Replies to post #3148 on Foreign Correspondence

[StephanieVanbryce]

US teeters on explosive line in the sand
By Yevgeny Bendersky

Modern-day maps of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia reflect a pattern and a principle ingrained in the foreign policies of major European, and now American, powers - the existence of numerous sovereign Muslim countries. While wars and invasions against Muslim states by outside powers have taken place in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, none of such major military and political moves in the last several decades sought to redraw boundaries or radically change the modern map of the Islamic world.

Today's Muslim states - countries where Islam is a majority religion adhered to by the overwhelming percentage of the population - emerged on the ruins of the last major Muslim power - Ottoman Turkey, and as a result of the dissolution of British India. After the end of World War I and, later on, in 1947, young nation-states emerged in place of the centuries-old established order and principles. For many decades, Western European powers, the United States and the Soviet Union all promoted the emergence of these states onto the world arena, and supported them based on their own political, military or economic interests. Assistance to these states as separate political units drove the diverse foreign policies of the major powers after both world wars, during the Cold War, and in the current unipolar environment.

Muslim states: Past and present
Taking a look at the modern map of the Islamic world reveals a rather strange picture. In North Africa, and the Middle East, actual boundaries of states hardly correspond to the historical, cultural and ethnic make-ups of these regions. The prevalence of straight lines on the map that cut the Sahara or Arabian Desert into independent states is just that - lines in the sand. They divide tribes, clans, families and their corresponding histories and aspirations in an arbitrary manner.

In some cases, all that is required to cross from one North African or Arabian state to the next is to walk over a sand dune. In a region where natural boundaries such as mountains, rivers, valleys or seas are largely absent, the new "borders" came to represent independent Libya, Egypt, Algeria and Jordan. People living on the border areas of these states are hardly aware of the fact that they live across another country. Likewise, in South Asia, Pakistan and India are divided by hastily designed borders that have been the source of conflict between these two states for the past five decades.

The powers that divided the Islamic world into modern states sought to preserve their own influence. British, French and Italian colonial holdings had to be clearly defined in the newly acquired territories of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The easiest way to do this was to create clearly defined boundaries on the world map. The results are straight lines running across the deserts of Arabia and the Sahara. These lines, however, did not - and still do not - reflect the realities on the ground, where people were used to moving around with ease, unobstructed by any border checkpoints and patrols.

The Muslim concept of ummah, or one's belonging to the worldwide Islamic community, is one of the chief principles of Islam. According to the Koran, every practicing Muslim's loyalty should be to his religion first, and to any other state or political entity second. Furthermore, a true believer of Islam should not follow the rules and customs of other governments, but instead must obey Islamic principles, as millions of fellow Muslims do every day.

Thus the actual reading of certain Islamic teachings would indicate that Muslims living across the globe belong to the worldwide Islamic "nation" and not to any particular state on the map. Today's headlines are full of statements by some Muslim groups or individuals all over the world who refuse to obey the secular laws of various countries, preferring instead to establish Islamic rule in those very states. Many countries today grapple with this principle, and the state responses to such Islamic claims vary considerably.

Until the end of World War I, most Islamic nations were part of great Muslim empires. After the demise of the Mongol and Persian empires, the last such empire, Ottoman Turkey, comprised what are now nearly 12 independent states of the Middle East and North Africa. It was once a regional hegemon and a superpower, threatening both Europe and Russia. The Ottoman Empire held sway over Islam by controlling two of the religion's holiest cities - Mecca and Medina - in present-day Saudi Arabia.

While internally weak, and under constant attacks from within and without starting with the dawn of the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire represented strength and hope to millions of Muslims around the world. As World War I drew to a close and the dissolution of this once-great power was imminent, a powerful movement was born in British India, home to the majority of the world's Muslims at that time. The movement, called the Khilafat - after the Islamic notion that a Muslim state unifying all the world's Muslims should exist, governed by a religious-political head, the khalif , or caliph - sought to preserve Turkey's role as the leader of the Islamic world.

While many Muslims living under the decaying Ottoman rule did not support such a movement, and fought against it alongside European powers, the concept itself was a powerful force to millions of Muslims in British India. It eventually died once Turkey became a republic and embarked on the road to modernization in the early 1920s. Nonetheless, Western foreign policies since that time have been directed at preserving the political disunity of the Muslim world, fostering various political developments with the eventual aim of avoiding the resurgence of a powerful Islamic state that would unify hundreds of millions of Muslims into one political, economic and military entity.

