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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Supporting both Sides”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The whole operation appears to have been carefully staged.

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

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

UPDATE [June 17, 2014]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is a regional conflict involving Iran in the making?

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

Concluding Remarks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rt.com
14 June 2014

By Pepe Escobar

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bomb them into democracy, again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rt.com
17 june 2014

By Judith Bello

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

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

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

Judy: How did you come to live in Syria?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judy: Do you feel safe going home?

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

Judy: Will you be given any assistance with rebuilding?

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

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

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

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

17 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Chris Marsden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Mohammad Javad Zarif

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bianca Jagger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like Mr Hague to answer his own question.

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

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

11 June, 2014
CommonDreams.org

By Juan Cole

The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, population roughly 2 million (think Houston) until today, when much of the population was fleeing. While this would-be al-Qaeda affiliate took part of Falluja and Ramadi last winter, those are smaller, less consequential places and in Falluja tribal elders persuaded the prime minister not to commit the national army to reducing the city.

It is an indictment of the George W. Bush administration, which falsely said it was going into Iraq because of a connection between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. There was none. Ironically, by invading, occupying, weakening and looting Iraq, Bush and Cheney brought al-Qaeda into the country and so weakened it as to allow it actually to take and hold territory in our own time. They put nothing in place of the system they tore down. They destroyed the socialist economy without succeeding in building private firms or commerce. They put in place an electoral system that emphasizes religious and ethnic divisions. They helped provoke a civil war in 2006-2007, and took credit for its subsiding in 2007-2008, attributing it to a troop escalation of 30,000 men (not very plausible). In fact, the Shiite militias won the civil war on the ground, turning Baghdad into a largely Shiite city and expelling many Sunnis to places like Mosul. There are resentments.

Those who will say that the US should have left troops in Iraq do not say how that could have happened. The Iraqi parliament voted against it. There was never any prospect in 2011 of the vote going any other way. Because the US occupation of Iraq was horrible for Iraqis and they resented it. Should the Obama administration have reinvaded and treated the Iraqi parliament the way Gen. Bonaparte treated the French one?

I hasten to say that the difficulty Baghdad is having with keeping Mosul is also an indictment of the Saddam Hussein regime (1979-2003), which pioneered the tactic of sectarian rule, basing itself on a Sunni-heavy Baath Party in the center-north and largely neglecting or excluding the Shiite South. Now the Shiites have reversed that strategy, creating a Baghdad-Najaf-Basra base.

Mosul’s changed circumstances is also an indictment of the irresponsible use to which Sunni fundamentalists in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Oil Gulf are putting their riches. The high petroleum prices, usually over $100 a barrel, of the past few years in a row, have injected trillions of dollars into the Gulf. Some of that money has sloshed into the hands of people who rather admired Usama B. Laden and who are perfectly willing to fund his clones to take over major cities like Aleppo and Mosul. The vaunted US Treasury Department ability to stop money transfers by people whom Washington does not like has faltered in this case. Is it because Washington is de facto allied with the billionaire Salafis of Kuwait City in Syria, where both want to see the Bashar al-Assad government overthrown and Iran weakened? The descent of the US into deep debt, and the emergence of Gulf states and sovereign wealth funds is a tremendous shift of geopolitical power to Riyadh, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi, who can now simply buy Egyptian domestic and foreign policy away from Washington. They are also trying to buy a Salafi State of Syria and a Salafi state of northern and western Iraq.

The fall of Mosul is an indictment of the new Iraqi army, which is well equipped and some of its troops well trained , and which seems to have just run away from the ISIS fighters, allowing some heavy weapons to fall into their hands.

It is an indictment of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and of the Shiite political elite that took over Iraq from 2005, and which has never been interested in reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs. It is not merely a sectarian issue. The particular Shiite parties that have consistently won elections are those of the religious right among Shiites. Before the CIA cooperated with the Baath Party to destroy the Iraqi Left, many Shiites were secular and the Iraqi Communist Party united them with many of the country’s Jews back in the 1950s. The Shiite religious parties dream of a Shiite state. Many want to implement a fundamentalist vision of Islamic law. There is little place for Sunni Kurds or Sunni Arabs in such a state. Al-Maliki himself seems to have a problem with the Sunnis, and his inability to integrate them into his government means that he is losing them to Sunni radicals. His inability to reach out to Sunni Arabs made plausible what the entire Iraqi parliament rejected when it came out, the Biden plan for the partition of the country. Usama Nujaifi, parliamentarian from Mosul and speaker of the Iraqi parliament, was driven to say a few years ago that for the first time since WW I, the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement (envisioning a French Syria and British Iraq) was up for renegotiation.

