Cathy Sultan's Blog, page 4

Lebanon in Crisis

This is a critical time for Lebanon, but so was its fifteen year long civil war which began in 1975, six years after I had moved there. I had arrived in June 1969 with my Lebanese husband and two small children. My husband had been eager to begin his medical practice and I equally keen to become Lebanese and learn a new culture and its languages. I led the most perfect of lives. My husband had a successful medical practice and my children were growing up speaking English, French and Arabic. My life came crashing down on April 13, 1975 when my tranquil tree-lined street became a deadly territorial divide—the infamous Green Line that separated Muslim West from Christian East Beirut, a place that determined who lived and who died.

Overnight young men brandishing M-16’s took up positions behind make-shift barricades and started firing at one-time friends who had suddenly become rival militiamen. In order to run my errands, I had to dodge behind overturned shipping containers in order to avoid the lurking rooftop sniper and in spite of night-long battles in my street I had to have my children dressed and fed in time to catch the school bus at 6:45 A.M. And when the schools were closed because of war—sometimes for months at a time—I hired a tutor to keep my children’s minds usefully occupied.

When the war began I chose for practical reasons to stay and fight. When I say ‘fight’ I mean fight in the way a housewife does. As the keeper of the hearth you are the heartbeat of your family. You are the mother who comforts her children after abomb blast shatters part of their bedroom wall. You are the wife who consoles her husband after he has spent his mornings treating wounded civilians and sending mangled bodies to the morgue. Collectively, you are the pulse of a country on the verge of collapse.

The country’s leaders did not have your housewifely energy and focus. They could not keep the streets clean, deliver the mail or collect the garbage. They were charged with keeping their Lebanese family together in peace but when they saw the hostility increasing, they failed to dissuade the various political factions from turning into vicious militiamen. Either through personal greed, political inflexibility or sheer ineptitude, they failed to save a nation they were trusted to preserve.

As I look back on those turbulent days, I think how innocent we were to have put our faith in those leaders, hoping they would do whatever was necessary to save Lebanon. My husband and I did our part. After spending long days at the hospital, he stood guard every night behind a barricade, sawed-off shotgun in hand, to prevent infiltrators from coming into our neighborhood, while I became the English-language news anchor for The Voice of Lebanon.

More than thirty-five years later, these same leaders, or their sons and daughters, are still in power with a level of nepotism and cronyism that exceeds epidemic proportions. The immediate spark for the current protests was a government plan to impose a levy of $.20 on the first call a user makes every day on WhatsApp, the otherwise free-text-messaging and voice-calling app that had become an essential communication tool in a country where phone service was fraught with problems. But the new fee was really just the tipping point to months of public frustration over the government’s inability to navigate the country out of a looming debt crisis.

Lebanon has never been a very rich nation—save for the Sunni merchants and Christian bankers—the very same people who have helped make Lebanon second to Bangladesh as the largest debtor nation in the world with arrears in the neighborhood of $38 billion. But this time the unrest has been triggered by seemingly small pocketbook items and people fed up with an unjust system. The Lebanese pound has fallen. The price of food has sky-rocketed. The middle class is disappearing. People are hungry and are unable to make a high enough salary to feed their families. To show their frustration they have gone to the streets in massive numbers and for the first time, across sectarian lines, people are demanding the same things, marching in unison as friends, neighbors, fellow workers, and not on opposite poles in an otherwise divided country which has, for far too long, existed, and even fostered sectarian divisions which were imposed by a French Protectorate at the end of World War One when they and the Brits, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, decided to divide the Middle East according to their own selfish interests in this oil-rich region of the world.

In Beirut I found my place to grow. My commitment to stay there through the war was a consequence of a deep love affair. I had married into a family which was for the most part loving and accepting, and it was exciting to wake up every day as a foreigner embraced by a Lebanese family. This is the kind of love which develops a loyal Beirut heart, one which never dissolves. May God protect Lebanon and all its people that together they may rebuilt their beautiful country on the pillars of fairness, truthfulness and love for one another.

The author is the author of five books on the Middle East. A Beirut Heart is a memoir of her life in Lebanon. Her books can be found here:Amazon[image error]

AN UPDATE ON THE MIDDLE EAST

 

THE EXPERIENCE OF LIVING IN LEBANN DURINGS ITS CIVIL WAR HAS NOT ONLY DEFINED MY LIFE, IT HAS MOTIVATED ME TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE CAUSES AND DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF CONFLICT ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST. LET’S TAKE A LOOK AT CURRENT EVENTS.

 

NOTHING HAS CHANGED FOR THE PALESTINIANS UNDER ISRAEL’S APARTHEID STATE. DESPITE AN ELECTION ON SEPTEMBER 17TH, A NEW ISRAELI GOVERNMENT HAS YET TO BE FORMED. IN THE RUN UP TO HIS LAST RE-ELECTION BID, AND ASSUMING IT WOULD CLINCH HIS ELECTION, NETANYAHU DID EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO CREATE HAVOC, FROM SENDING A CHEMICALLY LADEN DRONE INTO LEBANON THAT EXPLODED IN THE DENSLY POPULATD NEIGHBORHOOD OF DAHIYAH, THE STRONGHOLD OF HEZBOLLAH, TO ORDERING HIS AIRFORCE ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS TO TARGET SO-CALLED CONVOYS JUST OUTSIDE DAMASCUS WHICH HE CLAIMED WERE DELIVERING ARMS TO HEZBOLLAH.

AS OF THIS DATE, NETANYAHU HAS BEEN UNABLE TO FORM A GOVERNMENT AND HAS ASKED HIS RIVAL, BENNY GANTZ TO TRY. IF ISRAEL’S PRESIDENT, AS WOULD BE HIS RIGHT, WERE TO ASK A THIRD PARTY TO TRY TO FORM A GOVERNMENT, NETANYAHU WOULD NO LONGER BE AFFORDED PROTECTION AS  AN ELECTED OFFICIAL AND COULD FINALLY BE TRIED ON MULTIPLE COUNTS OF BRIBERY.

THOSE PALESTINIANS WHO LIVE IN EAST JERUSALAM AND THE WEST BANK STILL LIVE UNDER A HARSH, MILITARY OCCUPATION THANKS TO AN ISRAELI-OCCUPIED US CONGRESS AND OVAL OFFICE, BOTH OF WHICH ALLOW ISRAEL’S ACTIONS TO GO UNPUNISHED. IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN HOW THE TRUMP/KUSHNER PEACE PLAN WILL AFFECT THE 2 MILLION GAZANS LVING IN AN OPEN-AIR PRISON. PROPOSALS INCLUDE PUSHING THE GAZANS INTO THE SINAI AND TRANSFERING THOSE PALESTINIANS IN THE WEST BANK INTO GAZA WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE UN, IS MONTHS AWAY FROM BECOMING UNINHABITABLE.

AS TO THE RECENT ELECTION RESULTS IN ISRAEL, IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE TO ASSUME THAT THE POLITICAL DEADLOCK, BETWEEN WITH NETANYAHU AND HIS RIVAL BENNY GANZ, WAS EVIDENCE OF A DEEP IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE.

 IN POLITICAL TERMS, NOTHING DIVIDES THE ISRAELIS. IN THE SEPTEMBER ELECTION, 90% OF ISRAELI JEWS VOTED FOR PARTIES THAT IDENTIFIED AS BEING EITHER ON THE MILITARISTIC, ANTI-ARAB RIGHT OR ON THE RELIGIOUS, ANTI-ARAB FAR-RIGHT. ALL PARTIES SUPPORT THE ENTRENCHMENT OF THE OCCUPATION AND ANNEXATION OF PARTS OF THE WEST BANK; ALL THREE THINK THE SETTLEMENTS ARE JUSTIFIED AND NECESSARY; ALL DEMAND THAT THE SIEGE OF GAZA CONTINUE; AND ALL WANT NEIGHBORING ARAB STATES COWERING IN FEAR. IF NETANYAHU MANAGES TO CLING TO POWER, HIS FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS WILL BE TO DISMISS THE ATTORNEY GENERALWHO WANTS TO TRY HIM ON THREE COUNTS OF BRIBERY. WASHINGTON, IT SEEMS, IS NOT THE ONLY SWAMP.

