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By Sukumaran C. V.

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self respect and oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.—M. K. Gandhi. (The Story of My Experiments with Truth)

In his 32-minute long speech delivered extempore at the Central Hall of Parliament on 20th May 2014, Narendra Modi said that his “government is one which thinks about the poor, listens to the poor and which exists for the poor. … The new government is dedicated to the poor. This government is for the villagers, farmers, Dalits and the oppressed, for their aspirations and this is our responsibility.”

That is in words, in rhetoric. But Mr. Modi’s one year of governance proved that in deeds, his government is one which thinks about the corporates, listens to the corporates, exists for the corporates and dedicated to the corporates.

Nobody expected that Mr. Modi will or can translate his rhetoric into practice. Every politician comes to power in the name of the poor and governs to safeguard the interests of the rich. And the one year of Modi government is a categorical statement that the government rules only for the welfare of the corporate world, not for the welfare of the villagers, farmers, Dalits and the oppressed. Their condition is worsening by each passing day and they are referred to and remembered only in rhetoric!

How enthusiastic Mr. Modi and his team is to make the Land Acquisition Bill and the Environmental Laws more corporate friendly and anti-farmer and anti-poor; and in slashing social expenditure that will benefit the ‘villagers, farmers, Dalits and the oppressed’ he mentioned in his rhetoric!

The ‘achievements’ of Mr. Modi’s one year governance reminded me of what Arundhati Roy says about the Kingdom in the Sky in her article Listening to Grasshoppers: Genocide, Denial and Celebration:

“Ironically, the era of the free market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in India—the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own, somewhere up on the stratosphere where they merge with the rest of the world’s elite. This Kingdom in the Sky is a complete universe in itself, hermetically sealed from the rest of India. It has its own newspapers, films, television programs, morality plays, transport systems, malls and intellectuals. …But there is a problem, and the problem is lebensraum—living space. A kingdom needs its lebensraum. The Sky Citizens look toward the Old Nation. They see thousands of acres of farmland, and think: These really ought to be Special Economic Zones for our industries. They see Adivasis sitting on the bauxite mountains…They think: That is our bauxite, our iron ore, our uranium. What are these people doing on our land? What is our water doing in their rivers? What is our timber doing in their trees?”

It is natural that the Sky Citizens will certainly try to deprive the people of their land, rivers and even their right to live. Who will protect the people in a democracy if those who are elected by the people become the servants of the Sky Citizens?

In his keynote address at the opening of the Edinburgh Commonwealth Summit on October 24, 1997 the then Prime Minister of India, I. K. Gujral, said: “Equal opportunity and democracy are often absent in the restricted chambers of the international economic system. And yet, I have little doubt that, in the long run, globalization will succeed only if it is equitable and just. The institutional systems that oversee the globalised economy must reflect an enlightened balance of interests.”

Nearly 20 years after, the globalised economy in India not only reflects a balance of interests but also widened the imbalance between the rich and the poor and as a result it has wiped out the lives of nearly three lakh farmers between 1995 and 2011. According to the NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau) data; 2, 90, 740 farmers committed suicide during 1995-2011—an average 18,171 farm suicides each year! And this wave of farm suicides still continues.

When Mr. Manmohan Singh ushered in the liberalized economic policies in 1991, it paved the way for the corporate business to be a Shylock with the unconditional help of the State. And in the 2001-02 Union Budget, the then Finance Minister Yaswant Sinha introduced a major policy decision (in favour of the big business) to reduce the role of the FCI to maintaining only minimum buffer stocks. This policy shift was a lethal blow to our PDS and led to the dismantling of the Minimum Support Price scheme which was a solace to the farmers.

The Union governments since 1991 have confined themselves to creating conditions for private enterprise to flourish. While the successive Union Budgets in the liberalization era have inflicted severe cuts in agriculture subsidies, the revenue forgone under corporate income tax, excise and customs duties during the period 2005 – 2011 is Rs. 21, 25, 023 crores. (P. Sainath, “Corporate socialism’s 2G orgy”, The Hindu, March 7, 2011)

And on Sept. 21, 2012 in his address to the Nation, Prime Minister manmohan Singh, by calling us brothers and sisters again and again, told us: “No government likes to impose burdens on the common man. Our Government has been voted to office twice to protect the interests of the aam admi.” What a great joke it was! And I was reminded of this joke when I haerd Mr. Modi saying that his ‘government is for the villagers, farmers, Dalits and the oppressed, for their aspirations and this is our responsibility.’ And the one year of his governance proved that he was really joking.

A country’s well-being depends on the safety and security its farmers and women enjoy. India miserably fails in this count. In our country an average of 15,000 farmers commit suicide every year since 1995. It means that India’s agricultural sector has been in great distress since 1995 and the woes of our farmers still go unaddressed and unmitigated. In his article ‘Of luxury cars and lowly tractors’, published in The Hindu (Dec. 28, 2010), P. Sainath says that “over a quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1995. It means the largest wave of recorded suicides in human history has occurred in this country….It means one and a half million human beings, family members of those killing themselves, have been tormented by the tragedy. It means farmers in thousands of villages have seen their neighbours take this incredibly sad way out. A way out that more and more will consider as despair grows and policies don’t change.”

Manmohan Singh and his team have gone and Mr. Modi has come, but the policies have still not been changed and our farmers still kill themselves. In his article “Corporate socialism’s 2G orgy” (The Hindu, March 7, 2011) Sainath writes: “In six years from 2005-6, the Government of India wrote off corporate income tax worth Rs.3,74,937 crore. While writing off this gigantic sum for corporates, Pranab Mukherjee’s latest budget slashes thousands of crores from agriculture.”

Modi government too writes off corporate income tax and slashes thousand s of crores from agriculture and social expenditure. And he says that his government is dedicated to the poor!

PS: When millions of farmers were killing themselves during the decade long Congress rule, the Congress Vice President was in deep slumber and now suddenly he wakes up and sees the distress of the farmers and sheds (crocodile) tears for them. Every politician remembers the farmers and the poor when they are out of power and the moment they are in power they can only see the elites and their ‘problems’.

Author is a former JNU student now working as clerk in the Kerala State Government service.
27 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Dan Glazebrook

The ISIS suicide bombings in Yemen and Saudi Arabia – killing a total of at least 43 people – is yet more bitter fruit of the policy pursued by Britain, the US and France and their Gulf allies for the past eight years. This strategy – of fostering violently sectarian anti-Shia militias in order to destroy Syria and isolate Iran – is itself but part of the West’s wider war against the entire global South by weakening any independent regional powers allied to the BRICs countries, and especially to Russia.

The strategy was first revealed as far back as 2007 in Seymour Hersh’s article ‘The Redirection’, which revealed how Bush administration officials were working with the Saudis to channel billions of dollars to sectarian death squads whose role would be to “throw bombs… at Hezbollah, Motada al-Sadr, Iran and at the Syrians” in the memorable words of one US official.

But more evidence of precisely how this strategy unfolded has been coming out ever since. Most recently, last Monday saw the release of 100s of pages of formerly classified US Defence Intelligence Agency documents following a two year court battle in the US. These documents showed that, far from being an unpredictable ‘bolt from the blue’, as the mainstream media tends to imply, the rise of ISIS was in fact both predicted and desired by the US and its allies from as far back as 2012. The DIA report, which was widely circulated amongst the USA’s various military and security agencies at the time, noted that “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)” Elsewhere, the “supporting powers to the opposition” are defined as “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey”.

