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By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” John F. Kennedy

Terrorism*, directly or sponsored, has long been America’s weapon of mass destruction – its weapon of choice. As a strategy, it outdates ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy promotion’ and has proven itself to be far more effective by creating mayhem and fear, removing resistance to intervention. The events of 9/11 justified this age-old tactic. Although the tentacles of America’s terror tactic reach back far and spread wide, this article seeks to address the presence of ISIL (or ISIS).

As of writing this essay, it has become public knowledge that the group referred to as ISIS was trained by the United States to topple Syria’s President Assad. The purpose of this article is to give a comprehensive, chronological overview of events leading to the present day crisis, which by necessity may repeat some of the points raised in various excellent articles on ISIS.

This essay will be in two parts.

Part I. Prologue; Terror in Iraq

Scholars have opined that America’s crisis began in the 1970’s with the “Vietnam Syndrome” and America’s efforts to curb third world countries wishing to break away from the status quo system. None had the impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that ousted the American-backed Shah — the lynchpin of U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf. In the following decades, the United States sought to reestablish its hegemony, in particular in the Persian Gulf region.

It was due to America’s desire to establish sole control over the Persian Gulf region that it was showed no interest in the Soviet Union proposed the neutralization of the Gulf, with no alliances, no bases, no intervention in the region in 1980 and at the onset of the Iran-Iraq war [i]. To the contrary, the United States used the war as a lever to establish of military bases in the Persian Gulf states.

The Saudi monarchy, threatened by the Iranian revolution, and reassured by President Reagan that “we will not permit” Saudi Arabia “to be an Iran”[ii], made way for US bases on it is soil in 1985, making room for others to follow suit. America’s efforts with the Shah’s cooperation to alienate Iranians and Arabs to Israel’s benefit continued unabated.

Thus, it is worthwhile recapping here that the cooperation among the Arab states against Iran was fear of communism and the potential of an uprising against the ruling monarchies.

The 1991 [Persian] Gulf War was an important and tragic war with heavy casualties on the Iraqi side. However, for the sake of brevity it will not be discussed here other than to point out the most pertinent facts; the war was based on deception, Saudi Arabia paid $36 billion of US $60 billion costs, and US forces were deployed in Saudi Arabia. It is perhaps worthwhile pointing out that shortly before the end of the war, the American government allowed Israel to designate 100 targets inside Iraq for the coalition to destroy.[iii]Following the war, Iraq was subjected to deathly immoral sanctions with a death toll of over one million, half of them being children. The no-fly zone and its daily bombings left a vulnerable and devastated country in its trail, with no room for resistance to future incursions.

Not unrelated to current events is the fact that in the same year, The Jerusalem Report[iv]published that the idea of radical Islam replacing communism had taken seed among the Israeli right. The basis of the idea was founded on the neoconservatives fear that with the demise of the Soviet Union, and the splintering of the America’s right wing faction, there would no longer be an unconditional support for a U.S.-Israel alliance. Islam replaced communism as ogre du jour and gave neocons in Washington a decade to expand and promote the newfound ‘threat’.

The 90’s would see the virtual completion of media take-over by neocons made possible with the 1980’s regulation changes in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that allowed mergers and acquisitions. Washington think tanks became home to many more influential neoconservatives such as Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Richard Perle who had made their way to the AEI from the Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). IASPS has published numerous strategy papers, chief among them “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” in 1996 – viewed by scholars and activist as the blueprint to the 2003 Iraq attack and invasion.

September 11, 2001 triggered the events years in the making.

Two short days later, on September 13, 2001, while the nation was recovering from the shock of 9/11, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) already had a statement available as to how the U.S. should proceed. Saddam’s fate, or rather Iraq’s fate was already sealed. JINSA “recommended” that Iraq be invaded militarily. The policy also called for America to be involved in disputes far and wide for the unforeseen future not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, the Palestinian Authority, Libya, Algeria – and eventually, Saudi Arabia and Egyp[v]. No doubt the Saudis were not copied on the policy recommendations for even though they were included in the list of target countries, the Saudi monarchy fully cooperated with advancing terrorism as a weapon of mass destruction and warfare

PART II. Terror in Iraq; Invasion

It is common knowledge by now that Saudi Arabia partnered with the neocons and pushed for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Taking on their usual role of gas station attendants, they pumped oil to fuel America’s war. “Bandar promised President Bush that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election – to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day”. Their cooperation was not without its awards. There is ample literature available on the revelations made about the Carlysle Group and war profiteering. Additionally, less than a month after the illegal attack on Iraq, American forces were moved from Saudi Arabia to Qatar.

Saudis were further rewarded when in 2004, pro-Saudi, anti-Iranian Ayad Allawi, head of INA (Iraqi National Accord) backed by Saudi Arabia, UK and US was appointed as prime minister. His first order of the day was to re-establish diplomatic ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Dubbed ‘Saddam without a moustache’ and accused of being a US puppet, he was voted out in 2005. (In 2009, “Alawi launched al-Iraqiya (Iraqi National Movement)). The Saudi/US/British backed Allawi is once again in vogue and a platform is made readily available to him to comment on Iraq and promote himself in opposition to the elected President Nouri al-Maliki).

In the ‘war on terror’, the first order of the day for the US-led occupation forces was to give ‘special status protection’ to the terrorist group, Mojahedeen-e Khalg (MEK). US was grateful to the MEK for fighting alongside Saddam Hossein against Iran during the 8-year war, and for their 2000 attack on a government complex in Tehran which housed the Supreme Leader and the President. Thus, the US and Israel made long term plans for the terrorist group which included fabricating information about Iran’s civilian nuclear program (Gareth Porter).

The US also starting building elaborate bases in occupied Iraq. Contrary to their official narrative, Washington elite had plans to stay. The Americans built several ‘enduring’ bases soon upon arrival – each base arrogantly bearing an English name in Arab land. These were mini cities with their own coutnry club style amenities — swimming pools, theaters, golf, coffee shops, fast food chains, and so on. This was clearly an occupation mission.

According to Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who served in the office of the Secretary of Defense, “the neoconservative architects of the Iraq invasion definitely foresaw a permanent, large-scale presence and view the bases as vital both for protecting Israel and as launchpads for operations in Syria and Iran.” Kwiatkowski was right – this timeline coincided with Washington’s support of opposition groups in Syria and sending MEK terrorists to Iran.

But Iran and Syria were only part of the equation. America had global designs. As a former senior Defense Department official observed during the 8-year long Iran-Iraq war: ‘To all intents and purposes,[Persian] Gulf waters now extend from the Straits of Malacca to the South Atlantic.’[vi]

But occupation of Iraq would not be the predicted ‘cake walk’ . The “Mother of all Bombs” dropped on Iraq, the indiscriminate killings, destruction of Iraq’s ancient sites, and abuses such as the Abu Gharib scandal pushed Iraqis to fight against their “liberators”.

Narratives of crimes committed by US-led forces and their intentions had to be stopped. Journalism became a hazardous occupation as US forces bombed, killed, or shut down papers critical of their occupation and actrocities. Among the most vocal was Muqtada al-Sadr who, giving voice to the Iraqi people, condemned the occupation and oppression in his newspaper– al Hawza. The U.S. forces shut down his paper. He did not surrender his will to fight.

The rising death toll, abuse, and carnage united Iraqis against the American occupiers. Reporting from Baghdad in May 2004, Dahr Jamail cites Imam Al- Adhamy who told him: “what is happening is happening to all of Iraq. There is no difference now between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd. We have all been invaded.”

Hence it became pertinent to undermine their unity and have Iraqis turn on each other instead of fighting the occupiers. This tactic was not new to America. During the bloody Iran-Iraq war, the United States was providing arms and intelligence to both sides. When asked what the logic was in aiding both sides in the bloody war, a former official replied: “You had to have been there” vii. (This strategy is once again at play with the emergence of ISIL. “Many ordinary Sunni Baghdadis, the advance of Isis is cause for alarm mixed with a vague hope that somehow Isis and Shia Muslims may severely damage each other, to the general benefit of moderate Sunnis.”)

In this regards, none proved more helpful than King Abdullah of Jordan in delivering a strategy for the division of Iraqis with his concept of a “Shia Crescent” in late 2004. This inflammatory notion would lay the groundwork for a Sunni-Shia (and Kurd) division. (To understand Jordan’s cooperation and interests, it is important to read the aforementioned IASPS strategy paper “A Clean Break…” ) The mainstream media and collaborators in Iraq and the region spread the concept like wild fire, burning bridges among the various sects. (Click HERE to read an article that accurately refutes the myth of ‘Shia rising’).

In 2005, as anti-war protests spread across America, under direction of the Bush State Department the press was busy creating “happy” news to garner support for the illegal occupation of Iraq[viii. Meanwhile in Iraq, efforts were underway to keep the Iraqis united. In October 2005, then Iraqi president Jalal Talabani announced at a press conference a compromise plan that had been applauded by Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders alike. The threat of a united resistance to the occupation was reemerging. Extraordinary events would once again disrupt the fragile coalition.

Curiously (or not), in December 2005, it was announced that elite Israeli military were training the Kurds in Northern Iraq. In January 2006, Saudi Arabia planned on securing and upgrading a fence intended to seal the Iraq-Saudi border to stop the flow of ‘terrorists’. In February 2006, one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines, the Askariya shrine in Samarra was bombed. Without questioning or heeding witnesses, the bombing was quickly blamed on Sunnis. Violence and revenge killing erupted.

In May 2006, Joe Biden suggested splitting Iraq into three parts. In August, Vali Nasr, adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations released his book ‘The Shia Revival’. The flames of a dangerous and irreversible divide were being fanned. On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hossein was hung on Eid ul-Adha inside the Green Zone. The timing of his execution further exasperated the divide as it was a holy day of celebration for the Sunnis, yet the timeline had not yet commenced for the Shiites – it would commence the following day. This was perceived as a gift to the Shia’s further alienating the Sunnis and destabilizing Iraq.

In 2007, President Bush ordered a ‘surge’ and 30,000 additional troops would be housed in the bases in order to provide ‘security’ and to help create a “…unified, democratic federal Iraq that can govern itself, defend itself, and sustain itself, and is an ally in the War on Terror.” Askariya was bombed a second time. The troops managed to drag the Iraqi Christians into the sectarian division by pushing Christianity on Moslems

In 2008, the incumbent Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki opposed a permanent US presence and instead signed an Agreement (SOFA) that would see the removal of all US troops from Iraq by December 2011.

This timeline brings us to the arming of ISIL terrorists in Syria by the United States and allies who have been engaged in terror activities both inside Syria and Iraq. The motives are clear. To remove Assad, drag Iran (and Hezbollah) into this quagmire with the intention of bleeding all sides. It would also justify American presence to combat ‘terrorists’ and foreign fighters so that America can re-occupy its bases and dominate the Persian Gulf region as planned.

To sum up, neoconservatives had long sought to dominate the Persian Gulf and use it as a launch pad in their grand strategy of global dominance. When fear of communism and inter-state wars ceased to justify this agenda, 9/11 came to the rescue. Sectarian division eliminated resistance to the plan. As renowned strategist, Michael Porter said: “Finally, strategy must have continuity. It can’t be constantly reinvented.” ISIL is that continuation.

Finally, the brutal activities of the ISIL will also serve as a warning to Afghanistan’s reluctance to sign a SOFA. It is imperative to point out here that 9/11 was a pretext for the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan will be the topic of a future article.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing

* Although there is no universal definition of terrorism, Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f(d) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

22 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Nicola Nasser

Excluding “boots on the ground” and leaving combat missions to local and regional “partners,” President Barak Obama and his administration say the United States keeps “all options on the table” to respond militarily to the terrorists’ threat to “American interests” in Iraq, which are now in “danger.”

Similarly, former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on TV screens and in print has recently urged western governments to “put aside the differences of the past and act now” and to intervene militarily in Iraq “to save the future” because “we do have interests in this.”

Both men refrained from indicating what are exactly the “American” and “western” interests in Iraq that need military intervention to defend, but the major prize of their invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the country’s hydrocarbon assets. There lies their “interests.

On June 13 however, Obama hinted to a possible major “disruption” in Iraqi oil output and urged “other producers in the Gulf” to be “able to pick up the slack.”

The United States has already moved the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun, from the northern Arabian Sea into the Arabian Gulf (Persian according to Iran) “to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq,” according to Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, on June 14. Media is reporting that U.S. intelligence units and air reconnaissance are already operating in Iraq.

The unfolding collapse of the U.S. proxy government in Baghdad has cut short a process of legalizing the de-nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry in Iraq, which became within reach with the latest electoral victory of the Iraqi prime minister since 2006, Noori al-Maliki.

Anti-American armed resistance to the U.S. proxy ruling regime in Baghdad, especially the Baath-led backbone, is on record as seeking to return to the status quo ante with regard to the country’s strategic hydrocarbon assets, i.e. nationalization.

De-nationalization and privatization of the Iraqi oil and gas industry began with the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Al-Maliki for eight years could not pass a hydrocarbons law through the parliament. Popular opposition and a political system based on sectarian distribution of power and “federal” distribution of oil revenues blocked its adoption. Ruling by political majority instead by sectarian consensus was al-Maliki’s declared hope to enact the law.

Al-Maliki’s plans towards this end together with his political ambitions for a third term were cut short by the fall to armed opposition on this June 10 of Mosul, the capital of the northern Ninawa governorate and second only to Baghdad as Iraq’s largest metropolitan area.

Three days on, with the fighting moving on to the gates of Baghdad, “the most important priority for Baghdad right now is to secure its capital and oil infrastructure,” a Stratfor analysis on June 11 concluded.

The raging war in Iraq now will determine whether Iraqi hydrocarbons are a national asset or multinational loot. Any U.S. military support to the regime it installed in Baghdad should be viewed within this context. Meanwhile this national wealth is still being pillaged as spoils of war.

Al-Maliki is not now preoccupied even with maintaining Iraq as OPEC’s No. 2 oil producer, but with maintaining a level of oil output sufficient to bring in enough revenues to finance a defensive war that left his capital besieged and his government with southern Iraq only to rule, may be not for too long.

Even this modest goal is in doubt. Al-Maliki is left with oil exports from the south only, the disruption of which is highly possible any time now.

Worries that fighting would spread to the southern city of Basra or Baghdad have already sent oil prices to nine-month high on Thursday.

Legalizing the de-nationalization of Iraqi hydrocarbon industry has thus become more elusive than it has ever been since 2003.

On June 1 forty two years ago the process of the nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry kicked off in Iraq. Now Iraq is an open field for looting its only strategic asset.

On April 15 last year the CNN, reviewing “The Iraq war, 10 years on,” reported: “Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.”

“Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq’s domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms,” the CNN report concluded, indicating that, “From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West’s largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush’s running mate in 2000.

The international rush for the Iraqi “black gold” by trans-national oil and gas corporations is at its height with no national law or competent central authority to regulate it.

Iraq’s “oil industry” now “operates, gold rush–style, in an almost complete absence of oversight or regulation,” Greg Muttitt wrote in The Nation on August 23, 2012.

Nothing changed since except that the “rush” was accelerating and the de-nationalization process was taking roots, squandering the bloody sacrifices of the Iraqis over eighty two years to uproot the foreign hold on their major strategic asset. The ongoing fighting is threatening to cut this process short.

Tip of iceberg

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has been awarding hydrocarbon contracts to foreign firms independently without reference to the central government in Baghdad.

Since early 2014, it has been pumping crude to Turkey via its own independent pipeline built last December. On this June 4, Turkey and the KRG announced the signing of a 50-year deal to export Iraqi oil from Kurdistan via Turkey.

Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, threatened legal action against firms that purchased “smuggled oil” via the Turkish-KRG arrangements; he accused Turkey of “greed” and trying “to lay (its) hands on cheap Iraqi oil.
Baghdad filed for arbitration against Turkey’s state-owned pipeline operator BOTAS with the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.

Baghdad says those Turkish-KRG arrangements are illegal and unconstitutional, but its own contract awarding is also unlawful. Should a change of guard occur in Baghdad, al-Maliki and his government would be held accountable and probably prosecuted.

The dispute between Baghdad on the one hand and Turkey and the KRG on the other is only the surfacing tip of the iceberg of the “gold rush–style” looting of Iraq’s national wealth.

One of the main priorities of al-Maliki all along has been to legalize the de-nationalization and privatization process.

Muttitt, author of Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, wrote a few months before al-Maliki assumed his first premiership that American and British governments made sure the candidates for prime minister knew what their first priority had to be: To pass a law legalizing the return of the foreign multinationals. This would be the vital biggest prize of the U.S. 2003 invasion.

Al-Maliki is the right man to secure a pro-privatization government in Baghdad. Thomas L. Friedman described him in the New York Times on this June 4 as “our guy,” “an American-installed autocrat” and a “big gift” the U.S. occupation “left behind in Iraq.”

Various drafts of hydrocarbon privatization laws failed to gain consensus among the proxy sectarian parties to the U.S.-engineered “political process” and the “federal” entities of Iraq’s U.S.-drafted constitution.

Al-Maliki’s government endorsed the first draft of a privatization law in February 2007 and on August 28, 2011 endorsed an amended draft which the parliament has yet to adopt.

Iraqi trade unions, amid popular protests, opposed and fought the privatization draft laws. Their offices were raided, computers confiscated, equipment smashed and their leaders arrested and prosecuted. Nonetheless, the parliament could not pass the law.

