"America’s Vassal Acts Decisively and Illegally"

A great post by Craig Murray.

UPDATE
100,000 HITS IN 100 MINUTES CRASHED THE SITE. WE DON’T KNOW YET IF GENUINE INTEREST OR DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK. OUR BRILLIANT WEBHOSTS HAVE QUADRUPLED THE RESOURCE, BUT IF YOU CAN HELP TAKE THE STRAIN BY REPOSTING I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL.
I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.
This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world.
The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms. There is no modification or qualification elsewhere in the treaty.
Article 22

1.The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter
them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.
2.The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises
of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the
mission or impairment of its dignity.
3.The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of
transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

Not even the Chinese government tried to enter the US Embassy to arrest the Chinese dissident Chen Guangchen. Even during the decades of the Cold War, defectors or dissidents were never seized from each other’s embassies. Murder in Samarkand relates in detail my attempts in the British Embassy to help Uzbek dissidents. This terrible breach of international law will result in British Embassies being subject to raids and harassment worldwide.
The government’s calculation is that, unlike Ecuador, Britain is a strong enough power to deter such intrusions. This is yet another symptom of the “might is right” principle in international relations, in the era of the neo-conservative abandonment of the idea of the rule of international law.
The British Government bases its argument on domestic British legislation. But the domestic legislation of a country cannot counter its obligations in international law, unless it chooses to withdraw from them. If the government does not wish to follow the obligations imposed on it by the Vienna Convention, it has the right to resile from it – which would leave British diplomats with no protection worldwide.
I hope to have more information soon on the threats used by the US administration. William Hague had been supporting the move against the concerted advice of his own officials; Ken Clarke has been opposing the move against the advice of his. I gather the decision to act has been taken in Number 10.
There appears to have been no input of any kind from the Liberal Democrats. That opens a wider question – there appears to be no “liberal” impact now in any question of coalition policy. It is amazing how government salaries and privileges and ministerial limousines are worth far more than any belief to these people. I cannot now conceive how I was a member of that party for over thirty years, deluded into a genuine belief that they had principles.

'Divisions Among The Arab Left regarding The Syria Crisis'

This is a rough translation of an article appearing in Le Monde Diplomatique, August French edition, accessible only to subscribers. Original title: 'La crise syrienne déchire la gauche arabe'

In August 2011, the Lebanese nationalist leftist daily newspaper Al-Akhbar undergoes its first crisis, since its creation in the summer 2006.   Assistant editor, Khaled Saghieh, resigns from the journal he contributed to create citing  the lack of support from the journal to the Syrian popular uprising of March 2011.  Al-Akhbar has never kept secret its political proximity with Hezbollah, one of Syria’s president Bashar el-Assad principal regional allies, nor hidden its preference for dialogue between the government and part of the opposition over the pure and simple fall of the regime.  However, at the same time, the daily has opened its pages for the Syrian opposition to express itself.  Among those published was Salameh Khaileh, a Syro-Palestinian Marxist intellectual, arrested at the end of April 2012 by the security services.

Last June, the dissent appeared in Al-Akhbar English online version with an article by Amal Saad Ghorayeb: 'Syria Crisis, there is a crowd'.  In it, the Lebanese chronicler adopts a clear line of support for the Syrian regime and critcises ‘third wayers’ who denounce the authoritarian Syrian regime while warning against western foreign military intervention, Libya style.  The same month, another Al-Akhbar collaborator, Max Blumenthal,  resigns denouncing what he calls ‘Assad apologists’ inside the journal editorial team.

What happened at Al-Akhbar is symptomatic of wider strategic and ideological divisions among the Arab Left regarding the Syria crisis.  Some show support for the regime in the name of the struggle against Israel and the ‘resistance against imperialisme’.  Others support the uprising in the name of a ‘revolutionary logic’ and the defence of ‘democratic rights’.  Finally, some express a middle position between a distant solidarity with the uprising demanding freedom for the protests while rejecting ‘foreign intervention’ promoting ‘national reconciliation’.   Diverse sensibilities exist within the Arab Left : there are communists, Marxists, Leftists Nationalists, Radicals, and Moderates.  The Arab Left appears, with the Syria crisis, as a fragmented mosaic.

Anti-imperialism as the analysis grid for the Arab Left

On one side, the unconditional support for Al-Assad is not mainstream among the Arab Left and very few are the voices calling to maintain the regime as it is.   But, on the other side, the unconditional support for the popular uprising is not a dominant position.  It can be found among movements that are at the extreme Left of the political Spectrum ; Trostkyistes, the Lebanese Socialist Forum, the Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt, Maoists, and the Democratic Voice of Morocco.   These latter movements have built relationships with a fraction of the opposition to the regime, namely the Syrian Revolutionary Left of Mr. Gayath Naisse.  They have participated, since the Spring of 2011, in discrete mobilisations like protests in front of  Syrian embassies and consulates in their respective countries.

Some intellectuals from the independant Left, like the Lebanese historian Fawwaz Trabulsi, support the logic of uprisings.  They demand the fall of the regime.  This current excludes any dialogue.  And even if this part of the Left insist on the necessity of pacifist popular protests, they do not deny to protesters the right to take up arms.  At the extreme Left, the partisans of the revolution diverge from the Syrian National Council on the alliance with Qatar, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia.  They denounce such alliances as compromising the independance of the popular revolution in Syria.

