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THE ABSURD TIMES
Above: Latuff expresses a widely held view of what is going on.
First, this has taken longer than usual to get out, not for a lack of information, but because of an injury.
So, as I was about to say about a week ago, the best strategy for the United States in dealing with the situation in Iraq right now is to do nothing! Nothing at all. That will be a significant improvement on all of our past actions in the Mid-East for at least half a century or more.
In a sense, we find it fortunate that we were delayed as the information has slowly crept into the media in bits and pieces and much typing was saved.
About the only thing that has still been left fuzzy is that this ISIS, or ISIL, is not the same organization that has been terrorizing Syria for the past three years, "freedom fighter," as our leaders call them. In Syria, you had a crowd of various organizations, sometimes fighting one another as much as the legal government, and a bunch of maniacs, shouting and yelling in a mess of miscommunication.
Notice the orderly and precise movements of this march on Iraq's Shia government. One town after another, complete knowledge of the terrain, access to the bank and about half a billion dollars, plus gold. Wisely avoiding the Kurds for the time being, and then starting to surround the capital.
You may be able to see that old Ba'athist uniforms on the leaders. Al-Douri, one of the main people on the deck of cards is co-coordinating things. The uniforms had been buried to resurrect at the appropriate time. The Sunni maniacs are no more spokesmen for this movement than is a hellfire missile. In other words, they are weapons, nothing more. Also, below, you will see that in the silly deck of cards Bush used for the most wanted, 35 of the 52 were Shia, and one was Christian and spoke Aramaic. Saddam was not a religious nut. In fact, Bin Laden attacked him as an "infidel".
Earlier, George 41 messed things up as well. You'd have to get the truth our of April Gillespie for that one, and it's too far back anyway.
Bremer and Blair are talking about what a good idea de-Ba'athification was, but in reality it is the reason we are seeing the mess right now. There is much more, but this is enough. Interview one talks about the parties involved now and the U.S. and the Deck of Cards. It is continued before it moves onto Algeria where it is not that relevant.
Item two is a short Paragraph on Al-Douri.
Item three is another interview that talks about the Bath Party in charge.
So, Obama, do nothing. Anything you do will just screw things up more.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2014
Will Iraq or Syria Survive? UN Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sectarian War & the Disastrous ’03 Invasion
As a Sunni militancy overtakes large parts of Iraq, former U.N.-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi joins us to discuss the escalating Iraqi conflict, the long-term impact of the 2003 U.S. invasion, and the crisis in neighboring Syria. A former Algerian freedom fighter who went on to become Algeria’s foreign minister, Brahimi has been deeply involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades. He has worked on many of the world’s major conflicts from Afghanistan and Iraq to South Africa. Brahimi resigned as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria last month after a lengthy effort that failed to bring about peace talks between the Syrian government and rebel groups. On the legacy of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, Brahimi says: "The biggest mistake was to invade. I am tempted to say that every time there was a [U.S.] choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken." On Syria, Brahimi says the conflict is "an infected wound … if not treated properly, it will spread — and this is what is happening."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Sunni militants have seized part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery located in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji. The militants reportedly now control three-quarters of the refinery complex. Meanwhile, Shiite families are leaving the city of Baquba in droves out of fear the militants from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, will soon seize the city. Baquba is located just 40 miles from Baghdad. Many analysts say the fighting in Iraq has become a proxy war between the Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shiite-led Iran. On Tuesday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, vowed on live television to protect Shiite shrines in Iraq. Rouhani said many Iranians have already signed up to go to Iraq to fight. This came as Iraq’s Shiite-led Cabinet accused Saudi Arabia of promoting genocide in Iraq by backing Sunni militants.
In Washington, President Obama is scheduled to meet today with the four top congressional leaders. There are conflicting reports of his plan of action. The Wall Street Journal reports Obama has decided against immediate airstrikes in Iraq, butThe New York Times reports Obama is considering what the paper described as a "targeted, highly selective campaign" of airstrikes. One official told the Times the campaign would most likely use drones and could last for a prolonged period.
Joining us to discuss the situation in Iraq and across the wider region is Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned his post last month as the United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. Brahimi has been deeply involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for decades. He’s a former Algerian freedom fighter who went on to become Algeria’s foreign minister. As a diplomat, he has worked on many of the world’s biggest conflicts, from Afghanistan and Iraq, from Haiti to South Africa. He’s a member of the Elders, a group of retired statesmen formed in July 2007 at the initiative of Nelson Mandela; it was originally chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, now by Kofi Annan.
Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed Lakhdar Brahimi on Tuesday. He's in Paris, France. I started by asking him to respond to what’s happening in Iraq right now.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham have invaded and taken control of the second-largest city in Iraq, which is absolutely extraordinary. That is the city of Mosul. I understand that they went down also and took a part—or, you know, maybe they are still there—of the city of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, and that they were marching on Baghdad, and they have been stopped somewhere. And I doubt very much that they will enter Baghdad in any significant manner. But this indicates the fragility of the state of Iraq that has been created by the Americans after they invaded the country in 2003. It’s really extraordinary that the state, as important and as rich, as a matter of fact, as Iraq, cannot protect the second-largest city in the country.