Al-Maliki government began awarding contracts to international oil and gas giants without a law in place. They are illegal contracts, but valid as long as there is a pro-privatization government in Baghdad.

U.S. Executive Order 13303

Former British and U.S. leaders of the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair and George Bush junior, were on record to deny that the invasion had anything to do with oil, but the U.S. President Barak Obama has just refuted their claim.

On last May 16, Obama signed an Executive Order to extend the national emergency with respect to Iraq for one year. His predecessor Bush signed this “order” for the first time on May 22, 2003 “to deal with the … threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by obstacles to the continued reconstruction of Iraq.”

Details of Bush’s Executive Order (EO) No. 13303 are still kept out of media spotlight. It declared that future legal claims on Iraq’s oil wealth constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

Section 1(b) eliminates all judicial process for “all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein, and proceeds, obligations or any financial instruments of any nature whatsoever arising from or related to the sale or marketing thereof, and interests therein, in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons.”

EO 13303 was rubber-stamped by the UN Security Council Resolution No. 1483, which protected the U.S.-controlled governmental institutions in Iraq.

Muttitt wrote in August 2012: “In 2011, after nearly nine years of war and occupation, U.S. troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force.”

“Big Oil” is now the only guarantor of the survival of the U.S. proxy government in Baghdad, but the survival of “Big Oil” itself is now threatened by the escalating and rapidly expanding armed opposition.

Obama said the “threats” and “obstacles” to U.S, interests in Iraq have not changed eleven years after the invasion; Iraq has not enacted yet a hydrocarbon law to legalize the privatization of its oil and gas industry.

The developments of the last week in Iraq vindicate Obama’s renewal of EO 13303. The U.S. war on Iraq is not over and it is not won yet. Hence Obama’s recent extension of the national emergency with respect to Iraq for one year.

Since Great Britain granted Iraq its restricted independence in 1932, the nationalization of Iraqi oil wealth was the national and popular battle cry for complete sovereignty. It is now the battle cry of the armed opposition.

Iraq has been targeted by western powers since the “republic” under the late Abd al-Karim Qasim enacted law No. 80 of 1961, which deprived foreign companies of the right to explore in 99.5% of the Iraqi territory, but mainly since the Baath regime led by the late Saddam Hussein decided to nationalize the hydrocarbon industry on June 1, 1972.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

20 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Shamus Cooke

Is Iraq following Syria into the genocidal abyss? There have already been reported massacres on both sides, and more should be expected as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seeks to consolidate its victories while the Iraqi government mobilizes to reclaim what was lost.

But don’t believe for a second that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis have any interest in such a war. ISIS has a thin social base and is incapable of representing Iraqi Sunni Muslims. There is, of course, plenty of anti-government sentiment in Iraq, especially among the Sunni population. Tapping into this dissatisfaction and steering it into the dead end of sectarian warfare is the specialty of ISIS and its allies, who have zero progressive substance in their vision.

And while it’s true that other groups and militias have stepped into some of the void left by the fleeing Iraqi army, there is no mistaking that ISIS remains the leader of this insurgency, and carries a strict sectarian philosophy incompatible with the Baathists or other anti-government groups that may be opportunistically seeking temporary alliances.

One way ISIS gains some popular support is through its resources: ISIS is a well-funded, well-armed organization that gains many of its fighters by promising a fat paycheck, or equally importantly, promising a shot at survival amid war. ISIS is essentially a minority of religious fanatics leading a mercenary army.

But you wouldn’t know this from watching the news, which falsely portrays ISIS as representing Iraqi Sunni Muslims in general, a stinging insult to the global Sunni community who are disgusted by ISIS’ atrocities.

As many commentators exaggerate ISIS’ popularity in Iraq, they also misdiagnose the blame for the war by exaggerating the role of the Iraqi government. The media is bizarrely spinning the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as the principal culprit in this war.

This skewed perspective requires, in part, that the media ignore the recent Iraqi elections, which gave al-Maliki’s coalition a big victory, while proving that al-Maliki is the least hated politician in Iraq.

It’s likely that al-Maliki’s victory was a result of many people voting “no” against the anti-government insurgency, just like Assad’s popularity soared in Syria when it became clear that the rebels were dominated by al-Qaeda-style extremists.

Also like Assad, al-Maliki’s opponents are divided without a clear political vision, making many Sunnis feel like politics isn’t working. This has pushed some Sunnis into the arms of the insurrectionists, who also lack vision but at least do something.

There are significant religious divisions in Iraq, and it’s true that al-Maliki is guilty of sectarianism by strengthening his mostly-Shia base at the expense of the former Baath Party members, who are mostly Sunni. But by focusing the analysis here the big picture gets fuzzy.

The anti-al-Maliki emphasis helps minimize the fact that ISIS is essentially acting as an invading army from rebel-controlled Syria. This is the motor force of the war, and thus strange that the Obama administration is instead focusing his criticism on al-Maliki while Iraq is being invaded by perhaps the most powerful terrorist organization on earth.

ISIS does have Iraqi roots, being born out of the struggle against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But ISIS was all but extinguished in Iraq when the U.S. paid other Sunni groups to fight it, driving ISIS into Syria.

In Syria ISIS was instantly transformed from a U.S. enemy to an unofficial ally, since both ISIS and the U.S. were targeting the Assad government for destruction.

During ISIS’ Syrian growth spurt, the Obama administration consciously minimized or completely overlooked the role of ISIS and the other al-Qaeda linked Syrian “rebels” — such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham — who were getting the majority of the Gulf state cash and guns, ensuring that they would be the dominant rebel force in Syria.

Obama essentially used the Syrian extremist groups as leverage against Assad, allowing the U.S. and Gulf states to dump huge sums of money into the terrorist group’s coffers. It was hoped that if the rebels were strong enough, Assad’s inner circle would turn against him and install a more U.S. friendly government — regime change accomplished.

This failed Syrian tactic seems to be working in Iraq. Long before ISIS waged its recent assault, al-Maliki was begging the Obama administration for more military aid, which was refused. And when the ISIS attack started Obama declared, mid invasion, that al-Maliki would not receive further aid until he was more “inclusive” as a leader, while giving the Iraqi leader no specific suggestions. Obama’s intent was to send a strong message to the Iraqi government: “replace al-Maliki” or face ISIS alone.

As The New York Times recently noted, “…the Obama administration has made no secret of its exasperation with Mr. Maliki.” Obama wanted a more “reliable” leader in Iraq, with the front-runner being the pro-U.S. Ahmad Chalabi. The Iraq government seems to have gotten the hint, according to the New York Times:

“Alarmed over the Sunni insurgent mayhem convulsing Iraq, the country’s political leaders are actively jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraqi officials said Thursday.” The article implied that the Obama Administration was deeply involved in the discussion.

It’s possible that a behind the scenes agreement has already been reached, since Obama all of a sudden decided to send 300 American “military advisers” to aid the Iraqi Government fight against ISIS.

It’s possible that if al-Maliki is replaced there will be a temporary stabilization in Iraq, as some Sunni groups will be more open to negotiate with a new Shia leader, especially since the more intelligent Iraqi Sunnis will see ISIS as a bigger threat than any Shia-led government.

But ISIS has already been unleashed, ensuring that sectarian tensions will be exacerbated no matter who runs Iraq. The fundamentalist sectarian philosophy of ISIS and other Jihadi groups reflects the ideology of their financial backers, the Gulf state monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, etc., whose authoritarian rule is rooted in an especially oppressive form of Islam, ideally suited for the needs of these dictatorships.

Saudi sheikhs encourage impressionable, unemployed Saudi youth to fight abroad in conflicts they don’t understand, to impose a Islamic philosophy foreign to Syria and Iraq that labels Shia Muslims as infidels worthy of death.

The invasion by ISIS has triggered a large-scale Shia sectarian response, since Shia Muslims have seen what ISIS does to Shia “heretics” in Syria, and are thus mobilizing to protect themselves and to drive ISIS out of Iraq.

There is plenty of disastrous potential in this dynamic. Sectarian tensions will rise further still, and many innocent people will die in the process. Shia militias have committed atrocities in Iraq in the recent past as Baghdad underwent a Shia-led ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, partially in response to the al-Qaeda (Sunni)-led bombing campaign. And if ISIS is only met with a Shia sectarian response, other Sunnis will be reluctantly pushed ISIS’ arms, since they are the only effective fighting group.

Those who mislabel the ISIS invasion as a “Sunni uprising” forget that movements are defined by who leads them and what their goals are. A movement led by ISIS, which seeks to instill a Taliban-style dictatorship, will by rejected by the vast majority of Sunnis and Shias, just as they have been rejected in Syria.

Calling recent events an anti-government uprising shields the principle culprits in this war, giving them crucial political cover, as was done in Syria. The politics of ISIS and other al-Qaeda linked groups are the political equivalent of European fascism, a bringing together of all the most reactionary groups towards the most right-wing, totalitarian aims. It is an ideology that must be rejected no matter what religion it covers itself with.

And while one can sympathize with anti-government sentiment, one cannot minimize the danger posed by ISIS. An ISIS-led government will resemble Taliban-era Afghanistan, and destroy civil liberties for Shia Muslims, women, workers, and minorities in general. Shiites and Sunnis must form an alliance to defend their basic civil rights in the face of the ISIS insurgency.”

Shia’s and Sunnis can unite in a common political vision as many did under pan-Arab socialist movement after the post-colonial years. A plan of unity can be translated into a social vision that ensures that all Iraq and Syrian people have sufficient food, housing, jobs, healthcare, and dignity, which are the core issues just under the surface of the sectarian fighting across the Middle East.

Without a new political vision based on uniting economic demands, the Middle East will continue to be a plaything for foreign interventions, constantly divided and conquered through religion.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

20 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Jai Singh

Previous articles in this series: “Narendra Modi and the rise of India’s neo-fascist Far-Right”, and “Nazism and Narendra Modi: The ideological influence on India’s next Prime Minister”.

India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member of both the Bharatiya Janata Party (“BJP”) and its neo-Nazi paramilitary “ideological fountainhead”, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (“RSS”). Modi is efficiently streamlining India’s new national government along with discussing a range of issues with senior ministers, as the “Modi Administration” begins in earnest. In terms of South Asia’s regional stability, progress and prosperity, Modi’s recent outreach towards neighbouring Pakistan’s government is encouraging; time will tell if his intentions are sincere. The same applies to Modi’s much-vaunted “development” plans.

Modi has also confirmed a series of meetings with international leaders during the next few months; he is planning to visit the United States (including a meeting with US President Barack Obama personally), Japan, Brazil, Australia, Bhutan, Nepal, and the ASEAN-India and East Asia summits. Modi will also attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York this September. Interestingly, Modi has not arranged to visit any countries in Europe.

Nevertheless, a series of problems have already arisen, which provides a revealing insight into the nature of Modi’s regime:

(i) For example, as recently summarised in the Hindustan Times, (a) an RSS national executive member has called for India’s intelligence agencies to terminate their investigations of multiple RSS terrorist attacks, (b) senior members of Modi’s new national government are calling for the termination of affirmative action initiatives for India’s religious minorities, with the new Minister for Minority Affairs making the bizarre claim that Muslims are not a minority in India despite the fact that they are only 14% of the total population, and (c) it turns out that Modi’s newly-appointed education minister falsified her own educational qualifications in affidavits.

(ii) Modi’s national government is recklessly endangering India’s national security by allowing 100% Foreign Direct Investment in the Defence sector. (India is the biggest weapons importer in the world, currently 75% from Russia, 7% from the United States, and 6% from Israel; details via The Economist here).

(iii) The Indian Express has exposed the fact that a leaked new report by India’s Intelligence Bureau (“IB”) has actually plagiarised a key part of a paranoid speech by Modi in 2006. The report blacklists a considerable number of reputable human rights organisations and environmental groups, including Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the child-support service Childline and the women’s trade union SEWA (which assists poor, illiterate self-employed Indian women), claiming that they pose a “threat to [India’s] national economic security” due to “foreign funding”. Extensive further details and analysis via the New York Times, DNA India and Yahoo News.

Extract from the aforementioned Indian Express article: On September 9, 2006, then Gujarat chief minister Modi had lashed out in a speech at a “wealthy” and “influential” class of NGOs [Non-Governmental Organisations] that “hire PR firms to continually build their image” with “money coming from abroad.”……[Modi continued]: “Another conspiracy — a vicious cycle is set up. Funds are obtained from abroad; an NGO is set up; a few articles are commissioned; a PR firm is recruited and, slowly, with the help of the media, an image is created. And then awards are procured from foreign countries to enhance this image. Such a vicious cycle, a network of finance-activity-award is set up and, once they have secured an award, no one in Hindustan dares raise a finger, no matter how many the failings of the awardee.”

Readers will note the irony of Modi’s conspiratorial claims, considering the contents of sections #16 and #19 in the main article below; the sections highlight the network of influential US and UK-based groups (including a giant Washington-based PR firm) which have recently been heavily involved in politically lobbying on Modi’s behalf here in the West and “creating” and “enhancing” his image; #16 also includes some details on the multimillion-dollar foreign funding of the RSS.

(iv) 30% of the ministers in Modi’s government are currently facing criminal charges, including murder, kidnapping, communal [sectarian] disharmony, and electoral violations. The new parliament also has the lowest number of Muslims in post-independence India’s history . Modi’s regime has reinstated corrupt and sectarian Gujarat police officers, along with appointing ministers who have been involved in sectarian violence.

(v) Modi has also not removed BJP minister Giriraj Singh; during the elections, Giriraj Singh claimed that “those [Indians] who want to stop Narendra Modi [from becoming Prime Minister] should go to Pakistan. In the coming days, they will have no place in India.” (He subsequently refused to retract his statements despite the outcry). Giriraj Singh also claimed that “all terrorists belong to one community” [ie. Muslims].

(vi) Sikh readers in particular may be aware of the fact that, as Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Modi tried to force a huge number of Sikh families in Gujarat to “go back” to Punjab even though they have been living in Gujarat as farmers for nearly 50 years. Serving the Sikh families eviction notices and freezing their financial assets, Modi’s state government intended to seize their land, claiming that a law from 1948 allows only Gujaratis to own land in the state.

Further to Modi’s election as Prime Minister, India’s new Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, is the lawyer who defended and facilitated the original acquittals of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, two ringleaders of the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms (investigations of Tytler and Kumar were subsequently reopened). More recently, Rohatgi defended Modi’s Gujarat state government against prosecutions by victims of the 2002 riots.

(vii) The continuing epidemic of gang rapes (particularly of low-caste women) in India has received considerable domestic & international publicity, including forceful condemnations from the Obama Administration and the United Nations. One of Modi’s senior ministerial allies has publicly claimed that rape is “sometimes right, sometimes wrong”, and another has publicly claimed that rapes “do not happen deliberately. These types of incidents happen accidentally”. (In January 2013, current RSS head Mohan Bhagwat publicly claimed that “the influence of Western culture” was to blame for rapes in India; he also made the false claim that rapes in India occur only in cities, not villages). The recent murder of an Indian Muslim by members of a Hindu Nationalist organisation along with rioting by the latter in the city of Pune has also received wide publicity. Until very recently, Modi himself publicly remained completely silent about all of these issues, and belatedly spoke out only after widespread domestic and international criticism of his increasingly-conspicuous silence. One of Modi’s own senior ministers has subsequently been summoned to court as one of the accused in a major case involving rape, prostitution and blackmail.

There are a number of further facts that Modi’s lobbyists and pro-Modi media outlets are either reluctant to publicly disclose or are actively covering up. As with the material in the previous two articles in this series, as a contingency measure it is therefore imperative that Western governments, intelligence agencies and business leaders are apprised of the information documented below, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom.

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1. THE “BIG LIE” PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE:

Narendra Modi’s network has been making successful use of the “Big Lie” propaganda technique pioneered by the Nazis:

(a) Firstly, the claim that India’s Supreme Court has “cleared” Modi of culpability in the Gujarat 2002 riots is still widely circulating (including in some sections of the Western media). This claim is completely false. In reality, not only has the Supreme Court accused Modi of being a “modern-day Nero” at the very least, but the report by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigations Team (“SIT”) can be read in full online here. Amongst other things, the SIT report confirmed that Modi’s Gujarat state government was guilty of destroying a huge amount of incriminating evidence, including completely destroying the records of police communications and government meetings during the riots.

The SIT report also confirmed that there were multiple incidents where Modi’s conduct was divisive and prejudiced against Gujarat’s Muslim population; as Gujarat’s Chief Minister, Modi was therefore in violation of his constitutional duty to protect the life and property of every citizen of Gujarat state.

The SIT report also confirmed that (i) Modi claimed to have been unaware of the first massacre during the riots (at the Gulbarg Society area of Ahmedabad) for as long as 5 hours after the atrocity; Modi specifically claimed that he only heard about it during a meeting at his house that evening, (ii) there were numerous communications between police officers during the course of the siege and subsequent massacre, and (iii) Modi was praised for holding a series of meetings with police officers throughout the day in order to continuously monitor the violence. Readers will note the glaring contradiction in this narrative and can draw their own conclusions about the implications.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court also appointed an amicus curiae. Based on the SIT’s own findings, the senior Supreme Court lawyer and former Additional Solicitor General & Vice-President of the Supreme Court Bar Association has recommended that Modi should be put on trial and has concluded that there is indeed sufficient evidence to prosecute Modi on multiple criminal charges. Full details via the Times of India and Tehelka.

A case can of course also be made for prosecuting Modi and his accomplices via the International Criminal Court at The Hague and putting them on trial there.

