Archives: Articles

By James Bernard Quilligan

In considering the essential problem of how to produce and distribute material wealth, virtually all of the great economists in Western history have ignored the significance of the commons—the shared resources of nature and society that people inherit, create and utilize.

Despite sharp differences in concept and ideology, economic thinkers from Smith, Ricardo, and Marx to Keynes, Hayek, Mises and Schumpeter largely based their assumptions on the world’s seemingly unlimited resources and fossil fuels, their infinite potential for creating economic growth, adequate supplies of labor for developing them, and the evolving monoculture of state capitalism responsible for their provision and allocation. Hence, in the Market State that has emerged, corporations and sovereign states make decisions on the production and distribution of Earth’s common resources more or less as a unitary system—with minimal participation from the people who depend on these commons for their livelihood and well-being. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.

Over the past seventy years especially, the macroeconomic goals of sovereign states—for high levels and rapid growth of output, low unemployment and stable prices—have resulted in a highly dysfunctional world. The global economy has integrated dramatically in recent decades through financial and trade liberalization; yet the market is failing to protect natural and social resources, the state is failing to rectify the economic system, and the global polity is failing to manage its mounting imbalances in global resources and wealth. Without a ‘unified field theory’ of economics to explain how the commons is drastically undervalued and why world society is amassing huge debts to the environment, the poor and future generations, policymakers and their institutions lack the critical tools and support to address the massive instability that is now gripping the global economy. Businesses and governments are facing the Herculean challenge of reducing climate change and pollution while alleviating poverty without economic growth—a task for which the Market State is neither prepared nor designed to handle.

Meanwhile, the essential ideals of state capitalism—the rule-based systems of government enforcement and the spontaneous, self-regulating social order of markets—are finding direct expression in the co-governance and co-production of common goods by people in localities across the world. Whether these commons are traditional (rivers, forests, indigenous cultures) or emerging (energy, intellectual property, internet), communities are successfully managing them through collaboration and collective action. This growing movement has also begun to create social charters and commons trusts—formal instruments that define the incentives, rights and responsibilities of stakeholders for the supervision and protection of common resources. Ironically, by organizing to protect their commons through decentralized decision-making, the democratic principles of freedom and equality are being realized more fully in these resource communities than through the enterprises and policies of the Market State.

These evolving dynamics—the decommodification of common goods through co-governance and the deterritorialization of value through co-production—are shattering the liberal assumptions which underlie state capitalism. The emergence of this new kind of management and valuation for the preservation of natural and social assets is posing a momentous crisis for the Market State, imperiling the functional legitimacy of state sovereignty, national currencies, domestic fiscal policy, international trade and finance, and the global monetary system. Major changes are on the way. The transformation of modern political economy will involve reconnecting with—and reformulating—a pre-analytic vision of the post-macroeconomic global commons. Another world is coming: where common goods are capped and protected; a portion of these resources are rented to businesses for the production and consumption of private goods; and taxes on their use are redistributed by the state as public goods to provide a social income for the marginalized and to repair and restore the depleted commons.

Although people’s rights to their commons are often recognized and validated in smaller communities, scaling these lessons to the global level will require a new dimension of popular legitimacy and authority. The world community is rapidly evolving a sense of social interconnectivity, shared responsibility and global citizenship, yet the sovereign rights of people to the global commons have not been fully articulated. In declaring our planetary rights for these commons, we shall be confronting many decisive questions:

(1) Are modern societies prepared to create a framework in which the incentives behind production and governance are not private capital and debt-based growth, but human solidarity, quality of life and ecological sustainability?

(2) How soon—and how peacefully—will the subsystems of the Market State integrate their structures of value-creation and sovereign governance with the greater biophysical system of ecological and social interdependence?

(3) Can the global public organize effectively as a third power to develop checks and balances on the private and public sectors and establish the resource sovereignty and preservation value needed for a commons economy?

These issues will be filtering into mainstream discussion over the next two decades. Already the system of state capitalism is breaking down, threatening the entire planet, its institutions and species. When this collapse can no longer be contained and a global monetary crisis ensues, world society will have the choice of creating an economic system that follows the universal laws of biophysics and commons preservation—or accepting a new version of 18th-20th century mechanistic economics, obliging humanity to continue living off the common capital of the planet under corporate feudalism and über-militaristic regimes. Our decision will likely come down to this: global commons or global autarchy. As an economist, I don’t pretend to speak for the conscience of humanity; but as a human being, my heart tells me that we shall see the beginnings of a commons economy in our lifetimes. The long-forsaken global commons are beckoning.

James Bernard Quilligan has been an analyst and administrator in the field of international development since 1975. He has served as policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand, Edward Heath, Julius Nyerere, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Jimmy Carter, and His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan of Jordan.Original source: Guernica

15 September 2017

By Sarah van Gelder

Pacific Northwest forests are on fire. Several blazes are out of control, threatening rural towns, jumping rivers and highways, and covering Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and other cities in smoke and falling ash. Temperatures this summer are an average of 3.6 degrees higher than the last half of the 20th century, according to the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group analysis published in The Seattle Times.

Fire crews have been battling fires for months. In spite of all the effort, though, officials expect the fires to continue burning until major rains come sometime this fall. Meanwhile, firefighting coffers are running dry as costs run into the hundreds of millions.

The scale and costs of these disasters pale in comparison to the impacts of hurricanes Harvey and Irma: Accuweather is estimating the combined cost of these unprecedented storms at $290 billion. (Then there is the flooding in India and Bangladesh—less noted in U.S. news media—where 40 million were affected and 1,200 died.)

What these disasters have in common is that they are all exactly the sort predicted by climate models—and they will get terrifyingly worse over coming years.

So who will cover the costs? Who will pay for the first responders, for sheltering and relocating climate refugees, and for rebuilding homes, businesses, and infrastructure?

Our planet is quickly getting hotter, more volatile, and more dangerous. But Republicans are working to cut nearly $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and to give large corporations and the wealthy a big tax break. So who should pay for the climate disasters?

A report published in early September by the journal Climatic Change helps pinpoint a possible answer. According to the report, 90 companies are responsible for 42 to 50 percent of the increase in the Earth’s surface temperature and 26 to 32 percent of sea level rise.

Some say we are all to blame for the climate crisis—at least all of us who get around in cars and planes. But there are reasons these 90 companies owe a major debt to the entire planet.

First, many of them knew what damage they were causing. According to the report, more than half of the carbon emissions produced since the industrial revolution were emitted since 1986, when the dangers of global warming were well-known. But these companiesburied their own research findings and doubled down on fossil fuel extraction.

Second, many of these companies spend vast sums promoting climate denial and undermining support for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other responses to the climate crisis. Industry lobbyists and think tanks, flush with money from fossil fuel companies and their executives, distort our democracy, making government accountable to their interests rather than to We the People.

Third, by doing these things, these companies prevented action during the brief window of time between climate science becoming clear and it becoming too late to avert disaster.