In other words, a Salafist – that is militantly anti-Shia – “principality” was “exactly” what the West wanted as part of their war against, not only Syria, but “Shia expansion” in Iraq as well. Indeed, it was specifically acknowledged that “ISI [the forerunner of ISIS] could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria”.
The precision of the declassified predictions is astounding. Not only was it predicted that the terrorist groups being supported by Washington and London in Syria would team up with those in Iraq to create an ‘Islamic State’, but the precise dimensions of this state were also spelt out: recognising that “the Salafist[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”, the report noted that the consequences of this for Iraq would be to “create the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Mosul, don’t forget, was taken by ISIS in June 2014, and Ramadi fell earlier this week.

In the three years since the document was drawn up, the policy has continued relentlessly. Recent months have seen the West and its regional allies massively stepping up their support for their anti-Shia death squads. In late March, Saudi Arabia began its bombardment of Yemen following military gains made by the Houthi (Shia) rebels in that country. The Houthis had been the only effective force fighting Al Qaeda in the country, had taken key territories from them last November, and were subsequently threatening them in their remaining strongholds. This was when the Saudis began their bombardment, with US and British support, natch, and, unsurprisingly, Al Qaeda have been the key beneficiary of this intervention, gaining ‘breathing space’ and regaining valuable lost territory, retaking the key port of Mukulla within a week of the commencement of the Saudi bombardment.

Al Qaeda have also been making gains in Syria, taking two major cities in Idlib province last month following a ramping up of military support from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And of course, Britain has been leading the way for a renewed military intervention in Libya in the guise of a “war against people smuggling” that, as I have argued elsewhere, will inevitably end up boosting the most vicious gangs involved in the trade, namely ISIS and Al Qaeda.

So what explains this sudden stepping up of Western and ‘allied’ support for al Qaeda and co right now?
The answer lies in the increasing disgust at the activities of the death squads across the region. No longer perceived as the valiant freedom fighters they were depicted as in 2011, their role as shock troops for the West’s ‘divide and ruin’ strategy, promising nothing but a future of ultra-violent trauma and ethnic cleansing, has become increasingly obvious. The period between mid-2013 and mid-2014 saw a significant turning of the tide against these groups. It began in July 2013 with the ouster of Egypt’s President Morsi following fears he was planning to send in the Egyptian army to aid the Syrian insurgency. New President Al-Sisi put an end not only to that possibility, but to the flow of fighters from Egypt to Syria altogether. The West hoped to step in the following month with airstrikes against the Syrian government, but their attempts to ensure Iranian and Russian acquiescence in such a move came to nought and they were forced into a humiliating climbdown.

Then came the fall of Homs in May 2014, as Syrian government forces retook a key insurgent stronghold. The momentum was clearly with the government side; that is until ‘ISIS’ sprang onto the scene – and with them, a convenient pretext for the US intervention that had been ruled out just a year before.

Meanwhile, in Libya, the pro-death squad parties decisively lost elections for the first elected ‘House of Representatives in June 2014. Their refusal to accept defeat led to a new chapter in the post-NATO Libyan disaster, as they set up a new rival government in Tripoli and waged war on the elected parliament. Yet following a massacre of Egyptians by ISIS in Libya last December, Egypt sent its airforce in on the side of the Tobruk (elected) parliament; it is now, apparently, considering sending in ground troops.

Losing ground in Yemen, in Libya, in Egypt and in Syria, the West’s whole strategy for using armed Salafists as tools of destabilisation had been starting to unravel. The direct interventions in Syria, Yemen and soon Libya, then, are nothing but a means of propping them up – and last Friday’s bombings show they are already paying dividends.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in British domestic and foreign policy.. He can be reached at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk

27 May, 2015
RT.com

 

By Thierry Meyssan

Macedonia has just neutralised an armed group whose sponsors had been under surveillance for at least eight months. By doing so, it has prevented a new attempt at a coup d’État, planned by Washington for the 17th of May. The aim was to spread the chaos already infecting Ukraine into Macedonia in order to stall the passage of a Russian gas pipeline to the European Union.

On the 9th of May, 2015, the Macedonian police launched a dawn operation to arrest an armed group which had infiltrated the country and which was suspected of preparing a number of attacks.

The police evacuated the civilian population before launching the assault. The suspects opened fire, which led to a bitter firefight, leaving 14 terrorists and 8 members of the police forces dead. 30 people were taken prisoner. There were a large number of wounded

Not a terrorist act, but an attempted coup d’État

The Macedonian police were clearly well-informed before they launched their operation. According to the Minister for the Interior, Ivo Kotevski, the group was preparing a very important operation for the 17th May (the date of the demonstration organised by the Albanophone opposition in Skopje).

The identification of the suspects has made it possible to determine that they were almost all ex-members of the UÇK (Kosovo Liberation Army) [1].

Among them were :

• Sami Ukshini, known as « Commandant Sokoli », whose family played a historic rôle in the UÇK.

• Rijai Bey, ex-bodyguard of Ramush Haradinaj (himself a drug trafficker, military head of the UÇK, then Prime Minister of Kosovo. He was twice condemned for war crimes by the International Penal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, but was acquitted because 9 crucial witnesses were murdered during the trial).

• Dem Shehu, currently bodyguard for the Albanophone leader and founder of the BDI party, Ali Ahmeti. 
• Mirsad Ndrecaj, known as the « NATO Commandant », grandson of Malic Ndrecaj, who is commander of the 132nd Brigade of the UÇK.

The principal leaders of this operation, including Fadil Fejzullahu (killed during the assault), are close to the United States ambassador in Skopje, Paul Wohlers.

Paul Wohlers is the son of US diplomat Lester Wohlers, who played an important part in Atlantist propaganda, and directed the cinematographic service of the U.S. Information Agency. Paul’s brother, Laurence Wohlers, is presently an ambassador in the Central African Republic. Paul Wohlers himself, an ex-Navy pilot, is a specialist in counter-espionage. He was the assistant director of the United States Department of State Operations Center (in other words, the service for the surveillance and protection of diplomats).

To eliminate any doubt about the identity of the operation’s sponsors, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, intervened even before the assault was over – not to declare his condemnation of terrorism and his support for the constitutional government of Macedonia, but to paint a picture of the terrorist group as a legitimate ethnic opposition : « I am following the events in Kumanovo with deep concern. I would like to express my sympathy to the families of those who were killed or wounded. It is important that all polititcal and community leaders work together to restore order and begin a transparent investigation in order to find out what happened. I am calling for everyone to show reserve and avoid any new escalation of violence, in the intersts of the nation and also the whole region. » You would have to be blind not to understand.

In January 2015, Macedonia foiled an attempted coup d’état organised for the head of the opposition, the social-democrat Zoran Zaev. Four people were arrested, and Mr. Zaev had his passport confiscated, while the Atlantist press began its denunciation of an « authoritarian drift by the régime ».

Zoran Zaev is publicly supported by the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Holland. But the only trace left of this attempted coup d’état indicates the responsibility of the US.
On the 17th May, Zoran Zaev’s social-democrat party (SDSM) [2] was supposed to organise a demonstration. It intended to distribute 2,000 masks in order to prevent the police from identifying the terrorists taking part in the march. During the demonstration, the armed group, concealed behind their masks, were supposed to attack several institutions and launch a pseudo-« revolution » comparable to the events in Maidan Square, Kiev.

This coup d’État was coordinated by Mile Zechevich, an ex-employee of one of George Soros’ foundations.
In order to understand Washington’s urgency to overthrow the Macedonian government, we have to go back and look at the gas pipeline war. Because international politics is a huge chess-board on which every move by any piece causes consequences for all the others.