  LET’S TAKE A BRIEF LOOK AT LYBIA:

IN 1969 GADDAFI INHERITED ONE OF THE POOREST NATIONS IN AFRICA. BEFORE HE WAS BRUTALLY MURDERED, HE HAD TURNED LIBYA INTO AFRICA’S WEALTHIEST COUNTRY. IT HAD THE HIGHEST GDP PER CAPITA. LIBYANS ATTENDED COLLEGE FOR FREE. THEY HAD ACCESS TO FREE MEDICAL CARE. THE WESTERN BACKED NATO ATTACK OF 2011 TURNED LIBYA INTO A FAILED STATE. PRESIDENT OBAMA ADMITTED THAT THE ATTACK ON LIBYA WAS HIS WORST MISTAKE AS PRESIDENT, AND FOR GOOD REASON. THE WEST’S OBJECTIVE WAS TO OUST GADDAFI, INSTALL A PUPPET REGIME AND GAIN CONTROL OF LIBYA’S NATURAL RESOURCES. FOR THE US, IT WAS THE BOOMING ARMS MARKET. LIBYA IS NOW A BONANZ FOR AMERICAN ARMS DEALERS AND HOME TO THE WORLD’S LARGEST ARMS CACHE. FOR ITALY, IT WAS OIL AND GAS, AND FOR FRANCE IT WAS WATER, A COMMODITY WHICH PROMISES TO BE TO THE 21ST CENTURY WHAT OIL WAS TO THE 20TH. GOING FORWARD, WATER WILL BE THE PRECIOUS COMMODITY THAT DETERMINES THE WEALTH AND FATE OF NATIONS. ALREADY FRANCE’S GLOBAL MEGA-WATER CORPORATIONS CONTROL MORE THAN 45 % OF THE PLANET’S WATER MARKET, A $400 BILLION GLOBAL INDUSTRY.

LIBYA SITS ON THE NUBIAN SANDSTONE AQUIFER WHICH IS THE WORLD’S LARGEST UNDERGROUND SOURCE OF FRESH WATER. THIS FOSSIL WATER AQUIFER SYSTEM WAS FORMED APPROXIMATELY 20,000 YEARS AGO AND CONTAINS 150,000 CUBIC KILOMETERS OF FRESH WATER. GADDAFI MAY HAVE BEEN EXCENTRIC, BUT HE WAS A VISIONARY. HE  INVESTED $25 MILLION IN THE GREAT MAN-MADE RIVER PROJECT, A COMPLEX 4,000- KILOMETER LONG WATER PIPELINE BURIED BENIETH THE DESERT THAT COULD TRANSPORT TWO MILLION CUBIC METERS OF WATER PER DAY. SUCH A MOMUMENTAL WATER DISTRIBUTION SCHEME WAS ON COURSE TO TURN LIBYA, A NATION THAT WAS 95% DESERT, INTO A SELF-SUSTAINABLE, ARABLE OASIS. NATO PURPOSELY BOMBED KEY STATE OWNED WATER INSTALLATIONS, INCLUDING A WATER PIPE FACTORY IN BREGA, AND AS A RESULT, SOME FOUR MILLION LIBYANS DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER.

LET’S TURN TO SYRIA NOW: OVER THE LAST 70 YEARS, THE CIA HAS ATTEMPTED, AND OFTEN SUCCEEDED, IN OVERTHROWING GOVERNMENTS IN SYRIA. AT FIRST IT WAS AN EXPERIMENT IN ORIENTALISM, TRYING TO IMPOSE A DEMOCRATIZING INFLUENCE IN A NEW ARAB COUNTRY. WHEN THAT DIDN’T SUCCEED, IT WAS SYRIA’S REFUSAL TO ALLOW A SAUDI PIPELINE THROUGH ITS COUNTRY. THEN CAME THE FEAR THAT SYRIA WOULD BECOME A SOVIET SATELLITE STATE UNTIL FINALLY IT WAS SHIITE IRAN, ENEMY OF THE MAJORITY SUNNI STATES, EXERTING TOO MUCH INFLUENCE OVER SYRIA, AND BY EXTENSION, HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON.

US TROOPS ARE STILL ON THE GROUND IN THE OIL RICH NORTHEASTERN REGION OF SYRIA. THIS WAR OF CHOICE, WHICH BEGAN IN MARCH OF 2011, HAS COST OVER HALF A MILLION LIVES AND LEFT TENS OF THOUSANDS DISPLACED, WITH BASHAR ASSAD MORE SECURE IN POWER THAN EVER BEFORE. I SAY WAR OF CHOICE BECAUSE IT WAS, IN LARGE PART, NETANYAHU’S OBSESSION WITH IRAN, THAT TRIGGERED THIS LATEST REGIME CHANGE SCHEME. THE THINKING WENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS: TAKE OUT SYRIA, THE LINCHPEN BETWEEN IRAN AND HEZBLLAH, AND YOU WEAKEN THE CHAIN.  THE RESULT: CLOSE TO HALF A MILLION DEATHS AND THE DESTRUCTION OF LARGE SWATHS OF SYRIA ALL BECAUSE NETANYAHU CLAIMED IRAN WAS A THREAT TO ISRAEL, EVEN THOUGH HIS TOP INTELLIGENCE AND MILITARY PROFESSIONALS INSISTED THE CONTRARY.

            IT WAS THE RUSSIANS, LONG-TIME ALLIES OF THE ASSAD FAMILY, WHO RECENTLY BROKERED A DEAL BETWEEN THE TURKS AND THE SYRIAN KURDS GRAHICALLY SPELLING OUT THE SLOW BUT SURE RESTORATION OF SYRIA’S TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY. MEANTIME, THE IDEA THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP THOUGHT HE COULD SEND IN HIS TANKS TO “PROTECT” SYRIAN OIL FIELDS IS PREPOSTEROUS. THIS WOULD BE ILLEGAL, BY AN POSSIBLE INTERPRETATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, AS IS THE PRESSENCE OF US TROOPS IN SYRIA WHO WERE NEVER INVITED IN BY THE GOVERNMENT IN DAMASCUS. WHILE THE OIL FIELDS IN EASTERN SYRIA WILL NOT BE PRODUCING MORE THAN 60,000 BARRELS A DAY, ONCE UP AND OPERATIONAL, THAT LEVEL OF PRODUCTION IS ESSENTIAL FOR DAMASCUS AND THE SYRIAN PEOPLE, THE LEGITIMATE OWNERS OF THE OIL.

AFTER 18 YEARS OF WAR IN AFGHANISTAN, THE TALIBAN CONTROLS MORE OF THE COUNTRY THAN IT DID WHEN THE US INVADED IN 2001. A PROMINENT AFGHAN DIPLOMAT NOW SERVING AS HER COUNTRY’S AMBASSADOR TO NORWAY HAD THIS TO SAY ABOUT THE TALIBAN: “THEY ARE SO OVER THIS WAR. THEY JUST WANT TO GO HOME, BUT YOU AMERICANS WON’T LET THEM.” ACCORDING TO HER, THE TALIBAN ARE NOT AN INVADING ARMY. THEY ARE AFGHAN CITIZENS, DISTINGUISHED FROM THEIR COUNTRYMEN CHIEFLY BY THEIR EXTREME RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM AND PUNITIVE APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT. THINK OF THEM,” SHE SAID, “AS THE AFGHAN EQUIVALENT OF YOUR OWN EVANGELICAL RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS.” THE TALIBAN, SJE CONTINUED, ARE IN ALMOST EVERY TOWN. AND THE MORE YOU RILE THEM UP, THE MEANER THEY GET AND THE MORE FOLLOWERS THEY GAIN. BUT IN TIMES OF PEACE, SOMETHING AFGHANISTAN HAS NOT KNOWN FOR 40 YEARS, MANY TALIBAN WOULD RETURN TO BEING FARMERS, SHOPKEEPERS, VILLAGERS LIKE THEIR FATHERS BEFORE THEM.

