Archives: Articles

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

I visited Iraq in 1999. At the time, there were no so-called ‘jihadis’ espousing the principles of ‘jihadism’, whatever the interpretation may be. On the outskirts of Baghdad was a military training camp, not for ‘al-Qaeda’, but for ‘Mojahedin-e-Khalq’, an Iranian militant exile group that worked, with foreign funding and arms, to overthrow the Iranian Republic.

At the time, the late Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, used the exiled organization to settle scores with his rivals in Tehran, just as they, too, espoused anti-Iraqi government militias to achieve the exact same purpose.

Iraq was hardly peaceful then. But most of the bombs that exploded in that country were American. In fact, when Iraqis spoke of ‘terrorism’, they only referred to ‘Al-Irhab al-Amriki’ – American terrorism.

Suicide bombings were hardly a daily occurrence; in fact, never an occurrence at all, anywhere in Iraq. As soon as the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 followed by Iraq in 2003, all hell broke loose.

The 25 years prior to 2008 witnessed 1,840 suicide attacks, according to data compiled by US government experts and cited in the ‘Washington Post’. Of all these attacks, 86 percent occurred post-US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, between 2001 and the publishing of the data in 2008, 920 suicide bombings took place in Iraq and 260 in Afghanistan.

A fuller picture emerged in 2010, with the publishing of more commanding and detailed research conducted by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism.

“More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation,” it emerged.

“As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq … total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically – from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009,” wrote Robert Pape in Foreign Policy.

Tellingly, it was also concluded that “over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops, which is why 90 percent of suicide attackers in Afghanistan are Afghans.”

When I visited Iraq in 1999, ‘al-Qaeda’ was merely a name on the Iraqi TV news, referring to a group of militants that operated mostly in Afghanistan. It was first established to unite Arab fighters against the Soviet presence in that country, and they were largely overlooked as a global security threat at the time.

It was years after the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1988, that ‘al-Qaeda’ became a global phenomenon. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US’ misguided responses – invading and destroying countries – created the very haven that have espoused today’s militancy and terror.

In no time, following the US invasion of Iraq, ‘al-Qaeda’ extended its dark shadows over a country that was already overwhelmed with a death toll that surpassed hundreds of thousands.

It is hardly difficult to follow the thread of ISIS’ formation, the deadliest of all such groups that mostly originated from ‘al-Qaeda’ in Iraq, itself wrought by the US invasion.

It was born from the unity of various militants groups in October 2006, when ‘al-Qaeda’ in Mesopotamia joined ranks with ‘Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq’, ‘Jund al-Sahhaba’ and the ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ (ISI).

ISIS, or ‘Daesh’ has been in existence since then, in various forms and capacities, but only jumped to the scene as a horrifically violent organization with territorial ambitions when a Syrian uprising turned into a deadly platform for regional rivalries. What existed as a ‘state’ at a virtual, cerebral level had, in fact, morphed into a ‘state’ of actual landmass, oil fields and martial law.

It is easy – perhaps, convenient – to forget all of this. Connecting the proverbial dots can be costly for some, for it will unravel a trajectory of violence that is rooted in foreign intervention. For many western commentators and politicians it is much easier – let alone safer – to discuss ISIS within impractical contexts, for example, Islam, than to take moral responsibility.

I pity those researchers who spent years examining the thesis of ISIS as a religious theology or ISIS and the apocalypse. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. What good did that bring about, anyway?

American military and political interventions have always been accompanied by attempting to also intervene in school curricula of invaded countries. The war on Afghanistan was also joined with a war on its ‘madrasas’ and unruly ‘ulemas’. None of this helped. If anything, it backfired, for it compounded the feeling of threat and sense of victimization among tens of millions of Muslims all around the world.

ISIS is but a name that can be rebranded without notice into something entirely different. Their tactics, too, can change, based on time and circumstances.  Their followers can mete out violence using a suicide belt, a car laden with explosives, a knife even, or a truck moving at high speed.

What truly matters is that ISIS has grown into a phenomenon, an idea that is not even confined to a single group and requires no official membership, transfer of funds or weapons.

This is no ordinary fact, but in a more sensible approach should represent the crux of the fight against ISIS.

When a French-Tunisian truck driver rammed into a crowd of celebrating people in the streets of Nice, the French police moved quickly to find connections between him and ISIS, or any other militant group. No clues were immediately revealed, yet, strangely, President François Hollande was quick to declare his intentions to respond militarily.

Such inanity and short-sightedness.  What good did France’s military adventurism achieve in recent years? Libya has turned into an oasis of chaos – where ISIS now control entire towns. Iraq and Syria remain places for unmitigated violence.

What about Mali? Maybe the French had better luck there.

Writing for ‘Al Jazeera’, Pape Samba Kane described the terrible reality that Mali has become following the French intervention in January 2003. Their so-called ‘Operation Serval’ turned into ‘Operation Barkhane’ and neither did Mali became a peaceful place nor did French forces leave the country.

The French, according to Kane are now Occupiers, not liberators, and according to all rationale data – like the ones highlighted above – we all know what foreign occupation does.

“The question that Malians have to ask themselves is”, Kane wrote: “Do they prefer having to fight against jihadists for a long time, or having their sovereignty challenged and their territory occupied or partitioned by an ancient colonialist state in order to satisfy a group allied with the colonial power?”

Yet the French, like the Americans, the British and others, continue to evade this obvious reality at their own peril. By refusing to accept the fact that ISIS is only a component of a much larger and disturbing course of violence that is rooted in foreign intervention, is to allow violence everywhere to perpetuate.

Defeating ISIS requires that we also confront and defeat the thinking that led to its inception: to defeat the logic of the George W. Bushes, Tony Blairs and John Howards of this world.

No matter how violent ISIS members or supporters are, it is ultimately a group of angry, alienated, radicalized young men seeking to alter their desperate situation by carrying out despicable acts of vengeance, even if it means ending their lives in the process.

Bombing ISIS camps may destroy some of their military facilities but it will not eradicate the very idea that allowed them to recruit thousands of young men all over the world.

They are the product of violent thinking that was spawned, not only in the Middle East but, initially, in various western capitals.

ISIS will fizzle out and die when its leaders lose their appeal and ability to recruit young men seeking answers and revenge.

The war option has, thus far, proved the least affective. ISIS will remain and metamorphose if necessary, as long as war remains on the agenda. To end ISIS, we must end war and foreign occupations.

It is as simple as that.

– Dr Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”.

21 July 2016

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

On Wednesday, July 20, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey in order to hunt down all those deemed to be behind an attempted coup. The state of emergency was needed “in order to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organization involved in the coup attempt,” he told a press conference.

Turkey has accused the group of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the coup and acting as a terror group. “The decision has been made to declare the state of emergency for a period of three months,” Erdogan said adding that the state of emergency is a measure “against the terror threat facing our country”.

On Saturday, Erdogan called the attempted coup “treason” and took to task the forces he apparently suspects of masterminding it. “Now I’m addressing those in Pennsylvania,” he said, in an apparent reference to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric and former ally who lives in exile in Pennsylvania.

“The betrayal you have shown to this nation and to this community, that’s enough. If you have the courage, come back to your country. If you can. You will not have the means to turn this country into a mess from where you are.” In a statement, Gulen denied any connection to the coup attempt.

Tellingly, Gulen had supported the military coup of 1980 and the soft coup in 1997, which forced Necmettin Erbakan, the prime minister, to resign.

Gulen movement declared a terrorist group

On June 1, 2016, President Erdogan officially designated the Gulen movement a terrorist group and said he would pursue its members whom he accused of trying to topple the government.

Gülen, described by Pape Escobar as a CIA asset, has long been accused by leading Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmakers, President Erdoğan and his inner circle of forming and heading a terrorist organization to topple the Turkish government through insiders in the police and other state institutions.

