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By Jon Kofas

The bombing that took place in Paris with many casualties was a human tragedy and a political disaster for Western anti-terrorism policy. A day before ISIS suicide bombing in Paris, the bombing in Beirut, Lebanon demonstrated the ease with which jihadists fighting against the Assad regime are able to operate. In both cases the jihadist group ISIS operating in Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility and celebrated its success in retaliation for those trying to strike at ISIS targets. It is also likely that an ISIS affiliate in Egypt bombed a Russian passenger plane killing 224 people on 31 October 2015.

Three bombings within a remarkably short span of time demonstrate the reach of an organization that was once backed by US allies in the Middle East, and possibly by the US indirectly in the war that the US started to bring down the Assad regime, all in the name of freedom and democracy, just as the US has been delivering freedom and democracy in Libya. The quest to destabilize and ultimately overthrow Assad has failed in the last couple of years and made matters worse for everyone, above all the people of Syria. The US and its European and regional allies have managed to create a new force that has some appeal at least with the radicalized Sunni Muslims not just in Syria and Iraq but across the Middle East and beyond. Now that US secretary of State John Kerry has been in talks with Russia about how to stabilize Syria, perhaps agree on limited spheres of influence as imperialists, so that the greater threat of ISIS is contained.

Based on the results alone, one could conclude that the US policy of destabilization that helped to create the conditions for ISIS to operate is a miserable failure with horrible consequences. Of course, if one advocates a policy of redrawing the map of Syria and Iraq, as many Westerners and Zionists do, then the policy has been a resounding success. After all, both countries are already badly divided along sectarian and ethnic lines, and what could be a better way of limiting the influence of Iran in Iran and Syria and Russia in Syria other than redrawing the map just as Western imperialists almost did a century ago?

One would think that the lessons learned from the US policy of supporting jihadists in the 1980s in Afghanistan against the pro-USSR regime had become a lesson for policy change that would actually yield the desired results. On the contrary, as a status quo power immersed in Cold War ideology, the US does not change policy just because it backfires with dire consequences for itself and its allies. The military solution option is the only one on the table for the US for a combination of reasons. This means that cycle of jihadist attacks will continue as will the response with conventional militarist solutions that would in fact produce more unconventional warfare. Looking beyond the military solution to the root causes – social, economic and politic injustice – is out of the question during the era when neoliberal thinking prevails across the Western World.

1. The obsession of projecting strength through raw military power in the world as a way of retaining Pax American alive.

No matter the failures of the military solution, and unintended benefits to US rivals Russia, China and Iran that do not want the US to have exclusive role in determining the balance of power in the Middle East, policymakers in Washington, backed by the corporate world and media do not deviate from the failed military solution option until there is no choice as was the case with Iran and the nuclear deal. The empirical evidence suggests that while military solutions as a means of maintaining Pax Americana began to show weaknesses as far back as the 1960s during the Vietnam War. Yet, the US will not abandon a policy that has failed to deliver. Pax American was dead and buried during Vietnam, and President Johnson implied as much when he announced on TV that he would not seek reelection, knowing the failure of Vietnam was a resounding failure for Pax American he was supposed to guard and expand. However, the lessons of Vietnam included everything but political solutions to crises. Instead, a commitment to go deeper into debt as a nation – currently $17 trillion or about equal to GDP – so that Pax Americana’s glory could live on if not in the real world, at least in the minds of delusional politicians while defense contractors made huge profits.

2. Ideological commitment to militarism and imperialism, despite the evolution of new multi-polar world in which China plays a determining role.

The diehard ideologues to right-wing solutions have been around from the early days of the Truman administration advocating unilateral action in a world where the US defined its national security interests not just within its sovereign territory, not just in the Western Hemisphere as part of the long-standing Pan-Americanism perspective that dates back to the Monroe Doctrine, but across the world as the reckless and dysfunctional world’s policeman. Unable to exist as a society that is content with playing a role commensurate to its actual economic, political and economic power in the world, the ideologues advocating unilateralism, militarism and imperialism (intervention via over military action or covert operations) have proved detrimental to the security of the nation and to the destabilization of all places where there is intervention.

The US invaded and occupied Iraq under Saddam Hussein on a series of blatant lies, created chaos and divisions with an otherwise unified country, and above all it is responsible for millions of refugees that are a huge problem for neighboring nations. Similarly, the US goal to bring down Syria’s Assad and make that country a US satellite instead of one where Russia and Iran enjoy influence has entailed the creation of millions of refugees for which the right-wing American ideologues want harsh punishment instead of amnesty by EU nations. Blinded by the notion of an invincible America pursuing its destiny to exert preeminent influence if not dominate the world, these ideologues making money as consultants, politicians, media analysts and above all defense contractors thrive on destabilization and what they call crisis management; ironically for crises they create but then propose to “manage”.

3. Tangible interests of profits by defense contractors who hire former politicians and high level defense and intelligence officers to work and lobby for them.

President Eisenhower’s warning to the American people about the military industrial complex that was actually forged during the Wilson administration to manage World War I may have come too late. To this day, no one takes seriously the Eisenhower warning, partly because he was then advised by the IMF that the dollar as a reserve currency was becoming weak and would ultimately become even weaker owing to balance of payments deficits. Although the US could hardly afford both guns and butter, Johnson pursued such a reckless policy by escalating the Vietnam War to the delight of defense companies.
Because there is instability, jihadist terrorism, regional conflicts, and neglect of diplomacy as the first rather than the last option to resolve conflict, the profits of defense contractors rise as their stock market price indicates, and indeed the profits of every company from food and soft drink suppliers to defense to makers of drones. One cannot possibly ignore the power of the defense contractors and all industries feeding off the defense and intelligence budgets that simply drive up the public debt and weaken the civilian economy.

These people thrive on events that drive governments raise defense spending just at the time they should be cutting it and considering political solutions that may actually work against the reality of unending military solution failures that only generate more “unconventional warfare” or terrorism. As cynical as it may sound, all those making a living from the defense and intelligence domain delight in events such as that of Paris on 13 November 2015. These people know that peace and stability means cuts in their business, so they have no interest in political solutions to conflict.

4. The media is always there to pump up militarism as the sole solution.

The Western media had no problem with ISIS striking down the Russian plane and Beirut where Hezbollah was the target. In fact, the western media was criticizing Russian president Putin for striking at ISIS targets, prompting the US to indirectly assist ISIS by sending air cover to protect certain pro-West assets in Syria along the Turkish border. The media, reflecting US official position, sent the message to the world that the problem at hand was really Putin and Assad, rather than the barbaric ISIS that Russian planes were targeting; that is until the Paris bombing that had some arguing drive the idea into peoples’ heads that it is possible to wipe out unconventional type of war, or terrorism by simply striking hard at the enemy.

While the media does not create terrorism, it celebrates militarism by selecting news analysts and by reporting on stories of military solutions to conflict. It may be argued that the media must reflect the status quo and mirror what governments are pursuing. Editorial decisions are made on what stories to cover, how to cover them, and what spin to put on them, not just on FOX NEWS that has been called out by a number of organizations for extreme right wing coverage, but the New York Times that many regard as liberal newspaper, yet it hardly differs in goals from FOX.