Now we are very short on time. This year’s fires and floods are just the beginning. But we can still make choices that would curb catastrophic outcomes. To make that difference, we need an all-out effort now on all fronts—in agriculture, transportation, and energy generation, conservation, and efficiency upgrades. That will take a lot of money.

A good place to start would be requiring those who caused the climate catastrophe to pay. The 90 companies could start by helping families and communities recover from the floods, wind damage, and fires, and helping homeowners and cities everywhere build resilience for withstanding the effects of future disasters. But they shouldn’t stop there. The companies that are responsible for the damage should pay their share for the transition to a carbon-free future.

There is a precedent for this. Tobacco companies too had been hiding and dismissing the evidence that their product caused massive damage. Big Tobacco and Big Oil even hired some of the same scientists and public relations firms to obscure the damage their industries were causing, according to ClimateWire. The 1998 tobacco settlement of lawsuits brought by nearly every U.S. state required the major tobacco companies to pay over $200 billion toward the increased cost of health care resulting from smoking and for prevention education.

There are far more victims of the fossil fuel industries’ deception—billions of people today, future generations, and many other species.

We’ve got a precedent, we’ve got a dire need, and we have clearly defined culprits.

Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and editor-at-large of YES! Magazine, and author of The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000 Mile Journey Through a New America. Follow her blog and connect with Sarah on Twitter: @sarahvangelder

This article was written for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

15 September 2017

By Franklin Lamb

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut: This week commemorates the 35th anniversary of the Wednesday, Sept. 15 to Saturday, Sept. 18, Sabra-Shatila Massacre in the Fakhani neighborhood of Beirut. For many of the families and loved ones of the victims, as is certainly the case with this observer, it seems as though the Sabra-Shatila Massacre was committed at most four or five years ago. So vivid still in our memories are the horror images of that orgy of slaughter.

A massive crime against humanity which has yet to be adjudicated. Due to poisonous destructive sectarian political pressures, not only unique to Lebanon which has 18 competing sects with ever shifting alliances, there has never been any investigation by Lebanon’s government of the militiamen who actually conducted the slaughter. Subsequentlyi the Lebanese killers have thus been granted amnesty. A February 1983 Israeli Commission of Inquiry white-washed Israel’s facilitation of the crime with very limited and weak ‘findings of limited indirect responsiblity’.

As no Palestinian or person of goodwill who has learned about the Massacre will ever likely forget, shortly after dusk on the night of Sept. 15, 1982, the Israeli military, which had occupied much of Lebanon the preceding June, allowed drug and hate fueled right-wing Lebanese militia and others to enter Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and the adjacent neighborhoods of Sabra and BirHasan.

One dear friend, who was like a sister to the late American Journalist Janet Lee Stevens who wrote some of the most incisive reports documenting the Massacre, visited with me at the Shatila Palestinian Camp Youth Center (CYC) a few months ago. By the grace of God the lady escaped death by playing dead as two members of ElieHobeika’s “Christian” militia kicked her body and poked her chest with a rifle muzzle but did not fire, apparently thinking she was already dead. She told me that she can still sometimes smell the stench of the blackened rotting bodies in the alleyways of Shatila camp from those hot September days in 1982. And that until today she sometimes has nightmares about the Israeli 81-milimeter flares that lite up the night sky as bright as a sports stadium during a night football game to aid the butchers conduct their carnage.

Who were the killers?

The militiamen came from both south Lebanon – the area of Major Haddad’s stronghold – and the Christian militia areas of East Beirut. According to residents of Shuweifat, a largely Druze area located just south of Beirut airport, there was a steady stream of trucks and armored vehicles carrying militiamen to the airport parking area during the afternoon of 9/16/1982.

Interviews conducted by Janet Stevens and other journalists with Lebanese soldiers who were on duty in the traffic circle adjacent to the Kuwaiti Embassy above Shatila camp unanimously confirmed reports that they saw Haddad militiamen dressed in uniforms that stood out from those of the Phalangist militiamen. They also said the Haddad men were noticeable because they lacked the Phalangist insignia on their uniforms reading ‘‘Lebanese Forces” and spoke with south Lebanon accents. Scores of survivors of the Massacre confirmed that many of the militiamen spoke with southern Lebanese accents and referred to one another by names as Ali, Hussein, Hassan and Abbas. All being Shiite Muslim names. Roughly half of Major Haddad’s 6,000-member militia members were Shiites from South Lebanon and more than a few had grievances with the PLO from the days when it occupied South Lebanon and Israeli artillery fire rained on homes and villages. When Israel invaded Lebanon on June 5, 1982 many Shia Muslim residents showered the Zionist forces with rice and flowers urging them to crush the PLO. Today it’s Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims who may well offer rice and flowers when the oft-predicted war ignites, urging the Israeli forces to destroy Hezbollah.

On Sunday September 18, 1982, Janet Stevens and other reporters found scattered on the ground in the south area of Shatila camp boxes that had contained M-16 bullets and hundreds of shell casings. The boxes were printed in Hebrew. Elsewhere there were wrappings from Israeli chocolate wafers on the ground, as well as remnants of United States Army C-rations which the US military had supplied to the Israelis. All findings being evidence that at least some of the militia were supplied with weapons and food by the Israeli military.

As no Palestinian or person of goodwill who has learned about the Massacre can ever forget, shortly after dusk on the night of Sept. 15, 1982, the Israeli military, which had occupied much of Lebanon the preceding June, allowed drug and hate fueled right-wing Lebanese militia and others to enter Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and the adjacent neighborhoods including Sabra, Fakhani and BirHasan.

For the next nearly 72 hours, the Maronite Christian Lebanese Forces-Phalange Party’s militia and its Saad Haddad allies among others, raped, killed and dismembered as many as 3000-3500 civilians. Nearly all of the dead were women, children and elderly men.

Thirty-five years later, the massacre has not dimmed for the families of the victims or supporters of Palestine and those seeking justice. It is painfully remembered as a notorious chapter in modern Middle Eastern history for which accountability has to date failed.

When the United States government first learned about the massacre, which was hours after it began, the Reagan Administration contemplated exerting diplomatic pressure on Israel that could have quickly ended the atrocities. But it decided not to do so even amid reports that militiamen were continuing their slaughter of Palestinian families in and near Shatila camp. The White House had only weeks earlier signed an agreement that it would use all means to protect civilians in Palestinian camps as a condition precedent of the August, 1982 voluntary evacuation of 11,000 PLO fighters.`

Researcher Seth Anziska reported a few years ago on some recently declassified documents from the Israel State Archives that chronicle the conversations between American and Israeli officials before and during the massacre. The verbatim transcripts reveal that the Israelis misled American diplomats about events in Beirut and bullied them into accepting the spurious claim that 2000 to 3000 “terrorists” were in Shatila.

Much as we see with claims today in Syria, Sharon’s “terrorists” were, in fact, more than 90% innocent civilians.

“The main order of the day is to keep the peace,” Israeli Prime Minister Begin told the American envoy to the Middle East, Morris Draper, on Sept. 15. “Otherwise, there could be pogroms.”

