Posts
The Middle
East Imbroglio
People and news
around the world are concerned recently about the savagery perpetrated in the
name of religion in and the consequential migration from the ME. The present
thoughts are a contribution to the ongoing debate on how to deal with the
situation. We need to seek first the possible causes of this outburst against
the contemporary civilization -leaving aside, of course, the distant and
unfortunate occurrence that all three main religions were borne at the same
location causing an eternal enmity between people.
The history of the
period leading up to and including the aftermath of WWI are more relevant. 19th
century European powers’ preoccupation with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire without prior due consideration to the
consequential vacuum may be considered to be the foundation of the ongoing
conflict; a warning that Napoleon gave to the other leaders one century
earlier. The dismantling nevertheless occurred, and the vacuum was filled by an
idiotic plan that Britain and
France put into effect on
the advice of a shady adventurer, Lawrence of Araby, as well as by the creation
of Israel .
Disregard for local social and cultural realities in favor of the victors’
strategic and economic considerations started boiling the Middle Eastern
pot. The savagery of ISIS
in the areas it occupied, and of its followers in distant places around the
world is reminiscent of medieval crusades. Jihad may be a reverse crusade.
When terrorists do
us harm we must certainly hunt them down wherever they are in the world. If any
of our friends is attacked by terrorists and asks us for help, we should join
the hunt. What we should not do, however, is to intervene when the powers to be
in a country, like the majority or military or the ruler, terrorize their own
citizens. It is up to the citizens to rise against the oppressors. Otherwise,
they will never appreciate and cherish freedom and human rights. If people
would like to have democracy for their freedom and human rights, they have to
own it, not to have it handed to them. They have to be let to stew in their own
juice until they reach the boiling point of starving for democracy for whatever
it costs, and how long it takes. The choice of governing style must arise from
within the society concerned, for it to have a sound foundation. If democracy
is imported, it is often interpreted as a foreign object, or as the rule by
majority, which leads to totalitarianism. In the Muslim culture, where they
believe in being led rather than in leading, the majority’s rule turns into
autocracy. Examples of failures of forming free and democratic systems in
Muslim countries, which ended up with chaos or autocracy abound: Iran , Algeria ,
Egypt , Iraq , Libya ,
Sudan , Somalia , all of Central Asian countries, more
recently Yemen and Syria , and finally Turkey . This does not mean to
exclude from these failures the effects of the cold war competition and the
pursuit by world powers their strategic and economic interests. Especially, the
double standard applied to dictators makes the Western interventions in the
name of freedom and human rights suspect at best, and incredible at worst.
Locals then understandably perceive the interventions as an invasion of their
culture, or as designed to serve the West’s nefarious interests.
The current
operation to take down Assad of Syria is a sad demonstration that we did not
learn from these very recent experiences. The fact that Assad regime is not
legitimate does not make our intervention legitimate, even if we intervene for
humanitarian reasons. Humanitarianism alone, vaguely formulated in diplomatic
language in some international covenants, does not give us mandate to
intervene. It is absurd to try to topple Assad because he has committed
atrocities against his people while the vacuum we created ourselves right next
door in Iraq by removing Saddam is filled by the savages of ISIS.
Furthermore, it
was a great mistake to think that we could bring down Assad without the
involvement of Russia , who
has a Middle East beachhead in Tarsus
since the Cold War days of 1977. Blurring our focus on the fight against the
Islamist terrorists by including another target called Assad gave a chance to Russia to expand its presence in Syria . Russia swiftly built an air base in Latakia
between Tarsus and Turkey ’s NATO border, a mere 30-40
miles away.
On the other hand,
an operation in Syria
or anywhere, for that matter, is justifiable if it is a hot pursuit of
terrorists, who cause damage or constitute a threat to us or to our friends
–when they ask for help. We were to focus on eradicating the radical Islamist
terrorism that burgeoned in the vacuum in Iraq . Yet, we were distracted from
focusing on terrorists when Turks cried wolf about threat from Syria . We were
misguided as much by the false Turkish propaganda as by the fear from Iran ’s expansion, thus threat to Israel . Turkey ’s real motivation is, as we all know, to
block the Kurdish spread along its borders, and its, not so well-known, desire
to form a Sunni Syria under Turkey ’s
wing. Turks bomb Kurds, provide material support to Sunni rebels in Syria , and refrain from any effective action
against the Islamist (Sunni) terrorists whose aim is to rule over Syria .
Accordingly, Turkey
became a thorn on the side of the coalition fighting the Islamist terrorists. Turkey ’s several attempts to get NATO involved
in an operation against Syria
-not against Islamist terrorists-, like the positioning of Patriot missiles at
its southern border under the false pretense of threat from Syria , and the
unnecessary downing of the Russian military plane with a flimsy excuse, are
dangerous and irresponsible use of its membership position in NATO. NATO needs
to wake up to the reality that Turkey
is no longer Turkey
of 1952 or even of 1992. It has been, at least in the last fifteen years, an
Islamist oriented country. It became a liability on NATO who could condemn, instead of oblige, deceptions by Turkey .
I might add that
the most important aspect of fighting the radical Islamist terrorists is that
it is not a strategic fight. It is simply a hot pursuit of criminals. They are
not limited in space and time. They are not limited with a compact
organization, to a leadership, to a line of command, to a given location. They
are in fact a worldwide network of groups with a fanatical religious mind-set
(even the term “ideology” loosely used by commentators is misplaced). This
mentality cannot be changed by foreigners, whether by force or by teaching.
Foreign involvement will only exacerbate this fanaticism. These perverted minds
may be changed by the leaders of Muslim countries in general, and by the Saudi
Arabian leadership in particular. Whereas, those leaders stayed on the
sidelines, gave lip service, tried to pacify us by distinguishing Islam from
terrorists, or provided a halfhearted support to the fight against the latter.
Therefore, a wiser approach by us to this fight would have been to form a
coalition composed solely of the Arab countries in the region, including Syria and Iraq , without any overt military
involvement of the West except for a heavy logistic support. Unless all Arab
countries in the region actively and decisively fight against radical Islamist
terrorism, the latter will never be vanquished. If the Islamists’ terrorism is
not what Islam is about, other Muslims have to get their hands dirty and prove
it.
Once a relative
peace is achieved in the Middle East ,
hopefully a new political rearrangement in the region may be sought through an
international agreement between all countries of the region, to which a
guarantee of implementation may be lent by organizations like the UN and NATO.
The main objective of such an agreement must be the avoidance of forming once
again artificial states that would eventually fail and cause conflicts, like
the ones caused by the Sykes-Picot folly.