It also vindicates what the secretary-general of the United Nations and myself have been saying for months, years even. And that is that the situation in Syria is like an infected wound: If it is not treated properly, it will spread. And this is what is happening. You know, the secretary-general has very often warned that if Syria is not attended to properly, then most, if not all, of its neighbors were in danger. And this is one of the neighbors of Syria.
Of course, it had—it has its own problems. And this latest development is an addendum, something that has come on top of the problems that were there. Those problems were that the country was more and more divided along sectarian lines, and the corruption was rife, and the government was not capable—has not been capable of re-establishing services, like water, electricity, sewages and so on, at the level they existed under Saddam, when the country was under extremely severe sanctions.
So, this is where we are. Syria is—you know, there is fighting there. There is killing. There is—bombardments are taking place. And people are—you know, there is no development taking place, and people are leaving their homes, their villages, their cities, either remaining inside the country as internally displaced people or going to neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, in particular. And quite a few of them have gone to Iraq, actually.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Brahimi, you mentioned the complicity of the United States invasion of 2003 in the present situation in Iraq.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to comments made by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the weekend. He said, in fact, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not responsible for the violent insurgency now engulfing the country. He was speaking on the BBC’sAndrew Marr Show. Let’s just go to a clip.
TONY BLAIR: So my point is very simple: Even if you left Saddam in place in 2003, then, when 2011 happened and you had the Arab revolutions going through Tunisia and Libya and Yemen and Bahrain and Egypt and Syria, you would have still had a major problem in Iraq. Indeed, you can see what happens when you leave the dictator in place, as has happened with Assad now. But if you say to me, would I prefer a situation where we’d left Saddam in place in 2003—do I think the region would be safer, more stable, if we’d done that—my answer to that is unhesitatingly no.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Brahimi, that was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaking over the weekend.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you respond to the comments he made about the 2003 invasion?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: You know, the situation in Iraq was extremely bad, and definitely it was called the "Republic of Fear" with reason. You know, you cannot justify post facto an invasion that was absolutely horrible. I mean, first of all, it was unjustified. Second—I mean, it was built on a lie. You know, the weapons of mass destructions were just in the imagination of some people who wanted to invade Iraq. Second, things have—I mean, justifications were invented after—democracy, getting rid of a dictator, and I don’t know what. That very dictator, when he was just as a dictator as he was in 2003, was a very good friend of the United States and of Britain when he was fighting Iran in the '80s. But let's, you know, forget about that for the moment. So, the invasion was absolutely horrible.
And this—you know, it has—I mean, let’s talk about what is—what is important to talk about now: terrorism. There was no terrorism. There were no terrorists in Iraq in those days. Terrorism was sucked in, brought in, by—as a direct consequence of the invasion. And it flourished, first of all, in Iraq, and then it went to Syria, and now it is back in Iraq. So, to say that 2003 had nothing to do with what is happening now is a little bit an—I don’t know—overstatement, understatement. Certainly not reality.
AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Brahimi, Paul Bremer, the first head of the so-called coalitional—Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, one of the first things he did in that role was to sign the Coalition Provisional Authority Orders 1 and 2, completely dismantling Iraq’s government and military. During your tenure as U.N. special envoy for Iraq, you referred to Bremer as, quote, "the dictator of Iraq." Writing inThe Wall Street Journal over the weekend in the wake of the present violence that’s engulfing Iraq, Bremer said, quote, "It is time for both American political parties to cease their ritualistic incantations of 'no boots on the ground,' which is not the same as 'no combat forces.' Of course Americans are reluctant to re-engage in Iraq. Yet it is President Obama’s unhappy duty to educate them about the risks to our interests posed by the unfolding drama in Iraq." Can you elaborate, Ambassador Brahimi, on your comments about Paul Bremer being dictator of Iraq and what that meant for Iraq?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: You know, I was just repeating something that he said himself. I think he said—and he has written, I think, in his memoirs—that nobody in the history of Iraq had as much power as he had. For my money, that is equivalent to being a dictator. And he was doing everything he wanted.
And you have mentioned, you know, the dissolution of the army. Every American who knew anything about Iraq, and there were quite a few, many of them in government—former ambassadors, people who know Arabic, who know the country, who know the region—they were all unanimous: Don’t touch the army. There are definitely, you know, 10, 15, 100, 1,000 officers that have, you know, blood on their hands, that are corrupt, that should be taken off the army. But keep the army. This is the backbone of the country, and it is going to cooperate with you. And as a matter of fact, a lot of people, including in the military, were already talking to some of the Iraqi militaries to see how they can come back and reorganize themselves and work with the occupying power. But Mr. Bremer—and he was saying that he was under instructions from the secretary of state for defense, Mr. Rumsfeld—said, "No, no, no. We will dissolve the army." And they went ahead and did it. I think that—you know, I don’t think there is any, any, any argument that that was a mistake then.