(b) Secondly, the post-election claim that Modi has been “given a huge mandate by India’s 1 billion population” is being promoted by Modi’s propagandists and sympathetic sections of the Indian media (Modi himself has been making this claim too). In reality, 69% of voters in the election did not vote for Modi; in terms of the total number of eligible Indian voters, the percentage that did not vote for Modi rises to approximately 80%.

(c) Gujarat’s development under Modi’s state government has been considerably exaggerated; in fact, as recently documented by the New York Times, Modi repeatedly made major mistakes in hugely expensive local development projects, primarily due to his own character flaws. Furthermore, there are major health and malnutrition problems in Gujarat; as recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, approximately 50% of Gujarati children under 5 years old are stunted, 70% of Gujarati children under 5 years old are anaemic, and approximately 55% of Gujarati women are anaemic. For his part, Modi is on record as blaming widespread female malnutrition in Gujarat on what he claims is a combination of (i) “beauty-conscious middle-class” girls who don’t want to “get fat” and (ii) vegetarianism.

(d) The claim that Gujarat under Modi’s state government has been “free of sectarian violence since 2002” is completely false; in fact, rates of such violence in Gujarat are far higher than India’s national average. Statistical details via Firstpost here.

2. NARENDRA MODI’S STATEMENTS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES IN 2002:

Estimates of the number of Muslims murdered during the Gujarat 2002 riots range from 1000-2000, with victims ranging from the very young to the very old. Methods used to kill the men, women and children primarily involved hacking them to pieces and/or burning them alive (both individually and, in some instances, mass burnings). The riots also included mass rapes and sexual mutilation, again often involving the female victims subsequently being murdered. The RSS and affiliated groups were heavily involved in perpetrating these atrocities.

Celia Dugger was co-head of the New York Times’ South Asia bureau in 2002. She covered the riots and personally reported that Narendra Modi’s administration was deliberately failing to stop the violence; as mentioned by Celia Dugger in the NYT’s video here, “witnesses were telling [her] that they had begged the police to intervene and stop the mobs and that they stood by and that leaders of groups affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party were inciting violence”.

Celia Dugger personally interviewed Narendra Modi a couple of months after the riots. As included in the aforementioned NYT video:

“I asked [Modi] if he had any regrets about what had happened in his state in that period: Women openly raped, hundreds and hundreds of people were killed. He told me his greatest regret was that he didn’t manage the media very well. I left the interview feeling chilled by my interview with the Chief Minister. He had not shown any regret or expressed any empathy for those who had been slaughtered in his state on his watch”.

(Apart from the obvious callousness displayed, this also has ramifications for the Indian news media now that Modi is Prime Minister; see #11 below).

3. RSS AND NEO-NAZI RALLIES:

As comprehensively documented in the previous article in this series, the core ideology of the Far-Right paramilitary RSS (“Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”) is directly and explicitly based on Hitler and Third Reich-era Nazism; in their extensive writings, the RSS’ Hitler-supporting ideological founders directly lifted Nazi propaganda and simply replaced “Germans” with “Hindus” and “Jews” with “Muslims”. The ideology is also virulently hostile towards Christians. Bear in mind that India’s 1.2-billion population currently includes 170 million Muslims and approximately 30 million Christians.

In his own writings, Narendra Modi is on record as describing the most influential Hitler-supporting RSS founder, M.S. Golwalkar, as “a guru worthy of worship”.

Golwalkar (1906-1973) is on record as repeatedly endorsing Hitler, the Nazis and their treatment of religious minorities. He never retracted any of these statements, not even after the horrors of the Holocaust. Quoting directly from Golwalkar’s own propaganda writings, numerous examples of his statements were documented in the previous article. In summary:

(a) Golwalkar promoted explicitly racial Far-Right propaganda and claimed that a “Nation” is based on 5 indivisible factors: Race, Religion, Culture, Language and Geography. Golwalkar claimed that Race and Religion are the dominant factors for the RSS;
(b) Golwalkar had contempt for educated Hindus;
(c) Golwalkar was opposed to inclusive, pluralistic democracy and territory-based nationality;
(d) Golwalkar claimed that non-Hindus in India “deserve no privileges, not even citizen’s rights”;
(e) Golwalkar glorified Nazi Germany and the persecution of Germany’s Jews, and stated that India should duplicate Hitler’s treatment of minority populations;
(f) Golwalkar misrepresented and slandered Judaism, Christianity and Islam;
(g) Golwalkar claimed that Hindus are differentiated from other religious groups before birth;
(h) Golwalkar claimed that the RSS aims to reconvert Indian Muslims and Christians to Hinduism;
(i) Golwalkar rejected the Indian nationality of all Indian non-Hindus;
(j) Golwalkar reiterated his opposition to territory-based nationality and Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of Hindu-Muslim unity;
(k) Golwalkar repeatedly wrote lengthy bigoted diatribes against both Christians and Muslims, explicitly declaring them to be “hostiles” within Indian society and claiming that Christians have proved to be “bloodsuckers” wherever they have gone in the world.

Narendra Modi has been an active member of the RSS for the entirety of his political career. In fact, the RSS explicitly describe Modi as a “pracharak” for the organisation; the literal translation of the word is “proselytiser”. Modi can be seen performing a modified Nazi salute alongside a number of other RSS members in one of the photos at the top of this article; the photo was taken at an RSS meeting near Ahmedabad in September 2009.

Video footage of a neo-Nazi rally by the RSS is available on Youtube here; the footage is from an “RSS Mega Convention” in Mangalore in 2013. From 3 min 40 s onwards, the thousands of uniformed RSS members standing in formation simultaneously perform a modified Nazi salute. Shortly afterwards, senior RSS leaders (including the current head of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat) can also be seen performing that fascist salute. For obvious reasons, the whole thing looks chillingly familiar.

4. STRATEGY MEETINGS WITH THE RSS LEADERSHIP:

Narendra Modi and other senior members of the incoming new government (including the new Home Minister) were already having lengthy closed-door meetings with the RSS senior leadership during the weekend before the election results, specifically to discuss post-election strategy; details via Firstpost here and here. Modi was the first to do so, personally meeting Mohan Bhagwat for a detailed discussion. Bhagwat himself can be seen performing the aforementioned modified Nazi salute in the bottom-left photo in the image at the top of this article.

5. RSS CONTINUING TO DICTATE POLITICAL POLICY:

Narendra Modi’s team have subsequently continued to have meetings with the RSS. Furthermore, readers may be aware that there is already an escalating controversy involving the Indian state of Kashmir (also see the Kashmir Chief Minister’s tweet here); the RSS has publicly become directly involved in the issue.

6. RSS DOMINANCE OF THE NEW INDIAN GOVERNMENT:

As confirmed by Reuters, 17 of the 23 Cabinet-level senior ministers in Narendra Modi’s new government are current or former RSS members. This includes the new Home Minister Rajnath Singh and of course Modi himself.

7. THE RSS’ LONG-TERM STRATEGY IN INDIA:

A detailed Caravan investigative article on Mohan Bhagwat includes information on the RSS’ long-term gameplan. Extract:

“Between now and [2025], the organisation has planned a three-phase strategy aimed at expanding its work…..The RSS says it’s nearing the end of stage one; it seems that the next step, for which Bhagwat has been preparing the ground, is to win political power. If the BJP becomes dominant in the next government, the [RSS] juggernaut will likely begin rolling, entering a period of potentially unprecedented activity to fulfil its broader social goals.”

The aforementioned article also quotes Mohan Bhagwat making the following statements at a major RSS meeting in 2009:

“…..the evolution of the [RSS] shows that we are indeed marching ahead with our plan and reaching towards our goal consistently……We will overcome and surmount problems and try to accelerate the pace of our work effectively. The picture is clear in front of us. Not only the goal, the clear strategy, all the stages, methodology to reach there are all worked out and we have a clear cut plan before us.”

Similarly, other journalists have reported that a former Indian army officer who joined the RSS 10 years ago and is now conducting leadership camps for the RSS has stated:

“The [RSS’] strategy is to solidly consolidate its position and expand so powerfully across the country that no-one can shake it at least for the next 50 years. RSS believes in silent work and it has spread its activities in several areas all over the country.”

An RSS activist recently made the following statements to the Washington Post:

“We want people who subscribe to RSS’ philosophy of nationalism in every occupation, every department of the government, every industry, every sphere of society.”

8. RSS RECRUITMENT:

According to The Economist, the number of Indians joining the RSS is now 10,000 every month.

In March 2014, The Guardian reported that the RSS already had 40 million members in India. The organisation has at least 50,000 branches across the country, with meetings held daily. The RSS also has approximately 100 affiliate organisations. Furthermore, Bloomberg recently confirmed that the RSS is running a network of 18,000 schools across India.

9. NARENDRA MODI AND “TRIUMPH OF THE WILL”:

A major pro-Modi publication, “OPEN” Magazine, has published a glowing article about Narendra Modi titled “Triumph of the Will”. The article has been publicised on the magazine’s front cover, alongside a photo of Modi. Details via Al Jazeera here. The article’s title is of course the name of the most well-known pro-Hitler propaganda film from the Third Reich. This is not the first time that the magazine has used the “Triumph of the Will” caption for Modi.

10. SOCIAL ENGINEERING VIA PROPAGANDA FILMS:

Narendra Modi’s RSS-dominated team plans to set up a national government wing dedicated to developing & promoting propaganda films via India’s movie industry, in order to “bring a cultural awakening”. Details via the Hindustan Times here.

11. RESIGNATIONS OF ANTI-MODI JOURNALISTS AND CONSOLIDATION OF PRO-MODI INDUSTRIALISTS’ CONTROL OF INDIAN MEDIA:

(a) During Narendra Modi’s tenure as Gujarat’s Chief Minister, his state government actually accused journalists of sedition in order to silence their criticism of Modi’s regime, filing cases under a sedition law that India’s Supreme Court has ruled should only be used in cases of violent rebellion against the state.

(b) As discussed in Outlook India, a large-scale clampdown against senior anti-Modi journalists continued across India in the run-up to the national election. This included the targeting of very senior professional journalists at a number of prestigious news outlets; objective analysis and criticism of Modi has deliberately been silenced, accompanied by multiple high-level resignations. This has been particularly prevalent at all television channels, magazines and online outlets owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance group. The industrialist Ambanis played a key role in facilitating Modi’s election victory. Further examples are available here, including screenshots of online statements by anti-Modi journalists such as CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose who have subsequently found themselves silenced.

(c) According to Bloomberg, Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani has added $6 billion to his fortune since Modi’s candidacy for PM was announced; Mukesh Ambani and his younger brother Anil Ambani each added nearly $1 billion and $600 million to their respective wealth on the day that Modi’s election victory was announced. Bloomberg has also recently reported that the Ambanis are actively censoring the exposure of their own questionable business activities; for example, the Ambanis are alleged to have successfully pressured the previous Indian government into doubling the price of natural gas in India.

(d) After Modi’s election as Prime Minister, multiple senior anti-Modi journalists such as CNN-IBN’s Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose are continuing to resign as the Reliance group takes over the holding company Network 18, which includes the Indian news channels CNN-IBN and CNBC’s Indian affiliates, along with Forbes India, multiple business and news websites, and multiple entertainment channels. Details via Scroll.in and the Huffington Post. Extensive details on the exact sequence of events have been documented in Caravan here, including Network 18’s role as a major pro-Modi propaganda platform and the resulting impact on Indian news media coverage of Modi.

(e) A few years ago, Rajdeep Sardesai famously interviewed Modi about the Gujarat 2002 riots. As can be seen in the video clip available in this Outlook India article, “awkward questions by Rajdeep Sardesai are met with lengthy, awkward silence”. The same article also includes video footage of the famous incident when Sardesai’s CNN-IBN colleague Karan Thapar interviewed Modi in 2007; Thapar directly asked him “People still call you in your face a mass-murderer, and they accuse you of being prejudiced against Muslims. Do you have an image problem ?” One minute into the scheduled interview, Modi became visibly angry, asked for a glass of water, and then actually walked out of the interview (which was all caught on camera). According to Caravan:

…..the following day, Thapar said, he got a call from Modi: “He asked me, ‘Are you firing by resting your gun on my shoulder?’ and I said, ‘Didn’t I tell you it was better to complete the interview?’ He was okay by then, it seemed. He said when he came to Delhi next, we would have dinner together. And he would give me another interview. At some point he also said, ‘I love you.’”

However, despite repeated requests since 2007, Modi has never allowed Thapar to interview him again.

(f) Regular readers will recall that Modi has only recently publicly admitted that he is actually married. The aforementioned Caravan article also discusses what happened when an Indian Express journalist located Modi’s wife in 2002. Extract:

[The Indian Express journalist Darshan Desai] met [Modi’s wife], her brother and the headmaster of a primary school where she was teaching. None of them would agree to an interview, fearing retribution, and several local BJP men made it clear his questions were unwelcome and insisted he leave.

“I remember I had just reached home and removed my shoes when I got a call on my cell phone,” Desai told me. “The voice on the phone said in Gujarati, ‘The chief minister wants to speak with you.’ Soon, Modi came on the line. He said ‘Namaskar’, and then he asked: ‘So what is the agenda?’

“I said, ‘I didn’t quite get you.’ And he said, ‘You have written against me. Your newspaper even started Modi Meter,’ referring to a column my paper ran during the riots. I just kept quiet, and he said, ‘I’m aware what you’ve been up to today. What you’ve done today goes much beyond. That’s why I want to know what your agenda is.’ I wasn’t scared, but I remember being a little nervous, and I said, ‘I have no agenda. You can contact my editor.’ He just said, ‘Okay. Think it over,’ and hung up the phone.”

(g) In 2010, during a 90-minute interview with the Muslim editor of an Indian newspaper, Modi was asked if he dreamed of the Akhand Bharat (“Undivided India”) concept, which is strongly promoted by the RSS. The question was particularly relevant because, as detailed in Firstpost here, “a report in 2010 quoted the current RSS chief Dr Mohan Bhagwat as saying: “We should start thinking how to be Akhand Bharat once again,”…..The report added that “Bhagwat pointed out that all nations, including China, Russia and America, made no secret of stretching their land by harboring expansionist tendencies in the national interest — and to be stronger nations.”….”It is only this country where her own citizens live like refugees away from their homeland,” he said with respect to the Kashmiri Pandits. “Land,” he said, “is an important factor in today’s geo-politics.”

As quoted in the aforementioned Firstpost article, Modi’s response to the Muslim editor’s question about the RSS’ modern-day version of Lebensraum was to attack the editor himself, as follows:

”People who think of empire are talking of Akhand Bharat. In Pakistan, there is a movement to unite Pakistan, India and Bangladesh so that Muslims are in a majority. Your mouths are watering these days at the prospect of creating a Muslim-majority nation in the name of Akhand Bharat. And getting all Muslims together, with the Indian Muslims at their head, to create strife. Isn’t this a dream of yours?”

(h) As Prime Minister, Modi is currently continuing to centralise power and tighten his grip on the control of information by banning his entire Cabinet along with other senior officials from giving interviews to journalists. The only authorised sources of information from Modi’s regime will be official government spokespeople and Modi’s own Twitter account. (Modi has also recently warned his team about potential “sting operations”). This will effectively be a continuation of Modi’s policy when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat: members of his cabinet were not allowed to speak to journalists unless they had obtained prior permission from Modi, and customary press conferences following state government Cabinet meetings were either held by spokesmen or not even held at all (in other Indian states, such briefings are normally held by ministers).

12. NARENDRA MODI’S BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS CRITICAL INDIAN BUSINESS LEADERS:

As documented by Caravan here, Narendra Modi was present during a major conference of Indian business leaders in April 2002, when a forceful speech by a senior executive condemning the suffering of Muslims in Gujarat received a standing ovation and multiple famous industrialists explicitly questioned Modi’s own attitudes. In response, while on stage Modi furiously ranted: “You and your pseudo-secular friends can come to Gujarat if you want an answer. Talk to my people. Gujarat is the most peaceful state in the country.” Modi then turned to two of the most outspoken industrialists [Godrej and Bajaj; South Asian readers in particular will be familiar with them] and said, “Others have vested interest in maligning Gujarat. What is your interest ?”

After Modi returned to Gujarat, within a few days multiple Gujarati businessmen close to Modi retaliated against his corporate critics by setting up a rival organisation, involving 100 companies threatening to withdraw from the previous business group, claiming that the latter had “humiliated and insulted Modi and all Gujaratis”. A press statement was issued, swearing by the pride of Gujaratis, and demanding that the Gujarat chapter of the original business group should resign for “failing to protect the interests of the state”. In New Delhi, the BJP also began to limit the latter’s access to government ministers, thereby jeopardising one of the group’s primary roles as a lobbying organisation.

13. RSS TERRORISTS AND FALSE-FLAG ATTACKS IN INDIA:

There appear to be some internal clashes between India’s Supreme Court & National Investigations Agency and Narendra Modi’s incoming regime:

(a) A few days before the election results, the NIA publicly released a list of “Hindu Nationalist” terrorists. Details via India Today here; as the article also confirms, every single person on that list is a member of the RSS. The list includes senior RSS leader Swami Aseemanand; Modi is his most prominent political patron. As previously discussed on Loonwatch and in much more detail in Caravan magazine, Aseemanand was responsible for anti-Christian riots involving mass-murder, forced conversions to Hinduism, the destruction of dozens of churches, and the rape of nuns. Aseemanand is also on record as admitting that the RSS leadership personally authorised a series of terrorist attacks across India, deliberately targeting innocent Muslims for mass-murder.

