Obama and the Iraqi Gordian Knot

The Web of Illusion

By MICHAEL BRENNER

We all are acutely aware that Washington is in a serious jam because of the mounting threat to the Baghdad regime amidst signs of military and political unraveling. The United States is reaping the whirlwind from its twelve years of reckless “War On Terror” in the Middle East. The disastrous Iraqi invasion/intervention is the direct cause. Strategically incoherent and disjointed American actions elsewhere are also essential parts of the story. For there has been no systemic logic guiding policies from place to place, from issue to issue. Yet the intersection and overlap of developments are the hallmark of the region’s politics. In short, we have not been up to the task intellectually or diplomatically. Moreover, our leaders have indulged their own parochial interests and the escapist mentality of the public by refusing to face squarely either the error of our ways or the contradictory nature of our objectives.

Today, we are confounded by unanticipated events that leave us uncomprehending and at a loss as what to do. President Obama’s vague remarks issued daily only confirm the impression of disorientation. The nub of the problem is that the United States has multiple enemies and faces multiple threats to its interests in the Middle East. Each possible course of action for dealing with one of them has implications for the others. Moreover, any policy remedy for problem ‘A’ is counter indicated for problem ‘B’ or ‘C.’ Those contradictions have become manifest. Aid the Syrian opposition in order to unseat President Assad in Syria (problem ‘A’) and you cannot avoid strengthening radical jihadi groups (problem ‘B’) who are fighting Assad’s regime. Even if aid is funneled to more secular or moderate Islamist elements, the outcome will be to the advantage of the radical jihadis (they may also seize the arms that you send). Yet, acceding to a Syrian agreement that reserves a continuing place for the Assad forces would add to the status and prestige of its ally Iran (problem ‘C’). That reorientation would have the further adverse effect of deepening the alienation of Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf principalities by strengthening their arch enemy, Iran, and its partners (Assad and Hezbullah). To assuage the Saudis et al, Washington has reaffirmed its commitment to maintain a strong military presence in the Gulf. But the Obama administration’s repeated declarations that the era of American wars in the Middle East is over (made partly with an eye on American public opinion) trails doubts as to the credibility of those stated commitments.

As to Iran, Washington is concentrating on hammering out a nuclear deal with Tehran that meets its stringent terms for denying the IRI a nuclear weapons potential now or in the future. It assiduously has declined to put on the table other possible aspects of a wider political relationship with Iran – beyond a gradual lifting of economic sanctions and a deliberate normalization of diplomatic relations. This bifurcation of the approach toward Iran has two sources. One is a desire not to distress the House of Saud by feeding suspicions that Washington may abandon them for a new partner in the region. The second is the entrenched conviction in the Obama administration that the current Iranian leadership will remain hostile to the United States. That means that it should be treated warily as an unfriendly power if not an enemy.

Now there is the unraveling of Iraq. The appearance of ISIS (an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia that now has broken with the original al-Qaeda leadership) as a powerful force in both Syria and Iraq has exacerbated uncertainty and aggravated threats. Dedicated to spreading an ultra doctrine of anti-Western and anti-secular salafism, it is the embodiment of America’s foremost perceived threat: Islamic terrorism. If Washington prioritizes that threat, and that enemy, every other interest should be subordinate to it. Does that imply, though, joining forces with ISIS’ enemies in accord with the classic realist proposition that my enemy’s enemy is my friend (or ally)? The shi’ite dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad does not pose a direct problem in this respect insofar as it is a creature of the American occupation and Washington is committed to defend it as the legitimate authority in Iraq. However, Maliki is a tacit member of the political coalition that includes Iran, Assad in Syria, and Hezbullah. His oppression of Iraq’s sunnis has cast him as one of the evil-doers in the minds of the salafist groups and as an opponent by the Saudis. As the contests across the region take on darker and darker tones of an all-out sectarian war, the United States finds itself in a position whereby any expression of support for a given party is taken as a sign that it is choosing sides. Consequently, coming to Maliki’s aid – and more surely seeking an accommodation with Assad in Syria costs the US among most Sunnis. Military action directed at the ISIS, as is under consideration by the White House, would infuriate Sunni public opinion – especially in Iraq – and thereby raise the odds against some sort of modus vivendi being reached among the Iraqi sectarian factions. Movement in that direction, though, is a stated precondition for the provision of military assistance.

The Sunni tribes of Anbar and Diyala have struggled with their own challenge of prioritizing multiple threats. Since 2003, they have fought three enemies in overlapping phases: the occupying American forces, al-Qaeda militants, and the oppressive Shi’ite government in Baghdad. Their “preferred enemy” was the United States between 2003 and 2006-07. At the time of the shawah movement from 2007–2010 when they entered into a tacit coalition with the United States (facilitated by heavy cash payments) to counter the al-Qaeda militants’ encroachment on their tribal authority, and most recently the Maliki regime that reneged on premises to continue the arrangement and instead systematically sought to reduce the Sunnis to second class status. Today, they largely have abandoned the government – either entering into tactical alliances with ISIS or remaining neutral.