Should—what should the Americans do today? I fully understand the hesitation of President Obama to send foreign troops in, American troops into Iraq again. As a principle, foreign troops meddling in an internal situation like this is not a very good idea. I also hear that there is a possibility that they will be talking to Iran, and I’m sure that they will be talking to other neighbors of Iraq, chief of them—amongst them, Saudi Arabia, to see what needs to be done to help Iraq solve its problems and perhaps stop these terrorist organizations from making more progress. But be careful that this help from outside does not make things worse. I think that it’s—you know, there is a lot of sectarianism in Iraq. I don’t think there is a secret—that’s a secret or anybody ignores that fact or says it doesn’t exist. So, please, if you help face this ISIS, that’s great, but make sure that you don’t make things worse by making—by supporting more sectarianism, not less sectarianism.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Brahimi, on the question of sectarianism, there have been several reports that suggest that in the initial days of the Iraq invasion in 2003, there were some neoconservative members of the Bush administration that actively fostered sectarianism between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds as a way of—as a policy of kind of divide and rule. Could you comment on that?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: I have told my American friends several times, of course, I am not privy to what was taking place in the Pentagon, where responsibility lied for Iraq. President Bush had given full, total responsibility to the Pentagon over Iraq. What was discussed there and what they did there, I don’t know. But as somebody from the region just looking at what was actually taking place, it was extremely hard not to believe that sectarianism was being promoted and that the people that were being put in charge were—I mean, of course the Kurdish region was given to Kurds 100 percent, and no—the rest of the Iraqis had no part in it. But in the rest of Iraq, the impression one had was that the people that were preferred by the occupying powers were the most sectarian Shia and the most pro-Iranian Shia, so, you know, that Iran—that Iraq is now very, very close to Iran. Again, from the point of view of somebody who looks at things from outside, I have absolutely no knowledge of what went on in the high spheres of power in Washington. The impression we had is that these people were put in charge either out of total ignorance—and that is extremely difficult to accept—or intentionally. But the fact is, you know, that the system that was established was very sectarian.
AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned his post last month as United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. We’ll be back with him in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned as U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria last month.Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed him yesterday. He's in Paris, France. I asked him what the gravest error of the U.S. was in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: The biggest mistake was to invade Iraq. Having invaded Iraq, you know, I would be probably very, very unfair, but I am tempted to say that every time there was a choice between something right and something wrong, not very often the right option was taken.
If you want one instance of what was wrong, it’s probably the dissolution of the army, because the army was the backbone of the country, because the army was nonsectarian. You know, the majority of the soldiers were Shia. And I think in the officer corps—it would be very interesting to take a look back—you would find that there were a lot of Shia in it. Saddam was not—you know, I mean, didn’t care about who was Sunni or who was Shia. What he cared for is who was with him and who was not, you know, who would—whom he considers as loyal 1,000 percent and whom he does not. You know, I asked some American friends, couple of times—I don’t know if you remember that deck of cards with Saddam being the ace of spades. Out of those 54 bad guys in Iraq, I used to ask my American friends whether they knew how many Shia were in that deck of cards. One of them said zero. One of them said four or five. Actually, the number of Shia in that deck of cards was 35.
During the war, I mean, Saddam was terribly unfair. Although a lot of Shia were fighting in the ranks of army of their country against Shia Iran, I think he was extremely suspicious of the Shia, because they were Shia. And he has killed a lot of religious leaders, a lot of—so, you know, there was—there was that, but nothing like what existed after that and what exists today.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Brahimi, you’ve suggested that sectarianism was excarcerbated following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Yeah, sure.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: One of the other effects, which you mentioned earlier, was the spread of terrorism, and in particular, of suicide attacks in Iraq, which prior to 2003 were unprecedented. In other words, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan nor Pakistan nor Syria had ever witnessed suicide attacks before 9/11 occurred and, subsequent to that, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. So could you talk about some of the implications of that, what the effects of that have been, and how you think that phenomenon, which is now so widespread, should be dealt with?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: It did not exist in Iraq. And, you know, this al-Qaeda did not exist at all. It had no dormant cell in Iraq. It was brought in after the invasion as a way of people coming to fight a crusader, a power, invading a sister Muslim country. That is when al-Qaeda came in and started to recruit Iraqis and to bring in non-Iraqis. The ancestor of ISIS was created as a direct consequence of the invasion of Iraq, nothing else. And, you know, it developed and so on, and you remember 2005, 2006, 2007 were absolutely horrible years in Iraq, when civil war was really taking place, with the Americans at the receiving end themselves. And, of course, they destroyed Fallujah completely; the Americans destroyed the city of Fallujah completely.