(b) India’s Supreme Court subsequently made statements admonishing Modi’s conduct during investigations of other major terrorist attacks; one of these Supreme Court investigations in particular has confirmed that Gujarat’s state police deliberately framed innocent Muslims. Considering that the police were under the overall jurisdiction of Modi’s right-hand-man & fellow RSS member Amit Shah (Gujarat’s Home Minister at the time), Modi himself is now directly implicated in framing Muslims for what increasingly appear to be “false-flag” terrorist attacks, including the Godhra train attack in 2002 (the latter ostensibly triggered the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat). Details via the Indian Express here and here, via Firstpost here, and via the Times of India here.

(c) This backs up a BBC article from 2002: At the time, the BBC had obtained a leaked report from British officials in India, which stated that the Gujarat riots were “ethnic cleansing”, state-sponsored, planned months in advance, and that amicable relations between Hindus and Muslims would be impossible while Modi is in power.

14. HINDU RELIGIOUS LEADERS CONDEMN NARENDRA MODI:

In May 2014, the religious leaders at several major traditional Hindu monasteries belonging to the Advaita school of Hindu philosophy refused to endorse Narendra Modi’s candidacy for Prime Minister. Details via the Hindustan Times here. One of the Hindu leaders stated: “For me Modi is a grave sinner who has committed the highest sin in Hinduism, which is murder. He has blood on his hands and face.” The monasteries are in Dwarka and Puri in India, two of the seven holiest cities for Hindus. Dwarka itself is in Gujarat.

15. VARANASI: SUPPORT FOR NARENDRA MODI FROM THE LOCAL RSS AND BRAHMIN PRIESTS:

In conjunction with his campaign to become India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi also successfully campaigned to be the minister of Varanasi/Banares, Hinduism’s most important holy city. Modi’s election campaign was heavily supported by both the RSS in Varanasi and Brahmin priests at the city’s primary Hindu temple. Modi also publicly performed religious rituals in the area after his election victory (as filmed by both domestic and international news media).

(a) During the campaign, one of the local RSS leaders told journalists:

“We can all see it now, that it is happening — the change is happening…..What we believe is that we are the most advanced race in the entire world. We will convert the whole world into the Aryan race: So we have decided.”

The RSS is also planning to ban academic books that contradict the organisation’s own distorted claims about Hinduism, change Indian history books that depict Mughal emperors such as Akbar in a positive light, and so on.

Details via the New York Times here.

(b) Similarly, one of the aforementioned Brahmin priests told journalists that he “lamented the fact that all of India’s Muslims had not been sent to Pakistan in 1947; he spoke of the need, when Modi came to power, of one decisive riot that would show Muslims their place”. Details via OPEN magazine here.

(c) Regarding the India-wide campaign as a whole, extensive details on the highly-organised joint strategic coordination between Modi’s team and the RSS are available via NDTV here. This includes RSS-backed think-tanks who have organised meetings between Modi and Indian business leaders.

16. GROUPS LOBBYING FOR NARENDRA MODI IN THE WEST:

In April 2014, The Economic Times published an article exposing the organisations & individuals heavily involved in publicly whitewashing Narendra Modi’s image here in the West, especially the downplaying of Modi’s Nazism/RSS connection and extremist “Hindu Nationalist” agenda. Groups in the US have been particularly active in lobbying on Modi’s behalf, as follows:

(a) United States: Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a right-wing think-tank; former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill (now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations); the Washington-based lobbying giant APCO Worldwide (which already has a history of assisting dictators accused of major crimes against humanity); Indian Americans for Freedom; the RSS-linked Hindu American Foundation (HAF); and the US India Political Action Committee (USINPAC). Coordinating these efforts is the BJP’s Overseas Affairs cell and Overseas Friends of BJP.

(b) United Kingdom: According to the Economic Times article, “a major behind-the-scenes operator in these efforts has been UK-based lawyer Manoj Ladwa. Ladwa, who hails from Porbandar in Gujarat and is also the convener of Europe India Chambers of Commerce, is credited by party insiders as having laid much of the groundwork that led to the UK’s change of heart about Modi”. Ladwa was present in India on the day of the election results and was interviewed by NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt.

(c) As confirmed by the Financial Times, the UK’s Channel 4 News, Outlook India, the human rights group Awaaz, Frontline, and most recently by The Independent and Scroll.in, the RSS has been using front organisations in the US and UK to promote its propaganda in those countries and simultaneously raise millions of dollars to fund its activities in India.

Readers here in the West may be interested to know that multiple British citizens of Indian origin were also murdered by the rioters; a number of British Members of Parliament have correspondingly confirmed their support for prosecuting Modi and continuing to ban him from the UK “until he has been brought to account for his actions in fomenting racial and religious violence and bigotry”.

A case can be made for simultaneously prosecuting US and UK-based organisations & individuals if they are actually aware that Modi is indeed guilty of the various allegations regarding the Gujarat 2002 riots and yet are politically lobbying on Modi’s behalf, especially if they are also knowingly downplaying the RSS’ real ideology and any associated hidden agenda which Modi may have. Such US and UK-based organisations & individuals should also be prosecuted if Modi is responsible for any future atrocities and/or religious persecution in India.

17. US AND UK GOVERNMENTS’ PUBLIC RESPONSE TO NARENDRA MODI’S ELECTION VICTORY:

Prior to the election results, the US State Department publicly announced that the Obama Administration would “work very closely” with Modi if he won the election, including meetings in the US; it also mentioned that “there is more room to keep growing” what is now nearly $100 billion of India-US trade. (As confirmed by The Hindu, high-level trade meetings are already being planned, and the US-India Business Council has stated that bilateral trade could reach $500 billion over the next decade). Senior Western politicians including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and British opposition leader Ed Miliband have subsequently publicly congratulated Modi. President Obama and PM David Cameron have also invited Modi to visit Washington and London respectively (details via ABC News here, The Guardian here and Reuters here.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time after World War Two that the White House and Downing Street have extended congratulations & invitations to any foreign leaders ideologically affiliated with Nazism (it is the equivalent of rolling out the red carpet for a senior member of Golden Dawn if he had risen to power in Greece). However, it is presently unclear if Western governments have simultaneously stipulated “good behaviour” conditions for any amicable diplomatic and business relations with Modi’s regime, particularly if the former are actually pursuing a policy of “containment”. It is also presently unclear if the American and British administrations are aware of the full nature of the regime’s ideological background, especially considering the lobbying & whitewashing activities of the various groups discussed in #16.

18. DIRECT LINKS BETWEEN NARENDRA MODI & RSS AND US “TEA PARTY”:

VICE magazine has made a series of astonishing claims about extensive recent involvement between America’s “Tea Party” Republican politicians (including Newt Gingrich) and Narendra Modi. The article includes video footage. It also claims that RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat has been involved in these meetings. Extensive details here.

19. DIRECT LINKS BETWEEN NARENDRA MODI AND SILICON VALLEY:

Apparently Narendra Modi has also been heavily involved with senior figures & organisations in Silicon Valley, including attempts by the latter to rig India’s recent election. Meetings between Modi and major Wall Street banks to discuss investment in India were also arranged. Extensive details here.

20. BJP “STRATEGIC ACTION COMMITTEE” CHAIRMAN SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY: “UNITE THE HINDUS UNDER ONE FLAG AND DIVIDE THE MUSLIMS”:

Subramanian Swamy has most recently been the head of the BJP’s Strategic Action Committee for the 2014 elections; he was appointed by Rajnath Singh, now India’s Home Minister. Swamy is on record as stating that the BJP’s overall election campaign strategy should be “Unite the Hindus under one flag and divide the Muslims”.

Swamy used to give lectures on economics at Harvard University, but he was effectively fired in 2011 after he wrote a virulently anti-Muslim and anti-Christian article for an Indian news website. Swami made a series of strawman claims about the alleged “goals” of what he collectively describes as “Islamic terrorism” along with the alleged behaviour of Indian Muslims, and proposed a series of “solutions” targeting Indian non-Hindus en masse (especially Muslims and Christians) along with neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Regular readers will notice that many of Swamy’s statements are identical to the RSS’ core ideology, particularly the propaganda writings of the Hitler-supporting RSS co-founder M.S. Golwalkar. Swamy’s article is available online in full here. Key extracts:

Muslims, though a minority in India, still have fanatics who dare to lead violent attacks against Hindus. Other Muslims of India just lump it, sulk or rejoice….[…]…. Muslims cannot be divided into ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’ because the former just capitulate when confronted.

…..Therefore we need today a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. In this response, Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. That they do, I will not believe, unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors are Hindus…..But still, if any Muslim does so acknowledge his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj, which is Hindustan. India that is Bharat that is Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors are Hindus. Even Parsis and Jews in India have Hindu ancestors. Others, who refuse to so acknowledge or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration can remain in India, but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).

[…..]

Goal 1: Overawe India on Kashmir.

Strategy: Remove Article 370, and re-settle ex-servicemen in the Valley. Create Panun Kashmir for Hindu Pandit community. Look or create opportunity to take over PoK [Pakistan-occupied Kashmir]. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to struggle for independence.

Goal 2: Blast our temples and kill Hindu devotees.

Strategy: Remove the [Mughal-era mosque] masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple complex [in Varanasi], and 300 others in other sites as a tit-for-tat.

Goal 3: Make India into Darul Islam.

Strategy: Implement Uniform Civil Code, make Sanskrit learning compulsory and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India as Hindu Rashtra [Hindu State] in which only those non-Hindus can vote if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors are Hindus. Re-name India as Hindustan as a nation of Hindus and those whose ancestors are Hindus.

Goal 4: Change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning.

Strategy: Enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hindu religion to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned. Declare caste is not birth-based but code of discipline based. Welcome non-Hindus to re-convert to the caste of their choice provided they adhere to the code of discipline. Annex land from Bangladesh in proportion to the illegal migrants from that country staying in India. At present, northern one-third from Sylhet to Khulna can be annexed to re-settle the illegal migrants.

Goal 5: Denigrate Hinduism through vulgar writings and preaching in mosques, madrassas, and churches to create loss of self-respect amongst Hindus and make them fit for capitulation.

Strategy: Propagate the development of a Hindu mindset (see my new book Hindutva and National Renaissance, Haranand, 2010).

CNN-IBN journalist Karan Thapar subsequently interviewed Subramanian Swamy and meticulously challenged him about the statements in his article; video footage and an English transcript of the full interview is available via CNN-IBN here. It is worth reading in full, not least because of Swamy’s own behaviour and ridiculous “arguments” during the interview. Also note that Swamy made the following claims: (a) he was “proud” of his views, (b) his overall agenda explicitly targets Christians as well as Muslims, and (c) he has “already won over the RSS heart long ago”.

Incidentally, many readers will notice that Modi’s regime has already started the process of implementing a number of the “strategies” mentioned above.

Subramanian Swamy’s personal Twitter account is full of similar nonsense. Furthermore, Swamy is also now on record as claiming that “being gay is a mental disorder” and subsequently addressing homophobic insults to people who objected to his statements.

Despite the abhorrent nature of Swamy’s views, the Wall Street Journal has recently continued to give him a platform, albeit about economic issues, without publicly disclosing any of the information above.

21. NARENDRA MODI AND SHIV SENA’S BAL THACKERAY:

The BJP’s oldest ally is the Far-Right Maharashtrian organisation “Shiv Sena” (“Army of Shiva” or “Army of God”), which is now also a political party; approximately 80% of Shiv Sena politicians currently have criminal charges against them, the largest percentage of any Indian political party. The Shiv Sena has repeatedly been involved in fomenting sectarian conflict and violence, first targeting Gujaratis and South Indians, and subsequently Muslims (most notoriously during the 1992-1993 Bombay riots).

According to a formal judicial investigation in India, “the immediate causes of the Bombay Riots were: (a) the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya [the Shiv Sena was one of the Hindu Nationalist groups responsible for its destruction], (b) the aggravation of Muslim sentiments by the Hindus with their celebration rallies and (c) the insensitive and harsh approach of the police while handling the protesting mobs which initially were not violent.” The investigation also confirmed that writings in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna (“Confrontation”) played a major role in inciting sectarian conflict and anti-Muslim violence during the riots; Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray himself had repeatedly written inflammatory polemics in Saamna, describing “what should be done to the Muslims”.

The Shiv Sena has repeatedly been responsible for threats and violence targeting Sikhs too; furthermore, the organisation has also recently been agitating against migrants from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

During the recent election campaign, minutes before Narendra Modi arrived at a rally, a Shiv Sena leader told the large assembled crowd that “Narendra Modi will destroy Pakistan within 6 months if he comes to power”, although the organisation subsequently distanced itself from his statements.

It turns out that Narendra Modi himself was directly involved with the Shiv Sena’s late leader, the Hitler-idolising Bal Thackeray (1926-2012); one of the photos in the image at the top of this article shows Modi bowing to Thackeray, and the two men even jointly addressed large rallies where Thackeray made virulently anti-Muslim statements to the audience.

Examples of Thackeray’s statements are available as follows:

(a) Via the Indian Express: In 2007, Thackeray jointly addressed a rally alongside Narendra Modi. During Thackeray’s 20-minute speech, he said that his dream was to create “a Hindustan of the Hindus” so that “we can bring Islam in this country down to its knees”.

(b) Via India Today: In 1984, Thackeray gave an interview in which he stated:

”[Muslims] are spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer. The…country should be saved from the Muslims and the police should support them [Hindu Maha Sangh] in their struggle just like the police in Punjab were sympathetic to the Khalistanis.”

(c) Via The Daily Beast and the Times of India: In 1992, just weeks before the Bombay riots erupted, Thackeray stated:

“If you take [Hitler’s autobiography] Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.”

In 1993, Thackeray gave an interview to TIME magazine in which he stated:

“There is nothing wrong if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany”.

(d) Via CNN-IBN: In 2008, Thackeray promoted “Hindu terrorism” involving Hindu “suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus”.

(e) Via NDTV: Accused of being dictatorial and a demagogue, Thackeray stated:

“I am a great admirer of Hitler, and I am not ashamed to say so ! I do not say that I agree with all the methods he employed, but he was a wonderful organiser and orator, and I feel that he and I have several things in common.….What India really needs is a dictator who will rule benevolently, but with an iron hand.”

(f) Via the New India Press: Thackeray is on record as making the following statements:

“Yes, I am a dictator. It is a Hitler that is needed in India today.’’

[After Thackeray was asked in a television programme whether he wanted to be the Hitler of Bombay] ”Do not underestimate me, I am [the Hitler] of the whole of Maharashtra and want to be of whole of India.’’

(g) Via the New York Times: The article quotes Thackeray describing himself as the “Hitler of Bombay”. The article also includes multiple extracts from previous NYT articles describing Thackeray and the Shiv Sena’s role in sectarian conflict and particularly anti-Muslim carnage.

(h) Via Outlook India: Includes a 1996 video interview of Thackeray describing himself as “the Hitler of Maharashtra”, denigrating democracy and praising dictatorship.

(i) Via Outlook India: English transcript of Thackeray’s 1996 interview when he repeatedly denigrated democracy.

(j) Via TIME magazine: In 1993, Thackeray stated: “If a holy war is to begin because of me, so be it”.

22. NARENDRA MODI AND SAVARKAR, FOUNDER OF “HINDU NATIONALISM”:

Self-described “Hindu Nationalist” Narendra Modi has repeatedly praised V.D. Savarkar (1883-1966), most recently tweeting: “We remember and salute his tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland” and adding “Veer Savarkar is remembered as a prolific writer, thinker, poet and a social reformer. Leaving for parliament to pay tributes to Veer Savarkar.” Around the same time last year (the anniversary of Savarkar’s birth), Modi described Savarkar as a “heroic man”, a “worshipper of weapons” and a “worshipper of sacred texts”. An article on Modi’s own website also includes audio footage of a speech of Modi “going back almost two decades, where he talks about the phenomenon Veer Savarkar was”.

Savarkar coined the term “Hinduvta”, ie. Hindu Nationalism. He wrote numerous propaganda texts promoting this ideology and has been one of its most influential figures. Savarkar was an atheist, which possibly explains why “Hindu Nationalism” is stripped of Hinduism’s admirable pluralistic religious ideals and ethical principles.

Savarkar is on record as repeatedly endorsing Hitler, the Nazis and their treatment of religious minorities. Quoting directly from Savarkar’s own propaganda writings and speeches, numerous examples of his statements were comprehensively documented in the previous article in this series. In summary:

(a) Savarkar praised Hitler, Nazism and Fascism;
(b) Savarkar praised expansionist Nazi Germany and multiple aspects of Nazi ideology;
(c) Savarkar made statements duplicating the Nazi concept of a “Fatherland”;
(d) Savarkar explicitly compared Indian Hindus and Muslims to Germans and Jews;
(e) Savarkar explicitly stated that Indian Muslims should be treated the way Nazis treated German Jews;
(f) Savarkar explicitly advocated the “Two Nation Theory” and reiterated the parallels with Germany and Jews;
(g) Savarkar denigrated historical Hindu warrior codes of chivalry towards women and explicitly stated that Hindu men should rape Muslim women;
(h) Savarkar continued denigrating historical Hindu chivalry towards Muslim women and explicitly stated that Muslim women should be forcibly converted to Hinduism;
(i) Savarkar denigrated Buddhism’s principle of universal brotherhood;
(j) Savarkar promoted collaboration with the British colonial authorities and refused to support the mainstream Indian independence movement;
(k) Savarkar was one of the main ringleaders of the cabal that murdered Mahatma Gandhi, as confirmed by a formal judicial investigation in India during the 1960s.