It is also an indictment of the shameful European imperial scramble for the Middle East during and after WW I and the failed barracuda colonialism of the interwar period, as London and Paris sought oil and other resources, and strategic advantage, in areas they had promised the League of Nations they would prepare for independence. In one instance, they just gave away Ottoman Palestine to a European population, leading to 12 million stateless and displaced people to this day.

During WW I, British diplomats promised lots of people lots of things, and were not embarrassed to double book. The foreign office promised France Syria but the Arab Bureau in Cairo promised Syria to Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Cairo wanted Iraq for Sharif Hussein, but so did New Delhi (the British Government of India couldn’t see the difference between ruling Iraq and ruling Sindh or Rajasthan).

As the war was winding down it was clear that the Ottoman Empire would collapse. The French saw Mosul, with its oil wealth, as part of Syria. The British in New Delhi and in Cairo, for all their wrangling, agreed that it should be part of Iraq, which British and British Indian troops were conquering.

When British Prime Minister Lloyd George met with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau at Versailles, he was eager to push back French claims on Mosul. Since the British and their Arab allies had taken Damascus from the Ottomans, some wanted to renege on the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 altogether. President Woodrow Wilson was also there, with his ideas of self-determination for the peoples of the former empires, and he didn’t want to just see an imperial grab for them. Clemenceau is said to have remarked that he felt he was caught between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.

When Lloyd George met with Clemenceau, the latter is said to have asked him, “What do you want?” Lloyd George said, “Mosul.” Clemenceau agreed. Anything else? “Jerusalem.” You shall have it. In return, the French were assured of Syria, which meant that Lloyd George had betrayed Sharif Hussein and his son Faisal b. Hussein, then in Damascus, for the sake of Mosul’s oil. Afterwards it is said that Lloyd George felt he had gained these boons from Clemenceau so easily that he should have asked for more.

Integrating Mosul into British Iraq, over which London placed Faisal b. Hussein as imported king after the French unceremoniously ushered him from Damascus, allowed the British to depend on the old Ottoman Sunni elite, including former Ottoman officers trained in what is now Turkey. This strategy marginalized the Shiite south, full of poor peasants and small towns, which, if they gave the British trouble, were simply bombed by the RAF. (Iraq under British rule was intensively aerially bombed for a decade and RAF officers were so embarrassed by these proceedings that they worried about the British public finding out.)

To rule fractious Syria, the French (1920-1943) appealed to religious minorities such as the Alawites and Christians to divide and rule; Alawite peasants were willing to join the colonial military as proud Damascene Sunni families largely were not, but when the age of military dictatorships overtook the postcolonial Middle east, the Alawites were in a good position to take over Syria, which they definitively did in 1970.

The countries now known as Syria and Iraq came into modernity having been for 400 years part of the Ottoman Empire. Sometimes it ruled what is now Iraq as a single province with roughly its modern borders, sometimes it ruled it as a set of smaller provinces. At some points the city of Mosul was the seat of a province of the same name. More often its top official reported to the Sultan in Istanbul through Baghdad. Mosul, a large urban center on the caravan and river trade routes stretching to Aleppo and Tripoli to the west and to Basra and India to the southeast, was a major urban place. It was very different from southern Iraq, which through the 19th century converted to Shiite Islam (in part under Indian Shiite influence) and was less urban and more tribal. Still, it was united with the south by trade along the Tigris and by the structures of Ottoman rule.

PM Nouri al-Maliki can only get Iraq back by allying with nationalist Sunnis in the north. Otherwise, for him simply brutally to occupy the city with Shiite troops and artillery and aerial bombing will make him look like his neighbor, Bashar al-Assad.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan.

11 June, 2014
Informed Comment

 

By Barry Grey

Iraq plunged further toward full-scale civil war when Sunni insurgents of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) took control of most of Mosul and Tikrit after four days of fighting.

ISIS (also referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) seized government buildings, television stations, police headquarters, prisons, military installations and the airport in the country’s second largest city of Mosul when Iraqi army and police forces abandoned their posts and weapons and fled.

