad. They asked me to work with them, I refused many times, and when I felt they were planning to capture me again, I escaped to the north of Iraq, outside of the control of the government.

BW: The Kurdish zone.

SA: Yeah. I stayed three years and then I escaped by an illegal way to Turkey. And I stayed in Turkey for two years, and then with the help of the UNHCR I left to Canada. I arrived in Canada on July 5, 1995.

BW: So, when you were in prison—did you even come before a judge? Were you ever formally charged with a crime?

SA: No, I was held without charge.

BW: So it was extra-judicial, so to speak. And for three weeks you were under torture and very harsh conditions.

SA: Yeah, for 25 days I was under the torture. I still have a problem with my left side, and with my hearing…

BW: You first got into contact with the Worker-Communist Party when you arrived in the Kurdish zone, in the north?

SA: Yeah, in the Kurdish zone.

BW: Can you tell us something about the Worker-Communist Party and what it believes?

SA: There are two communist parties in Iraq. One is the Communist Party of Iraq, which was with the Soviet Union, and is now part of the American process in Iraq and part of the government. But the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq is different from this kind of communism. The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq has criticized the Soviet Union, China, Albania, Cuba; they said that the Soviet Union and China are not socialism, it’s a capitalist state. And the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq was positioned against the sanctions, against the wars—the Second Gulf War [1991] and Third Gulf War [2003]. And we are now positioned against the American-led process in Iraq and the occupation and political Islam. And the Iraqi Freedom Congress is a project of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq to save Iraq society from this abyss.

BW: What’s exactly the relationship between the Iraqi Freedom Congress and Worker-Communist Party of Iraq?

SA: As I said, Iraqi Freedom Congress began as a project of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq. But now, after one year of this project, the Worker-Communist Party is just a member, like any party or organization. And our manifesto calls for every organization and every party to be a member of IFC if their manifesto does not have a contradiction with the Freedom Congress. For example, no Islamist party could be a member of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, because we have in our manifesto full equality between men and women. This is a contradiction with all of the agendas of the Islamist parties. After one year, there are many members, some more nationalist, some more Islamic. And Worker-Communist Party of Iraq has a right to build its faction and work to bring the policy of the IFC to the left. And the nationalist faction can work to push the policy of the IFC to the right. Yes, I am a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, but as leader of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, my duty is now to make a balance between right and the left in IFC.

BW: What groups would constitute the right of the IFC?

SA: If you look at the leadership of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, there are many people who are Muslims, who believe in Islam and pray, but also believe in the agenda of the IFC to establish a secular government. We also we have a Christian; and we have Communists and atheists. But all of the leadership believe in human identity, non-religious government, non-nationalist government, one Iraqi society with one identity—human identity.

BW: So the leadership is not entirely constituted by followers of the Worker-Communist Party, then?

SA: No, no. The Worker-Communist Party has a minority in the leadership, not a majority. The majority are independent people.

BW: And you returned to Iraq from Canada, to organize the IFC.

SA: Yes, in December 2005.

BW: Bringing the conversation back to where we began it: You say there’s a reluctance among activists in the United States to address the question of what happens after the occupation—that we see our responsibility ends with merely calling for bringing the troops home. And I think part of the reason for that is that Bush used this propaganda that we’re going to “liberate Iraq,” it was “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” So I think there is some legitimate wariness on the part of anti-war activists to the notion that it’s any of our business to “liberate” Iraq. And there’s a failure to draw a distinction between intervention to “liberate Iraq” (quote-unquote) and solidarity—trying to actually provide some human solidarity to the forces in Iraq that are trying to liberate their own country. You follow me? So this raises the question of what’s the best way to pose the issue so that people understand…

SA: Well, today I had an interview with the Boston Globe newspaper and they asked me the same question: if American forces go out, won’t there be chaos in Iraq? I said, “It is not chaos now?” It is chaos now. When you can be killed for 100 US dollars, this is not chaos? When people are killed just because of their [religious or ethnic] identity, this is not chaos? This is US propaganda. They ask me again, “You are against the political Islamist groups? If American forces were out of Iraq, then political Islam will get power.” I said, “Who brought political Islam in Iraq? Not the American forces, not the American occupation? Who put political Islam in power, who gave legitimacy to the Islamic constitution, who brought this order in which women and Sunni and Christians are second-class citizens?” If you go to the south of Iraq, controlled by the Shi’a militia, if you go to a government building in Basra, you see a big picture of Khamenei, the cleric of Iran. Music prohibited. Alcohol prohibited. Men and women doctors separated in the hospital. Jeans prohibited in Najaf. And if you go to the west of Iraq, the areas controlled by the Sunni militia, chewing gum prohibited…

BW: Chewing gum?

SA: Yeah, chewing gum prohibited.

BW: Why chewing gum?

SA: I don’t know why chewing gum prohibited, this is the rule of the Taliban, al-Zarqawi—the Sunnist group. And also, imposing the cover, the hejab, on women. And men must wear their beard a certain way. I don’t know if you remember my beard, but I have a short Western-style beard…

BW: You have sort of a goatee, as I recall it.