23. NARENDRA MODI’S ELECTION MANIFESTO AND INDIAN NON-HINDUS:

The BJP’s 2014 election manifesto discussed Indian civilisation from ancient times to the modern period, explicitly referring to various examples in glowing terms, but it completely avoided mentioning anything from the 12th century to the 18th century (as the historian William Dalrymple also recently noted in the New Statesman). The entire era was eradicated from the manifesto’s sweeping historical summary, as though Muslims didn’t even exist, let alone contribute anything positive to Indian culture and civilisation during that extensive period.

Furthermore, the manifesto explicitly stated that persecuted Hindus overseas would be welcome to seek refuge in India, but no mention was made of similar privileges for persecuted Indians overseas from other religious backgrounds — a fact that Narendra Modi increasingly tied himself up into knots to “explain” when Indian professional journalist Arnab Goswami questioned him about the matter prior to the election. Full English transcript of the interview via Outlook India here.

24. MAYA KODNANI: SENIOR MINISTER IN NARENDRA MODI’S GUJARAT STATE GOVERNMENT, MURDEROUS RINGLEADER DURING 2002 RIOTS:

Maya Kodnani, a qualified medical doctor with a further diploma in Gynaecology and Obstetrics, was a senior minister in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat state government until 2009 (the perverse irony of Kodnani’s specific medical qualifications will become clear to readers shortly). In 2012, Kodnani was convicted of orchestrating one of the main massacres during the Gujarat 2002 riots. Along with 31 other perpetrators, Kodnani was found guilty of “murder, attempt to murder, conspiracy, spreading enmity and communal [sectarian] hatred and unlawful assembly”. Survivors and witnesses had repeatedly identified Kodnani as one of the ringleaders; she had even driven around and exhorted rioters to kill as many people as possible, and was seen handing out swords to Hindus, again exhorting them to kill Muslims. It is worth noting that Gujarat’s state police, under the primary jurisdiction of Modi’s right-hand-man Amit Shah, had initially refused to prosecute Kodnani, citing “lack of evidence”.

As documented in the English transcript via Outlook India here, Arnab Goswami, the Indian professional journalist mentioned in #23, also recently questioned Modi about the issue of Maya Kodnani. Modi worked closely with her, appointing Kodnani as “Minister for Women and Child Development” in 2007 (bear in mind that Kodnani was one of the ringleaders of a riot that had included mass rapes). There are only two plausible explanations: Either Kodnani managed to successfully trick Modi for years, or Modi approved of her actions during the 2002 riots (possibly including being complicit himself). Modi became noticeably aggressive and evasive when the journalist attempted to question him about Kodnani, including excusing his own promotion of Kodnani to the state Cabinet by repeatedly insisting that “she was not facing any charges at the time”, and even accusing the journalist of having “so much filth on [his] mind”.

As Firstpost observes, not only did Modi make Kodnani a senior minister in 2007 despite the fact that it was already well-known that she had been one of the ringleaders of the mass-murdering, mass-raping riot in February 2002, but Modi had even given Kodnani the ticket to run for election in that very same riot-ravaged constituency in December 2002.

25. “TEN MORE YEARS”:

Narendra Modi is now on record as claiming that it will take “10 years” for him to “transform India”. As detailed in #7 above, the RSS is planning to consolidate and expand its position in India for the next 50 years at the very least.

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

FURTHER INFORMATION:

1. I will repeat my statements from the previous two articles in this series: The information in this article should not be exploited by anyone to denigrate India & Indians in general, Hindus en masse or the religion of Hinduism as a whole; both as a Sikh and as an individual, I have a zero-tolerance policy towards racial & religious bigotry, regardless of the source and regardless of the target.

2. Senior academics such as Princeton University’s Dr Christophe Jaffrelot (who has written extensively about “Hindutva”/”Hindu Nationalism” and the RSS) have stated that Narendra Modi will switch to the extremist Hindu Nationalism agenda as “Plan B” if his alleged “development” plans ultimately fail.

Hypothetically, it is also possible that Modi and the RSS will not necessarily wait that long if they think they can get away with it domestically and internationally — particularly if (a) they decide to engineer some kind of “incident” in order to justify their subsequent actions [see #13 in the main article above, regarding the extremely incriminating information recently released by India’s Supreme Court and National Investigations Agency], or (b) there is a genuine Islamist terrorist attack and/or sectarian violence in India and/or a deterioration in relations with Pakistan which they can exploit.

Hopefully none of these events will occur.

Realpolitik may force Modi to moderate his stance and restrain his actions now that he is actually Prime Minister (especially due to foreign trade/diplomatic ties and international scrutiny). Nevertheless, legitimate concerns will remain if Modi does not resign from the RSS, denounce the organisation and condemn its ideology; the feasibility of this is of course complicated by the fact that the BJP openly describes the RSS as its “ideological fountainhead”.

3. The RSS, Bal Thackeray and Hindu Nationalists’ admiration for Hitler and Nazism is particularly ironic (not to mention extremely stupid) considering what the racist white supremacist Hitler actually thought of Indians, including the British colonial rule of India.

Furthermore, Narendra Modi’s Gujarat state government was exposed as enthusiastically promoting Hitler in school textbooks, including the glorification of Nazism.

Indian readers who are unaware of the full historical facts or (for whatever reason) misguidedly admire Hitler are very strongly advised to read Cambridge Professor Sir Richard J. Evans’ acclaimed Third Reich trilogy: The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War. Professor Evans is one of the world’s leading experts on the period; his historical trilogy is widely (and justifiably) regarded as the best, most comprehensive overview of Hitler, Nazism, the Third Reich and the Holocaust ever written. The books’ focus on the dangers of dictatorship & extreme nationalism should prove extremely educational, especially the focus on the consequences of large-scale cultural and institutional bigotry towards (and ultimately persecution of) religious minorities; the moral implications for members of majority populations who are either indifferent or actively complicit should also prove enlightening.

4. For interested readers and for future reference, contact details for the International Criminal Court at The Hague are available here. Details on atrocities which the ICC defines as crimes against humanity are available here. It is also worth noting that the United Nations Security Council has adopted multiple resolutions during the past decade in which it has reaffirmed its responsibility to protect people from genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; furthermore, one of these resolutions also states that rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute crimes against humanity or “a constitutive act with respect to genocide”.

5. The Twitter address of US President Barack Obama is @BarackObama. President Obama also uses the official White House twitter account: @WhiteHouse.

The Twitter address of British Prime Minister David Cameron is @Number10gov.

6. Contact details for the US Department of State are available here. The US Department of State’s Twitter address is @StateDept.

7. Contact details for US Secretary of State John Kerry are available here. John Kerry’s Twitter address is @JohnKerry.

8. Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison and Republican Congressman Joe Pitts have been leading American bipartisan efforts to oppose Narendra Modi. They have jointly introduced a bipartisan Congressional resolution urging the US Government to continue denying a visa to Modi on the grounds of religious freedom violations. They have also jointly introduced a bipartisan Congressional resolution on the protection of religious minorities in India, which includes calls for specific actions to be taken by the US State Department; the complete text of the resolution is available in PDF form online here.

Congressman Keith Ellison’s Twitter address is @keithellison. Congressman Joe Pitts’s Twitter address is @RepJoePitts.

9. Contact details for the British Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office are available here. The FCO’s Twitter address is @foreignoffice.

10. The Twitter address of Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister for Faith and Communities, is @SayeedaWarsi.

11. Contact details for the British Government’s Home Office are available here. The Home Office’s Twitter address is @ukhomeoffice.

12. The Twitter address of Keith Vaz, Chairman of the British Government’s Home Affairs Select Committee, is @Keith_VazMP.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham: An instrument of the Western Military Alliance.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government.

(Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS))

The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”. What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda.

Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.

The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades.

The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support (covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan.

Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are controlled indirectly by US-NATO.

The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.

US-NATO is involved in the recruitment, training and financing of ISIS death squads operating in both Iraq and Syria. ISIS operates through indirect channels in liaison with Western intelligence. In turn, corroborated by reports on Syria’s insurgency, Western special forces and mercenaries integrate the ranks of ISIS.

US-NATO support to ISIS is channeled covertly through America’s staunchest allies: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. According to London’s Daily Express “They had money and arms supplied by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

“through allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West [has] supported militant rebel groups which have since mutated into ISIS and other al‑Qaeda connected militias. ( Daily Telegraph, June 12, 2014)

While the media acknowledges that the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of supporting ISIS, it invariably fails to mention that both Doha and Riyadh are acting on behalf and in close liaison with Washington.

Under the banner of a civil war, an undercover war of aggression is being fought which essentially contributes to further destroying an entire country, its institutions, its economy. The undercover operation is part of an intelligence agenda, an engineered process which consists in transforming Iraq into an open territory.

Meanwhile, public opinion is led to believe that what is at stake is confrontation between Shia and Sunni.

America’s military occupation of Iraq has been replaced by non-conventional forms of warfare. Realities are blurred. In a bitter irony, the aggressor nation is portrayed as coming to the rescue of a “sovereign Iraq”.

An internal “civil war” between Shia and Sunni is fomented by US-NATO support to both the Al-Maliki government as well as to the Sunni ISIS rebels.
The break up of Iraq along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the US and its allies. (See map of Middle East below)

“Supporting both Sides”

The “War on Terrorism” consists in creating Al Qaeda terrorist entities as part of an intelligence operation, as well as also coming to the rescue of governments which are the target of the terrorist insurgency. This process is carried out under the banner of counter-terrorism. It creates the pretext to intervene.

ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which is broadly committed to secular forms of government. The caliphate project is part of a US intelligence agenda.

In response to the advance of the ISIS rebels, Washington is envisaging the use of aerial bombings as well as drone attacks in support of the Baghdad government as part of a counter-terrorism operation. It is all for a good cause: to fight the terrorists, without of course acknowledging that these terrorists are the “foot soldiers” of the Western military alliance.

Needless to say, these developments contribute not only to destabilizing Iraq, but also to weakening the Iraqi resistance movement, which is one of the major objectives of US-NATO.

The Islamic caliphate is supported covertly by the CIA in liaison with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkish intelligence. Israel is also involved in channeling support to both Al Qaeda rebels in Syria (out of the Golan Heights) as well to the Kurdish separatist movement in Syria and Iraq.

More broadly, the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) encompasses a consistent and diabolical logic: both sides –namely the terrorists and the government– are supported by the same military and intelligence actors, namely US-NATO.

While this pattern describes the current situation in Iraq, the structure of “supporting both sides” with a view to engineering sectarian conflict has been implemented time and again in numerous countries. Insurgencies integrated by Al Qaeda operatives (and supported by Western intelligence) prevail in a large number of countries including Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, the Central African Republic, Pakistan. The endgame is to destabilize sovereign nation states and to transform countries into open territories (on behalf of so-called foreign investors).

The pretext to intervene on humanitarian grounds (e.g. in Mali, Nigeria or the Central African Republic) is predicated on the existence of terrorist forces. Yet these terrorist forces would not exist without covert US-NATO support.

The Capture of Mosul: US-NATO Covert Support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
Something unusual occurred in Mosul which cannot be explained in strictly military terms.

On June 10, the insurgent forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) allegedly (according to press reports) captured Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, with a population of over one million people. While these developments were “unexpected” according to the Obama administration, they were known to the Pentagon and US intelligence, which were not only providing weapons, logistics and financial support to the ISIS rebels, they were also coordinating, behind the scenes, the ISIS attack on the city of Mosul.

While ISIS is a well equipped and disciplined rebel army when compared to other Al Qaeda affiliated formations, “the capture” of Mosul, did not hinge upon ISIS’s military capabilities. Quite the opposite: Iraqi forces which outnumbered the rebels by far, equipped with advanced weapons systems could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels.

There were 30,000 government forces in Mosul as opposed to 1000 ISIS rebels, according to reports. The Iraqi army chose not to intervene. The media reports explained without evidence that the decision of the Iraqi armed forces not to intervene was spontaneous characterized by mass defections.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul,openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting. (Guardian, June 12, 2014, emphasis added)

The reports point to the fact that Iraqi military commanders were sympathetic with the Sunni led ISIS insurgency intimating that they are largely Sunni:

Speaking from the Kurdish city of Erbil, the defectors accused their officers of cowardice and betrayal, saying generals in Mosul “handed over” the city over to Sunni insurgents, with whom they shared sectarian and historical ties. (Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2014)

The report is misleading. The senior commanders were largely hardline Shiite. The defections occurred de facto when the command structure collapsed and senior (Shiite) military commanders left the city.

What is important to understand, is that both sides, namely the regular Iraqi forces and the ISIS rebel army are supported by US-NATO. There were US military advisers and special forces including operatives from private security companies on location in Mosul working with Iraq’s regular armed forces. In turn, there are Western special forces or mercenaries within ISIS (acting on contract to the CIA or the Pentagon) who are in liaison with US-NATO (e.g. through satellite phones).

Under these circumstances, with US intelligence amply involved, there would have been routine communication, coordination, logistics and exchange of intelligence between a US-NATO military and intelligence command center, US-NATO military advisers forces or private military contractors on the ground assigned to the Iraqi Army in Mosul and Western special forces attached to the ISIS brigades. These Western special forces operating covertly within the ISIS could have been dispatched by a private security company on contract to US-NATO.

In this regard, the capture of Mosul appears to have been a carefully engineered operation, planned well in advance. With the exception of a few skirmishes, no fighting took place.

Entire divisions of the Iraqi National Army –trained by the US military with advanced weapons systems at their disposal– could have easily repelled the ISIS rebels. Reports suggest that they were ordered by their commanders not to intervene. According to witnesses, “Not a single shot was fired”.

The forces that had been in Mosul have fled — some of which abandoned their uniforms as well as their posts as the ISIS forces swarmed into the city.

Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/06/10/mosul-falls-to-al-qaeda-as-us-trained-security-forces-flee/

A contingent of one thousand ISIS rebels takes over a city of more than one million? Without prior knowledge that the US controlled Iraqi Army (30,000 strong) would not intervene, the Mosul operation would have fallen flat, the rebels would have been decimated.

Who was behind the decision to let the ISIS terrorists take control of Mosul? Who gave them the “green light”

Had the senior Iraqi commanders been instructed by their Western military advisers to hand over the city to the ISIS terrorists? Were they co-opted?

Was the handing over of Mosul to ISIS part of a US intelligence agenda?

Were the Iraqi military commanders manipulated or paid off into allowing the city to fall into the hands of the ISIS rebels without “a single shot being fired”.

Shiite General Mehdi Sabih al-Gharawi who was in charge of the Mosul Army divisions “had left the city”. Al Gharawi had worked hand in glove with the US military. He took over the command of Mosul in September 2011, from US Col Scott McKean. Had he been co-opted, instructed by his US counterparts to abandon his command?

(image left) U.S. Army Col. Scott McKean, right, commander, 4th Advise and Assist Brigade, 1st Armored Division, talks with Iraqi police Maj. Gen. Mahdi Sabih al-Gharawi following a transfer of authority ceremony on September 4, 2011

US forces could have intervened. They had been instructed to let it happen. It was part of a carefully planned agenda to facilitate the advance of the ISIS rebel forces and the installation of the ISIS caliphate.

The whole operation appears to have been carefully staged.

In Mosul, government buildings, police stations, schools, hospitals, etc are formally now under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In turn, ISIS has taken control of military hardware including helicopters and tanks which were abandoned by the Iraqi armed forces.

What is unfolding is the installation of a US sponsored Islamist ISIS caliphate alongside the rapid demise of the Baghdad government. Meanwhile, the Northern Kurdistan region has de facto declared its independence from Baghdad. Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces (which are supported by Israel) have taken control of the cities of Arbil and Kirkuk. (See map above)

UPDATE [June 17, 2014]

Since the completion of this article, information has emerged on the central role played by the Sunni Tribes and sections of the former Baathist movement (including the military) in taking control of Mosul and other cities. The control of Mosul is in the hands of several Sunni opposition groups and the ISIS.

While these forces — which constitute an important component of the resistance movement directed against the al-Maliki government– are firmly opposed to ISIS, a de facto “relationship” has nonetheless emerged between the ISIS and the Sunni resistance movement.

The fact that the US is firmly behind ISIS does not seem to be a matter of concern to the Tribal Council:

Sheikh Zaydan al Jabiri, leader of the political wing of the Tribal Revolutionary Council, told Sky News his organisation viewed ISIS as dangerous terrorists, and that it was capable of taking them on.

“Even this blessed revolution that has taken place in Mosul, there may be jihadist movements involved in it, but the revolution represents all the Iraqi people – it has been brought about by the Sunni tribes, and some baathist elements, it certainly does not belong to ISIS,” he said.

But Mr Jabiri, [based in Amman]… also made a clear threat that without Western help, the tribes and ISIS may be forced to combine efforts targeting their shared enemy – the Shia-dominated Iraqi government. (Sky News, emphasis added)

An exiled leader of the Iraqi resistance movement calling for “Western help” from the aggressor nation? From the above statement, one has the distinct impression that the Tribal Revolutionary Council has been co-opted and/or infiltrated.

Moreover, in a bitter irony, within sectors of the Sunni resistance movement, US-NATO which supports both the Al Maliki government and the ISIS terrorists– is no longer considered the main aggressor nation.