The collapse of government forces, said to number 60,000 in the region, before several hundred insurgents is a humiliation for the central government, exposing its extreme weakness and placing a question mark over its continued existence. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has presided over a sectarian Shia government that has alienated Sunni tribal leaders by removing leading Sunnis from office and otherwise marginalizing them.

Militants took control of the Iraqi city of Tikrit and freed hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, police said, the second provincial capital to fall in two days.

“All of Tikrit is in the hands of the militants,” a police colonel said of the Salaheddin provincial capital, which lies roughly half way between Baghdad and Iraq’s second city Mosul which fell on Tuesday.

Coming just two and a half years after the withdrawal of the last of a US occupation force that at its peak numbered over 157,000—deployed in a war sold to the US public as a struggle against terrorism—the fall of Mosul to Al Qaeda-linked guerrillas also constitutes a searing indictment of the criminal character of US policy in the region.

With the takeover of the west bank and center of Mosul, a mostly Sunni city of 1.8 million people 220 miles north of Baghdad, ISIS controls a large swath of territory stretching from the eastern outskirts of Aleppo in Syria to Fallujah and part of Ramadi in Iraq’s western Anbar Province, to large parts of Nineveh Province and its capital, Mosul.

ISIS’ goal is to establish an Islamic caliphate comprising the two countries.

Iraq has been hit in recent months by an eruption of sectarian bombings and killings, mostly directed against Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Christians. ISIS practices a particularly savage form of Sunni fanaticism, carrying out widespread massacres of civilians in both Syria and Iraq.

Mosul is known as the political capital of northern Iraq and is strategically located on the border of the autonomous Kurdish region, home to large oil reserves. The city is a key transit point for exports of Iraqi petroleum. It has been at the center of a power struggle between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over control of the oil in the region.

On Tuesday, Maliki went on television to declare a nationwide state of “maximum preparedness” and request that the Iraqi parliament approve a state of emergency. He did not, however, indicate how or when he would attempt to dislodge ISIS from Mosul. The jihadist group has maintained control of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi since early January, beating back all attempts by government forces to retake the cities.

Officials in Nineveh urged Kurdish authorities to mobilize their peshmerga military force against the ISIS attackers, but Kurdish spokesmen said they had first to receive a request from the central government in Baghdad. The population on the east bank of Mosul, which has as yet not been occupied by ISIS, is mostly Kurdish. Maliki gave no indication of making such a request in his remarks Tuesday.

The ISIS offensive in Mosul has compounded a worsening humanitarian crisis. The United Nations refugee agency reported last week that nearly 500,000 people had been displaced so far this year in fighting, primarily in Anbar Province. The BBC reported Tuesday that some 150,000 people had already fled Mosul. The Mosul refugees are heading to nearby Kurdistan to seek protection from marauding ISIS forces.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Mahmoud Al Taie, a dentist, saying, “The whole of Mosul collapsed today. We’ve fled our homes and neighborhoods, and we’re looking for God’s mercy. We are waiting to die.”

Reuters cited Amina Ibrahim, who was leaving the city with her children. She said, “Mosul is now like hell. It’s in flames and death is everywhere.” Her husband had been killed last year in a bombing. The news agency cited one of its reporters as seeing “the bodies of soldiers and policemen, some mutilated, littering the streets.”

The UN estimates that 8,868 people were killed in Iraq in 2013, the worst death toll since the height of the sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007. The UN mission in Iraq reported that May was the deadliest month so far this year, with 799 Iraqis killed in violence, including 603 civilians. The past few days, in addition to the fighting in Mosul, have seen ISIS attacks in a number of cities and a wave of sectarian bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere. On Tuesday, bombs exploded near a funeral procession in Baquba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 20 people.

On Sunday and Monday, offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Communist Party of Kurdistan in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, were bombed, killing some 40 people in all. ISIS claimed responsibility for these attacks.

Last week, ISIS sent a column of fighters into Samara, a Sunni city that includes a famous Shia shrine, and stormed Anbar University outside Ramadi, taking some 100 students hostage. ISIS withdrew its forces from both places after being challenged by government forces and released most of the hostages taken at the university.

On Saturday night, seven car bombs exploded within an hour in Baghdad, killing at least 52 people, mostly Shiites.