Denouncing the regime and calling for its fall does not prevent the radical Left from being suspicious of the support given to the Syrian revolution by Gulf monarchies neither from dissociating itself from the anti-Assad discourse of a part of the ‘international community’ headed by the United States.  However, their anti-imperialist reflex comes after their support for the revolution.  The priority is given here to the internal situation in Syria : the logic of the uprising of the people against their political regime is what counts first, as in Tunisia and Egypt.

[What has been described so far is the position of a minority situated at the extreme Spectrum of the Arab Left.]

On the contrary, a cautious distance toward the Syrian revolution is what characterises the majority of the Left in the Arab World.  This majority denounces the militaristaion of the uprising, a process it thinks is profiting the radical Islamists and foreign fighters entering Syria.  It fears the confessionalisation of the conflict leading to opposing religious minorities, Alawis and Christians to Sunnis radicalised by repression, seeing in this the spectre of an unending civil war.  This majority also takes into account the balance of regional and international powers : Iran and Syria against Gulf monarchies, Russia and China against the United States.  In this confrontation between multiple international state actors, the majority of the Arab Left does not hesitate to take sides where its affinities are rooted, with Iran and Syria as state actors against Gulf monrachies and with Russia and China against the United States.

Thus, when the union of Socialist and Leftist parties in Jordan, a coalition of six political formations including communists and Arab nationalists, met in Amman in April 2012 to commemorate the 9th anniversary of the 2003 invasion of  Iraq, the Syria crisis, more than the fall of Saddam, was front and center in the discussions, leading to firmly denounce any foreign intervention in Syria, where some of the speakers did not hesitate to draw the parallell  between the military intervention in Iraq and the support the SNC and the Syrian armed opposition enjoy in the West.

In Tunisia, in a communiqué dated May, 17, 2012,  the UGTT, Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, which is the main unionised force in Tunisia whose executives come partly from the extreme Left, while affirming its support for the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Syrian people, warns against the ‘plot’ fomented by the ‘colonial states’ and ‘Arab Reactionaries’.  Two months before this, the Communist Labour Party of Tunisia (POCT, acronym in French) called, along with Arab Nationalist Movements, to protest the venue, in Tunis, of the conference of the Friends of Syria formed of the SNC and 60 international delegations.

The Lebanese Communist Party has adopted a cautious position.  While opening its Press to opponents of the Syrian regime like Michel Kilo (who is not member of the SNC), it abstained from participating in the daily protests that have been taking place for a year now in front of the Syrian embassy in Beirut.  The party is under criticism from the extreme left in Lebanon for its support for Qadri Jamil, head of the Popular Will Party in Syria, and member of the ‘legal’ opposition, who joined the newly formed Syrian government of Mr. Riyad Hijjab in June 2012 as vice PM for economic affairs.

It is mainly a reformist logic that has the favours of a part of the Arab Left : the solution to the Syrian conflict must be political, not military.  The final communiqué of the Arab Nationalist Conference meeting in June, in Hammamet, Tunisia, the gathering of 200 members of Arab Nationalist Leftist  - and to a lesser extent - Islamist formations, reflects this reformist logic.  Their communiqué, trying to please everybody,  recognises the right of the Syrian people to ‘freedom, democracy, and pacific alternance of power’, denounces violence from all origins, thus highlighting the violence of both the uprising and the regime and calling on both to commit to a logic of dialogue based on the peace plan of March 2012 of UN special envoy, Mr. Kofi Annan.

If, for a part of the Arab Radical left, the revolutionary perspective must come first in Syria,  the majority of the Arab Left has renounced this perspective.  This majority does not want the brutal fall of the regime.  For this majority, there is a contradiction in what’s going on in Syria : a cold war that doesn’t say its name.  The fear of the void in a post-Assad Syria reconciled with the US and allied to gulf monarchies is much stronger than the fear of the continuation of the regime.

Moreover, Syria is some sort of Janus to many Leftist militants in the Arab world.  Very few among them deny the repressive and authoritarian character of its regime, but even today,  the defensive discourse of a regime under international sanctions, echoes the profound ideological bedrock of the Arab left which can be found in the third worldist and anti-imperialist paradigm. To some, this ideological paradigm is nuanced by the attachment to the popular character of the revolt, to others, this ideological attachment is, to the contrary, multiplied and amplified by the increasing internationalisation of the conflict.

Not to forget the Islamist dynamic born from the Arab Spring which translates by seizing power, in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, by the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood.  These events have provoked a backlash among part of the Left: from now on, Arab revolutions are feared because they may lead to an Islamist hegemony in the Arab world.

What stokes these fears among the Arab Left is the support of Islamist movements to the revolution in Syria: Ennahda in Tunisia, as well as the Msulim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, are fervent supporters of the Syrian revolution.  Thus, the position of a majority of the Arab Left  toward the Syrian revolution reflects the history of their own confrontation with political Islam.  This is why, Arab Leftist parties with commitments to ‘revolution’ and ‘progressism’, and for some, to ‘Marxism’, have, paradoxically, set their preference for a negotiated and gradual transition in Syria, out of fear of the disillusion these revolutions will bring.

For article references, please go to original article at Le Monde Diplomatique website here.