The Sunni resistance movement broadly considers Iran, which is providing military assistance to the al-Maliki government as well as special forces- as the aggressor alongside the US.

In turn, it would appear that Washington is creating conditions for sucking Iran more deeply into the conflict, under the pretext of joining hands in fighting ISIS terrorism. During talks in Vienna on June 16, US and Iranian officials agreed “to work together to halt ISIS’s momentum—though with no military coordination, the White House stressed”.(WSJ, June 16, 2014)

In chorus The US media applauds: “The US and Iran have a mutual interest in stemming the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)” (Christian Science Monitor, June 13 2014). An absurd proposition knowing that the ISIS is a creature of US intelligence, financed by the Western military alliance, with Western special forces in its ranks.

Is a regional conflict involving Iran in the making?

Tehran is using the ISIS pretext as an “opportunity” to intervene in Iraq: Iran’s intelligence is fully aware that ISIS is a terrorist proxy controlled by the CIA.

Concluding Remarks

There were no Al Qaeda rebels in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Moreover, Al Qaeda was non-existent in Syria until the outset of the US-NATO-Israeli supported insurgency in March 2011.

The ISIS is not an independent entity. It is a creation of US intelligence. It is a US intelligence asset, an instrument of non-conventional warfare.

The ultimate objective of this ongoing US-NATO engineered conflict opposing the al-Maliki government forces to the ISIS insurgency is to destroy and destabilize Iraq as a Nation State. It is part of an intelligence operation, an engineered process of transforming countries into territories. The break up of Iraq along sectarian lines is a longstanding policy of the US and its allies.

The ISIS is a caliphate project of creating a Sunni Islamist state. It is not a project of the Sunni population of Iraq which historically has been committed to a secular system of government. The caliphate project is a US design. The advances of ISIS forces is intended to garnish broad support within the Sunni population directed against the al-Maliki government

Through its covert support of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, Washington is overseeing the demise of its own proxy regime in Baghdad. The issue, however, is not “regime change”, nor is the “replacement” of the al-Maliki regime contemplated.

The division of Iraq along sectarian-ethnic lines has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 10 years.

What is envisaged by Washington is the outright suppression of the Baghdad regime and the institutions of the central government, leading to a process of political fracturing and the elimination of Iraq as a country.

This process of political fracturing in Iraq along sectarian lines will inevitably have an impact on Syria, where the US-NATO sponsored terrorists have in large part been defeated.

Destabilization and political fragmentation in Syria is also contemplated: Washington’s intent is no longer to pursue the narrow objective of “regime change” in Damascus. What is contemplated is the break up of both Iraq and Syria along sectarian-ethnic lines.

The formation of the caliphate may be the first step towards a broader conflict in the Middle East, bearing in mind that Iran is supportive of the al-Maliki government and the US ploy may indeed be to encourage the intervention of Iran.

The proposed re-division of both Iraq and Syria is broadly modeled on that of the Federation of Yugoslavia which was split up into seven “independent states” (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYRM), Slovenia, Montenegro, Kosovo).

According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, the re division of Iraq into three separate states is part of a broader process of redrawing the Map of the Middle East.

The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers”. (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East” By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)

Rt.com
14 June 2014

By Pepe Escobar

 

The Phantom of the (tragic) Middle East Opera is back. A killer without a clue, he can’t be blamed for not being consistent.

His most recent opus speaks for itself; like a Kabuki mask high on Earl Grey tea, the Phantom is eviscerated by his own mighty pen, actually sword.

The fact that the Phantom keeps getting away with his vast desert of convoluted lies – instead of languishing in some rotten, extraordinary rendition hotel – spells out all we need to know about so-called Western “elites”, of which he’s been a faithful, and handsomely rewarded, servant.

So Western “inaction” in Syria has led to the latest Iraq tragedy? Sorry, Tony; it was yours and “Dubya’s” 2003 Shock and Awe “action” that set the whole Shakespearean tragedy in motion.

The Phantom always wanted the Obama administration to bomb Syria, as much as he labored for “Dubya” to destroy Iraq. Phantom logic never considered that would have installed in Damascus the same Islamic State of Iraqi and the Levant (ISIL) that is now making a push towards Baghdad.

Then there’s the gift that keeps on giving – the endlessly recycled, repackaged Global War on Terror (GWOT), of which the Phantom was the prime sidekick. So Phantom had to be on board the latest US craze – which brands ISIL as the avatar of a new 9/11.

In Syria, Phantom has been one of the prime instigators of the “rebel with a cause” ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra-infested gang. If the Phantom’s bombing logic had won in Syria – he was preaching Damascus as a replay of 2003 Baghdad – Aleppo would be, for a while now, an avatar of Mosul.

The deeper we get into it, the Phantom looks and sounds like the heir of – also clueless – British commanders in 19th century Afghanistan. Look, for instance, at this unintended consequence of the 2001 American bombing of Afghanistan; now we have Hazaras – Afghan Shi’ites – fighting side by side with Iranians, alongside Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army, against the Phantom-supported Syrian “rebels”. Oh Tony; not even your old cohort Peter “Lord of Darkness” Mandelson could have explained that.

By the way, the Phantom has always been a firm believer in the “evil” of Iran, constantly “warning” that Tehran was on the verge of assembling a nuclear weapon (old habits – as in the Phantom’s Saddam syndrome – die hard.) So imagine his Dick Cheney-worthy stupor when Washington and Tehran are on the verge of discussing in Vienna the set up of some sort of joint action to fight ISIL in Iraq, and even “uber-hawks” such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham utter the unimaginable words, “We are probably going to need [Iran’s] help to hold Baghdad.”

The Phantom would be incapable of connecting the geopolitical dots from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria; the bottom line he would be unable to identify is that there is absolutely no strategic, long-term Anglo-American foreign policy project in what the Pentagon still calls the “arc of instability”. If there ever was a motto, it was “Dubya’s” “you’re either with us or with the terrorists”. A motto turned on its head, because until this very moment Anglo-American power was “with the terrorists”, from Libya to Syria; a predictable perversion of time-tested Divide and Rule.

The Obama administration is going no holds barred to get a SOFA in Afghanistan – code for Enduring Freedom forever (with “discreet” Special Forces as the invisible stars.) Washington has already admitted it is sending lethal “assistance” to “moderate” rebels in Syria (as, in theory, the Islamic Front goons, not Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIL). As if Hollywoodish CIA assets wouldn’t know that these weapons will certainly be bought and/or stolen by hardcore jihadis.

ISIL in the borderless desert between Syria and Iraq is already a proto-Caliphate. Blowback from this weaponizing of so-called “moderates” – there are no “moderates”, as there are no Taliban “moderates” – will be no less than staggering. Victims includes Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran; Turkmen in Iraq (as it’s already happening this week); and of course Christians all over (as it already happened in Syria).

Bomb them into democracy, again

The Phantom now is preaching for American “intervention” in Iraq; first you starve them; then you bomb them into a wasteland and call it “democracy”; then you occupy them; then you infest them with jihadis; then they kick you out; then the jihadis raise hell (now flush with $425 million stolen from a government vault in Mosul, apart from loads of cash from Wahhabis in the Gulf to buy all those white Toyotas and RPGs); then you re-occupy them softly. It IS the gift that keeps on giving.

As for the notion – equally peddled by the Phantom and US neo-cons – that ISIL is a threat to Western security (“trying to do harm to Europe, to America and other people”, in Kerry’s words), that’s nonsense; a joke as monumental as that maze of American satellites incapable of tracking a long line of white Toyotas advancing in the Western Iraqi desert – leading to the swift disintegration of four Iraqi army divisions.

They saw it, they tracked it, and they kept mum. That’s straight from the Empire of Chaos’s playbook. Why not advance murderous “Divide and Rule” between Sunnis and Shiites? Let them eat corpses – and kill each other to kingdom come, as in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

ISIL’s push is a remix of the Sunni-Shi’ite civil war of 2006-2007, whose effects, pre-American surge, I documented in my reportage book Red Zone Blues. At the time, it was all centered in Baghdad; when al-Qaeda in Iraq took over the Dora neighborhood in Baghdad, that lasted only a short while. Sunnis themselves rebelled against the medieval jihadi “worldview”.

The Phantom, anyway, got his wish; Iraq is for all practical purposes broken, irretrievably fragmented, and cannot be “fixed” (Colin Powell’s terminology). The Kurds have already solved one of the most intractable problems of post-Shock and Awe; they’ve already rearranged Sykes-Picot by taking over oil-rich Kirkuk (not to mention the Nineveh plateau).

And as further proof ISIL has nothing to do with a threat to Western security, the tanks and heavy artillery they captured in Iraq were redirected to Syria, in their push to fight Damascus.

This is all too much for the Phantom to digest. Perhaps he should start by reading this – as in Iraqi works rejecting everything that happened even before 2003, and even before the Phantom’s limelight moment.

As for the Phantom’s key argument that what’s happening now in Iraq is the result of less – and not more – Western warmongering, call it phantom hubris. The “Middle East” – in fact Southwest Asia – is a Western fiction imposed by colonial powers on the local populations. What the Pentagon described since the early 2000s as the “arc of instability” is a self-fulfilling projection of anarchy, with some patches of “peace” represented by those repellent GCC petro-monarchies (after we need “our” oil).

And then there’s the slowly but surely inevitable process of progressive integration of Eurasia – along the myriad, Chinese-driven new silk roads. That’s anathema for the empire of chaos and its “special relationship” minion. So Southwest Asia in perpetual chaos is more than welcomed. Expect hubristic Phantom to call for increased fuel to be added to this Western-concocted opera already on fire.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

Rt.com
17 june 2014

By Judith Bello

I was with a group of 5 Americans, 3 Canadians and an Irishman who went to observe the Syrian election, but there were other observers from Asia, Africa and South America. On the way there, I thought about having a particular angle to report from, and I decided that since there weren’t many women observers that I would talk to other women and try to get their perspective on the election, but also on life in Syria before and after the war. I wanted to look at the issues from a less politicized perspective than most of what you hear and read on the subject of the war in Syria, and Assad’s election.

I did meet and interview number of women in Syria, and I found myself in contact with another woman when I got back, an American named Lilly Martin living in Syria with her Syrian husband. When I heard that Lilly had a house in the town of Kassab that had been destroyed during the recent period of occupation by ‘rebel’ forces (actually, al Nusra Front I think) , I wanted to know more. Kassab, an Armenian town near the Turkish border, was occupied during March of this year and only liberated by the Syrian Army a few days ago. I asked Lilly via email if she would be willing to do a written interview through email and she agreed.

Because Lilly is a middle class American and has lived much of her life in this country, her voice is familiar. She says that she had not considered herself an ‘activist’ since the Vietnam War. She says she had not thought of herself as a feminist before now. But, she says this war has changed her. Not everyone will agree with Lilly’s perspective, but it is honest, and not unfamiliar. I am very grateful to her for sharing her insights and experiences. What follows are my questions and Lilly’s answers.

Judy: How did you come to live in Syria?

Lilly: I married in 1978 in California a young kid my same age who was originally from Syria, but had migrated to USA and had left Syria in 1970. We were married and living in California from 1978 to 1994. He was in the real estate business and I was a medical professional. We had 2 sons born in CA, then moved to Syria to be close to his parents and siblings. My parents had died, and my only brother was living in Singapore teaching.

Judy: How long have you lived in Kassab and did you live in Syria before that?

Lilly: I have lived in the city of Latakia from 1994 until present. Latakia is a mid-size city, it is a beach resort for summer tourism and a Port for shipping. I visited Latakia first in 1986, then in 1990, and finally moved here in 1994. The home I lost in Kassab is my summer house, as Kassab is a high mountain village, and many people have a summer house there. Kassab is about 2000 pop and is Armenian, but the summer-house-people are of other sects. Kassab used to be a frequent summer spot for Saudi and Kuwaiti families seeking cool breezes. They would drive up from “Arabia”.

Judy: What was your life like in Kassab before the war?

Lilly : My life in Latakia from 1994 to March 2011 was wonderful. I had a great group of friends, they were all females, some Syria and some western women. We had regular meetings and I called them ‘The Ladies Club’. That ‘club’ was broken up by this war, because some of the ladies backed the ‘revolution’ and some did not. I did not, so we have never met again, after a famous Christmas party in 2011, where I simply stated, “My Christmas prayer is: God please stop the terrorists”. Half the group attacked me viciously, they said that there were no terrorists, only freedom fighters. When I said, “But, they are making bombs and throwing them everywhere indiscriminately!” They countered, “They have to defend themselves.” I never did get their logic of throwing a bomb into a shopping center in order to defend themselves.

My kids had free education, and really a good education system in both Arabic and English, mandatory. My kids went to University for FREE, which is the right of all Syria students, as long as the grades are kept up. We had free medical, hospital, surgeries, etc. Medicines were so cheap, because Syria was a large manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, with export to over 32 countries. Free education and Free medical. What more do you want?

Latakia is a easy-going place, there are no dress codes or restrictions here. Everyone got along and in 1994-March 2011 there were no uprising, no riots, no sectarian strife. The government and police were strong, so criminal activity was very low, no one had hand guns other than police and Army. No robberies, no car-jackings, no armed robbery, no bank robbery. There was regular crime, like thieves coming in when people were away, and a car theft, but nothing which involved a gun. No one had a gun.

Judy: Did you or your loved ones ever have any problem with the government in Syria

Lilly: I never had any problem with the government. My husband, and all of his family members, are NOT civil servants, or connected to the government in anyway. My husband is a self-employed businessman. We didn’t have anyone who was in prison, or in any trouble. It was my general impression that there was nothing to be afraid of, if you obeyed the laws, just I would have if I was still living in USA.

Judy: What did you think was happening at the beginning of the insurgency and where did you think it would lead?

Lilly: We all watched the revolution in Egypt. We wondered if it was coming to Syria? We all shook our heads and guessed that it would NOT. I had friends who were a couple of retired teachers from Canada, who had asked to come to visit Syria in January 2011. We all debated as to whether there could be any disturbances, and we all concluded that there was nothing going to happen. They came and we did my famous ‘walking-tour’ of Damascus. They went home and our revolution began March 2011.

From our home, watching TV we watched the coverage of Deraa March 201 unfold. Deraa is a very small and insignificant town. It is so small and remote, I would venture a guess that 90% of Syrians had never visited it. I know that the Latakian people had no relationship to Deraa, they were about 8 hours drive time between the 2 and there was no exchanges between the 2 places. Deraa was famous for archeology, and farming, and no much else.

At first, we guessed it must really be an uprising. An actual uprising of disgruntled people . People who felt oppressed or grievances of some sort. Then we wondered why were their so many soldiers and policemen being killed? How could the BBC report a soldiers funeral as coming under fire from other soldiers? That made no sense. Who were these snipers on roofs? Once they showed the Omari Mosque was a store-room for weapons, then we understood the true story. This was a foreign attack, but disguised as a popular uprising.

If it was really an uprising, then we should see it come to Latakia eventually. It did, on April 1, 2011. That was the first day. The mayor and other dignitaries went out to the protesters and asked them “WHAT” do you all want? They said in reply, “FREEDOM”. The mayor asked, “WHAT does that mean?” No reply. I saw the protesters. They were drug addicts and weird looking people, and they didn’t all look like there were even from Latakia. Out-side agitators, bused in to create trouble. However, there were some genuine intellectuals, how were duped into promoting the cause, which they later dropped when it went to armed rebellion.

People would protest, they would destroy shops, they killed innocent civilians, they killed soldiers, and police. Next came the President on TV announcing that they would abolish the emergency law, and they would send all police and soldiers to watch the protests, but strictly unarmed. The President thought that the western media was showing the Syrian police and soldiers as brutal, so by taking away the weapons, there could be no excesses. I’ll never forget that day, the day they were not allowed to carry a weapon, just to stand and watch. My friend’s son in the Police force, stood and watched, and the peaceful protesters cut him up with axes. He was buried in a plastic garbage bag. That was April 2011, from that day on we knew this was really awful, and had nothing to do with freedom or democracy.
Judy: Were you aware of a part of the population that was not being well served by the government and who could be used to spearhead a regional proxy war?

Lilly: The government in Syria was, and is secular. The President is a minority, but most of his cabinet of ministers are Sunni, the majority. The Defense Minister, who is directly responsible for the Military, was a Christian, until the terrorists blew him up in Damascus, and now he is a Sunni. The Syrian government has never been a “Alowi Elite”, or a “Minority Rule”. Those are media mantra, but are not fact.

My husband and all his relatives are Sunni, the majority, which is about 60% of the country. Alowi are about 20%, Christians are about 15%, there are about 5% which are Shite. Syria is famous for having 18 sects. The first sectarian strife was instigated by the Ottoman Turks in 1860. The second sectarian strife was 1980’s in Hama, instigated by Muslim Brotherhood. During the years I have been here there was no sectarian strife.

Every Syrian is the same under law. Corruption does exist, as it does all over the middle east, but it was dispersed among all sects. The reason for this secular government was due to the Ba’ath Party being the sole ruling party until 2012, when the new constitution abolished the one party rule. The Ba’ath party was strictly secular, and members and supporters of the Ba’ath party are among all various sects. It is still the largest and strongest party. It will take years to build confidence in other parties.