 THERE ARE TWO REASONS THIS IS UNLIKELY TO HAPPEN.

US ARMS DEALERS WOULD BE IN AN UPROAR IF TRUMP PULLED OUR TROOPS OUT. ENDLESS WARS ARE A BONANZA FOR GUARANTEED ARMS SALES. THE OTHER PROBLEM:  PRESIDENTS HAVE CONSISTENTLY PUT GENERALS IN THE OVAL OFFICE, AND GENERALS DO WHAT GENERALS DO, THEY MAKE MORE WARS. HOPEFULLY FOR THE AFGHANS, PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL KEEP HIS PROMISE AND BRING OUR TROOPS HOME FROM BY 2020.

BETWEEN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ, THE US HAS SPENT OVER $2.7 TRILLION OF OUR TAX DOLLARS.

IRAQI, ONCE A HIGHLY DEVELOPED COUNTRY WITH A WELL-EDUCATED, SKILLED POPULATION IS NOW A FRATURED COUNTRY. PATRICK COCKBURN, THE IRISH JOURNALIST WHO HAS BEEN THE MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT FOR BOTH THE INDEPENDENT AND THE FINANCIAL TIMES SINCE 1979, REPORTED ON SEPTEMBER 30TH THAT ISRAELI DRONES WERE LAUNCHED FROM A US BASE IN KURDISH-CONTROLLED NOTHEAST SYRIA INTO IRAQ. THIS HAS LED THE IRAQ GOVERNMENT TO PASS A BILL DEMANDING THE WITHDRAWAL OF US FORCES FROM ITS COUNTRY.

PRESIDENT TRUMP RECENTLY ANNOUNCED HE WOULD SEND THOSE TROOPS LEAVING SYRIA INTO IRAQ. THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT HAS MADE IT CLEAR THEY DO NOT WELCOME THE US TROOPS AND HAS AGAIN ASKED THE US MILITARY TO LEAVE. WHETHER OR NOT THIS REQUEST WILL BE RESPECTED B Y THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION REMAINS TO BE SEEN.

 

THE BUSH REGIME THOUGHT IT COULD GET RID OF SADDAM WITHOUT BENEFITING IRAN. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. BECAUSE OF A DEEP SEATED ANOMOSITY BETWEEN SUNNIS AND SHIITES, THE DOWNFALL OF SADDAM GAVE RISE TO A SHIA MAJORITY IN IRAQ AND A STRONGER IRAN. GIVEN THAT IRAQ AND IRAN ARE AMONG THE FEW SHIA-LED STATES IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN NO SURPRISE THAT THE SHIA IN IRAQ WOULD FIND COMMON CAUSE WITH THE SHIA OF IRAN.

POST SADDAM IRAQ SAW THE FIRST SHIA  ARAB GOVERNMENT TAKE POWER IN THE REGION SINCE SALADIN OVERTHREW THE FATIMIDS IN 12TH CENTURY EGYPT.

US ADMINISTRATIONS HAVE REPEATEDLY MADE THE MISTAKE OF DENOUNCING HEZBOLLAH, THE HOUTHIS IN YEMEN AND THE SHIA MOVEMENT IN IRAQ, AS IRANIAN PROXIES. THIS IS A MISTAKE BECAUSE THESE POWERFUL MILITARY MOVEMENTS ARE ROOTED, ABOVE ALL ELSE, IN THEIR LOCAL SHIA COMMUNITIES. IRAN MAY HAVE FOSTERED THESE GROUPS, BUT IT DOESN’T COMMAND OR CONTROL THEM.

FROM AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, IRAQ AND IRAN HAVE A TUMULTIOUS HISTORY. THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR OF 1980-88, WHICH COST ONE MILLION LIVES, WAS BUT ANOTHER PHASE IN AN ANCIENT PERSIAN-ARAB CONFLICT FUELED BY 20TH CENTURY BORDER DISPUTES. THE FALL OF THE SHAH IN 1979 AND THE RISE OF IRAN’S NEW REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP THREATENED SADDAM’S DELICATE SUNNI-SHIITE BALANCE. SUPPORTED AND ARMED BY THE US, IRAQ LAUNCHED THE 1980 WAR TO CONSOLIDATE ITS POWER IN THE ARAB WORLD AND CLAIM ITS PLACE AS A DOMINANT PERSIAN GULF STATE. ACCORDING TO SOME IRAN OBSERVERS, THE WAR TAUGHT IRAN THAT WHO GOVERNS BAGHDAD MATTERS, SLATING IRAN TO INTERVENE IN IRAQ FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE. THIS IS SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE SHIITES ARE THE MAJORITY IN IRAQ AT 67%. AND EXPLAINS, IN PART WHY, AFTER THE FALL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN, IRAN BECAME THE POWERHOUSE IT IS TODAY, AND WHY IT IS IN CONFLICT WITH SAUDI ARABIA, A MAJOR SUNNI POWERHOUSE THAT FEELS THREATENED BY IRAN WHOSE POPULATION IS 90% SHIITE. SHIITES BROKE AWAY FROM MAINSTREAM ISLAM IN 661 OVER WHO SHOULD SUCCEED THE PROHPHET MUHAMMAD. IN THE EYES OF THE SUNNI MAJORITY, SHIITES ARE INFIDELS. WORLD-WIDE, THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 1.4 BILLION MUSLIMS. SUNNIS MAKE UP SOME 87%, AND THE REST ARE SHIITES. ONLY 20% OF MUSLIMS LIVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA BUT BETWEEN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE GULF THE EQUATION IS 50-50, WHICH GREATLY CONTRIBUTES TO HEIGHTENED TENSIONS, PARTICULARLY TO SUNNIS WHO HAVE, SINCE THE TIME OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, BEEN THE MAJOR POWER. SYRIA IS RULED BY ALAWITES, A SECULAR SECT OF ISLAM AND AN OFFSHOOT OF SHISM THAT ASCRIBES TO ARAB NATIONALISM, A DESIRE FOR ARAB UNITY IN THE FACE OF ANTICOLOLONIAL ETHOS AND WESTERN DOMINANCE EXPERIENCED BY ARAB COUNTRIES IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES, AND IT IS ONE OF THE REASONS SYRIA HAS BEEN A CONSTANT THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE US AND ITS QUEST FOR HEGEMONY.

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, HIS GOAL WAS TO BRING IRAN TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE AND ACHIEVE A SUCCESSFUL ARMS-CONTROL AGREEMENT, THUS PREVENTING IRAN FROM OBTAINING NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

TRUMP’S ABROGATION OF THE IRAN DEAL HAS REVIVED THE POKER GAME. HIS GOAL IN BREAKING THE NUCLEAR AGREEMENT SIGNED BY THE US, THE UK, RUSSIA, CHINA, FRANCE AND GERMANY WAS TO BATTER IRAN’S ENONOMY WITH SANCTIONS TO THE POINT THAT IRAN’S LEADERS WOULD RENEGOTIATE THE NUCLEAR DEAL ON TERMS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DEEMED MORE FAVORABLE TO THE US.

THE LARGER GOAL, WHICH ISRAEL AND THE SUNNI GULF STATES SHARED, WAS THE REALIGNMENT OF THE MIDDLE EAST WITH ISRAEL AND SELECT SUNNI NATIONS REINING SUPREME OVER IRAN. THIS WAS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT VISION THAN THE ONE ADVANCED BY OBAMA, WHO WAS COMMITTED TO PREVENTING IRAN FROM GETTING A NUCLEAR WEAPON, BUT WHO ACCEPTED THE NOTION THAT IRAN COULD BECOME A COUNTERWEIGHT TO SAUDI ARABIA’S INFLUENCE IN THE REGION. OBAMA’S IDEA WAS FOR SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN TO “SHARE THE NEIGHBORHOOD.”

TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE NUCLEAR DEAL HAS REVIVED FEARS NOT JUST THAT THE US COULD START MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAN OR QUIETLY BLESS AN ISRAELI STRIKE, BUT THAT ALL PARTIES COULD UNLEASH WIDESPREAD CHAOS.