Car bombs and so on did exist before, but it did no exist in Iraq, and al-Qaeda had absolutely no presence in Iraq before the invasion. It really became a reality as a direct consequence of the invasion in 2003 and developed from there. And what you see today there is the son or the grandson of what happened in—I mean, you know, I’m sure some of your viewers may remember the name of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, very, very cruel man who was one of the leaders of the al-Qaeda in Iraq in those years, 2005, 2006. So, this is it. Al-Qaeda and what—the terrorist organizations that exist today in—as far as Iraq is concerned, and Syria, as a matter of fact, their origin is definitely post-2003.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to comments made by the former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford. He resigned from his position in May. He was speaking to Christiane Amanpour on CNNearlier this month.
ROBERT FORD: I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy. We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict, in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat. And there really is nothing we can point to that’s been very successful in our policy, except the removal of about 93 percent of some of Assad’s chemical materials. But now he’s using chlorine gas against his opponents, in contravention of the Syrian government’s agreement in 2013 to abide by the Chemical Weapons Convention. The regime simply has no credibility, and our policy is not addressing the Syrian crisis as it needs to.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria. Ambassador Brahimi, could you comment on what he said and also what you see the flaws with U.S. policy vis-à-vis Syria being today?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: I was very, very surprised when I heard him say that he left because he couldn’t support the American policy anymore. Very, very surprised that—you know, of course, I’m not familiar with what was going on inside the government and what discussions he had with the secretary of state and others before he left, but the impression I had was that he left because he reached retirement age and he was tired of dealing with a very, very difficult problem in Syria. That was understandable. This is—this is something, you know, very surprising to me, what he said about him not capable of supporting the U.S. policy anymore. Again, the view in the region was that he was making the policy, or at least he was taking a very, very important part in making that policy.
You know, what was wrong with American policy, I think every single party that dealt with Syria over the last three years have made mistakes. The United States, like everybody else, misjudged the meaning and the—you know, what was happening and, you know, where things were going. You know, mistakes were made in Tunisia, when everybody thought that, you know, President Ben Ali was so strong, so well organized, that these demonstrations are going to last two days, three days, three or two weeks, and then they will be over and the men will be there. He left after less than a month. Mubarak in Egypt—you know, Egypt is a stable country, a very well-organized country. Their police was tremendously strong and well equipped. They will manage to—you know, to ride this storm. And to be fair, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they took quite a while. They were telling those young people, I mean, "Go home. You know, you are going to be killed for nothing. The regime is not going to fall." This is—this was—so, everybody made a mistake there. So when the—you know, and Libya, Libya, the country, you know, everybody thought that Libya would fall in a matter of days. It took several months and several billion dollars spent by the Americans, the French, the British and others in bombarding and destroying the country. And, by the way, look at the results: They are not great.
When the turn of Syria came, I think, understandably, everybody said, "Ah, OK, you know, this is now the trend. People—I mean, this regime resist one month, three weeks, six months. So this will be the case in Syria." So I think that the Americans, like everybody else, thought that the regime was going to fall, and everybody started talking about the day after. And people were afraid that they would not be ready for the day after, that the regime will fall, and we will not be ready how to help the country rebuild and so on and so forth. It has taken maybe almost three years, three, four years, before people started to realize that this was different. And by the way, the Russians were the first who said this—Syria is not going to follow suit to what happened in Tunisia and Egypt; the regime is not going to fall. And nobody listened to them. I think if we had, perhaps it would have been better for all of us.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did you quit as former U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: You know, I wanted to quit one year before I did, because in these kind of jobs, you come and try a few ideas and then move on. This is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job that you do for years and years. That is one reason.
The second reason is that, you know, we organized that conference in Montreux, Switzerland, and we moved from there to what we thought was going to be negotiations between the opposition and the government. And that was a failure, mainly because of the government. And then the government announced that they were organizing presidential elections, meaning that they were going a totally different way from what we were discussing in Geneva. So I think it was the normal thing for me to do.
I have tried this working with the Russians and the Americans. Together, the three of us have organized the Geneva II Conference. I led those discussions, two rounds of discussions in Geneva. That has taken us nowhere. I think it is time to tell the Syrian people we are not delivering, and we—I apologize to them for that, but also to tell everybody else, "Please be careful. This is—this is a very, very bad, very complicated, very dangerous situation, and you have got to pay more attention to it." I hope that, you know, they will pay a little bit more attention and that they will help the secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, who is really devoting a great deal of attention to Syria. I hope that he will be helped to do a better job than I have been able to do until the end of May.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ambassador Brahimi, you’ve also suggested, in an interview you gave to the German news magazine Der Spiegel earlier this month, that the situation in Syria is so much worse than it was in Afghanistan in 1999 when you resigned your U.N. position there. Could you explain why you think that’s the case?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: You know, in Afghanistan, there was a, yeah, civil war, but the factions in Afghanistan were not over-armed the way the parties that are involved in Syria are. There was—you know, nobody had the aviation that the Syrian government has or the tanks and the artillery that they have. It was, you know, this horrible war, low-intensity civil war. And, you know, the Afghans were, in their way, much better organized and also much more open in their discussions with us. For example, we never had, in all those wars of civil war—you know, after the Russians left, anyway, that’s the part I know—we never had any problem going for the vaccination in spring. All the factions knew that teams from the United Nations were going to go all over the country and vaccinate kids. And that happened. It hasn’t been that easy in Syria.