Amal Saad Ghorayeb: Assad and the Resistence

Assad Foreign Policy (I): A History of Consistence

Assad Foreign Policy (II): Strategies of Confrontation

I mainly agree with Amal Saad Ghorayeb here.  Her second paper completes the first but is much more convincing than the first, not because of substance, because the substance of both is interlinked, but because it is better writing.  Amal is much more comfortable building an argument than deconstructing and in the first paper she had to deconstruct what she calls the 'third wayers'.  Third wayers in the Syria crisis are those who claim they refuse intervention but they criticise Assad, especially in his resistence credentials, and call for regime change.

 Comment on Amal Saad Ghorayeb's A clarification of my position on Syria and a riposte to Angry Arab

Amal Saad Ghorayeb is a courageous woman.  It takes a woman, and an academic not part of academia, to articulate a position on Syria free from political pressure. 

Personally, whenever I voiced an opinion favorable to reforms in Syria supported by a political process, I have experienced on Twitter and on this blog, accusations of being pro-regime, ostracisation, silence to my arguments, ridicule, and embarrassment felt by others at not being able to engage with me.  Do I feel alone?  Definitely.  But I also feel that I am not afraid, like others, to speak from my own informed judgement without a 'conscience' guide and without the approval of others.

The result of this process of pressure toward thought homegenisation and thought control, under a political program hypocritically focused, from the exterior, on democracy 'rights' for Arabs, and, from the interior, on the divisions and disintegration of post-colonial Arab societies along sectarian lines, is more divisions.  This is the core of the process of unconventional warfare used now by a financially bankrupt US: disintegration of societies and groups, manipulation of beliefs, loss of trust and confidence.

To Saad Ghorayeb's critics I say: the more we quarrel, the more we aid the people who want us to fight among ourselves.

Now on the substance of Amal Saad Ghorayeb's argument: there is truth to the fact that the fall of Assad will fragilise the resistance axis.  It is not about Assad.  With the fall of Assad, a whole system will be down, a system that never compromised with the West as other Arab regimes did.  And I don't think this is good for Palestine.  I think the fall of Assad will be one of the last nail in the coffin of the resistance and will be to the Palestinian resistance (or what is left of it) of a much larger impact than the defeat of the PLO in Beirut in 1982.

Now, although I am sympathetic to Amal Saad Ghorayeb's argument, I have a concern.  Let's suppose that Palestinians have given up fighting Israel and that they will be happy with western approved tactics like non violent resistance and so on - and there are many indications pointing in this direction - should we still fight for them?  This is what is preocuppying my thoughts these days.  I don't have the answer to this but I still think that we have the duty to preserve a resistance to imperialism in the region, unattached to the palestinian struggle.  If the Palestinians want to come along, this is fine.  Otherwise, we have the duty to keep the resistance alive and we have to think of ways to preserve it.  And if this means keeping Assad because if he goes it might bring about, not only the end, but the death of the resistance, I don't see a problem.  But we must do this with accountability.  So, yes, we're in for an existential struggle against an existential threat:  the West and Israel.  This is not only purely a moral obligation to Palestinians, who had to endure this threat the most, it is a moral obligation to ourselves.  And it is bigger than Assad and it is bigger than Palestine.

Syria, the resistance and Palestine

I found this quote on Amal Saad Ghorayeb's blog.

"Why would I worry about how the fall of Asssad would lead to a strike on Iran, the severe weakening of Hizbullah, and the destruction of the remaining vestiges of armed resistance in Palestine, when your boycott campaign against Madonna‘s global tour is picking up steam?"

I think the quote summarises well the state of the resistance in Palestine.  Isn't strange that the resistance axis is currently defined without a strong Palestinian component?  Isn't strange that Palestinian movements, who were sheltered in Syria, are either sitting idle or, when moving, going in the direction of Gulf states? 

All this despite the sad state of Palestinians' rights and their quasi absence from the Arab and international agenda.

 

Arundhati Roy on the links between NGOs, global finance and US hegemonic interests

Arundhati Roy does a formidable job exposing these NGOs...

"...When corporate-endowed foundations first made their appearance in the US, there was a fierce debate about their provenance, legality and lack of accountability. People suggested that if companies had so much surplus money, they should raise the wages of their workers. (People made these outrageous suggestions in those days, even in America.) The idea of these foundations, so ordinary now, was in fact a leap of the business imagination. Non-tax-paying legal entities with massive resources and an almost unlimited brief—wholly unaccountable, wholly non-transparent—what better way to parlay economic wealth into political, social and cultural capital, to turn money into power? What better way for usurers to use a minuscule percentage of their profits to run the world? How else would Bill Gates, who admittedly knows a thing or two about computers, find himself designing education, health and agriculture policies, not just for the US government, but for governments all over the world?"

