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Hans M. Kristensen

Robert S. Norris

Abstract

The United States has an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads available for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. Approximately 2,700 retired but still intact warheads await dismantlement, for a total inventory of roughly 7,400 warheads. The stockpile includes an estimated 2,130 operational warheads, about 1,150 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 470 on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Roughly 300 strategic warheads are located at bomber bases in the United States, and nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads are deployed in Europe. Another 2,530 warheads are in storage. To comply with New START, the United States is expected to eliminate land-based missile silos, reduce the number of launch tubes on its missile submarines, and limit its inventory of nuclear-capable bombers in coming years. Coinciding with a revised nuclear weapons strategy, the Obama administration is also planning an upgrade of all nuclear weapons systems. The three-decade-long plan would cost more than $200 billion in the first decade alone.

The US Defense Department maintains a stockpile of an estimated 4,650 nuclear warheads for delivery by more than 800 ballistic missiles and aircraft. The stockpile did not decline significantly over the last year, but has shrunk by roughly 460 warheads compared with May 2010, when the United States announced that the Defense Department’s stockpile contained 5,113 warheads.

The current stockpile includes an estimated 2,130 operational warheads, of which approximately 1,620 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles—1,150 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and 470 on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); roughly 300 strategic warheads are located at bomber bases in the United States; and nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads are deployed in Europe (see Table 1). The remaining 2,530 warheads are in storage as a so-called hedge against technical or geopolitical surprises.

In addition to the warheads in the US stockpile, approximately 2,700 retired, but still-intact warheads are in storage and await dismantlement, for a total inventory of roughly 7,400 warheads.

Implementing New START

As of September 1, 2013, the United States nuclear arsenal was counted under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with 1,688 strategic warheads attributed to 809 deployed missiles and bombers—an increase of 34 warheads and 17 launchers compared with the previous count in March 2013. The increase is an anomaly, however, reflecting fluctuations in launchers in overhaul rather than an actual increase of strategic forces. Since the treaty entered into force in February 2011, the United States has reduced a total of 146 strategic warheads and 90 launchers counted under the treaty (Kristensen, 2013a).

To meet the treaty limit on non-deployed launchers, the Air Force plans to eliminate 104 empty ICBM silos. This includes 50 silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which until 2008 housed the 50 Minuteman III missiles of the 564th Missile Squadron; 50 silos at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, which was until 2005 used by MX/Peacekeeper ICBMs of the 400th Missile Squadron; and one MX/Peacekeeper and three Minuteman III test-launch silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The 50 silos at Malmstrom will be destroyed in 2013–2014, the 50 silos at Warren in 2015–2016, and the four test-launch silos at Vandenberg in 2017.

The next step will be the reduction of missile tubes from 24 to 20 on each US nuclear missile submarine in 2015–2016. The third and final step will be the denuclearization of excess bombers to reduce the accountable inventory to 60.

Nuclear weapons employment guidance

The Obama administration’s long-awaited nuclear weapons employment guidance was announced in June 2013 after more than two years of internal deliberations. The administration published a nine-page report and a fact sheet that described the employment guidance—known as Presidential Policy Directive 24—setting four overall principles for the role of US nuclear forces.

Under the directive, the fundamental role of US nuclear weapons remains to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies and partners. The United States will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The United States will maintain a credible nuclear deterrent capable of convincing any potential adversary of the adverse consequences of attacking the United States or its allies and partners. And US policy seeks to achieve a credible deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons, consistent with its current and future security requirements (Defense Department, 2013).

These planning principles are based on the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, and the guidance report describes an employment strategy that contains a mix of constraints on and reaffirmations of nuclear planning.

In terms of constraining nuclear plans, the guidance document declares that the United States can safely pursue up to a one-third reduction in deployed nuclear weapons from the level established in New START in negotiated cuts with Russia; directs the Defense Department to focus planning only on those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence; and tells the department to examine further options to reduce the role Launch Under Attack plays in US planning. The guidance also directs the Defense Department to take concrete steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US national security by increasing planning for non-nuclear strike options and assessing what objectives and effects could be achieved through them; declares that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their non-nuclear obligations;1 declares that the United States will not intentionally target civilian populations or civilian objects; reiterates the intention to work toward the goal of making deterrence of nuclear weapons the sole purpose of US nuclear weapons; and outlines a more efficient strategy for hedging against unanticipated risks with fewer non-deployed nuclear weapons (Defense Department, 2013; White House, 2013).

The reaffirmations contained in the guidance document in some cases simply confirm that long-held principles for nuclear war planning still are in force. In other cases, however, the reaffirmations appear to contradict the constraints asserted in the same document. Among other things, the document declares that the new guidance is consistent with the fundamentals of deterrence that have long undergirded US nuclear weapons policy, and that the United States will retain a nuclear triad so it can credibly threaten “a wide range” of nuclear responses if deterrence should fail; these responses could include nuclear attacks against adversaries armed with chemical, biological, and conventional weapons. The guidance also states that the United States will maintain significant counterforce capabilities against potential adversaries and rejects countervalue or minimum deterrence as the basis for US nuclear strategy. It also directs the Defense Department to retain the ability to Launch Under Attack; declares that the new employment strategy does not direct any changes to currently deployed nuclear forces; decides to continue to keep a reserve of non-deployed warheads to increase the deployed force if needed; calls for retaining the ability to forward-deploy nuclear weapons with heavy bombers and dual-capable fighter aircraft in support of extended deterrence; says that the United States should continue a forward-based nuclear posture in Europe; and declares that non-nuclear strike options are not a substitute for nuclear weapons (Defense Department, 2013; White House, 2013).

Based on the new employment guidance, the Office of the Secretary of Defense will update the Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy, and the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will update the nuclear supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. These documents will in turn guide Strategic Command’s revision of the strategic nuclear war plan (Kristensen, 2013b). Some changes will be implemented quickly, while others (such as increasing the role of non-nuclear forces) could take years to achieve.

Nuclear modernization plan

Coinciding with the revised nuclear weapons employment strategy, the Obama administration is planning an extensive upgrade of all nuclear weapons systems: missiles, bombers, submarines, fighters, warheads, and the supporting complex and factories. The plan extends three decades into the future and costs more than $200 billion in the first decade and hundreds of billions of dollars more in the next two decades.

The plan envisions the production of significantly modified nuclear weapons, including the addition of a guided tail kit to the B61 bomb to increase its accuracy, broaden strike options against underground targets, and reduce radioactive fallout. The new B61 bomb (B61-12) is already being designed and is expected to cost around $10 billion for 400 to 500 bombs—the most expensive nuclear bomb project ever.

The plan also envisions building a family of so-called interoperable warheads that could be used on both land- and sea-based missiles. Little is known about the precise configuration of these warheads, but even though they would incorporate components from previously tested warhead designs, each could differ significantly from warheads currently in the stockpile and potentially increase uncertainty about warhead performance. Each interoperable warhead will be extremely expensive, with IW1 projected at $14.7 billion. The plan is known as the 3 + 2 plan because it envisions the entire future stockpile containing three warhead types for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and two warheads for bombers, compared with seven warhead types today (see Figure 1). The high cost will likely result in significant modification, even cancelation, of the 3+2 plan.

Land-based ballistic missiles

The US Air Force operates a force of 450 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs split evenly across three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base; the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota; and the 341st Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Each wing has three squadrons, each with 50 missiles controlled by five launch-control centers. Under New START, the Air Force plans to reduce the ICBM force to 400 missiles, probably by retiring one of three missile squadrons at one of the three bases, leaving two bases with 150 missiles each and one with 100 missiles.

Each missile carries either the 335-kiloton W78 warhead or the 300-kiloton W87 warhead. A few missiles still carry multiple warheads but are being downloaded in order for the United States to meet the limits of New START. Despite the download, the ICBM force will retain a re-MIRVing capability that could increase warhead loading if directed.

The Air Force is in the final phase of a multibillion-dollar, decade-long modernization program to extend the service life of the Minuteman III to 2030. Although the United States has not officially announced deployment of a new ICBM, the upgraded Minuteman IIIs “are basically new missiles except for the shell” (Pampe, 2012). The total modernization program will be completed in 2015.

In mid-2014, the Air Force is scheduled to complete an analysis of alternatives for replacing the Minuteman III missiles. Options being studied range from extending the existing missile to beyond 2030 to more exotic options, such as a mobile ICBM to increase survivability. Three Minuteman IIIs were test-launched in 2013.

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines

The US Navy operates 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (eight based in the Pacific and six in the Atlantic), all equipped with Trident II D5 SLBMs. Normally 12 of the subs are considered operational, with a 13th and 14th boat in overhaul at any given time. The aggregate New START data show that normally fewer than 12 of these submarines are fully equipped with missiles. Of the 14 boats, 10 or 11 are normally capable of deploying with their missiles.

The deployed submarines carry approximately 1,150 warheads—or an average of 4.8 warheads per missile. In practice, each missile probably has three, four, or five warheads, depending upon the requirement of the war plan. Loading with fewer warheads increases a missile’s range.