That process was greatly assisted by the start of the Cold War and the US-Soviet rivalry. As the newly created Islamic states ended their domination by the British, French and Italian colonial powers in the 1950s, they actively sought to protect their newly acquired independence from the repeat of colonial encroachment. Both the West and the Soviet Union were happy to oblige their new clients, supporting each one independently from the other. Pan-Arab nationalism of the 1950s and 1960s was a perfect example of such a policy, as the USSR supported Egypt's nationalism, while the West invested resources to support the states of the Arabian Peninsula.

Elsewhere, in North Africa, such states as Morocco and Algeria were seen as a counterweight to strong claims by Egypt for the leadership of the Arab world. Supporting each state separately, giving it incentives to act independently of others in the region, made it possible for the Western and Soviet world to deal with each Muslim state on its own. Pan-Arab national aims replaced religious Islam as a rallying cry for unity - a cry that was followed by various indigenous attempts to modernize the Muslim world and bring it closer to Western economic and political standards.

While the Soviet Union actively supported secular nationalistic Egypt, Syria and Libya, the United States supported secular Iran and Pakistan, as well as Israel and monarchic Arabian kingdoms. Conflicting political and economic programs by the Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian states replaced relative Muslim unity and cohesion that might have existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, these countries were drawn into economic interdependence with the West through the exploration and trade of oil, the chief source of fuel for the rapidly growing Western and Asian economies.

Modern challenges to the West
The Iranian revolution of 1979 delivered the first shock to the established principles of splitting the Muslim world into separate political entities. While the coming to power of a theocratic government was not by itself shocking - most oil-producing states of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula were monarchic theocracies supported by the Western world - the message and policies of the new Iranian government were alarming. The new rulers of Tehran sought to export their religious revolution to other Muslim countries and to overthrow the regimes that were either leaning toward, or were supported by, the secular, non-religious US, Soviet Union and Western Europe.

Their motives met with relative success with the Iranian-style revolution in Sudan in the early 1980s, and the creation of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. In effect, the Iranian theocratic government assumed the leadership of the movement to unify the Islamic world, hoping to rid it of any non-Islamic influence, or at least to unify Shi'ite Muslims living in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. This has been Iran's consistent policy and while it has varied its statements and policies since 1979, the overall message is the same. What makes Iran more powerful in this scenario is the fact that it is one of the world's largest oil producers, and its aims are directed at the main oil-producing region of the world that is of immense strategic and economic importance to practically every industrialized country.

The second challenge to the non-Islamic governments of the West was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This time, the US and its worldwide coalition responded with a powerful military operation against the Iraqi regime that became known as the Gulf War. Iraq's aims at that time were twofold - to achieve military hegemony in the Persian Gulf and to conquer a major oil-producing state in the region. Throughout the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's leader, espoused claims to the leadership of the Arab world, acting as the protector of Arab Sunni countries against a recalcitrant Iranian Shi'ite regime.

At that time, many Muslim states supported Iraq as the bulwark against Iran. Once Iraq invaded Kuwait, the regional powers and the West saw the possible emergence of Iraq as a major power in control of the world's oil supplies. Prior to the US-led military action, the Iraqi regime stood within striking distance of Saudi Arabia and its massive oilfields, a territory that would not have been able to protect itself adequately without outside assistance. A military attack on Iraqi forces became a necessary option for Western interests to prevent the emergence of a powerful Muslim state with the capacity to act as a possible unifying force in the Muslim world because of its growing military and economic strength.

The third challenge came in the face of al-Qaeda, a powerful worldwide militant organization that calls for the unity of the ummah against the US and the West; the overthrow of secular, military, political or monarchic regimes associated with the West; and the establishment of an Islamic khilafat, or caliphate. Al-Qaeda has been linked to various Muslim militant groups operating all around the world with similar goals.

Recently, it has been suspected of cooperating with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant organization, as well as other non-Arab groups and movements. This particular cooperation is significant because it marks the first known operational linkage across religious and ethnic lines - al-Qaeda is an ultra-conservative movement adhering to the Sunni branch of Islam, while Hezbollah and Iran follow Shi'ite Islamic teachings. The worldwide cooperation of this network marks a serious development that is already unsettling the entire Muslim world. While al-Qaeda has been temporarily crippled by the US-led assault after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there is no indication that it is letting up its efforts in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or even Europe - in fact, its popularity is growing among the world's Muslims.

The Western response to Iranian, Iraqi and al-Qaeda threats include the support and cooperation with several key Muslim states, such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. All of them receive varying degrees of military, logistical, economic and political support. After the defeat of the Iraqi regime in 2003, the US made public its desire to contain Iran and to destroy al-Qaeda. The harder that both al-Qaeda and Iran try to create a Muslim movement capable of challenging the outside world, the harder the US and its partners push back in preserving and supporting regimes as different from each other as the military dictatorship in Pakistan, the Saudi monarchy or the quasi-military government of Egypt.