Two days later Mr. Draper and the American ambassador, Samuel W. Lewis, held a meeting with Israeli officials. Contrary to Begins earlier assurances, Defense Minister Sharon insisted that the occupation of West Beirut was also completely justified because he had information that they were yet another “2,000 to 3,000 terrorists who remained in West Beirut.”

A verbatim transcript of the Sept. 17 meeting reveals that the Americans appeared intimidated by Mr. Sharon’s false insistence that “terrorists” needed “mopping up.” It also makes plain how Israel’s refusal to relinquish areas under its control to the Lebanese army as well as its delays in coordinating with the Lebanese government which the Americans wanted to step in, prolonged the slaughter. Secretary of State George P. Shultz later admitted that “we are partially responsible” because “we took the Israelis and the Lebanese at their word.”

Thirty-five years later, for the victims’ families of the 1982 Massacre, including 29 Shia, this tragedy is magnified by their impression that the Hezbollah-led “Resistance” has been averting its eyes for more than three decades from their oft-repeated support for the Palestinian cause. And by the “Resistance” failure today, for solely political reasons to give desperately needed aid to slow the deterioration of Lebanon’s Palestinian camps.

One urgent question  still being put by survivors of the massacre and supporters of Palestine to the Hezbollah led “Resistance” is whether at long last it will put its oft-touted “Moral and Religious Duty” to support the Palestinians goal of Full Return to Palestine” above Lebanon’s  intensifying Shia-Sunni sectarian politics. If so, Lebanon’s Palestinians will finally be granted the elementary civil rights which will expedite their return to Palestine, help grow Lebanon’s economy, and give some much needed credence to shop-worn “Resistance” speeches.

Palestinians from Syrian camps also victims of Lebanon’s Satilla Massacre

Palestinian refugees from Syria, including the approximately 40,000 who fled to Lebanon from that country’s nearly seven-year civil war, also share the continuing trauma of the 1982 Massacre at Shatila.  One reason is because many Palestinians living in Syria’s ten camps lost relatives who were in the Shatila and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood on those fateful days of September 16-18 1982.  The Palestinians in both countries are also closely connected by family, with many having been neighbors from among the 531 Palestinian villages Zionist forces ethnically cleansed during the three year Nakba (1948).

Historically, since the 1970’s when the PLO held broad powers in Lebanon, Syria based Palestinians refugees passed relatively easily across their border crossings for visitations. The largely unimpeded Syria-Lebanon border passages continued as Syria occupied Lebanon essentially unimpeded with as many as 40,000 troops from the beginning of Lebanon’s civil war in June of 1976 until UN Security Council Resolution 1551 was enacted in September of 2004.  Just five months later the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others affected this arrangement as it ignited the so-called “Cedar Revolution” and forced Syria’s occupation forces and many of its intelligence operatives back into their own country. Syria retaliated by tightening border crossings.

Today, Palestinian refugees in Syria who back in 2011 represented approximately 3 % of Syria’s population continue fleeing their war-torn host country and are one of the refugee groups most urgently seeking to find new homes in Europe. Palestinians are proportionally the most over-represented minority of all those escaping the carnage across Syria. UNRWA estimates that as of this month more than 20% of Syria’s pre-war estimated 450,000 Palestinians have fled the country. Some estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 have taken the death boats to Europe with hundreds dying en route. The Syrian war has also driven all but approximately 7000 Palestinians out of the Yarmouk neighborhood south of central Damascus. Yarmouk was Syria’s largest ‘camp’ with a pre-war population of nearly 150,000. The fact that they, among others, are risking their lives on various dangerous sea and land routes towards Europe reflects a realization among many Palestinians that, 95% being non-Shia,  there is no future for them in a “Resistance” Iranian-Shia dominated Middle East.

True “Resistance” begins in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps

As the “Resistance” is acutely aware, Lebanon’s political sects of whom Hezbollah is by far the most powerful have prevented the emergence of an energetic and vigorous Palestinian community in Lebanon. The consequent pauperization, ghettoization, marginalization, broad deterioration of community health and growing sense of hopelessness by many in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps community is leading to the fragmentation of Palestinians.  This is a factor undercutting their Full Return, a claimed raison d’etre of the “Resistance.”

Increasingly Lebanon’s Palestinians are insisting that it’s time to reverse these trends by giving meaning to the “Resistance” motto of “Moral and Religious Duty to Palestine.” What does the “Resistance” motto mean if not to help the Lebanon-hosted refugees from

Palestine gain elementary civil rights to aid their Return,” is a common camp expression these days.
One reason the “Resistance” has seemingly abandoned its claims to support the Palestinian cause in Lebanon by granting them elementary civil rights is partially clarified by referencing the regional expansion tasks assigned the “Resistance” by Tehran. Specifically orders for the “Resistance” to focus on more beneficial political objectives including the “Lebanization” of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and then Jordan and other Middle East countries.

Problematical for Lebanon’s Palestinians seeking their half century overdue civil rights, they are told by some “Resistance” sources that the war in Syria must first end before any consideration of the right to work and home ownership. Despite previous claims that it is essentially over, the war in Syria may end for years.

For decades without serious “Resistance” opposition, Lebanon’s Parliament and ministerial decrees have erected a series of legal and institutional barriers that deprive Palestinian refugees of the right to work, to social security, and to join Lebanese trade unions and many other elementary rights granted refugees globally. For example, Palestinian refugees are subject to all legal regulations governing foreign workers and visitors including the principle of reciprocity and the requirement to obtain work permits. Given that there is yes no state of Palestine with official diplomatic relations and reciprocity agreements with Lebanon these barriers are invoked to prevent Palestinian refugees from obtaining work permits, especially within professional associations. These discriminatory regulations are enforced in Lebanon to target Palestinians despite Article 7 of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which Lebanon has not signed, but which is binding on Lebanon by International Customary Law. The Refugee Convention specifically exempts refugees including Palestinians in Lebanon from the principle of reciprocity and allows them to work without a permit three years after they establish residence in the asylum country.

By outlawing Palestinians elementary civil rights to work or to own a home and depriving them of a host of other civil rights, unlike what any other refugee group on earth is granted at birth, Lebanon is also violating countless principles, standards, and rules of globally recognized international humanitarian law. Among the most notable are the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and the September 1965 Casablanca Protocol on the Treatment of Palestinians in Arab Countries.

Shortly after the late summer 1982 PLO withdrawal from Lebanon, the movement to and from Palestinian refugee camps, particularly those in the south, have been subject to strict security measures. The Lebanese army maintains checkpoints at the entrances to most of the southern camps. In addition, the army strictly monitors — and restricts — building and renovation materials brought into the southern camps, especially in the Tyre region. In May 2010, Lebanese security forces also banned building materials from Beirut’s Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp based on orders from the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. Earlier this year, the Minister of the Interior and Municipalities requested the Directorate General of Internal Security Forces to investigate unlicensed centers and offices for humanitarian and social organizations in the destroyed Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, and required 23 associations to apply for licenses or risk legal sanction.  The threat was issued even though the associations cannot obtain licenses under the Associations Law.