Then there is Iran. Circumstances have produced a convergence of the primary American interest (suppressing the violent jihadists) and the primary Iranian interest (securing their theocracy against threats from a coalition of Sunni forces). Revolutionary Guard officers already have visited Baghdad to talk about contingency plans for the provision of direct military existence to the Maliki government – although there is no evidence to support rumors of elite Iranian units (Quds battalions) crossing the border to stem the ISIS offensive. Objectively speaking, conditions point to some form of tacit collaboration between Tehran and Washington – politically and perhaps militarily on the ground in Iraq. However, that suggests a diplomatic relationship which not only does not exist but which Washington has to date refused to contemplate even in the abstract. Of course, the Iranian leadership confronts the same contradictions as it contemplates the ominous situation in Iraq. It, too, must prioritize interests and make painful trade-offs in a situation where it perceives multiple enemies and multiple threats.*

The same could be said for the House of Saud. They invested heavily in the Islamist opposition to Assad. They funded and supplied al-Nasr among other groups. That behavior conforms to a long-standing policy of promoting Islamic fundamentalism so as to secure its legitimation from any Islamist elements that might seek to undermine their legitimacy – in Saudi Arabia and in the Islamic world. No enemies on the fundamentalist end of the Islamist continuum. They persevered in that strategy even when Osama bin-Laden’s al-Qaeda emerged as a mortal threat from the Saudi backed mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The malignant mutation in Syria and now Iraq endangers them. Yet they have no surrogate in the game this time to represent their interests. The US? Maliki? Assad? The Iranians? Life is tough all over.

Recently, there have been slight signs that the Saudi leadership has recoiled from its over-commitment in Syria and, indeed, is giving some thought to exploring a modus vivendi with Tehran. Logically, that could represent a “third way” between the confrontation stance it has followed (and urged on Washington) and waiting in dread to see whether a possible US-Iran partial reconciliation might impend. Such an agonizing strategic reappraisal is even harder for the Saudis than for American leaders.

One can argue that objective circumstances have pointed to this line of thinking as serving the best interests of all parties for some years now. Washington itself could have reached this conclusion and invested far more intellectual and diplomatic energy in encouraging the Saudis to reconceptualize their strategic perspective accordingly. Rather, we have concentrated on gestures to assuage Saudi fears. One reason, of course, is that our urging a modus vivendi depended on our own readiness also to pursue a more cordial relationship with the IRI which domestic political circumstances and impoverished strategic thinking in the Obama administration militated against. In addition, we never seem to have understood how powerful the sectarian/historical dimension of the Saudi led Sunni vs Persian led Shi’ite sectarian rivalry is in reinforcing the power competition. By siding with the Saudis et al on the latter, we were encouraging indirectly the former. Iraq redux insofar as the basics of the Islamic world are concerned.

We should be cautious about ascribing too much to the American role in inflecting Saudi attitudes – if in fact a meaningful shift has occurred, which we certainly don’t know for sure. Yes, the Saudi have suffered a prolonged bout of nerves over the past three years. That makes them sensitive to the atmospherics. In truth, though, nothing of consequence has changed in American policy over this period. We never were ready to bomb Iran back to the Neolithic Age because the Saudis ran out of valium; and we never were inclined to lower markedly either our assessment of interest or risk in the region. That “pivot” business was just sloganeering as every knowledgeable observer knew from the moment it was broached by the White House/State public relations machines.

Faced with this paradoxical dilemma, the United States has one advantage compared to the regional players. It has far greater latitude in defining and weighing its stakes. There are no vital American interests at stake – most certainly not the country’s security and regime stability. Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been grounded on an expansive conception of national interest. In the post-Cold War era, it has been an integral, important part of a grand strategy that aimed at the fostering of a sort of benign hegemony. That is to say, a set of institutions and arrangements that embraced most of the world, protected against any rogue forces by overwhelming American military force (as expressed in “full spectrum dominance.”) In the Middle East, our goals expanded correspondingly: isolate and contain both Iraq and Iran, secure Israel by weaving a web of mutually interested conservative regimes that included Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and – later – Fatah’s tame Palestinian Authority itself. Turkey was a tacit member.

In the wake of 9/11, goals became more audacious: suppress radical jihadist Islam everywhere, crush Saddam’s Iraq, promote democracy (except in the Gulf states) with a liberated Iraq serving as the pole of attraction, coerce of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and encourage the forces of globalization to do their benign work. Of course, the plan was full of contradictions from Day One. Its keystone, a remade Iraq, was pure fancy whose pursuit has produced catastrophic waves of instability. Yet, despite tactical defeats and manifestly noncompliant local players, Washington under two successive presidents has refused to revise its strategy’s underlying premise. Above all, the practical objectives of securing Israel and maintaining access to the region’s energy resources, were overlaid with grander ambitions. The War On Terror itself quickly was transformed from an intelligence cum police operation into an all-embracing program to remake the Islamic world so as to reduce future threats of that kind to zero. A national culture that had little tolerance for uncertainty had difficulty abiding anything less. A native optimism elided the obvious obstacles. And a political leadership whose hallmarks were evasion of both the world’s hard truths and honesty at home shed inhibition about reaching for the impossible.