The gas war

The United States have been attempting to sever communications between Russia and the European Union since 2007. They managed to sabotage the projet South Stream by obliging Bulgaria to cancel its participation, but on the 1st December 2014, to everyone’s surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new project when he succeeded in convincing his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to sign an agreement with him, despite the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO [3]. It was agreed that Moscow would deliver gas to Ankara, and that in return, Ankara would deliver gas to the European Union, thus bypassing the anti-Russian embargo by Brussels. On the 18th of April 2015, the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsípras, gave his agreement that the pipeline could cross his country [4] . As for Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he had already conluded discrete negotiations last March [5]. Finally, Serbia, which had been a partner in the South Stream project, indicated to the Russian Minister for Energy Aleksandar Novak, during his reception in Belgrade in April, that Serbia was ready to switch to the Turkish Stream project [6].

To halt the Russian project, Washington has multiplied its initiatives : in Turkey, it is supporting the CHP against President Erdoğan, hoping this will cause him to lose the elections; in Greece, on the 8th May, it sent Amos Hochstein, Directeur of the Bureau of Energy Ressources, to demand that the Tsípras government give up its agreement with Gazprom; it plans – just in case – to block the route of the pipeline by placing one of its puppets in power in Macedonia; and in Serbia, it has restarted the project for the secession of the small piece of territory – Voïvodine – which allows the junction with Hungary [7].

Last comment, but not the least: Turkish Stream will also supply Hungary and Austria, thus ending the alternative project negotiated by the United States with President Hassan Rohani (against the advice of the Revolutionary Guards) for supplying them with Iranian gas [8].

Thierry Meyssan French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

Notes

[1] « L’UÇK, une armée kosovare sous encadrement allemand », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 15 avril 1999.
[2] Le SDSM est membre de l’Internationale socialiste.
[3] “How Vladimir Putin Upset NATO’s Strategy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 13 December 2014.
[4] “Möglicher Deal zwischen Athen und Moskau: Griechenland hofft auf russische Pipeline-Milliarden”, Von Giorgos Christides, Der Spiegel, 18. April 2015.
[5] “Геннадий Тимченко задержится на Балканах. Вместо South Stream “Стройтрансгаз” построит трубу в Македонии”, Юрий Барсуков, Коммерсант, 12 марта 2015 r.
[6] «Énergie : la Serbie souhaite participer au gazoduc Turkish Stream», B92, 14 avril 2015.
[7] “Brussels’s Next Balkans Ersatz State: Vojvodina”, by Wayne Madsen, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia), Voltaire Network, 7 March 2015.

[8] “Behind the anti-terror alibi, the gas war in the Levant”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 3 October 2014.
Translation – Pete Kimberley

27 May, 2015
Voltairenet.org

 

The Stockholm Appeal from the I.A.O.N.:

After decades of sanctions, war and occupation, attempts to dominate and control Iraq continue. The destruction of the country´s infrastructure, its army and its middle class has left a failed state that leaves its people in social misery and chaos. This has resulted in the collapse of the health and education systems, the weakening of the social fabric and the collective memory and national identity of the Iraqi people. Foreign plans to divide Iraq threaten its very existence as a state.

1. The failure of the US-led occupation to achieve their goals has been followed by another war with massive bombings of civilians and the infusion of enormous amounts of military weapons.

2. The regime in Baghdad which resulted from the imposed sectarian Bremer constitution is incapable by its very nature of achieving the inclusiveness of the different ethnic, religious and political groups that is required to guarantee Iraq´s continued existence.

3. Outside interference and support to sectarian militia and terrorist groups has further worsened internal conflicts, giving birth to criminal ruling groups. It has led to serious violations of human rights and has caused widespread suffering for civilians.

4. The government policies of massive imprisonment, torture, forced displacement and the exclusion of many from the political process have together provided fertile ground for all forms of extremism and terrorism.

5. Millions of refugees have been caught between the US-led bombing and the attacks from the government and its militia allies as well as from the terrorist attacks by ISIS. A humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions continues to worsen with widespread sectarian ethnic cleansing .

We re-iterate our stand that peace cannot be restored until the underlying causes of the conflict have been dealt with. The Iraqi people continue to resist foreign domination. Only their unity can guarantee the sovereignty of Iraq and defeat of terrorism and separatism. Only their efforts can guarantee good relations with all their neighbours based on strict non-interference in each other´s internal affairs. Iraq is not a pawn to be offered in regional or religious conflict. Its sovereignty and independence must be respected.

In the present situation, our efforts should be intensified and co-ordinated to:

– spread information about the underlying political nature of the conflict and demand an end to all foreign intervention.

– support the efforts of the patriotic forces for unity against sectarianism and terrorism where all Iraqis are treated as citizens of one country rather than members of specific communities.

– mobilize international efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people.

– demand an end to the bombing and military intervention in Iraq under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

– demand justice for the victims and accountability by those responsible for the crimes committed and their responsibility for reparations and the reconstruction of the country. The UN must uphold international law.

We call upon all anti-occupation, anti-war and peace loving people to maintain and continue solidarity with the people of Iraq and their struggle for an independent, unified and non-sectarian Iraq.

Stockholm May 24, 2015
27 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Hamid Dabashi

“Iran is piling one brick on the other,” warns one pundit with solemnity. “Today’s Iranians, with their Persian heritage, are on the march as surely as were the armies of Xerxes 2,500 years ago.”

Usually such right-wing wizardry is the premise upon which is launched the criticism of US President Barack Obama’s evident determination to pursue a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

“Desperate for a legacy,” this particular warmonger surmises, “our president obsesses about a deal [no matter how wretched] on Iran’s nuclear programme, while ignoring Iran’s aggression across the Middle East”.

If the domain of such nonsense about the rising “Persian Empire” – a blatant act of fear mongering to call for yet another disastrous war in the region to facilitate the further Israeli theft of Palestine – were limited to these neocon artists, there would be very little to be said.

Alas, and quite regrettably, we have begun to see echoes of them among some of the leading Arab thinkers, intellectuals and opinion-makers. Where did that come from?

Fanciful ghostbusting

The origin of this particular brand of fanciful ghostbusting may seem to have been a casual remark by a verbose Iranian official who is reported to have said, “Baghdad is now the capital of the Iranian empire.”

But did he – really? A quick check of the actual phrase by this official, Ali Younessi, President Hassan Rouhani’s adviser on Ethnic and Religious Minorities affairs, does anything but corroborate that charge.

“Cultural, economic and political cooperation between countries in the region,” he had said, and then parenthetically added, “[which in the past composed the Persian empire] could be instead of past ancient empires.”

An entirely pretentious and convoluted sentence you might say, but a claim to the rising Persian Empire – by no means. Later on, Younessi went out of his way emphatically to deny he had ever said anything to claim the return of the Persian Empire – but to no avail.

What I say does not mean we want to conquer the world but we must reach historical self-consciousness and understand our place in the world, and while thinking globally act in an Iranian and national manner.

If someone were to bother to read Younessi’s original Persian phrasing, the confusion about the rising currency of “the Persian Empire” will become even more confounded, because in the midst of all his bombastic verbiage he keeps repeating: “What I say does not mean we want to conquer the world but we must reach historical self-consciousness and understand our place in the world, and while thinking globally act in an Iranian and national manner.”

Again: pompously verbose, you might say and think the proverbial clerical penchant for vacuous hyperbole may have overcome the man at this conference on “Iranian identity”, where he delivered this speech – but calling for a Persian empire now? Not really.