Three versions of two basic warhead types are deployed on the SLBMs: the 100-kiloton W76-0, the 100-kiloton W76-1, and the 455-kiloton W88. The W76-1 is a refurbished version of the W76-0, with the same yield but with an added safety device, a dual strong link detonation control. Moreover, a new arming, fuzing, and firing unit provides improved targeting capabilities. Full-scale production of an estimated 1,200 W76-1 s is under way at the Pantex plant in Texas. So far, roughly 500 W76-1 s have replaced W76-0 s on Trident II SLBMs, and production is scheduled to continue through 2019. W76-1 s are also being supplied to Britain’s missile submarines (Kristensen, 2011a).

US submarine nuclear deterrent patrols have decreased significantly over the past decade from 64 patrols in 1999 to 28 in 2011. As a result, each sub now conducts an average of 2.5 patrols per year compared with 3.5 patrols a decade ago. The average duration of a patrol is 70 days, with a few lasting more than 100 days. More than 60 percent of the patrols take place in the Pacific Ocean, reflecting nuclear war planning against China, North Korea, and eastern Russia.

At any given time, eight or nine of the 12 operational nuclear missile submarines are at sea. Four or five of the at-sea boats are on “hard alert,” which means they are in designated patrol areas within range of the targets specified in their assigned target package in accordance with the strategic war plan. The other three or four subs at sea are in transit to or from their patrol areas, and the remaining boats are in port, some with their missiles removed.

Starting in 2015, the number of missile tubes on each Ohio-class boat will be reduced by four, from 24 to 20. The reduction is intended to reduce the number of deployed SLBMs to no more than 240 at any given time, to meet the 2018 limit on deployed strategic delivery vehicles set by New START.

The Navy has ambitious modernization plans to replace the Ohio-class subs with a new design, a submarine that is 2,000 tons larger than the Ohio-class submarine, but with 16 missile tubes instead of the current 24—four fewer than the 20 planned under New START. Twelve replacement boats (tentatively known as SSBNX) are planned, a reduction of two compared with the current fleet of 14, at an estimated cost of approximately $100 billion. Construction of the first new submarine is scheduled for 2021, with deployment on deterrent patrol starting in 2031.

The plan is that during the first decade of its service life, this new class of submarine will be armed with a life-extended version of the current Trident II D5 SLBM. This upgraded missile, the D5LE, has a guidance system designed to “provide flexibility to support new missions” (Draper Laboratory, 2006: 8) and make the missile “more accurate” (Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, 2008: 14); it will also be backfitted onto existing Ohio-class subs for the remainder of their service life, starting in the Pacific in October 2017. The D5LE will also be deployed on Britain’s missile submarines.

The US submarine force conducted eight SLBM test-launches in 2013. In April, following completion of its reactor-refueling overhaul, the Pennsylvania launched four missiles including the second flight test of the D5LE guidance package. And in September, another submarine launched two salvos of two missiles in the Atlantic Ocean.

Strategic bombers

The Air Force operates a fleet of 20 B-2 and 93 B-52H bombers at three bases. Of those, 18 B-2 s and 76 B-52Hs are nuclear-capable. An estimated 60 bombers (16 B-2 s and 44 B-52Hs) are assigned nuclear weapons under the strategic nuclear war plan.

Each dedicated B-2 can carry up to 16 nuclear bombs (B61-7, B61-11, and B83-1). The dedicated B-52Hs are assigned air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) but are no longer assigned gravity bombs. From the 2020s, the B-2 is scheduled to receive the planned B61-12 precision-guided nuclear bomb, a program currently estimated to cost in excess of $10 billion. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 nuclear weapons, including 528 ALCMs, are assigned to the bombers. Most of these weapons are in central storage at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, but a small number (we estimate 200 to 300) are stored at Minot Air Force Base and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri; nuclear weapons are no longer stored at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana (Air Force Magazine, 2011; Ferrell, 2012). The weapons are not deployed on the bombers under normal circumstances but could be loaded on short notice.

From the mid-2020s, the Air Force plans to begin replacing B-52 and B-1 (and later also B-2) bombers with a new long-range bomber. Procurement of 80 to 100 aircraft is envisioned; some of the new bombers are planned to be nuclear-capable, at a total cost of well over $55 billion. The new bomber will be equipped to deliver the planned B61-12 precision-guided bomb, as well as a new nuclear ALCM that is currently known as the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile. The current ALCM is scheduled to remain operational through the 2020s. The administration has promised that it will not produce “new” nuclear warheads, so the LRSO could either use a life-extended version of the ALCM’s W80-1 warhead or a life-extended version of the retired W84 warhead that once armed the Ground-Launched Cruise Missile. The LRSO warhead could cost as much as $12 billion, with billions more needed to produce the missile itself.

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons

The US inventory of nonstrategic nuclear weapons includes approximately 500 warheads, all B61 gravity bombs. Nearly 200 of the bombs are deployed in Europe at six bases in five NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The Belgian, Dutch, and Turkish air forces (with F-16 s) and German and Italian air forces (with PA-200 Tornado aircraft) are assigned nuclear strike missions with the US nuclear weapons (Kristensen and Norris, 2011). The weapons in Europe no longer serve a military purpose and are not tasked with providing the ultimate security guarantee to NATO, a mission that is assigned to strategic weapons.

Although the May 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago approved the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review conclusion that the existing “nuclear force posture currently meets the criteria for an effective deterrence and defense posture” (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2012: paragraph 8), NATO has approved modernization in Europe through the addition of a guided tail kit to the B61 bomb to increase its accuracy, and the deployment of the stealthy F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter in Europe. Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey have decided to buy the F-35A, and it is under consideration in Belgium. The modified bomb, known as the B61-12, will also be carried on other fighter aircraft (F-15E, F-16, and PA-200 Tornado) as well as strategic bombers (B-2 and the new long-range bomber), potentially complicating future arms control agreements (Kristensen, 2011b, 2012).

Funding

This research was carried out with grants from the New-Land Foundation and the Ploughshares Fund.

 

Hans M. Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.

Robert S. Norris is a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.

17 December, 2014

 

 

By Nicola Nasser

International, regional and internal players vying for interests, wealth, power or influence are all beneficiaries of the “al-Qaeda threat” in Iraq and in spite of their deadly and bloody competitions they agree only on two denominators, namely that the presence of the U.S.-installed and Iran–supported sectarian government in Baghdad and its sectarian al-Qaeda antithesis are the necessary casus belli for their proxy wars, which are tearing apart the social fabric of the Iraqi society, disintegrating the national unity of Iraq and bleeding its population to the last Iraqi.

The Iraqi people seem a passive player, paying in their blood for all this Machiavellian dirty politics. The war which the U.S. unleashed by its invasion of Iraq in 2003 undoubtedly continues and the bleeding of the Iraqi people continues as well.

According to the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq, 34452 Iraqis were killed since 2008 and more than ten thousand were killed in 2013 during which suicide bombings more than tripled according to the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk’s recent testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The AFP reported that more than one thousand Iraqis were killed in last January. The UN refugee agency UNHCR, citing Iraqi government figures, says that more than 140,000 Iraqis have already been displaced from Iraq’s western province of Anbar.

Both the United States and Russia are now supplying Iraq with multi–billion arms sales to empower the sectarian government in Baghdad to defeat the sectarian “al-Qaeda threat.” They see a casus belli in al–Qaeda to regain a lost ground in Iraq, the first to rebalance its influence against Iran in a country where it had paid a heavy price in human souls and taxpayer money only for Iran to reap the exploits of its invasion of 2003 while the second could not close an opened Iraqi window of opportunity to re-enter the country as an exporter of arms who used to be the major supplier of weaponry to the Iraqi military before the U.S. invasion.

Regionally, Iraq’s ambassador to Iran Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh announced earlier this month that Baghdad has signed an agreement with Tehran “to purchase weapons and military equipment;” Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen defense and security agreements with Iran last September.

Meanwhile Syria, which is totally preoccupied with fighting a three –year old wide spread terrorist insurgency within its borders, could not but coordinate defense with the Iraq military against the common enemy of the “al-Qaeda threat” in both countries.

Counterbalancing politically and militarily, Turkey and the GCC countries led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in their anti-Iran proxy wars in Iraq and Syria, are pouring billions of petrodollars to empower a sectarian counterbalance by money, arms and political support, which end up empowering al–Qaeda indirectly or its sectarian allies directly, thus perpetuating the war and fueling the sectarian strife in Iraq, as a part of an unabated effort to contain Iran’s expanding regional sphere of influence.

Ironically, the Turkish member of the U.S.–led NATO as well as the GCC Arab NATO non–member “partners” seem to stand on the opposite side with their U.S. strategic ally in the Iraqi war in this tragic drama of Machiavellian dirty politics.

Internally, the three major partners in the “political process” are no less Machiavellian in their exploiting of the al-Qaeda card. The self–ruled northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, which counts down for the right timing for secession, could not be but happy with the preoccupation of the central government in Baghdad with the “al–Qaeda threat.” Pro-Iran Shiite sectarian parties and militias use this threat to strengthen their sectarian bond and justify their loyalty to Iran as their protector. Their Sunni sectarian rivals are using the threat to promote themselves as the “alternative” to al-Qaeda in representing the Sunnis and to justify their seeking financial, political and paramilitary support from the U.S., GCC and Turkey, allegedly to counter the pro-Iran sectarian government in Baghdad as well as the expanding Iranian influence in Iraq and the region.

Exploiting his partners’ inter-fighting, Iraqi two–term Prime Minister Nouri (or Jawad) Al-Maliki, has maneuvered to win a constitutional interpretation allowing him to run for a third term and, to reinforce his one-man show of governance, he was in Washington D.C. last November, then in Tehran the next December, seeking military “help” against the “al-Qaeda threat” and he got it.