THE STORY OF HOW THIS SIMMERING CRISIS WITH IRAN BEGAN IS IN MANY WAYS ABOUT THE COMPLEXITIES OF AMERICA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL. IT IS A STORY OF A WAR NARROWLY AVERTED UNTIL NOW, AN IRANIAN ARMS AGREEMENT NEGOTIATEE BEHIND ISRAEL’S BACK, AND A BATTLE OVER WHO ULTIMATELY SHAPES AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. OBAMA FELT REQUIRED TO NEGOTIATE A NUCLEAR DEAL WITH IRAN AFTER ISRAEL CAME DANGERIOUSLUY CLOSE TO LAUNCHING AN ATTACK ON IRAN IN 2012. SUCH AN ATTACK, WHICH CAME FAR CLOSER TO HAPPENING THAN WAS MADE PUBLIC, WOULD HAVE BEEN A SIGNIFICANT BREACH OF ISRAEL’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE US, OR MORE PRECISELY, WITH THE OBAMA ADMNISTRATION. PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS CONVINCED AN ISRAELI STRIKE WOULD PUSH BACK IRAN’S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS BY A YEAR OR TWO AT MOST, WHEREAS HIS NUCLEAR DEAL DELAYED ANY SUCH PROBLEM BY 10 OR MORE YEARS.

THE FACT THAT TRUMP RECENTLY SUGGESTED HE MIGHT MEET WITH IRAN’S PRESIDENT HAS SENT SHOCK WAVES THROUGH ISRAEL WHICH WORRIES THAT TRUMP, LIKE OBAMA, MIGHT TRY TO AVOID WAR WITH IRAN AND ATTEMPT TO REACH AN AGREEMENT. OBAMA FELT THAT HIS HARD-NOSED DIPLOMACY AND LEADERSHIP HAD UNITED THE WORLD’S MAJOR POWERS AND OFFERED A MORE EFFECTIVE WAY TO VERIFY THAT IRAN WAS NOT PURSUING A NUCLEAR WEAPON. ISRAEL DIDN’T SEE IT THAT WAY. IT ADHERES TO THE BEGIN DOCTRINE, ADOPTED IN 1981 BY THEN PRIME MINISTER BEGIN, WHICH DECLARES THAT THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, WHETHER BY PREVENTIVE STRIKE OR COUNTER-PROLIFERATION, SHALL HAMPER ITS ENEMIES’ CAPACITY TO POSSESS WEAPONS OF MASS DESCRUCTION. PUT MORE SUCCINCTLY, NO ONE IN THE REGION, EXCEPT ISRAEL, SHALL EVER BE ALLOWED TO POSSESS NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO, AN IRAN HAWK, HAS BECOME THIS ADMINISTRATION’S MOST INFLUENTIAL VOICE ON IRAN AND ISRAEL’S NEW BEST FRIEND. TRUMP’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE IRAN DEAL HAS BROUGHT THE NUCLEAR STANDOFF FULL CIRCLE. SEVERE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS, ANNOUNCED IN APRIL, WITH THE AIM OF DRIVING DOWN IRANIAN OIL EXPORTS, HAS TRIGGERED MONTHS OF TIT-FOR-TAT MEASURES. IN LATE JUNE, TRUMP ORDERED A STAND DOWN HOURS BEFORE US FORCES WERE POISED TO STRIKE IRAN. HIS MORE HAWKISH ALLIES, ISRAEL, UAE AND SAUDI ARABI, WERE VERY DISAPPOINTED.

AND NOW TO YEMEN, WHERE RECENT EVENTS THERE TIE IN WITH BOTH IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA, BUT TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF THIS, THE POOREST OF MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES, I’LL BEGIN WITH ITS HISTORY.

NORTH YEMEN BECAME A REPUBLIC IN 1962, BUT IT WAS NOT UNTIL 1967 THAT THE BRITISH WITHDREW FROM WHAT THEN BECAME SOUTH YEMEN. IN 1970, THE SOUTHERN GOVERNMENT BECAME A COMMUNIST COUNTRY, THE FIRST EVER IN THE MIDDLE EAST. FINALLY, IN MAY 1990, THE TWO COUNTRIES WERE FORMALLY UNITED AS THE REPUBLIC OF YEMEN, ELECTING AS ITS FIRST PRESIDENT ALI ABDALLAH SALAH.

IN 2004, RUMBLES OF UNREST BEGAN OVER PRESIDENT SALAH’S CORRUPTION, HIS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, THE RAMPANT POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT. IT WASN’T UNTIL 2011 THAT THINGS REACHED A BOILING POINT WHEN SALAH’S SECURITY FORCES UNLEASHED A BRUTAL ASSAULT ON THE HOUTHI-LED PRO-DEMOCRACY CAMP, KILLING 50 PEOPLE IN SANA, YEMEN’S CAPITAL. UN SANCTIONS FORCED PRESIDENT SALAH TO FLEE TO SAUDI ARABIA, WHERE HE DESIGNATED HIS VICE PRESIDENT HADI TO ASSUME POWER. IN A STRANGE TURN OF EVENTS, WHEN THE HOUTHIS SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING SANAA, SAHAH TURNED FACE, OPENLY ALLIED WITH THE HOUTHIS AND FORCED HADI TO FLEE THE COUNTRY. SALAH AND THE HOUTHIS FORMED A “POLITICAL COUNCIL” TO GOVERN SANAA AND MUCH OF NORTHERN YEMEN BUT SHORTLY THEREAFTER, SAHAH BROKE WITH THE HOUTHIS AGAIN, ALIGNED HIMSELF WITH THE SAUDIS AND PRESIDENT HADI, AND CALLED ON HIS FOLLOWERS TO TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST THE HOUTHS AT WHICH POINT THE HOUTHIS HAD HIM KILLED. THE CONFLICT ESCALATED DRAMATICALLY WHEN THE SAUDI COALITION BACKED BY THE US, THE UK AND FRANCE BEGAN AIR STRIKES AGAINST THE HOUTHIS, WITH THE AIM OF RESTORING PRESIDENT HADI’S GOVERNMENT.

SINCE THE SAUDI-LED COALITION BEGAN ITS ASSAULT ON YEMEN IN MARCH 2015, 80% OF YEMEN’S POPULATION, ROUGHLY 24 MILLION PEOPLE, ARE IN NEED OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE. 10 MILLION ARE A STEP AWAY FROM FAMINE. THE CHARITY SAVE THE CHILDREN ESTIMATS THAT 85,000 CHILDREN DIED BETWEEN APRIL 2015 AND OCTOBER 2018 FROM SEVERE MALNUTRITION.

EVENTS DRAMATICALLY CHANGED IN YEMEN WHEN THE HOUTHIS RECENTLY LAUNCHED DRONES AND MISSILES, ATTACKING AND DESTROYING SAUDI OIL AND REFINING INSTILLATIONS, CAUSING THE LOSS OF 5.7 MILLION BARRELS A DAY, ABOUT 50% OF SAUDI’S OIL OR 5% OF THE WORLD’S DAILY PRODUCTION, THE BIGGEST OIL DISRUPTION IN HISTORY, AND CAUSING THE BIGGEST HIKE IN THE PRICE OF OIL IN A DECADE.

 THE SAUDI’S WAR IN YEMEN HAS COST THE SAUDI GOVERNMENT SEVERAL BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. THIS AT A TIME WHEN THEIR BUDGET DEFICIT HAS INCREASED AND IS EXPECTED TO REACH 7% OF ITS GDP. THE SAUDIS RECENTLY ANNOUNCED PLANS TO SELL A SHARE OF ARAMCO, ITS STATE OIL CONGLOMERATE, AS A WAY TO RAISE MUCH NEED CASH. PRINCE SALMAN OR MBS AS HE IS KNOWN IN THE REGION, HAD HOPED TO RAISE SOME $2.7 TRILLION DOLLARS. IT’S DOUBTFUL NOW THAT ANYONE WILL BUY SHARES OF THE COMPANY WHEN ITS MAJOR INSTALLATIONS ARE NOT SECURE. THE ASSUMPTION NOW IS THAT THE SAUDI PRINCE WILL HAVE TO MAKE PEACE WITH YEMEN BEFORE HE CAN SELL ARAMCO SHARES FOR A DECENT PRICE. HE WILL ALSO HAVE TO DISH OUT BILLIONS IN REPARATION PAYMENTS TO YEMEN AND ITS PEOPLE BEFORE THE HOUTHIS WILL BE WILLING TO MAKE PEACE.