But the news of an Iranian official calling for a Persian empire with Baghdad as its capital soon spread like a bushfire among the nervous and confused pan-Arab nationalists. They were rightly upset about Iranian meddling in many Arab countries, but so upset that they did not bother to check the original, which after all is in a language very much akin to their own?

So where did such panicked rubbernecking around and about the phrase “Persian Empire” originate?

Reviving the Persian Empire?

The date of this speech by Ali Younessi is March 7, 2015. But the neocon US and Israeli Zionist charge of this Persian empire business predates it by many months and years until it finally found its way to the august pages of the New York Times by three apparatchiks employed at the notorious Zionist joint Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy (WINEP).

In other words, the boorish and blase charge of the ruling regime in Iran trying to revive “the Persian Empire” did not have to wait for Younessi’s idiotic remarks at a gaudy conference on “Iranian identity”, for the hasty and nervous Arab opinion-makers seem to have taken it directly from Israeli and American Zionists, with whom they now seem to share not just the English language but a frightful Iranophobia.

There is no longer any Persian, Arab, Ottoman, Indian, Chinese, British, Spanish, or Mongol empire, and may the angels of mercy and justice be praised for that. The only empire that exists, and it does not feel particularly well or imperial these days, is the American empire. It is a kind of postmodern empire, as it were, ruling, or wishing to rule, via drones, proxies, mercenary armies, and lucrative arms sales to rich, corrupt, and bewildered potentates.

Iran has not become a Persian empire. As a fragile and internally unstable Islamic republic, Iran has systematically and consistently spread its sphere of influence in a region where national boundaries mean very little.

Saudi Arabia is right now in Yemen, and a couple of years ago it was in Bahrain. While bombing Libya, Egypt wants to lead a pan-Arab army around the region, as the European settler colony of Israel continues to sit on, and steal more of, Palestinian and Syrian territories and eyeing even more.

Runaway hoodlums

Syria and Iraq are under attack by a murderous gang of former Iraqi Baathists and other runaway hoodlums they have hired from around the world and call themselves ISIL, “a digital caliphate”, as Abdel-Bari Atwan rightly calls it in a new book.

Pakistan acts freely in Afghanistan, as Turkey does in Iraq and Syria. Kurds have run away from Iraq to form an autonomous region and protect themselves from yet another Baathist slaughter. Iran is integral to this widening gyre of geostrategic free fall – not above it. To disregard the real imperial power operating in the region, and turn a blind eye to the aggressive counter-revolutionary mobilisation and speak of “Persian Empire” at a time when all post-colonial boundaries have collapsed, is a silly red herring.

Speaking of “Persian Empire” and thus exaggerating the influence of a deeply flawed, menacing, and malfunctioning Islamist theocracy, plays the horn from its open side, as the Persian proverb aptly puts it. It blinds us to the factual evidence of a chorus of counter-revolutionary forces that place the ruling regimes of Iran and Saudi Arabia on the same (and not on the opposite) sides.

There is no “Persian Empire” in sight: only the hard geostrategic facts of US imperialism reshuffling its cards to play a more winning hand. The test of our moral and intellectual mettle is to keep our eyes on the ball and not be distracted by any curved ball that seeks only to reassert the old Roman imperial dictum: Divide et Impera: Divide and Conquer!

27 May 2015

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

 

 

By Robert Barsocchini

Newly-declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents from 2012:

In Syria:

THE SALAFIST [sic], THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.

AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS: “ISIS, once called AQI”] SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA…

…OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS.

IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…

Now for some definitions:

Salafi Movement:

The Salafist movement, also known as the Salafi movement, is a movement within Sunni Islam that references the doctrine known as Salafism.

The Salafi movement is often described as being synonymous with Wahhabism, but Salafists consider the term “Wahhabi” derogatory.[1] At other times, Salafism has been described as a hybrid of Wahhabism and other post-1960s movements.[2] Salafism has become associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam – and, particularly in the West, with the Salafi Jihadis who espouse offensive jihad against those they deem to be enemies of Islam as a legitimate expression of Islam.

In recent years, Salafi methodology has come to be associated with the jihad of extremist groups that advocate the killing of innocent civilians [though not all Salafists can be stereotyped under this umbrella].

Principality:

A principality (or princedom) can either be a monarchical feudatory or a sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or by a monarch with another title within the generic use of the term prince.

Thus, what the documents say the Western powers and their collaborators want, a “Salafist Principality” in Easter Syria, is an Islamic monarchical state. It should be no surprise that the US/West want this, as they are allied with so many Islamic dictatorships (ie the Gulf States and Turkey, as noted above).

The strictest sect of Salafism:

Wahhabism (Saudi Arabia)

Wahhabism is a more strict, Saudi form of Salafism, according to Mark Durie, who states Saudi leaders “are active and diligent” using their considerable financial resources “in funding and promoting Salafism all around the world.” Ahmad Moussalli tends to agree with the view that Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism, saying “As a rule, all Wahhabis are salafists, but not all salafists are Wahhabis”.

Saudi Government is funding to increase the Salafi Islam throughout the world. Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include “upward of $100 billion”, between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year [and US government/corporate propaganda budgets of many billions per year]),[92] and “at least $87 billion” from 1987–2007.

Its largesse funded an estimated “90% of the expenses of the entire faith“, throughout the Muslim World…

“Books, scholarships, fellowships, mosques” (for example, “more than 1,500 mosques were built from Saudi public funds over the last 50 years”) were paid for.[96] It rewarded journalists and academics, who followed it and built satellite campuses around Egypt for Al Azhar, the oldest and most influential Islamic university.[97] Yahya Birt counts spending on “1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centres and dozens of Muslim academies and schools”.

This financial aid has done much to overwhelm less strict local interpretations of Islam, according to observers like Dawood al-Shirian and Lee Kuan Yew, and has caused the Saudi interpretation (sometimes called “petro-Islam”) to be perceived as the correct interpretation – or the “gold standard” of Islam – in many Muslims’ minds.

While the Western powers and their collaborators may want a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria, they, mainly the US, are openly supporting the most extreme Salafist, missionary state in the world: Saudi Arabia.

The US has been supporting Saudi Arabia since oil was discovered there around the 1930s.

The US is the world’s biggest arms trafficker. The biggest arms sale of the world’s biggest arms trafficker was to the Saudi dictatorship, approved by Obama in 2010:

The Guardian:

Barack Obama to authorise record $60bn Saudi arms sale

Biggest arms deal in US history…

The US is the world’s largest arms supplier…

Amnesty reported that, contrary to US gov and media propaganda, the Saudi regime got worse under the last dictator (who recently died), and is getting even worse now under new US-backed dictator Abdulaziz, with Saudi Arabia committing dozens and dozens of beheading/crucifixions, taking the lead in confirmed state executions worldwide.

2009 US documents leaked by Wikileaks revealed Hillary Clinton stating that Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest source of funding for Sunni terrorist groups.

Abdulaziz himself, the top of the Saudi dictatorship, is said by al Qaeda to be one of their sources of funding and support.

Unlike Iran, which has parliamentary representatives and voting, Saudi Arabia is a straight despotism which maintains itself through terror, such as by lashing innocent civilians in public.

Unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia not only does not renounce nuclear weapons (US intelligence does not even say Iran is pursuing them; in fact far from it), but Saudi officials promise never to renounce nuclear weapons, or even negotiate about nuclear weapons, which Iran has agreed to do numerous times, with the US always cancelling the negotiations, as Obama has done before, and did again this week: “US Kills Nuclear Free Mid-East Conference“.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia just announced its intentions to go nuclear, a prospect that has long been known to all.

