Western Hypocrisy Over St. Petersburg Attacks

It was a welcome change to hear the Western media acknowledge that the St. Petersburg bombing might have something to do with Russian foreign policy: the interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria. Yet you will never hear such an angle raised when its an atrocity carried out in an American or a Western European city. In such cases any attempt to explain terrorism would be dismissed as making excuses for violence.

This moral blackmail was not deployed over St. Petersburg. What do we know about the attack? The main suspect Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyz national, is accused of killing 14 people and injured 50 others in detonating a bomb in the St. Petersburg underground. Six people have now been arrested. They have been accused of recruiting for ISIS. The suspects are all from Central Asian states. This would fit with the analysis that the bombing was staged in reaction to Russian aggression.

Not only was Central Asia dominated by the Soviet Union, the region was on the frontline in the war in Afghanistan. Once the USSR had invaded Afghanistan, the war aims quickly changed to building a new society and occupying the country for the time being. The United States and its regional allies - particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - established a network of jihadists to fuel the Afghan resistance to the Red Army.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan would come to a close by 1989. Gorbachev oversaw the withdrawal and warned the West that the forces they had mobilised in Afghanistan would come back to haunt them. Of course, the network behind Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the World Trade Centre had their origins in the Afghan struggle. The war itself would create a space for Eastern European dissidents to challenge regimes backed by the USSR. This combined with economic factors would bring down the Eastern bloc.

Events in Chechnya would be even more crucial for the terror factor in Russia. As the USSR was dismantled in 1991, Chechen Ichkeria declared independence under the nationalist leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev. Growing instability and tension in the region would lead to the eruption of armed conflict in North Ossetia, the Chechens feared the presence of the Russian armed forces would be the first stage of mission creep. Dudayev imposed a state of emergency after Russia deployed troops to the border.

At the same time, Dudayev was facing a groundswell of opposition in the fledgling state. This opposition would turn to armed force in 1994. Boris Yeltsin pledged Russian support for the attempt to overthrow the Dudayev government. Yeltsin was desperate to bolster his domestic support in the midst of his disastrous economic reforms. The instability in the Chechen region offered an opportunity. The Russians backed the opposition in order to overthrow Dudayev and crush the example of independence.

However, Dudayev held his own from October to November against the forces Yeltsin had mobilised. Russian armed forces would play a clandestine role, but the Battle of Grozny left the Russian government humiliated after the Chechen independence forces captured a large number of military vehicles and personnel. It was meant to be a swift operation to topple the government. Faced with this, Yeltsin sanctioned the invasion of Ichkeria ostensibly to restore the territorial integrity of Russia.

The Russian army began bombing the Chechen air capabilities and within ten days the invasion was underway. Just as Brezhnev had mistakenly thought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would be successful within weeks the Russians now thought the Grozny government could be toppled. The war would rage for two years before a ceasefire was signed on Russian terms. Dudayev was assassinated in an 1996 airstrike.

With American help, Yeltsin would survive the Presidential elections of 1996. Estimates of the people killed in the first Chechen war range up to 100,000, along with 500,000 people displaced, in just two years of fighting. A new war would start in 1999 following the apartment bombings in Moscow and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The second war was waged by Russia and its Chechen allies to kill off independent Ichkeria and snuff out the emergent Islamist movement in the Northern Caucasus.

The first aim was secured, but an insurgency continues to this day. Russia has been struck by numerous bombings by Chechen Islamist fighters, and a key reason for the Russian intervention in Syria has been partly to extent the war against those same Chechens - now fighting in Syria alongside the mainstream rebels and an array of jihadist groups. Of course, the main reason has been to back the Assad regime - the only Russian ally in the region.

An honest look at the situation finds that the Russian government relies upon the Islamist threat to  justify its aggression in Syria. Even though Russia has been motivated partly by counter-insurgency in Chechnya, the main targets of Russian bombing have been the Syrian opposition and the civilians living in their territory, not Islamic State or al-Nusra. This in turn is a key factor in the continued threat of terrorism in Russia.

Catastroika: Are the Russians Leaving?

Apparently, the Russians are leaving. Seemingly out of nowhere, Vladimir Putin declared that the operation had “largely achieved” the desired aims and Russian forces would be winding down operations in Syria. Not that this means the Russian military base will be dismantled. Far from it, the Russian invasion (yes, we shouldn’t mince words here) has entrenched the influence over the Assad regime, which it has strengthened. Out of 60 aircraft, the Russians have withdrawn 30. The picture is more mixed than the announcement of the mission’s ‘success’.