WHILE MIKE POMPEO HAS BEEN QUICK TO PLACE BLAME ON IRAN, HE HAS BEEN UNABLE TO DEFINITIVELY PINPOINT WHERE THE ATTACKS ORIGINATED. INITIALLY, THERE WAS SPECULATION THAT THE ATTACKS ON SAUDI OIL PROCESSING CENTER AND OIL FIELDS WERE LAUNCHED FROM IRAQ.

IF THE DRONES HAD ORIGINATED FROM IRAQ, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A HUGE EMBARRASSMENT TO THE US MILITARY ARMS INDUSTRY BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE MEANT THAT THE PATRIOT SYSTEM DIDN’T ACTIVATED, WHICH WOULD HAVE MEANT A COMPLETE FAILURE OF THE SYSTEM.

OR, THE HOUTHIS INSIST THEY LAUNCHED 10 SUICIDE DRONES AND MULTIPLE MISSILES WITH HELP FROM INTELLIGENCE SOURCES INSIDE SAUDI ARABIA. ACCORDING TO LOCAL SOURCES, THIS IS A DISTINCT POSSIBILITY. ARAB SHIITES IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE WORKING IN SAUDI OIL INSTALLATIONS ARE NATURAL ALLIES OF THE HOUTHIS FIGHTING SAUDI ARABIA. HOUTHI STRIKING CAPABILITY FROM DRONE SWARMS TO BALLISTIC MISSILE ATTACKS HAVE BEEN IMPROVING STEADILY OVER THE PAST YEAR. EVEN BEFORE THE RECENT ATTACKS, THE HOUTHIS HAD ALREADY ENGINEERED SEVERAL ATTACKS AGAINST SAUDI OIL INSTALLITIONS AS WELL AS UNITED ARAB EMIRATE AIRPORTS. IN JULY, THE HOUTHI STAGED AN EXHIBIT IN SANAA, FEATURING THEIR RANGE OF BALLISTIC AND WINGED MISSILES AND DRONES.

AS A RESULT OF ATTACKS ON THEIR AIRPORTS, THE UNITED ARAB EMIRITES HAVE WITHDRAWN THEIR FORCES FROM THE SAUDI-LED COALITION, A STEP THE HOUTHIS HAVE REWARDED BY HALTING ITS ATTACKS.

THE HOPE IS THAT THIS COULD EXPAND TO INCLUDE ALL PARTIES INCLUDING SAUDI ARABIA. WHILE SUCH A RESULT WOULD BE SEEN AS A WIN FOR THE HOUTHIS AND IRAN, IT WOULD ALSO FREE SAUDI ARABIA FROM A WAR COSTING IT TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. 

THE IRONY HERE IS THAT SAUDI ARABIA HAS SPENT BILLIONS ON AMERICAN MADE MILITARY HARDWARE WHICH FAILED TO PROTECT ITS OIL INSTALLATIONS FROM A RAGTAG HOUTHI REBEL GROUP. APPARENTLY, THE HOUTHIS NEW DRONES AND MISSILES ARE BASICALLY COPIES OF IRANIAN DESIGNS ASSEMBLED IN YEMEN WITH HELP FROM HEZBOLLAH ENGINEERS AT A COST OF $15,000 PER DRONE.

ANOTHER IRONY. SAUDI AIR DEFENSES WERE EQUIPPED TO DEFEND THE COUNTRY FROM IRAN, NOT YEMEN. TO PUT IT MIDLY, US INTELLIGENCE HAS PROVIDED SAUDI ARABIA WITH VERY POOR SERVICE. EXACTLY WHY THE US AND SAUDIS WERE SO BLIND-SIDED IS A CRITICAL QUESTION.

A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION CANNOT BE JUST A CEASE-FIRE OR A WITHDRAWAL OF FORCES. IT REQUIRES A POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ROAD MAP FOR THE POSTWAR PERIOD. THE DISTRIBUTION OF POWER AND AN EQUITABLE BUDGET ALLOCATION WOULD HAVE TO BE RESOLVED IN A MANNER THAT SATISFIED THE HOOTHIS.

ANOTHER ISSUE HERE IS THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE US AND ISRAEL, EACH OF WHOM HAVE ENCOURAGED THE EMIRITES AND SAUDI ARABIA TO LAUNCH A WAR AGAINST THE HOOTHIS AS PART OF THEIR STRUGGLE AGAINT IRAN. THE MOMENT ISREAL AND THE US STOP INTERVENING IN WHAT IS HAPPENING A SOLUTION WILL BE ATTANABLE.

IN THE VERY LATEST WRINKLE, THE HOUTHIS, OVER A THREE-DAY-PERIOD, RECENTLY CARRIED OUT A SPECTACULAR ATTACK INSIDE SAUDI ARABIA, CAPTURING A TOWN, MILITARY EQUIPMENT AND THREE SAUDI BATTALIANS. SAUDI ARABIA HAS YET TO CONFIRM THIS.

THE CLAIM, HEARD NOT JUST FROM SUNNIS BUT FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS THAT IRAN IS A MAIN SPONSOR OF TERRORISM NEEDS MENTION HERE, TOO. IT WAS SAUDI ARABIA THAT PRODUCED AL-QAEDA. OVER THE MANY DECADES, IT HAS BEEN THE SAUDIS WHO HAVVE CULTIVATED THE MOST DANGEROUS ELEMENTS IN ITS SOCIETY, PROVIDING THEM WITH MONEY, TRAINING AND THE MOST REACTIONARY VERSION OF ISLAM TO FORM THE BRIGADES THAT HAVE REINED TERROR NOT JUST ON THEIR OWN SOCIETY BUT ON THE WORLD. SAUDI ARABIA’S BATTALIONS OF TERRORISTS BECAME LEGENDARY AFTER 9/11, AND YET, ACCORDING TO CONGRESS AND THE .VAL OFFICE, IT IS NOT SAUDI ARABIA WHO ARE THE TERRORISTS BUT IRAN? HOW IS SUCH IGNORANCE POSSIBLE?  IRAN HAS NOT ATTACKED ANOTHER COUNTRY IN OVER 400 YEARS. AL-QAEDA, ISIS AND ITS ILK ARE SUNNIS. IRANIANS ARE SHIITES AND THE ONES BEING ATTACKED AS INFIDELS BY SAUDI ARABIA’S MONSTROUS ARMY OF INSURGENTS.

AND IT IS IRAN, NOT SAUDI ARABIA, NOW WHICH SEEKS A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION AND AND END TO THE PROXY WAR LAUNCHED BY SAUDI ARABIA, ISRAEL AND THE US. 

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THE US RETURN TO THE 2015 IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL. MODIFICATIONS OF THAT DEAL CAN, THROUGH DIPLOMACY, BE WORKED OUT, NOT BY FULL-SCALE DEMANDS OR SEVERE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS IMPOSED BY WASHINGTON. AS TO THE HOUTH, THEY HAVE SAID THEY WOULD LIKE A CEASEFIRE WITH SAUDI ARABIA AND WOULD BE WILLING TO WORK TOGETHER TOWARD PEACE. THIS WOULD BE A FAR BETTER SCENARIO THAN FULL-FLEDGED WAR THAT WOULD NOT ONLY TEAR THE MIDDLE EAST APART BUT WOULD PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO ECONOMIC CHAOS.