A sober recognition of the limitations on the extent to which the United States can influence the outcomes of internal politics should be a central element in our foreign policy thinking. The overwhelming evidence of the past twelve years highlights the heavy penalties that the United States pays by acting on the sanguine belief that it is within our power to shape the affairs of other societies.

Now the web of illusion has been shredded. So the prime requisite for the grueling task of figuring out the least costly and least dangerous ways to cope with current realities is to admit the fatal flaws of past thinking and, thereby, to clear the ground for a modest strategic construction that conforms to a realistic assessment of American interests based on a sober appreciation of regional realities. To move forward with deliberation, America’s political class first should take an unsparing look backwards and then look in the mirror. This self exorcism is long overdue.

*In Washington’s perspective, the absolute security priority in the Middle East is eliminating any risk of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Reports indicate that the prevailing line of thinking within the White House is that the United States must achieve what amounts to a hermetically sealed containment vessel around all Iranian facilities that could play any role, now or in the foreseeable future, in a weapons program. That includes all projects dealing with systems that conceivably could carry a nuclear arm even if designed for conventional explosives. In thereby tightening the screws, Obama may well be sounding the death knell for these negotiations and foreclosing a possible reconfiguration of security arrangements in the Gulf.

That is why it is imperative that President Obama shake off his typical diffidence and seize control of the issue directly. He must resist the pressure to take an unbending stance, and he must do so by forcefully arguing the case for an accord that serves American interests along with Iranian ones – and that thereby serves the cause of stability in a highly flammable Middle East. Unless he does so, he likely will find himself back in the box where he placed himself before the Rouhani initiative opened a diplomatic path out of it. For were the talks to fail, he would be hoisted on the petard of his own rhetoric that has painted the Iranians in vivid colors as an ominous threat while keeping ostentatiously on the table the military option. That is the position he had been pushed into by his long deference to advisers, Israel and the Congressional hawks for whom co-existence with the IRI is not a goal.

Michael Brenner is a Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

America to Watch Entanglement in Iraq’s Bloody Saga

Fraternalsite

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, Cyrano’s Journal Today

“We are waging war on terrorism even as we embody terrorism. No wonder we seem sometimes to be at war with ourselves, and have been for most of the 21st century….. No American under 12 Has Lived in a Country at Peace… whatever the U.S. government knows, or thinks it knows, is not widely shared with most of its citizens….. The American Enemies List Is Decided Anonymously and Secretly.” (William Boardman “Is America a country at war with an Illusion,” Information Clearing House: 8/19/2013.)

Late Dr. Ali Shariati (the persuasive intellectual force of Iran’s Islamic revolution), once noted: “when people live in darkness, they lose sense of direction.” The 21st century knowledge-based information age tells a lot about how some of the global politicians and sadistic leaders tend to ignore the lessons of history. The darkness is returning to Baghdad. In March 2003, America waged a bloody war against Iraq under a false pretext of having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ All impartial accounts of the decade-long war point out to the American-led insanity to have murdered approximately 3 million innocent people in Iraq and destroyed countless human habitats and the hub of one of the ancient human civilizations. American occupation and war strategy built sectarian divides and barriers to maintain law and order. It helped the US military strategists to ensure the operational capability of US contractors to manage the constant flow of precious oil exports without Iraqi presence and control.

George W. Bush was keen to see Iraq remaking the dollar as the only exchange currency for oil exports and that all the major oil businesses were taken over by the US contractors including of his own family and the reconstruction work by Halliburton under Dick Cheney-the VP. According to the Project for the New American Century – PNAC, it is clear that George W. Bush administration had no other interests to propagate human rights, freedom or democracy in that part of the troubled world. It was a ‘mission accomplished’ by occupation. Iraq continued to be a place of bloody sectarian encounters, political and economic instability and missing legitimate political governance since that invasion of the few monsters of history. Iraq’s one-sided Shiite governance by Nour Al-Malki regime is under threat of being replaced by a new popular movement of the ISIS groups led by Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi after their sudden success in capturing several major towns in Iraq.

Again this weekend, American psyche for war is gearing up to review all the possibilities to reclaim insanity and discard rationality. President Obama faces multiple problems both at home and abroad. American politics is a game of pretensions, money, big talks and people who act fist and think later. This is how an estimated of 5,000 American soldiers were killed in Iraq and more than 30,000 wounded. The real figures could be many times more. Nobody can explain to justify if all the human lives were lost for any rational cause to preserve human dignity, freedom, democracy and justice in Iraq. Recently, an international tribunal has indicted George W. Bush and Tony Blair (PM of Britain) with war crimes committed in Iraq. The ICC at The Hague is currently pursuing an investigation against Britain of war crimes in Iraq. This could well involve the US crimes against the people of Iraq too.