Of course, it’s not true that Islamic State has been decimated by Russian actions, however, the real aim was to defend the Assad regime and crush rebel groups. This may have meant bombing Islamic State’s positions, but it mainly meant striking at groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Army of Conquest and the Free Syrian Army. These efforts gave the Syrian regime an advantage over the rebels. While it left Islamic State as a more distant foe. Keep in mind Bashar al-Assad can use ISIS to justify his own position.

If it is a choice between Islamism and Ba’athism, many would turn to Assad for order and security over chaos and terror. This falls apart when you look at the record. Assad has far more blood on his hands than anyone else in Syria. Many liberal and even leftist commentators have turned to argue for tactical and critical support for the Ba’athists. But this means, as long as the regime remains intact, the Arab Awakening will not have reached its conclusion.

Meanwhile the problem for liberal interventionists is precisely the lack of any credible force in Syria. Who do we need to defeat more? If we bomb ISIS, we help Assad and vice versa. Can we defeat both simultaneously and birth a secular democracy? Unlikely, as it may be, the only just outcome would be a democratic opening. Western intervention has served prolonged the conflict, whereas Russian involvement has consolidated the gains of the Assad regime.

At the same time, the Russian withdrawal sends a clear message to Assad. There are no blank cheques, or free passes, for the Syrian regime and Russian support may not be unconditional. Putin cannot do everything for Assad. The Russian army obviously cannot sustain a long-term occupation in Syria. Even the Soviet Union could not occupy Afghanistan for as long as the US has done. In fact, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is particularly relevant to the Syrian intervention.

Defeated in slow-motion

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan came in 1979 after Hafizullah Amin organised the death of Muhammad Taraki and seized the reins in Kabul. Officially, the Soviet army intervened to aid the leftists in their struggle with the Mujahideen. Yet the true purpose of the intervention was take control of the country and restore order.

The People's Democratic Party came to power in 1978 with the violent overthrow of President Daoud. Once at the helm, Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin declared a revolution and proceeded to try and transform the country by breaking apart the remaining feudal structures. They declared women equal, abolished shariah, criminalised arranged marriages and began redistributing land. The new regime began converting opium production towards agricultural development. But these reforms would bring unforeseen consequences.

Prior to this upheaval, the Soviet Union was more than comfortable with the Afghan monarchy, which guaranteed stability, even as it pursued modernisation programmes. Afghanistan itself is valuable as a source of natural gas, but also as a route for pipelines. The revolution threw them off and provoked rebellion in the countryside, where the leftists were carving up the land. This would be the beginning of the Islamist revolt. What the Soviet leaders feared most was that this instability would engulf Central Asia.

After all, the region was predominantly Muslim and a valuable cluster of buffer-states between Russia and China, Iran and Pakistan. Much like the Eastern bloc, the hold on energy-rich Central Asia helped the USSR stand tall as a superpower. This is exactly why the US moved to back the insurgents. The day Soviet forces crossed the border, officially, national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote to President Carter: “We now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam War”.

It's not that the Soviet leadership was ignorant of this factor. Alexei Kosygin was opposed to sending troops to Afghanistan precisely because of the example of Vietnam. In Kosygin’s view, the new regime should be able to hold its own against the rebellion, as North Vietnam had triumphed over the South and even against American aggression. Yet the balance of forces in the Soviet leadership still favoured intervention. In the end, Leonid Brezhnev was persuaded to back the intervention after Hafizullah Amin had Taraki smothered with a pillow.

Of course, financial support for the Mujahideen was already under way even before the invasion was launched. The CIA, with the help of Pakistan and Saudi, had set out to built a vast network of Islamist militants. This gave Arab regimes the opportunity to rid themselves of these troublesome elements. Far from harbouring any regrets, Zbigniew Brzezinski says he would do it again if he could go back. As Brzezinski personally told Islamists in the mountains: “Your fight will prevail... because your cause is right and God is on your side.”

Without any institutional framework for government, the country descended into civil war as the informal networks of power, both communal and tribal, were easily fractured and broke apart. This process would destroy the fabric of Afghan society. The US considered the reversal of social progress in Afghanistan as a necessary part of the efforts to defeat the Soviet-backed regime. Later the journalist Alexander Cockburn would read out a portion of a document seized during the Iran Hostage Crisis on the eve of the NATO-ISAF war in 2001:

The United States’ larger interest would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in Afghanistan. The overthrow of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history being inevitable is not accurate.