Even in Syria, the “Resistance” stands accused of ignoring the rights of Palestinians and the fact that Islam calls upon all Muslims, regardless of their race or nationality to see themselves as brothers and sisters in faith. One Sheik at the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque’ in downtown Beirut recently expressed the view of many in an email: “The killing of another Muslim is strictly forbidden but given Iran’s strategy of breaking governments in this region one by one and then controlling them, Tehran has ordered its “Resistance” to pit Arab Muslims against one another and especially to “Resist” Sunni Muslims. One way to achieve Iran’s hegemonic project is to find a loophole in Islamic law whereby Iran’s theocratic leadership labels Sunni Muslims apostates or Kafirs (non-believers). Hence the creation of the “Takfiri” canard as a weapon for conducting a hegemonic war in this region labeling Sunni Muslims, and increasingly Sunni Palestinians as “Takfirs” claiming that these and Sunni Muslims are impure.”

By training and often commanding more than a dozen Iran funded Shia militia from half a dozen countries, Lebanon’s “Resistance” was organized starting in 1981 by Iran’s newly established Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini has its interests far from Lebanon’s Palestinian camps. According to the New York Times of 8/28/2017 Hezbollah has evolved into a virtual arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, providing the connective tissue for the growing network of powerful militias.”

A Russian military source in Palmyra emphasized to this observer a while back that the “Lebanese “Resistance” takes orders from the Iranian IRGC commander QassimSolemani who, he claims, Vladimir Putin considers the second most powerful man in Syria today. Taking heavy combat losses with more than 4000 reportedly killed and approximately 9350 wounded and busy with Iran’s regional agenda, the “Resistance” is accused of having little if any interest beyond speeches to honor its claimed “Moral and Religious Obligations to Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees” according to  a majority of Palestinian camp leaders interviewed recently.

Hezbollah claims that its interventions across the Middle East are merely an extension of the “Resistance” against Israel. However, the “Resistance” is increasingly accused in Lebanon of benefitting Israel by avoiding “Resistance” to Israel in order to apply its “Resistance” targeting Muslims across the Middle East. According to the New York Times of 8/28/2017 the “Resistance” has become the mercenary “Blackwater” of the Middle East.

Below are proposed some essential “Resistance” Palestinians civil rights actions Iran, Syria and Russia and other Members of the global community should support by all means at their disposal. This while Palestinians in Lebanon try to convince the Lebanese

“Resistance” to use its dominant political power in Parliament to enact legislation fully implementing these elementary civil rights.

These elementary civil rights have, since the 1982 Massacre at Shatila, been increasingly ignored by the “Resistance” due largely to sectarian politics. Yet, they are fully and quickly able to be enacted by Lebanon’s Parliament if the Hezbollah-led “Resistance” will finally act.

What specifically needs to be done is well known in Dahiya South Beirut and Tehran from countless petitions communicated by supporters of Palestine including the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign (PCRC) founded in 2008 in Washington DC and Beirut Lebanon. They include strengthening the Palestinian civil rights initiatives that have been proposed and one or two that in a weak form were actually adopted but as was predictable they were quickly shown to be largely ineffective.

One of the latter was the 2005 Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee (LPDC) with a mandate to address matters related to the social and economic well-being and security of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and to formalize relations between Lebanon and Palestine. This initiative did result in the reopening of the PLO office in 2006 it also led to some Palestinian political factions engaging in dialogue. But it has to date failed to achieve its other basic goal which was to improve the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian refugees by achieving any elementary civil rights for Palestinians. The main factor is judged by many including this observer as being indifference from the “Resistance”

Another positive initiative was taken in early 2009 when the Lebanese Parliament’s Committee on Women and Children offered a draft law to amending Article 15 of the Lebanese Nationality Law of 1925. Article 15 entitles every child born to a Lebanese father to obtain Lebanese nationality. The proposed amendment would have allowed children born to Lebanese mothers to obtain nationality. However, the Committee’s bill blocked children born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother from the right to nationality.  It also excluded children born to fathers from countries that do not grant Lebanese children reciprocity. Both proposals are a flagrant violation of Article 7 of Lebanon’s Constitution, which states that all Lebanese are equal before the law and enjoy civil and political rights without any distinction. They also violate the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racism, to which Lebanon is a signatory. The “Resistance” sat on its hand during these proceedings and did not oppose the decisions taken.

A major legislative initiative was attempted during Lebanon’s June 2010 legislative session. The Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) led by WalidJumblatt  introduced four draft laws that called for allowing Palestinians born on Lebanese soil to work, to benefit from pension plans, to receive an end-of-service gratuity and medical care for work-related injuries, to own one residential apartment and to own property through inheritance. The Parliament split across sectarian lines and opposition and loyalist Christian Parliamentarians united to block the proposed legislation. The “Resistance” essentially sat on its hands. During the sometimes heated debate, it was largely mute in order not to upset the anti-Palestinian Free Progressive Movement (FPM) led by Lebanon’s current President Michel Aoun. Had they applied their political power during the 2010 vote Palestinians in Lebanon today would have many civil rights.

The “Resistance” to gain credibility should assume some Parliamentary leadership by immediately proposing a “Ministry of Palestinian Affairs” to oversee and help implement civil rights for every Palestinians in Lebanon.

The “Resistance” can no longer justify marginalizing Palestinians in Lebanon for political purposes and hope not to face popular criticism in Lebanon and globally. Palestinian basic human rights which include the rights of Palestinians to work, social security, property ownership and inheritance, education, and freedom of movement and association are enshrined in international law and Lebanon’s Constitution. The “Resistance” is obliged to eschew sectarian politics and take the lead in their enactment.  Thereby honoring its oft-proclaimed “Moral and Political Resistance duty” to support Palestine.

The “Resistance” should also encourage its political partners to end their verbal attacks on Lebanon’s Palestinians which encourages incitement. On 8/30/2017 Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, the anti-Palestinian FPM’s JebranBassil, yet again attacked Lebanon’s Palestinians in a call for the removal of any “terror hubs” in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps. “We must… reject the persistence of terror hubs in Palestinian refugee camps topped by the challenge of the Ain el-Hilweh camp.” He added, “The scheme of terrorism in Lebanon has fallen and the Palestinian naturalization schemes should fall next.”

Bassil knows, the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have never sought, nor do they today seek naturalization. What they seek is to return to their own country Palestine the very minute it becomes possible. But Bassil and his ilk frequently bash Palestinians to curry political favor from those holding similar views. The “Resistance” for the past decade has been political partners with Michel Aoun of the “Free Patriotic Movement”, the anti-Palestinian father-in-law of Bassil, for whom the very idea of granting civil rights for Palestinians is anathema.

Is there still a “Resistance” 35 years after the Sabra-Shatila Massacre?

Thirty-five years after the carnage of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila the question remains, where is the “Resistance”? For the survivors of the massacre and loved ones of its victims, the “Resistance” appears nowhere to be found. The “Resistance” is in danger of becoming irrelevant to the Palestinian civil rights struggle in Lebanon and the Palestinian cause generally.