U.S. Continues War by Proxy

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged to support al-Maliki’s military offensive against al–Qaeda and its offshoot the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

24 Apache helicopter with rockets and other equipment connected to them, 175 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles, ScanEagle and Raven reconnaissance drones have either already been delivered or pending delivery, among a $4.7 billion worth of military equipment, including F-16 fighters. James Jeffrey reported in Foreign Policy last Monday that President Barak Obama’s administration is “increasing intelligence and operational cooperation with the Iraqi government.” The French Le Figaro reported early this week that “hundreds” of U.S. security personnel will return to Iraq to train Iraqis on using these weapons to confirm what the Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, did not rule out on last January 17 when he said that “we are in continuing discussions about how we can improve the Iraqi military.”

Kerry ruled out sending “American boots” on the Iraqi ground; obviously he meant “Pentagon boots,” but not the Pentagon–contracted boots.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) online on this February 3 reported that the “U.S. military support there relies increasingly on the presence of contractors.” It described this strategy as “the strategic deployment of defense contractors in Iraq.” Citing State Department and Pentagon figures, the WSJ reported, “As of January 2013, the U.S. had more than 12,500 contractors in Iraq,” including some 5,000 contractors supporting the American diplomatic mission in Iraq, the largest in the world.

It is obvious that the U.S. administration is continuing its war on Iraq by the Iraqi ruling proxies who had been left behind when the American combat mission was ended in December 2011. The administration is highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” as casus belli as cited Brett McGurk’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on this February 8.

The Machiavellian support from Iran, Syria and Russia might for a while misleadingly portray al-Maliky’s government as anti – American, but it could not cover up the fact that it was essentially installed by the U.S. foreign military invasion and is still bound by a “strategic agreement” with the United States.

 

Political System Unfixable

However the new U.S. “surge” in “operational cooperation with the Iraqi government” will most likely not succeed in fixing “Iraq’s shattered political system,” which “our forces were unable to fix … even when they were in Iraq in large numbers,” according to Christopher A. Preble, writing in Cato Institute online on last January 23.

“Sending David Petraeus and Ambassador (Ryan) Crocker back” to Iraq, as suggested by U.S. Sen. John McCain to CNN’s “State of the Union” last January 12 was a disparate wishful thinking.

“Iraq’s shattered political system” is the legitimate product of the U.S.–engineered “political process” based on sectarian and ethnic fragmentation of the geopolitical national unity of the country. Highlighting the “al-Qaeda threat” can no more cover up the fact that the “political process” is a failure that cannot be “fixed” militarily.

Writing in Foreign Policy on this February 10, James Jeffrey said that the “United States tried to transform Iraq into a model Western-style democracy,” but “the U.S. experience in the Middle East came to resemble its long war in Vietnam.”

The sectarian U.S. proxy government in Baghdad, which has developed into an authoritarian regime, remains the bedrock of the U.S. strategic failure. The “al-Qaeda threat” is only the expected sectarian antithesis; it is a byproduct that will disappear with the collapse of the sectarian “political process.”

Iraq is now “on the edge of the abyss,” director of Middle East Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), professor Gareth Stansfield, wrote on this February 3. This situation is “being laid at the door of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,” who “is now portrayed as a divisive figure,” he said.

In their report titled “Iraq in Crisis” and published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on last January 24, Anthony H. Cordesman and Sam Khazai said that the “cause of Iraq’s current violence” is “its failed politics and system of governance,” adding that the Iraqi “election in 2010 divided the nation rather than create any form of stable democracy.” On the background of the current status quo, Iraq’s next round of elections, scheduled for next April 30, is expected to fare worse. Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly last August 14, Salah Nasrawi said that more than 10 years after the U.S. invasion, “the much-trumpeted Iraqi democracy is a mirage.” He was vindicated by none other than the Iraqi Speaker of the parliament Osama Al Nujaifi who was quoted by the Gulf News on last January 25 as saying during his latest visit to U.S.: “What we have now is a facade of a democracy — superficial — but on the inside it’s total chaos.”

Popular Uprising, not al-Qaeda

Al-Maliki’s government on this February 8 issued a one week ultimatum to what the governor of Anbar described as the “criminals” who “have kidnapped Fallujah” for more than a month, but Ross Caputi, a veteran U.S. Marine who participated in the second U.S. siege of Fallujah in 2004, in an open letter to U.S. Secretary Kerry published by the Global Research last Monday, said that “the current violence in Fallujah has been misrepresented in the media.”

“The Iraqi government has not been attacking al Qaeda in Fallujah,” he said, adding that Al-Maliki’s government “is not a regime the U.S. should be sending weapons to.” For this purpose Caputi attached a petition with 11,610 signatures. He described what is happening in the western Iraqi city as a “popular uprising.”

Embracing the same strategy the Americans used in 2007, Iran and U.S. Iraqi proxies have now joined forces against a “popular uprising” that Fallujah has just become only a symbol. Misleadingly pronouncing al-Qaeda as their target, the pro-Iran sectarian and the pro-U.S. so-called “Awakening” tribal militias have revived their 2007 alliance.

The Washington Post on this February 9 reported that the “Shiite militias” have begun “to remobilize,” including The Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army; it quoted a commander of one such militia, namely Asaib Ahl al-Haq, as admitting to “targeted” extrajudicial “killings.”

This unholy alliance is the ideal recipe for fueling the sectarian divide and inviting a sectarian retaliation in the name of fighting al-Qaeda; the likely bloody prospects vindicate Cordesman and Khazai’s conclusion that Iraq is now “a nation in crisis bordering on civil war.”

Al – Qaeda is real and a terrorist threat, but like the sectarian U.S.-installed government in Baghdad, it was a new comer brought into Iraq by or because of the invading U.S. troops and most likely it would last as long as its sectarian antithesis lives on in Baghdad’s so–called “Green Zone.”

“Al-Maliki has more than once termed the various fights and stand-offs” in Iraq “as a fight against “al Qaeda”, but it’s not that simple,” Michael Holmes wrote in CNN on last January 15. The “Sunni sense of being under the heel of a sectarian government … has nothing to do with al Qaeda and won’t evaporate once” it is forced out of Iraq, Holmes concluded.

A week earlier, analyst Charles Lister, writing to CNN, concluded that “al Qaeda” was being used as a political tool” by al–Maliki, who “has adopted sharply sectarian rhetoric when referring to Sunni elements … as inherently connected to al Qaeda, with no substantive evidence to back these claims.”

Al–Qaeda not the Only Force

“Al–Qaeda is “not the only force on the ground in Fallujah, where “defected local police personnel and armed tribesmen opposed to the federal government … represent the superior force,” Lister added.

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) had reported that the “Iraqi insurgency” is composed of at least a dozen major organizations and perhaps as many as 40 distinct groups with an estimated less than 10% non-Iraqi foreign insurgents. It is noteworthy that all those who are playing the “al-Qaeda threat” card are in consensus on blacking out the role of these movements.

Prominent among them is the Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshabandi (JRTN) movement, which announced its establishment after Saddam Hussein’s execution on December 30, 2006. It is the backbone of the Higher Command for Jihad and Liberation (HCJL), which was formed in October the following year as a coalition of more than thirty national “resistance” movements. The National, Pan-Arab and Islamic front (NAIF) is the Higher Command’s political wing. Saddam’s deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, is the leader of JRTN, HCJL and NAIF as well as the banned Baath party.

“Since 2009, the movement has gained significant strength” because of its “commitment to restrict attacks to “the unbeliever-occupier,” according to Michael Knights, writing to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) on July1, 2011. “We absolutely forbid killing or fighting any Iraqi in all the agent state apparatus of the army, the police, the awakening, and the administration, except in self-defense situations, and if some agents and spies in these apparatus tried to confront the resistance,” al-Duri stated in 2009, thus extricating his movement from the terrorist atrocities of al-Qaeda, which has drowned the Iraqi people in a bloodbath of daily suicide bombings.

The majority of these organizations and groups are indigenous national anti-U.S. resistance movements. Even the ISIL, which broke out recently with al-Qaeda, is led and manned mostly by Iraqis. Playing al-Qaeda card is a smokescreen to downplay their role as the backbone of the national opposition to the U.S.-installed sectarian proxy government in Baghdad’s green Zone. Their Islamic rhetoric is their common language with their religious people.

Since the end of the U.S. combat mission in the country in December 2011, they resorted to popular peaceful protests across Iraq. Late last December al-Maliki dismantled by force their major camp of protests near Ramadi, the capital of the western province of Anbar. Protesting armed men immediately took over Fallujah and Ramadi.

Since then, more than 45 tribal “military councils” were announced in all the governorates of Iraq. They held a national conference in January, which elected the “General Political Council of the Guerrillas of Iraq.” Coverage of the news and “guerrilla” activities of these councils by Al-Duri’s media outlets is enough indication of the linkage between them and his organizational structure.

No doubt revolution is brewing and boiling in Iraq against the sectarian government in Baghdad, its U.S. and Iranian supporters as well as against its al-Qaeda sectarian antithesis.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

 

12 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Ramzy Baroud

“When they first put the electricity on me, I gasped; my body went rigid and the bag came off my head,” Israa Salah, a detained Iraqi woman told Human Rights Watch (HRW) in her heartrending testimony.