Although the Soviet intervention came with few humanitarian illusions, the occupation would soon take the shape of the civilising missions launched by European empires. Babrak Karmal, the leader of the Parcham faction, was installed as leader, while the USSR set about shaping the country in its image as it waged a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. The new narrative would be that the occupation was necessary to defend the rights of women from the reactionary forces mobilising against the regime.

Realpolitik was not enough in the end. The brutality of the Soviet occupation had to be dressed up as an expression of solidarity justified by socialist internationalism. As the years passed it became more and more evident that the occupation could not be sustained. Gorbachev would initiate an exit strategy concluding in total withdrawal in 1989. Just as the US would invade Afghanistan in 2001 in an act of vengeance - against the same network it helped to establish years earlier - only to discover the cause of women's rights. In both cases, the invaders were defeated in slow-motion.

Life after defeat

Members of the CIA would later claim the Soviet collapse was a result of endogenous factors. It fell apart like a house of cards because it was a house of cards. The political system was bankrupt and no longer functioned. So this had little to do with US policy. If anything, observers like Archie Brown have argued the Cold War helped preserve the USSR and not bring it down. But this was not the view taken by the Mujahideen. Many of the Islamists believed that they helped to bring down the USSR. They are not alone either.

Journalist Robert Fisk takes this view. It can be argued that the defeat of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan became so costly, it opened up a space for dissidents to win major battles in Eastern Europe. This was clear by 1981 when KGB chief Yuri Andropov (Putin’s hero, incidentally) persuaded Brezhnev not to intervene in Poland. It was evident that the system could not sustain such adventurism. In other words, the USSR could not repeat the actions it took in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Hungary in 1956.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian foreign policy has been primarily concerned with national sovereignty. This was the basis of Boris Yeltsin’s postures over Serbia and Chechnya. The brief war with Georgia, and the conflict in eastern Ukraine, also fits this pattern. Although Syria shares no borders with Russia, the civil war could well have implications for Chechen jihadists. It’s easy to sell the intervention as ‘defensive’ within Russia. Despite the economic problems Putin can still bolster support through jingoism.

The key question for Putin is how long can this last? Oil prices remain low and the sanctions are hitting the government and its oligarchs. Putin’s credibility is at stake. He is widely credited with ending the economic chaos of the 1990s. The military adventures are incidental, whether it’s Chechnya or Syria. If the economic problems facing the country cannot be resolved, there may be more trouble on the horizon.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

Catastroika: Putin's Syria Policy

So Russia is now an active participant in the Syrian civil war. The pretext is standard: Islamic State must be defeated at any cost to the Syrian people. Yet the bombs are falling on other rebel targets - al-Qaeda's Jubhat al-Nusra, no doubt - and civilian targets are not out of bounds. Russian bombs have already hit hospitals and medical centres. These incidents will only increase as the bombing continues and the war continues to hurtle onward.

As I wrote before the Russian army began bombing Syria, Vladimir Putin has a more coherent strategy than the Western powers - which still cling to the hope that Islamic State and Assad can be defeated at once. Putin begins from a different premise: Assad's regime is the most legitimate force in the war. This may be a key strength, but it doesn't guarantee victory - nor does it justify itself. Four years of war have left 250,000 people dead, maybe more, and displaced millions.

No one power seems capable of destroying the other. But this could quickly change. Bashar al-Assad could be ousted by his generals. Islamic State could takeover a major city and declare a new capital, which would be a tremendous blow. That's why Assad has been so desperate to cling onto Aleppo. If the Alawite-Sunni alliance, on which the Syrian regime depends, collapses then there will be a strong power vacuum.

The endless war

In this case, Syria will fall into the abyss, as if the conflict wasn't already bad enough, imagine total chaos. It's plausible external powers would back whichever factions they can to try and regain control over the situation. There are a hand full of countries where this has happened: Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and now Syria possibly. It's not pretty, to put it mildly.

Russia has been here before. In December 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, first to topple Hafizullah Amin, who it found untrustworthy and unstable, then it set about trying to turn the Parcham wing of the People's Democratic Party into the centre of power in the country. Babral Karmal was its Menshevik front man. The Mujahideen, backed by the US and Pakistan, was its adversary. In the end, the Soviet Union was humiliated.

Today Russia cannot afford to reenact this catastrophe. Despite this historical lesson, the Putin government has not been deterred from de facto invading Syria on the side of the Assad regime. Up to now, Putin was playing the distant game. In early 2013 Putin made his stance clear at the UN Security Council and stood in unanimity with China. When it looked like the US was getting ready for 'punitive bombing' in August 2013 Putin was sending arms to Assad.