Critics point to a video that emerged in 1999 in which Gülen seemed to suggest that his followers should infiltrate mainstream institutions. “You must move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centres … You must wait until such time as you have got all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institution in Turkey.”

According to the Diplomat, in May 2015, Tajikistan had become the latest Central Asian country to close schools linked to the Gülen movement. In fact, Tajikistan’s decision to close the schools reflected a wider trend in the region. The Turkish Daily Sabah reported in mid-May 2015 that Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kazakhstan, Somalia, and Japan have all begun procedures to close Gülen-linked schools. In July 2014, Azerbaijan closed Gülen schools on fears of a parallel government. Uzbekistan shut down its Gülen schools in 1999. In Russian Chechnya and Dagestan regions Gulen-backed schools were once banned by President Putin. The Gulen website says that the schools are back in operation.

A Turkish court in December 2014 issued an arrest warrant for Gülen. Turkish government has asked for his repatriation.

Massive purge launched

While the July 14 (Friday) abortive coup in Turkey highlighted the fragile nature of democracy in that country, the aftermath will have long-term consequences as President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to cleanse the Turkish state of dissidents. On Saturday (July 15) morning he declared the attempted coup against his government a failure and a “gift from God.”

So far, thousands of soldiers, including 112 generals and admirals, have been suspended or arrested in what obviously is a purge of the armed forces. One of the captured generals was Erdal Öztürk, the commander of Turkey’s third army, who could now face the death penalty after Erdoğan’s allies called for a change to the constitution to allow the execution of plotters.

In addition, an astonishing number of police personnel, estimated at nearly 9,000, with more than 2,700 judges were fired from their posts.

According to Foreign Policy Magazine, more than 50,000 people have been rounded up and either arrested or suspended from their jobs as the Turkish government continues its purge of the country after last week’s failed coup attempt. The country-wide purge has been expanded to include journalists and academics who the government claims are disloyal to Erdogan. That includes almost 17,000 teachers, educators, and university deans.

Erdogan had it coming

The danger of the military striking back has not gone away as Erdogan consolidates his power.

Robert Fisk of Independent writes:

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan had it coming. The Turkish army was never going to remain compliant while the man who would recreate the Ottoman Empire turned his neighbours into enemies and his country into a mockery of itself. But it would be a grave mistake to assume two things: that the putting down of a military coup is a momentary matter after which the Turkish army will remain obedient to its sultan; and to regard at least 161 deaths and more than 2,839 detained in isolation from the collapse of the nation-states of the Middle East.

“For the weekend’s events in Istanbul and Ankara are intimately related to the breakdown of frontiers and state-belief – the assumption that Middle East nations have permanent institutions and borders – that has inflicted such wounds across Iraq, Syria, Egypt and other countries in the Arab world. Instability is now as contagious as corruption in the region, especially among its potentates and dictators, a class of autocrat of which Erdogan has been a member ever since he changed the constitution for his own benefit and restarted his wicked conflict with the Kurds.

“Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot began the Ottoman Empire’s dismemberment – with help from Arthur Balfour — but it continues to this day. In this grim historical framework must we view the coup-that-wasn’t in Ankara. Stand by for another one in the months or years to come.”

Erdogan consolidates power

For almost a century, since the birth of modern Turkey, the military had remained the guardian of the country’s secular tradition. The military’s political role has been enshrined in the constitution that legitimised its frequent intervention in the country’s politics. It had successfully staged three coups in the last century and had executed elected leaders. The Islamists were barred from politics for not being in line with the country’s founding vision.

But the situation changed dramatically over the past decade with the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a socially conservative party with an agenda for economic development led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in 2002. The party has won four elections since then. Its popularity went up each time it pulled out the country out of political instability and perpetual economic crisis. Turkey became one of the fastest-growing economies. The country has earned a coveted place among the top 20 global economies.

This remarkable economic turnaround of Turkey strengthened the civilian authority and consequently undermined the power and influence of the military. Erdogan, who earlier served two terms as prime minister and was recently elected as the country’s president, had opened up cases against retired top military officers for plotting a coup against elected governments, many of whom are serving jail sentences. He had further consolidated his power by purging the military.

Egypt blocks U.N. call

Interestingly, the United Nations Security Council failed on Saturday to condemn the violence and unrest in Turkey after Egypt objected to a statement that called on all parties to “respect the democratically elected government of Turkey,” diplomats were quoted by Reuters. The U.S.-drafted statement, also expressed grave concern over the situation in Turkey, urged the parties to show restraint, avoid any violence or bloodshed, and called for an urgent end to the crisis and return to rule of law.

Statements by the 15-member Security Council have to be agreed by consensus.

Diplomats said Egypt asked for a call for all parties to “respect the democratically elected government of Turkey” to be removed from the draft statement, saying the council is “in no position to qualify, or label that government – or any other government for that matter – as democratically elected or not.”

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

21 July 2016

By Shujaat Bukhari

Militant leader Burhan Wani’s death in a gun battle with government forces in Indian-administered Kashmir has sparked days of deadly violence. Who was he and why was he so popular, asks local journalist Shujaat Bhukari.

Burhan Wani’s funeral was attended by thousands of people, and despite restrictions, the funeral venue was so crowded there was no space to conduct funeral prayers.

Wani, 22, is largely credited with reviving and legitimising the image of militancy in Muslim-majority Indian-administered Kashmir.

The region has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, although violence has waned in recent years.

New age militant

Born to a highly-educated upper-class Kashmiri family, Wani – it is believed – was driven to militancy at the age of 15, after his brother and he were beaten up by police “for no reason”.

Wani was extremely active on social media, and unlike militants in the past, did not hide his identity behind a mask.

His video messages, which would often go viral in Kashmir, were on the topics of Indian injustice and the need for young people to stand up to oppression.

In his last video he had warned local police of “consequences” if they continued to resist the “movement”.

India considered Wani a terrorist, but for many locals he represented the spirit and political aspirations of a new Kashmiri generation.

Indian officials have admitted that he was instrumental in persuading local boys to take up arms in the state.

Isolation from India

But Wani’s popularity can be considered as more of a manifestation of the current mood and upsurge of violence in Indian-administered Kashmir, which has been influenced by several incidents.

Two popular “uprisings” in 2008 and 2010 saw the death of more than 200 people, many of them civilian protesters, killed by Indian forces. The hanging of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri separatist convicted over the 2001 Indian parliament attack, also intensified anger and a sense of isolation.

The final straw in recent times, seems to be the decision by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which won elections in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, to form a coalition with India’s ruling Hindu nationalist BJP which performed well in the neighbouring Hindu majority region of Jammu.

Police records confirm that some of the young men who have recently become militants had actively canvassed for the PDP in the 2014 general elections.

Analysts in the area say that the absence of political engagement to resolve the Kashmir dispute is setting a new political discourse and militancy is gaining legitimacy among people who believe Delhi is ignoring political realities.

The question that is being asked now, is if Wani is more dangerous to India now that he is dead.

The challenge the government now faces is fighting the ideology that Wani promoted, clearly reflected in the outpouring of sentiment over his killing.

Shujaat Bukhari is the editor of Rising Kashmir newspaper, Srinagar

11 July 2016

By Umar Sultan

The news of the killing of Burhan Wani, commander of militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, had an electrifying effect on the entire Kashmir. Within no time, streets were transformed into battle fields between angry protestors and state forces. Mosque loudspeakers were blaring out Pro-Burhan slogans and songs. Social Media users made his images as their profile and display pictures. In his early twenties, with six years into the life of gun, Burhan was already a household name in Kashmir. A sea of people converged outside his residence in Tral to have a last glimpse of “their beloved commander.” Fifty back to back funeral prayers were held for him, attended by around four lakh people, including armed militants. This was despite curfew across Kashmir Valley and the restrictions being in place to stop people from marching towards Tral. In his death, Burhan Wani had metamorphosed into tens of thousands of masked youth, carrying Pakistani flags, and ready to respond to his call, forcing, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, to send out a tweet that “dead Burhan Wani will recruit more militants.” People who couldn’t make it to the Tral organized funeral prayers for him in absentia at hundreds of places across the State. To protest his killing, youths clashed with forces and at some places, attacked and torched Police Stations and Army establishments.