None of this prevents the US from making its biggest ever lethal arms sale to the dictatorship, or selling them almost a billion dollars worth of banned cluster bombs in 2013, which HRW reports are now being used in the US-coordinated/assisted Saudi aggressive war against Yemen, from which the US refuses to rescue its own civilian nationals, unlike eight other countries including Russia, China, and India, which have performed rescue missions.

Author’s research focuses on global force dynamics. He also writes professionally for the film industry. His articles have been noted by professors, scholars, student-groups, and other independent researchers. Twitter @_DirtyTruths

26 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Trevor Timm

Seymour Hersh has done the public a great service by breathing life into questions surrounding the official narrative of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet instead of trying to build off the details of his story, or to disprove his assertions with additional reporting, journalists have largely attempted to tear down the messenger.

Barrels of ink have been spilled ripping apart Hersh’s character, while barely any follow-up reporting has been done to corroborate or refute his claims—even though there’s no doubt that the Obama administration has repeatedly misinformed and misled the public about the incident. Even less attention has been paid to the little follow-up reporting that we did get, which revealed that the CIA likely lied about its role in finding bin Laden, which it used to justify torture to the public.

Hersh has attempted to force the media to ask questions about its role in covering a world-shaping event—but it’s clear the media has trouble asking such questions if the answers are not the ones they want to hear.

Hersh’s many critics, almost word-for-word, gave the same perfunctory two-sentence nod to his best-known achievements—breaking the My Lai massacre in 1969 (for which he won the Pulitzer) and exposing the Abu Ghraib torture scandal 35 years later—before going on to call him every name in the book: “conspiracy theorist,” “off the rails,” “crank.” Yet most of this criticism, over the thousands of words written about Hersh’s piece in the last week, has amounted to “That doesn’t make sense to me,” or “That’s not what government officials told me before,” or “How are we to believe his anonymous sources?”

While there’s no way to prove or disprove every assertion Hersh makes without re-reporting the whole story, let’s look at the overarching criticisms one by one:

Conspiracy theory

No phrase has been bandied about more than “conspiracy theory” in describing Hersh’s reporting. Critics argue that he’s accusing “hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years.” How could that be possible?
First of all, denigrating a legendary reporter who has broken more major stories than almost anyone alive as a “conspiracy theorist” because his story contained a few details a little too implausible for some people’s taste is beyond insulting. A conspiracy theory in the traditional sense would be something like The US government is covering up the fact that bin Laden is still alive, not accusing the administration of telling a story about a highly classified matter that differs from the truth—something it does all the time.

But beyond that, it is extraordinarily naive to think the government is incapable of keeping a large secret involving dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. I am reminded of this passage from the memoirs of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who knows a thing or two about how government secrecy works. Not only is the idea that you can’t keep secrets in Washington “flatly false,” Ellsberg writes, but by repeating it you’re doing the government’s work for them.

[Such sayings] are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn’t in a fully totalitarian society. But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public … The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders. [emphasis added]

As a simple example, which Hersh himself stated in this fascinating On The Media interview, how many people knew about the Bush administration’s manipulation of intelligence before the Iraq war? Hundreds? Over a thousand? How many knew about the NSA’s mass phone metadata program aimed at Americans until Edward Snowden revealed it? A thousand? Ten thousand? It stayed secret for more than seven years until a single person—a contractor, not an NSA employee—exposed it.

If that doesn’t convince you, read about two other recent agreements about assassinations, one with Pakistan and another with Yemen. Both stayed secret for years without the public knowing. The old adage that “three people can only keep a secret if two are dead” is a fantasy, and journalists should stop mindlessly repeating it.

Anonymous sources

It has been rich watching journalists fall over each other to see who can more vehemently criticize Hersh’s use of anonymous sources, despite the fact that using anonymous sources is a tried-and-true Washington ritual that receives almost no criticism in day-to-day reporting. Banal sound bites are regularly printed on the front pages without names attached, and entire press conferences are held every day with “senior government officials” who refuse to be named. (One of the few mainstream journalists who consistently points this out is Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times’ public editor.)

According to the excellent Twitter account @NYTAnon, the Times published at least 20 stories relying on anonymous sources in the five days after the Hersh story went online Sunday night, on topics ranging from new Facebook features to strife among Democrats over the stalled trade agreement to Cablevision dropping its bid for the Daily News. Imagine if reporters aimed a tenth of the criticism at those stories that they aimed at Hersh. Predictably, though, we’ve barely heard a peep.

Indeed, anonymity is sometimes warranted, and the idea that Hersh’s sources were anonymous should not come as a surprise. These are highly classified operations. The Defense Department has openly threatened to prosecute people for talking about the bin Laden raid, even as the CIA leaks its own version of events to friendly reporters and movie producers.

It’s not out of line to criticize Hersh’s sourcing, or to question his informants’ knowledge. Should he have relied on more sources than he did? Possibly. But Hersh has said in multiple interviews that, while the crux of the story came from one person, he confirmed the details with many others. This has been conveniently ignored by his critics.

The CIA

The venom and vitriol from Hersh’s journalistic colleagues has been especially astonishing given their kid-gloves treatment of one of the main players in Hersh’s story, the CIA.

Most journalists would never dream of confronting CIA officials with the same aggressiveness they now direct at Hersh—even though, less than six months ago, the Senate released a 500-page report documenting in meticulous detail the dozens of times the CIA blatantly lied to the public, the press, and Congress about torture over the past decade.

Hersh’s assertion, which has by now been at least partially confirmed by multiple news organizations, that bin Laden was found thanks to a “walk-in” tip—rather than by tracking his courier as the government has claimed—should be a major scandal. For years, the CIA has said it found bin Laden thanks to information about his personal courier—information that was obtained by means of torture.

Besides one piece by Huffington Post’s Ali Watkins, the press has barely made a peep about the fact that the CIA’s argument about bin Laden and torture—one that Hollywood made a movie about!—is a lie. Meanwhile, Slate ran five hit jobs on Hersh within 36 hours. Perhaps that’s why Hersh treated their reporter with contempt during this already-legendary interview.

We know that the administration made many assertions about the bin Laden raid in its aftermath that turned out to be false. The purported details, many given to reporters “anonymously,” were downright fantastical—yet reporters dutifully printed them just the same. We also know that the government ordered the photos of bin Laden’s body destroyed—possibly in violation of federal law—and, in an unprecedented move, had all information about the raid transferred to the CIA, where it can’t be accessed through Freedom of Information Act requests. John Kerry told reporters directly to “shut up and move on.” How Hersh himself deserves more scrutiny than these disturbing moves by the government is beyond comprehension.

Largely ignored in this is debate is the opinion of longtime New York Times Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent Carlotta Gall, who has more knowledge of the region in one finger than most of Hersh’s critics put together. She wrote in the Times this week that she “would not necessarily dismiss [Hersh’s] claims immediately” and that “he is following up on a story that many of us assembled parts of.” Of his claim that an informant, rather than a courier, led the CIA to bin Laden, Gall wrote that “my own reporting tracks with Hersh’s.”