Now Putin has 'little green men' flying over Syria to dump explosives on the rebels. There has been a dramatic shift since 2013 and it may come down to one country: Ukraine. The Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea provoked outrage in the West and led the US and the EU to impose sanctions on the Russian Federation. As wrong as it was for Russian troops to march into a sovereign nation-state, the most outraged squeals came from war criminals.

As the Russian economy faces bleak prospects - thanks to the collapse of oil prices, never mind the sanctions - the Ukrainian crisis is being felt in the homes of ordinary Russians. If Putin cannot stabilise the economy he could face serious domestic opposition. The boost in popularity over Ukraine could easily disappear. The end of the Yeltsin years left Putin with a great deal of credibility. He appeared as a necessary force providing order and stability.

High-risk strategy

According to financial journalist Andrew Critchlow, Putin is playing a high-risk strategy to drive oil prices up. To undermine the Russian economy, the US and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly slashed oil prices. This has hit Russia hard, but it also threatens to destabilise the Saudi dictatorship. Rather than back down Putin has moved to confront his enemies via the Syrian civil war. He has moved to strengthen the Syrian regime and the Iranian government, which pose serious obstacles to Saudi Arabia.

By invading Syria, Russia can throttle the jihadi rebels mobilised by Saudi and Qatari petro-dollars. It might be the means to exhaust the Saudi royal family. King Salman can't afford to face chaos at home either. If the House of Saud feels its position threatened by the Syrian civil war it may back down. In this case, King Salman may cut oil production to allow prices to rise. This would help ease the strain of the Russian economy.

Along these lines, as Critchlow's theory goes, the Syrian civil war could threaten the ruling order in the Saudi Kingdom and the Russian Federation. If Putin's gamble leads all sides to push harder, then it's possible everyone would lose out. Even in that case, it's likely oil prices will have to stabilise in the end. In the meantime, as the civil war reaches new suicidal heights, the Syrian people are the real losers.

If the Russian air strikes can weaken the rebels, the Syrian regime can hold onto its gains and may be even expand its reach. This could force the Western powers to accept new terms of negotiation. In this scenario, Putin will have won and the US will have been humiliated. If Putin can do this and force the Saudis to raise oil prices this victory will be twofold. But the stakes are high and the war is far from cold.

This article was originally published at Souciant.

The real substance.

The real substance of Obama's state of the union address was in the positions he has already taken and merely reaffirmed yesterday. The truth of his government can be read in these statements. Below, I've included excerpts here and underlined particularly important sentences:

First, we stand united with people around the world who have been targeted by terrorists -- from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris. (Applause.) We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we have done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies. (Applause.)  

At the same time, we’ve learned some costly lessons over the last 13 years. Instead of Americans patrolling the valleys of Afghanistan, we’ve trained their security forces, who have now taken the lead, and we’ve honored our troops’ sacrifice by supporting that country’s first democratic transition. Instead of sending large ground forces overseas, we’re partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.  

In Iraq and Syria, American leadership -- including our military power -- is stopping ISIL’s advance. Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group. (Applause.) We’re also supporting a moderate opposition in Syria that can help us in this effort, and assisting people everywhere who stand up to the bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.  

Now, this effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed. And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL. We need that authority. (Applause.)

Of course, it goes without saying that the Islamic State emerged out of an array of conditions which the US helped to create - not only in its destabilisation of the whole region, but in its encouragement of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to back Syria's Islamist rebels. The fact that the President has done this and reserves the right to act unilaterally against such 'terrorists' would have been noted by any serious observer. Instead the media was largely silent on these points and preferred to focus on 'middle-class economics'. But wait, it gets better.

Second, we’re demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We’re upholding the principle that bigger nations can’t bully the small -- by opposing Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine’s democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. (Applause.)  

Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with frontline states, Mr. Putin’s aggression it was suggested was a masterful display of strategy and strength. That’s what I heard from some folks. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads -- not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve. (Applause.)

What's missing from this picture? Well, the coup which threw out Viktor Yanukovych was supported by NATO and the EU to bring Ukraine within the US-EU orbit of influence. The US opposes Russian aggression, but only as a response to its own unilateralism. Don't just take my word for it. Here's what Mikhail Gorbachev said in a recent interview with Der Spiegel.