5. Will Terrorism Subside or proliferate.

Contrary to what many politicians including the French President announced about closing the border and adopting other such “security measures” to preempt any strikes on French soil, and contrary to what British PM announced about striking down and ending jihadist activities, terrorism will continue and proliferate. This is because the underlying causes of terrorism are not addressed, and they include Western militarism and economic imperialism, complemented by racism and religious prejudice.

In 2015, we have much greater and wider forms of terrorism than we did when the US announced its war on terror after 9/11. The public relations exercises intended for mass consumption project the idea that government has the solution at hand and it is in position of protecting its citizens. However, jihadists already reside within the nations they wish to strike and history has demonstrated that unconventional war has never been won by conventional military means. One could argue that the Russian Tsars in the 19th century lacked the sophisticated science and technology available to the West in 2015.

Fair enough, but how do then explain the Paris bombings taking place when France is well known for its sophisticated intelligence and technology available? This does not mean that measures cannot be taken for greater security of citizens, but it does mean that there will never be a full proof method of combating unconventional warfare (terrorism) because of its nature unless the underlying causes are addressed. The political solution remains the only option to eradicate terrorism which is simply a publicity stunt that never brings about systemic change toward greater social justice because it lacks grassroots support and alienates people that would otherwise sympathize with the cause of social justice.

In the aftermath of the Paris bombings, the response I expect from the Western countries is one similar to the US in 9/11, although Russia will take advantage of the situation and once again propose a multilateral approach for a conventional strike against ISIS. One would think that if ISIS was able to bring down the Russia plane over Egypt, hit at the heart of Hezbollah in Beirut and hit Paris within a few days, there must be a wide network of support behind it with significant links.

There are still questions about which governments, corporations and varieties of businessmen still maintain indirect ties to this group that needs such cooperation to manage its considerable economic and strategic affairs. Similarly, there are questions about the US policy toward Syria that one the one hand, claims to be fighting to undermine ISIS, but on the other hand, it wants to bring Assad down and undermines Russia efforts to fight ISIS. Clearly, a coordinated policy between US-NATO with Russia, China and Iran could go a very long way to contain ISIS. However, this is not how US ideologues see the matter resolved; this is not what the defense contractors want, and this is not what the populist Republicans and rightwing media advocate. It makes sense that they keep citizens living in a state of perpetual fear as a means of imposing sociopolitical conformity amid a period when the socioeconomic gap has been widening on the US despite a modest economic recovery. Unless systemic problems of the Muslims – social justice issues – and the relationship of Muslim nations with the West are addressed, terrorism is a reality that will become more prominent in the next decade.

Jon Kofas is a retired university Professor from Indiana University.
14 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Instead of shifting blame for ISIS’s rise, the West and its allies should look in the mirror.

By Ben Reynolds

The Baroness Turner of Camden recently argued in The Diplomat that Iran is the “major driving force” in Iraq’s civil war, and furthermore, that Iran is “central to the broader conflict that has seemingly put the entire Middle East beyond hope of stability.” The Baroness’ article is right about one thing: the Iranian regime brutally suppresses dissidents. But it is not the main party responsible for Iraq’s civil war, or for the broader conflict in the Levant. It may be convenient for dissidents and opponents of the current Iranian regime to blame Iran for the rise of ISIS, but history tells a different story.

The U.S., Western Europe, and their regional allies in fact bear most of the responsibility for the rise of extremist groups like ISIS. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Britain notably supported, was a strategic disaster. Contrary to speculation at the time, Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist regime prevented Al Qaeda from operating out of Iraq. Iraq had also been supported by the West before the 1991 Gulf War as a counterbalance against the revolutionary Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq War. The U.S.-led invasion changed all of that.

The Iraq War toppled Saddam, destabilized the country, and led to a wave of sectarian bloodshed. It also made Iraq a safe haven and recruiting ground for Al Qaeda affiliates. Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS’s forerunner, was founded in April 2004. AQI conducted brutal attacks on Shia civilians and mosques in hopes of sparking a broader sectarian conflict. Iran naturally supported Shia militias, who fought extremists like AQI, both to expand its influence in Iraq and protect its Shia comrades. Iran cultivated ties with the Maliki government as well. Over the long term, Iran tried to seize the opportunity to turn Iraq from a strategic counterweight into a strategic ally. The U.S. didn’t do much to stop it.

When the U.S. helped to establish Iraq’s government, it consistently supported Maliki, even going so far as to assist in Maliki’s persecution of dissidents and civil society activists. The U.S. was probably more instrumental than Iran in cementing Maliki’s power in Iraq. Maliki alienated Sunnis in Iraq by cracking down on his opponents and pursuing discriminatory policies in government and the armed forces. When Maliki’s troops stormed Sunni protest camps in 2013, they were armed with U.S.-made weapons. By the time the U.S. and Western Europe finally decided Maliki was enough of a liability to push out of government, fertile ground already existed for an ISIS-led Sunni insurgency in Western Iraq.

The Syrian story is even more important. In 2011 the Assad regime violently suppressed peaceful pro-democracy protests. This civil society movement rapidly transformed into an armed uprising against the Syrian government. Why? In the early stages of the war, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey began funneling arms to opposition forces, seeing an opportunity to destabilize a key ally of Iran and Hezbollah, their geopolitical foes. As the civil war deepened, extremist groups joined the fight against what they saw as an odious secular regime. They also became the beneficiaries of large amounts of arms and funding from America’s regional allies.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey knowingly funded extremist groups including Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra quickly became one of the most effective and influential rebel groups fighting against the Syrian government. ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have been fighting over doctrinal and practical matters for months, but some al-Nusra elements have also merged into ISIS. The extent of Saudi support for ISIS is uncertain and hotly debated, but many analysts agree that there has been a substantial bleed of funding and weapons between rebel groups.

The U.S.’s own involvement in the Syrian conflict is telling. Early in the civil war, the Obama administration expressed its conviction that Bashar al-Assad’s regime had to go. Given U.S. antagonism toward Iran and its allies, this statement did not come as a surprise. The U.S. offered nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels and eventually covertly armed them, going so far as to operate a training camp for rebels in northern Jordan.

But the U.S. didn’t appear to expand its direct support for the Syrian rebels beyond this point, and for good reason. When the Obama administration asked Congress for $500 million to train and equip “moderate rebels,” the Pentagon testified that it anticipated difficulties finding moderate fighters to train and arm. In plain English, this means that they don’t really exist. With ISIS’s victories in Iraq, the U.S. strategy of fueling the fire in Syria without allowing either side to win is finally revealing its inherent contradictions.

No one is innocent in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, but Iran is not primarily responsible for the current state of affairs. The U.S. and its allies destabilized Iraq and Syria in turn, creating safe havens for extremists that previously did not exist. U.S. allies provided the material support that allowed ISIS and groups like it to become threats to the entire region, despite lacking any substantial popular base in Syria and Iraq. It is not unreasonable for Iran and Hezbollah to fight against these groups, which murder and enslave Shia and other religious minorities. Their actions conceivably fall under one of the West’s favorite principles of international law: the duty to protect.