From a geopolitical standpoint, it is easier to deal with a relatively small state than with a large and powerful country. When Egypt sought to create the United Arab Republic in the 1960s by attempting to unify Egypt, Syria, Yemen and potentially other states in the Middle East, the US supported Israel's successful military moves and counter-moves that eventually ended the Egyptian initiative. The US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 did not seek to change these countries radically - rather, they sought to install friendly governments within the existing borders.

The US current administration's drive to spread democracy in the Middle East does not envisage the melting away of boundaries and decades-long political sovereignty - rather, Washington seeks to preserve the existing states as they are by bringing democratically oriented governments to power. This policy is driven by a premise that democratic states would not pose a danger to one another, would respect one another's sovereignty within the existing borders and would not easily launch war on their neighbors for a religious, political or ethnic purpose. The collection of pacific but independent Muslim states would allow for unobstructed access to the world's oil resources and would preclude the emergence of a regional hegemon capable of upsetting the existing balance of power.

That is precisely what Iran and al-Qaeda want to avoid. The melting away of artificial Middle Eastern and North African boundaries that were imposed by now-defunct governments of Western Europe would create a massive state with the majority-Muslim population in the hundreds of millions and in control of the crucial oil and natural-gas reserves. Such an outcome would in effect create another superpower in the world arena. There are indications that Muslim states are seeking to move closer to such a reality.

The creation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a supranational organization comprising major oil exporters from North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, was a major development in the Muslim world. It has already demonstrated its power by causing an oil crisis in the US in the 1970s, and it could still be a powerful force affecting world governments that grow more dependent on oil imports. The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is another powerful organization that unifies Muslim states around the world.

The OIC has a major influence in world affairs, since even Russia is seriously contemplating joining it to foster greater religious freedom for its millions of Muslim citizens. Other organizations exist that seek to speak with a unified Arabic, North African or Islamic voice. While at present these organizations are not powerful or unified enough to stop US political and military developments, their clout is steadily increasing as the powers of the European Union and China - both entities with a heavy reliance on oil - grows on the world arena.

Conclusion
Given the historical progression that at one time saw powerful Islamic states play a major role in world developments, followed by their internal dissolution, later subjugation and colonization by outside powers, and the eventual emergence as many distinct entities with varying degrees of religious, political and military governance, today's Islamic world presents a fragmented picture within artificial political boundaries. If the world's current dependence on oil continues to grow - as recent reports about China's oil consumption seem to indicate - many Muslim states will assume greater clout in world affairs, making it harder to treat each of them separately as distinct "identities" vis-a-vis other states.

The latest developments in the "war on terrorism" point to unifying movements in the Islamic world, either with Iran's help or under the banner of al-Qaeda and its allies - a more coordinated attack on Western principles and Western interests in the Muslim world that cut across the religious and ethnic divides. While US efforts in Iraq have faltered since 2003, this Sunday's Iraqi election after a relatively successful election in Afghanistan will prove to be one of the turning points in the development of the Islamic world, which will either accept and foster the Western model and emerge as a collection of distinct and friendly states, or will finally break under the pressure of Iran and al-Qaeda and begin to emerge as a unified religious, political and military entity, heralding a new chapter in world history.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA28Ak01.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

US fights back against 'rule by clerics'
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Given the widespread Sunni boycott of Iraq's January 30 elections for a National Assembly, with voting concentrated among the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south, the polls served more as a referendum to prove Shi'ite and Kurd strength.

This can be seen in the results of the polls released on Sunday, with the Shi'ite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance capturing 48% of the vote and the Kurdish alliance 26%.

Now it emerges that there is a strong movement in southern Iraq for the establishment of autonomous Shi'ite provinces as a precursor to introducing vilayet-e-faqih (rule by the clergy) in the whole country.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html

Of these calls for autonomy or federalism, the most disconcerting for US authorities is the call for religious rule. Already, leading Shi'ite clerics in Iraq are pushing for "Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution".

To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.

A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones.

"A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained.

The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States.

Asia Times Online contacts said it is clear that Pakistan would not be the only country from which the US would have procured arms. And such arms could not be destined for the Iraqi security forces because US arms would be given to them.

For the Americans, the situation in southern Iraq has turned into a double-edged sword. Iraqis there fully embraced the elections - even if they had to be convinced by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to do so - and this participation was welcomed as a sign of democracy taking root in the country.

But with Shi'ite religious parties emerging as the strongest power, no sooner were the elections over than voices were raised for the creation of an autonomous southern Iraqi region, and for vilayet-e-faqih .

People from different walks of life from Basra and other southern provinces can be heard on television and radio channels demanding a federal system in which southern Shi'ites could govern their oil resources for their benefit.