Post 9/11, the American Congress authorized the President to use military force against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attack and those countries who harbored those individuals. That’s it, that’s the only legal authorization to use of military force available to the US President. Saddam Hussain or Iraq was not listed in the US charge sheet of the 9/11 attacks. At the outset, it was a PNAC’s per-planned scheme of things to wage wars and to occupy the Middle East oil enriched region for the future strategic priorities and security of the US. The then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the US invasion as “illegal war.”

Glenn Greenwald (IS Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream of Mass Regime Change in Muslim World?, Democracy Now: 11/28/2011.), the constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger (Salon.com) points out the rationale of crossing over the firing lines:

“What we’re doing in essence is not only going way beyond what we were supposed to be doing when the Congress authorized military force, but what we’re really doing is we’re constantly manufacturing the causes of our war. Everywhere we go, every time we kill Pakistani troops or kill children in Yemen or in Afghanistan, we’re generating more and more anti-American sentiment and violence, and therefore, guaranteeing we will always have more people to fight.”

Glen Greenwald recalls having heard General Wesley Clark (speech he gave in 2007 to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco):

“in which he recounted meetings that he had at the Pentagon with people with whom he had close relationships in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he talked about how, as he had done before, that he was told within a week or two after 9/11 that the Pentagon intended to attack Iraq, even though no one thought that they were involved in the 9/11 attack.”

This week, Iraq appears to be on the brink of political disintegration. The ISIS groups have seized control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, Tikrit – former dictator Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and Dhuliya which is about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. The ISIS fighters are pushing forward to Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds have seized control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk. The ISIS groups now control the area that stretches from the eastern edge of Aleppo, Syria, to Fallujah in western Iraq and the northern city of Mosul. The sudden advance and military success of the ISIS attacks has surprised the military experts across the globe. The ISIS advance has caused an unthinkable humanitarian catastrophe. Reportedly, five hundred thousand people have left Mosul to go into Kurdistan. Save the Children reports that, “We are witnessing one of the largest and swiftest mass movements of people in the world in recent memory.” The political and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis must be analyzed in a non-partisan manner without prejudice and to ensure the best interests, restoration of peace and safety of the people of Iraq as whole.

What happened across Iraq preceding to the 2003 American invasion is no coincident but reactionary outbursts of vengeful killings and sectarian atrocities watched indifferently by all the global war players. Iraq needs people of new ideas to cope with multiple scopes of the political and humanitarian crises to seek workable solutions away from the entrenched political box of the few Shiite egoistic administrators. This has not happened and will not come about as long Nour Al-Mallki is heading the secluded government of self-appointed cronies. President Obama has hinted out too in yesterday’s statement that Iraq must make progress in finding political solutions and work on building trust of the Sunni component of the Iraqi political landscape. American leadership jumping into a prevalent chaotic and strategically volatile situation will not sound a rational decision. Most of the US sponsored oil contractors have already fled and taken planes out of Iraq and there are no American troops stationed in Iraq to fight against the ISIS. Supposedly, if there were US marines in Iraq, how could they have rescued the endangered Al-Maliki regime from total collapse?

While media reports indicate that Iran’s spiritual leaders are talking of the “Quds Guards” to be dispatched to help the Iraqi Shiite regime, it will not be in the interest of Iran or the Muslim world to intervene based on any sectarian consideration. Whether Sunni and Shiite followers of Islam, they are Muslim, and there is no religious basis to fight or to kill one another. What would they be fighting for except to protect an illegitimate political regime? Shrines at Karbala and Najf are historically respectable places to both Shiite and Sunni sects. There should be no foreign interference from any corner to enflame the already worst human catastrophic situations affecting the public life across Iraq. Surely, Iraq does not another influx of unwelcome American warriors to reignite the old wounds, fear and hatred. The moral is, be it America, Iran, Brits, Saudis or Kuwaitis or any outside nations, they must refrain from jumping into fire and inflicting more cruel pains and anguish to the Iraqi masses.

If President Obama decides to order air strikes and other secretive security forces measures to support the PM Nour-Al-Maliki failing client regime, it could raise multiple reactionary problems to deal with the Muslim world. At this stage, President Obama needs to analyze critically his weakness and strength as a leader in coping with the global issues. America is not in a moral and political strength to impose its hegemony on others. He has already flunked in dealing with Syrian war problem, normalization with Iran and restoration of sovereignty of Ukraine. Robert Pape, Professor, University of Chicago’s, and author of the Dying to Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism(2005) points out the alarmingly failing record of the US war strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American hegemony.”