There was no “under-served, oppressed, unrepresented” portion of Syrian society. The western media mantra is the SUNNI majority rose up because they had been downtrodden too long. This is the SUNNI fantasy. My family are Sunni, and from the average types, nothing spectacular or different. There is a self-deluded paranoia here, among under-educated and bigoted Sunnis, who say all their problems are because the Alowis have all the breaks. No one asks the Sunnis why do they refuse to take advantage of the FREE education? They decided that they will do a revolution, strip everything hard earned from their minority neighbors, and then the yogurt maker will be appointed Prime Minster. This is their fantasy.

There is a huge cultural difference between Sunni families and Alowi families here on the coast, which is the Alowi highest concentration. You find the Alowi families living on an orange farm, the mother and father are tending to the trees, meanwhile their kids are studying to be a Doctor, Lawyer and Engineer. Down in the city of Latakia, you find the Sunni families complaining that their kids have to study so much, and they have to pay for private tutors because their kids are not self motivated, and want to drop out of school. These people are my relatives, and have been through 36 years of marriage. They need a lot of work, and they need to do it alone.

It was the Sunni population which fostered and participated in the rebellion. It didn’t take much outside agitation to get them into the streets and demanding that the country should be Sunni only, with all Christians shipped out to Beirut, and all Alowis slaughtered. That was the Free Syrian Army’s first banners and slogans. The Free Syrian Army was and is exclusively Sunni. If you can find one FSA soldier who is from any sect other than Sunni, I will give you $100.00 The FSA is a bigoted, sectarian terrorist group, who prays upon the uneducated, and undereducated bigoted people who want to blame all their woes on the government and their minority neighbors.

The problem with this plan of revolution was that it had very little support on the ground. The vast majority of Sunnis did not buy it or accept it or support it.

Judy: What do you think is the role of the US in the current war against Syria?

Lilly: The US is the founder, inventor and the prime driver of the attack on the Syrian people for the purpose of regime change. The CIA admits they started planning and funding this many years ago. I can understand their wish for regime change, as Syria is a pro-Palestinian resistance supporter. Those goals are not compatible with US. However, once they started their plans, and got to the point that they could see their was no ground support for the removal of the President, they should have switched gears and given up on the attack, and found another plan. But, the evil part is to continue killing innocent unarmed civilians, only because they refuse to be traitors and refuse to stop fighting terrorists. This is a moral low point for USA foreign policy.

The funding comes from Saudi Arabia, who is forced to fund by black-mail. In other words, if they don’t fund terrorism, their Royal family would be taken out over night, in the cause of human rights, and a new form of government instituted by USA. This could still happen. The Saudis have to be very docile, if they act too strong, the US will cut them down to size. The Army and military in Saudi Arabia are all in the hands of USA.

Judy: Did the people of Kassab have much social or economic commerce with people on the other side of the border in Turkey before the war?

Lilly : The border crossing at Kassab was very busy before the war. Trucks of Turkish merchandise coming in, Syrian dress shop owners going to Turkey for merchandise orders from their factories, shoes coming in from Turkey, sugar and tea going to Turkey from Syria (cheaper in Syria). The back and forth business exchanges were daily. As far as tourism, the Syrians went to Turkey all summer long on bus trips, going to shops, going to restaurants, to resorts. My own family took our summer vacation every year in Turkey. We loved it.

Judy: Were there problems with terrorists in Kassab before they took over the town a few months ago?

Lilly : The road from Latakia to Kassab had remained open all during the war. People were constantly coming and going between the 2 all during the war. Even on March 21, the day of invasion, there were people in Kassab visiting there. There was a place to the EAST of Kassab, towards Idlib, Qasta Maaf, Selma, Ferloq, Rabia, all those areas to the EAST of Kassab had experienced problems with terrorists. But, the coast and Kassab were OK and there had been no previous attacks. It was a shock and mystery why they would burst into Kassab on March 21, 2014. I still don’t see the military target or strategy. From the other side, I can’t see why they did it. Massacring 88 unarmed civilians and beheading 13. Why? For what reason? Because they were Christians?

Judy: Were there internal divisions in or around Kassab where people were taking divisive political or military stances within the community?

Lilly : There was nothing whatsoever political going on in Kassab. 2,000 Armenians, Syrian citizens, who are Christian. They were all small farmers, apples and peaches. Some owned tiny grocery shops, some owned hand soap factories, small sized, for the production of Olive Oil and Bay leaf hand soap bars. There were no parties, no protests, nothing. The Syrian Christians are all of one mind, which is in support of peace, safety, support of the government. I have never seen any Syrian Christian say anything about supporting any rebellion. There could be some Syrian Christians in USA who may be supporting regime change, but not inside Syria. Christians here see the rebellion as 100% Sunni and they have no place in it.

Judy : Were people killed when Kassab was overrun or did most people escape before the terrorists came in?

Lilly: 6 am, March 21, 2014 the terrorists burst in, according to survivors (I have their names and testimony) the terrorists were a combination of foreigners, with a few Syrians included. This would be classic Free Syrian Army. They are Syrians working with various Al Qaeda. 88 unarmed civilians killed immediately, with 13 of those beheaded. The survivors ran to Latakia in cars, etc. The survivors are still sleeping here at the Armenian church in Latakia (I spoke by cell phone to their media person this morning) 22 very elederly survivors were kidnapped and taken by force to Turkey, were they were treated well in a small village 23 kilometers north of Kassab. 11 of them have been brought back to Latakia, via Lebanon and we are waiting for the other 11.

Judy: Have you been suffering other problems due to the war before or since the terrorist invasion of Kassab? Have there been shortages of food or gas and oil, for instance.

Lilly: Since the war began, March 2011, the prices of normal everyday items of life have risen by 8 times. If an item had cost 100 lira, it is now 800 lira. I am referring to everything you eat, drink, or clothes. Many medicines are no longer available. You would have to go to Lebanon to find them, and at US prices. Gas, food and supplies are available, but at prices many can not bear. Syria has never had a welfare program, like money given to the poor. So the poor are suffering.

For example: my husband sells bulldozers. He has not sold one bulldozer since March 2011. We have been living off savings, with no income at all in this period. We are a typical family. Government employees still have their paychecks, so this helps many. Self employed people have been hit, and especially factory workers, since all the various factories were destroyed by FSA.
At certain times we were staying inside city limits, it was too dangerous to travel. Right now, the roads from Latakia to Homs to Damascus are all open and OK. There is no travel from Latakia to Aleppo, that is all terrorist lands.
Judy: What are the conditions under which refugees in Latakia live?

Lilly: The survivors of Kassab have been and still are sleeping at the Armenian church in Latakia. The church is modern and has water, kitchen, toilets and plenty of space. It is a church, school and cultural center all in one. It was renovated about 5 years ago, thank God for that, it has been put to use. The refugees are well cared for and have funds donated and are OK for the persent, but they will need a lot to repair and rebuild their homes in Kassab. Many homes have been looted and destroyed. Some are burnt up, some demolished.

Judy: How have the conditions of the war affected the circumstances of women and children in general in Syria?

Lilly: Women and children have suffered a great deal. But the biggest suffering has been those that LEFT Syria to stay in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. I will discuss the females and kids outside of Syria later with you. The suffering of those inside Syria, internally displaced, has been real, but not much more than males. We have many internally displaced refugees from Aleppo here in Latakia. They have food, shelter, medicines, and the kids are all in school. They are suffering because they can’t go home. They can’t have a normal income.

Judy: I saw a lot of martyrs images in and around Tartous when I was there . Are many of the men in your community engaged in the fighting as members of the military?

Lilly: The Syrian Army was ranked #16 in the world prior to the war. It consisted of 600,000 soldiers. I know many have died, the official count is 25,000 soldiers dead. The Syrian Army consists of young men 18 and over, healthy and not currently enrolled in University. It is a compulsory duty. The Syrian Army soldiers are from all 18 different sects. They are not “Assad loyalist” any more that the US military are “Obama regime loyalist”. Uniformed soldiers in a national Army are fighting for their country and family, but not necessarily for their leader or political ideology. The typical American soldier and the typical Syrian soldier are similar. You wear and uniform and shoot a gun and no one ever asks you for your political analysis.

The Syrian soldiers who have died in the war are from every family in every community across Syria. Everyone has lost someone.
Judy: How did you feel about the election? What are your thoughts on Bashar Assad’s continued Presidency?

Lilly: I was very excited about the election, I observed my local poll and took photos and wrote a report. I had been expecting the current President to make a big move toward free elections back in 2007. I could tell when he came to office in 200 he wanted to make changes. He was very slow, but I am sure he had advisors who cautioned to go slow. Syria is so conservative, they move slow. I know that the majority of people support him.

There are people who boycotted the election, they are mainly these bigoted, sectarian types. If they wanted a Sunni President, they could have all voted for Dr. Hassan al Nouri, but only 500,000 did. If you ask any of the revolutionaries who do they want leading, they have no candidate, no ideas, no goals. They are just dead-heads as far as I am concerned. All they needed to do was to present a vision of what they wanted for Syria should the regime fall. If their vision proposed was acceptable to many, it would have happened. But they never had a vision, or any plan. They are the blind leading the blind and wondering why everyone voted for President Assad.

Judy: Do you feel safe going home?

Lilly: I won’t feel safe returning to Kassab, to check on my home there, until all the Armenians go. I will tag-along with them. I would be afraid of left over bombs, or dead bodies laying around. I am a bit afraid really. But at some point the all clear will be given and I will go. I have to.

Judy: Will you be given any assistance with rebuilding?

Lilly: The government has already said there will be funds provided for rebuilding the whole of the country. The exact amounts, and how and when, those are in the works. Syria entered into the war with zero debts. They have paid for many weapons and various supplies, they were not given any gifts, they paid for everything, but still have not taken any loans from anyone. This was their goal, to be able to spend their own money without asking for loans, which could make you feel tied up later, beholden.

Judy: Is there anything else you would like to share with people about what is going on in Syria right now?

Lilly: The main thing is for the various countries funding and supporting the attack on Syria to stop. That means the London 11 group (formerly known as the Friends of Syria) should be dissolved. There should be no more paychecks and weapons sent to terrorists to fight inside Syria. The Rat Line from Benghazi to Iskenderun, Turkey should be shut. The borders along Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan should be well guarded and terrorists should be prevented from coming in. if the various sponsors and supporters will stop immediately, Syrian can slowly recover, clean up and re-build. In the consideration of humanitarian issues, I would ask that all nations formerly against Syria cease and desist and let’s discuss ways to make Syria a better place through the UN and other peaceful means.

Judy Bello has traveled to Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and now Syria seeking to bridge cultural barriers to understanding and network with others to build a more peaceful and more just society.

17 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Chris Marsden

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that Washington was willing to talk to Iran about collaborating to beat back a Sunni insurgency led by the Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has already gained control of most of Iraq’s Sunni regions in northern and central Iraq and is threatening Baghdad.

In an interview with Yahoo!News, Kerry said he “wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability.” He added, “I think we are open to any constructive process here that could minimize the violence, hold Iraq together—the integrity of the country—and eliminate the presence of outside terrorist forces that are ripping it apart.”

Kerry gave the interview in Vienna, where he was holding talks with Iranian officials on that country’s nuclear program. His statement followed press reports of two “senior US officials” saying the Obama administration was exploring direct talks with Iran over the crisis in Iraq.

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement denying that it was discussing joint military action with Iran in Iraq. “There are no plans to consult Iran on military actions inside Iraq. There is no plan to coordinate military activities,” said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters.

Despite the Pentagon disclaimer, the fact that the United States is publicly asking for Iran’s help is a measure of the desperation of American policy makers as Washington’s decades-long policy in Iraq and the broader Middle East implodes under the weight of its own contradictions. Another sign was the official announcement over the weekend that the US is drawing down its staff at the mammoth US embassy fortress in Baghdad, the first time since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Washington has taken such a precaution.

For more than decade, Washington has carried out a steady drumbeat of threats and provocations against Iran, imposing brutal economic sanctions, waging cyberwar, conspiring to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, and repeatedly raising the possibility of military action against the country. During the eight-year US military occupation of Iraq—which killed a million Iraqis, incited sectarian warfare and destroyed the country’s infrastructure—the US government and media routinely blamed attacks on US troops on Iran.

The neo-con authors of the US invasion of Iraq, many of whom went on to occupy high positions in the George W. Bush administration, made clear in a statement published in September, 2000 that the ultimate target of the conquest of Iraq was Iran. Rebuilding America’s Defenses, published by the Project for the New American Century, declared that “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein… Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the Gulf as Iraq has.”

Now, however, ISIS, a Sunni jihadist force nurtured and armed by Washington and its Sunni Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar) as a proxy force to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, is threatening to topple Washington’s Shia sectarian puppet regime, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in Iraq. In the face of a debacle without precedent since the defeat of US forces in Vietnam 34 years ago, the US is turning to yesterday’s “Axis of Evil” bogeyman, Shia-led Iran.

Any US accommodation with Iran for the purpose of defending US interests in Iraq can be no more than a temporary arrangement that will not preclude further American threats and attacks on Iran in the future.

The Obama administration is stepping up preparations for a direct US military intervention in Iraq. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday ordered the “quick reaction” USS Mesa Verde into the Persian Gulf with the stated aim of protecting US personnel in Baghdad. The Mesa Verde carries 500 Marines as well as MV-22 attack helicopters. Washington’s response to the catastrophe its military has produced in Iraq and the wider region will be to compound its crime with more military violence.

ISIS, with 4,000–5,000 fighters, leads an insurgency that includes Saddam-era officers and soldiers. It was in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Turkmen-majority town of Tal Afar to ISIS, which already controls Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, as well as Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit and other cities, that the Obama administration said it was evacuating a part of its 5,000 embassy staff.

The Mesa Verde joins three other US naval ships, including the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier, named after the architect of the 1991 war against Iraq. It is equipped with Patriot missiles that can reach any part of Iraq. The administration has also broached the use of drone strikes, probably mounted from Turkey.

The response to the insurgency by Maliki has been desperate and brutal. There are widely-circulated reports of Iraqi Army air strikes on the northern town of Tikrit being “indiscriminate” and “continuous.” Many of the hundreds of thousands who are fleeing ISIS-overrun areas are seeking to escape government air strikes as well as ISIS reprisals.

It is difficult to imagine a more cynical display of realpolitik than the moves toward a US-Iran alliance in Iraq. This is true not only in relation to the US, but also Iran, whose bourgeois rulers want nothing more than an accommodation with the US.

US political figures, who only weeks ago were agitating for war against Iran, have queued up to call for a rapprochement with Tehran in order to bring the region back under US control. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN, “The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made clear he is ready to collaborate with the US in a bloodbath. “Until today, no specific request for help has been demanded. But we are ready to help within international law,” he said.

More than 130 Iranian Revolutionary Guards are reportedly in Iraq to train Maliki’s forces. Their commander, Qasem Suleimani, was in Baghdad this weekend. An official in Tehran said more than 4,200 Iranians have volunteered to travel to Iraq to protect Shiite shrines.

As could be expected, there is a bitter dispute over whether the US should respond to the destabilisation of Iraq by pursuing its war aims in Syria more forcefully, or seeking an accommodation with Damascus alongside Tehran.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power spent the last week in Jordan and Turkey, where she discussed the war in Syria and developments in Iraq. Power, one of the chief advocates of “humanitarian” wars, while condemning the ISIS attacks in Iraq, said the US remained “in lockstep with Turkey on seeking an end to the Assad regime.”

Muhammad Nour al Khallouf, the acting defense minister for Syria’s opposition coalition, used the crisis to appeal for arms, stating, “For the first time, I feel there’s a kind of seriousness to support the [Free Syrian Army].”

In contrast, writing in USA Today, William Young of the RAND Corporation, proposed, “The answer may lie instead in a negotiated settlement, which includes negotiating with Syrian President Bashar Assad, perhaps brokered through the Russians and Iranians.”

The Syrian army, in coordination with the Maliki government in Iraq, this weekend launched mortar attacks on major bases of ISIS, including those in the northern province of Raqa and in Hasakeh in the northeast, bordering Iraq.

China has also made supportive noises regarding the Maliki regime, hoping to curry favour with Washington. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement that “For a long time, China has been giving Iraq a large amount of all sorts of aid and is willing to give whatever help it is able to.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained, “For internal political reasons, the US withdrew their forces when the Iraqi security forces had been far from being prepared to enforce law and order on the entire territory of the country.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the Welt am Sonntag, ruled out military involvement and called on Turkey, the Gulf States and Iran to help stabilise Iraq. “We have to prevent a proxy war of the regional powers breaking out on Iraqi soil,” he said.
17 June, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Mohammad Javad Zarif

The nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 powers have reached a critical stage. I am reasonably confident that by next month’s deadline, we can reach a comprehensive agreement that will assure the world that Iran’s nuclear program will remain exclusively peaceful. All that is required is a sober appreciation of the realities faced and a serious calculation of alternatives. Illusions have in the past led to missed opportunities and should not be allowed to ruin the real prospect of the historic deal before us.

When current President Hassan Rouhani and I were leading the Iranian nuclear negotiating team almost 10 years ago, just before the election of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I presented a proposal to our Western counterparts that contained an array of measures designed by independent, non-Iranian scientists to provide assurances that our nuclear program would remain forever peaceful.

Prodded by the Bush administration, however, our counterparts demanded that we abstain from enrichment until at least 2015, effectively killing the chances of a deal. Their mistaking our constructive engagement for weakness, and opting for pressure and sanctions to gain concessions, led to a change in Iran’s position, both by the ballot box in the 2005 presidential election and the subsequent expansion of Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.