Iran has been the most serious foreign force fighting against ISIS from the very beginning of the Syrian civil war. The Syrian Army is constantly beset by manpower and equipment problems. It is difficult to believe that the Syrian government would have held its own without the assistance of the Iranian Qods Force and Iran’s allies in Hezbollah, much less without Iranian weapons. Contrary to the Baroness’ objections, Iran is the most viable regional partner for a temporary, pragmatic alliance against ISIS.

Western politicians and activists like the Baroness of Camden understandably oppose the Iranian regime’s domestic repression. But Iran and its regional allies are not the cause of ISIS’s rapid and brutal rise. Extremist groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have been consistently aided by disastrous Western interventions in the Middle East and the influence of regional actors like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Responsibility for the rise of ISIS isn’t much of a mystery: the West and its allies just have to look in the mirror.

Ben Reynolds is a writer who graduated from the College of William and Mary. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

31 August 2014
www.thediplomat.com

 

By Ma’an News Agency

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Thursday condemned Israel’s undercover arrest raid earlier in the day in al-Ahli hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The organization told Ma’an that it urged “the relevant military authorities to respect the special status that [International Humanitarian Law] grants to medical facilities and the wounded and sick.”

MSF said that Azzam Ezzat Shalaldah, 20, who was shot by an Israeli settler last month, was a patient of the group and was being treated in their Mental Health Support Program “for victims of political violence.”

The group said that the way in which Shalaldah was detained was “serious” and contrary “to the principles of neutrality and respect of the medical mission.”

“International Humanitarian Law requires the respect of health facilities and forbids any intrusion of the armed forces in these structures,” MSF said, adding that international law “demands that sick and wounded people would be treated without any discrimination in conformity with medical ethics.”

During the undercover raid, Shalaldah’s cousin, Abdullah Azzam Shalaldah, 28, was shot and killed while coming out of a bathroom in the hospital ward. His other cousin, Bilal, who was in the room with Shalaldah was handcuffed during the incident, but not detained.

MSF demanded that the relevant authorities inform and train “members of the armed forces on their obligation to respect medical facilities and personnel, as well as patients… and their caretakers” in order to prevent another incident of this kind.

Shalaldah, who was detained during the undercover raid, was still in recovery after undergoing three surgeries at the hospital where he was admitted mid-October.

MFS said the organization is “very concerned about the fate of the patient taken away from the hospital and strongly demands to the Israeli authorities to provide the adequate medical attention and information on his conditions in the shortest delay.”

MSF also requested that Israel allow Shalaldah to continue his mental health treatment through the organization.

Undercover Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian in Hebron hospital

Undercover Israeli forces on Thursday shot dead a Palestinian during a hospital raid in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, witnesses and hospital staff said.

Abdullah Azzam Shalaldah, 28, was shot several times by forces who raided the surgery unit of al-Ahli hospital in order to detain his cousin, Azzam Ezzat Shalaldah, 20, who was shot by an Israeli settler last month, hospital staff told Ma’an.

Abdullah and another relative were in the hospital visiting Azzam when around 20 undercover Israeli soldiers entered the hospital at around 4:00 a.m., witnesses said.

The forces tied up the relative while Abdullah, who was in the bathroom at the time, entered the room and was shot dead on scene.

The undercover forces then retreated from the hospital with Azzam, taking him into custody, witnesses added.

Video footage from security cameras shows a group of around 16 men walking through the corridors of the hospital just before 4 a.m. pushing a wheel chair, when suddenly the man sitting down removes his blanket, stands up, and all the men draw guns and proceed down the hall.

The footage also shows what appears to be an Israeli agent dressed as a Palestinian woman, and other Israeli forces dressed as Palestinian Muslim men, wearing keffiyehs and appearing to have fake beards.

An Israeli army spokesperson was unable to comment on the presence of undercover forces during the raid, while Israeli media reported that the forces arrived in two large vans with someone pretending to be pregnant.

The army spokesperson told Ma’an that a combined force of Israeli army and police members had entered the hospital in order to detain Azzam, when an “additional suspect attacked the forces.”

The forces responded with live fire, killing the man, the spokesperson confirmed.

The spokesperson said that the forces detained Azzam on the grounds that he “stabbed an Israeli in the chest in Gush Etzion” on Oct. 25, wounding him severely, adding that “the victim shot him” as he fled the scene.

The spokesperson added that the “Shalaldah family are known Hamas operatives.”

Palestinian security sources told Ma’an on Oct. 25 following the attack that Azzam was shot by an Israeli settler.

A spokesperson for Hadassah hospital said at the time that the settler, 58, had received a light “stab” wound to his chest, and had possibly been hit with a stone in his head.

Palestinian witnesses told Ma’an that they believed that the alleged Palestinian attacker had fled the scene unharmed and that Azzam had been working in agricultural fields when he was shot.

Abdullah, from the Hebron-area village of Sair, was the 80th Palestinian to be killed since Oct. 1.

The majority of those killed were shot dead by Israeli forces during alleged, attempted, and actual attacks on Israeli military and civilians.

Ten Israelis have been killed by individual Palestinians during the same time period.

13 November, 2015
Maannews.com

By Eric Zuesse

Unlike so many online ‘news’ reports that are merely authoritarian trash because they don’t link to any of their sources (they rely instead upon dumb readers’ faith or trust in the ‘reporter’ or in the publisher, such as The New York Times or Fox News), this one from Marshall is top-notch: not only does it provide intelligently skeptical readers with instantaneous access to documentation for each one of its key points, but those sources are credible ones. Taken all together, the sources, and Marshall’s presentation of them, constitute a solid historical account of how the war to bring down Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, actually started. It didn’t start by Assad’s dumping (as U.S. President Barack Obama loves to claim) “barrel bombs,” upon merely peaceful protesters in Syria. It started actually in Washington, years before that.

The Obama Administration itself was taking advantage of not only the “Arab Spring” protests throughout much of the Arab world, but, specifically, of an ongoing economic catastrophe in Syria that had started five years before the anti-Assad demonstrations did: an extended drought. Here is how the source that Marshall linked to describes it, two years before the “Arab Spring” even began:

In the past three years, 160 Syrian farming villages have been abandoned near Aleppo as crop failures have forced over 200,000 rural Syrians to leave for the cities. This news is distressing enough, but when put into a long-term perspective, its implications are staggering: many of these villages have been continuously farmed for 8000 years.

That source had been published on 16 January 2010. The drought continued on; the situation only got even worse right into 2011 and up through the public demonstrations in Aleppo that started the war. There were no “barrel bombs” then. There was instead surging economic dislocation. Obama merely took advantage of it. He knew that it was coming, and he planned so as to exploit it.