One major factor encouraging the global powers to go freely for warmongering and being unchallenged out of their own hemisphere to far fetched lands and commit massacres and destroy human habitats, is the obvious corrupt system of global peace and security operated by the UNO. It is nothing more than a debating club overwhelmed by the few – the five obsolete global powers at the UN Security Council to claim legitimacy to rule the nations of the world. If the UNO could be reformed and made responsible to the people of the globe, it could certainly play an effective role in global peace and security.

What is the cure to raging indifference and cruelty to the interests of the people of the Iraq, United States and for that matter to the whole of the humanity?

The 21st century new-age complex political, economic, social and strategic challenges and the encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and NEW Visions for change, conflict management and participatory peaceful future-making. But change and conflict resolution and new visions will not grow out of the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of the few insane and egoistic leaders [issuing from and embedded in the carapace of world capitalism). Be it the Obama, Bush, Blair or Nour Al-Maliki, none have the understanding of contemporary societal peace or understanding of human interests seeking peaceful co-existence in a God-given splendid and living Universe. Once in power, they engage to assert one-way self-serving polices and practices in complete disregard of the interests of the people and their sense of peace, solidarity and happiness. To challenge the deafening silence of the US, Europeans, Russian, and of the authoritarian rulers of the Arab Middle East for global peace and security, the humanity must find ways and means to look beyond the obvious and troublesome horizons dominated by the few warlords and continued to be plagued with massacres, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, destruction of the habitats and natural environment as if there were no rational being and people of reason populating the God’s created splendid and living Universe. The informed and mature global community looks towards to those thinkers, educated and honest proactive leaders enriched with coherent unity of moral, spiritual, intellectual and physical visions and abilities to be instrumental to rescue the mankind from the planned encroachment of the few global warlords.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012.

Mass Executions Push Iraq Towards Sectarian War

US Lines Up Iran Talks to Halt ISIS

This image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which was provided by AP and has not been verified by NBC News, appears to show militants from the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) leading captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes to an open field moments before shooting them in Tikrit, Iraq. The caption on this image, in Arabic, said, "They walking to death by their foot."

By PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

Iraq is close to all-out sectarian war as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) massacres dozens of Iraqi soldiers in revenge for the loss of one of its commanders, and government supporters in Baghdad warn that the spread of fighting to the capital could provoke mass killings of the Sunni minority there.

One unverified statement from Isis militants on Twitter says that it has executed 1,700 prisoners. Pictures show killings at half a dozen places. Isis has posted pictures that appear to show prisoners being loaded on to flatbed trucks by masked gunmen and later forced to lie face down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs.

In the midst of all this pandemonium it should not be forgotten that it was the United States in tacit alliance with the Saudis and other regional despots that stirred up the hornet’s nest in the Middle East, and all this horrible suffering should be laid at Washington’s door as inevitable fruit of its imperialism.

Final pictures show the blood-covered bodies of captive soldiers, probably Shia, who make up much of the rank-and-file of the Iraqi army. Captions say the massacre was in revenge for the death of an Isis commander, Abdul-Rahman al-Beilawy, whose killing was reported just before Isis’s surprise offensive last week that swept through northern Iraq, capturing the Sunni strongholds of Mosul and Tikrit.

Meanwhile, the US government was considering direct talks with Iran to discuss options for halting the Isis advance, an official from the Obama administration said.

This image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which was provided by AP and has not been verified by NBC News, appears to show militants from the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) leading away captured Iraqi soldiers dressed in plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq.

The two countries were already scheduled to meet with other world powers to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme in Vienna this week, and the US deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns will now travel to take part in those talks.

President Barack Obama continues to weigh up options for international intervention in Iraq, and has now deployed three warships to the Persian Gulf, but on Sunday the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said: “We are probably going to need [Iran’s] help to hold Baghdad.”

Early on Monday the mayor of the northern town of Tal Afar said it had become the latest landmark settlement to fall to Sunni militants.

Abdulal Abdoul told reporters his town of some 200,000 people, 260 miles (420 kilometres) northwest of Baghdad, was taken just before dawn.

Shia militiamen are pouring out of Baghdad to establish a new battle line 60 or 70 miles north of the capital. Demography is beginning to count against Isis as its fighters enter mixed provinces such as Diyala, where there are Shia and Kurds as well as Sunni.

In Mosul, from where 500,000 refugees first fled, the Sunni are returning to the city. Isis ordered traders to cut the price of fuel and foodstuffs, but religious and ethnic minorities are too terrified to return.

Sectarian strife looms as Shia join up to fight Isis to go home. “People in Baghdad are frightened about what the coming days will bring,” said one resident, but added that they were “used to being frightened by coming events”.

Baghdadis have been stocking up on food and fuel in case the capital is besieged. There is no sound of shooting in the city, though searches at checkpoints are more intense than previously and three out of four of the entrances to the Green Zone are closed.