That it was a demonstration of solidarity with a militant commander, who glamorized militancy for Kashmiri youth, sent shivers down the spine of the people in security establishment. It was demonstration of popular indignation, of popular support for armed resistance. But why Burhan was so much venerated and what did Burhan-Era of Kashmir resistance mean?

Burhan was not only a militant. He actually personified the idea the Kashmir has started to embrace again. He not only represented an open revolt against New Delhi’s military control of Kashmir but also identified with the expectations of the disgruntled youth who were fed up by the pacifist politics of Hurriyat Leadership, whose politics is bound within the redline drawn by the New Delhi. This fact had alienated youth from the political leadership of pro-freedom camp as they failed to deliver during three successive summer agitations from 2008 to 2010 when Kashmiris in lakhs took to streets to seek freedom from India and when dozens of people were killed in state action.
As the peaceful protests and street agitations of three consecutive summers were put down ruthlessly by New Delhi, there was a deceptive calm in Kashmir. But experts had warned of this as a dangerous lull before storm. New Delhi’s failure to respond to non-violent transition in Kashmir and an apparent lack of resolve exhibited by the political leadership of the resistance camp alienated youth from political process. In that lull, boys like Burhan Wani quietly vanished into woods to join up with militants who, though handful, were undeterred or unmindful of geopolitical discourses going on around the use of violence in freedom struggle and debates on terrorism post 9/11. Unlike their predecessors, they didn’t cross over to Azad Kashmir for arms training with the result they could not be discarded as the ones being instigated by or being controlled from across the LOC. They were homegrown, unmindful of consequences or, well prepared for them. What distinguished Burhan from the rest of his colleagues, however, was his audacity in lifting the mask from the face of a local militant, first time in the history of armed resistance in Kashmir. He almost romanticized gun with a local face providing a rallying point to the disgruntled youth who were seething in anger. Unlike in nineties when militants would make every effort to conceal their identity, Burhan’s style was the opposite. And this style worked. People in security establishment say that Burhan managed to recruit dozens of educated youth from south Kashmir into militant folds in just few years. Furthermore, Burhan’s rise on militant landscape of Kashmir changed its complexion from being predominantly foreign and faceless to local and identical. And with this change, the militancy in Kashmir was again mass-supported, first time after late nineties when the popular support to gun had started to dwindle. Soon Burhan was the most sought after figure not only for the local or Indian media, but for the International press too.

In August 2013, Jason Bruke, a British journalist, travelled to the forests of volatile Tral in South Kashmir to report for the Guardian. He catched-up with then 17-year-old Burhan Muzaffar Wani and managed to photograph him. As the Guardian produced gun-brandishing picture of Burhan somewhere in Tral forests with his colleagues standing alert in action, soon there was a rush for “The Robin hood of Kashmir.” I remember my editor at a daily rebuking our south Kashmir correspondent for failing to catch on such a “hot stuff.” The reporter cited security reasons for being a local journalist.

Burhan represented a desperate Kashmiri response against New Delhi’s arrogant policies towards Jammu and Kashmir. This won him the mass support, besides his personal charisma and ability to utilize the social media.
The crackdown on peaceful demonstrations, widespread arrest spree including that of minors, notorious rape and killing of Asiya and Neelofar in Shopian in 2009 and the hanging of Parliament attack accused, Mohammad Afzal Guru in 2013 became earth-shattering events which shaped the collective psyche of Kashmiri youth and convinced them against any political concessions from New Delhi amicably. This was exacerbated by the widespread paranoia in Kashmir that the State was run by RSS from Nagpur as a local pro-India political party PDP formed government with India’s BJP post 2014 state assembly elections. That any Kashmiri political party will join hands with India’s BJP to form government in the State was unimaginable as in the run upto polls, all political parties had sought votes against “anti-Muslim” BJP to keep it out of Kashmir.

In Kashmiri imagination, BJP led by Narendra Modi has certain connotations and not unfounded. Modi’s BJP means setting up of Amarnath Nagar, a separate homeland for local Hindu population, in the midst of Muslim majority Kashmir Valley, abrogation of Article 370 which grants special status to the State, setting up of separate Pandit Townships and fortified Sainik Colonies in Kashmir. It means ban on beef, any violation of which means death by a lynch mob of the Hindutva brigade. It also means New Industrial Policy which grants permission, in contravention to Article 370, to non-State business houses to set up industrial units anywhere in the State. It further means massacre of Muslims in Gujarat and in Muzzafarnagar. BJP means religious intolerance. In one sentence, BJP means erosion of Kashmiri Muslim identity and its assimilation into Indian mainstream, which is what Kashmiris fear the most.

So when the PDP joined hands and formed government with the very Hindutva party, it was a profound blow to Kashmiri imagination. Outburst was only a matter of time.

Omar Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir in a primetime interview with India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai on July 11 said that the crowd at Burhan’s funeral was a wakeup call for New Delhi to understand the situation in Kashmir. He was not incorrect. The latent alienation of years in Kashmir sought to be subdued by aggressive political posturing has snowballed into a manifest revolt against New Delhi’s rule. Gone are the days when forces personnel were feared by the masses. Today, people, including women and children, confront bullets and batons fearlessly. Gone are also the days when armed militants would hide their identities for fear of getting eliminated. It is Burhan’s Kashmir where militant life is thought to be joyous and enviable as they post gun-toting selfies and cricket playing videos on social media. In fact, and unfortunately so, whole of the population has become militant today. The worst nightmare for policy makers of India: Fear psychosis no longer works in Kashmir.
It was perhaps in this context that a top general of Indian Army recently expressed helplessness in militarily containing the simmering discontent.

General H S Hooda, General Officer Commanding of Srinagar based 16 Corps, said “we are losing narrative in Kashmir and militarily, there is little left that we can do now.” More than one million Indian forces personnel, including army, border security force and paramilitary besides local police, are struggling to eliminate a handful of armed militants in small Kashmir valley and parts of Jammu division. This is because the general masses not only support and shelter militants, but also defend them, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Whenever forces personnel zero in on any location to eliminate the militants present there, civilian population engages the forces in pitched stone pelting battles and helps the trapped militants to escape. This is new normal in Kashmir villages. Kashmir is slipping back to the situation of nineties, or, perhaps worse. Militancy has again found a popular support in Burhan’s Kashmir. Attempts made over the years aimed at conflict management like the so-called Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) have proven futile or not worked. And the situation is back to the square one. In his death, the tech-savvy face of new age youth militancy in Kashmir has indeed rejuvenated the narrative that supports armed resistance to seek political objectives. The ball is in New Delhi’s court now.

Unfortunately, the Modi-led Government of India has again sought to hide behind the smokescreen of denial and tread the traditional beaten path of blaming Pakistan for unrest in Kashmir. This may help deceive the gullible populace back home but the world no longer accepts such stuff. The latest flare up in Kashmir has found support from the USA as well as the UN besides the OIC. The world refused to toe the Indian line and, the USA instead asked all parties, which include India, Pakistan and the People of Jammu and Kashmir, “to find a peaceful solution to the issue.”

Addressing a rally in fortified Srinagar stadium earlier this year, where troops outnumbered the civilians including those ferried from outside the state, the Indian premier, had said that he doesn’t need anybody’s advice in the world on Kashmir. Soon after landing in New Delhi from many days of Africa tour on July 12, Modi chaired a high-level meeting of his cabinet and security establishment to seek advice on Kashmir. Besides this, the UN, the USA and the OIC are advising New Delhi on Kashmir. Burhan not only rejuvenated militant movement back home but also brought Kashmir to international limelight, again. However, his biggest achievement: Burhan’s Kashmir has already achieved Azadi from fear.