In fact, a wikileaked confidential 26 November 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus to the CIA and other associated agencies referred to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization by saying:

UNFAO Syria Representative Abdullah bin Yehia briefed econoff and USDA Regional Minister-Counselor for Agriculture on what he terms the “perfect storm,” a confluence of drought conditions with other economic and social pressures that Yehia believes could undermine stability in Syria. Because he is working with such limited resources, Yehia plans to target FAO assistance to small-holding farmers in the hardest-hit province of northeast Syria, Al Hasakah. (Note: This province shares a northern border with Turkey and a southern border with Iraq. Mosul is approximately 100km from Al Hasakah province.) Because the UN appeal has, thus far, not been entirely successful, Yehia has had to prioritize aid recipients.

That was institutional U.S. federal government knowledge three months prior to Obama’s becoming President. Obama as the President-elect at the time was privy to such information. Once he got into the White House, he needed to understand what was going on in Syria. Was it dumb of Yehia to trust the U.S. government with this information? Was he naive about the type of people who sit in America’s Oval Office nowadays? Is a deer in the forest naive to move when a hunter is stalking it? Is the deer supposed to just stand still, instead? Barack Obama during his electoral campaign had provided the public with no reason to suspect that he might have been harboring aggressive designs against the Syrian government, nor even against the Russian government that has been supporting it. Yehia was just seeking help, like the deer in fear.

Obama knew what was going on. He knew that the Syrian situation wasn’t just “barrel bombs” showing up suddenly out of nowhere, from no cause, and for no reason. He knew more than was published to the public in the American press. His repeated references to “barrel bombs” after the situation in Syria blew up, suggests that he takes advantage of the fact that the American public isn’t aware of such facts. It suggests that he’s playing the American public as trusting gulls, rather than as citizens.

In fact, America’s own National Academy of Sciences recently published a study (17 March 2015), “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” which opens (though propagandistically blaming Assad as having contributed to the drought):

“Before the Syrian uprising that began in 2011, the greater Fertile Crescent experienced the most severe drought in the instrumental record. For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest.”

(Of course, Obama doesn’t claim to be bombing Assad’s forces because Assad had ‘unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies.’) In the section of that report “Significance,” the investigators-propagandists close:

“We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.”

So, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, in this recent study, is arguing, in effect, that Syria should have a different government. Perhaps the failed state that Obama insists upon producing there would be the ‘solution’? To what extent is the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (it’s PNAS) nowitself politicized, nationalistic, propagandistic — that they are retrospectively publishing something like this, which fails to criticize the U.S. Government itself for having turned down the Syrian Government’s years-long pleadings for assistance on the matter? The PNAS study ignores this. Instead, it argues only that, “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria, marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.”

Wow, the NAS argues that Assad should have been more dictatorial! That would have helped prevent the effects of the drought? Does nothing that comes from the U.S. Establishment possess credibility anymore — publishing garbage like this inPNAS? Is Assad more of a dictator than Obama? Does the U.S. National Academy of Sciences really think he should have been? How absurd does the propaganda need to be in order for the U.S. to become a laughingstock to the entire world for its ‘democratic’ pretensions? After all: it’s not a democracy. And the one scientific study that has been done of that has confirmed that it’s not. So: the U.S. now insists upon installing ‘democracy’ in Syria, where all polls show that Assad would win any free election (and the latest polled finding is that he’d win at least 55% of the votes) but Obama insists that he must be ousted, so that there can be ‘democracy’ there?

Marshall’s news report about the origin of the Syrian war was published at Consortium News on 20 July 2015, but was picked up and reported to a broader audience only at a very few news-sites, each no larger (or even smaller) in audience-size than is the publisher (Consortium News) itself. Only RINF, CommonDreams and Truthout republished it. Reddit posted that story’s headline, “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War,” linking to the Consortium News report, but no one up-marked it there, and still no reader-comments have been posted to it there. It was just another voice of real news unheard in the wilderness of propaganda that causes an individual tree to be ignored among the forest.

Thus: This blockbuster three-month-old news-report still remains news in the U.S., even today. Marshall’s news report was one of the most important of all news reports on the Syrian war, and it certainly deserves larger public distribution than that. So: Here is his historical account of the origin of the Syrian war.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is an academic and author.

The original source of this article is Strategic Culture. Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Strategic Culture, 2015

10 November 2015

By Dan Glazebrook

Following the 1991 Gulf war, the late lamented US comedian Bill Hicks performed a routine of a US general at a press conference. “Iraq has incredible weapons. Incredible,” the general said. ‘How do you know that?,’ he was asked. “Oh, well, uh – we looked at the receipt”.

In the aftermath of the Russian plane crash in Egypt last week, Britain in particular has been quick to claim that the crash was the result of a “terrorist bomb”, presumably planted by ISIS. So what is it that makes Cameron so sure that the terrorist group created by his Syria policy has the necessary training, equipment and wherewithal to carry out that attack? Did he look at the receipt?

After all, the lame ‘evidence’ we have actually been graced with by the US and British governments so far is no evidence whatsoever. The British claim to have intercepted “chatter” about the attack between ISIS’s Syria and Sinai operations which even the Times admits was “probably deliberately planted to prove to the Americans and British that ISIS operatives were behind the bomb plot”. Of course ISIS would want to claim it; but such claims are far from confirming they actually did it. The US, for their part, claim that their satellite picked up a ‘heat flash’, suggesting an explosion. But, as the Times again points out, a bomb is not the only possible cause of such an explosion: “the aeroplane suffered a sudden violent event – probably a structural failure that snapped off the tail. The question is whether the cause was a bomb or a fracture in the fuselage. An exploding fuel tank is also an outside possibility”. The UK seem to be pretty sure it was terrorism and presumably they have reason to believe this. But whatever that reason is, it is not the reason we have been given.

What is clear is that if the plane was brought down by a bomb, and that bomb was planted by ISIS, it marks a major development for the group. According to Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute, an attack of this kind by ISIS would “herald an unseen level of sophistication in their bomb-making, as well as the ability to smuggle a device on board.” But as well as a new technical feat, such an attack would represent an alarming change in tactics. The Times yesterday argued that “If the plane crash did turn out to be the work of an Islamic State affiliate in Sinai, it would mark a significant departure for the jihadist group, which had yet to launch a large-scale attack against civilians”. So, if the plane was indeed brought down by an ISIS-in-Sinai bomb, either the group have suddenly been blessed with some amazing new technology, or they have suddenly decided to change tactics to mass killings of civilians. If the latter, isn’t it a little odd that, after more than a year of Western airstrikes apparently aimed at ISIS, the group has failed to launch such an attack against Western civilians – yet are able to respond within weeks to a campaign of Russian airstrikes which, according to the West, do not even target ISIS??

Either way, the crash couldn’t have been timed more perfectly from the point of view of Western geopolitics. After four years of setbacks, the West’s Syrian ‘regime change’ (that euphemism for wholesale state destruction) operation now faces the prospect of imminent total defeat courtesy of Russia’s intervention. And options for how to salvage that operation are very limited indeed. Full scale occupation is a non-starter; following Iraq and Afghanistan, both the US and British armies are now officially incapable of mounting such ventures. The Libya option – supporting death squads on the ground with NATO air cover – has always come up against Russian opposition, but has now been effectively rendered impossible. And relying on anti-government death squads alone is simply very unlikely to succeed, however many TOWs and manpads are feverishly thrown into the fire; after all, there are only so many terrorists and mercenaries who can be shipped in, and, as Mike Whitney put it, the world may have already reached “peak terrorist”. Forcing Russia out – and turning US and British airpower openly and decisively against the Syrian state – has thus become a key objective for Western planners. But how to do it? What would turn Russians against the intervention? The Times yesterday: “So far the war in Syria has been quite popular….[but] if it turns out that the war prompts terrorists to wreak vengeance on ordinary Russians by secreting explosives on planes, that gung-ho attitude could change” – or, at least, that is presumably what the Times is hoping.