If still serious about its claimed “Moral and Religious duty toward the Palestinian cause” the “Resistance” should seize the opportunity to burnish the “Resistance” brand which the Party of God claims to lead. And it should recognize that “Resistance” means helping the Palestinian camp’s needs including infrastructure improvements. And crucially it means that the “Resistance” must become serious about immediately granting Palestinian refugee the most elementary civil rights that every other refugee is automatically granted when her or his foot touches Lebanese soil.

On 9/11/2017 according to Beirut’s pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar daily Hassan Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah “won the war in Syria,” and that the party is “making history in the region.” “We are aware of our situation regarding the war in Syria…and writing the region’s history, not Lebanon’s.” Words that suggest that the “Resistance” has wider ambitions than supporting any fundamental rights for Palestinians in Lebanon.

Hopefully “The Resistance” will prove this tentative but rapidly growing conclusion premature by enacting via its political power in Parliament, civil rights for Palestinians in Lebanon, first among them being the rights to work and to own a home.

Franklin Lamb volunteers with the Lebanon, France, and USA based Meals for Syrian Refugee Children Lebanon (MSRCL) which seeks to provide hot nutritional meals to Syrian and other refugee children in Lebanon. http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com. He is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com or franklin.lamb@hmc.ox.ac.uk

16 September 2017

 PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL

Session on

State Crimes Allegedly Committed in Myanmar against the Rohingyas, Kachins and Other Groups

University of Malaya, Faculty of Law

18-22 September 2017, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Panel of the Judges:

Daniel Feierstein (Argentina), who chaired the panel

Zulaiha Ismal (Malaysia)

Helen Jarvis (Cambodia-Australia)

Gill H. Boehringer (Australia)

Nursyahbani Katjasungkana (Indonesia)

Shadi Sadr (Iran)

Nello Rossi (Italy)

PRESS RELEASE

General Secretariat:

 

VIA DELLA DOGANA VECCHIA 5 – 00186 ROME – TEL:0039 0668801468

E-mail:ppt@permanentpeoplestribunal.org

www.tribunalepermanentedeipopoli.fondazionebasso.it

 

The Judgment presented today by the Panel of the Judges of this Session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) is the product of a long term research work, which included not only the close monitoring of the many published reports, but of formal public hearings in London, 6-7 March 2017, and in these days 18-22 in Kuala Lumpur.

The deliberation of the seven Judges is very detailed in the analysis of the facts and in their qualification according to the best recognized instruments and criteria of international law: the State of Myanmar is fully responsible for genocide against the Rohingya people, and is further responsible not only for genocidal intent against the Kachin and the Muslim minority, but also and more specifically for crimes of war against the Kachins and crimes against humanity against the Kachins and the Muslim groups.

The full responsibility of the State of Myanmar for the above crimes is made more hideous because of the state of total impunity which is guaranteed by the substantial absence of a judicial system, as it is totally dependent from the military Government which is de facto the only ruling power.

The qualification of genocide corresponds to the highest level of criminal responsibility and its foundations are analysed and documented in all its aspects: in the systematic policies of discrimination and physical elimination, in the active denial of identity and culture, including even the prohibition from using the term Rohingya. The witnesses heard in London and in Kuala Lumpur testified both in public hearings and in camera sessions (to protect their identity and for security reasons). Together with the reports of international experts (from Bangladesh, UK, USA) and the contribution of a very competent team of Prosecutors, they have provided evidence of the systematic use of the whole spectrum of atrocious violations of the right to life and dignity of the affected populations: raping of women was possibly the most conspicuously present, beside the killing and burning of children and elderly, tortures, and the long list of acts included in the definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of war.

The PPT is the expression of the need and duty to react of the civil society to give the victims their identity as subjects who must be recognized as such and defended by the international community. In this sense, the Panel of the Judges has not concluded its work simply with a Judgment, which will be forwarded to the Myanmar authorities and to the international agencies and actors, but has issued a well targeted list of recommendations which must be implemented, to stop the ongoing genocidal process against the Rohingyas and to avoid the intended genocide against the Kachins and the other Muslim groups.

It is worth mentioning that the Government of Myanmar duly and timely informed of the PPT procedures and of its rights to defence never responded nor accepted to appear in the PPT court.

By www.siasat.com

NEW DELHI: Pope Francis issued a stinging criticism on the Myanmar’s harsh treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority community, saying they had been tortured and killed simply because they wanted to keep their culture and Muslim faith.

“They have been suffering for years…simply because they want to live their culture and their Muslim faith,”   decried  Francis, who is slated to visit Myanmar and Bangladesh between November 27 and December 2, where the Rohingya Muslim minority is suffering extreme persecution.

In August, condemning atrocities committed by Burma, the Pontiff  urging worshippers gathered in St Peter’s Square in Rome to pray that God “saves” the persecuted minority.

“Sad news has arrived of the persecution of the religious minority, our Rohingya brothers,” condemned Pope Francis.

“I would like to express my full closeness to them. Let us all ask the Lord to save them, and to elicit men and women of goodwill to help them, for them to be given their full rights.”

The Pope went on to say, “Let us pray for our Rohingya brethren.”

Some 146,000 Rohingya Muslims in the region have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in less than two weeks, overwhelming refugee camps that were already bursting at the seams and triggering warnings of a humanitarian crisis.

ALSO READ: Don’t think we will be able to give any relaxation to Rohingya Muslims: Naqvi

Many more have died trying to flee the fighting in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where witnesses say entire villages have been burned to the ground since Rohingya militants launched a series of coordinated attacks on August 25, prompting a military-led crackdown.

Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country, while Myanmar is dominantly Buddhist, with Christians occupying a very small percentage of the population.

Myanmar refers to Rohingya as Bengalis and denied citizenship, contending they were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations.

11 September 2017

By Divya Goyal

A team of volunteers from Sikh organisation Khalsa Aid reached Bangladesh-Myanmar border Sunday night to provide relief to the lakhs of Rohingya Muslim families fleeing Myanmar. Speaking to The Indian Express over phone, Amarpreet Singh, managing director, Khalsa Aid, India who has reached Teknaf, a border town in Bangladesh where the refugees are living in the camps, said that condition at the border was “miserable to say the least”.

“It was our first day here today and we did a pre-assessment before launching a major relief operation. We had come prepared for providing relief to some 50,000 people, but there are more than three lakh refugees here. They are living without water, food, clothes and shelter. They are sitting wherever they can find a corner. It is raining, but people do not have anywhere to go. It is miserable to say the least. We will be providing them langar food (community kitchen) and shelter. We are arranging tarpaulins but since the number of refugees have overwhelmingly exceeded our preparations, it can some time to make arrangements,” he said.

He added that there were huge camps at Teknaf and each one was crowded beyond its capacity. “A camp can accommodate at least 50,000 people but in most of them there are more than one lakh refugees. But we are committed to run langar here (community here) till the crisis is not over. The priority is to not let anyone sleep without food. Children are roaming without clothes and begging for food. Those who do not get space in camps are sitting along roads in hope of getting food from someone,” he added.