Israa (not her real name) was arrested by US and Iraqi forces in 2010. She was tortured to the point of confessing to terrorist charges she didn’t commit. According to HRW’s “No One is Safe” – a 105-page report released on Feb 06 – there are thousands of Iraqi women in jail being subjected to similar practices, held with no charges, beaten and raped.

In Israa’s case, she received most degrading, but typical treatment. She was handcuffed, pushed down on her knees, and kicked in the face until her jaw broke. And when she refused to sign the confession, it was then that electric wires were attached to her handcuffs.

Welcome to the ‘liberated’ Iraq, a budding ‘democracy’ which American officials rarely cease celebrating. There is no denial that the brutal policies of the Iraqi government under Nouri al-Maliki is a continuation of the same policies of the US military administration, which ruled over Iraq from 2003 until the departure of US troops in Dec. 2011.

It is as if the torturers have read from the same handbook. In fact, they did.

The torture and degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners – men and women – in Abu Ghraib prison was not an isolated incident carried out by a few ‘bad apples.’ Only the naïve would buy into the ‘bad apples’ theory, and not because of the sheer horrendousness and frequency of the abuse. Since the Abu Ghraib revelations early in 2004, many such stories emerged, backed by damning evidence, not only throughout Iraq, but in Afghanistan as well. The crimes were not only committed by the Americans, but the British as well, followed by the Iraqis, who were chosen to continue with the mission of ‘democratization.’

“No One is Safe” presented some of the most harrowing evidence of the abuse of women by Iraq’s criminal ‘justice system’. The phenomenon of kidnapping, torturing, raping and executing women is so widespread that it seems shocking even by the standards of the country’s poor human rights record of the past. If such a reality were to exist in a different political context, the global outrage would have been so profound. Some in the ‘liberal’ western media, supposedly compelled by women’s rights would have called for some measure of humanitarian intervention, war even. But in the case of today’s Iraq, the HRW report is likely to receive bits of coverage where the issue is significantly deluded, and eventually forgotten.

In fact, the discussion of the abuse of thousands of women – let alone tens of thousands of men – has already been discussed in a political vacuum. A buzzword that seems to emerge since the publication of the report is that the abuse confirms the ‘weaknesses’ of the Iraqi judicial system. The challenge then becomes the matter of strengthening a weak system, perhaps through channeling more money, constructing larger facilities, and providing better monitoring and training, likely carried out by US-led training of staff.

Mostly absent are the voices of women’s groups, intellectuals and feminists who seem to be constantly distressed by the traditional marriage practices in Yemen, for example, or the covering up of women’s faces in Afghanistan. There is little, if any, uproar and outrage, when brown women suffer at the hands of western men and women, or their cronies, as is the situation in Iraq.

If the HRW report remerged in complete isolation from an equally harrowing political context created by the US invasion of Iraq, one could grudgingly excuse the relative silence. But it isn’t the case. The Abu Ghraib culture continues to be the very tactic by which Iraqis have been governed since March 2003.

Years after the investigation of the Abu Ghraib abuses had begun, Major General Antonio Taguba, who had conducted the inquiry, revealed that there were more than 2,000 unpublished photos documenting further abuse. “One picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” reported the Telegraph newspaper on May 2009.

Maj Gen Taguba had then supported Obama’s decision not to publish the photos, not out of any moralistic reasoning, but simply because “the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.” Of course, the British, the builders of security in Afghanistan, wrote their own history of infamy through an abuse campaign that never ceased since they had set foot in Afghanistan.

Considering the charged political atmosphere in Iraq, the latest reported abuses are of course placed in their own unique context. Most of the abused women are Sunni, and their freedom has been a major rallying cry for rebelling Sunni provinces in central and western Iraq. In Arab culture, dishonoring one through occupation and the robbing of one’s land comes second to dishonoring women. The humiliation that millions of Iraqi Sunni feel cannot be explained by words, and militancy is an unsurprising response to the government’s unrelenting policies of dehumanization, discrimination and violence.

While post-US invasion Iraq was not a heaven for democracy and human rights, the ‘new Iraq’ has solidified a culture of impunity that holds nothing sacred. In fact, dishonoring entire societies has been a tactic in al-Maliki’s dirty war. Many women were “rounded up for alleged terrorist activities by male family members,” reported the Associated Press, citing the HRW report.

“Iraqi security forces and officials act as if brutally abusing women will make the country safer,” said Joe Stork, deputy MENA director at HRW. It was the same logic that determined that through ‘shock and awe’ Iraqis could be forced into submission.

Neither theory proved accurate. The war and rebellion in Iraq will continue as long as those holding the key to that massive Iraqi prison understand that human rights must be respected as a precondition to a lasting peace.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

12 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Mike Head

As this week’s second round of talks in Geneva remained at an impasse, US President Barack Obama yesterday renewed talk of possible military intervention against Syria, on the cynical pretext of “humanitarian” concern for the Syrian people.

Accompanied by French President Francois Hollande at a joint media conference in Washington, Obama declared there was “enormous frustration here” over the situation in Syria. While he discounted military intervention, for now, he ratcheted up the pressure on the Syrian and Russian governments to accept the removal of Syria’s Assad regime.

“Right now we don’t think that there is a military solution per se to the problem,” Obama stated. “But the situation’s fluid, and we are continuing to explore every possible avenue to solve this problem.”

His remarks underscore the reality that the US and its allies remain committed to an agenda of regime change. If the current talks, brokered by Russia, do not achieve that soon, then a military attack remains an option, as previously carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Obama emphasised: “I always reserve the right to exercise military action on behalf of America’s national security interests,” adding only, “That has to be deployed wisely.” He underscored Washington’s insistence on the removal of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, describing it as “crumbling.” Obama said the conflict was “one of our highest national security priorities.”

The US president also sought to intensify the pressure on Iran to prevail upon its Syrian ally to accede to Washington’s dictates. Having initiated talks with Tehran in recent months, partly with a view to securing the US agenda in Syria, Obama declared that his administration would come down like “a ton of bricks” on firms that violated the still crippling sanctions imposed on Iran.

Five months ago, Obama and Hollande were on the brink of bombing Syria on the basis of utterly false allegations, later exposed by a UN report, that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in towns near Damascus. Confronted by popular opposition, and with differences in US ruling circles over a new Middle Eastern war, Obama pulled back, seeking to create more favourable conditions for pursuing Washington’s predatory interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, notably against China and Russia.

During the first round of the Geneva talks, which ended in failure last month, the US provocatively renewed US arms shipments to the Syrian “rebel” forces, but they have suffered further setbacks on the ground and there is intensifying fighting occurring between the Islamist militias themselves.

At yesterday’s press conference, during which the two presidents hailed their two countries’ “exceptionally” close alliance, Hollande also spoke of other “choices” if the Geneva negotiations did not result in Assad’s removal. Hollande bluntly stated that the “only purpose” of the Geneva talks was to “make political transition possible.”

This exposes the pretence that the Geneva talks are about “peace.” The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition delegation in Geneva warned on Monday it would not return for a third round of talks if the Syrian government representatives did not agree to Assad’s ouster as a pre-condition for negotiations. UN convenor Lakhdar Brahimi announced that the talks were proving just as “laborious” and unsuccessful as the previous round.

Hollande also revealed the aggressive agenda behind his and Obama’s hypocritical claims to be dismayed by the plight of the Syrian people—whose suffering is the direct result of the nearly three year US-instigated war for regime-change. Hollande denounced the Russian government for opposing a proposed Western-sponsored US Security Council resolution to supposedly increase aid access to people trapped in the conflict. “How can you object to humanitarian corridors, why would you prevent the vote of a resolution if in good faith, it is all about saving human lives?” he declared.

Such demands for military “corridors” and “no-fly zones”—ostensibly to protect civilians—have provided the trigger for repeated imperialist interventions over the past two decades, including the 2011 US-NATO war of aggression that ousted Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya. The draft UN resolution reportedly includes the threat of punitive sanctions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday described the resolution as “absolutely one-sided” and “unacceptable” because it contained “an ultimatum for the government that if they don’t solve all this in two weeks then we automatically introduce sanctions.”

While the Western media has focussed sole attention on the plight of 1,100 war refugees trapped in besieged opposition-held areas of Homs, the responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in Syria lies above all with the “rebel” militias. Spawned and funded by the US and its collaborators, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they are carrying out massacres and laying siege to towns and villages, while engaged in ferocious in-fighting for territorial control. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is locked in battles with another coalition of Islamist militias led by the al-Nusra Front, which swears allegiance to Al Qaeda.

Even as the Geneva talks resumed on Monday, Islamist forces killed 20 civilians—including women and children—and 20 local fighters during an attack on the Alawite village of Maan in the central Syrian province of Hama. There were also reports that ISIL forces had been forced to withdraw from Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Deir al-Zor after days of heavy fighting against its Islamist rivals. ISIL reportedly alienated the province’s population by imposing harsh rulings against dissent, such as beheadings, in areas it controlled.

The chemical weapons issue, temporarily downplayed after a Moscow-brokered disarmament pact was reached last September, is also being brought back to centre stage, with the Obama administration accusing the Assad government of stalling in meeting deadlines for the destruction of its stockpiles. The agency supervising the agreement, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), reported that a third shipment of chemicals was exported on Monday from the port of Latakia, despite the fighting raging in the country. Nevertheless, OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu warned against “further delays” in meeting the “concrete schedule” laid down in September.