And downing the plane on Egyptian soil just before Sisi’s first state visit to Britain? It couldn’t have served British strategy better if the bomb had been planted directly by MI6 themselves (which certainly shouldn’t be ruled out by the way, and certainly not simply on the racist grounds that ‘of course we don’t do that sort of thing’ – in other words, that only brown people are capable of an atrocity so hideous).

Egypt is at a historical crossroads. Having moved from the socialist camp into the West’s ‘orbit’ during the Sadat era in the 1970s, Egypt’s leadership has become ever less willing to be dictated to by Washington and London: a process that began in the latter part of Mubarak’s rule, and has continued under Sisi. Along with Russia, Egypt has played a leading “spoiler role”, as Sukant Chandan puts it, in the West’s regime change operation in Syria – and has not been forgiven for it. In addition, Mubarak’s government had been dragging its feet on the privatization and ‘structural adjustment’ demanded by the IMF: and tourism was and is a major source of income helping to reduce the country’s dependence on the international banksters. But since last Saturday, all that is now in the balance; as the Financial Times commented, suspicions that the crash was caused by a bomb “are likely to prove disastrous to the country’s struggling tourism industry”. “Of course this will have a huge negative impact on Egypt” announced British foreign secretary Philip Hammond matter-of-factly following Britain’s decision to stop British flights to Egypt – seemingly without an ounce of regret. It is interesting, in this regard, that early suggestions that the plane could have been brought down by a shoulder-to-air missile (of the type now being supplied by the CIA to the insurgency in Syria, according to the Wall Street Journal) – as ISIS themselves actually claimed to have done – were very quickly replaced with speculation that it must have been an onboard bomb. This was a very useful way to shift blame away from the equippers of terrorism, and onto ‘lazy, corrupt Egyptian airport staff’ who let the bomber through – all the better to humiliate Egypt and undermine its tourist industry. The likely massive loss of tourist income will force the Egyptians to go back to the IMF, who will, of course, demand their pound of flesh in the form of mass privatisations and ‘austerity’.

But it is not only Egypt’s economic dependency on the West that will be deepened by the crash – Britain, in particular, appears to be using the crash as leverage to reinsinuate itself into Egypt’s military and security apparatus. Firstly, British officials have been taking every opportunity to humiliate Egypt, trying to convince the world that Egypt is perilously unstable, and that only by outsourcing security to the West can it be safe again. When Sisi arrived in the country this week, noted the Times, “Britain openly contradicted the Egyptian leader and suggested that he was not in full control of the Sinai peninsula” whilst an Egyptian official “commented that the dispatch of six officials to check the security arrangements at Sharm el-Sheikh airport was ‘like treating us as children’”. And lo and behold, following Sisi’s visit, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced that “the UK would establish a small military team in Egypt to counter terrorism and extremism.” As I have written about here, the spread of terrorism throughout the MENA region by NATO’s Libya operation has laid the groundwork for a renewed Western push to convince global South states that they need to deepen ‘military co-operation’ with the West. Thus, where economic dependence on Western finance and markets is in terminal decline (largely due to the rise of China), a new military dependence is being fostered. This is especially so for states such as Nigeria, Egypt and Iraq – one-time client states of the West gradually being pulled out of its orbit – with the West using the threat of terrorism as a means of forcing them back into the Western fold. A classic protection racket, in other words.

Finally, of course, the British government has not missed the opportunity to use the tragedy to push for deeper British involvement in Syria. Michael Fallon, Britain’s Defence Minister, has been spending the last two days explaining how the case for bombing Syria would be strengthened if it were proven the plane was brought down by ISIS. Quite how more deeply insinuating one of the death squads’ leading state backers into Syria would somehow reduce the power of the death squads is, of course, not explained; such is the nature of imperialism.

In a world, then, where Western power is in steep decline, terrorism is fast becoming one of the last few viable options for extending its hegemony and undermining the rising power of the global South. If this attack was conducted by ISIS, then, how kind it was of them to take it upon themselves to act as the vanguard of Western imperial interests. And how obliging of the hundreds of Western agents in the organization not to do anything to stop them.

An earlier version of this article first appeared on RT.com

Dan Glazebrook is a political journalist and author of Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis

9 November 2015

By AWD news

Kuwait City — According to Kuwaiti Al Qabas daily, the flamboyant Saudi Prince and entrepreneur, al-Waleed bin Talal posited that his country must reconsider its regional commitments and devise a new strategy to combat Iran’s increasing influence in Gulf States by forging a Defense pact with Tel Aviv to deter any possible Iranian moves in the light of unfolding developments in the Syria and Moscow’s military intervention.

“The whole Middle-East dispute is tantamount to matter of life and death for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from my vantage point ,and I know that Iranians seek to unseat the Saudi regime by playing the Palestinian card , hence to foil their plots Saudi Arabia and Israel must bolster their relations and form a united front to stymie Tehran’s ambitious agenda,” Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA) quoted Prince al-Waleed as saying on Tuesday , adding, Riyadh and Tel Aviv must achieve a modus vivendi , for Saudi policy in regard to Arab-Israeli crisis is no longer tenable.

Iran seeks to buttress its presence in the Mediterranean by supporting Assad regime in Syria, added Prince al-Waleed, but to the chagrin of Riyadh and its sister Gulf sheikhdoms , Putin’s Russia has become a real co-belligerent force in Syrian 4-year-old civil war by attacking CIA-trained Islamist rebels. Here surfaces the paramount importance of Saudi-Israeli nexus to frustrate Russia-Iran-Hezbollah axis.

” I will side with the Jewish nation and its democratic aspirations in case of outbreak of a Palestinian Intifada( uprising) and i shall exert all my influence to break any ominous Arab initiatives set to condemn Tel Aviv , because I deem the Arab-Israeli entente and future friendship necessary to impede the Iranian dangerous encroachment,” Al Qabas cited the Saudi media tycoon as he is in a regional tour, visiting the other Gulf Arab littoral states–Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman–to muster support for Saudi-backed Islamist rebels in Syria.

No longer able to justify its illegal military presence in Bahrain – a tiny Arabian Gulf Kingdom, occupied by Saudi forces to stifle the 2011 pro-deaconry movement–, some high-profile Saudi officials, namely Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, voiced their willingness to annex Bahrain. These flagrant statements drew wide condemnation from nearly every quarter of the Arab world.