Khalsa Aid team is now serving langar and water to the refugees. “Teknaf is almost 10 hours ride from the capital Dhaka from where we are ferrying all the material needed to prepare langar. Connectivity issues and rain are creating hindrances but we are trying our best to provide food to the maximum people at the earliest. The langar will continue here till crisis is not over and refugees continue to reach the border,” he added.

Another team of Khalsa Aid volunteers is expected to reach the border town Teknaf in coming days to assist in the relief operations, said Amarpreet.

Jeevanjyot Singh, a Khalsa Aid volunteer from Jammu & Kashmir who is also in Teknaf, said that refugees started from Myanmar by foot almost ten days back and then reached Teknaf through boats. “They are in an extremely bad state as of now. They have nowhere to go.

We have spoken to some families and they have told us that after crossing thick jungles on foot in Myanmar, they crossed border through boats and then resumed journey on foot. Most of them have traveled for more than ten days. Since then, children had no food or water. They are in dire need of food and water,” he said.

Myanmar led by its state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has been rapped by the United Nations for gross human rights violation against the tribe of Rohingya Muslims and as per UN estimates, 2.70 lakh Rohingya Muslims have already fled to Bangladesh and even more are trapped at the border.

Divya Goyal is our Punjab correspondent

12 September 2017

By M. Ghazalli Khan

In an article in the Economic Times “India is Israel’s top destination for arms exports, buying 41 per cent of export between 2012 and 2016, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent global conflict and arms-research institute. Israel is India’s third-largest source of arms, with a 7.2 per cent share of imports between 2012 and 2016, next to the US (14 per cent) and Russia (68 per cent)”.

Since India established full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, covering a wide range of issues from defence and homeland security, to agriculture and water management, and now education and even outer space. The Indian writer Prabir Purkayastha has argued that India cannot be a major “buyer of Israeli arms… and claim innocence when charged with helping subsidize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.” There is also, allegedly, a cost to India’s reputation in the developing world, whose backing is crucial if India is to gain the permanent seat on the UN Security Council it has long coveted.

Supporters of a justice in Kashmir draw comparisons between the Indian and Israeli militaries. Modi himself drew such a parallel after launching preemptive military strikes against alleged terrorist safe havens in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan. We copied Israeli tactics when an Indian army officer strapped a Kashmiri civilian onto a jeep as a “human shield,” arguing that if Israel could do it, then we should too.

Calls from retired military officials ask India to replicate the Israeli model of total social mobilization against terrorism. On the ground, things are different. Israel’s occupation was openly rejected when young activists in a south Indian town sought to show solidarity with besieged Palestinians by putting up signs renaming one of its streets after Gaza. Sangh Parivar affiliates exploded with rage comparison the town to an ISIS den.

The article we share shows how India’s ‘fatal embrace with Israel takes India down the wrong track. It is devoid of a vision that is needed to end an illegal occupation and a colonialist regime in Israel that occupies the Palestinians with fierceness and viciousness that has few, if any, parallels in history. If India wishes to be a factor in the Middle East, with its high degree of dependence on oil resources in the region, then it must contend with a foreign policy that desists from choosing Israel over the Palestinians. Nor can India be neutral. India must precondition its relations with Israel with a caveat – that Israel ends its occupation and enlarges its trade relations with India and, indeed, the rest of the world. Sadly, Modi has abandoned a historic policy which served India well for all of 50 years until the Congress opens its doors to the wrong Israel for reasons of duress and opportunism.

Ranjan Solomon
Editor

10 September 2017

By Desmond Tutu

My dear Aung San Suu Kyi

I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness about the plight of the Muslim minority in your country, the Rohingya.

In my heart you are a dearly beloved younger sister. For years I had a photograph of you on my desk to remind me of the injustice and sacrifice you endured out of your love and commitment for Myanmar’s people. You symbolized righteousness. In 2010 we rejoiced at your freedom from house arrest, and in 2012 we celebrated your election as leader of the opposition.

Your emergence into public life allayed our concerns about violence being perpetrated against members of the Rohingya. But what some have called ‘ethnic cleansing’ and others ‘a slow genocide’ has persisted – and recently accelerated. The images we are seeing of the suffering of the Rohingya fill us with pain and dread.

We know that you know that human beings may look and worship differently – and some may have greater firepower than others – but none are superior and none inferior; that when you scratch the surface we are all the same, members of one family, the human family; that there are no natural differences between Buddhists and Muslims; and that whether we are Jews or Hindus, Christians or atheists, we are born to love, without prejudice. Discrimination doesn’t come naturally; it is taught.

My dear sister: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep. A country that is not at peace with itself, that fails to acknowledge and protect the dignity and worth of all its people, is not a free country.

It is incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country; it is adding to our pain.

As we witness the unfolding horror we pray for you to be courageous and resilient again. We pray for you to speak out for justice, human rights and the unity of your people. We pray for you to intervene in the escalating crisis and guide your people back towards the path of righteousness.

God bless you

Love

Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop-emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa.

9 September 2017

By Satya Sagar

On that dreadful evening of 5th September, if Gauri Lankesh had seen her own corpse lying in a pool of blood outside her house she would have -I am very sure- simply smiled

For even in her death she had done what was closest to her heart – expose India’s saffron supremacists for what they really were.  A sorry bunch of cowards, whose idea of valour or honour was to shoot an unarmed woman in the back and disappear into the dark.

In fact, such was her chutzpah, if Gauri had known there were a group of men waiting to kill her she would have invited them home for a cup of coffee. In chaste Kannada then, she would have asked them to explain whether her dying would be of any use to the ordinary citizens of this land. If convinced by their arguments, maybe she would have happily paid for the cartridges in their guns and requested them to go ahead.

Instead, in the end, her opponents remained true to their cultural roots and usedthe chosen methods of suppressing rebels and ‘rakshasas’ prescribed by hoary Hindu mythology. Like Vali, slyly shot by Ram, from behind a tree or a defenceless Meghnad murdered by Lakshmana, as he sat worshipping Lord Shiva – Gauri, daughter of Lankesh, was silenced only through low cunning and treachery.

Very appropriate perhaps in some ways. Nothing, after all, has really changed in this country, so many millennia since the Ramayana happened. The racist Aryans, whom Gauri fought all her life, are in power and consolidating by the hour.

Not one of these ‘Ram bhakts’ though, had the guts to look her in the eye – for who knows what mighty powers that may have provoked? Gauri, despite her own professed rationalism and atheism – had silently become through her life, work and audacity- what ordinary Indians have respected from time immemorial – a fearless and even fearsome Mother Goddess.She had to be eliminated – the Gods themselves were feeling the heat way up there, from the fires she had lit all around.

Gauri would also had a hearty laugh at the sick characters on social media celebrating her death, their green tongues dripping poison, using the vilest of terms to abuse her. The ethos of these proponents of  ‘Ram Rajya’, are now so visible for the whole world to see.