NATO's eastward expansion has destroyed the European security architecture as it was defined in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The eastern expansion was a 180-degree reversal, a departure from the decision of the Paris Charter in 1990 taken together by all the European states to put the Cold War behind us for good. Russian proposals, like the one by former President Dmitri Medvedev that we should sit down together to work on a new security architecture, were arrogantly ignored by the West. We are now seeing the results.

NATO was founded to counter Soviet aggression. It makes little sense, if we accept its initial claims, why it would continue to exist after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not only does it exist, but it has been expanded. Now Obama brags about the economic sanctions he has imposed on Russia as a punishment. It's a clear message: the US will not accept the standards it applies to others.

Putin's Asia.

My latest article for Souciant focuses on Putin's foreign policy in West Asia. Here's an excerpt:

Last year, many commentators in the West were aghast at the Russian stance on the Syrian civil war. It was in early 2013 when Russia and China presented a united opposition at the UN Security Council to intervention in Syria. Then it was flabberghasted at the Russian opposition, in the summer of 2013, to Obama’s proposed ‘punitive measures’ (e.g. indiscriminate bombing). This was after Assad’s use of chemical warfare, which led to Putin pledging more military hardware as a gesture of support. The proponents of ‘humanitarian interventions’ will pretend that Vladimir Putin succeeded in deterring the Americans.

In reality, the US government would have gone ahead whatever the UN Security Council concluded if it had really wanted to intervene. It certainly didn’t stop when the UN opposed the occupation of Iraq. The sudden capitulation may have been more symptomatic of any clear strategy in Washington than anything else. The Sino-Russian veto was a convenient pretext not to directly intervene and watch the conflict play out.

The US non-strategic proposal of ‘punitive measures’ was a lot like Israeli airstrikes against Syria in early 2013. Nothing constructive could’ve come of it, and probably nothing good was intended. Once again, there was no great loss in waiting it out in the absence of any willing military collusion. In the United Kingdom, parliamentary debate on Syria opposed the government’s stance and – for the first time since 1782 when the British conceded American independence – the country had to rule out getting involved.

In the end, Obama decided not to pursue punitive measures and hold back until Assad had rid his regime of chemical weapons. The US government may well have concluded that it would be best to draw out the conflict for as long as possible, due to the various forces tied up in the country, thereby ensuring long-term instability. Everyone is playing the Syrian game right now: militants, Iranians, and so on. As long as there is no unanimous victor, there is no impetus to bomb.

Putin backed the move to clean Syria of chemical weapons for the very opposite reason: if the secular nationalist regime can survive, then there is the possibility of a stability beneficial to Russian interests. This is the crux of the matter. The US has a vested interest in regional instability, which keeps its opponents busy, whereas the Russians have an opposing interest in stability which may allow them to assert their influence. On Syria, these interests ultimately converged, and settled on chemical weapons.

Goodbye, Mr Ahmadinejad.

 

It’s good to see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finally out of office. It was a shame that the protest fallout of the last election didn’t succeed in ousting him. Instead the thugs of the Revolutionary Guard were deployed and the demonstrations were crushed. The emergence of Hassan Rouhani as the next President should not be understood in separation from those events just four years ago. The violence of the state remains a flagrant memory for Iranians. The spectrum of Iranian politics may only be varying forms of conservatism. In this election it was particularly so, as the ‘Supreme Leader’ Khamenei sought to ensure the range of candidate was incredibly narrow. Even former President and veteran politician Rafsanjani was barred from entering the race. Yet it was Ahmadinejad’s crony who was rejected for an old ally of Rafsanjani and Khatami.

The long-term future of the clerical regime will be on the mind of the ‘Supreme Leader’, as it always has been, and it was clear that the continuity of the Ahmadinejad era may not be the wisest way of proceeding. Mysterious charges have come to pass against the outgoing President, which he will face in November and that in itself is significant.[1] It’s possible that the Islamic regime is looking to split the grass-roots opposition of the Green movement. If a series of reforms are passed it may be a way for the clerics to extend their rule by winning over more of the young and women as a base. That’s one possibility as the support of conservative Iran in conjunction with a police state may not be enough to guarantee the future of the Islamic Republic. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the ‘Supreme Leader’ may be able to offset serious reform at home through the Syrian conflict. The safe bet might be on reformist gestures rather than any substance.