Washington reacted with alarm to the ISIS seizure of Mosul. There are reports that the insurgents gained access to bank deposits and government funds in addition to seizing advanced weaponry, including helicopters and planes, from the fleeing Iraqi troops. ISIS also freed hundreds of prisoners, mostly ISIS and Al Qaeda supporters, who are likely to join the insurgency.

The US has been attempting to isolate and subdue ISIS in Syria, mobilizing other jihadist forces, including the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, in order to create the conditions to resume its war for regime-change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It does not want to see ISIS increase its influence in Iraq. The private intelligence service Stratfor reported Tuesday that Washington has accelerated its arming of the Baghdad regime since the fall of Fallujah and Ramadi in January. According to Stratfor, the US has increased its sale of small arms, ammunition and Hellfire missiles to Baghdad, is training Iraq’s special forces in Jordan, and plans to deliver the first F-16 jets to the Iraqi regime before the end of the year.

The US State Department issued a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” by the developments in Mosul and that Washington would “support a strong, coordinated response.”

The statement went on to say that the United Sates would “provide all appropriate assistance to the government of Iraq,” adding that ISIS was “not only a threat to the stability of Iraq, but a threat to the entire region.”

This is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism. US imperialism is entirely responsible for the catastrophe engulfing Iraq, including the rise of forces such as ISIS. The American invasion and nearly decade-long occupation killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, wounded countless more, turned millions into refugees and destroyed the economic and social infrastructure of the country.

While the Bush administration fabricated claims that there were ties between the Saddam Hussein regime and Al Qaeda in an attempt to convince the American public that the war of aggression was retaliation for 9/11, in reality there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq until after the US invasion toppled the Iraqi government.

Washington deliberately fomented and exploited sectarian differences in order to overthrow the Sunni-based regime of Saddam Hussein and destroy the Baathist political establishment. It then encouraged Shia resentment against the old Sunni-based elite and installed a Shia sectarian government in order to block the emergence of a unified opposition to its neo-colonial occupation. This created a fertile environment for Al Qaeda-linked forces.

In Syria, it has similarly played the sectarian card in its attempt to pit the majority Sunni population against the Assad regime. The US has promoted, financed and armed Sunni jihadist forces such as ISIS to wage the civil war that has devastated that country.

 

11 June, 2014

WSWS.org

Keynote address by Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, at Sarajevo Peace Event Sarajevo. (6th June, 2014)

Dear friends,

We are all aware that this is the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo which led to the start of the First World War in l9l4.
What started here in Sarajevo was a century of two global wars, a Cold War, a century of immense, rapid explosion of death and destruction technology, all extremely costly, and extremely risky.

A huge step in the history of war, but also a decisive turning point in the history of peace. The peace movement has never been as strong politically as in the last three decades before the break-out of WWl. It was a factor in political life, literature, organization, and planning, the Hague Peace Conferences, the Hague Peace Palace and the International Court of Arbitration, the bestseller of Bertha von Suttner, ‘Lay Down your Arms’. The optimism was high as to what this ‘new science’ of peace could mean to humankind. Parliaments, Kings, and Emperors, great cultural and business personalities involved themselves. The great strength of the Movement was that it did not limit itself to civilizing and slowing down militarism, it demanded its total abolition.

People were presented with an alternative, and they saw common interest in this alternative road forward for humankind. What happened in Sarajevo a hundred years ago was a devastating blow to these ideas, and we never really recovered. Now, 100 years later, must be the time for a thorough reappraisal of what we had with this vision of disarmament, and what we have done without it, and the need for a recommitment, and a new ambitious start offering new hope to a humanity suffering under the scourge of militarism and wars.

People are tired of armaments and war. They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism. These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity and above which we need to take steps to transcend, lest we unleash further dreadful violence upon the world. To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity is more important than our different traditions. We need to recognize our life and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other. We need to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness. We need to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings, give and accept forgiveness, and choose nonkilling and nonviolence as ways to solve our problems. So too as we disarm our hearts and minds, we can also disarm our countries and our world.

We are also challenged to build structures through which we can co-operate and which reflect our interconnected and interdependent relationships. The vision of the European Union founders to link countries together, economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war amongst the nations, is a worthy endeavour. Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for EU citizens, we are witnessing the growing Militarization of Europe, its role as a driving force for armaments, and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the USA/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression. The European Union and many of its countries, who used to take initiatives in the UN for peaceful settlements of conflicts, particularly allegedly peaceful countries, like Norway and Sweden, are now one of the US/NATO most important war assets. The EU is a threat to the survival of neutrality. Many nations have been drawn into being complicit in breaking international law through US/UK/NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.,

I believe NATO should be abolished. The United Nations should be reformed and strengthened and we should get rid of the veto in the Security Council so that it is a fair vote and we don’t have one power ruling over us. The UN should actively take up its mandate to save the world from the scourge of war.