You know, the Russians had destroyed quite a little bit of the country, and the Afghans, very early on, before the Taliban, destroyed Kabul when the Russians left. But after that, there wasn’t that kind of destruction that you see in Syria now. Homs—friends who went to Homs recently told me that it looks like the pictures we see of Berlin in 1945. So the level of destruction is absolutely horrible. You know, when I arrived on the scene in ’97, with the years of Russians and the—of the internal civil war between the factions, there was something like five million refugees from Afghanistan. In three years only, in Syria, we have two million and a half refugees, six or seven million internally displaced. And by next year, if things continue the way they are, we are going to have four million refugees—population being about the same, 23 million in Syria, maybe 25 or 26 [million] in Afghanistan. So, the level of violence and destruction is much higher in Syria than it was in Afghanistan.
AMY GOODMAN: Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned his post last month as United Nations-Arab League special envoy for Syria. We’ll be back with him in a minute.
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2014
"Colonialism is Inhuman": Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi on the Lessons of Algeria’s Independence Struggle
Weeks after his resignation as the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria, the longtime diplomat and former freedom fighter Lakhdar Brahimi discusses his own country, Algeria, and its struggle for independence from the French. The Algerian rebellion was captured in the classic anti-colonial film "Battle of Algiers," which vividly depicts the Algerian struggle against the French occupation in the 1950s and early 1960s. "They dispossessed a whole nation," Brahimi says of the French occupation. "Colonialism was very inhuman."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our conversation with Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. He resigned as U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria last month. Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed him yesterday.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Do you think that this, what we are seeing in Syria and in Iraq, that this is just the beginning of a larger regional war? Do you think any of these states will survive intact, Iraq or Syria?
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Syria, I think, I think will survive. I think that the people in Syria are not thinking themselves of any partitions. You know, if things go on as they are for 10 years, I don’t know what will happen. But, you know, if we start having a solution this year or next year, I think that Syria will remain united. And I said very early on that the risk in Syria is not a partition in states just like it happened in Yugoslavia, but Somalization, which means that the country will become a failed state with warlords all over the place. In Iraq, it’s—I don’t know, really. I hope that the country will stay united, but I think that the danger is bigger in Iraq than it is in Syria.
From the deck of cards:
Al-Douri and has been pointed out as one of the main commanders responsible for successful take over of North Iraq and the city of Mosul in June 2014 by rebel groups[14] The Naqshbandi Army along with other groups lead by former Ba'ath officers are reported to have assumed an increasingly large role in the governance and administration of occupied cities. Militants were reported to have appointed fellow Ba'ath generals Azhar al-Obeidi and Ahmed Abdul Rashid as the governors of Mosul and Tikrit.[15]
MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2014
As Obama Considers Drone Strikes in Iraq, Could U.S. Military Action Worsen Sectarian Conflict?
Over the weekend, militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized the northern town of Tal Afar after a fierce fight. Many fear Iraq could disintegrate asISIS takes more cities. Shiite militias are now fighting alongside the Iraqi army in an effort to retake cities from the control of Sunni militants. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged today the United States is considering launching drone strikes inside Iraq to help shore up the Iraqi government. He also said he is open to talks with Iran on how Washington and Tehran could work together to help the Iraqi state. The United States appears to be moving closer to launching airstrikes. The USSGeorge H.W. Bush aircraft carrier has recently arrived in the Persian Gulf. The carrier is accompanied by the USS Philippine Sea guided-missile cruiser and the USSTruxtun guided-missile destroyer, both of which carry Tomahawk missiles that can reach Iraq. The United States has also begun evacuating some employees from its massive embassy in Baghdad. Meanwhile in Britain, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing widespread criticism after he suggested the current crisis is not linked to the 2003 U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Blair said, "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven’t." To talk more about the crisis in Iraq, we are joined by Iraqi-American political analyst Raed Jarrar.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Obama administration is reportedly considering reaching out to Iran to find ways they could work together to help shore up the Iraqi regime as Sunni militants continue their offensive. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journalthat the Obama administration may use the Iran nuclear talks starting in Vienna today to broach the subject of the Iraq crisis with envoys from Iran. On Friday, President Obama ruled out sending U.S. combat troops back to Iraq but left open other military options.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraq security forces, and I’ll be reviewing those options in the days ahead. I do want to be clear, though: This is not solely or even primarily a military challenge. Over the past decade, American troops have made extraordinary sacrifices to give Iraqis an opportunity to claim their own future. Unfortunately, Iraqis’ leaders have been unable to overcome too often the mistrust and sectarian differences that have long been simmering there, and that’s created vulnerabilities within the Iraqi government as well as their security forces.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Unnamed U.S. officials told The Washington Post that the Obama administration is now considering sending drones to Iraq. The USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier has recently arrived in the Persian Gulf. The carrier is accompanied by the USS Philippine Sea guided-missile cruiser and the USS Truxtun, also a guided-missile destroyer, both of which carry Tomahawk missiles that can reach Iraq. The United States has also begun evacuating some employees from its massive embassy in Baghdad.