As Patrick Cockburn has observed, Tehran is fully behind the Assad regime because the attempt at regime change in Syria is interpreted as a necessary precondition for a strike on Iran and possibly its Shi’ite allies in Lebanon and Iraq. In fact, the Iranian re

gime has just pledged 4,000 troops to the defence of the Assad dictatorship.[2] It’s astonishing that there can be a discourse on these events without any regard for history. The motivations in Tehran for backing Assad to the bitter end are hardly discussed. It is long forgotten now that the Syrians were the only regional powers to support Iran (along with Israel incidentally) in the savage war with Iraq in the 1980s. In those days the US found Saddam Hussein to be an adequate ally against Khomeini’s Islamic regime. Yet once the Gulf War came and went Hafez al-Assad became the preferred Arab despot for the Washington tyrannophiles.

If we examine history (itself a heresy in contemporary discourse) we find that we have been here before. The previous government to Ahmadinejad was headed by President Khatami and it posed as a shift to reform from the past administrations. The aims were to normalise the Islamic Republic and resituate it in the traditional role that Iran has played in the region. Elected in 1997 Mohammed Khatami relied on the support of the women’s vote, as reformists typically do, as well as the urban middle-classes. He convinced the ‘Supreme Leader’ to allow him to run because the system requires a steam valve to release the political tension built up after nearly two decades of conservative governments. It was a politically expedient sales-pitch to a faux-cleric who was once President himself. From all of this we can see that the Iranian leadership cannot be taken as ‘irrational’ or ‘crazy’.

The Khatami administration had no qualms with the structural adjustments to the Iranian economy. Indeed, Khatami was eager to speed up the processes of privatisation and deregulation which he had inherited from Rafsanjani. Likewise the aim of re-establishing Iran in its traditional role required a normalisation of relations with the US, as well as client-states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the traditional role of Iran was a ‘cop on the beat’ alongside mercenary-states such as Israel, Turkey and Pakistan. This is the crowd to which Rouhani belongs. In these terms it’s easy to see the appeal of the anti-imperial bluster with which Ahmadinejad straddled Iran for nearly a decade. The former Mayor of Tehran promised the Iranian people economic concessions, such as instituting pensions for the thousands of women who work as carpet weavers and were blinded by their occupation by the age of 40.[3] The backbone of conservative populism in Iran is the rural and urban poor, precisely those desperate enough to seek refuge in religion.

At the same time, Ahmadinejad offered crumbs to the poor and needy he opted for the Khomeini vision of Islamic Iran as the only alternative to the decadence of Western liberalism. This is the alternative to the Khatami propositions to normalise relations with Washington. It’s what has led Iran to forge alliances with Caracas as well as Moscow and even Pyongyang. Yet there must be a tension in the ruling-class of the country to allow for such a fluctuation between the ‘moderates’ and the ‘extremists’. The foreign policy of Iran remains completely rational in the terms understood by Iran’s intelligentsia. The development of nuclear power and the capability for nuclear weapons was originally a policy of the Shah. After seizing power Khomeini immediately had the reactors shut down, only to reluctantly reopen them once Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass-destructions and Iran needed a deterrent. So this is an old story, nothing new.

President Khatami sought to normalise relations with the US by lending intelligence support to the invasion of Afghanistan. It was saleable move as the Taliban had butchered Shi’ites and killed Iranian diplomats after which Khatami acted to prevent a war with Afghanistan. The Khatami government helped set up Hamid Karzai as the US objectives shifted from retaliation for the World Trade Centre attacks to regime change in Afghanistan. In return for these gestures Bush put Iran on the ‘Axis of Evil’ for its sponsorship of groups like Hezbollah. That was in early 2002 and months later when the US and Britain were looking for support to invade Iraq the incorrigible Jack Straw flew to Tehran. The memory of the insane war with Iraq was, and is, still haunting Iran. Khatami offered to provide assistance – in the form of intelligence, logistics and advice – to the forces looking to plunder Mesopotamia. The future of Iraq was no less insignificant than that of Afghanistan.

Jack Straw pitched the idea to Colin Powell, who found it appealing, but couldn’t convince the White House to get behind the idea. It may have been arrogance on the part of the Bush administration. Perhaps the Bushites feared the prospect of an emboldened Iran and its influence filling the void left-over from Saddam Hussein. In the end the US couldn’t hold-off elections and couldn’t prevent Iran from having a hand in the future of Iraq. It may have been inevitable in a predominantly Shi’a country. Neither Iran nor Iraq wants a re-run of the war that took place in the 80s. The prospect of peaceful relations between Iran and Iraq could lead to greater stability in the region, and that’s undoubtedly not what the US wants. The possibility of a Shi’ite alliance across West Asia is terrifying precisely because it could threaten the US control of the oil spigot.