SA: Yes, and if they catch you shaving like that they will shave you with a stone and cut your head! This is going on every day in Ramadi. And they say if Americans go out, then political Islam gets power! Political Islam has power now! And the American administration has brought all these armed gangs to our society! If the American occupation leaves, first thing, we end the justification of the political Islamist groups to attack innocent people. When we end the occupation, they cannot justify their crimes. We can face all of these gangs. There is another perspective, another movement, that can rebuild society, that can establish security and stability, can establish a secular government. After 10 days in the United States, I believe if we show the American people this perspective, this alternative, we can stand together against the American administration and the propaganda of George Bush.

BW: Well, one response which I frequently get when I tell people about the existence of a civil resistance in Iraq, is: “Well, it’s a very nice idea, they’re very idealistic, but they’re doomed. And they have no chance to bring about any kind of change for the better because the ethnic and religious extremists are the people who have the power and have the guns.”

SA: Well, first thing. Till now, you know, the history of Iraqi society is a civilized one. And all of the crimes are happening by the sectarian parties, not by the ordinary people, and there is a very strong resistance against the ethnic conflict. But this is not a guarantee. I must tell you frankly, if a movement like IFC is not involved in this situation, Iraqi society could fall into a sectarian war and be like Kosovo and Rwanda and Lebanon. And we are facing a financial problem. All of the sectarian groups are supported by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. But our movement doesn’t get any support—only from the international human movement, from the anti-war movement.

You ask me, how to face the ethnic cleansing without the gun? I would like to tell you, every single house in Iraq has three guns and four guns. But if IFC were to mobilize these people to use their guns, [it will be] to prevent sectarian war, not to go to kill his neighbor because he is Shi’a or Sunna. We can defeat this ethnic cleansing. And now we have experience, organizing in many areas in Iraq, especially Baghdad and Kirkuk. We can organize and educate and mobilize people to never use those guns against their neighbor, never use them to kill innocent people because of their identity, only use them for self-defense. This is what we are doing in Iraq now.

BW: You acknowledge that there is at least a possibility that if the US leaves, things could continue to get worse?

SA: You know, if the American forces stay in Iraq, the situation is only going worse and worse…

BW: Right. I’m not making an argument for the US forces staying, but I think it’s important to recognize that at this point the situation is so bad, it could continue to deteriorate regardless of whether the US stays or the US goes. And I think activists in the United States—speaking as one—need to realize that our government’s actions created this ghastly situation and therefore our responsibilities to the Iraqi people do not end when the US occupation troops leave.

SA: This is I want to tell you. This is what pushed me to come to the United States. Our movement can prevent the sectarian war, can end the catastrophic situation, but we need support from the United States people; we need support from the West—all of the movements, the human movements, progressive movements in the world. We can do this; this is our job. We have a clear agenda, we have a clear program, and the people join us day-by-day, thousands of people. But we don’t have financial support, unfortunately, and we don’t have the moral support, unfortunately, from progressives outside Iraq. Nobody has heard until now that there is a secular movement in Iraq, a libertarian movement in Iraq. We want to tell the people of the United States there are people in Iraq thinking like them, thinking of a better life, thinking to build a democratic society, to give a human identity to this society. And they can trust this movement, we can do it if the occupation leaves of Iraq. Because, I say again, without the occupation, these sectarian gangs couldn’t continue their behavior. Because their justification would be gone.

BW: I understand it’s your special dream to establish a satellite television station, which would be a voice for secular progressive forces not only in Iraq but throughout the region.

SA: Yeah.

BW: And our friends in the Movement for Democratic Socialism in Japan have already started to raise money for this project.

SA: As you know—you participated in the international conference in solidarity with the IFC in Tokyo on January 28 to 29–a resolution was passed there to support this project, and our Japanese friends are working hard to achieve this. And I think we are going to open our satellite TV maybe in July or August…

BW: That soon? Of this year? Why, that’s a month and a half away!

SA: We got a very positive response from them and they told me just two days ago they want me to visit them in Japan after I finish my tour of the United States to have a meeting and arrange everything. We believe our movement is about to advance many steps forward. Because just as the people of the United States are victims of the media, victims of Fox News, so people in the Middle East are victims of al-Jazeera. But if we get this Iraqi Freedom Congress satellite TV, we can mobilize people. People in Iraq are waiting to hear another voice, a new voice, a human voice. Unfortunately, we have 12 satellite TV stations in Iraq, and they are all nationalist and ethnic TV, every day educating the people how to hate your neighbors because they are Sunni or Shi’a; how to hate your sister because she’s woman; how to educate your children to become suicide bombers. This is Iraqi satellite TV. If we get on satellite TV, there will a big change in our movement and our society.

BW: Samir Adil of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, I hope that the rest of your tour in the United States is very productive, and best of luck back in Iraq. And please, do stay in touch with us.

SA: Thank you very much.

Transcription by Melissa Jameson

RESOURCES:

Iraqi Freedom Congress (IFC)
http://www.ifcongress.com/

Letter from Samir Adil to the Leaders of the Southern Oil Trade Unions
http://www.ifcongress.com/English/News/mar06/union-leaders.htm

IFC statement to US anti-war forces
/node/1746

AFSC page on Samir Adil’s US tour
http://www.afsc.org/iraq/news/2006/04/beyond-dictators-and-occupation-way.htm

See also:

“HOUZAN MAHMOUD INTERVIEW:
The Iraqi Freedom Congress and the Civil Resistance,”
WW4 REPORT #120, April 2006
/node/1798

“Iraqi civil resistance leader confronts Richard Perle,” May 15
/node/1966

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution

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