"...By the 1950s, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, funding several NGOs and international educational institutions, began to work as quasi-extensions of the US government that was at the time toppling democratically elected governments in Latin America, Iran and Indonesia. (That was also around the time they made their entry into India, then non-aligned, but clearly tilting towards the Soviet Union.) The Ford Foundation established a US-style economics course at the Indonesian University. Elite Indonesian students, trained in counter-insurgency by US army officers, played a crucial part in the 1965 CIA-backed coup in Indonesia that brought General Suharto to power. Gen Suharto repaid his mentors by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Communist rebels.
Eight years later, young Chilean students, who came to be known as the Chicago Boys, were taken to the US to be trained in neo-liberal economics by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago (endowed by J.D. Rockefeller), in preparation for the 1973 CIA-backed coup that killed Salvador Allende, and brought in General Pinochet and a reign of death squads, disappearances and terror that lasted for seventeen years. (Allende’s crime was being a democratically elected socialist and nationalising Chile’s mines.)
In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Prize for community leaders in Asia. It was named after Ramon Magsaysay, president of the Philippines, a crucial ally in the US campaign against Communism in Southeast Asia. In 2000, the Ford Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Emergent Leadership Award. The Magsaysay Award is considered a prestigious award among artists, activists and community workers in India. M.S. Subbulakshmi and Satyajit Ray won it, so did Jayaprakash Narayan and one of India’s finest journalists, P. Sainath. But they did more for the Magsaysay award than it did for them. In general, it has become a gentle arbiter of what kind of activism is “acceptable” and what is not.

Interestingly, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement last summer was spearheaded by three Magsaysay Award winners—Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi. One of Arvind Kejriwal’s many NGOs is generously funded by Ford Foundation. Kiran Bedi’s NGO is funded by Coca Cola and Lehman Brothers."

"...The transformation of the idea of justice into the industry of human rights has been a conceptual coup in which NGOs and foundations have played a crucial part. The narrow focus of human rights enables an atrocity-based analysis in which the larger picture can be blocked out and both parties in a conflict—say, for example, the Maoists and the Indian government, or the Israeli Army and Hamas—can both be admonished as Human Rights Violators. The land-grab by mining corporations or the history of the annexation of Palestinian land by the State of Israel then become footnotes with very little bearing on the discourse. This is not to suggest that human rights don’t matter. They do, but they are not a good enough prism through which to view or remotely understand the great injustices in the world we live in."

The whole article can be found here.

Samir Amin: An Imperialist Springtime, Libya, Syria and Beyond

 What follows is a transcript of an interview made by Aijaz Ahmad.  Video and transcript can be found here.

Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment -- and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO -- derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, the movements.  They have tested their experience in Libya, and they have tested it in Libya with success, in the sense that, in Libya, at the start we had no [broad popular] movement . . . against Gaddafi.  We had small armed groups, and one has to question immediately . . . where those arms were coming from.  They were -- we know it -- from the beginning, from the Gulf, with the support of Western powers, and the US.  And attacking the army, police, and so on.  And the same day, not even the next day, those very people who qualified themselves as "liberation forces," "democratic liberation forces," called upon NATO -- the French and then NATO -- to come to the rescue, and that allowed for the intervention.  That intervention has succeeded in the sense that it destroyed the regime of Gaddafi.  But what is the result of the success?  Is it democratic Libya?  Well, one should laugh at that when one knows that the president of the new regime is nobody else than the very judge who condemned to death the Bulgarian nurses.  What a curious democracy it is!  But it has also led to the dislocation of the country on a Somalian pattern: that is, local powers -- all of them in the name of so-called "Islam," but local warlords -- with the destruction of the country.  One can raise the question: was this the target of the intervention -- that is, the destruction of the country?
I'll come back to this main question, because they tried to implement the same strategy immediately afterward on Syria -- that is, introducing armed groups from the very beginning.  From the north through Turkey, Hatay particularly.  The so-called "refugee camps" in Hatay are not refugee camps -- there are very few refugees -- they are camps for training mercenaries to intervene in Syria.  This is well documented by our Turkish friends.  And Turkey as a NATO power is part of the conspiracy in that case.  And similarly with Jordan, introducing from the south, with the support -- not only neutrality but, I think, active support -- of Israel, through Daraa, armed groups in the south.
Facing that in Syria we have objectively a situation similar to the one of Egypt: that is, a regime which a long, long time ago had legitimacy, for the same reasons, when it was a national-popular regime but lost it in the time of Hafez Assad already -- it moved to align itself with neoliberalism, privatization, etc., leading to the same social disaster.  So, there is an objective ground for a wide, popular, social-oriented uprising.  But by preempting this movement, through the military intervention of armed groups, the Western imperialist powers have created a situation where the popular democratic movement is . . . hesitating.  They don't want to join the so-called "resistance" against Bashar Assad; but they don't want to support the regime of Bashar Assad either.  That has allowed Bashar Assad to successfully put an end, or limits, to external intervention, in Homs and on the boundary of Turkey in the north.  But opposing state terror to the real terrorism of armed groups supported by foreign powers is not the answer to the question.  The answer to the question is really changing the system to the benefit of, through negotiations with, the real popular democratic movement.  This is the challenge.  And this is the question which is raised.  We don't know, I don't know, I think nobody knows how things will move on: whether the regime, or people within the regime, will understand that and move towards real reform by opening, more than negotiations, a re-distribution of the power system with the popular democratic movement, or will stick to the way of meeting explosions just brutally as they have done until today.  If they continue in that direction, finally they will be defeated, but they will be defeated to the benefit of imperialist powers.
Now, what is the real target of imperialism, in Syria and in the region?  It is not at all bringing democracy.  It is destroying societies just as they have destroyed the society of Libya.  If you take the example of Iraq, what have they done?  They have replaced the real dictatorship of Saddam Hussein by three uglier dictatorships: two in the name of religion, Shia and Sunni, one in the name of so-called "ethnicity," Kurds, which are uglier even than Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.  They have destroyed the country by systematic assassination -- I have no other word for that.  In addition to hundreds of thousands of people who were bombed in humanitarian bombings and so on, the systematic assassination of the cadres of the regime: scientists, doctors, engineers, professors of universities, even poets, and so on -- all the real elite of the nation.  That is destroying the country.  This is the target of imperialism in Syria.  What does the so-called Liberation Army of Syria claim to have as its program?  That we should eradicate the Alawis, the Druzes, the Christians, the Shia.  When you add those four "minorities," you come to 45% of the population of Syria.  What does it mean?  It means democracy?  It means the ugliest possible dictatorship and the destruction of the country.
Now, who has interest in that?  This is the common interest of three intimate allies: the US, Israel, and the Gulf countries.  The US.  Why?  Because the destruction of the societies of the region is the best way to prepare the next stage, which is the destruction of Iran, with a view of the containment and possibly rolling back of major "emerging" countries, the dangerous ones, China and Russia (and potentially, if India is naughty, India -- but India is not naughty, for the time being).  That is the target.  It implies the destruction of the societies of the Middle East, including that of Iran, as a major target.  This project of destruction of societies, accompanied with the continuation of lumpen-development, is also the target of Israel.  Because, if Syria is split into four or five insignificant, confessional, small states, it allows for further easy expansion of the process of Israel's colonization.  It is also the target of the Gulf.  Well, it is almost a farce to see today the Emir of Qatar and the King of Saudi Arabia, standing with the Westerners Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron, as the leaders of the struggle for democracy.  One can only laugh.  But their hegemony in the region in the name of Islam -- in the "name," because there are different possible understandings of Islam of course -- implies the destruction of countries like Egypt basically, because, if Egypt is standing on her feet, then the hegemony of the Gulf is, you know, what was the Gulf in the time of Nasser, in the days of Nasser?  So they have this in common.
And they are supported, within the societies, by the Muslim Brotherhood.  Therefore, I would conclude by that.  We should look at the Muslim Brotherhood not as an "Islamic" party.  The criterion for qualifying and judging organizations, parties, is not whether they are "Islamic" or whether they are "secular," but whether they are reactionary or progressive.  And when we look at the Muslim Brotherhood, on all real issues, they are against the strikes of the working class, they are against the resistance of poor peasants, they are for privatization, they are in favor of the dismantling of public service, which means that they are fully aligned with the most reactionary forces.  This is a reactionary party using Islam as a front.  This is the real criterion.
This is the global picture of what are the strategic targets of imperialists and their internal allies, reactionary forces, within the societies of the Middle East.