As we approach 2015, the outcome of past maximalism and obsession with sanctions is clearly evident. In the past 10 years, Iran has gone from 200 to 20,000 centrifuges, our enrichment capacity has risen from 3.5 to 20 percent and theArak heavy-water research reactor is less than a year from being commissioned.

Nobody can rewind the clock. Sacrifices have been made. Capabilities are vastly different. Knowledge and expertise have been attained. None of this can be wished or negotiated away.

Today, President Rouhani and I are back at the negotiating table, and our commitment to constructive engagement has not changed. We are willing to provide assurances of the exclusively peaceful nature of our nuclear program. Our proposed measures are serious and would make a real difference. But we will not abandon or make a mockery of our technological advances or our scientists, nor would it be prudent or serve the interest of nuclear nonproliferation to expect us to do so.

And we have already delivered. Within 100 days of my being appointed as Iran’s nuclear negotiator, the first nuclear agreement in a decade was concluded with the P5+1. The International Atomic Energy Agency has verified that we have kept up our end of the bargain. Furthermore, the cooperation we now extend to the IAEA has been recognized as the best in years. We are prepared to maintain this trajectory.

It would be tragically shortsighted if illusions were to again derail progress toward a historic achievement. There will be no better time to put an end to the unnecessary nuclear crisis than now, when all sides have much to gain and before the window of cooperation and pragmatic reason closes.

Excuses for once again torpedoing a deal, which can change the shape of our region, can certainly be found. Prominent among them is the myth of “breakout.” For years, small but powerful constituencies have irrationally advanced the idea that Iran can produce enough fissile material for a bomb in months.

While reaching a realistic deal is the best available option for the West to prevent such a remote possibility, it may be instructive to take that phobia at face value. Let’s put it to a logical test. If Iran ever wanted to break out, all IAEA inspectors would have to be expelled from the country. Iran’s program would then have to be reconfigured to make weapons-grade fissile material, which would have to be converted to metal, be molded into the shape required for a bomb and undergo countless other complex weaponization processes. None of these capabilities exist in Iran and would have to be developed from scratch. This would take several years — not a few months.

Even when Iran had the time for this, it did not opt for a bomb. Between 2005 and 2013, when its relations with the West and the IAEA were at rock bottom, Iran had time, little international constraints, relatively relaxed monitoring and enough centrifuges to press ahead toward a bomb. Furthermore, Iran had already paid the price of massive, unjust sanctions that far exceeded those imposed on countries that have developed a bomb.

Despite all this, we did not take a single step toward a nuclear weapon. The 16 security organs behind two consecutive U.S. National Intelligence Estimates, in 2007 and 2012, agreed.

It is ironic that some in the West ignore all of this in favor of projecting the dangerous double myth that Iran needs the bomb to protect itself and is only months away from getting one. It will be even more ironic if this hype torpedoes a deal that is the surest and safest way to preclude proliferation.

Today, we have a unique opportunity in our negotiations with the P5+1 to put in place long-term confidence-building measures, as well as extensive monitoring and verification arrangements, to provide the greatest assurance that Iran’s nuclear program will forever remain exclusively peaceful. To overcome the obstacles to realizing this historic achievement, we must look ahead, but we also cannot ignore the lessons provided by the past. Comprehension of how the cycle of lost chances has been propelled by illusions is important. Taking action to exit this cycle is crucial.

As we enter the crossroads of turning the interim nuclear deal into a comprehensive solution, I urge my counterparts to reciprocate our willingness to address concerns about our capabilities with appreciation of our demand for our rights, dignity and respect. Most of all, I urge them to refrain from allowing illusions to derail the march toward ending an unnecessary crisis and opening new horizons.
Mohammad Javad Zarif is Iran’s foreign minister.
June 13, 2014

By Bianca Jagger

The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict begins today, June 10-13, 2014, on the banks of the Thames here in London. The Summit is organized by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Angelina Jolie. According to the UK government, it will be the biggest meeting ever held on this subject and the conference will launch an International Protocol to help strengthen prosecutions. Delegations from over 140 countries are here to participate, along with legal experts, academics, religious leaders and many others. There are many survivors present.

The objectives of the summit are admirable and they could have a profound impact in ending sexual violence in conflict. As Special Envoy Angelina Jolie said at the opening, this could be “a turning point, an opportunity to send a message, around the world.”

I fully support the aims of the conference. I support the contention that sexual violence is not an inevitable part of conflict. I applaud the call for new attitudes, which remove the stigma, the great shame that comes with these crimes. I support Foreign Secretary Hague and Special Envoy Angelina Jolie’s determination to “shatter the culture of impunity for sexual violence.” The Foreign Secretary calls ending sexual violence in conflict “a moral issue for our generation.” I couldn’t agree more.

But regrettably, Foreign Secretary Hague has forgotten about the courageous survivors of sexual violence in Sri Lanka.

Sexual violence in Sri Lanka is not on the conference agenda. More than this, the Stabilization Unit Team of Experts, created by Mr Hague, has not been assigned to the country to investigate. The team is working on both ongoing (DR Congo, Syria) and historic (Libya, Bosnia, Rwanda) cases of sexual violence in conflict — and has recently expanded its remit to cover more countries including Burma… Yet Sri Lanka, where rape has been used as a weapon of war for many years of brutal civil conflict, is not being examined.

Nor is the UK providing a safe haven for victims of torture and sexual violence in conflict. Refugees are being deported from the UK back to Sri Lanka to face further torture or even death.

I have campaigned for human rights, social justice and environmental protection for over 30 years. I have met many victims of sexual violence, from Bosnia to Guatemala. I was very shaken by the brutal accounts of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. Rape is systematic and widespread against both men and women. Horrific crimes are being committed with total impunity by police and armed forces.

The evidence reveals a chilling pattern — not opportunistic individual soldiers but a sanctioned coordinated program with different wings of Security forces cooperating in secret camps for torture and sexual violence.

On Friday, June 6, I met with two Tamil survivors of torture and rape in Sri Lanka — a man and a woman. I felt sickened after listening to their horrific testimonies of unlawful detention, torture, sexual crimes and repeated rape — the young man was subjected to similar torture and rape as the woman. I have withheld their names and certain details in the accounts below, in order to protect them and their families from reprisals. They are in fear for their lives.

The young woman told me of being dragged from her home in front of her mother by five men in civilian dress, blindfolded and taken in a white van to a place where men and women were screaming and crying behind the walls. She was put in a room with no window, water, toilet, bucket or sink. Two men in cargo pants interrogated her. She was crying so much that she couldn’t answer. They tore her dress off as she cried and shouted and slapped them. They burned her with cigarettes on the face and breasts. Then they both raped her. That night she lay on the cement floor, bleeding from the rapes. She was not given food or drink and she didn’t sleep. She says she felt very ashamed, that perhaps it would have been better if they had killed her. Through the walls other male and female voices were screaming.

Over the next nine days she was raped repeatedly. She believes it was by many different men. Sometimes there were as many as four at once. She was burned on the face, breasts, thighs, arms, buttocks and back and beaten with a plastic pipe, repeatedly ducked in a barrel of water.

After the ninth day, men came every other day rape her, one at a time. During the time she was held prisoner she never saw a lawyer or a judge.

After 16 days, she was finally freed by a bribe from a family member, who arranged for her to board a flight to London. She was taken into custody on arrival when she could not produce a passport. She told me that the first time she met with the Home Office, she couldn’t speak. She is not allowed to work in the UK. She reports to the Home Office once a month. She says she can’t sleep. She’s always anxious. She’s still in pain from her injuries from the rapes and beatings. She feels that the UK is the only place that can protect her. If she is sent back, she says, they won’t leave her alive this time. She hopes that what happened to her will not happen to anyone else.

The young man was crying and trembled as he spoke to me. He was frightened, emotionally fragile.

He was at home with his mother and sister when three large men, two in plain clothes and one in a green army uniform, seized him from the yard as his mother and sister screamed. They bundled him into an unmarked white van. He had no shoes. In the van, they beat him until he passed out.

He woke in a small cell with no windows. Over the next five months, he was subjected to torture, including having his genitals squeezed until he passed out. He was beaten, sprayed with a high pressure hose, threatened with cigarettes, urinated on, spat on, and blindfolded. He was fed but not much, and lost a lot of weight.

He was finally released and ordered to report to the police station every two weeks. He had injuries all over his body — pain in his genitals, back, knees. He returned home but he says he didn’t want to do anything, or go anywhere. He was very frightened all the time.

When he routinely reported to the police station again two months later, he was handcuffed and again bundled into a vehicle. He was taken to another place with concrete bunkers and metal sheds, taken into a concrete room and bound to a chair.

He was interrogated. He was kicked with boots, beaten, threatened with cigarettes. He remained in detention for eight months. Sometimes he saw other detainees in the yard but no one spoke. This time the interrogations were different.

He was often stripped and held down while one man squeezed his testicles. On one occasion, a man licked him up and down with his tongue.

He was raped more than three times, including with metal objects, by between three and five men at a time. “They were always wearing army uniform,” he said. He remembers screaming and screaming.

During the time he was held prisoner, he never saw a lawyer or a judge.

His family also bribed his way out, and they kept the fact that he had a passport quiet. He was again ordered to report to the police station every two weeks but instead obtained a student visa and came to the UK, where he was detained at Gatwick for two months. He has applied for asylum. It has not been granted.

He was a student, and he says that he thinks if he could study again, it would be better, and that he could move on. He lives with his family, but he has not told them what happened to him. His deportation hearing is coming up at the end of the month. I will be accompanying him to the hearing.

I have met survivors of sexual violence from all over the world. I have never in my experience as a human rights campaigner encountered so much evidence of the rape of men as in Sri Lanka.

Last Friday was a beautiful sunny day in London but it seemed very dark in my living room where I sat with those two survivors. I felt sick, revolted as I listened to the atrocities they had endured. Their suffering was palpable. It was a trauma to recount their experiences, but both said it was a relief to speak of it. There is a stigma surrounding rape and the survivors feel great shame, as of course the perpetrators intended they should.

Cigarette burns and branding are used as a way of ensuring that everyone knows the victims have been raped. Frances Harrison, the author of Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War, says most survivors never confide in husbands, mothers, sisters, family. These rapes inflict tortures of isolation and suffering years after they are over. She says it’s common for the Sri Lankan government to take reprisals against family of those who have fled to the UK. Victims therefore fear to phone their families in Sri Lanka. They are very alone.

The cases I have cited above are not isolated or exceptions. Rape is being used as a weapon of war in Sri Lanka as we speak. The survivors, including the two I have met, are understandably horrified, at a loss to understand why their plight is not being addressed at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict.

I have appealed to William Hague and Angelina Jolie to include sexual violence and torture in Sri Lanka in the agenda to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, and broaden the remit of the Stabilization Unit Team of Experts. It is critical that they include Sri Lanka as one of the countries to which they are assigned. I urge them also to lend their voices to the plight of those survivors who are being sent from the UK back to Sri Lanka to face further torture or death.

Rape has long been used as a weapon of war. For a long time it was seen as inevitable. Talking to those two Sri Lankan survivors brought back horrific memories of the testimonies I heard from Bosnian and Croatian women during my fact finding mission to the former Yugoslavia. In 1993 the Helsinki Commission, U.S. Congress asked to me to document the use of mass rape as a weapon of war by Serb forces as part of their campaign of ethnic cleansing. I traveled through the former Yugoslavia with UNHCR, visited refugee camps and listened to hundreds of shocking testimonies of women who had been raped. Upon my return to the U.S., I testified before the Helsinki Commission. I recall the reluctance of the international community to believe that tens of thousands of women had been victims of rape — and their reluctance to act. Today, thousands of those women are still waiting for justice in Bosnia.

I cannot fathom why the UK government is not denouncing the Sri Lankan government’s atrocities. Why are they not demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice? Why are they deporting survivors of torture and rape back to Sri Lanka, and endangering their lives?

In November 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague attended the Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka, despite widespread international condemnation of the Sri Lankan government for their human rights abuses. Sri Lanka now holds the presidency of the Commonwealth. Why is the issue of sexual violence in Sri Lanka not included in the agenda for the summit when there is such a wealth of evidence?

In the April 2014, a UN report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Zainab Hawa Bangura, the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, named Sri Lanka as one of the 21 countries where rape and other sexual violence have been committed during conflicts.

The March 2014 report, “An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka, 2009 – 2014,” was produced by human rights lawyer and co-author of the UN Panel of Experts report on mass atrocities in Sri Lanka, Yasmin Sooka. The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales and the International Truth and Justice Project, “Sri Lanka,” is a collection of 40 sworn testimonies from witnesses who had been subject to detention in Sri Lanka, now in the UK. The statements are supported by medical and hospital records, and the report was conducted by nine independent, international lawyers. The report found that “the targeting … was not random and that the patterns of the use of torture, rape and sexual violence makes it likely, we believe that the experiences described a small sample of those crimes likely to have been committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka.” I urge you to read the report. It states, “[A]lmost half the witnesses interviewed for the report attempted to kill themselves after reaching safety outside Sri Lanka.”

The only mention of Sri Lanka in the three-day agenda of the Summit is the participation of Yasmin Sooka, co-author of ‘An Unfinished War,’ in the panel “Investigating and Documenting sexual violence in conflict.” There is no country specific focus on Sri Lanka — Ms Sooka will speak generally about investigation. There is no mention of Sri Lanka in any of the documents about the official sessions, and no case studies on Sri Lanka.

Channel 4’s The Killing Fields documents the last days of the civil war in 2009. A UN report leaked to the BBC at the time, investigating the UN’s own conduct during the last months of the conflict states: “Events in Sri Lanka mark a grave failure of the UN.”

The 2013 Human Rights Watch report, “We Will Teach You a Lesson” and other reports by the Minority Rights Group, recent interviews on ITV News and the BBC, and the 2014 documentary No Fire Zone, The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, all suggest that sexual violence against the Tamil community continues to be rife. No Fire Zone also shows that the Tamil journalist Isaipriya was raped and executed while in custody — the Sri Lankan government has always claimed she died in combat.

Even Foreign Secretary William Hague cited these allegations on November 13, 2013, and urged Sri Lanka to sign the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict and launch an investigation.

Sri Lanka has refused to sign the Declaration despite the urging of Foreign Secretary Hague, and declined his invitation to the conference.

Sri Lanka is not living up to its responsibilities to launch an investigation into the atrocities committed during the civil war. UNHCR voted on March 27, 2014, in the face of fierce opposition from the Sri Lankan government, to launch an international investigation. High Commissioner Navi Pillay had urged the creation of an independent inquiry for years. The lack of progress, she says dryly, “[H]as been a question of political will.”

It would have a significant impact if the Foreign Secretary broadened the remit of the Stabilization Unit Team of Experts to include Sri Lanka as one of the countries to which they were assigned.

Sri Lanka is an obvious candidate for inclusion and such a move would send a powerful signal to President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government that rape is a war crime and that the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

The voluntary Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict is a precondition for investigation under current regulations of the Stabilisation Unit. They cannot investigate in Sri Lanka. But as the “An Unfinished War” report demonstrates, and as I have seen for myself, there are victims willing to be interviewed living here in the UK.

I fear that the UK Government’s unwillingness to investigate this issue is linked to immigration, border policy and the UK Border Agency. The UK has been deporting victims of sexual violence and torture back to Sri Lanka. Last year the UK government admitted that 15 people had been tortured, escaped to the UK, were deported back to Sri Lanka, tortured again, and then escaped to the UK again. I have read the testimonies of some survivors of sexual violence who have undergone this process, and are once again awaiting deportation in the UK. This could well be the tip of the iceberg.

The Refugee Council’s women’s advocacy manager, Anna Musgrave told the Observer on the June 7 that it was hypocritical of the government to have the Foreign Office pledging to help to stop rape as a weapon of war while the Home Office was treating its victims so shoddily.

“This summit demonstrates,” she said, “there is a dangerous lack of joined-up thinking when it comes to tackling sexual violence against women. On one hand, you’ve got real progress being made in conflict zones overseas, but when those same victims make it to UK shores it’s a completely different story. Women often aren’t believed, and instead of being protected they’re further traumatised by the asylum system. It’s critical that the government tackles this issue with the same gusto at home as it’s doing abroad and protects the survivors of sexual violence.”

I hope Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Envoy Angelina Jolie will seize this historic opportunity. I have written them both personal letters urging them to include Sri Lanka in the agenda for the Summit, to shine a light on the plight of the victims of sexual crimes and torture in Sri Lanka, and asking them to meet with survivors.

Angelina Jolie and William Hague said in their joint article in the Sunday Times on the June 8, “It is in our power to remove rape as a weapon of war from the world’s arsenal of cruelty. And it is in our hands to treat victims not as social outcasts, but as courageous survivors.”

I admire their objectives — this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But all the victims of sexual violence in conflict deserve access to justice and our support — we cannot pick and choose who we extend that justice to.

I am afraid that at the moment, the Sri Lankan survivors are still treated as “outcasts.” They are being relegated to the edges of society. Their plight is being ignored by the support systems of the state — by the Agenda for the Summit and, I am afraid to say, by the UK government. As Mr Hague said in his opening statement to the Summit: ‘What would it say about Britain if we chose not to act — now that we know the facts, how can we turn aside?’

I would like Mr Hague to answer his own question.

Editor’s note: William Hague late on Tuesday did respond to charges levied against the UK government about its treatment of Tamil asylum seekers by saying his office will investigate the matter.

Bianca Jagger is a prominent international human rights and climate change advocate. She is the Founder and Chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation.

11 June, 2014
CommonDreams.org