In the US, two items in the New York Times signalled a shift to a more aggressive posture. A February 10 editorial backed the proposed UN resolution, declaring that the UN Security Council had “failed to respond to the bloodshed” in Syria, “largely because of Russia’s slavish allegiance to President Bashar al-Assad.”

Yesterday, the newspaper published an op-ed piece by two academics, Danny Postel and Nader Hashemi, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “geostrategic calculations” and Assad’s “coldblooded recalcitrance” of standing in the way of “thousands of Syrian civilians eating.” Invoking the UN’s “responsibility to protect” doctrine, adopted in 2005 to sanctify imperialist interventions against targeted states, they declared: “And if a multinational force cannot be assembled, then at least some countries should step up and organize Syria’s democratically oriented rebel groups to provide the necessary force on the ground, with air cover from participating nations.”

This call for military intervention, and a confrontation with Russia, would no doubt find support from the pseudo-left groups, such as the US International Socialist Organisation and the French New Anti-capitalist Party, that have adopted similar appeals in acting as cheerleaders for the imperialist operations in Libya and Syria. Such demands for action in the name of humanitarianism have become vehicles for the continuing drive by the US to assert hegemony over the resource-rich and strategically critical Middle East and Central Asia.

12 February, 2014

WSWS.org

 

By Franklin Lamb

Yarmouk Palestinian camp, Damascus: As of 2/6/14 it’s been seven days since the first humanitarian aid, generally in the form of 56 lb. food parcels packed by UNWRA, the World Food Program, the ICRC or European aid organizations have been able to enter Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp following half a dozen aborted attempts the past few months by various militia and political groups to achieve consensus to deliver aid. The aid parcels, including two kilos of rice, two kilos sugar, three kilos lentils, three kilos dry macaroni, plus flour, jam, tea, oil, and sweet Halawi spread are intended to feed a family of five to eight for ten days. The boxes have been trickling into the South side of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp and up along Rima Street where this observer has seen crowds this past week tensely waiting and hoping for food and clean water. For some camp residents the wait for relief began in June of 2013 when all entrances and exits to Yarmouk camp were cut.

Up to this morning, approximately 5,300 food parcels have been allowed into Yarmouk or an average of 800-1,000 food packages daily. Aid has been entering sporadically and sometimes chaotically, with perceptible but slight increases over the past week.

A large yellow flat-bed truck arrived on the morning of 2/5/14 and this observer watched as food parcels were off-loaded and neatly stacked into six white pick-up trucks that were then driven into Yarmouk under the watchful gaze of pro and anti-regime forces and security agents. According to one source from South Beirut who this observer had met earlier, Jabhat al Nusra, Jabhat Islam, Daash and Jund al Cham snipers could be observed on rooftops monitoring the distribution activity with their eyes pressed against their rifle scopes. One SARCS volunteer who this observer has known for two years advised that she feared there might be a shootout between these fighters and nearby Palestinian forces allied with the government (Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-GC) suspected Hezbollah fighters with hand radio phones who were watching and seemingly discussing the events. Frankly, for this observer, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish which group which around here is given the proliferation of fighters with beards and essentially indistinguishable attire.

For many food parcel recipients, their first act is to open the jar of jam inside the cardboard box and scoop the confections into the mouths of their children or the nearby infirm refugees, usually elderly. On 2/6/14, UNWRA also started a polio vaccination program, its first in Yarmouk and which is urgently needed by thousands of trapped camp residents. Ten thousand dosages of polio vaccines are being allowed into the camp with vaccinations currently underway for the second day running.

In addition to the so far paltry amount of food allowed into the camp, approximately 1,600 people have been allowed to leave Yarmouk for medical treatment. Young Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) volunteers, wearing shirts with large Red Crosses can be seen trickling out from the besieged camp this morning. Invariably holding the hands, arms, or shoulders of those who could walk the 50 yards to waiting ambulances that will evacuate and transport these patients, suffering the effects of starvation including muscle atrophy and dehydration. Most will be taken to the PCRS Jaffa hospital two kilometers away. Others are being transferred to Syrian government hospitals in Mazah, in central Damascus, including al-Mujtahed, al-Muwasat, al-Tawleed and children hospital.

This observer mingled for a couple of hours among the approximately 250 family members of trapped refugees, many of whom appear daily outside the only exit from Yarmouk camp, hoping that a relative might be allowed to leave. One elderly lady, maybe in her late sixties, explained to this observer that every day for the past seven months, i.e. since the tight siege of Yarmouk began last June, she has stood in the same location waiting for her son Mahmoud to come to her from inside besieged Yarmouk. She has no idea if he is alive but she explained to me that she believes that God will deliver him safely to her.

Another view of much needed Divine assistance was articulated by a lovely young mother who had just exited Yarmouk with her two toddlers who looked, as she did, to be in fairly bad shape and in need of immediate hospitalization. A former English literature student, the lady, whose family is from Haifa, Occupied Palestine, explained to this observer that she no longer has any belief in God and as she elaborated why, she lowered her voice so as not to offend the nearby elderly believer waiting for her son Makmoud.

She told of her experience trapped inside Yarmouk: “For the past more than five months I have sold my body for one hour to whoever would give me a kilo of rice which sometimes costs as much as 14,000 s.p. (close to $ 100). I was proud to be a whore for these terrorists in order to keep my parents alive and who are still trapped and I also prevented complete starvation of my children.” She continued, “God did not help me and my family but I promise if I live and ever see one of those dogs I will kill him and he can learn if his God exists or not. None existed for me!” and she sobbed as two young lady volunteers from the PRCS held her as she and her little ones made their way to a waiting PRCS ambulance.

Given the 18,000 in need of urgent aid this cold winter morning inside Yarmouk camp, what has been allowed in so far has been a mere trickle, rather minor in a sense. But major for those getting the live saving food parcels and urgently required medical treatment.

As this observer waits to return to Yarmouk this morning, and for a promised and expensive taxi to hopefully arrive, for few cabs want to go anywhere near Yarmouk camp these days and charge five times the normal fare if they do, ones imagines that as has been the case this past week, there will be large crowds and long lines of people waiting and sometimes jostling for food. This attests to the enormous humanitarian need and to the desperation of thousands of civilians, Palestinian and Syrian, being starved and used as a weapon of war and as human shields.

After months of false starts toward reaching an agreement among fourteen Palestinian factions here in Damascus, as well as a green light from the Syrian government, and more than a dozen rebel militias, each with disparate agendas, this week’s agreement, and the 8th since early December, may or may not hold. And it may not end the carnage that criminally took 6000 more lives just last month.

If it does succeed, it will be one more half-step, to use UN Envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi Geneva II term, toward lifting the siege of Yarmouk camp which achievement might then augur well for more widespread humanitarian efforts to achieve a nationwide ceasefire as a full step toward serious reconciliation work in order to save this great country.

Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).

07 February, 2014

Countercurrents.org

 

 

By Kate Randall

A wave of layoff announcements over the past week has exposed the reality of the economic “recovery” touted by the Obama administration and governments worldwide. Deep-going job cuts are hitting the manufacturing, pharmaceutical, technology and retail sectors across North America, Europe and Japan.

Despite stagnant revenues, reflecting sluggish economic growth, companies are reporting booming profits. These profit gains are almost entirely due to a relentless assault on jobs, wages and working conditions being carried out by the ruling class.

The layoff of tens of thousands of workers comes amid news of unprecedented compensation packages for the heads of major US corporations. It is combined with ruthless austerity measures in the US and across Europe. As the chasm between rich and poor continues to grow, social programs and benefits upon which millions rely are being gutted.

Weatherford International plans to cut its global workforce by 7,000 by mid-2014. The oilfield services company, which currently employs more than 65,000 people, hopes to generate annual cost savings of $500 million with the job cuts.

Vehicle maker Volvo announced Thursday that it will lay off 4,400 employees in 2014, including a previously announced reduction of 2,000 jobs. CEO Olof Persson said the layoffs would affect workers worldwide.

Chemical maker Ashland Inc. will cut up to 1,000 jobs as part of a restructuring program being carried out under pressure from investors to boost “shareholder value,” i.e., share prices. With revenue remaining flat at $1.9 billion for the quarter ended December 31, Ashland aims to save $150 million to $200 million annually from the restructuring.

Swiss drug maker Novartis plans to eliminate or transfer up to 4,000 jobs. The plan will affect up to 6 percent of the company’s workforce and is part of a larger plan to cut costs, including the closure of production sites. Pharmaceuticals are under increasing pressure from investors to restructure in response to expiring drug patents and government efforts to cut health care costs.

British-Swedish multinational drug maker AstraZeneca has increased its job-cutting toll to 5,600, raising by 550 last year’s announced layoff of 5,050. The company expects the job cuts, to be completed by 2016, to bring annual savings of $2.5 billion.

Japanese tech giant Sony confirmed that it will sell its struggling PC unit to investment firm Japan Industrial Partners and cut some 5,000 jobs in its TV, PC, marketing and other departments.

A mass layoff program began this week at Dell Inc., the multinational computer technology company, with over 15,000 people expected to lose their jobs. A source speaking to the Register described the impending job cuts as “a bloodbath.”

US tech companies have also announced layoffs. Massachusetts-based EMC Corp. has approved a restructuring plan that will result in layoffs “similar in size” to job cuts of more than 1,000 last year.