AMY GOODMAN: Over the weekend, militants from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, seized the northern town of Tal Afar after a fierce fight in the city of 200,000 people. Shiite militias are now fighting alongside the Iraqi army in an effort to retake cities from ISIS control.
This comes as ISIS is claiming it had massacred 1,700 Shiite soldiers in the city of Tikrit, but the claim has not been verified. Graphic photos have also been published online showing masked Sunni militants shooting dead captured Iraqi soldiers.
Meanwhile, in Britain, former Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing widespread criticism after he suggested the current crisis is not linked to the 2003 U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Blair said, quote, "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven’t. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not; and whether action or inaction is the best policy and there is a lot to be said on both sides. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it."
To talk more about the crisis in Iraq, we’re joined by Iraqi-American political analyst Raed Jarrar. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Raed. We’ve spoken to you so many times during the Iraq War. Why don’t you respond first to what the former prime minister of Britain said, that it has nothing to do with the U.S. invasion and occupation, and the British, as well, of Iraq?
RAED JARRAR: Oh, I think it has everything to do with the U.S.-, British-led invasion and occupation. The idea of destroying the strong central government and creating three or more partitions in Iraq was heavily promoted at that time. It was promoted sometimes on the political level, but many times on the demographic level. We saw, during the occupation of Iraq, millions of Iraqis were displaced inside the country. Sunnis were kicked out of what we call now Shiite provinces, and Shiites were kicked out of what we call now Sunni provinces. Same happened with Kurds and Christians. So this ethnic cleansing happened during the occupation, laying grounds for making this partitioning a reality. So, I think, in retrospect, what’s happening in these few weeks of, you know, like an uprising in these Sunni-dominated provinces in Iraq can be directly traced to the divisions that were installed by the U.S.-led occupation in 2003.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Raed, I’m reminded of that very mundane, but prophetic, warning of Colin Powell to George Bush—if you break it, you own it—that in reality, the invasion of the United States and of Britain in 2003 really, it appears, has created instability still unresolved.
RAED JARRAR: Correct. And in addition to that, the U.S. is still interfering in Iraq. Although the last U.S. soldier left the country at the end of 2011, the U.S. continues to supply the Iraqi central government with weapons, training and other military assistance. This year alone, the U.S. is sending billions of dollars’ worth of jet fighters and other weapons. We just included $150 million in the defense appropriations bill for training Iraqi forces, although many human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have flagged a number of Iraqi security forces and militias as human rights abusers that the U.S. should stop funding. So in addition to the military funding, of course, there is a lot of support that—to legitimize the Iraqi central government. So this week’s narrative from the U.S. side is a good example of how the U.S. has been taking one side in this conflict all along. It has been arming and supporting one side of the conflict, and this side happens to be the Iraqi central government and the militias affiliated with it.
AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby confirmed over the weekend the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush was en route to the Persian Gulf. He discussed the possibility of the U.S. carrying out what he termed "kinetic strikes."
REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY: One of the capabilities that—that we are tasked to provide options for would be kinetic strikes, which can be incredibly effective and powerful, when done the right way, to achieve objectives. ... What we have is an armed militant group and network threatening the internal security of Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: What is your understanding of what these, quote, "kinetic strikes" are, also the whole discussion about the drone strikes that could take place?
RAED JARRAR: I think it’s another fancy name of a U.S. military intervention. We have heard so many different words describing U.S. military interventions in Iraq and the region. And whatever you name it, I think, from the Iraqi perspective, this will be yet another example of a U.S. military strike on Iraq that will not be a part of the solution. The U.S. has been bombing Iraq since 1991, so it’s been 13 years of bombings, bombardments, or like 23 years if you count all of the years of the sanctions. And none of these campaigns were ever a part of a solution. The U.S. has historically been a part of the problem. So I think if the U.S. were to attack Iraq yet again, this will add another layer of complexity. It will make the situation inside Iraq worse, and it will threaten the U.S. interests in the region and the world, because the U.S. will become an active participant in this very bloody conflict.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Raed Jarrar. He is an Iraqi-American blogger, political analyst, joining us from Washington, D.C. What should the U.S. do? What should happen with Iraq? What will happen with the Iraqi regime? We’ll talk about al-Maliki, the prime minister. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would respond to any call for assistance from the Iraqi government as it fights an Islamist insurgency.