Umar Sultan is freelance journalist based in Srinagar. He has reported for Press Bureau of India, Conveyor Magazine and Kashmir Reader earlier. He Tweets @omarsultan616

18 July 2016

Published in: Asia & Americas, EU, Europe & Russia, International Organisations, Middle East, News, Turkey, US

America knew about the planned coup attempt in Turkey before it happened, the head of Al-Sharq Forum and former director of Al Jazeera network said.

In an interview with the Anadolu Agency, Wadah Khanfar said: “A coup of this magnitude would not be able to do anything without consulting or notifying the Americans.”

“We must not forget that Turkey’s army is part of NATO forces and America has a military base in Turkish Incirlik,” he added, “and we know that there are still issues in this base and Turkish officers have American colleagues there. ”

He continued: “I do not think that the Americans were unaware of this.” US Secretary of State John Kerry has rejected claims that the US was aware of the plan; however Khanfar said it was “expected that he would announce that Washington had nothing to do with it.”

Khanfar pointed out that Kerry’s first statement was “hesitant and not assertive in the first hour of the attempted coup.” After it was clear that the coup had failed, “the statements of US President Barack Obama and others were stronger in their support for the legitimate government in Turkey.”

With regards to the European position of the failed coup attempt, Khanfar said Europe’s political and media groups “insisted on painting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government as an authoritarian dictatorship, which we have seen clearly in recent years,” adding that “the late response and hesitant European reaction to what happened is the biggest indicator that Europe does not want Turkey to continue on its current course – led by Erdogan.”

“When the coup took place, we noticed a state of indecision in the media and western political attitudes, as they were not quick to condemn what happened; on the contrary, some of the statements were gloating and some wanted to wait and give the coup some time to prove itself.”

He went on saying that “there is no doubt that if the coup were to succeed, European attitudes towards it would have been positive. However, after it became clear to the West in general as well as many of the neighbouring countries that the Turkish people had foiled the coup, the statements of opposition to what happened started to emerge.”

20 July 2016

By Kareem Shaheen

It was midnight in the Turkish capital, just two and a half hours into the attempted coup, and the group of nine senior ministers who were gathered in a conference room at the prime ministry were convinced that they were all about to meet their end.

“They probably will be successful and we will die tonight,” said one of the ministers, according to an official who was present at the meeting. “Let us be ready to die. We will all be martyred in this fight.”

He sent his bodyguard to fetch his personal gun. Security forces charged with protecting the building had been escorted out of the room in a sombre scene, because ministers did not know who to trust in the middle of the unfolding coup.

They were in the meeting when the state broadcaster, TRT, was taken over by the rebels and the channel’s anchorwoman was forced to read a statement declaring the military was in control and denouncing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The cabinet fell into utter silence for two minutes.

Then one minister cracked a joke that eased the tension: “Don’t bother with TRT, I don’t even watch it during regular times, it’s just state TV.”

Nearly three days have passed since a faction within Turkey’s military attempted to overthrow the government, deploying tanks to the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, blocking bridges, arresting top military officers, seizing TV stations and launching coordinated attacks on police and security headquarters, promising to restore true democracy.

That effort was short-lived but bloody, with hundreds of lives lost and thousands wounded in the carnage. The capital city is pockmarked with tell-tale signs of the violence, abandoned tanks now a curiosity for locals posing on the metal carcasses left in the streets. Shattered glass and concrete adorn the grounds of local security and intelligence headquarters and the parliament building, itself bombed in an attack on democratic institutions of symbolic importance.

But as Turkey picks up the pieces after the failed coup, new details are emerging of how it unfolded, and just how close the military intervention came to succeeding. Many observers have labelled the attempt amateurish, but accounts by officials contradict this characterisation, describing it as well organised and very nearly successful.

In Ankara on Friday, the day of the coup, the interior minister had been invited, along with other top officials, to a high-level security meeting in military headquarters that was supposed to take place after 5pm, a ploy that turned out to be intended as a pretext to detain him. He did not go because he was too busy, and later when the coup unfolded he was stuck in Ankara’s Esenboğa airport, setting up a crisis cell there to manage the fallout, protected by crowds that had gathered to oppose the coup.

The top counter-terrorism official responsible for Turkey’s campaign against Islamic State did go to a “meeting” at the presidential palace in Ankara. He was later found with his hands tied behind his back, shot in the neck, according to a senior official.

President Erdoğan himself was at the resort of Marmaris, but had left the residence where he was staying some 20 minutes before coup plotters attacked it. Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel there on ropes, shooting, in an apparent attempt to seize him just after Erdoğan had left, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

But as he flew from Marmaris on a business jet, two F-16 fighter jets locked their radar targeting system on the president’s plane, according to an account first reported by Reuters and later confirmed to the Guardian.

The jets didn’t fire after the presidential plane’s pilot told the fighter jet pilots over the radio that it was a Turkish Airlines flight, a senior counter-terrorism official told the Guardian.

But that came later. At around 9pm, General Mehmet Dişli, the brother of a long-serving MP with the ruling AK party, allegedly gave the order that set the coup in motion, sending army special forces officers to arrest the military’s senior command. Tanks began rolling out into the streets of Ankara, and an hour later they had closed down Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.

Cemalettin Haşimi, a senior adviser of prime minister Binali Yıldırım, watched it all with a sense of foreboding. At 10.24pm, after surveying besieged Ankara, he walked into the office of the prime ministry’s undersecretary.

“Is it real?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s real,” came the reply. “But we are not sure if it’s within the chain of command or just a group in the army.”

By 10.37pm they had conferred with Yıldırım, who was in Istanbul, deciding to declare it an attempted coup on national television. They called TRT, but 10 minutes later the channel was overrun. So Haşimi called the private channel NTV, and minutes later Yıldırım was denouncing the plot.

Meanwhile, there were chaotic scenes in Ankara and Istanbul. A statement appeared on the military’s website and was circulated by email declaring it had taken control to restore democracy, feeding into the fears of government officials who worried the military chain of command had endorsed the takeover. Haşimi claimed that judges aligned with the coup had begun calling on associates to adhere to the military’s demands.

The national intelligence building and the police headquarters were attacked from the air. In the latter, helicopters had targeted the intelligence department in the top three floors of the facility, unleashing a hail of shattered glass and concrete that still scars the building.

“It was a nightmare,” said Murat Karakullukcu, a police official who spent the night at the headquarters through the attack and had served at UN peacekeeping missions in Kosovo. “Our first thought was how to survive, and then we started shooting at the helicopters with small arms.”

ack at the prime ministry, despair was setting in. They had resolved to make a final stand in the parliament, when Erdoğan appeared on a live broadcast at 12.37am on a reporter’s iPhone, exhorting the people to defend democracy.

“What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?” asked one of the ministers in attendance.

“That was the moment when the psychology were reversed and we thought we were going to win,” said Haşimi.

People began taking to the streets in larger numbers, answering the call of the president and the religious affairs Diyanet ministry, which had called on the imams of Turkey’s mosques to take to their minarets to declare “God is great”. The call to take to the streets was met with unease by some ministers, who worried it would result in a massacre.

On their way to the parliament, Haşimi and the rest of the ministers received the news that it had been bombed. That was one of the key pivotal points that led to the failure of the coup, he said. While he appreciated that many of those who took to the streets did not like Erdoğan’s government, the attack on the parliament, the first by the military since the 1920s, was too much of a provocation.

The statements by opposition leaders and top military officers, including army commanders, disavowing the coup sealed its fate.

Stories emerged of those crucial hours, between the president’s address and the successful quelling of the coup by 4am, that are sure to pass into the official mythology of the events. At 1am, officials say the police chief the city of Bursa arrested the local army commander, who possessed a 6-page list that included the names of designated judges and military officials who were to be appointed to various positions in the bureaucracy in the aftermath of the coup. Other pro-coup soldiers possessed lists of secure telephone lines to receive orders.