 

Several hundred people will be laid off as early as this week at Disney’s Interactive group. The job cuts will come mostly from Disney’s Playdom unit, which produces games for social media platforms.

Time Inc., publishers of People, Time, Sports Illustrated and In Style, began job cuts on Tuesday expected to number about 500.

North American manufacturers are shedding workers as companies close plants and make across-the-board cuts. Five hundred workers will lose their jobs beginning next week as International Paper shuts down the remaining two paper machines at its plant in Courtland, Alabama and winds down production at the facility.

GenCorp Inc. announced Tuesday it is eliminating 225 jobs nationwide as it seeks to “eliminate redundancies and achieve efficiencies” following its $550 million acquisition of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

Pittsburgh-based US Steel is laying off nearly a quarter of the non-unionized workforce at its operations in Nanticoke and Hamilton, Ontario—about 175 workers. The steelmaker’s operations in Hamilton, which once employed 15,000, will be trimmed to around 820 workers.

Michigan-based Kellogg Co. said Tuesday it will close its Charlotte, North Carolina snack factory by the end of 2014 at a cost of 195 jobs.

Retailers in the US and Canada announced major layoffs along with store closures. RadioShack will close 500 of its 4,300 stores.

Best Buy in Canada is laying off 950 workers at stores in British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario.

Sears Canada announced layoffs Wednesday for the second time this month, eliminating 634 jobs. Two weeks ago, the company said 1,600 positions would go as it moved ahead with plans to close its Canadian call centers and reduce warehouse staff.

United Airlines said last Saturday it would drop its hub in Cleveland, slashing many of its daily flights and eliminating 470 jobs. The hub formerly served Continental Airlines, which merged with United in 2010.

Even as they continue to attack jobs and wages, the corporations, with the full backing of the Obama administration and governments worldwide, are sitting on massive cash reserves. US corporations are estimated to be holding a cash hoard of $1.5 trillion.

Instead of using this money for productive investment and an expansion of employment, the corporate-financial elite is using it to finance speculative operations and stock buyback programs that drive up share prices and further enrich corporate CEOs and big investors—at the expense of the living standards of billions of people around the world.

07 February, 2014

WSWS.org

 

By William T. Hathaway

Countercurrents.org

Review of Eric Walberg, From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization, Clarity Press, 2013

Most western Middle East experts see Islam as a problem for the West — a source of terrorism, religious fanaticism, unwanted immigrants — and they see their job as helping to change the Middle East so it’s no longer a problem for us. Eric Walberg, however, recognizes that this is another instance of the Big Lie.

The actual problem is the multifaceted aggression the West has been inflicting on the Middle East for decades and is determined to continue, no matter what the cost to them and us will be. His books and articles present the empirical evidence for this with scholarly precision and compassionate concern for the human damage done by our imperialism.

His latest book, From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization, is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand our ongoing war on the Muslim world — from Libya to the Philippines, from growing beleaguered communities scattered across North America and Europe to South Africa and Australia — from the perspective of those on the receiving end of America’s violence today. It is a compelling representation of both the breathtaking sweep of fourteen centuries of Islamic civilization and the current state of the Muslim world.

In this sequel to his impressive Postmodern Imperialism (2011), Walberg attempts to bridge the East-West gap, “not through a reconciliatory discourse, but through a critical reading of history,” according to the Palestinian-American writer Ramzy Baroud. Walberg looks at Islam as both religion and ideology, tracing it both via a methodological and an epistemological critique, and takes it seriously as a civilizational alternative to our present bankrupt secular imperialist order.

Our politicians and media have created an image of fiendish Muslim terrorists who “hate us for our freedom.” But they really hate us for subjugating them, for overthrowing their governments, dominating their economies, and undermining their way of life. Since we started the aggression, the attacks won’t end until we leave their countries.

Walberg asks the logical question: What can replace the neocolonial order so ruthlessly and cleverly put in place by the imperial powers in the Middle East over the past century? He explores many alternative answers ranging from “more of the same” to radical transformation.

What does Islam have to say about economics, politics, community, relations with Nature? Walberg charts a wealth of experience from the past fourteen centuries. Islam was the first world order to unite people on the basis of genuine equality, in a truly multicultural way. It never created empires like the Romans, the Christian heirs to the Romans, and most recently the British and Americans. Why?

Who are the great Muslim thinkers, and how do they differ from western thinkers of the time? How do the Prophet Muhammad’s efforts to enact the revelations of the Quran in the seventh century compare with the teachings of Marx about how to create a world order without the depredations of capitalism?

 

These are some of the questions Walberg addresses, trying to bring together the two main opponents of imperialism today: Islamists and socialists. Our foe is the entire Western corporate juggernaut, of which Israel is only a part. To survive, we must set aside our religious and political differences and form a united front. Shias, Sunnis, secularists, and socialists need to work together to defeat our common enemy. As Samir Amin wrote, “To bring the militarist project of the United States to defeat has become the primary task, the major responsibility, for everyone.” If we join in solidarity, we can win. Otherwise the imperialists will continue to divide and rule.

But it is essential for socialists to take Islamists seriously, and vice versa, for both sides to understand the various currents in the common resistance to imperialism, and to forge alliances that will be lasting. So far, Islam has been at best tolerated by socialists, at worst, dismissed and opposed. At the same time, Islamists have been suspicious of the socialist reaction to imperialism, in a sense, wishing a pox on both houses.

Leftists are quick to condemn Islamists as strategically obtuse, or worse craven, willing to collaborate with imperialists (Saudis from the start, Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s–60s against Nasserists), and to take CIA money (Afghanistan). There are those who denounce Hamas as an Israeli creation. Walberg looks closely at these arguments, based on his analysis of imperialist strategies during the past two centuries.

That Hamas possibly got support from Israeli sources is part of the age-old imperialist use of Islamists, but it has backfired. Hamas didn’t sell out. Fatah/PLO discredited themselves over decades and are now empty shells. The role of Hamas in exposing PLO hypocrisy and “holding the fort” against Israel has been proved decisively since it came to power in democratic elections in 2006.

From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization is a gripping and informative wake-up call to both sides of the anti-imperial equation, pulling together the many threads that can unite us, from Foucault’s “political spirituality,” to the Egyptian revolutionaries’ solidarity with America’s 99%, to the American Muslims’ support for the peace and ecology movements.

William T. Hathaway is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany and a member of the Freedom Socialist Party

06 February, 2014

 

By William Blum

Williamblum.org

“Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for ‘objectivity’. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.” – Michael Parenti

An exchange in January with Paul Farhi, Washington Post columnist, about coverage of US foreign policy:

Dear Mr. Farhi,

Now that you’ve done a study of al-Jazeera’s political bias in supporting Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, is it perhaps now time for a study of the US mass media’s bias on US foreign policy? And if you doubt the extent and depth of this bias, consider this:

There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam? Or even opposed to any two of these wars? How about one? In 1968, six years into the Vietnam war, the Boston Globe 1

surveyed the editorial positions of 39 leading US papers concerning the war and found that “none advocated a pull-out”.

Now, can you name an American daily newspaper or TV network that more or less gives any support to any US government ODE (Officially Designated Enemy)? Like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or his successor, Nicolás Maduro; Fidel or Raúl Castro of Cuba; Bashar al-Assad of Syria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; or Evo Morales of Bolivia? I mean that presents the ODE’s point of view in a reasonably fair manner most of the time? Or any ODE of the recent past like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, or Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti?

Who in the mainstream media supports Hamas of Gaza? Or Hezbollah of Lebanon? Who in the mainstream media is outspokenly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians? And keeps his or her job?

Who in the mainstream media treats Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning as the heroes they are?

And this same mainstream media tell us that Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, et al. do not have a real opposition media.

The ideology of the American mainstream media is the belief that they don’t have any ideology; that they are instead what they call “objective”. I submit that there is something more important in journalism than objectivity. It is capturing the essence, or the truth, if you will, with the proper context and history. This can, as well, serve as “enlightenment”.

It’s been said that the political spectrum concerning US foreign policy in the America mainstream media “runs the gamut from A to B”.

Sincerely, William Blum, Washington, DC

(followed by some of my writing credentials)

–

Reply from Paul Farhi:

I think you’re conflating news coverage with editorial policy. They are not the same. What a newspaper advocates on its editorial page (the Vietnam example you cite) isn’t the same as what or how the story is covered in the news columns. News MAY have some advocacy in it, but it’s not supposed to, and not nearly as overt or blatant as an editorial or opinion column. Go back over all of your ODE examples and ask yourself if the news coverage was the same as the opinions about those ODEs. In most cases. I doubt it was.

–

Dear Mr. Farhi,

Thank you for your remarkably prompt answer.

Your point about the difference between news coverage and editorial policy is important, but the fact is, as a daily, and careful, reader of the Post for the past 20 years I can attest to the extensive bias in its foreign policy coverage in the areas I listed. Juan Ferrero in Latin America and Kathy Lally in the Mideast are but two prime examples. The bias, most commonly, is one of omission more than commission; which is to say it’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. My Anti-Empire Report contains many examples of these omissions, as well as some errors of commission.

Incidentally, since 1995 I have written dozens of letters to the Post pointing out errors in foreign-policy coverage. Not one has been printed.