PRESIDENT HASSAN ROUHANI: [translated] Should the Iraqi government request any aid from us, we will of course address it. However, we haven’t received any request for specific aid so far. We are prepared to provide help within the frameworks of international law and the official request of the Iraqi government and nation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Raed Jarrar, I’d like to ask you about not only the role of Iran right now and the potential for greater cooperation between the United States and the Iranian government, but also the role of Saudi Arabia and its relationship to ISIS.
RAED JARRAR: Let me start by saying the armed uprising in six Iraqi provinces has many other players from the Sunni side or the local population side. There has been a lot of focus on ISIS because it makes a good media story. It’s this crazy group. Everyone is an expert now on ISIS and where it came from. And it tells a compelling story for a U.S. intervention: There is an extremist terrorist group that is threatening a legitimate central government that is our friend. That is the narrative now. I think that is important to unpack and deconstruct, because, on the one hand, ISIS is one of many players in this uprising. It’s really naive to believe that one crazy terrorist group can take 50 percent of Iraq’s territory in a week. There are many other players, including—I think the most important players are tribal leaders in all of these provinces, and their armed militias, and former Iraqi officials from the Saddam Hussein government, led by the former vice president, Izzat al-Douri, who runs a group called al-Naqshbandi, a group. There are other smaller players like the Iraqi Islamic Army, the Mujahideen Army, the 1920 Brigades. There are, I would say, at least 12 other players. So it’s more indigenous. The vast majority, I would say, maybe almost everyone who’s fighting, is an Iraqi, unlike what the image that is being drawn by the Iraqi authorities.
On the other hand, there is a central government, of course, that is being supported by the United States. It’s mostly comprised of Shiite parties, and the army is almost exclusively Shia. And it’s surrounded by many local and foreign militias and forces, which is a good leeway to answer your question. The last few days witnessed an actual military participation by Iran. According to The Guardian, there are a couple thousand Iranian troops that entered Iraq. They’re most likely from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The first images of the first Iranian to be killed in Iraq from this Iranian Revolutionary Guard surfaced a couple of days ago online, and it seems that his funeral is held today in northern Tehran. From reading the captain’s biography online, the one who died in Iraq, it seems that he’s younger. He’s been sent to Syria before. So, it seems that there is an actual military involvement by Iran.
Saudi Arabia and other players have been involved very much in Iraq, as well. Saudi Arabia maintains strong relationships with the former Iraqi officials, including Izzat al-Douri, the vice president. And there are some rumors about Saudi Arabia supporting some other militant groups in Iraq. Let me take one step back and say that this regional intervention, whether it came from Iraq or—excuse me, from Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey or Jordan or whatever, these are also consequences of the destruction of the Iraqi central government in 2003, when Iraq had a legitimate, strong government. All of these neighbors existed around Iraq, but they were never able to manipulate the country and use their proxies for civil war inside the country before. And now, of course, with the new realities, this is how Iraq looks. I think everyone from the region has their hand in Iraq supporting one horse in that race.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, there’s been the whole question of whether the U.S. should intervene. The U.S. has been intervening to the tune of millions, if not billions, of dollars, with supporting weapons going to Iraq and the government of al-Maliki. Can you talk about al-Maliki, who he is, and what you feel needs to be done in Iraq, as an Iraqi yourself?
RAED JARRAR: I mean, as an Iraqi, I think there are a million things that have to be done in Iraq. It is extremely messy. And I think Iraq is going now through the worst stage in its contemporary history. There are real doubts that Iraq can maintain its territorial integrity, because the very national identity of Iraq has been destroyed, and now maybe overwritten by Iraqi sectarian and tribal identities. We’re talking about issues that need decades to deal with, and the current Iraqi government is completely dysfunctional and incapable of resolving any of these issues.
So, I think, from an Iraqi perspective, there isn’t really an easy solution, other than attempting to start a real dialogue. And so far, the Iraqi government has refused to start any dialogue. They’re calling any—anyone who is supporting the uprising in the six provinces, anyone who is not a, you know, complete supporter of al-Maliki, they’re calling them al-Qaeda supporters and ISIS members. I mean, for God’s sake, yesterday the Iraqi official channels were calling the governor of Mosul and the president of the Parliament, who happen to be brothers from al-Nujaifi family—they were calling both of them ISIS supporters. So, it’s—"ISIS supporters" is just a code for Sunni or, you know, not a member of the ruling elite now. So saying—I mean, from an Iraqi perspective, it seems that that is the most easy first step, which is sitting around the same table and stopping this polarization and calling anyone who does not agree with the government policies a terrorist.
From a U.S. perspective, as an American, I think we do have an easier mandate, an easier solution, and that starts with not interfering militarily. That is easier than having a proactive solution. From the U.S., I think not sending troops, not sending, you know, more airstrikes, not sending training and weapons is actually a step in the right direction. And there are other obligations that the U.S. can handle that are less controversial, such as humanitarian aid for refugees and IDPs and other nonpolitical issues.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Raed, how do you explain the breathtaking collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of what is not really a large guerrilla force lined up against them?