RECENTLY, THE NEW YORK-BASED CREDIT RATINGS AGENCY FITCH DOWNGRADED THE SAUDI KINGDOM FROM A TO A-, CITING NOT ONLY THE LATEST ATTACK BUT ALSO THE CONTRY’S FINANCIAL SITUATION. IT SAID:

“THE DOWNGRADE REFLETS RISING GEOPOLITICAL AND MILITARY TENSIONS IN THE REGION, THE VULNERABILITY OF THE SAUDI ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE, AND CONTINUED DETERIORATION IN SAUDI ARABIA’S FISCAL AND EXTERNAL BALANCE SHEETS.”

 

IN A TACIT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THEIR VULNERABLE POSITION, AND THE APPARENT UNWILLINGNESS OF PRESIDENT TRUMP TO OFFER AID, THE SAUDIS ARE INCHING CLOSER TO TALKS WITH IRAN, A STEP UNTHINKABLE JUST A SHORT WHILE AGO.

FOR MORE ABOUT CATHY SULTAN AND HER WORK PLEASE VISIT WWW.CATHYSULTAN.COM OR GOOGLE HER. HER FIVE BOOKS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.

 

GO NOT ABROAD IN SEARCH OF MONSTERS

I am a huge fan of Stephen Kinzer’s work, whether one of his many articles in The Boston Globe or any of his books, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War and All the Shah’s Men, in particular.

One of his most recent articles talked about a collaboration between two unlikely men, George Soros and Charles Koch, each of whom had committed a million dollars to the newly formed Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. In the most recent edition of The Nation, these two men were mentioned again in an article by David Klion entitled Go Not Abroad in Search of Monsters about this new Washington, D.C. think tank advocating restraint overseas.

According to Mr. Klion, “John Quincy Adams never got much respect. There are no monuments to the sixth president on the National Mall and his face adorns no paper currency. But before Adams became president, he was an accomplished diplomat, representing the US government in multiple European capitals. On July 4, 1821, while serving as Secretary of State, he gave a speech in which he declared that although the United States would always be sympathetic to national liberation struggles, ‘She goes no abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.’”

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft declares as its mission “to move foreign policy away from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in the pursuit of international peace.

Why is this such an urgent task? John Quincy’s Adams’ warning about interventionist foreign policy has repeatedly been ignored.

This is particularly evident in our intervention in Syria. As far back as 2005, John Bolton, at the time serving George W. Bush, had designated Syria as one of a handful of rogue states that, like Iraq, could expect to eventually become a US target. In 2008, through WikiLeaks documents, Bashar Assad had been made aware of a US-NATO plan to trigger social chaos to discredit his government and destabilize Syria as a nation-state but was powerless to do anything about it.

If Bashar Assad could have asked why his country had been designated a rogue state what would we have told him? That the CIA had been attempting regime change in Syria for the last seventy years? That at first it was an experiment to see if it could exert democratizing influence over a new Arab country. And when that did not succeed, it was Syria’s refusal to allow a Saudi oil pipeline through its country, then came the fear that Syria would become a Soviet satellite state until finally it was Shiite Iran, enemy of the majority Sunni states, exerting too much influence over Syria and, by extension Hezbollah in Lebanon, each intervention seemingly justifying further interventions.

President Bush dismissed the idea of engaging Syria and Iran in dialogue, claiming that such overtures would reward the enemy. According to former Secretary of State James Baker, “Negotiations are not a reward, nor are they a gift. They are rather a process in which two adversaries (or enemies) engage as a means to end the conflict between them.”

President Obama read the diplomatic cables from as far back as 2005 suggesting a collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Egypt to promote sectarian conflict in Syria between Sunni and Shiite as a means of destabilizing the Syrian government, and this at the height of sectarian strife in Iraq which the US military had tried unsuccessfully to control. Despite this moral dilemma, the president authorized the CIA to move forward with its plan to destabilize Syria.

It is called hubris. It is an American disease we all share. Haven’t we all heard P

resident Obama referring to us as an exceptional nation? We aren’t, of course, but wehinking we are.

Powerful figures in both the Democrat and Republican parties are responsible for our hubris and our perpetual wars and few of them have shown any inclination to change course. This is why we need the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft more than ever.

In my two works of fiction The Syrian and Damascus Street i discuss the Syria crisis in great depth. These books are available for sale here:

Amazon

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WHO ARE THE SYRIAN-BASED NGOs?

Suleiman al-Kalidi’s article, Russian-Led Assault in Syria Leaves over 500 Civilians Dead published by Reuters on July 7, 2019, would have us believe that Russia joined forces with Bashar Assad’s Army to kill over 500 civilians and wound 2,000.

His source was the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) which claims to monitor casualties and brief various UN agencies.

What is the Syrian Network for Human Rights? Who funds it? What is its relationship to the Syrian opposition? Does its financial support come from states that are waging war on Syria and openly lobbying for US military intervention?

According to Patrick Cockburn in The London Review of Books, “this group is staffed by anti-Assad activists, not exactly reliable sources.”

The Syrian government presides over a harsh police state apparatus, a relic from Hafez Assad that his son Bashar never managed to undo, but, that said, it has been the target over the last years of one of the most expensive and sophisticated campaigns arguing for regime change in recent history.

All modern Western-initiated wars have been fought with manipulated imagery and disinformation, and the US does it better than anyone. Everything starts and ends with “scene-setting” and “swaying perceptions” to prepare a population to support invasion, regime change, humanitarian intervention, and the like. In Syria, the US government imposed a narrative from day one: Assad was indiscriminately killing innocent civilians in a popular, peaceful revolution.

Many NGOs, like the Syrian Network for Human Rights, played a major role in spinning this conflict. They are one-sided and pro-opposition. They put out statements and reports based on the loosest definition of sourcing. Western journalists reported their disinformation across world media. On script, governments reacted in outrage. They cited the NGO and press reports as fact, just like al-Kalidi’s source-based article in Reuters.

Sharmine Narwani, unlike the Beirut-based journalists who rarely leave the city, has spent her days on the ground, whether in Daraa, the sight of the first uprising, or Homs, Aleppo or Idlib. She had no particular advantage over other foreign journalists. She had to wait just as long to receive a visa as anyone else, but she made the effort. After earning her degree in journalism from Columbia University, she spent four years as senior associate at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Her dozens of publications reflect her work covering the Middle East. According to Patrick Lawrence, Salon’s foreign affairs columnist, “she is eyes-wide-open and beholden to no national interest or media slant.”

She met with these so-called reliable sources. She didn’t interview them via Skype, as so many journalists did. She probed and exposed their so-called “sources” and motives. Her reporting was not published in any mass media publication because what she had to say ran contrary to the political agenda of the US government.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, Chairman of SNHR, told Reuters, “The Russian military and its Syrian ally are deliberately targeting civilians with a record number of medical facilities. Both deny their jets hit indiscriminately civilian areas with cluster munitions and incendiary weapons, which residents in opposition areas say are meant to paralyze every-day life.”

Who are these “residents in opposition areas? How did they get their information out?  Via Skype? Where any journalists there asking the hard questions—who was dying, who was doing the killing?

The Idlib-based Civil Defense is none other than the US Department of Defense-funded White Helmets, who work only in areas with the most extreme militant groups and are the ones who played witness to alleged chemical attacks. Photos of these White Helmets “first-responders” show them flaunting their weapons and posing next to al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters. Despite such questionable sources, mass media consistently uses them to blame the Assad regime and its allies for mass killings.

Western media has helped to stage and grow the Syrian conflict. Should journalists be treated with a special kind of immunity when they repeatedly get the story wrong, and people die in the process? Sharmine Narwani calls them “media combatants,” a fair and accurate description of the role they play in today’s wars.

Both The Syrian and Damascus Street discuss in great detail the Syrian conflict. These books are available for purhase here: Amazon

 

 

 

 

THE KING-CRANE COMMISION, 100 YEARS AGO

Almost exactly a hundred years ago, the president of the United States was searching for a “deal of the century” in the Middle East. Christian academic Henry King of Oberlin College was no Jared Kushner. Neither he nor the industrialist Charles Crane, whose family got rich making toilets in Chicago, were sons-in-law of the American president. But Woodrow Wilson sent them on an ambitious 1919 tour to the former Arab provinces of Ottoman Empire to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants regarding post-war settlement of their territories.