'In The Shadow Of Sectarianism': When US scholars produce a posteriori justifications for their country’s foreign policy

Sectarianism: a basic definition is ‘Being ideologically in the confines of one’s own sect’

This is a comment on an interview with MaxWeiss published on Jadaliyya around his book ‘In the shadow of sectarianism’.  It is not a comment on his book of the same title. 

Weiss : 

« I suppose the central question at the heart of my book is: How did the Lebanese Shi`a become sectarian? »

The hypothesis, as it is stated, rests on one of these two assumptions :

1)   Lebanese were sectarians and Shi'a were not but became sectarians later.

2)   None of the Lebanese communities became sectarians, only Shi'a did. 

From a methodological perspective, this is a question that already contain an answer which validates the hypothesis that Shi'a sectarianism is to be treated separately from others.

But because it is impossible to treat the question of Shi'a sectarianism separately from others, Weiss is forced to formulate a secondary hypothesis which appears as an ad hoc hypothesis by stating that his study of Shi'a sectarianism is a case study in sectarianism.  This secondary ad hoc hypothesis is acceptable in itself but doesn’t fit well with the main hypothesis as it is stated.

« Therefore, I concluded that there was some value in considering the institutionalization of sectarianism and Shi`ism together, as part of what might be called a sort of case study in the critical historical analysis of Lebanese sectarianism. »

Weiss couldn’t decide if his book is the study of Shi’a sectarianism as a case study of sectarianism in Lebanon or a study of Shi’a sectariansim without reference to other communities. In other words he is methodologically engaged, by definition, in studying sectarianism from a Shi'a sectarian perspective, within the confines of one sect.

The focal point of the book, Weiss says, is:

« that the Shi`i community in Lebanon became sectarian—which for me also meant starting to practice being sectarian—during the period of French Mandate rule (1918-1943) »

This was the period of the institutionnalisation of sectarianism in the Middle East for all sects under the French and the English mandates which took territories from the defeated Ottoman empire as ‘sacred trusts’ and transformed them into countries. One Wonder what’s in the Shi’a sectarianism for Weiss?

Weiss is interested in Shi’a sectarianism as sectarianism with regard to Sunnis, and not to other sects  in Lebanon, something that he doesn’t state openly in his interview but that is illustrated with a picture showing religious dignitaries from both sects. Weiss situates the rise of Shi’a sectarianism around the French mandate but does not attribute it to the French mandate.  Under the French mandate Shi’a assumed a more independant and visible role than during the Ottoman empire when they were persecuted, forced to convert, and displaced.  Normally, this is where one should search for the roots of Shi’a sectarianism.  Maybe Weiss does tackle the question in his book.  But I found it strange that there is not one occurrence for the word Sunni in Weiss’s interview in Jadaliyya.  I bet also that there is very little in his book.  