Happy New Year

–

I present here an extreme example of bias by omission, in the entire American mainstream media: In my last report I wrote of the committee appointed by the president to study NSA abuses – Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies – which actually came up with a few unexpected recommendations in its report presented December 13, the most interesting of which perhaps are these two:

“Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry.”

“Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.”

So what do we have here? The NSA being used to steal industrial secrets; nothing to do with fighting terrorism. And the NSA stealing money and otherwise sabotaging unnamed financial systems, which may also represent gaining industrial advantage for the United States.

Long-time readers of this report may have come to the realization that I’m not an ecstatic admirer of US foreign policy. But this stuff shocks even me. It’s the gross pettiness of “The World’s Only Superpower”.

A careful search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis database failed to turn up a single American mainstream media source, print or broadcast, that mentioned this revelation. I found it only on those websites which carried my report, plus three other sites: Techdirt, Lawfare, and Crikey (First Digital Media).

For another very interesting and extreme example of bias by omission, as well as commission, very typical of US foreign policy coverage in the mainstream media: First read the January 31, page one, Washington Post article making fun of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba.

Then read the response from two Americans who have spent a lot of time in Venezuela, are fluent in Spanish, and whose opinions about the article I solicited.

I lived in Chile during the 1972-73 period under Salvadore Allende and his Socialist Party. The conservative Chilean media’s sarcastic claims at the time about shortages and socialist incompetence were identical to what we’ve been seeing for years in the United States concerning Venezuela and Cuba. The Washington Post article on Venezuela referred to above could have been lifted out of Chile’s El Mercurio, 1973.

[Note to readers: Please do not send me the usual complaints about my using the name “America(n)” to refer to “The United States”. I find it to be a meaningless issue, if not plain silly.]

JFK, RFK, and some myths about US foreign policy

On April 30, 1964, five months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was interviewed by John B. Martin in one of a series of oral history sessions with RFK. Part of the interview appears in the book “JFK Conservative” by Ira Stoll, published three months ago. (pages 192-3)

RFK: The president … had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.

MARTIN: What was the overwhelming reason?

RFK: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.

MARTIN: What if it did?

RFK: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also it would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an effect on the Middle East. Just as it would have, everybody felt, a very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred million population. All of those countries would be affected by the fall of Vietnam to the Communists.

MARTIN: There was never any consideration given to pulling out?

RFK: No.

MARTIN: … The president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there …

RFK: Yes.

MARTIN: … And couldn’t lose it.

RFK: Yes.

These remarks are rather instructive from several points of view:

1. Robert Kennedy contradicts the many people who are convinced that, had he lived, JFK would have brought the US involvement in Vietnam to a fairly prompt end, instead of it continuing for ten more terrible years. The author, Stoll, quotes a few of these people. And these other statements are just as convincing as RFK’s statements presented here. And if that is not confusing enough, Stoll then quotes RFK himself in 1967 speaking unmistakably in support of the war.

It appears that we’ll never know with any kind of certainty what would have happened if JFK had not been assassinated, but I still go by his Cold War record in concluding that US foreign policy would have continued along its imperial, anti-communist path. In Kennedy’s short time in office the United States unleashed many different types of hostility, from attempts to overthrow governments and suppress political movements to assassination attempts against leaders and actual military combat; with one or more of these occurring in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, British Guiana, Iraq, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Brazil.

2. “Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world.”

Ah yes, a vital part of the world. Has there ever been any part of the world, or any country, that the US has intervened in that was not vital? Vital to American interests? Vital to our national security? Of great strategic importance? Here’s President Carter in his 1980 State of the Union Address: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America”.

“What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war.” – Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher

3. If the US lost Vietnam “everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall.”

As I once wrote:

Thus it was that the worst of Washington’s fears had come to pass: All of Indochina – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos – had fallen to the Communists. During the initial period of US involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and other American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of the type known as the “Domino Theory”, warning that if Indochina should fall, other nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one instance, President Eisenhower listed no less than Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the anticipated “falling dominos”. 2

Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by succeeding administrations and other supporters of US policy in Indochina as a key argument in defense of such policy. The fact that these ominous predictions turned out to have no basis in reality did not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same dogma up until the 1990s about almost each new world “trouble-spot”, testimony to their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the International Communist Conspiracy.

Killing suicide

Suicide bombers have become an international tragedy. One can not sit in a restaurant or wait for a bus or go for a walk downtown, in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or Russia or Syria and elsewhere without fearing for one’s life from a person walking innocently by or a car that just quietly parked nearby. The Pentagon has been working for years to devise a means of countering this powerful weapon.

As far as we know, they haven’t come up with anything. So I’d like to suggest a possible solution. Go to the very source. Flood selected Islamic societies with this message: “There is no heavenly reward for dying a martyr. There are no 72 beautiful virgins waiting to reward you for giving your life for jihad. No virgins at all. No sex at all.”

Using every means of communication, from Facebook to skywriting, from billboards to television, plant the seed of doubt, perhaps the very first such seed the young men have ever experienced. As some wise anonymous soul once wrote:

A person is unambivalent only with regard to those few beliefs, attitudes and characteristics which are truly universal in his experience. Thus a man might believe that the world is flat without really being aware that he did so – if everyone in his society shared the assumption. The flatness of the world would be simply a “self-evident” fact. But if he once became conscious of thinking that the world is flat, he would be capable of conceiving that it might be otherwise. He might then be spurred to invent elaborate proofs of its flatness, but he would have lost the innocence of absolute and unambivalent belief.

We have to capture the minds of these suicide bombers. At the same time we can work on our own soldiers. Making them fully conscious of their belief, their precious belief, that their government means well, that they’re fighting for freedom and democracy, and for that thing called “American exceptionalism”. It could save them from committing their own form of suicide.

Notes

1. Boston Globe, February 18, 1968, p.2-A

2. New York Times, April 8, 1954

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2

06 February, 2014

 

 

By Kourosh Ziabari

Countercurrents.org

It’s now three years that Syria has been engulfed in a destructive civil war which is leading nowhere but simply continues to claim the lives of innocent civilians falling prey to the greediness and voracity of the imperial powers and those who intend to disintegrate Syria and disrupt the solidarity of its people.

It’s reported that since March 2011, more than 130,000 Syrians were killed in the clashes that have erupted inside the war-torn country, and more than 2 million others were displaced.

The Western mainstream media persistently try to portray the violence in Syria as part of the wave of revolutionary movements in the Arab world that started from Tunisia three years ago known as the Arab Spring, but the irony is that there is virtually no sign of a popular uprising or civil movement in Syria that can quality the unrest in this country as a revolution. What is happening in Syria is an unspeakable, all-out sectarian conflict fueled by the foreign powers and terrorists from more than 80 countries whose ultimate objective is to tear the country apart and dismantle it as an integral part of the axis of resistance.

In a systematic and organized way, the United States and some of its regional and trans-regional allies have concocted a scheme for Balkanizing Syria through embroiling the country’s different religious sects in an erosive and seemingly unending clash; Sunnis against the Alawites and Twelver Shiites against the Christians. This will ultimately result in acrimony, quarrel and bitterness in Syria and pave the way for what the enemies of peace and harmony in Syria have been looking for: the dismantlement of the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Some analysts believe that Syria is paying the price for its resistance against Israel. Of course Israel, which directly benefits from conflict and unrest in Syria, is inclined to see a chaotic, turbulent and tumultuous Syria rather than a Syria which is unified, strong and powerful. This belief that Israel sees its interest in the continuation of unrest in Syria is substantiated by many analysts and politicians who have closely monitored the developments in the Middle East in the recent years. In an interview with Press TV in September 2012, the former Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener said “the unrest in Syria benefits Israel, because Syria is one of a few countries standing against Tel Aviv.” According to Sener, Israel seeks to weaken Syria to undermine the Palestinians and Hezbollah.

Even there are some Israeli officials who are not afraid of openly bragging about their ambition for destabilizing Syria, saying that the emergence of Syria without Bashar al-Assad or any other leader who is opposed to the policies of Tel Aviv would be the most favorable outcome of the civil war in the Arab country. On January 26, 2012, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried the statements made by former Military Intelligence Chief and Head of the Institute for National Security Studies Amos Yadlin who said “the changes in Syria bear strategic benefits for Israel.” Yadlin, however, further went on to disclose his real intentions for the region and stated that Iran should also be subject to political transformations emanating from the Arab Spring: “If the revolution finds its way to Tehran it could save Israel the huge dilemma of choosing between two alternatives – a viable nuclear Iran or preventing a nuclear Iran.”

All the parties involved in this erosive conflict, including the United States, the European powers, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Israel pursue certain interests in Syria. But all of them converge on the point that Bashar al-Assad must go, and a leader should be put in place that follows the orders given to him rather than representing the will and interest of his people. Under such circumstances, the United States will never object that the Syrian government is not a democratic and representative government and is inattentive to the calls of its people; but when Bashar al-Assad is in power, his campaign against the extremists, takfiris and insurgents would be tantamount to a “killing of his own people” and should be condemned!

All things considered, the war that is being waged on Syria, with the involvement of those dangerous killers whom the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry honorably brands as “moderate terrorists” is leading to an erosive, obnoxious and bloody sectarian conflict which one can hardly think of an end for. Those who are pitting the Shiites against the Sunnis and vice versa are making use of the diversity of denominations in Islam as an instrument to spread unrest and confusion among the Muslims and undermine their unity and integrity. They fear that the growth of the Muslim community will entail a heavy price for them.