Despite Washington’s intransigence the Khatami government sought a roadmap of improving US-Iran relations. Khatami wanted to hold talks with the US and put everything on the table. He offered to turn Hezbollah into a non-violent political organisation which accepted the two-state peace settlement.[4] In exchange Khatami hoped the US government would abolish all sanctions on Iran and refrain from instigating regime

change in Tehran.[5] It was drawn up through discussions between Khatami, Khamenei and others. According to a BBC documentary on Iran’s recent political history the ‘Supreme Leader’ actually gave his approval for 85% to 90% of the proposals. George W Bush sent a sharp message to Tehran by refusing to acknowledge or engage with the offer. The message was received and by the next election the ‘reformism’ of Mohammed Khatami had been written-off as a failure. Onto the stage marched Ahmadinejad with the blessing of the clerical establishment.

Now we have seen the process fall the other way. The terms Ahmadinejad spent in office reaped no great results for Iran. The intransigence and aggression of the West was hardly deterred by the absurd posturing of the crackpot statesman. Talk of war has been a recurrent theme in discourse for Americans, Europeans and Israelis. Meanwhile the huge costs incurred by the Iraq war meant the possibility of war with Iran unfeasible for a long time. Later, the Bush administration refused to back Ehud Olmert’s dream of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.[6] Yet the White House has since launched a campaign of assassination against nuclear scientists in the country. The US has even gone as far as to remove the MEK from its terrorist list.[7] It was a sweet ‘Thank You’ for the group’s cooperation in the campaign of bombing and killing Iranian scientists. It’s a strategy which has been coupled with economic strangulation in the form of sanctions, which may keep the Iranian people from rising up against the regime.

All the while Tehran is no doubt very aware of the threat posed by US military bases in neighbouring countries: the Fifth Fleet is based on Bahrain and the island of Diego Garcia has been utilised to station bunker-busters and nuclear submarines. It would be ridiculous to attribute any responsibility to Iran for this aggression. Lebanon was the battlefield between Israel and Iran in 2006, now it may be Syria’s turn. The effect of the Lebanon war was conservative in Iran; the Syrian civil war may have similar consequences. Time will only tell. The contradictions of Iranian society are turning, as always, in societies everywhere, towards a conclusion which will only be obvious in hindsight. The enemies of democracy in Iran include not just the ‘Supreme Leader’, but the US, Israel and Britain as well. Whether or not we see war in coming decades is very much up to us.

This article was later posted at the Third Estate on August 6th 2013.

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/mahmoud-ahmadinejad-summons-iran

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-to-send-4000-troops-to-aid-president-assad-forces-in-syria-8660358.html

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/iran-votes-for-new-president-farewell-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-well-miss-you--but-not-that-much-8658144.html

[4] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0525-05.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1

[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19767043

Obama's Killing Machine.

 

Not even a week into his first term, President Obama sent a clear message to the world when it came to the ‘War on Terror’ re-declared by Bush in 2001. On January 23^th 2009 Obama authorised the first of many military operations conducted within Pakistani territory to take place during his time in office. It was a double-strike carried out by a remotely piloted American aircraft – one of the so-called ‘drones’ – killing at least 15 people in western Pakistan.[1] As far as we know it was the first of more than 300 of these operations to be conducted by the CIA in Pakistan over the last four years. It was as much a sign of things to come as it was the first sign of what looks like continuity between Obama and Bush. Actually the truth is even worse than that.

The policy of drone strikes was initially launched under the shameful first term of President Bush only five months before the 2004 election. Under Bush the campaign of assassination was supplemented, at first, with the kidnapping and torture of ‘terror suspects’ only for this campaign to be upped under Obama. It was Bush who saw the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, rammed through Congress after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Pentagon officials have claimed that the AUMF gives the President the power to wage an endless war anywhere on earth; with one official predicting that the operations against al-Qaeda could go on for 20 years.[2] Even so, the Bush administration only authorised around 50 strikes in Pakistan compared with the more than 300 strikes authorised by Obama.[3] With the passing of the National Defence Authorization act the US can now feel free to murder its own citizens at a whim if they are ‘associated’ with terror. The world remains the battlefield for these airborne death squads and no one appears to be safe.
 