Ottoman rule was caracterised by religious tolerance but certainely not at the end when European countries started waging a war on the empire at its confines by heightening sectarian tensions.  Was the persecution of Shi’a the result of this process? 

Based on his argument that Shi’a sectarianism developed under the French mandate but was not the result of the French mandate, Weiss argues that there is ‘sectarianisation from below’ initiated by the community, as opposed to ‘sectarianisation from above’ imposed by rulers.  But by situating the start of Shi’a sectarianism with the French mandate, he completely obliterates the fact that  what he calls ‘sectarianism from below’ was provoked by persecutions before the French mandate which might be considered, in fact, as a sectariansim 'from above'.  And while he absolves the French from being at the origins of Shi'a sectarianism we don't know if he does the same for other sects.  It is notorious that the French are behind the structuring of the political system in Lebanon in a sectarian one and have played a role in the sectarianisation of the Shi'a 'from above' by instituting privileges for other sects.

But opening the question of Shi'a sectarianism to the Ottoman period and to sectarianism among other sects under the French rule might weaken Weiss's argument for a 'sectarianism from below'

What interests Weiss is modern history of Shi’a in Lebanon and ‘Alawi in Syria (on whish he is writing a book), in other words, the  Gordian knot of the ‘Shi’a crescent’ 

« By the time that Imam Musa al-Sadr arrived on the Lebanese scene in the late 1950s, therefore, a foundation for the mobilization of a specifically Shi`i politics was well in place. »

This is why he states that sectarianism, particularly in this case, is:

« built upon and shored up by certain institutions and practices, which might include parochial schools, the allocation of political positions according to sectarian metrics, the primacy afforded to communal law courts over and above other jurisdictions, and a deeply divided media environment » 

But when Musa al-Sadr arrives on the 'Lebanese scene' there are no strong institutions for Shi'a or deeply divided media environement between Shi'a and Sunnis.  At the time Shi'a called themselves Al-Mahroumin (The Deprived).  Shi’a were battered by a border war between  Israel and the Palestinians, forced to move again by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, and left deprived by the state.  Here again, Weiss overlooks the persecution and deprivation factors in the construction of sectarianism,  and to take into account these two factors is to render the distinction between ‘sectarianism from above’ and ‘sectarianism from below’ totally useless because persecutions and deprivations come from above.

And while arguing that sectarianism could be ‘modified or undone’ he admits that once enshrined in institutions,

« It will be difficult, if not impossible, to combat or even defeat sectarianism in all its forms without clear-eyed attention to the array of institutional venues in which sectarianism has been and continues to be produced, nurtured, and sustained. »

And here he warns about Iraq.  

It is ironic that at the end of the interview in which he lays out his argument about Shi’a sectarianism, Weiss warns about Iraq.  Ironic because if there is a case for Shi’a secatarianism continually and exclusively nurtured from above, either through the English mandate, persecutions or, as of 2003, by an imposed ‘democracy’ without civil institutions (or sectarianism from below), it can be found in Iraq.   In fact Iraq might well be a perfect example of how Europe and the West played the sectarian game to finish off the Ottoman empire and how they continue to play it until today to further divide the remnants of this empire.  In the Middle East, it's been sectarianism 'from above' all the way from the fall of the Ottoman empire to the 'Arab Spring'.

By arguing for a sectarianism 'from below’ Weiss is doing nothing more than an a posteriori justification to the current western game of sectarianism in the Middle East and his hypothesis is no more then a fallacy containing its own confirmation leaving out the main factors in the radicalisation of identities around communities and sects; persecutions, deprivations and fear.  The same is true of excessive privileges.  Where Shi'a sectarianism have been provoked by persecutions, other sectarianisms were provoked by excessive privileges given from above. Sectarianism cannot be treated as a phenomenon of one sect only, it plants its roots wherever there is deep inequality elevating barriers between self and other and between communities.

Update:  I found this review of Weiss's book by Alexander Henley There are at least two other reviews of this book and I will try to make them available on this post soon.

P.S.  Upon reading the interview, I was angry that not only Jadaliyya published an interview on a book that is a propaganda for US foreign policy among scholars and university students promoting sectarianism as part of who we are, but that they didn't bother asking the author questions that should have been asked.  Weiss seems also incapable of speaking about the Middle East without the lens and language of sectarianism.

"Are we headed for a Bay of Pigs in Iran?"

Amid the western mainstream media propaganda-like coverage of Iran comes this clairevoyant analysis by Gary Sick.