Then there’s Robert Baer, the highly regarded former CIA officer (and the inspiration for Stephen Gaghan and George Clooney’s Syriana). He refused to criticize Hersh’s story when asked on a podcast and repeatedly insisted that the administration’s story had to be false. Baer, a CNN contributor, was not invited on CNN to say this, of course. Instead CNN had on torture cheerleader Philip Mudd, who proceeded to trash Hersh’s story as “nonsense” while largely avoiding specifics. Politico uncritically quoted CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, one of the agency’s most notorious liars about WMDs in Iraq, as their proof that Hersh was wrong. The author of the Politico piece later admitted to The Intercept that “spokespersons like Harlow are ‘usually the least informed in the spy world.’ ”

This is not to say all the assertions contained in Hersh’s story are accurate. Some may turn out not to be true; I simply don’t know. But neither do any of Hersh’s critics, because, unfortunately, the flippant blog posts dismissing Hersh out of hand outnumber follow-up reporting on his stories by about 50 to one.

Hersh does not need me or anyone else to defend him—he’s entirely capable of doing that himself, as he has been doing on national television and radio all week, in response to the kind of skeptical questioning that most reporters would never dare to direct at government officials who had lied to their face. “I’ve been around a long time,” Hersh told CNN, “and I understand the consequences of what I’m saying.” It’s a shame others don’t.

All this brings to mind a story from earlier in Hersh’s career, when, as a relatively unknown reporter in Vietnam, he put together the pieces of his My Lai scoop. At first, no one would listen. He tried to sell the story to Life and Look; both turned him down. It ended up going out on a little known wire service known as Dispatch News Service. Twenty of Dispatch’s 50 customers rejected it.

Within months, of course, Hersh’s stories would be on the front page of The New York Times. He soon started reporting on intelligence agencies. In 1974 he broke the story that the CIA was systematically spying on Americans in violation of federal law. The rest of the media ridiculed it. They questioned his sourcing while calling the story “exaggerated” and “overwritten and under-researched.” A year later, CIA director William Colby was forced to admit to Congress that it was all true.

Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports and defends journalism dedicated to transparency and accountability.

15 May 2015

 

By Alex Kane

They’re are striking contracts with the Department of Defense to supply missiles, helicopters and fighter jets.

In mid-May, President Barack Obama hosted top officials from Gulf Arab states at Camp David, the idyllic presidential retreat in Maryland. The meeting was designed to assure Gulf Arab leaders that the U.S. still has their back, even though the Obama administration is hurtling full-speed ahead toward a landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

Many of the monarchs from the Gulf decided to snub Obama by not showing up for the retreat. Instead, they sent other top officials, a way of showing their displeasure at the impending nuclear deal with Iran, the state they have been battling over Middle East hegemony for years. Despite the snubs, the Obama administration announced at the summit that there will be more security assistance and expedited weapons sales for Gulf Arab states as a way of ensuring their strategic position against Iran.

That promise of more arms is not surprising. In recent years, the Gulf states, flush with oil wealth, have bought massive amounts of American weapons. Since 2010, Gulf Arab states have increased their armaments purchases by 70 percent. Leading the pack is Saudi Arabia, which in 2014 became the world’s largest importer of American-made weapons. One out of every seven dollars spent on weapons in the world comes from the Saudis, according to the IHS’ yearly Global Defence Trade Report. The Obama administration has overseen the sale of over $64 billion in weapons and defense systems to Gulf nations.

In the past, weapons sales to Gulf Arab nations have been held up because of Israeli concerns over their “qualitative military edge,” the notion that Israel should maintain superior military capabilities over their Arab nations. But that reticence to sell weapons to states like Saudi Arabia has eased in recent years because Israel and the Gulf states share a common interest in boxing in Iran.

For the most part, arms sales are designed to beef up militaries in anticipation of any conflict with Iran. But in the past year, the Gulf states have flexed their muscles by joining the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, and by pounding Yemen with bombs, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe. The flow of arms sales is further militarizing a region already rife with bloody conflict stretching from Syria to Yemen. The result is human misery.

But the Gulf States’ purchases are making one American industry very happy. U.S. arms companies are striking contracts with the Department of Defense to supply states like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar with missiles, helicopters and fighter jets. Here’s a look at four U.S. arms companies getting rich off the Gulf States’ fear of Iran.

1. Boeing. This Illinois-based aerospace company makes aircraft and helicopters designed to be used in military conflict. Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the six-nation consortium of Gulf states, have been frequent Boeing customers.

Earlier this year, the United Arab Emirates announced it would be spending $618 million on two C-17s, a large military transport aircraft made by Boeing. This purchase was in addition to one made in 2009, when the company was awarded a contract to supply the United Arab Emirates with six C-17s. In 2010, Boeing made nearly $700 million by supplying Kuwait with a C-17.

In 2013, Boeing received part of a $10 billion contract to give Saudi Arabia and the UAE high-tech missiles that can be launched from airplanes over 135 miles from the target. Two years before that deal, Boeing was awarded a $29.4 billion contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 84 F-15 fighter jets and upgrade older aircrafts.

Boeing is also the creator of the Apache attack helicopters. The biggest weapons deal of 2014 was a $23 billion agreement with Qatar, in which Boeing will supply 24 Apache helicopters to the small nation. Other weapons firms were also involved in the agreement.

2. Raytheon. This company is best known for manufacturing missiles. Raytheon has won a number of contracts to supply Gulf states with high-tech missiles.

In 2013, Raytheon was given a $1 billion contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 15,000 anti-tank missiles. Middle East analysts saw the move by Saudi Arabia as connected to their support for Syrian rebels battling against the Assad regime. While it’s against U.S. law for American-made weapons to go to an unauthorized third party, Middle East observers said it’s possible the Saudis were shipping old stocks to the rebels and replenishing their own with U.S.-made weapons.

Raytheon also struck gold in 2012 when it won a deal to supply the Saudis with a $600-million Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) system, a centralized decision-making system.

The Saudis are not the only ones handing over cash to Raytheon. The company was included in the massive $23 billion deal with Qatar in 2014. It is supplying the country with Patriot missiles—a defense missile that shoots down other missiles—valued at $1.7 billion. Raytheon also won a contract in 2008 to supply the UAE with Patriot missiles, which will net it $3.3 billion. And in 2013, Oman announced it would be giving Raytheon over $2 billion for a ground-based defense system designed to counter air attacks.

3. Lockheed Martin. This company is another major player in the U.S. weapons industry. In 2013, the company inked a deal with the UAE to build them a defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, meant to combat missile strikes. Lockheed nabbed $3.9 billion for the deal, which also included armaments for the U.S. military.

The company has had extensive dealings with Oman. In 2011, it inked a $600 million deal to supply the Gulf state with 12 fighter planes.

And like other companies, it has also profited from sales to Saudi Arabia. It won a $22 million deal in 2014 to give the Saudis specialized support for Apache helicopters. The deal includes deliveries of equipment for “long range precision engagement” and flight safety for the helicopters. In 2013, the company, alongside Northrop Grumman, received a $90 million contract to supply the Saudis with a radar system for the Apache helicopters the Saudis possess.

4. Sikorsky Aircraft. This subsidiary of United Technologies makes Black Hawk helicopters, another type of military helicopter. It has delivered the Black Hawks to Gulf Arab states. In August 2014, the company won a $30 million contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 12 Black Hawks. In 2011, Sikorsky Aircraft netted $270 million to upgrade the UAE’s supply of Black Hawk helicopters.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that the company is looking to sell 400 helicopters to Middle Eastern countries over the next five to 10 years.

15 May 2015

Alex Kane is former World editor at AlterNet. His work has appeared in Mondoweiss, Salon, VICE, the Los Angeles Review of Books and more.

Humanitarian crisis affecting Rohingya Muslims is the product of genocide, according to researchers from Queen Mary University of London

“The Rohingya are faced with only two options: stay and face annihilation, or flee.”

[For immediate release]

London, 16 May 2015: Persecution of the Rohingya minority by the Myanmar government amounts to genocide, according to field research from the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), based at Queen Mary University of London.