These are the rabble claiming to be upholders of India’s great spiritual heritage, culture and morality and who distribute the Gita to visiting dignitaries from distant lands. They stand stark naked now, proven to be nothing more than hate-filled misogynists, men without mothers or sisters, born to stone and not of flesh and blood.

Even so, I think,  Gauri was large-hearted enough, to forgive them. For despite the biting language she often employed – her battle was nothing personal at all. Instead she stood for whatever she thought was just and humane and against all that reeked of raw greed for oppressive power. She harboured no ill will against anyone and would have fought like a tigress to defend the human rights of even her foes.

Gauri’s heart would have filled with genuine happiness to see the thousands upon thousands who turned out across India to protest her brutal murder – again, not as a boost to any ego but as sign of hope they hold for the future. What she had tried very hard in nearly two decades of activism – to mobilize and unite fellow citizens against the politics of religious bigotry– happened within twenty four hours following her death.

She would have loved especially all those young girls coming out with ‘I am Gauri’ placards. In the instant the bullets pierced her frail body a million Gauris were already born, resolving to carry on her fight, with similar courage, commitment and passion. India indeed has a bright future, despite the descending gloom at Gauri’s departure There are many indeed many wild flowers, inspired by her, blooming in the dry wasteland this nation has become and they will have their day too.

Gauri, would have known though, given the vast challenges of fighting injustice, deprivation and venal racism of caste in a country like India, even all this outpouring of grief, anger and resolve may not be enough. It will take much more energy, intellectual honesty, courage and conscience to overcome the forces of darkness enveloping our nation.

It will be first of all crucial – to follow in the footsteps of Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar and Gauri – to go to the field to study, mix with common citizens to understand what is really needed and how it should be done. To listen to and speak the language of the people in their own idiom, to truly communicate– in a way that transforms hearts and minds.

How is whatever we see all around us today in the country linked to what is happening in other parts of the world? Is there not a long history of religious, ethnic, racial hatred everywhere and how were they challenged? What were the responses forged by ordinary folks in their fight against fascism or other similar ideologies that pit the weak against the weak to cover up the crimes of the high and mighty?

How does nationalism or religion intersect with the economy, both local and global? Where does the money trail behind the assassins of our democracy really lead to? Who are the corporate babas, who make all their wealth, by distracting the population from its immediate problems using the politics of hate? How can we beard these monsters in their ‘deras’?

What role does religion play in all these stratagems and is religion just one single monolith or can it also contain myriad memories and possibilities of both good and evil? In this ancient land of the Buddha, Mahavir, Nanak, Kabir and Basavanna, is there anything we can learn from them – their outlook, methods and action – that can give us the strength to fight contemporary battles?

We also need to ask today, are we going to confine ourselves to merely protesting injustices or do we also construct alternative institutions and processes to shape a new reality? Do we even have the skills to make such a contribution and have we bothered to develop them sincerely – so that we do not remain mere creatures of rhetoric without any tangible substance to offer anyone?

Are we being honest enough with ourselves, when we point fingers at others while ignoring the various faults in our own midst? Do we have the will or energy or courage to first change our own ways of working?

If we are to be true to Gauri’s memory, it is urgent today we ask questions not just to those in power but to ourselves. It only through the process of putting own feet to fire that we can fly high – like Gauri ultimately did.

Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker. He can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com

9 September 2017

By Alastair Crooke

Syria’s victory in remaining still standing – still on its feet, as it were – amid the ruins of all that has been visited upon her, marks effectively the demise of the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East (of “the New Middle East”). It signals the beginning of the end – not just of the political “regime change” project, but also of the Sunni jihadi project which has been used as the coercive tool for bringing into being a “New Middle East.”

Just as the region has reached a geopolitical inflection point, however, so too, has Sunni Islam. Wahhabi-inspired Islam has taken a major hit. It is now widely discredited amongst Sunnis, and reviled by just about everyone else.

Just to be clear how linked were the two projects:

In the wake of the first Gulf War (1990-91), General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, recalled: “In 1991, [Paul Wolfowitz] was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy … And I had gone to see him (…)

“And I said, ‘Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.’

“And he said: ‘Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the region?—?in the Middle East?—?and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes?—?Syria, Iran, Iraq?—?before the next great superpower comes on, to challenge us.’”

Wolfowitz’s thinking was then taken up more explicitly by David Wurmser in his 1996 document, Coping with Crumbling States (following on from his contribution to the infamous Clean Break policy strategy paper written by Richard Pearle for Bibi Netanyahu earlier in the same year).  The aim here for both these seminal documents was to directly counter the allegedly “isolationist” thinking of Pat Buchanan (now arisen again in parts of the U.S. New Right and Alt-Right).

Libertarian writer Daniel Sanchez has noted:  “Wurmser characterized regime change in Iraq and Syria (both ruled by Baathist regimes) as ‘expediting the chaotic collapse’ of secular-Arab nationalism in general, and Baathism in particular. He [asserted that] ‘the phenomenon of Baathism,’ was, from the very beginning, ‘an agent of foreign, namely Soviet policy’ … [and therefore advised] the West to put this anachronistic adversary ‘out of its misery’ – and to press America’s Cold War victory on toward its final culmination.  Baathism should be supplanted by what he called the ‘Hashemite option.’ After their chaotic collapse, Iraq and Syria would be Hashemite possessions once again. Both would be dominated by the royal house of Jordan, which in turn, happens to be dominated by the US and Israel.”

Influencing Washington

Wurmser’s tract, Coping with Crumbling States, which together with Clean Break was to have a major impact on Washington’s thinking during the George W. Bush administration (in which David Wurmser also served).  What aroused the deep-seated neocon ire in respect to the secular-Arab nationalist states was not just that they were, in the neo-con view, crumbling relics of the “evil” USSR, but that from 1953 onwards, Russia sided with these secular-nationalist states in all their conflicts regarding Israel. This was something the neo-cons could neither tolerate, nor forgive.

Both Clean Break and the 1997 Project for a New American Century(PNAC) were exclusively premised on the wider U.S. policy aim of securing Israel. The point here is that while Wurmser stressed that demolishing Baathism must be the foremost priority in the region, he added: “Secular-Arab nationalism should be given no quarter” – not even, he added, “for the sake of stemming the tide of Islamic fundamentalism”. (Emphasis added).

In fact, America had no interest in stemming the tide of Islamic fundamentalism. The U.S. was using it liberally: It had already sent in armed, fired-up Islamist insurgents into Afghanistan in 1979 precisely in order to “induce” a Soviet invasion (one which subsequently duly occurred).

Asked, much later, in view of the terrorism that subsequently occurred, whether he regretted stoking Islamic extremism in this way, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbig Brzezinski replied:

“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’”

Fired-up Sunni radicals have now been used by Western states to counter Nasserism, Ba’athism, the USSR, Iranian influence, and latterly to try to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. One former CIA official in 1999, described the thinking at the time thus:

“In the West, the words Islamic fundamentalism conjure up images of bearded men with turbans and women covered in black shrouds. And some Islamist movements do indeed contain reactionary and violent elements. But we should not let stereotypes blind us to the fact that there are also powerful modernizing forces at work within these movements. Political Islam is about change. In this sense, modern Islamist movements may be the main vehicle for bringing about change in the Muslim world and the break-up of the old ‘dinosaur’ regimes.” (Emphasis added).