Notably, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading secular Shi'ite candidate in the Iraqi elections, has called for autonomy for the Shi'ite south, which contains some of the world's largest oil fields. Chalabi, a former US favorite who fell out with Washington after the 2003 invasion, said the move would ensure a fairer share of wealth for a region that provides the bulk of Iraqi revenue but receives only a fraction of state spending. The mainly Shi'ite southern provinces of Amara, Nasiriya and Basra are Iraq's poorest, Chalabi said.

Observers say this is the beginning of a new era which could climax in a movement for vilayet-e-faqih , a compulsory part of the Shi'ite faith that is intertwined with the concept of imamat or leadership (all Muslims under one leader). The difference between a caliph and an imam is that a caliph can be anyone accepted by Muslims, but an imam must hail from the Prophet Mohammed's family and be a recognized religious authority (clergy).

Already, members of the Da'wa Party, many of whom were taught in Iran, have taken over mosques in Basra, and members of Hezbollah have heavily infiltrated the Shi'ite population, in addition to Iranian intelligence and members of the Pasdaran-i-Inqalab (Iran's Revolutionary Guards) to pave the way for vilayet-e-faqih.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at [e-mail]


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB15Ak02.html

[Ace Hanlon]

 

Hillary Clinton, the Next GW Bush: She Wants to Run Iraq  

By Sam Hamod

Al-Jazeerah, February 22, 2005

 

"America has one party with two names," Jesse Jackson

Once again, showing that she's as evil politically as her husband, ex-president Clinton, the shill for Israel--Hillary Clinton is in the infamous American fortress called "the green zone," telling the Iraqis who should be their next Prime Minister by speaking out against the victorious election party's choice, Dr. Jaafari.

It is interesting that she, in league with other zionist leaning senators had to rush to Iraq, to stay in the Green Zone and start making comments about who should be running Iraq. Their chief gripe against Dr. is that he's a moderate, loyal to Iraq and that he's a religious Muslim (not a hypocrite like Allawi and Chalabi). Hillary and GW Bush prefer the whores like themselves; people who have no scruples, no ethics or real belief in God, but use God's name in vain for their own ends. With all of Hillary's criticism of Bush, it turns out she's part of the same game, with the same goals, and is no better than GW Bush in her imperialistic behavior.

As an independent person, who wants real DEMOCRACY for the world, I think it is time we call Hillary home, and tell her to quit being like so many other Republocrat clones, GW Bush clones, and stand up for freedom and democracy. After all, who tells Hillary what to do, and gives her the money to remain in office--the biggest zionist voting bloc in history, in New York City. Thus, Hillary is there to do the bidding of her zionist constituency, not the American people's constituency, nor for freedom or justice in the world.

I call her as much a prostitute as her husband because all of us who know the Middle East and the truth about the Arafat/Barak/ Clinton talks know that Bill Clinton sold the chance for peace down the river for zionist support for Hillary. We also know that the"good deal" Clinton talked about would have given the Palestinians much less than 242, the rightful UN mandate on the Palestine/Israeli conflict, and would have given the Palestinians non-contiguous Bantustans. In other words, not a state, but a bunch of disconnected villages, no control of water, transport, electricity or any rights to their own policing.

Now Hillary is in Iraq to do the bidding of Sharon and his zionist friends in NYC and in the Senate, people like sleazy Joe Lieberman, one of of the first Republocrats to endorse GW Bush's designs to attack Iraq and her congressional colleagues like Israel firsters Lantos, King, Schumer and the lot.

It is time for Americans to stand up for democracy, not to be shunted aside by whores and liars who ran the government under Clinton and their friends who run it under GW Bush. Where are the Eisenhowers, the Washingtons, the Lincolns, the Carters--all we have left are a bunch of people who are making enemies for us in the world and even here at home by selling out our democracy for their own ends.

It's time we all join an independent party and quit giving money to these fraudulent "American parties"--the Republocrats and the Republicans.

I hate to say this, but these people like GW Bush, Hillary, Mc Cain, Kerry are making enemies that are going to kill more of our troops and will bring down sabotage against all of us in our country and as we travel overseas; not because of anything we've done wrong, except allowing them to hold office. People will want to kill us because of their way of treating others in the world, from the Atlantic to the Pacific they are making these enemies--and the enemies will end up killing us while Hillary, GWB and their gangs will be protected by Secret Service and later by bodyguards. Tis a shame.

I hope our nation and our democracy survives these duplicituous, undemocratic and disloyal scum.

Sam Hamod writes for several magazines, ezines and websites; his work is translated in over 30 language; he is also the former founder and editor of 3rd World News in Wash, DC, former Director of The Islamic Center in Wash, DC and now edits, www.todaysalternativenews.com  He may be reached at [e-mail] 


 


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