“…you know the union with Bahrain doesn’t explicitly mean to annex our dear neighbors, but in fact we are wary about the future of Bahrain, its people security and well-being. Bahrain is the home to U.S. fifth fleet which its presence is of vital interest for Saudi Arabia, thus we can not permit Iran to wreak havoc in our back yard,” said the Saudi Prince, vindicating his previous brash comments regarding the annexation of Bahrain.

27 October 2015
www.awdnews.com

A recent study suggests the “War on Terror” has had two million victims, but reporter Nafeez Ahmed claims this may be only a fraction of the total dead from Western wars.

By MintPress News Desk

WASHINGTON — A study released earlier this year revealed the shocking death toll of the United States’s “War on Terror” since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but the true body count could be even higher.

Published in March by Physicians for Social Responsibility, the study, conducted by a team that included some Nobel Prize winners, determined that at least 1.3 million people have died as a result of war since Sept.11, 2001, but the real figure might be as high as two million. The study was an attempt to “close the gaps” in existing research, including studies like the Iraq Body Count,” which puts the number of violent deaths in that country at about 219,000 since 2003, based on media reports of the time period.

Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, writing in April for Middle East Eye, explained some of the ways the previous figures fell short, according to the physicians’ research:

“For instance, although 40,000 corpses had been buried in Najaf since the launch of the war, IBC [Iraq Body Count] recorded only 1,354 deaths in Najaf for the same period. That example shows how wide the gap is between IBC’s Najaf figure and the actual death toll – in this case, by a factor of over 30.

Such gaps are replete throughout IBC’s database. In another instance, IBC recorded just three airstrikes in a period in 2005, when the number of air attacks had in fact increased from 25 to 120 that year. Again, the gap here is by a factor of 40.”

The physicians behind the study also praised a controversial report from the medical journal The Lancet that placed the toll count far higher than that of Iraq Body Count, at closer to one million dead. In addition to the war in Iraq, the PSR study added additional victims from other countries where the United States has waged war:

“To this, the PSR study adds at least 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, killed as the direct or indirect consequence of US-led war: a ‘conservative’ total of 1.3 million. The real figure could easily be ‘in excess of 2 million’.”

These figures may still be underestimating the real death toll, according to Ahmed. These studies only account for the victims of violent conflict, but not the many more who will die as a result of the damage war brings to crucial infrastructure, from roads to farms to hospitals — not to mention devastating sanctions like those placed on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991. He continues:

“Undisputed UN figures show that 1.7 million Iraqi civilians died due to the West’s brutal sanctions regime, half of whom were children.

The mass death was seemingly intended. Among items banned by the UN sanctions were chemicals and equipment essential for Iraq’s national water treatment system. A secret US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document discovered by Professor Thomas Nagy of the School of Business at George Washington University amounted, he said, to ‘an early blueprint for genocide against the people of Iraq.’”

Similar figures for Afghanistan, he reports, could bring totals to four million or more.

As Ahmed points out in his article, the majority of those killed in these wars and those suffering most from these wars, statistically speaking, were Muslim — a stark contrast to the common view that radical Muslim terrorists are the deadliest group in the Middle East. Rather, it would seem the American military are the worst killers, and the death toll resembles religious genocide. In 2009, Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard, wrote in Foreign Policy:

“How many Muslims has the United States killed in the past thirty years, and how many Americans have been killed by Muslims? Coming up with a precise answer to this question is probably impossible, but it is also not necessary, because the rough numbers are so clearly lopsided.”

Or, as Ben Affleck famously quipped to Bill Maher last year: “We’ve killed more Muslims than they’ve killed us by an awful lot.”

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3 August 2015

www.mintpressnews.com

 

By Afro-Middle East Centre

The outcome of Turkey’s 1 November snap election was an unexpected surge in support for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which will comfortably dominate parliament with 49 per cent of the vote (up from 41 per cent in the June election) and 57 per cent of parliamentary seats. This is in stark contrast to the results of the June election that had produced a hung parliament and led to five months of political and economic instability. This latest outcome sets a different scene for the country’s future social, political and economic agendas as the AKP takes 317 of the 550 parliamentary seats.

With large numbers of refugees arriving in Turkey daily, the Syrian crisis certainly influenced the the socio-economic environment and the election, but there is little doubt that the resumption of violence between the state and the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) was extremely crucial in how votes would be cast. While opposition media, particularly those aligned to the Gulen/Hizmet movement, portray the outcome as a personal victory for the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the results highlight the collective weakness of the three main opposition parties, underlined by the spectacular losses suffered by the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – which shed 40 parliamentary seats – and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) – with a decrease of 21 seats. Both parties could have been king-makers in a coalition government after June but, like the AKP, they gambled on securing more seats in the second election. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) maintained its position, losing only two seats.

The AKP’s revival as majority party with four million votes more votes than in June can be attributed mainly to a popular desire for ‘stability’ which, many voters believed, can be delivered only by the ruling party. Further, the Kurdish issue and related violence loomed large, and coalition governments in Turkey have historically failed to help in resolving the Kurdish question. Turks became instinctively distrustful of coalition governments after the turbulent 1990s when frequent military interventions into politics became the norm. This week’s outcome can, thus, also be read as an attempt by voters to prevent a situation where Turkey can only be governed by a coalition. Five months ago analysts and exit polls predicted the AKP’s decline as a result of internal and external pressures, particularly because of contestation between the party and its former ally, the Fethullah Gulen movement. The Gulenists’ withdrawing support from the AKP in June strongly influenced the party’s poor showing.

In five months the HDP, which celebrated in June for the 13 per cent of the vote it had received, lost three per cent, while its leadership aimed for 20 per cent. To voters for whom stability was a priority – especially conservative Kurdish voters, the HDP’s unwillingness to distance itself from and condemn the PKK was a major factor for its losses. Votes that the HDP received in June from those who viewed a strong HDP as a check on the AKP’s exercise of power, especially in light of corruption allegations against AKP officials, now switched to the AKP. Some observers suggest that the shock decline in AKP votes in June was a result of punitive voting because of a stagnant economy and rising instability brought on by the Syrian crisis. And nationalists wanted to punish the AKP for its seemingly-dovish approach to the PKK. Images of armed PKK members at check points in Kurdish areas such as Cizre stirred anti-AKP sentiment even within its traditional support base.

But the return of violence on a daily basis – with bombings in Turkey’s major cities, and the Turkish army at war with both the PKK and Islamic State group and with deaths on both sides of the state-Kurdish conflict – turned a large number of voters away from the HDP back to the AKP. Most HDP votes this week came from Turkey’s east, suggesting that Kurds in other areas switched their votes back to the AKP. The ruling party seems to be considered by many as a safe bet during tumultuous times. Some critics argue that the AKP manufactured ‘instability’ in the past five months in order to return precisely the result that this election did, that while the government has not been responsible for all the violence, it created the conditions for it and helped paint the PKK (and politicised Kurds more generally) as Turkey’s enemy – in order to win back the parliament.

Since, in the immediate aftermath of the election, Erdogan has pledged to liquidate the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, will likely face increased pressure from Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), which will want him to support a political solution to the conflict – a difficult prospect for the imprisoned leader of an armed group. If he is unwilling, as he will be, he will be made to seem irrelevant and the assumption would be that the PKK strategic leadership centre had shifted to the commanders in the Qandil Mountains. He will likely spend much more time in prison, at least until the AKP decides it wants to revive talks with the PKK.