“There were crucial moments,” said Haşimi. “It was incredibly well organised actually, but sudden moves by the leadership and sudden movement by the people changed the whole plan.”

“It could have succeeded,” he added. “They lost the moment the president and the prime minister went on air, and when high-level army commanders came out on air and declared their support for democracy, and the people rejected going home.”

Kareem Shaheen is a Middle East reporter based in Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @kshaheen

18 July 2016

By Mile Whitney

A failed coup in Turkey has changed the geopolitical landscape overnight realigning Ankara with Moscow while shattering Washington’s plan to redraw the map of the Middle East. Whether Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged the coup or not is of little importance in the bigger scheme of things. The fact is, the incident has consolidated his power domestically while derailing Washington’s plan to control critical resources and pipeline corridors from Qatar to Europe. The Obama administrations disregard for the national security interests of its allies, has pushed the Turkish president into Moscow’s camp, removing the crucial landbridge between Europe and Asia that Washington needs to maintain its global hegemony into the new century. Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia, surround and break up Russia, control China’s growth and maintain its iron grip on global power is now in a shambles. The events of the last few days have changed everything.

This is from the Daily Sahbah:

“Turkey’s changing rhetoric toward Russia is also a direct consequence of Ankara’s unmet expectations regarding the Syria conflict. Turkey’s disappointment with the United States’ policy in Syria has increased with time, especially considering Washington’s continued support for the Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria. Ankara sees this group as an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization (Daily Sabah, 12 June).
(A Change in Turkish-Russian Relations: What Sort of Rapprochement?, The Jamestown Foundation)

Obama can only blame himself for the debacle that is now unfolding. Erdogan was completely clear about Turkey’s red lines, the most important of which is preventing the Kurdish militias from moving west of the Euphrates and creating a contiguous state along the Syrian side of Turkeys southern border. Here’s Erdogan commenting on developments a few months ago:

“Right now, there is a serious project, plan being implemented in northern Syria. And on this project and plan lay the insidious aims of those who appear as ‘friends’. This is very clear, so I need to make clear statements.”

Instead of addressing Erdogan’s security concerns, Obama brushed him aside in order to pursue the US goal of establishing bases and seizing territory in East Syria that will eventually be used as pipeline routes from Qatar to the EU. Naturally, Erdogan responded in kind, forming alliances with former enemies (Russia, Syria, Israel) in order to reset Turkish foreign policy and address the growing threat of an emerging Kurdish state on his southern flank. Keep in mind, Turkey believes that America’s new proxies in Syria–the Kurdish YPG– are linked to the PKK, which is listed as a terror organization by the U.S. and EU. Had Obama committed US troops to the fight, (instead of using the YPG) Erdogan would not have reacted at all. But the fact that Obama was deliberately strengthening Turkey’s traditional rivals in their westward move, was more than Erdogan could bear.

Erdogan Apologizes

At the end of June, Erdogan apologized to President Vladimir Putin for the death of a Russian pilot who was killed when Turkey downed a bomber flying over Syrian territory last November. The shootdown prompted Putin to break off relations with Ankara ending all communication between the two countries. Then, in the last week of June, Erdogan sent a letter to Putin “expressing his deep sympathy and condolences to the relatives of the deceased Russian pilot.” He added that Russia was “a friend and a strategic partner” with whom the Turkish authorities would not want to spoil relations.” (The Turkish pilots who shot down the Russian Su-24 have since been arrested and charged as members of the Gulenist coup.)

The White House inexplicably never commented on this thawing of relations which posed obvious risks to US ambitions in the region.

Why?

Then, just two weeks ago, reports began to emerge that Erdogan was making an effort to normalize relations with Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The news wasn’t reported in most of the western media, but the Guardian ran an article titled “Syrian rebels stunned as Turkey signals normalisation of Damascus relations”. Here’s an excerpt:

“More than five years into Syria’s civil war, Turkey, the country that has most helped the rebellion against the rule of Bashar al-Assad, has hinted it may move to normalise relations with Damascus.
The suggestion made by the Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, on Wednesday, stunned the Syrian opposition leadership, which Ankara hosts, as well as regional leaders, who had allied with Turkey in their push to oust Assad over a long, unforgiving war.

“I am sure that we will return [our] ties with Syria to normal,” he said, straying far from an official script that has persistently called for immediate regime change. “We need it. We normalised our relations with Israel and Russia. I’m sure we will go back to normal relations with Syria as well.”
(Syrian rebels stunned as Turkey signals normalisation of Damascus relations, Guardian)

You’d think that would set off alarms at the White House, after all, if Turkey wanted to normalize relations with Damascus, then clearly it had abandoned the war it had supported (through its proxy militants and jihadists) for more than five years signaling a fundamental shift in policy that could have broader implications for the US effort. But did the Obama team show any interest in the announcement or make any attempt to keep Erdogan in the fold?

Of course not. Washington gives orders and everyone else is expected to click their heels and stand at attention. Obama and Co don’t bother with the incidentals like the fear of the nascent Kurdish state that could pose a direct threat to Turkey’s national security. Why would they bother with something as trivial as that? They have an empire to run.

Then came the coup which, by the way, Erdogan may have been tipped off to by Russian intelligence agents who have a strong presence in Turkey. By informing Erdogan of the coup, Putin might have hoped that Erdogan would return the favor and block NATOs plan to deploy permanent fleet to the Black Sea that will further encircle and threaten Russia. (And, yes, Putin knows that Erdogan is a ruthless autocrat and a backer of terrorist organizations, but he also knows he can’t be “too picky” when NATO is making every effort to surround and destroy Russia. Putin must take his friends as he finds them. Besides, some analysts have suggested that Putin will require Erdogan to abandon his support for jihadists in Syria as a condition of their new alliance.)

In any event, Putin and Erdogan have settled their differences and scheduled a meeting for the beginning of August. In other words, the first world leader Erdogan plans to meet after the coup, is his new friend, Vladimir Putin. Is Erdogan trying to make a statement? It certainly looks like it. Here’s the story from the Turkish Daily Hurriyet:

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin may meet in a face-to-face meeting in August as part of mutual efforts to normalize bilateral ties following months of tension due to the downing of a Russian warplane by the Turkish Air Forces in November…

With the normalization of ties, Russia removed some sanctions on trade and restrictions on Russian tourists, though it will continue to impose visa regime to Turkish nationals. A deeper conversation between the two countries over a number of international issues like Syria and Crimea will follow soon between the two foreign ministers before the Putin-Erdoğan meeting.” (Putin, Erdoğan to meet soon in bid to start new era in Turkey-Russia ties, Hurriyet)

Is it starting to sound like Turkey may have slipped out of Washington’s orbit and moved on to more reliable friends that will respect their interests?

Indeed. And this sudden rapprochement could have catastrophic implications for US Middle East policy. Consider, for example, that the US not only depends on Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase to conduct its air campaign in Syria, but also, that that same facility houses “roughly 90 US tactical nuclear weapons.” What if Erdogan suddenly decides that it’s no longer in Turkey’s interest to provide the US with access to the base or that he would rather allow Russian bombers and fighters to use the base? (According to some reports, this is already in the works.) More importantly, what happens to US plans to pivot to Asia if the crucial landbridge (Turkey) that connects Europe and Asia breaks with Washington and joins the coalition of Central Asian states that are building a new free trade zone beyond Uncle Sam’s suffocating grip?

One last thing: There was an important one-paragraph article in Moscow Reuters on Monday that didn’t appear in the western press so we’ll reprint it here:

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s joint projects with Turkey, including the TurkStream undersea natural gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey, are still on the agenda and have a future, RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich as saying on Monday.” (Russian Dep PM says joint projects with Turkey still on agenda, Reuters)

This is big. Erdogan is now reopening the door the Obama team tried so hard to shut. This is a major blow to Washington’s plan to control the vital resources flowing into Europe from Asia and to make sure they remain denominated in US dollars. If the agreement pans out, Putin will have access to the thriving EU market through the southern corridor which will strengthen ties between the two continents, expand the use of the ruble and euro for energy transactions, and create a free trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok. And Uncle Sam will be watching from the sidelines.