Isis may be the shock troops in the fighting but their swift military success and the disintegration of four Iraqi army divisions have provoked a general Sunni uprising. At least seven or eight militant Sunni factions are involved, many led by former Baathists and officers from Saddam Hussein’s security services. But the most important factor working in favour of Isis is the sense among Iraq’s five or six million Sunni that the end of their oppression is at hand.

“The Shia in Iraq see what is happening not as the Sunni reacting justifiably against the government oppressing them but as an attempt to re-establish the old Sunni-dominated-type government,” said one observer in the capital. On both the Shia and Sunni sides the factors are accumulating for a full-scale bloody sectarian confrontation.

The surge of young Shia men into militias was touched off by the appeal of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered Shia cleric, for people to join militias. “The street is boiling,” said the observer.

Some 1,000 volunteers have left the holy city of Kerbala for Samarra which is on the front line, being the site of the al-Askari mosque, one of the holiest Shia shrines in a city where the majority is Sunni.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a Shia militia force close to the Iranians, is said to have recaptured the town of Muqdadiyah in Diyala and Dulu’iyah further west towards Samarra.

A problem in Iraq is that the country’s sectarian divisions are at their worst in areas where there are mixed populations: the country could not be partitioned without a great deal of bloodshed, as occurred in India at the time of independence.

The Sunni-Shia civil war of 2006-07 was centred on Baghdad and eliminated most mixed neighbourhoods, leaving those Sunni who had not already fled holding out in enclaves mostly in the west of the capital.

A cadre of advisers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is believed to be putting together a new military force drawn from the army and militias. The regular army command has been discredited by the spectacular failure of the last 10 days.

The involvement of Shia militia fighters at the front increases the likelihood of mass killings of Sunni. This had started to happen even before the present offensive in Diyala province and at Iskandariya, south-east of Baghdad, where militants were said to be building car and truck bombs and where the Shia militiamen are said by witnesses to have adopted a “scorched-earth policy”.

Iraq has effectively broken up as the Kurds take advantage of the collapse of the regular army in the north to take over Kirkuk, northern Diyala and the Nineveh plateau.

The Kurds have long claimed these territories, saying they had been ethnically cleansed from there under Saddam Hussein. Many of these areas are rich in oil.

The government in Baghdad, though vowing to return to Mosul, has a weakened hand to play. Its military assets have turned out to be much less effective than even its most severe critics imagined.

If there is going to be a counter-attack it will have to come soon but there is no sign of it yet.

Isis has taken some of the tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment to Syria which might indicate that it doesn’t want to use it in Iraq.

But as a military force, it has recently depended on quick probing attacks and forays using guerrilla tactics, so its need for heavy weaponry may not be high.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.

Saudis biggest funders of reactionary jihadists?

The Latest Regional Slugfest

On to Baghdad

Ryadh is the most likely paymaster for the ISIL fighters, and Washington knows it.

By MIKE WHITNEY, Counterpunch

While President Barack Obama’s top political and military advisers deliberate on how best to address the growing crisis in Iraq, a small army of battle-hardened Islamic extremists, volunteers and ex-Baathists have swept to within 50 miles of Baghdad threatening to seize the Capital, topple the government of President Nouri al-Maliki and ignite another firestorm of sectarian violence. Although Obama has characterized the bloody onslaught as an “emergency situation” requiring a prompt response, he has not yet committed to particular course of action. Meanwhile, the increasingly-anxious residents of Baghdad are hurriedly stocking up on food and bottled water figuring that another war could be just hours away.

Even now, little is known about the shadowy group of Sunni radicals who call themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). What is known, however, is that they are an extremely proficient military force that can strike with lightening speed, dispatch their better-equipped adversaries effortlessly, and enlist the support of the local people to join their ranks. ISIS could never have captured a city the size of Mosul unless the bulk of the population saw them as liberators not occupiers. It’s clear that al-Maliki has failed to win the hearts and minds of the people in the Sunni heartland where he is seen as a dispassionate tyrant who rules with an iron fist. Still, none of this explains why the ISIS has emerged from obscurity just recently or what their real objectives are. Here’s a clip from the Alakhbar News that helps answer that question:

“A lot of theories are being bandied about…The most logical analysis leans in two directions that meet at some point. The first argues that ISIS… sensed a US-Iranian understanding on the horizon and the signs of a regional front emerging to liquidate the takfiri Islamist movement including ISIS. The seeds of this front emerged first in Syria, and its signs were detectable in Iraq given the talk about military preparations and arms deals to regain state control over al-Anbar province. All this prompted ISIS to wage a preemptive strike to fortify its positions and prepare for the crushing battle expected to come.

The second direction alludes to an operation meant to lure ISIS into a trap similar to what the United States did with Saddam Hussein before he invaded Kuwait in order to rally regional support to eliminate him…..The international reaction to the fall of Mosul reinforces the second analysis. ” (Theories behind the ISIS takeover of Iraqi province, al-Akakhbar)

So, is ISIS march on Baghdad a preemptive strike designed to undermine a US-Iranian alliance that would sabotage their political future or has the disparate militia been lured into a trap? It is impossible to say at the present time, but at least one veteran journalist thinks he knows where the groups funding comes from. Here’s a short excerpt from an article by Robert Fisk with the revealingly title “Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia”:

“So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama.