About 15 years ago, when the United States was first experimenting with wide-ranging sanctions against Iran, an Iranian acquaintance remarked to me, "I certainly hope Iran doesn't become another Cuba."
At that point, the U.S. had imposed a total embargo on Cuba for more than three decades. As he said it, I detected that part of him could not believe that a rich and cultured nation on the other side of the globe could ever be treated like an island dictatorship off the American coast. But I also saw a glint of apprehension in his eyes as he considered for the first time how America's vision of its own national interests could change when viewed through the prism of raw domestic politics.
The cases are not at all the same. Yet today, Cuba has been under U.S. embargo for 50 years, and Iran has passed the 16-year mark. Cuba experienced a U.S.-sponsored invasion before the sanctions began. Iran is still waiting for its Bay of Pigs.
When the Obama administration came into office, talk was all about "smart sanctions." President Obama's foreign policy advisers had seen what indiscriminate sanctions had done to Iraq. Ordinary lives were destroyed and, in the words of a friend whose family was in Iraq, the entire middle class was criminalized, driven to smuggling and black-market dealings just to survive.
The sanctions also created a sympathetic backlash with the Iraqi population and visceral anti-Americanism throughout the world. We were not going to make that mistake again. Instead, we would target sanctions only against the decision-makers and abusers.
Yet today, the sanctions regime in Iran is resembling, more and more, the Iraqi and Cuban cases. We have arrived by a very different route. Instead of controlling all goods going into the country, we have ingeniously found ways of manipulating Iran's banking system. That, together with regional boycotts, has the prospect of blocking a large proportion of Iran's oil sales.
In Iran there has been a run on the currency, food prices are soaring, and every single person is beginning to experience some form of economic pain. That has been the source of considerable public satisfaction in Washington and elsewhere. It is also reminiscent of the early stages of the Iraqi experience. Add to that the serial murders of civilian scientists, cybertampering with Iran's centrifuges, flyovers of U.S. drones, and covert assistance to Iranian separatist groups.
Forget the euphemisms. What would we think if a nation were doing all of this to us? The benign image of sanctions as graduated pressure has been transformed. In reality, it is war with Iran in all but name.
Until now, the threat of escalation has been a tool for promoting sanctions. I remember vividly my own experience in the White House during the original Iranian hostage crisis. At that time, President Carter and his National Security Council staff quite deliberately used the threat of a possible U.S. military action against Iran to encourage Europeans and other allies to adopt sanctions against Iran. The purpose of the sanctions was to persuade Iran to release the American diplomatic hostages. It didn't work.
The threat of military action was, however, very effective in getting allies to take economic actions that were contrary to their own national interests. The thinking was that economic sanctions and boycotts, however disagreeable, were less costly than the outbreak of a military conflict in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
The same tactic was used by the George W. Bush administration to twist the arms of reluctant allies. The presence of such uber-hawks as Vice President Dick Cheney, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and others, as well as the formal security doctrine of the administration to launch pre-emptive military attacks, gave the argument credibility.
Upon the arrival of the Obama administration and its initial policy of engagement with Iran, the role of enforcer shifted to Israel. The first major media storm about an Israeli attack on Iran came in the final months of the Bush administration, when John Bolton predicted without qualification in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that Israel would launch its attack before Bush left office, on the grounds that the incoming administration would be less sympathetic to the idea.
Since then, such predictions have become almost an annual event. Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in September 2010 after extensive interviews with key Israelis, concluded that "there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July," 2011.
That date came and went. Then about a month ago, Israeli commentator Ronen Bergman wrote in The New York Times magazine that "After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."
It is a bit ironic that Bergman spoke to the same individuals who had previously convinced Goldberg that a strike was coming in 2011. Moreover, many of those interviewed openly expressed great doubt about the feasibility and wisdom of any such attack. This included the recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan and the former Israeli chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who said that "the Iranian threat was not as imminent" as some had suggested and that "a military strike would be catastrophic." But the article resonated powerfully, especially in an election year.
Congress has been extremely active in trying to prevent the administration from pursuing negotiations. H.R. 1905 -- the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 -- proposes to ban U.S. diplomats from contact with "any Iranian official who poses a threat to the United States." There is scarcely anyone in Iran who has not chanted "Death to America"; does that constitute a threat and disqualify that person from contact with American diplomats?
More recently, a proposed Sense of the Senate resolution tries to define the terms and acceptable objectives of any United States policy dealing with Iran:
• It rejects "any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat," thus ruling out a policy that the United States used successfully against the Soviet Union.
• It defines the U.S. "red line," where we would consider the use of force, not as Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon, but rather as an Iranian "nuclear weapons capability," which by many calculations Iran already has.
• Finally, it sets as the objective of any negotiations "the full and sustained suspension" of uranium enrichment by Iran. But Iran regards enrichment for peaceful purposes as a right conferred by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that principle is supported by a vast majority of the Iranian population, including even the reformist opposition.
This resolution is not binding, and it does not yet have majority support in the Senate. However, it is apparently intended to be used as a centerpiece in the pro-Israeli AIPAC meeting that started this weekend in Washington. And it comes just at the moment when it appears that negotiations between Tehran and six major powers are likely to resume.
There is an inevitability about sanctions imposed for political reasons. Serious negotiations and compromise are precluded, and the appetite for ever-stronger sanctions grows with the realization that past efforts were a failure. If you set an impossible objective and then begin imposing sanctions to achieve it, the result is always more sanctions, until you arrive at the point where there are no more sanctions and only force remains.
We are approaching that point.

Michael Young in Ottawa: Mixing narratives on Lebanon and the 'Arab Spring'

Summary from video:

Lebanon in 2005 wasn’t probably spark for the Arab spring but there are ingredients that are the same from what we are seeing in other Arab countries now and before 2011.