All of a sudden, Washington’s “pivot” plan looks to be in serious trouble.

Mike Whitney  lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

20 July 2016

By Pepe Escobar

When Turkish President/aspiring Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport early Saturday morning, he declared the attempted coup against his government a failure, and a “gift from God.”

God apparently uses Face Time. It was via that iconic iPhone footage from an undisclosed location shown live on CNN Turk by a bewildered female anchor that Erdogan managed to call his legion of followers to hit the streets, unleash People Power and defeat the military faction that had taken over state TV and proclaimed to be in charge.

So God does work in mysterious mobile ways. Erdogan’s call was heeded even by young Turks who had fiercely protested against him in Gezi Park; were tear-gassed or water-cannoned by his police; think the AKP governing party is disgusting; but would support them against a “fascist military coup.” Not to mention that virtually every mosque across Turkey relayed Erdogan’s call.

Ankara’s official version is that the coup was perpetrated by a small military faction remote-controlled by exiled-in-Pennsylvania cleric Fethullah Gulen, himself a CIA asset. As much as responsibility remains debatable, what’s clear is the coup was a Turk remix of The Three Stooges; the actual stooges in fact may have been the already detained 2nd Army Commander Gen. Adem Huduti; 3rd Army Commander Erdal Ozturk; and former Chief of Air Staff Akin Ozturk.

As over-excited former CIA ops were blaring on US networks – and they do know a thing or two about regime change — rule number one in a coup is to aim at, and isolate, the head of the snake. Yet the wily Turkish snake, in this case, was nowhere to be seen. Not to mention that no top generals sounding convincingly patriotic went on the TRT state network to fully explain the reasons for the coup.

(Erdogan) love is in the air

The coup plotters did aim at the intel services – whose top positions are at Istanbul’s airport, the presidential palace in Ankara and near the ministries. They used Cobra helicopters – with pilots trained in the US – against these targets. They also aimed at the army’s high command – which for the past 8 years is designated by Erdogan and is not trusted by many a mid-ranking officer.

As they occupied the Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul they seemed to be in touch with military police – which is spread out all over Turkey and have a solid esprit de corps. But in the end they did not have the numbers – and the necessary preparation. All key ministries seemed to be communicating among themselves as the plot developed, as well as the intel services. And as far as Turkish police as a whole is concerned, they are now a sort of AKP pretorian guard.

Meanwhile, Erdogan’s Gulfstream 4, flight number TK8456, took off from Bodrum’s airport at 1:43 A.M. and flew for hours over Turkey’s northwest with its transponder on, undisturbed. It was from the presidential plane, while still landed, that Erdogan had gone on Face Time, and then, on the air, managed to control the countercoup. The plane never left Turkish airspace – and was totally visible to civil and military radars. The coup plotters’ F-16s could have easily tracked and/or incinerated it. Instead they sent military choppers to bomb the presidential abode in Bodrum a long time after he had left the building.

The head of the snake must have been 100% sure that to board his plane and stay on Turkish airspace was as safe as eating a baklava. What’s even more startling is that the Gulfstream managed to land in Istanbul in absolute safety in the early hours of Saturday morning – despite the prevailing notion that the airport was occupied by the “rebels”.

In Ankara, the “rebels” used a mechanized division and two commandos. Around Istanbul there was a whole army; the 3rd command is actually integrated with NATO’s rapid reaction forces. They supplied the Leopards positioned in Istanbul’s key spots – which by the way did not open fire.

And yet the two key armies positioned in the Syrian and Iranian borders remained on “wait and see” mode. And then, at 2 A.M., the command of the also key 7th army based in Diyarbakir – in charge of fighting the PKK guerrillas – proclaimed his loyalty to Erdogan. That was the exact, crucial moment when Prime Minister Binali Yildırım announced a no-fly zone over Ankara.

That meant Erdogan controlled the skies. And the game was over. History does move in mysterious ways; the no-fly zone dreamed by Erdogan for so long over Aleppo or the Syrian-Turkish border in the end materialized over his own capital.

Round up the usual suspects

The US position was extremely ambiguous from the start. As the coup took over, the American embassy in Turkey called it “Turkish uprising”. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Moscow to discuss Syria, also hedged his bets. NATO was royally mute. Only when it became clear the coup was in fact smashed President Obama and the “NATO allies” officially proclaimed their “support for the democratically elected government”.

The Sultan went back to the game with a vengeance. He immediately went live on CNN Turk demanding Washington hands over Gulen even without any evidence he masterminded the coup. And that came with an inbuilt threat; “If you want to keep access to Incirlik air base you will have to give me Gulen”. It’s hard not to be reminded of recent history – when the Cheney regime in 2001 demanded the Taliban hand Osama bin Laden over to the US without offering proof he was responsible for 9/11.

So the number one eyebrow-raising possibility is a go; Erdogan’s intel services knew a coup was brewing; and the wily Sultan let it happen knowing it would fail as the plotters had very limited support. He also arguably knew – in advance — even the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose members Erdogan is trying to expel from parliament, would support the government in the name of democracy.

Two extra facts add to the credibility of this hypothesis. Earlier last week Erdogan signed a bill giving soldiers immunity from prosecution while taking part in domestic security ops – as in anti-PKK; that spells out improved relations between the AKP government and the army. And then Turkey’s top judicial body HSYK laid off no less than 2,745 judges after an extraordinary meeting post-coup. This can only mean the list was more than ready in advance.

The major, immediate post-coup geopolitical consequence is that Erdogan now seems to have miraculously reconquered his “strategic depth” – as former, sidelined Prime Minister Davutoglu would have it. Not only externally – after the miserable collapse of both his Middle East and Kurdish “policies” – but also internally. For all practical purposes Erdogan now controls the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary – and is taking no prisoners to purge the military for good. Ladies and gentlemen, the Sultan is in da house.

This means the neo-Ottoman project is still on – but now under massive tactical reorientation. The real “enemy” now is Syrian Kurds – not Russia and Israel (and not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; but they never were in the first place). Erdogan is going after the YPG, which for him is a mere extension of the PKK. His order of the day is to prevent by all means an autonomous state entity in northeast Syria – a “Kurdistan” set up like a second Israel supported by the US. For that he needs some sort of entente cordiale with Damascus – as in insisting that Syria must preserve its territorial integrity. And that also means, of course, renewed dialogue with Russia.

So what’s the CIA been up to?

Needless to add Ankara and Washington are now on a certified collision course. If there is an Empire of Chaos hidden hand in the coup – no smoking gun yet — that certainly comes from the Beltway neocon/CIA axis, not the lame duck Obama administration. For the moment Erdogan’s leverage only amounts to access to Incirlik. But his paranoia is ballooning; for him Washington is doubly suspicious because they harbor Gulen and support the YPG.

Hell hath no fury as an underestimated Sultan as well. For all his recent geopolitical follies, Erdogan’s simultaneous ballet of reconnecting with Israel and Russia is eminently pragmatic. He knows he needs Russia for the Turkish Stream and to build nuclear plants;  and he needs Israeli gas to consolidate Turkey’s role as a key East-West energy crossroads.

When we learn, crucially, that Iran supported Turkey’s “brave defense of democracy”, as tweeted by Foreign Minister Zarif, it’s clear how Erdogan, in a mater of only a few weeks, reconfigured the whole regional picture. And that spells out Eurasia integration and Turkey deeply connected to the New Silk Roads – not NATO. No wonder the Beltway – for whom, overwhelmingly, Erdogan is the proverbial “erratic and unreliable ally” — is freaking out. That dream of Turkish colonels under direct CIA orders is over – at least for the foreseeable future.