HDP leaders will face similar pressures. To continue to be recognised as the political voice of Turkish Kurds (at least by the state), they will be expected to distance themselves from the PKK. It will also have to consider how it might strengthen its appeal both to Kurds and to Turkish leftists who supported it in June, but might have deserted it in November. As with all parties, the HDP’s survival partly depends on the Turkish economy. This will be a critical factor for the HDP which won most seats through votes obtained in the east where the economy has been particularly hard hit as a result of the government-PKK battles. To complicate matters further for the HDP, it will have to navigate its ‘debt’ to the Gulen movement whose members voted for the HDP as a way of blocking the AKP and opposing Erdogan.

But with the Kurdish question again becoming the most pressing domestic issue – especially with the renewed war between the state and the PKK, the government will want a strong Kurdish political partner that can be an interlocutor with the PKK and encourage it back to the negotiations table in the event that the AKP decided to revert to that strategy. The AKP then will likely see the HDP as such a partner and will want to change that adversarial relationship into one of cooperation.

Paradoxically, the AKP also retained votes from supporters who had been critical of the party’s negotiations with the PKK, but who did not shift their votes to the hardline Turkish nationalist MHP; and it won the votes of MHP nationalists who were encouraged by the government’s recent (deadly) confrontations with the PKK. The MHP’s identity-based policies are viewed by many as incapable of dealing with the new reality, including that of Kurdish parliamentarians, and is losing even leaders because of this. The AKP, then, succeeded in winning the votes of both conservative Kurds (from the HDP), and nationalist Turks (from the MHP) – even though that seems counter-intuitive.

Another factor contributing to the AKP’s success was the revision of its candidate lists since the June election. Many well-known leaders who had reached their three-term limit were unable to stand in June, but, having ‘missed’ an election, became eligible again. In a period of uncertainty the electorate seems to have taken comfort in personalities from the past who are tried and trusted.

While in most elections a weak economy results in the incumbent ruling party losing support, in Turkey it has meant that voters supported the incumbent because they believed it could rescue the economy – as it did over a decade ago.

While the Syrian war is ever-present for all Turks – especially since Turkey hosts two million Syrian refugees who have been partly blamed for the country’s economic woes – it and other foreign policy issues were less important in this election than the PKK issue.

With the question of parliament’s make-up settled for another term, there have been two broad perspectives on a future under the AKP. The optimistic view is that the government, with a secure majority, will be able to deal with the economic, foreign policy and Kurdish issues. The other is that the vote was unfair because of repression, and that the AKP will become more authoritarian, further restrict free expression and increase polarisation.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s prime minister and AKP’s chief, acknowledged in his victory speech that polarisation was a problem, and he pledged to form a government that will embrace all Turks. Will he seriously address the problem? Will he reflect that pledge in a new cabinet that includes members of other parties? For many critics of the AKP, the big concern is what they see as Erdogan’s authoritarian tendency and his desire to change Turkey’s political system into a presidential one. Whether this desire or Davutoglu’s pledge will trump will have long-term implications for Turkey.

Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) has been established in South Africa as a non-profit organisation. Its funds are raised through grants and donations as well as through training and commissioned research that it conducts for the private and public sectors.

6 November 2015

By Chandra Muzaffar

Current trends in Malaysian society do not generate much optimism about the future. Gleaned from the electoral landscape, there are two trends one should focus upon: one, associated with the ruling Barisan Nasional, specifically UMNO, the coalition’s pillar and the nation’s biggest and most influential political party; the other, linked to the Pakatan, mainly the DAP, the largest political party in the opposition.

We shall evaluate briefly these two actors in relation to five critical aspects of national life — integrity; economic realities; political structure; religion; and ethnic relations.

Integrity

While the UMNO led government has initiated some institutional measures to enhance integrity such as anti-corruption courts and integrity pacts, it has given very little attention to the variety of proposals made by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and the Institute Integrity Malaysia (IIM) in the last few years to combat elite corruption. This is largely because of powerful vested interests which have become deeply entrenched. The government’s approach to the 1MDB controversy testifies to this.

The opposition appears to be more determined to curb graft. The DAP state government in Penang under Lim Guan Eng requires its Executive Councillors and Assembly members to declare their assets (though not their liabilities) to the public. After seven years in power, there is no whiff of any financial scandal. The PKR-led Selangor state government sought to minimize political interference in governmental decisions pertaining to contracts and projects under its former Mentri Besar, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim. Kelantan, which has been under PAS stewardship for 25 years now is not tainted with corruption largely because of the moral rectitude of the late Dato Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, who was Mentri Besar for 23 years.

Economic Realities

The UMNO-BN leadership recognizes that the bottom 40% of urban Malaysia is struggling to make ends meet. It has offered some remedies in the form of assistance programmes but they are largely palliative and do not address the root causes of relative deprivation. It is not just a question of raising incomes or upgrading skills. The ownership and control of key resources that the bottom 40% depend upon — land, water, energy — will have to be re-appraised. Likewise, the distribution of goods and services which impact upon the cost of living will have to be reviewed to ensure greater access and equity for the poorer half of society.

The opposition’s economic policies have also not examined larger structural challenges of this sort in a consistent manner. True, its alternative budget for 2016 promises to implement a capital gains tax and an inheritance tax which would be equitable. But it could have tried to explore how the role of the cooperative movement for instance could be reinforced in both the production and distribution of certain goods and services to strengthen the position of the working-class. The re-organization of agriculture, which the opposition’s budget highlights, could have also been linked to building dynamic rural cooperatives.

Political Structure

For all its warts and pimples, Malaysia is still a functioning democracy. In some respects, democratic space has widened in the last few years with the abolition of the Internal Security Act (ISA), changes to the University and the University Colleges Act (UCCA) and the introduction of a Peaceful Assembly Act — all accomplished under Dato Sri Najib’s tutelage. The new media has also been a major contributory factor. Nonetheless, dissent, especially when it raises questions about the exercise of power at the apex, is often severely curbed. A true participatory democracy anchored in local, grassroots communities is nowhere on the horizon.

Through its commitment to local government elections, the DAP continues to uphold an important principle of grassroots democracy. But there is little evidence to show that it is seeking to change the top-down approach to democracy and governance — which is part of the national ethos — even in those areas within its jurisdiction in Penang.

Religion

Freedom of worship and celebration of religious diversity — hallmarks of UMNO-BN rule for decades — are very much part of the social reality. And yet there are worrying signs which have become more pronounced over time. As Islam became more prominent in the public arena from the late seventies onwards expressing itself through form rather than substance, many of its adherents also became more exclusive in their outlook especially in matters relating to interaction with non-Muslims. At the same time, because their understanding of faith has undergone a transformation of sorts propelled by the pressures of urbanization and external influences, more and more Muslims in the middle and upper echelons of society have become advocates of an “Islamic State” that emphasizes prohibition and punishment. It has willy-nilly created an environment that erroneously views hudud as pivotal to Islam when it is God-Consciousness reflected in justice and compassion which defines the religion. Hudud has not only driven a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims in Peninsular Malaysia but has also generated a great deal of uneasiness among Sarawakians and Sabahans including Muslims.