RAED JARRAR: It is surprising for an outsider, I think, to see how fast it fell. But in reality, it did not really fall in a week. It fell in a long time. Some people argue a decade; some people argue a few months. If we just go back to January of this year, the Iraqi forces attacked two unarmed, peaceful protest sites in Iraq—one in Hawija near Kirkuk and one in Fallujah. And this created a huge backlash against the Iraqi government in Sunni-dominated areas. There has been attacks against and, you know, by the Iraqi army and the militias supporting it in Fallujah and Anbar for at least the last four months. They’ve been throwing bombs on residential neighborhoods, getting attacked back. So this has been going on, and I think the building the infrastructure for a counter-government attack has been in the making for quite a time. So it wasn’t very surprising for Iraqis who have been following the situation, but I think it is still a surprise that armed forces that have been funded by tens of billions of dollars would just collapse in a couple of days. It just shows how fragile and dysfunctional the entire Iraqi military system is. And the fact that the Iraqi Parliament failed to meet to pass martial laws, because they couldn’t get a quorum, shows how dysfunctional the political system continues to be, if—
AMY GOODMAN: Raed, I wanted to ask about what’s happening with the Kurdish pershmerga forces, what role they’ve been playing in the wake of the ISISinsurgency, what’s happened with the takeover of Kirkuk by the Kurds. This is Brigadier General Sherko Fatah speaking Saturday.
BRIG. GEN. SHERKO FATAH: [translated] Because of the security situation in Kirkuk, peshmerga forces have taken over the positions of the 12th Infantry Brigade, who abandoned their posts, and soldiers abandoned their positions and fled. Because of the collapse of the morale, they could not defend themselves, and therefore they fled. In order to prevent the Islamic militants from taking over these positions and threaten Kirkuk city, higher orders were issued, first to move and take these positions.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance, Raed Jarrar, of the Kurds taking over Kirkuk in this oil-rich city in northern Iraq? And then there’s this breaking news: John Kerry has just spoken, the secretary of state, saying the U.S. is opening talks [sic] with Iran over Iraq, won’t rule out military cooperation. He says U.S. drone strikes may well be an option to stem ISIL advances in Iraq. But respond first on the Kurds.
RAED JARRAR: It’s very interesting to see the dynamic now between the uprising forces in the six Sunni provinces and the Kurdish authorities, because the Iraqi central government’s media have been criticizing the Kurdish authorities in the last couple of days, saying that they betrayed their relationships with al-Maliki, that they have been coordinating with the rebels, with the former Baathists, with the—like this type of accusations. Things on the ground actually suggest that there might be some coordination between the uprising forces and the Kurdish forces, because there were very minor clashes between the two sides, and so there might be actually some sort of political coordination. Keep in mind that the former Iraqi vice president of this regime, Mr. Tariq al-Hashemi, who fled to Turkey a few years ago, came out yesterday in support of the uprising in these six provinces. He called it the Iraqi Spring—very romantic, you know, for how destructive the situation has been. But Mr. al-Hashemi maintains very strong relationships with the Kurdish side. So, many people were reading that as maybe ha has been leading these coordinations between what’s going on in the six Sunni provinces and Kurdistan.
AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to correct something in the breaking news: Kerry said that the U.S. is open to talks, not "has opened talks." But the significance of this?
RAED JARRAR: Well, so, it’s not very significant. You know, I have been personally speaking about how the U.S. and Iran are in the same bunker when it comes to Iraq. I’ve been saying that for over six or seven years now. And it doesn’t add up for U.S. audiences, because we’re used to seeing the U.S. and Iran at odds. They are at odds in other parts of the Middle East and the world, but in Iraq the collaboration started very strongly from day one. Iran played a strong role in toppling the former Iraqi government, and the U.S. played a very proactive, collaborative role with Iran all along. So that never stopped. Saying that they are going to add that to a negotiating table does not make any sense. They’re, both sides, fighting on the same side. It’s like saying the U.S. and Maliki will negotiate over how to fight against the uprising. Well, they’re on the same side.
If you want to negotiate with someone, I would say we have to reach out to the other side, people who are involved in the uprising, whether they are tribal and youth leaders in these six provinces or former officials who are flooding back to the country, former army officers who are running these operations—running fighter jets, for God’s sake. There are two fighter jets that were seen yesterday attacking current Iraqi army, flying out of the—you know, out of Mosul. So it just gives you a hint of how there is real institution behind the uprising. You can’t train two pilots in a day, you know. These people know what they’re doing. We’re not sure who they are, but I think bringing them to the table is the right step, rather than negotiating with people who we agree with and people who we’ve been supporting all along.
AMY GOODMAN: Raed Jarrar, I want to thank you for being with us. Of course, we’ll continue to follow this critical situation in Iraq and the greater region. Raed Jarrar is an Iraqi-American blogger and political analyst, joining us from Washington, D.C.
When we come back, we’re going to Rio de Janeiro, to Brazil, to talk about the World Cup. Stay with us.
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