So what about Europe? Yildirim already said that Turkey might reinstate the death penalty – to be applied to the coup plotters. This means, in essence, bye bye EU. And bye bye to the European Parliament approving visa-free travel for Turks visiting Europe. Erdogan after all already got what he wanted from chancellor Merkel; those 6 billion euros to contain the refugee crisis that he essentially unleashed. Merkel bet the farm on Erdogan. Now she’s talking to herself – while the Sultan is able to dial God on Face Time.

This piece first appeared in Sputnik.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

18 July 2016

By David Hearst

#TurkeyCoup

Turkey’s reaction last night was that of a mature democracy. The West’s was that of corrupted democracy tainted by its support of autocracy
To mount a coup, senior Turkish army officers from the commando units, land forces, the first and fourth armies, and the airforce went to extreme lengths to seize power.

They occupied two airports and closed a third. They attempted to separate the European from the Asian sides of Istanbul. They bombed the parliament in Ankara nine times. There was a pitched battled outside the headquarters of MIT the Turkish intelligence agency. They deployed tanks, helicopter gunships and F16 jets.

To defeat the coup, the Turkish president used his iPhone. Mosques used their loudspeakers, broadcasting the call to prayer hours before dawn. Political leaders of all creeds, some staunch opponents of the president, called unambiguously for the coup to be defeated. Policemen arrested soldiers.

Unarmed people recaptured CNN Turk and the bridges across the Bosphorus, braving gunfire to recapture democracy for their country.

This was unambiguously a military coup. And yet the US Embassy in Ankara in its emergency message to US citizens called it an “uprising”.

Geopolitical Futures released an analysis saying the coup was successful. BBC Arabic, Sky News Arabic, El Arabiya TV, the ITN diplomatic editor, the US networks were all running commentaries saying Erdogan was finished, or had fled to Germany.

The Guardian ran a piece whose first headline (it was later amended) said everything about an author unable to contain his glee at the demise of a man he qualified as authoritarian islamist: “How Recep Tayyip Erdogan inflamed tensions in Turkey”.

As the people of Turkey battled for their future, there was a crashing silence from Western leaders whose brand image is democracy. The French consulate had closed two days earlier. Did it know something Turkey did not?

In his initial statement, US Secretary of State John Kerry used every word except the dreaded “d” one. He hoped for “stability and peace and continuity” within Turkey.

Nothing about supporting a legitimately elected president and a legitimately elected parliament. Only when it was already obvious that the coup was failing did President Barack Obama and Kerry issue a statement unambiguously backing Erdogan.

If you want to know why Europe and the US are a busted flush in the Middle East, why they have lost all moral authority, indeed any authority at all,  and why they are no longer the candle bearers of democratic change, look no further than the three hours of silence as they waited to see which way the wind was blowing in Istanbul and Ankara.

The Saudis waited 15 hours before issuing a statement supporting Erdogan. The Emiratis and the media they controlled spread the message that Erdogan had fled the country.

The exact opposite was the truth. Erdogan showed bravery getting into a plane and heading for Istanbul knowing F16s were in the air and that the runway at Ataturk airport could have been closed.

Only three countries in the world clearly supported Erdogan from the start – Morocco, Qatar, and Sudan.

What was particularly impressive were the statements of Turkish politicians who had every reason to want Erdogan to go, and who had themselves been displaced by him. To his credit, the leader of Turkey’s largest party, Kemal Kalicdaroglu of the centre-left People’s Republican Party (CHP), came out immediately against the coup in a series of tweets, saying the country has “suffered a lot” in past military takeovers.

Two AK Party leaders from the liberal wing, who had been displaced or recently sacked by Erdogan supported him. Former president Abdullah Gul told CNN Turk that “Turkey is not a Latin America country … I’m calling those who attempt to overthrow the government [they] should go back to their barracks.”

Former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Al
Jazeera: “Turkey is a democracy … I don’t think this attempt will be successful. There cannot be any attempts to destabilise Turkey. We’re facing so many crises in Syria and other regions, it’s time to have solidarity with the Turkish people… At this moment people in different cities are in the streets, the squares [protesting] against this coup d’etat attempt.”

All these people could see what the Western consensus about Erdogan could not. That the process was more important than the man. That Turks, believe it or not, would fight and die for the right to elect their president, even though the majority clearly do not want him to have overriding presidential powers.

Turkey’s reaction last night was that of a mature democracy. The Western reaction was that of corrupted democracy, terminally tainted by its military and political support of autocracy.

The turning point in last night’s morality play in Turkey came when images of Erdogan speaking into his iPhone were broadcast and spread virally over social media.

Up until then, it looked as if the coup would succeed. He called for the people to come out onto the streets and stay out on them. And they heeded that call sometimes at the cost of their own lives. An iPhone defeated tanks.

Turkey proved it is not Egypt. If there is a lesson in these dark days for democracy in the Middle East, it is for the people who are living the other side of the Mediterranean and whose country is bleeding from the military autocracy it once hailed as a second revolution.

Not for the first time since 2011, autocrats across the region must be shivering today. The democratic forces which can disarm soldiers, can disarm them too.

David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

16 July 2016

By  Brad Evans and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

This is the sixth in a series of dialogues with philosophers and critical theorists on the question of violence. This conversation is with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who is a university professor in the humanities at Columbia University. She is the author of “An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization,” and other books.

Brad Evans: Throughout your work, you have written about the conditions faced by the globally disadvantaged, notably in places such as India, China and Africa. How might we use philosophy to better understand the various types of violence that erupt as a result of the plight of the marginalized in the world today?

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: While violence is not beyond naming and diagnosis, it does raise many challenging questions all the same. I am a pacifist. I truly believe in the power of nonviolence. But we cannot categorically deny a people the right to resist violence, even, under certain conditions, with violence. Sometimes situations become so intolerable that moral certainties are no longer meaningful. There is a difference here between condoning such a response and trying to understand why the recourse to violence becomes inevitable.

When human beings are valued as less than human, violence begins to emerge as the only response. When one group designates another as lesser, they are saying the “inferior” group cannot think in a “reasonable” way. It is important to remember that this is an intellectual violation, and in fact that the oppressed group’s right to manual labor is not something they are necessarily denied. In fact, the oppressed group is often pushed to take on much of society’s necessary physical labor. Hence, it is not that people are denied agency; it is rather that an unreasonable or brutish type of agency is imposed on them. And, the power inherent in this physical agency eventually comes to intimidate the oppressors. The oppressed, for their part, have been left with only one possible identity, which is one of violence. That becomes their politics and it appropriates their intellect.

This brings us directly to the issue of “reasonable” versus “unreasonable” violence. When dealing with violence deemed unreasonable, the dominating groups demonize violent responses, saying that “those other people are just like that,” not just that they are worth less, but also that they are essentially evil, essentially criminal or essentially have a religion that is prone to killing.

And yet, on the other side, state-legitimized violence, considered “reasonable” by many, is altogether more frightening. Such violence argues that if a person wears a certain kind of clothing or belongs to a particular background, he or she is legally killable. Such violence is more alarming, because it is continuously justified by those in power.

B.E.: At least some violent resistance in the 20th century was tied to struggles for national liberation, whether anti-colonial or (more common in Europe) anti-fascist. Is there some new insight needed to recognize forces of domination and exploitation that are separated from nation states and yet are often explained as some return to localism and ethnicity?

G.C.S.: This is a complicated question demanding serious philosophical thought. I have just come back from the World Economic Forum, and their understanding of power and resistance is very different from that of a group such as the ethnic Muslim Rohingya who live on the western coast of Myanmar; though both are already deeply embedded in global systems of power and influence, even if from opposing sides. The Rohingya have been the victims of a slow genocide as described by Maung Zarni, Amartya Sen and others. This disrupts an Orientalist reading of Buddhism as forever the peace-loving religion. Today, we see Buddhists from Thailand, Sri Lanka and Myanmar engage in state-sanctioned violence against minorities.