But there is hope. People are mobilizing and resisting non-violently. They are saying no to militarism and war and insisting on disarmament. Those of us in the Peace Movement can take inspiration from many who have gone before and worked to prevent war insisting on disarmament and peace. Such a person was Bertha Von Suttner, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in l905, for her activism in the Women’s rights and peace movement. She died in June, l9l4, 100 years ago, just before WWl started. It was Bertha Von Suttner who moved Alfred Nobel to set up the Nobel Peace Prize Award and it was the ideas of the peace movement of the period that Alfred Nobel decided to support in his testament for the Champions of Peace, those who struggled for disarmament and replacing power with law and International relations. That this was the purpose is clearly confirmed by three expressions in the will, creating the fraternity of nations, work for abolition of armies, holding Peace Congresses. It is important the Nobel Committee be faithful to his wishes and that prizes go to the true Champions of Peace that Nobel had in mind.

This 100 year old Programme for Disarmament challenges those of us in the Peace Movement to confront militarism in a fundamental way. We must not be satisfied with improvements and reforms, but rather offer an alternative to militarism,
which is an aberration and a system of dysfunction, going completely against the true spirit of men and women, which is to love and be loved and solve our problems through co-operation, dialogue, nonviolence, and conflict resolution.

Thanks to the organizers for bringing us together. In the coming days we shall feel the warmth and strength of being among thousands of friends and enriched by the variety of peace people, and ideas. We shall be inspired and energized to pursue our different projects, be it arms trade, nuclear, nonviolence, culture of peace, drone warfare, etc., Together we can lift the world! But soon we shall be back home, on our own, and we know all too well how we all too often are being met with either indifference or a remote stare. Our problem is not that people do not like what we say, what they understand correctly is that they believe little can be done, as the world is so highly militarized. There is an answer to this problem,- we want a different world and people to believe that peace and disarmament is possible. Can we agree, that diverse as our work is, a common vision of a world without arms, militarism and war, is indispensable for success. Does not our experience confirm that we will never achieve real change if we do not confront and reject militarism entirely, as the aberration/dysfunction it is in human history? Can we agree to work that all countries come together in an Agreement to abolish all weapons and war and to commit to always sort out our differences through International Law and Institutions?

We cannot here in Sarajevo make a common peace program, but we can commit to a common goal. If out common dream is a world without weapons and militarism, why don’t we say so? Why be silent about it? It would make a world of difference if we refused to be ambivalent about the violence of militarism. We should no longer be scattered attempts to modify the military, each one of us would do our thing as part of a global effort, across all divisions of national borders, religions, races, we must be an alternative, insisting on an end to militarism and violence. This would give us an entirely different chance to be listened to and taken seriously.

Let the Sarajevo where peace ended, be the starting point for the bold beginning of a universal call for peace through the wholesale abolition of militarism.

Thank you,

Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, www.peacepeople.com

 

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

If there were any doubts that Western “leaders” live in a fantasy make-believe world constructed out of their own lies, the G-7 meeting and 70th anniversary celebration of the Normandy landing dispelled the doubts.

The howlers issuing from these occasions are enough to split your sides. Obama and his lap dog Cameron described the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944, as “the greatest liberation force that the world has ever known” and took all the credit for the US and Britain for the defeat of Hitler. No mention was made of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, which for three years prior to the Normandy landing had been fighting and defeating the Wehrmacht.

The Germans lost World War II at the Battle of Stalingrad, which was fought from August 23, 1942 until February 2, 1943, when most of the remnants of the powerful German Sixth Army surrendered, including 22 generals.

Nineteen months previously the largest invasion force ever assembled on planet earth invaded Russia across a one thousand mile front. Three million crack German troops; 7,500 artillery units, 19 panzer divisions with 3,000 tanks, and 2,500 aircraft rolled across Russia for 14 months.