Experts from ISCI, led by Professor Penny Green, conducted four months of fieldwork in Myanmar between October 2014 and March 2015. The team was based primarily in Rakhine state, the home of the Muslim minority. There, they undertook detailed research which exposes the Myanmar state’s crimes against the Rohingya.

The current crisis is, according to Professor Green, the direct result of government sponsored actions against the Rohingya, which together amount to genocide.

“The Myanmar government’s ongoing persecution of the Rohingya minority has, in the last two years, reached a level so untenable that tens of thousands haven been forced to flee on boats. The current exodus of those seeking asylum is just one manifestation of persecution consistent with genocide,” said Professor Green.

According to Professor Green, there is a general reluctance to define an event as genocide until after mass killing begins. However, ISCI research reveals that the historic and current conditions of persecution against the Rohingya minority have developed into genocidal practice.

“Our research is being conducted within a state crime framework in which genocide is understood as a process, building over a period of years, and involving an escalation in the dehumanisation and persecution of the target group. The Rohingya have been subject to stigmatisation, harassment, isolation, and systematic weakening. The Rohingya are faced with only two options: stay and face annihilation, or flee. Those who remain suffer destitution; malnutrition and starvation; severe physical and mental illness; restrictions on movement, education, marriage, childbirth, livelihood, land ownership; and the ever present threat of violence and corruption,” said Professor Green.

Details and more information about ISCI’s findings, concerning the stigmatisation; harassment; isolation; and systemic weakening of the Rohingya are set out in the notes below. These initial findings are drawn from a report to be published in September 2015. The research is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The research team includes Professor Penny Green, Dr Thomas MacManus, and Alicia de la Cour Venning.

Media enquiries:

Researchers are available for comment and interview. Please contact:

Mark Byrne

Public Relations Manager (Humanities and Social Sciences)

Queen Mary University of London

E: m.byrne@qmul.ac.uk

T: 020 7882 5378

M: 078 1590 2560

From ISCI’s forthcoming research:

Stigmatisation

Emerging from decades of oppression and poverty, Rakhine state is ripe for economic exploitation, particularly in relation to natural resources. Demonising the Rohingya as ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’, the Myanmar state has manipulated genuine Rakhine grievances and Buddhist monks’ insecurities to foster conditions for ongoing persecution and violence for social, political and economic gain. The Myanmar government has been central in stigmatising the Rohingya, allowing hate speech, Islamophobia, the publication of inflammatory newspaper reports, and nationalism to flourish. The entire Rohingya population has recently been further disenfranchised, ahead of elections scheduled for November this year. However, the granting of citizenship cards with voting rights will not be enough to end the genocidal process. Citizenship has, for example, afforded little protection for the Kaman Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine state.

Harassment

Physical violence resulted in some 200 deaths in Sittwe in 2012, and the threat of violence remains ever present for the Rohingya. Those responsible have enjoyed complete impunity for the violence. Our research reveals that the violence was planned and organised by local authorities supported by local civil society organisations, and political and Buddhist leaders. Continued harassment has contributed to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.

Isolation

More than 100,000 Muslims, formerly living in mixed Rakhine and Rohingya communities, have been forced into squalid camps in an overcrowded and isolated detention complex on the outskirts of Sittwe. A further 4,250 Rohingya live a precarious existence in downtown Sittwe’s militarised ghetto, Aung Mingalar. Dehumanised and destitute, Sittwe’s Rohingya live what can only be described as a ‘bare life’. The parallels with 1930s Germany are undeniable.

Systematic weakening

Systematic weakening is the genocidal stage prior to mass annihilation. Physically and mentally weakened, and living in broken communities devoid of social cohesion, the Rohingya have been stripped of agency and human dignity. The expulsion of Médecins Sans Frontières and the regulation of humanitarian aid are state actions designed to systematically weaken the Rohingya community. As the Rakhine National Party spokesperson declared in his interview with us (January 2015), “When the international community give them [Rohingya] a lot of food and a lot of donations, they will grow fat and become stronger, and they will become more violent.”

Penny Green is a Director of ISCI. Professor Green graduated from the Australian National University in 1979, with a BA (Hons) and from the University of Cambridge with an MPhil and PhD in Criminology.

Thomas MacManus has a BA (Hons) in Law & Accounting (University of Limerick), an LLM (with distinction) in International Law (University of Westminster) and a PhD in Law and Criminology (King’s College London). Thomas is admitted as an Attorney-at-Law (New York) and Solicitor (Ireland).

Alicia took up a post as an ESRC researcher at QMUL on 1 September 2014. She is also a 2013-2014 Arthur C. Helton Fellow, a fellowship awarded by the American Society of International Law.

After nearly seven weeks of airstrikes launched by Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab allies, a fragile temporary ceasefire appears to have taken hold over most of Yemen. The bombing campaign was launched in late March with the goal of reinstalling ousted president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now exiled in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. It also aims to thwart the advance of the Houthi rebels, who control the capital and large swathes of territory, and are now the country’s dominant political force.

The military strikes have had a calamitous effect on the already desperate humanitarian situation facing the country, resulting in more than 1,500 civilian deaths, including scores of children. The Saudi-led coalition has blockaded ports and bombed runways, preventing the delivery of food shipments, aid and humanitarian supplies, which have exacerbated the severe shortages in a country that imports more than 90 percent of its food and water supplies. A lack of fuel and medicines has compounded the suffering of civilians, many of whom face malnourishment and dire poverty.

Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, must now cope with tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians who have been made refugees by the Saudi offensive, a seemingly impossible task for a country under siege and without an effect leadership. The Saudi-led “Operation Decisive Storm,” launched just two months into the reign of King Salman ibn Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, marks a shift away from a foreign policy that heavily leveraged the use of proxies and toward a far more assertive interventionist posture.

The international community’s acquiescence to Arab coalition’s offensive in Yemen – apart from Russia, China and Iran – is disturbing, considering the hastily announced and ill-defined nature of the intervention, which has completely derailed the existing negotiated approach to conflict resolution. Jamal Benomar, the former UN envoy who mediated those negotiations, resigned after the Saudi-led offensive began, telling the Wall Street Journal, that Yemen was “close to a deal that would institute power-sharing with all sides, including the Houthis” before the bombing campaign took place.

Washington and other western powers have strongly backed Riyadh, providing critical logistical and intelligence support through direct coordination with the US military, which has begun daily aerial-refueling tanker flights to support the offensive. The Pentagon has also expedited the delivery of advanced US-made weaponry and guidance systems. Moreover, evidence has emerged indicating that the Saudi-led coalition have used banned cluster munition bombs supplied by the United States, which are internationally prohibited due to their capacity to harm civilians.

The Question of Hadi’s Legitimacy

Despite the exertion of huge military force, the coalition’s objective of restoring Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s presidency or altering the balance of power in his favor has not succeeded. Earlier this month, a Saudi military spokesman admitted that the nominal goal of the operation had changed from restoring the exiled Yemeni president to defending Saudi regions that lay on the southern border, which have come under fire from retaliatory Houthi shelling in recent days. Some have argued that the offensive in Yemen is legal under international law because Hadi himself called on the Saudi-led coalition to intervene. It is therefore necessary to examine the issue of the deposed president’s claims to legitimacy.

Hadi served as the vice-president of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 in the midst of Arab Spring-inspired protests, clearing the way for Hadi to claim the presidency. Many Yemenis viewed Hadi during his tenure as being a placeholder during a drawn-out period of transition. Hadi lacks a power base in the capital Sana’a and is distrusted by politically influential tribes in the country’s northern regions because he comes from the secessionist-minded south. Likewise, those in the south distrust him because he sided with the north in the 1994 civil war and is widely regarded as a traitor.