Hudud has also split the opposition. It has split DAP from PAS and is one of the implicit reasons why a number of PAS leaders and activists have broken away from the party to form the Parti Amanah Negara (PAN). How the different opposition parties will deal with this issue in the coming months will determine to an extent the fate of the opposition. The hudud issue is in a sense interwoven with the bigger and more complex challenge of what the role of Islam is in Malaysian society. Neither the opposition nor the BN has the answer.

Ethnic Relations

UMNO and the BN have all along adopted a two pronged approach to ethnic relations. One, keep the Malays and the other communities in their own silos. Mobilize and organize along ethnic lines. View issues and individuals through ethnic lenses. Two, ensure that at the elite level in particular there is an appreciable degree of inter-ethnic cooperation and amity. So ethnic mobilization and inter-ethnic cooperation go hand and hand.

It is a formula that ensured the BN’s electoral success for quite a long while. It was partly responsible for guaranteeing inter-ethnic peace in the country. However, since the 2008 general election, the formula has ceased to be viable. Given the massive erosion of support from the BN among Chinese and Indian voters, it is not possible any more to bring those communities into an inter-ethnic relationship with the Malays and UMNO. And for a lot of urban Malays who perceive UMNO as a party that has gone astray and is no longer connected to them, the party is not on their radar screen. If a silo based, static approach to the maintenance of inter-ethnic peace does not command any meaning, is UMNO-BN capable of evolving an alternative?

Though opposition parties are formally less ethnic, their electoral appeal is still shaped by ethnic politics. What is worse, they are in no position to offer a formula for inter-ethnic cooperation given the huge ideological chasm that separates PAS from DAP. The DAP on its own will not be able to win substantial Malay support partly because it has little empathy for the history and identity of the land which is central to the Malay vision of the nation. Will the DAP’s partners — PKR and PAN — be able to fill that vacuum?

In the ultimate analysis, it is because UMNO-BN, on the one hand, and DAP- Pakatan, on the other, both lack inter-ethnic credentials vital for governing a multi-ethnic society like ours that the future does not inspire hope.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yayasan 1Malaysia.
Petaling Jaya.

10 November 2015.

By Maung Zarni

With a constitution that safeguards its immense power and wealth, the military knows that, unlike in 1990, it doesn’t need a crackdown to keep its regime intact

Though in exile 6,000 miles away from Myanmar, I can almost taste the euphoria. Aung San Suu Kyi’s wildly popular opposition – the National League for Democracy – has won a landslide in the multiparty elections, and 31 million voters, most apparently backing the NLD, are savouring a long-awaited moment of jubilation. The NLD leader, whom they call Amay or mother, appeared on TV, her eyes shining with tears of joy.

Even foreign journalists covering the country in the 25 years since Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest have scarcely been able to conceal their excitement at the prospect of a new era of freedom and democracy, ushered in through her non-violent, pragmatic leadership.

Myanmar’s Mandela moment has arrived. Or has it?

A sober analysis may be in order. Aside from the fact that Myanmar’s military leaders have, constitutionally, blocked any possibility of “the Woman” with her two “impure-blooded sons” and “foreign privileges” assuming the presidency, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party faces huge barriers to turn a resounding electoral mandate into a real step towards a genuinely representative government.

And this is not the first time the public has felt euphoric about the power of its votes. In May 1990 Aung San Suu Kyi and her then fledgling opposition party won a decisive mandate taking 82% of the parliamentary seats and 62% of the total votes. That landslide came despite the fact that the generals placed her and her senior colleagues under house arrest on the eve of the elections, in effect barring them from the electoral process. So the opposition knows how it feels to fail to convert this mandate a quarter-century ago into a real political gain or put the country on the path of democracy.

The generals annulled the results of that election and imprisoned hundreds of newly elected MPs. Their excuse was that the NLD had been infiltrated by communists, considered a threat to national security.

Now, 25 years on, Myanmar finds itself in a similar situation. This time the ruling military has prepared itself to meet the popular challenge for democratisation through electoral politics. To appreciate how difficult it is for Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition to move the country in a genuinely democratic direction, it is imperative to understand how the military – fascist at root, and authoritarian in outlook and operation – defines and approaches the issue of electoral democracy.

To start with, elections overseen by the generals are held not to usher in a representative government as it is understood in any system worthy of the term “democracy”; but to legitimise the system they call “discipline-flourishing democracy”. This means the military serves as the ultimate custodian with the power to discipline any elected government or MP who dares to stray from the military’s chosen path and its definition of parliamentary democracy.

The main instrument is the 2008 constitution, which elevates core interests of the military (such as the military budget, appointments, business conglomerates and security matters) above the law and parliamentary oversight.

Specifically, the constitution authorises the commander-in-chief to appoint and control all cabinet members in charge of departments relating to the apparatus of state security, such as defence, home affairs and border affairs (dealing with ethnic and strategic matters). He also approves all presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In other words, this top-ranking soldier can stage a coup any time he deems fit.

In addition, he holds the constitutional authority to in effect veto any popularly elected government’s attempt to amend the 2008 constitution, which of course safeguards the military’s prerogatives. Even if the NLD now forms a government, the all-powerful military can and will reject any changes that seek to convert the generals’ discipline-flourishing democracy into something more democratic and less disciplined.

It is little wonder then that Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief, with a smile on his face, wrote off popular fears that the army might stage a coup, annul the results, and lock up the new MPs . A coup was “not conceivable”, he said.

For his part, the acting chairman of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development party – the former general Htay Oo – was heard conceding that his party had suffered big losses in many areas. But in spite of his own defeat, he looked unnaturally relaxed when he said that the ruling party would accept any outcome, including an NLD landslide, and that the mission of the generals was to put the country on the path of democracy. He can say this, because of course it is the military’s version of democracy.

Having secured their ill-gotten gains – billions of dollars amassed from the proceeds of jade, natural gas and other national assets and a quarter-century of the military’s “Burmese Way to Capitalism”- and with the constitutional right to take power back 24/7, the generals will keep on smiling.

It is win-win: incremental change with echoes of the Arab spring, without bloodshed or chaos. The public and opposition get to experience another ephemeral wave of euphoria. And democratic governments in Washington, London, Paris or Canberra can now hold up Burma as a success story of the kind of business, diplomatic and military engagement they practise vis-a-vis China. Aung San Suu Kyi can feel vindicated about her Mandela-like status and her choice of a pragmatic strategy of no longer rocking the boat and fighting hard for human rights.

Never mind that the “ democracy” midwifed by these powerful actors excludes and undermines the welfare and interests of the country’s jailed student and labour activists, farmers, ethnic minorities in the civil war zones, and the disenfranchised Rohingya people and other Muslims.

9 November 2015

Maung Zarni (www.maungzarni.net) is a London-based scholar with the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, at the Sleuk Rith Institute. He is a former visiting fellow at the LSE

http://www.theguardian.com/