By June 1944, three years later, very little of this force was left. The Red Army had chewed it up. When the so-called “allies” (a term which apparently excludes Russia) landed in France, there was little to resist them. The best forces remaining to Hitler were on the Russian front, which collapsed day by day as the Red Army approached Berlin.

The Red Army won the war with Germany. The Americans and the British showed up after the Wehrmacht was exhausted and in tatters and could offer little resistance. Joseph Stalin believed that Washington and London stayed out of the war until the last minute and left Russia with the burden of defeating Germany.

Hollywood and popular writers have, of course, buried the facts. Americans have all sorts of movies, such as “A Bridge Too Far,” that portray insignificant events, however heroic, as turning points in the war. Nevertheless, the facts are clear. The war was won on the Eastern front by Russia. Hollywood’s movies are fun, but they are nonsense.

Russia is again on the outs with “the world community,” because Obama’s plan to seize Ukraine and to evict Russia from its Black Sea base in Crimea has come a cropper. Crimea has been a part of Russia for as long as the US has existed. Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, stuck Crimea into the Ukrainian Socialist Republic in 1954 when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country.

When the Washington-imposed stooge government in Kiev recently declared that it was abolishing the use of the Russian language and arresting Ukrainians who had dual Russian citizenship and began tearing down Russian war memorials consecrated to the liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis, the people in Crimea used the ballot box to disassociate from Washington’s stooge government in Kiev, first voting their independence and then voting for reunification with their mother country.

Washington, and the other G-7 countries following Washington’s orders, described this Crimean act of self-determination, which is exactly comparable to the act of self-determination declared by Britain’s American colonies, to be a case of “Russian invasion and annexation.” Similar efforts to disassociate from Kiev are underway in other former Russian territories that today comprise eastern and southern Ukraine. Washington has equated self-determination in eastern and southern Ukraine with “terrorism” and has encouraged its stooge in Kiev to use military violence against protesting civilians. The reason for branding separatists “terrorists” is to make it OK to kill them.

It is extraordinary to any learned person that the President of the United States and the titular heads of state of the Western European countries would publicly declare such blatant lies to the world. The world has historians. The world has peoples whose knowledge vastly exceeds that of the “mainstream media,” a.k.a., the Ministry of Propaganda, or, as Gerald Celente brands them, “the presstitutes.” Whatever name we use, the Western media is a collection of well paid whores.They lie for money, dinner party invitations, and speaking invitations with large honorariums and book contracts with large advances.

I know. They tried to recruit me.

Notice how narrowly Washington defines “the world community.” The “world community” consists of the Group of 7. That’s it. Seven countries make up the “world community.” The “world community” consists of six white countries and Washington’s puppet state of Japan. The “world community” is the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan. The other 190 countries are not part of Washington’s “world community.” In the neocon doctrine, they are not even part of humanity.

The “world community” doesn’t have the population of single excluded countries, such as China or India. I haven’t done the calculation, but probably the land mass of Russia itself exceeds the land mass of the “world community.”

So, what is this “world community?”

The “world community” is the assemblage of US vassal states. Britain, France, and Germany were important on the 20th century scene. Their histories are studied in universities. The populations had a decent standard of living, although not for all citizens. Their past is the reason for their present importance.

In effect, these countries were propelled forward by history, or by the history important to the West. Japan, being an appendage of Washington, has tried to become “western.” It is extraordinary how such a proud, war-like people became nothing.

As I have finally stopped laughing at the presumed non-role of Russia in the defeat of Hitler, let’s return to the G-7 meeting. The Big Happening of this meeting was Russia’s exclusion and the shrinkage of the G-8 to the G-7.

This was the first time in 17 years that Russia was not allowed to participate in the meeting of which Russia is a member. Why?

Russia is being punished. Russia is being isolated from the 7 countries that the White House Fool thinks constitute “the world community.”

Obama is angry that his National Security Council and the morons he appointed to the State Department and UN were so poorly educated that they did not know that much of the Ukraine consists of former Russian provinces inhabited by Russians. These ignorant Obama-appointed morons thought that they could grab Crimea, evict Russia, and leave Russia without access to the Mediterranean, thus unable to hold on to its naval base in Tartus, Syria, the easier for Washington to invade Syria.

Crimea has been part of Russia since Russia completed the reconquest from the Tartars. I remember the Tarter, or Tater, ethnics from my visit to Tamerlane the Great’s (Timur as he was also known) tomb in Samarkand 53 years ago. Today Tamerlane’s city is refurbished as a tourist site. 53 years ago it was a desolate place in ruins, overgrown with trees growing out of the tops of the minarets.