The commission reported that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. They determined that nearly nine-tenths of the population was emphatically against the entire Zionist program.

The King-Crane Commission warned that to subject the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike, to such a project would be a gross violation of the principle of self-determination, and of the peoples’ rights. The Commission, while expressing sympathy for the Jewish cause, recommended limitations on Jewish immigration and abandonment of the goal of a Jewish state in Palestine.

King and Cane returned home with their 40,000-word report in hand. By the time they returned, President Wilson had embarked on a speaking tour that would leave him a permanent invalid. He most likely never read the report until retiring from office. The report ended up, without official comment, in the U.S. Department of State archives.

On December 3 and 4, 1922, the New York Times published the King-Crane Report in its entirety, with an introduction by the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, William Ellis. Based in Jerusalem and Damascus when the King-Crane Commission was making its inquiries, Ellis explained: “I witnessed enough to understand the painstaking impartiality, the tireless diligence and patience, and the American shrewdness and courage of the commission amidst pitfalls unimaginable to the Western world.”

He believed it had been suppressed for political reasons.

Crane, writing in the 1930s. expressed himself in no uncertain terms about the political reasons alluded to by Ellis: “The interests that were opposed to the report, especially the Jewish and the French, were able to persuade President Wilson that, as Americans were not going to take any future responsibility for Palestine, it was not fair that the report should be published and so it was pigeonholed in the State Department archives even though America, at the time, was the only country that had the prestige, the power and the resources to manage the array of complex challenges facing the Middle East.

Alas, Balfour and the Sykes-Picot agreement had already doomed the King-Crane Commission before they set off by train from Paris through the Balkans to Constantinople.

Sadly, it is a sign of the times that while Kushner and Trump trumpeted their pitiful “deal of the century,” to destroy any future Palestinian state, no one remembered that this is the one hundredth anniversary of the most intensive Western inquiry ever made into what the people who actually lived in the Middle East wanted for their future.

The tragedy is that no action was taken. Had someone bothered to read the report, the world would be a different place today.

I discuss both the King-Crane Commission, the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot agreement in my book Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with Both Sides. It is available for purchase here: Amazon

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THE KING-CRANE COMMION, 100 YEARS AGO

Almost exactly a hundred years ago, the president of the United States was searching for a “deal of the century” in the Middle East. Christian academic Henry King of Oberlin College was no Jared Kushner. Neither he nor the industrialist Charles Crane, whose family got rich making toilets in Chicago, were sons-in-law of the American president. But Woodrow Wilson sent them on an ambitious 1919 tour to the former Arab provinces of Ottoman Empire to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants regarding post-war settlement of their territories.

The commission reported that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. They determined that nearly nine-tenths of the population was emphatically against the entire Zionist program.

The King-Crane Commission warned that to subject the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike, to such a project would be a gross violation of the principle of self-determination, and of the peoples’ rights. The Commission, while expressing sympathy for the Jewish cause, recommended limitations on Jewish immigration and abandonment of the goal of a Jewish state in Palestine.

King and Cane returned home with their 40,000-word report in hand. By the time they returned, President Wilson had embarked on a speaking tour that would leave him a permanent invalid. He most likely never read the report until retiring from office. The report ended up, without official comment, in the U.S. Department of State archives.

On December 3 and 4, 1922, the New York Times published the King-Crane Report in its entirety, with an introduction by the newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, William Ellis. Based in Jerusalem and Damascus when the King-Crane Commission was making its inquiries, Ellis explained: “I witnessed enough to understand the painstaking impartiality, the tireless diligence and patience, and the American shrewdness and courage of the commission amidst pitfalls unimaginable to the Western world.”

He believed it had been suppressed for political reasons.

Crane, writing in the 1930s. expressed himself in no uncertain terms about the political reasons alluded to by Ellis: “The interests that were opposed to the report, especially the Jewish and the French, were able to persuade President Wilson that, as Americans were not going to take any future responsibility for Palestine, it was not fair that the report should be published and so it was pigeonholed in the State Department archives even though America, at the time, was the only country that had the prestige, the power and the resources to manage the array of complex challenges facing the Middle East.

Alas, Balfour and the Sykes-Picot agreement had already doomed the King-Crane Commission before they set off by train from Paris through the Balkans to Constantinople.

Sadly, it is a sign of the times that while Kushner and Trump trumpeted their pitiful “deal of the century,” to destroy any future Palestinian state, no one remembered that this is the one hundredth anniversary of the most intensive Western inquiry ever made into what the people who actually lived in the Middle East wanted for their future.

The tragedy is that no action was taken. Had someone bothered to read the report, the world would be a different place today.

I discuss both the King-Crane Commission, the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot agreement in my book Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with Both Sides. It is available for purchase here: Amazon

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WHEAT IS A WEAPON

 

“Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict,” insists Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington, DC based think-tank, bankrolled by the US government, and until four months ago, run by Victoria Nuland, a key architect of the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, a Hillary Clinton confidant and the wife of the neoconservative ideologue Robert Kegan.

CNAS functions as a revolving door to both the Democratic and Republican Party’s foreign-policy elite. Its top donors include the leading weapons manufacturers—Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and BAE Systems, the usual suspects who support any war as long as there are profits to be made.

How is it possible, after eight years of trying to oust Bashar Assad from power, killing or injuring half a million Syrians, displacing two-thirds of the population and destroying large swaths of the country, that this despicable group of warmongers thinks it is a good idea to use wheat as a weapon to starve Syria’s civilian population as a way to terrorize Damascus into submission?

As I suggest in Damascus Street, the issue, from the beginning, was not Syria per se. It was about dealing a crippling blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and Syria, as their linchpin, needed to be taken out, even if such an action triggered a great power war.

Mr. Heras suggests arming Syria’s moderate opposition to help carry out his plan. The US government has been doing business for the last eight years with any al-Qaeda affiliate who will do its dirty work and calling them Syria’s moderate opposition. Mr. Heras also wants the US to put pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia, to force concessions. What concessions? The US has lost. Assad is still in power and Syria, Russia and Iran have won.

The battle for global hegemony, as defined by the US government, unraveled over Syria and the world changed. Russians, Iran and China drew a red line and stood behind Assad. Syria triggered the great power battle that unleashed the potential for a new order, with the US descendent.

Meanwhile, President Assad has offered farmers in northeastern Syria a high subsidized price for their wheat but the local armed factions, directly allied with the US military, which has built a dozen military bases there, refuses to allow wheat to leave the region under their control.

Bread is a major food stable for Syrians who depend on it to survive. Already millions of Syrians are food insecure and crippling sanctions imposed by the US have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.

The proliferation of al-Qaeda insurgents is a pretext for endless wars. Isn’t it time they come to an end?

My book is available for purchase here:  Amazon

 

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SOURCES

I write about the Middle East because it is an area of the world I am passionate about and know very well. After three books of nonfiction, I recently began writing fiction because it gave me the opportunity to incorporate current events, some of which have personally touched my life while living in Beirut and turn them into page-turning thrillers. I was able to properly research both The Syrian and Damascus Street because I had trustworthy sources, journalists who are the finest in the business, and have been for years, who are not owned by corporate media. They now write for online services like Consortium News, Information Clearing House and Grayzone whose major source of income comes from individual donations. Once such journalist, Patrick Lawrence, recently interviewed Sharmine Narwani, whose work is distinctly thorough and honest amid a sea of collapsed professional standards and abandoned ethics. Her pieces, written for a variety of publications, consistently reflect her hard work, particularly on the ground in Syria in places few dared go. She is eye-wide open and refreshingly beholden to no national interest or media slant.

Having witnessed the Syrian war from start to finish, she now casts it in a usefully broard context. “The Syrian conflict constitutes the main battlefield in a kind of World War III,” she said. “The world wars were, in essence, great-power wars, after which the global order reshuffled a bit and new global institutions were established.”

This is what Narwani sees out in front of us, now that the Western powers’ latest regime change operation has failed.