And unfortunately, the extremist takfiris and salafists who are being dispatched to Syria en masse by certain countries in the region on behalf of the imperial powers are taking the artificial battle they’ve invoked between the Shiites and Sunnis to the neighboring countries, and one can only think of their intentions in terms of a pernicious effort to provoke the different sects of Muslims, including the Sunnis and Shiites, to commit violence against each other and engage them in internal conflicts. This is in line with the efforts made by the United States and some of its allies that are trying their best to plunder the natural resources of the Muslim nations and dominating their lands.

The recent bombings in Lebanon and Iraq which the takfiri, salafist and Al-Qaeda fighters claim the responsibility for indicate that the sectarian conflict that has come into sight from Syria is spilling into the other Middle East nations, and can be considered a blaze which will take in and burn the whole region in a tragic manner.

For instance, it was reported on January 16 that a suicide car bombing killed at least 5 people and wounded 42 others in the northwestern Lebanese city of Hermel. Hermel is a Shiite-majority city in the Beqaa Governorate where Hezbollah wields a remarkable influence, and it’s said that the members of Al-Nusra Front, which undertook the responsibility for the bombing, are planning more attacks in such areas to punish the Shiite population of Lebanon for their crime of supporting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On February 2, the British paper The Independent published an article in which it elaborated on the growth of sectarian conflict in the Middle East as a result of the protraction of violence and bloodshed in Syria, writing that the Lebanese communities are being dragged into the “neighbor’s civil war” simply because it’s perceived that they support the side of the conflict which is disfavored by the “big boss” and its friends, namely the United States, its NATO and Arab allies. However, the January 16 bombing was not the first instance of assault on the “100 percent Shiite” Hermel district. According to The Independent, over the past two years, more than 150 rockets were fired into Hermel by the Al-Nusra Front. The town is targeted mostly because it’s an important logistical hub for Hezbollah, which has openly sided with Bashar al-Assad in his battle against the insurgents and foreign-backed mercenaries, and is known as the “capital of resistance.”

Although it’s difficult to demonstrate that the bloodletting and violence in Syria has caused sectarian conflict, it can be maintained that the three-year civil war in Syria has very bold sectarian overtones and many of the motivations of the parties involved in the war are sectarian. Unquestionably, one is that the takfiris and salafists in Syria are dismayed that the Sunni majority country is ruled by a Shiite Alawite government, and their consternation has gone to such extremes that they have taken up arms against the government, brutally behead its supporters and kill whoever they think is somewhat related to or supportive of the government.

I remember talking to a Syrian citizen a few weeks ago. She told me that Bashar al-Assad has always maintained a policy of preserving balance and equilibrium between the followers of divine religions in Syria, and religious tolerance is something which is widely practiced in the country. She was saying that the Alawites and other Shiites, Sunnis and the Christian and Jewish minorities have always lived with each other peacefully and interacted constructively, and this atmosphere was created by Bashar al-Assad, but it’s really indeterminate and unclear what will happen if he goes, either voluntarily or by force, and what the next leader will do to maintain religious equality.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria has confirmed in a recent report that sectarian violence has increased in Syria, and there are other reports testifying that sectarian conflict is being expanded into Lebanon and Iraq and is likely to engulf the whole Middle East very soon.

The fact that takfiris, salafists and other fundamentalists who don’t accept as Muslim whoever is politically opposed to them are now gaining power and contributing to the Balkanization of Syria is really disturbing, and it seems that nothing worthwhile comes out of the negotiation rooms in Geneva that can help Syria see the face of peace and tranquility once again; however, experience has shown that whenever the decision-making is entrusted to the people themselves, they make the best choices. It’s up to the Syrian people to decide whether they want Bashar al-Assad to remain in power or not. Killing and terrorizing will not help find an answer to the dilemma.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian Journalist, writer and media correspondent

06 February, 2014

 

Countercurrents.org

As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hurried to his helicopter ready to take off at the end of a visit to Iraq last year, it was becoming clearer that the Americans have lost control of a country they wished to mold to their liking. His departure on March 24, 2013 was the conclusion of a ‘surprise’ visit meant to mark the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Ten years prior, the US had stormed Baghdad, unleashing one of the 20th century’s most brutal and longest conflicts. Since then, Iraq has not ceased to bleed.

Kerry offered nothing of value on that visit, save the same predictable clichés of Iraq’s supposedly successful democracy, as a testament to some imagined triumph of American values. But it was telling that a decade of war was not even enough to assure an ordinary trip for the American diplomat. It was a ‘surprise’ because no amount of coordination between the US embassy, then consisting of 16,000 staff, and the Iraqi government, could guarantee Kerry’s safety.

Yet something sinister was brewing in Iraq. Mostly Muslim Sunni tribesmen were fed up with the political paradigm imposed by the Americans almost immediately upon their arrival, which divided the country based on sectarian lines. The Sunni areas, in the center and west of the country, paid a terrible price for the US invasion that empowered political elites purported to speak on behalf of the Shia. The latter, who were mostly predisposed by Iranian interests, began to slowly diversify their allegiance. Initially, they played the game per US rules, and served as an iron fist against those who dared resist the occupation. But as years passed, the likes of current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, found in Iran a more stable ally: where sect, politics and economic interests seamlessly align. Thus, Iraq was ruled over by a strange, albeit undeclared troika in which the US and Iran had great political leverage where the Shia-dominated government cleverly attempted to find balance, and survive.

Of course, a country with the size and history of Iraq doesn’t easily descend into sectarian madness on its own. But Shia and Sunni politicians and intellectuals who refused to adhere to the prevailing intolerant political archetype were long sidelined – killed, imprisoned, deported and simply had no space in today’s Iraq- as national identity was banished by sect, tribe, religion and race.

Currently, the staff of the US embassy stands at 5,100, and American companies are abandoning their investments in the south of Iraq where the vast majority of the country’s oil exists. It is in the south that al-Maliki has the upper hand. He, of course, doesn’t speak on behalf of all Shia, and is extremely intolerant of dissidents. In 2008, he fought a brutal war to seize control of Basra from Shia militias who challenged his rule. Later, he struck the Mehdi Army of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr in a Baghdad suburb. He won in both instances, but at a terrible toll. His Shia rivals would be glad to see him go.

Maliki’s most brutal battles however have been reserved for dissenting Sunnis. His government, as has become the habit of most Arab dictators, is claiming to have been fighting terrorism since day one, and is yet to abandon the slogans it propagates. While militant Sunni groups, some affiliated with al-Qaeda, have indeed taken advantage of the ensuing chaos to promote their own ideology, and solicit greater support for their cause, Iraq’s Sunnis have suffered humiliation of many folds throughout the years long before al-Qaeda was introduced to Iraq – courtesy of the US invasion.

Iraq’s Sunni tribes, despite every attempt at negotiating a dignified formulation to help millions of people escape the inferno of war, were dismissed and humiliated. The likes of former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was notorious for his targeting of Sunni tribes and mercilessness with any community that in any way supported or tolerated the resistance. Due to strong support by Shia militias, which served as the core of today’s Iraqi army, and Kurdish militias in the north, the resistance was isolated and brutalized.

That history is not only relevant, but it is not history to begin with. It is the agonizing reality. When the last US military column snaked out of Iraq into Kuwait in Dec. 2011, the US was leaving Iraq with the worst possible scenario: a sectarian central government that was beyond corrupt, plus many ruthless parties vying for power or revenge and sectarian polarization at its most extreme manifestation.

Nonetheless, Iraq is still very important to the Americans. It is perhaps a failed military experiment, but it is still rich of oil and natural gas. Moreover, Iraq is getting richer, the draft of the Iraqi budget for 2014 “anticipates average exports of 3.4m barrels/day (b/d), up 1m b/d from the previous year,” according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Radical shifts are certainly on the horizon,” reported Forbes on the future of the oil market. Something is driving speculation and that “something is Iraq.” (Jan 31) Iraq’s prospected oil production potential “dwarfs everything else”, reported Canada’s Globe & Mail, citing Henry Groppe, a respected oil and gas analyst. “It’s the thing that everybody ought to be watching and following as closely as possible,” he said.

Drawing its conclusions for the 2012 Iraq Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency reported that Iraq could be “reaching output in excess of 9 mb/d by 2020”, which “would equal the highest sustained growth in the history of the global oil industry.”

And many are indeed watching. Kerry and the US administration are hardly fond of Maliki, for the latter is too close to Tehran to be trusted. But he is Iraq’s strongest man commanding about 930,000 security personnel “spread across the army, police force and intelligence services,” according to the BBC, and that for the Americans must count for something.

However, Iraq’s riches cannot be easily obtained. Sure, the country’s strong parties are comforted by the fact that the army crackdown on Sunni tribes, al-Qaeda affiliated militias and other groups in al-Anbar and elsewhere is happening outside the country’s main oil field. But they shouldn’t discount just how quickly civil wars spiral out of control. The death toll in 2013 was alarmingly high, over 8,000, mostly civilians, according to the UN. It is the highest since 2008.

Iraq’s ‘bad years’ seem to be making a comeback. This time the US has little leverage over Iraq to control the events from afar. “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis,” Kerry said in recent comments during a visit to Jerusalem. Indeed, with little military and diplomatic presence, the US can do very little. In fact, they have done enough.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

06 February, 2014