From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles…

Remember that the Americans captured and recaptured Mosul to crush the power of Islamist fighters. They fought for Fallujah twice. And both cities have now been lost again to the Islamists. The armies of Bush and Blair have long gone home, declaring victory.

Under Obama, Saudi Arabia will continue to be treated as a friendly “moderate” in the Arab world, even though its royal family is founded upon the Wahhabist convictions of the Sunni Islamists in Syria and Iraq – and even though millions of its dollars are arming those same fighters. Thus does Saudi power both feed the monster in the deserts of Syria and Iraq and cozy up to the Western powers that protect it.” (Iraq crisis: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia, Belfast Telegraph)

Fisk is not alone in pinning the blame on Saudi Arabia. There’s also this from Al-Thawra news which is Syrian state media:

“Terrorism is spreading in front of the eyes of the western world… and alongside it are the fingers of Saudi Arabia, providing money and arms…In the events in Iraq and the escalating terrorist campaign, no Western country is unaware of the role Saudi is playing in supporting terrorism and funding and arming different fronts and battles, both inside and outside Iraq and Syria.

The emergence of these organizations is not the result of a vacuum but rather long and clear support for terrorism… which the Gulf has dedicated its finances to expanding.” (These actions were taken) “with Western knowledge and in most cases clear and explicit orders.” (Saudi behind ISIS onslaught in Iraq: Syrian state media, Alakhbar)

While neither Fisk nor al-Thawra provide any proof of their claims, we suspect that when the money-trail is finally uncovered, the evidence will once again point to Riyadh, the Capital of global terrorism. Here’s more from Alakhbar:

“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki addressed his military officers on TV in light of security reports stating that the attackers are Baathists affiliated with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri – who was vice president under Saddam – as well as officers from the former Iraqi army and Fedayeen Saddam. According to the reports, more than 40 officers who had served in Saddam Hussein’s army conspired with the attackers. There are tales of betrayal involving senior military leaders including General Abboud Qanbar, Lieutenant General Ali Ghaidan and General Mahdi al-Ghazzawi, all members of the former army.” (ISIS “success” facilitated by betrayal, Iraqi government inadequacies, Alakhbar)

So the ISIS is not just a group of disgruntled jihadis after all. The ranks of full of ex-Baathists and professional military who are ready for a winner-take-all, no-holds-barred clash in Baghdad.

And what does al-Maliki intend to do to defend the capital from this rampaging horde of highly-motivated, combat-tested Sunni troopers?

He plans to launch an enlistment campaign to organize a “popular army” similar to the National Defense Forces in Syria.

Got that? The ISIS militia is just a few miles from Baghdad and al-Maliki thinks he’s going to whip up an army in the next couple hours that will repel them.

Good luck with that, Mr President.

Of course, many people feel that Obama and Co. are just pretending to be surprised at the sudden turn of events; that they actually knew something like this was brewing all along but decided to look the other way figuring that the ISIS’s aggression would help to implement their larger regional strategy to disempower Arab-controlled nation-states by erasing existing borders and creating a “soft partition” that would strengthen US-Israeli hegemony making it easier to repress the indigenous population and pilfer their resources. This is from an article by Al Hayat correspondent, Raghida Dergham:

“While ISIS, with its haphazardness, destructive ideology, and appalling ignorance, spreads from Deir al-Zour to the borders of Kurdistan, achieving its wretched victories, regional and international powers are rushing to take advantage of the situation to further their interests…

All trans-border armies think themselves as makers of a new history by overturning Sykes-Picot. These are the armies of destroying and abolishing borders. As it seems, no one is standing in their way no matter how much NATO powers pretend to be panicked and no matter how many concerned statements the United Nations make. What is frightening is that there are international forces supporting mobile radical armies in their bid to cross borders, to use them in wars of attrition against traditional armies, with a view to partition existing countries in the Arab region.

ISIS not the response to the plans to fragment the Arab region and strengthen Iranian hegemony but is actually an instrument in those plans, whether ISIS is aware of this or naïvely oblivious to the fact. ISIS is destroying the Arabs and undermining Sunni moderates, because it is part of a sinister project to which it was driven voluntarily or by coincidence. All those extending help to ISIS and similar groups like al-Nusra Front, and other Salafist or Wahhabi militias, are directly contributing to the collapse of Syria and Iraq, no matter how much they think they are making history.

Iraq today is on the brink of collapsing into civil war and partition, if not fragmentation. No one will come out victorious in the coming Iraq war.” (ISIS ‘Achievements’ in Iraq and Syria a Gift to the Iranian Negotiator?, Raghida Dergham, Huffington Post)

The author clearly believes that Iran is a big player in these regional games of power politics, but as she concedes later in the article: “the United States is not innocent of these plans. In the minds of many, it is the side that manufactures and encourages extremism, be it Sunni or Shiite, to divide the Arab region and allow Iran to dominate it, with Israeli collusion.”