“My trips took me to places in May and June 2011 in the weeks before the battle for the south of Syria began. I visited Daraa, Suweida and Qunetra, the three southern governorates most critical to the upcoming battle. It was fascinating. It dispelled a number of myths about the conflict. One of these was the discovery that al-Qaeda was smack in the middle of the fight in Daraa, indistinguishable from Western-supported militant groups in all the main theaters. Another shocker was when I interviewed former al-Nusra and Free Syrian Army fighters near the Lebanese border. They told me their salaries had been paid by the Israelis for the entire year before they surrendered, around $200,000 per month from Israel to militants in the town of Beit Jinn alone in southern Syria.”

Among other things she discussed in her conversations with Patrick Lawrence were the reforms that President Assad passed, reforms that the international community decided to ignore.

“Since 2011, Assad has issued decrees suspending almost five decades of emergency law that prohibited public gatherings. This was a big deal, as other Arab leaders were doing the opposite in response to their uprisings. Other decrees included the establishment of a multi-party political system, term limits for the presidency, the suspension of state security courts, prisoner releases, amnesty agreements, decentralizing down to local authorities, sacking controversial political figures, introducing new media laws that prohibited the arrest of journalists, and provided for more freedom of expression, investment in infrastructure, housing, pension funds, establishing direct dialogue between populations and governing authorities, setting up a committee to dialogue with the opposition, many of whom turned down the offer.

“These reforms were far-reaching and significant. So much carnage could have been avoided had they been given the time and space to take hold. You could feel these reforms unfolding in Damascus by early 2012. I would call up opposition figures on their mobile phones, go to their homes, talk to regular folks about politics. I could even access Twitter and Facebook in Syria, platforms that had been banned for years.”

Patrick Lawrence asked Sharmine about proportionate response to violence, something Assad was roundly accused of doing. “Let’s be clear here. Between March and June 188, Syrian soldiers were ambushed, many of their heads cut off. Nobody can dispute this. I have their names, ages, ranks, birthplaces, everything.”

She continued, “So, you ask about proportionality, and to that I would simply ask: What if there were armed men in Washington who killed a few cops in the last week of December? In January, these unknown shooters began a campaign of ambushing American servicemen coming and going from their bases around the D.C. area. Then, in March over 100 soldiers were killed in a single day, half with their heads cut off. What would be the proportionate response in this case?”

Sharmine’s exceptional interview with Patrick Lawrence is a must-read. The name of the article is The Secret History of America’s Defeat in Syria,

Both the Syrian and Damascus Street can be purchased here:  Amazon

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WHEN I WAS CIA DIRECTOR

  When I was the CIA director, we lied, we cheated, and we stole.” –  Mike Pompeo

On June 13, 2019, as  Ayatollah Khamenei  was holding talks in Tehran with Japanese prime minister,  Shinzo Abe , two oil tankers carrying oil to Japan were attacked. Though an investigation into the incident had only just begun, Pompeo announced his assessment that the Iranians were guilty. His use of the word “assessment” was all-telling. In the US judicial system, an assessment does not require proof. And as his pal in the Intelligence community, John Brennan, recently boasted, “We don’t do proof.”

Recall that back on May 13 four oil tankers had been damaged in the same area. The United States blamed Iran without any evidence alleging, on the basis of a grainy, blurry video, that an Iranian navy boat had been seen removing mines from the damaged Japanese ship, even though the Japanese owner disputed any evidence of mines.

To understand the full story, we need to go back to Trump’s announcement on April 22nd that America would not renew US waivers for countries which imported oil from Iran. The Iranians condemned America’s illegal demands and said that no other country could take its share of the oil market.

 The Trump team claimed that what Iran meant was that they would sabotage any oil tanker going through the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran was referring to its legal right under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which legally allows it to impede the passage of oil shipments through its territorial waters –the Strait of Hormuz.

While UNCLOS stipulates that vessels can exercise the right of innocent passage, and coastal states should not impede their passage, under the UNCLOS framework, a coastal state, in this case Iran, can block ships from entering its territorial waters if the passage of those ships harms “peace, good order or security” of said state, because the passage of such ships would no longer be deemed “innocent.”

Given Iran’s rights under UNCLOS, it makes no sense for Iran to blow up oil tankers and turn the world opinion against it to favor Trump and his warmongering advisors – Pompeo and Bolton.

But tankers were blown up.

Enter NOPEC – No to Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act. In February, the House passed a bill that would prohibit OPEC from coordinating production and influencing prices.

The Saudis threatened to drop dollar for oil trades to discourage US from passing the NOPEC bill.  The Saudi threat came on the heels of the UAE which cautioned that if such a bill passed, it would in effect, break up OPEC.

After Trump announced his Iran oil embargo, a senior US administration official assured the world at large that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would fill any gap left in the oil market. This announcement did not please the Saudis. On April 29th, their Energy Minister made it clear that Saudi Arabia would not rush to boost oil supply to make up for the loss of Iranian oil.

After the second attack on the oil tankers, however, the Saudis changed their mind and agreed to raise their oil production. Once the oil market was satisfied there would be no oil shortage, and the price stabilized, the US resumed its pressure on friend and foe to stop buying Iranian oil.

But then there was the second tanker incident on June 13th and the US once again blamed Iran and discouraged the international community from cooperating with Iran. But hidden from the headlines was the fact that the hike in the price of oil, or at best a stabilizing of price, would signal relief to US shale oil producers. Plummeting oil prices would have harmed or bankrupted US shale-focused, debt-dependent producers.

So, in the words of Pompeo: “We cheat. We lie.” And we will continue to blame the enemy.

 

 

Israel’s Role in the 2016 US Election

People follow results of the 2016 Presidential Elections at Time Square Center in New York, United States on November 9, 2016. [Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency]

June 6, 2019 at 3:28 pm

American lawmakers have summoned a British security consultant to probe Israel’s role in alleged Russian interference with the 2016 election, which has been the subject of a two-year long FBI investigation.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is seeking an interview with Walter Soriano, director of London-based security firm USG Security, to discuss what, if any, role Israel may have played in attempts to manipulate the 2016 election.

The committee, which oversees the work of the US Intelligence Community, sent a letter to Soriano for a voluntary, closed-door interview to discuss documents dating back to June 2015. The letter obtained by Politico, is said to be more than just a “fishing expedition”. The committee members are said to be keen on getting a deeper insight into the role other countries may have played in hacking US elections. It’s believed that they are interested in speaking with Soriano because of his connections to high profile people.

A source told Politico that the committee is “surprised by how connected he seems to several people of interest.” They are also interesting in questioning Soriano over communications with Israeli private intelligence firms.

READ: Time to stop the external manipulation of ‘what Palestinians want’ 

Up till now US officials have been reluctant to cast their eyes in the direction of Israel in any probe related to interference by a foreign country. While “Russiagate”, as it’s known, has dominated the Trump presidency, Israel is often cited as a more obvious case of meddling by a foreign country.

Renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky pointed this out earlier this year in an interview. “Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done,” said the veteran author pointing to Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to humiliate former President Barack Obama by speaking to Congress, with overwhelming applause, that was noted for the 26 standing ovations during a 39 minute speech.

Controversial pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, which many say should be registered as a foreign-agent in Capitol Hill, has been caught on tape boasting of its influence in Washington.

While it would be an extremely unlikely turn of event to see Israel come under any serious investigation by the committee, the role of Israeli firms in meddling in elections across the globe has become a serious concern. Last month elections in several African, Asian and Latin American countries were targeted by a disinformation campaign. Social media giant, Facebook traced these accounts to Archimedes Group, a private company based near Tel Aviv.

Facebook announced that it had removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts with a combined following of 2.8 million users for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”. The Israeli group’s activities were focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia along with some activity in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The online world has become a major battle ground for Israel. Last month it launched a massive recruitment drive to support the country’s online propaganda campaign. The new initiative, which would see the government funding pro-Israel groups overseas, was unveiled by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a government arm set up to combat the global rise of pro-Palestinian activism and Israel’s poor global image.