The fact is that when the pro-democracy spokesperson Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest there, she could bravely work against oppressive behavior on the part of the military government. But once she was released and wanted to secure and retain power, she became largely silent on the plight of these people and has sided with the majority party, which has continued to wage violence against non-Buddhist minorities. One school of thought says that in order to bring democracy in the future, she has to align herself with the majority party now. I want to give Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi the benefit of the doubt. But when the majority party is genocidal, there is a need to address that. Aligning with them cannot possibly bring democracy.

However, rather than retreating back into focused identity politics, resistance in this context means connecting the plight of the Rohingya to global struggles, the context of which is needed in order to address any particular situation. Older, national, identity-based struggles like those you mention are less persuasive in a globalized world. All of this is especially relevant as Myanmar sets up its first stock exchange and prepares to enter the global capitalist system.

In globalization as such, when the nation states are working in the interest of global capital, democracy is reduced to body counting, which often works against educated judgments. The state is trapped in the demands of finance capital. Resistance must know about financial regulation in order to demand it. This is bloodless resistance, and it has to be learned. We must produce knowledge of these seemingly abstract globalized systems so that we can challenge the social violence of unregulated capitalism.

B.E.: What are the implications when the promotion of human rights is left to what you have called “self-appointed entrepreneurs” and philanthropists, from individuals such as Bill Gates onto organizations like the World Bank, who have a very particular conception of rights and the “rule of law?”

G.C.S.: It is just that there be law, but law is not justice.

The passing of a law and the proof of its existence is not enough to assure effective resistance to oppression. Some of the gravest violations of rights have occurred within legal frameworks. And, if that law governs a society never trained in what Michel Foucault would call “the practice of freedom,” it is there to be enforced by force alone, and the ones thus forced will find better and better loopholes around it.

That is why the “intuition” of democracy is so vital when dealing with the poorest of the poor, groups who have come to believe their wretchedness is normal. And when it comes time to starve, they just tighten their nonexistent belts and have to suffer, fatefully accepting this in silence. It’s more than children playing with rocks in the streets. It takes over every aspect of the people’s existence. And yet these people still work, in the blazing heat, for little or next to nothing for wealthy landowners. This is a different kind of poverty.

Against this, we have this glamorization of urban poverty by the wealthier philanthropist and aid agencies. There is always a fascination with the picture-perfect idea of poverty; children playing in open sewers and the rest of it. Of course, such lives are proof of grave social injustice. But top-down philanthropy, with no interest in an education that strengthens the soul, is counterproductive, an assurance that there will be no future resistance, only instant celebrity for the philanthropist.

I say “self-appointed” entrepreneurs because there is often little or no regulation placed upon workers in the nongovernmental sector. At best, they are ad hoc workers picking up the slack for a neo-liberal state whose managerial ethos cannot be strong on redistribution,, and where structural constitutional resistance by citizens cannot be effective in the face of an unconstituted “rule of law” operating, again, to protect the efficiency of global capital growth. The human rights lobby moves in to shame the state, and in ad hoc ways restores rights. But there is then no democratic follow-up, and these organizations rarely stick around long enough to see that.

Another problem with these organizations is the way they emphasize capitalism’s social productivity without mentioning capital’s consistent need to sustain itself at the expense of curtailing the rights of some sectors of the population. This is all about the removal of access to structures of reparation: the disappearance of the welfare state, or its not coming into being at all.

If we turn to “development,” we often see that what is sustained in sustainable development is cost-effectiveness and profit-maximization, with the minimum action necessary in terms of environmental responsibility. We could call such a thing “sustainable underdevelopment.”

The Stone

A forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. The series moderator is Simon Critchley, who teaches philosophy at The New School for Social Research.

Where in the USA do people ever expect justice?All they ever get are “deals” – mostly in favor of the fat cats or a D.A..
Michael Kubara July 15, 2016

Pacifism has two varieties: Pure (PP) and Tactical (TP).PP prohibits violence under all circumstances. It is incoherent because sometime…
FFILMSINC July 15, 2016

“Justice is not just some abstract theory it is a living breathing principlle” President Obama in part selected quoteThere is a series of…

Today everything is about urbanization, urban studies, metropolitan concerns, network societies and so on. Nobody in policy circles talks about the capitalization of land and how this links directly to the dispossession of people’s rights. This is another line of inquiry any consideration of violence must take into account.

B.E.: While you have shown appreciation for a number of thinkers known for their revolutionary interventions, such as Frantz Fanon, you have also critiqued the limits of their work when it comes to issues of gender and the liberation of women. Why?

G.C.S.: I stand by my criticism of Fanon, but he is not alone here. In fact he is like most other men who talk about revolutionary struggle. Feminist struggle can’t be learned from them. And yet, in “A Dying Colonialism,” Fanon is really trying from within to understand the position of women by asking questions about patriarchal structures of domination.

After the revolution, in postcolonial Algeria and elsewhere, those women who were part of the struggle had to separate themselves from revolutionary liberation organizations that were running the state in order to continue fighting for their rights under separate initiatives. Gender is bigger and older than state formations and its fight is older than the fight for national liberation or the fight between capitalism and socialism. So we have to let questions of gender interrupt these revolutionary ideas, otherwise revolution simply reworks marked gender divisions in societies.

B.E.: You are clearly committed to the power of education based on aesthetic practices, yet you want to challenge the canonical Western aesthetic ideas from which they are derived using your concepts of “imaginative activism” and “affirmative sabotage.” How can this work?

G.C.S.: Imaginative activism takes the trouble to imagine a text — understood as a textile, woven web rather than narrowly as a printed page — as having its own demands and prerogatives. This is why the literary is so important. The simplest teaching of literature was to grasp the vision of the writer. This was disrupted in the 1960s by the preposterous concern “Is this book of relevance to me?” which represented a tremendous assault on the literary, a tremendous group narcissism. For literature to be meaningful it should not necessarily be of obvious relevance. That is the aesthetic challenge, to imagine that which is not immediately apparent. This can fight what is implicit in voting bloc democracy. Relevant to me, rather than flexible enough to work for others who are not like me at all. The inbuilt challenge of democracy – needing an educated, not just informed, electorate.

I used the term “affirmative sabotage” to gloss on the usual meaning of sabotage: the deliberate ruining of the master’s machine from the inside. Affirmative sabotage doesn’t just ruin; the idea is of entering the discourse that you are criticizing fully, so that you can turn it around from inside. The only real and effective way you can sabotage something this way is when you are working intimately within it.

This is particularly the case with the imperial intellectual tools, which have been developed not just upon the shoulders, but upon the backs of people for centuries. Let’s take as a final example what Immanuel Kant says when developing his “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.” Not only does Kant insist that we need to imagine another person, he also insists for the need to internalize it to such an extent that it becomes second nature to think and feel with the other person.

Leaving aside the fact that Kant doesn’t talk about slavery whatsoever in his book, he even states that women and domestic servants are incapable of the civic imagination that would make them capable of cosmopolitan thinking. But, if you really think about it, it’s women and domestic servants who were actually trained to think and feel like their masters. They constantly had to put themselves in the master’s shoes, to enter into their thoughts and desires so much that it became second nature for them to serve.

So this is how one sabotages. You accept the unbelievable and unrelenting brilliance of Kant’s work, while confronting the imperial qualities he reproduces and showing the contradictions in this work. It is, in effect, to jolt philosophy with a reality check. It is to ask, for example, if this second-naturing of women, servants and others can be done without coercion, constraint and brainwashing. And, when the ruling race or class claims the right to do this, is there a problem of power being ignored in all their claimed benevolence? What would educated resistance look like in this case? It would misfire, because society is not ready for it. For that reason, one must continue to work — to quote Marx — for the possibility of a poetry of the future.

13 July 2016