 

Over the next four years Obama would extend the drone operations to a whole new precedent, past Pakistan across West Asia and even onwards to Africa. By the summer of 2011 the White House had given the ‘okay’ to bomb Somalia, the justification being to combat the Islamists in the country who had forged ties to Yemen’s al-Qaeda.[4] The US had been conducting operations against Yemen, where they would later assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki – the American and online face of radical Islamism – only to continue the strikes and kill (as of May 20^th 2013) somewhere between 1,100 and 1,800 people.[5] Then the arms that had flowed readily into the hands of Berbers and Tuareg fighters in Libya’s civil war made it to Northern Mali in 2012. The Tuaregs, now rearmed, carved out Azawad from the African state only for the military junta in Bamako to request French assistance. The Islamist presence in North Africa provided yet another pretext to the ever extending bloodbath from above. Soon the US government had responded in its own way and American troops were deployed in 35 African countries.[6] By January 2013, Niger had agreed to let the US drones swarm into their sovereignty to kill yet more targets.[7]
 

The exact numbers of those killed in these operations are not so much disputed as the precise composition of the slain. At CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair estimates the death toll as more than 3,000 with something like 900 civilian deaths including at least 176 children.[8] That’s if we assume that the muddy distinctions of ‘civilians’ from ‘terror suspects’ or even ‘associated forces’ (of al-Qaeda) can be sustained. At the Brookings Institution, in July of 2009, Daniel L Byman estimated that the body count from the drone strikes came to ten civilians for every militant killed.[9] It’s worth keeping in mind that the US government defines ‘suspected militant’ as all military-age males in a strike zone.[10] There are worthy victims and unworthy victims, those killed by the enemy and those we have killed. Such a distinction is to be maintained through whatever legal wrangling necessary in this bizarre age.
 

Come the second term, President Obama had resorted to using past precedents of American war crimes in Indochina to further legitimise the swarm of Predator drones.[11] Operation Menu was the name for the systematic bombing of selected targets (supposedly Viet Cong strongholds) within neutral Cambodia. This campaign was actually just a worse version than the less intense operations carried out under Lyndon Johnson.[12] It was called Menu because of the order of bombing: first breakfast, then lunch, snack, dinner, supper and dessert. With this flippancy the US effectively invaded Cambodia in 1970 and out of the inferno emerged the Khmer Rouge stronger than ever from the fallout. The example of Operation Menu is useful because international law would rule out extending conflict outside of the battlefield. At the time the State Department lawyer claimed legitimacy in extending the war in Vietnam to its neutral neighbour because there were Vietnamese forces in Cambodian territory.[13]
 

It is a befitting analogy for Obama’s drone wars, given the destabilising effect on Pakistan with the potential for civil war and even nuclear disaster in the country. With this in mind we may add that the assassination of Osama bin Laden, originally named Operation Geronimo, was carried out by US forces with the prior expectation that if the situation gets out of hand with nearby Pakistani soldiers they would have to fight their way out of the country. These unsanctioned actions against a supposedly sovereign country have provoked incredible anger in Pakistan. Let alone the authorised actions to repeatedly bomb villages and towns in Pakistan’s territory. Even if we accept the premises of the ‘War on Terror’ we cannot be blind to the sheer futility of these bloody operations. The latest drone strike in Pakistan was on May 29^th of this year, left Walier ur-Rehman, second-in-command of the Taliban, dead among three others in North Waziristan.[14] The next day the Pakistani Taliban replaced this prominent commander with Khan Said. No doubt the Islamists of Pakistan have plenty of new recruits to hoover up in the wake of drone strikes.
 

The attempts by the White House to find a loophole around the criminal nature of this conduct are especially revealing. Obama is much less comfortable than his predecessor when it comes to disregarding international law. Where the Bush-Cheney gang couldn’t give a damn about international law this lawyer-cum-politician looks for the legal grounds to commit mass-murder. Bush had the audacity to pass the ‘Netherlands invasion act’ in 2002, which gave the US the right to invade to prevent any trial of an American citizen taking place in The Hague.[15] Obama is looking to find a more subtle way out of any possible allegations of crimes against humanity. In short, we find that the Democrats offer a better and more civilised George Bush with his finger on the button.

 

This article was written for the Third Estate and posted on June 4th 2013.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=0

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/astoundingly_disturbing_obama_administration_claims_power

[3] http://natsec.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan/analysis

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[5] http://yemendrones.newamerica.net/
[6] http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-real-invasion-of-africa-is-not-news-and-a-licence-to-lie-is-hollywoods-gift
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/29/niger-approves-american-surveillance-drones
[8] http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-game-of-drones/
[9] http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
[10]http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/15453-obama-orders-drone-strikes-killing-of-6-suspected-militants-in-yemen
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/opinion/obamas-nixonian-precedent.html?_r=0
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/29/senior-talibans-killed-us-drone-pakistan
[15] http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law