Protecting the Emirs

Precisely: This was what the Arab Spring was about. The role allocated to Islamist movements was to break up the nationalist-secular Arab world (Wurmser’s “Secular-Arab nationalism should be given no quarter”), but additionally to protect the kings and Emirs of the Gulf, to whom America was obliged to tie itself – as Wurmser explicitly acknowledges – as the direct counter-party in the project of dissolving the nationalist secular Arab world. The kings and emirs of course, feared the socialism that was associated with Arab nationalism (— as did the Neocons).

Dan Sanchez perceptively writes (well before Russia’s intervention into the Middle East), that Robert Kagan and fellow neocon, Bill Kristol, in their 1996 Foreign Affairs article, Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, sought to inoculate both the conservative movement and U.S. foreign policy against the isolationism of Pat Buchanan:

“The Soviet menace had recently disappeared, and the Cold War along with it. The neocons were terrified that the American public would therefore jump at the chance to lay their imperial burdens down. Kristol and Kagan urged their readers to resist that temptation, and to instead capitalize on America’s new peerless pre-eminence … [that] must become dominance wherever and whenever possible. That way, any future near-peer competitors would be nipped in the bud, and the new ‘unipolar moment’ would last forever … What made this neocon dream seem within reach, was the indifference of post-Soviet Russia.”

And, the year after the Berlin Wall fell, war against Iraq marked the début of the re-making the Middle East: for America to assert uni-polar power globally (through military bases); to destroy Iraq and Iran; to “roll-back Syria” (as Clean Break had advocated) – and to secure Israel.

Russia Is Back

Well, Russia is back in the Middle East – and Russia is no longer “indifferent” to America’s actions – and now “civil war” has erupted in America between those who want to punish Putin for spoiling America’s unipolar moment in the region so thoroughly, and so finally – with Syria – and the other policy orientation, led by Steve Bannon, which advocates precisely the Buchanan-esque U.S. foreign policy which the neocons had so hoped to despoil (… plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose).

It is very plain however, that one thing has changed: Sunni jihadists’ long “run” as the tool of choice for re-making the Middle East is over. The signs are everywhere:

The leaders of the five emerging market BRICS powers have for the first time named militant groups based in Pakistan as a regional security concern and called for their patrons to be held to account:

“We, in this regard, express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, (Islamic State) …, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates including Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir,” the leaders said in the declaration. (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will need to take note).

Similarly, an article published in an Egyptian newspaper written by Britain’s Middle East minister, Alistair Burt, suggests that London now whole-heartedly supports the Sisi regime in Egypt in its war on the Muslim Brotherhood. Burt attacked the M.B. for links to extremism, while emphasizing that Britain has imposed an outright ban on any contact with the organization since 2013 – adding that “now is the time for everyone who defends the Brotherhood in London or Cairo to put an end to this confusion and ambiguity.” Not surprisingly, Burt’s remarks have been greeted with profound pleasure in Cairo.

While it is quite true that there were well-intentioned and principled men and women amongst Sunni Islamists who originally had wanted to recover Islam from the doldrums it had found itself by the 1920s (with the abolition of the Caliphate), the fact is (unfortunately), that this same period coincided with the first Saudi king, Abdul Azziz’s notion (enthusiastically supported by Britain) to use fired-up Wahabbism as the means for him to rule all of Arabia. What subsequently happened (ending with the recent violent attacks in European cities) is not so surprising: most of these Islamist movements were tapped in to the Saudi petro-dollar spigot, and to the Wahhabist notion of its own violent exceptionalism (Wahhabism is alone in claiming to be “the one true Islam”).

Politically Instrumental

And as Islam became increasingly instrumentalized politically, so the more violent strain in it, inevitably, became predominant. Inevitably, the spectrum of Sunni Islamist movements – including those viewed as “moderates” – became incrementally closer to Wahhabi intolerant, dogmatic, literalism – and to embracing extremist violence. In practice, even some nominally non-violent movements – including the Muslim Brotherhood – have allied themselves, and fought with, Al-Qaeda forces in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

So, what now: the failure of Wahabbist movements to make political achievements is complete. It seems so short a time since young Muslim men – including ones who had lived their lives in the West – were truly inspired by the very radicalism and the promise of Islamic apocalypse. The Dabiq prophesy (of arriving redemption) then seemed close to fulfillment for these young adherents.  Now that is dust. Wahabbism is thoroughly discredited by its careless brutality. And Saudi Arabia’s claims to political savoir faire, and Islamic authority, has suffered a major blow.

What is less obvious to the outside world is that this blow has been delivered in part by the mostly Sunni Syrian Arab Army. For all the stereotyping and propaganda in the Western world of the Syria conflict as Shi’a versus Sunni, it was Syrian Sunnis who fought – and died – for their Levantine Islamic tradition, against the blown-in, exceptionalist, intolerant, orientation recently brought (post-World War Two) into the Levant from the Saudi Nejd desert (Wahabbism originally arose in the Nejd desert of Saudi Arabia).

In the aftermath of the Syria war and the aftermath of ISIS murderous brutality in Mosul, many Sunnis have had more than enough of this Wahabbi orientation of Islam. There is likely to be a revival of the notion of secular, non-sectarian nationalism in consequence. But also, the traditional Levantine model of a tolerant, more inwardly orientated, quasi-secular, Islam will enjoy a revival.

Whereas fired-up Sunnism used as a political tool may be “down,” radical reformist Sunni Islam, as a sub-culture, is certainly not “out.” Indeed, as the pendulum now swings against Sunni movements globally, the hostility already being generated is very likely to feed the sense of Islam being besieged and attacked; of usurpation of its lands and authority; and of dispossession (of the state, which Sunnis have tradition thought as being “of them”). The puritan, intolerant strain in Islam has been present since the earliest times (Hanbali, Ibn Taymiyya and, in the Eighteenth Century, Abd-el Wahhab), and this orientation always seems to arise at times of crisis within the Islamic world. ISIS may be defeated, but this orientation is never fully defeated, nor disappears completely.

The “victor” in this sub-sphere is Al Qaeda. The latter predicted the failure of ISIS (a physically-situated Caliphate being premature, it argued). Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been proved to have been correct in his judgment. Al Qaeda will sweep up the remnants from both ISIS, on one hand, and the angry and disillusioned members of the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other. In a sense, we may see a greater convergence amongst Islamist movements (especially when the Gulf paymasters step back).

We are likely to witness a reversion to Zawahiri’s virtual, global jihad intended to provoke the West, rather than to defeat it militarily – as opposed to any new attempt to seize and control a territorial Emirate.

Expect the shrines at (Shi’i) Kerbala and Najaf to start outshining those of (Sunni) Mecca and Medina. In fact, they already are.

Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.

8 September 2017