Isn’t this what’s really going on? While outside observers may not know the particular details, they can assume with some confidence that foreign powerbrokers — Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US — are all deeply involved and are looking for ways to shape the outcome. All four of these countries are up to their axels in the bloody game of geopolitics, and are using Iraq as a staging ground for the own hegemonic ambitions.

Although we have no idea what will happen in the next few weeks, we know who the losers will be in this latest regional slugfest, the Iraqi people.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

CIA rendition jet was waiting in Europe to SNATCH SNOWDEN

Unmarked Gulfstream tracked as it passed above UK

By Duncan Campbell, 13 Jun 2014, The Register (UK)

As the whistleblowing NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden made his dramatic escape to Russia a year ago, a secret US government jet – previously employed in CIA “rendition” flights on which terror suspects disappeared into invisible “black” imprisonment – flew into Europe in a bid to spirit him back to America, the Register can reveal.

Mr Snowden, your ride is waiting. Click here for full size.

On the evening of 24 June 2013, as Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong intending to fly on to Cuba, an unmarked Gulfstream V business jet – tail number N977GA – took off from a quiet commercial airport 30 miles from Washington DC. Manassas Regional Airport discreetly offers its clients “the personal accommodations and amenities you can’t find at commercial airports”.

Early next morning, N977GA was detected heading east over Scotland at the unusually high altitude of 45,000 feet. It had not filed a flight plan, and was flying above the level at which air traffic control reporting is mandatory.

“The plane showed up on our system at 5:20 on 25 June,” according to our source, a member of an internet aircraft-tracking network run by enthusiasts in the UK. “We knew the reputation of this aircraft and what it had done in the past.”

N977GA was not reporting its progress to air-traffic controllers, and thus it would normally have been necessary to use a massive commercial or military radar installation to follow its path. But, even if pilots have turned off automated location data feeds, ordinary enthusiasts equipped with nothing more than suitable radio receivers connected to the internet can measure differences in the time at which an aircraft’s radar transponder signal reaches locations on the ground. Using the technique of multilateration, this information is sufficient to calculate the transponder’s position and so track the aircraft. (The ACMS/ACARS data feeds which automatically report an aircraft’s position are a separate system from the transponder which responds to air-traffic radar pulses. They too can be picked up by receivers on the ground beneath, if they are activated.)

Several such online tracking networks are active in the UK, using this and other sources of information: they include www.flightradar24.com, www.planefinder.net, Planeplotter (www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm) and www.radarvirtuel.com. UK-based Planeplotter is one of the more sophisticated of these global “virtual radar” systems. It boasts 2,000 members with receivers hooked up to the internet.

The online tracking information reveals that the Gulfstream did not make it all the way to Moscow, but set down and waited at Copenhagen Airport.

Snowden might have found himself sitting in the same seat as Abu Hamza

At the time, Washington was demanding that Moscow should hand over the fleeing Snowden into US custody.

“We expect the Russian government to look at all options available to expel Mr Snowden back to the US to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged,” a National Security Council spokeswoman told reporters. The US also urged countries in the “Western Hemisphere” not to let him in.

The “black” jet is actually white.

The Kremlin’s response, however, was a big “nyet”. Russia’s Interfax News quoted government sources as saying:

“Snowden has not committed any crimes on Russian territory … Russian law-enforcement agencies have received no instructions through Interpol to detain him. So we have no grounds.”

N977GA has a chequered history. It was originally ordered by the US Air Force for use as a general’s flying gin-palace. But then, shortly after 9/11, it lost its military livery and acquired civilian registration as N596GA. Under that designation it was employed in CIA “renditions” – or kidnappings. In 2011, the “black” jet switched roles again, transferring from the CIA’s contractor to use instead by the Department of Justice (DoJ).

With its new tail number N977GA the plane became part of the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation Systems (JPATS), operated by US Marshals. On perhaps its best-known mission, the jet flew a team of marshals into the UK on 5 October 2012 to collect radical cleric Abu Hamza after the USA won an extradition order against him.

Only Vladimir Putin’s intransigence saved Snowden from a similar travel package, complete with free one-way ticket home and fitting for a stylish new orange outfit. Abu Hamza was last seen waving goodbye from a back window on N977GA.

According to Mr Snowden’s colleagues, if the Russians knew that an American team was on its way to bring him home, they did not warn him. In the event the “black” (actually white) Gulfstream and its posse of marshals got no further than Copenhagen as US negotiations with the Kremlin failed to prosper. But Snowden remains in Russia to this day – and potentially for the rest of his life.

The US Department of Justice did not respond to our requests for information regarding N977GA and its purpose in heading to Europe on 24 June last year. ®