What happened in 2005?  Iraqi elections, Lebanon’s Beirut Spring.  No one mentions now these two events when speaking about Arab Spring.  But many of the features of these two events are present in the Arab Spring.

In 2005, ten and hundred thousands occupy Martyr Square demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, the resignation of the government and the security apparatus. Syria was a key actor in the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

Syrians pulled out of Lebanon after 29 years of continuous presence.  Lebanon earned this.  It wasn’t a revolution, it was an emancipatory movement.

Those who went to Martyr Square represented all walks of Lebanese society except the Shias.

In investigating this moment Young finds in it 4 major salient issues:

1.     Use of public space

2.     Demand for overhaul of instruments of repression

3.     Role of foreign intervention

4.     Aftermath

These 4 salient issues can be found in current Arab revolutions.

1.     Use of public space: The need to secure a public space with symbolic and geographic relevance, under the eyes of media.  In the case of Lebanon, Martyr Square was an easy location, green line, place of reconciliation and the place where Hariri was buried.  It is next to the old city that Hariri built and to An-Nahar newspaper building.  The public will come to visit the tomb of Hariri.  The security cannot prevent them from doing so.  They assemble after the visit and the place becomes difficult to clear, under the watch of the media.  There was a replication of this in Arab revolutions: Tahrir, Pearl roundabout, different and rival squares in Yemen, a whole city in Libya, Benghazi, where a rival government was established.  In Syria revolts proliferated in many cities but took hold in Hama, Homs and Kurdish area.  Public space occupation becomes a tent city and who occupies a tent city?  Young people.  Idealistic, convinced of their position.  It is in this context that frustration is high.

2.     Instruments of repression:  In 2005, senior security chiefs were removed by the government under popular pressure. It doesn’t happen often that security personnel leave office under pressure from street.  When Jamil el Sayyed  was removed, Young called Qasir to congratulate him because of his editorials against the security apparatus but Qassir was assassinated 15 days later and Young is convinced that the two events are connected, the removal of El-Sayyed and the death of Qassir.

Security apparatuses are difficult to change or remove.   Lebanese protesters in 2005 played the differences and the competition between different tools of repression, security apparatus and army, playing on the nationalism of the Lebanese army who avoided attacking protesters.  The army also was playing it both ways, implementing order but not firing on crowd.   The value of any revolution in the aftermath is by the severity order is imposed.

In Egypt and Tunisia the army didn’t fire on the crowd. 

In Libya, it is the balance of power between two armies that was responsible for order.  No accountable security force in Libya, same in Syria, it is the balance of power.

3.     Foreign intervention (outside intervention).  Lebanon didn’t get its due in 2005.  Chirac was for foreign intervention but Bush came late to it.  The trend in the Arab world was against foreign intervention, not against Hezbollah and Syria.  Lebanon's revolution was seen as Bourgeois revolt (Prada revolution).  Those who could protest were relatively rich and educated.  Liberals in the west were more pro-March 8 because they felt the movement was more popular.  In the Arab world today, foreign intervention is being accepted in Libya, in Syria.  Now it’s OK.  It is not what it used to be for Iraq and Lebanon back in 2005, there is no more opposition in the Arab world to foreign intervention.    We shouldn’t underestimate the role narratives play in the acceptance of foreign intervention.  In the narrative, you have to make people (natives) part of the foreign intervention, mix narratives, and inside one meant for the outside, hence the importance of placards in English, and an outside one meant for the  inside.  Make people on both sides want to be part of it.  In Lebanon narratives played an important role.  Here Young mentions the ad agency role in Lebanon's revolution.  Symbolism and colours created a narrative that was both mobilising on the inside and easy for western audience to understand what was going on.  

Lebanese understood how the west wanted them to be!

There is symbolism in Tahrir, in Benghazi.

One thing that became important in Lebanon is the STL functioning under a Canadian prosecutor.  It is the first time the UN investigates in other countries and it will be replicated.  Young said he was disappointed with the STL, accused Brammertz who he called the second prosecutor of derailing the investigation, but says that there might still be possibilities for other indictments, Syria.

4.     Aftermath.  In Lebanon: parliamentary elections, political acrimony, 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, domestic conflict leading to almost armed conflict.

The aftermath tend to shape the perception of the revolution.  It is a mistake to interpret things with such an absolutism and only from the point of view of the aftermath.  The outcome shouldn’t delegitimize the initial impulse if it fails.   Such delegitimisations go like this: ‘if Islamists win, then revolution is undemocratic’  This is currently the problem at the center of Arab revolts. It is a shame to adopt these interpretations because they fall into Arab dictators argument ‘either them or us’.  ‘I am not religious, but Islamists are legitimate, they’re 60% in Tunisia’.  We shouldn’t assume that if Islamists do well then the initial revolt failed.  Instruments of repression are important in the aftermath.  The aftermath won’t be like the Canadian system but at least could have some accountability.  The accountability of the instruments of repression is a question that the west has to ask (and answer?)

Conclusion of the talk:  there is a recurring pattern between 2005 and 2011.  2011 is the second impulse.  We can find some authenticity in this recurring pattern.  Lebanon in 2005 is as authentic as Iraq in 2005 as Tahrir in 2011.

Authenticity bestowed from outside, the tag of inauthenticity for Lebanon in 2005 was made by Arab world.

There are 20' questions at the end of the video.  Questions and answers are interesting.