As Obama’s plan to seize Ukraine failed, like every one of his other plans has failed, Washington’s spokesmen for the vested private interests have seized on the opportunity to demonize Putin and Russia and to restart the Cold War. Obama and his Group of 7 puppets or vassals used the occasion to threaten Russia with real sanctions, in place of the present propaganda sanctions that have no effect. According to Obama and his British lap dog, Putin must somehow prevent the Russian populations of eastern and southern Ukraine from protesting their subservience to a neo-fascist government in Kiev backed by Washington, or else.

Putin is supposed to embrace the Oligarch, a former minister of the government that Washington overthrew, put in office by a fake vote in which turnout was a small percent of the population. Putin is supposed to kiss this corrupt Oligarch on both cheeks, pay Ukraine’s natural gas bills and forgive its debts. In addition, Russia is supposed to repudiate the Crimean people, evict them from their re-unity with Russia and hand them over to the neo-Nazi Right Sector to be eliminated as retribution for Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, for whom some Western Ukrainians fought. In exchange, Washington and NATO will put anti-ballistic missile bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia in order to protect Europe from nonexistent Iranian nuclear ICBMs.

This is supposed to be a win-win deal for Russia.

The Obama regime used its well-paid NGOs in Ukraine to overthrow an elected, democratic government, a government no more corrupt than those in Western or Eastern Europe or Washington.

The political morons who have England, France, Germany, and Italy in their hands are wagging their fists at Russia, warning of more, this time real, sanctions. Do these morons really want their energy supplies cut off? There is no prospect, despite the propagandistic claims, of Washington supplying the energy on which Germany industry depends and on which Europeans depend so that they do not freeze in the winter.

Sanctions on Russia will wreck Europe and have little, if any, effect on Russia. Russia is already moving, with China and the BRICS, outside the dollar payments mechanism.

As the demand for dollars drops, the dollar’s exchange value will drop. Initially, Washington will be able to force its vassals to support the dollar, but eventually this will become impossible.

What the White House Fool, the neoconized National Security Council, the presstitute media, and subservient Congress are doing is to support and uphold the policies based on hubris and arrogance that are leading the US into the abyss.

An abyss is like a black hole. You don’t get out.

Washington’s lies are so blatant and transparent that Washington is destroying its own credibility. Consider the NSA spying. Documents released by Snowden and Greenwald make it completely clear that Washington spies not only on government leaders and ordinary people but also on foreign businesses in order to advance US commercial and financial interests. That the US steals Chinese business secrets is not in doubt. So what does Washington do? Washington not only denies what the documents prove but turns the charge around and indicts five Chinese generals for spying on US corporations.

The only purpose of these indictments hyped by the US attorney general is propaganda.The indictments are otherwise totally meaningless, not merely false. China is not about to turn over five Chinese generals to the liars in Washington. For the presstitute media the story is a way to move the NSA’s spying out of the spotlight. China is substituted for the NSA as the guilty party.

Why doesn’t China, Brazil, Germany and every other country issue arrest warrants for NSA’s top officials, for Obama, and for the members of the congressional oversight committee? Why do other countries always allow Washington to control the explanation with propaganda first strikes?

Americans are very susceptible to propaganda. They seem to have a special taste for it. Consider the hate whipped up against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier just released by the Taliban in a prisoner exchange with the US. The hatred and bloodlust that the presstitute media have whipped up against Bergdahl has caused his hometown to cancel the celebration of his release. The press engineered hatred of Bergdahl has spilled over into threats against Hailey, Idaho.

What is the basis for the attacks on Bergdahl? Apparently, the answer is that Bergdahl, like pro-football star Pat Tillman who turned down a $3.6 million contract to join the Army Rangers and go to defend freedom in Afghanistan, came down with a case of doubts about the war. Originally Pat Tillman’s death was attributed to his heroic action and enemy fire. Then it emerged that Tillman was a victim of “friendly fire.” Many concluded that he was murdered, because the government did not want a sports hero speaking out about the war. As Bergdahl is off the battlefield, he has to be murdered in the press–like Russia, China, Iran, Putin, Assad, Crimeans, and the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.

In America hate and the cultivation of hate is alive and well. But not a single moral virtue is.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

07 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org