Hadi ran unopposed in elections held in 2012 in which his name was the only one on the ballot, while his term legally expired in February 2014, though he continued to hold office. He officially resigned in January 2015 after Houthis seized Sana’a and occupied the presidential palace, but retracted his resignation one month later and attempted to reestablish his government in the southern city of Aden prior to fleeing to Saudi Arabia and ordering international intervention to reinstall his government.

Despite being internationally recognized, Hadi’s claims to legal legitimacy are highly tenuous, especially in the context of Ukraine in 2014. When former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych – who was democratically elected in multi-party polls – fled to Russia following protests in Kiev, Washington and western powers argued that his fleeing from the country nullified his legal and moral legitimacy. As a similar situation unfolds in Yemen, the Obama administration has entirely failed to apply the same standards to Hadi.

Moreover, the notion that Saudi Arabia and a coalition comprised of mostly unelected monarchies are fighting to protect a government they claim represents some form of ‘democratic legitimacy’ is farcical. Not only was Hadi’s government ineffectual and routinely opposed by popular protests, but existing support for his regime is being eroded by his calls for Riyadh to bomb and blockade the country to the detriment of the civilian population. In the eyes of many Yemenis, Hadi’s calls for airstrikes against his own country represent a nail in his political coffin.

The Question of Iranian Involvement

Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies has gone to great lengths to portray their intervention in Yemen as a necessary response to Iranian meddling, emphasizing the rhetoric of sectarian determinism by labeling the Houthi rebels as Iran’s “stooges”. Seeing the conflict in Sunni-versus-Shia terms or through the lens of overarching claims about Iran’s capacity to influence events in Yemen not only serves to stoke the divisive sectarianism already engulfing the region, but it ignores the complexities of the country’s internal political struggles and local socio-economic factors, which are crucial to understanding the situation.

The Houthis are widely viewed as Shiites due to their adherence to the Zaydi sect of Islam – an offshoot of mainstream Twelver Shiism, the predominant religion in Iran – of which some 40 percent of Yemen’s population belongs. Yemen was under the control of a Zaydi imamate for hundreds of years, until republican forces toppled their regime in a 1962 civil war that similarly drew regional powers into the fold. For the past several decades, the country’s Zaydi minority has been rigorously persecuted through socio-economic marginalization and military crackdowns.

The Houthis, once on the fringes of Yemen’s political scene, played a key role in ending the 34-year rule of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012 protests, largely by harnessing socio-economic grievances and political oppression faced by many Yemenis. The Houthis gained credibility as a political opposition and paramilitary force, having fought the Saleh government to a standstill in six wars since 2004. Following the resignation of Saleh, the Houthis were sidelined from the Gulf-led political process that brought then-vice president Hadi to power.

Furthermore, the Houthis have garnered domestic credibility that transcends sectarian divisions due to their positions on several issues. They have consistently opposed US intervention and the use of drone warfare in their country, which resonates with a great many Yemenis. The Houthis expanded the territory under their control through forming alliances with influential Sunni tribes and clans that also sought to reverse the systemic political and socio-economic marginalization of their communities. Most credibility, the Houthis have proved to be the force most capable of thwarting the presence of al-Qaeda in Yemen and fighting jihadist terrorism.

The Houthi movement has methodically expanded its power base, becoming the de-facto government both because of the group’s prowess in guerilla warfare and its ability to tap into disillusionment with the poor performance of Yemen’s political establishment. Furthermore, it has proven to be shrewdly pragmatic force, as evidenced by the Houthi’s alliance with armed forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is again angling for a political comeback. The dynamics of the Saleh-Houthi relationship remain murky, as are the details of any possible power-sharing arrangements the former adversaries may have brokered behind the scenes.

Given the internal dynamics of the Houthi’s rise and its ability to navigate the complex domestic political landscape, the role of Iran has been vastly overstated, precisely because it allows Saudi Arabia and its allies to use Tehran as a scapegoat to execute aggressive policies designed to maintain regional hegemony and delegitimize political opposition movements that seek participatory politics. If Iran had lent any support to the Houthis, it would have been quite modest since no party to the conflict has yet produced any convincing evidence of direct Iranian material, financial or logistical intervention in Yemen.

The Question of King Salman’s Reign

There is no denying, however, that a Houthi-led Yemen represents a major shift toward Iran’s sphere of influence. Saudi Arabia shares a 1,800-km long border with Yemen and is determined to suppress the emergence of a government that represents political opposition to the House of Saud, especially considering Riyadh’s own discontented Shia minorities who populate key oil-producing regions, such as Najran, which border areas of Yemen under Houthi control. The Kingdom is primarily concerned with a Houthi rebellion spilling over its borders.

Rather than supporting a plan that would have checked the Houthis’ hold on power through the formation of a governing coalition representing different power blocs, Riyadh’s interference in Yemen’s internal affairs represents a strategic blunder that will fail to yield a decisive victory for the Saudis, putting the country on an entirely weaker footing. The Kingdom’s military offensive against Yemen comes at a time when the newly inaugurated King Salman is hastily overhauling the foreign and domestic policies of his predecessor, King Abdullah, who died in January.

The House of Saud, an institution known for decision-making by consensus and conservative incrementalism, has seen more personnel changes in the first months of 79-year old Salman’s reign than at any previous time, offering unprecedented changes in the Saudi line of succession. He boldly removed the sitting crown prince and promoted his nephew, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, to the kingdom’s second highest post, also promoting his 29-year old son, Mohammed bin Salman, now third from the crown and responsible for directing the Yemen offensive through his role as defense minister, among other major roles.

These abrupt personnel changes may be a sign of a major split within the Saudi ruling family over how best to secure the kingdom’s strategic interests, though there are yet to be any outward signs of a power struggle between different royal factions. The 55-year old Prince Nayef is known for his role in counterterrorism activities that thwarted the kingdom’s domestic al-Qaeda presence. The ascent of the ruthlessly ambitious Mohammed bin Salman has set the stage for the young prince to become the first grandson of Ibn Saud Abdul-Aziz, the kingdom’s modern founder, to take the reigns.

Salman’s advanced age has likely influenced his comparatively abrupt decision-making style, though his intentions are fairly transparent: projecting a leadership position on the world stage as the defender of the region’s Sunnis while establishing a reputation for his untested son, who will likely emerge as the leader of the next generation of Saudis, of whom more than two-thirds are currently under the age of 30. Riyadh’s touting of the so-called Iran threat should be viewed in the context of a new leadership keen to change the norms and appear as decisive and capable of securing the kingdom’s future.

Yet by aggressively intervening in Yemen’s civil war, Saudi Arabia has put itself in an awkward position as it becomes increasingly obvious that an undisputed victory for the kingdom is out of reach, opening the door for a prolonged military engagement. The danger is that the Saudis may perceive any stalemate or negotiated settlement with the Houthis as an unacceptable loss of face, prompting Riyadh to continue the devastating military campaign. As a result of developments thus far, Yemen is devastated, far less capable of fighting terrorism and a positive outcome seems truly out of reach.

17 May 2015

Nile Bowie is a Singapore-based political commentator and columnist for the Malaysian Reserve newspaper. His articles have appeared in numerous international media outlets, including Russia Today (RT) and Al Jazeera, and newspapers such as the International New York Times, the Global Times and the New Straits Times. He is a research assistant with the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), a NGO based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.