United States eyes a Shi'ite-led West Asia

The tumultuous Middle East is going through a bloody transition where it is increasingly difficult to draw a line between friends, foes, allies, and adversaries, through its origins can be found on the regional map and the creation of nation-states by victorious Western powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The actions of the United States-led Western block helped shape present-day Sunni monarchies and despots around the pivot of the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and two secularist non-Arab regional powers, Turkey and Iran. They stabilized the Middle Eastwith the help of their allies in order to extract the region's mineral resources.

While Iran after Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution stepped out of the Western regional alliance, recent talks between with the US and Iran are signaling its re-entry. On the other hand, Turkey, a longtime partner of the US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization, under the moderately Islamic leaning AK Party is appearing to be leaving its US hegemonic alliance.

In the process of establishing regional hegemony, Western powers eliminated all the challengers that tried to defy the status quo that has guaranteed the easy flow of oil. The rise and fall of Iran's former prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and Iraq's former president Saddam Hussein were in the same trail.

A pivotal moment in changing the balance of Sunni-Shi'ite power was the hanging of Saddam on December 30, 2006. Saddam was not hanged on just any day but rather at the start of Iraqi Sunnis' celebration of Eid al-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice), a major Islamic holiday. In many experts opinion, this was done as an intentional slight to Sunnis and to demonstrate a marked shift of power in Iraq, from Saddam's Sunni rule to the post-2003 Shi'ite regime.

The rise of Islamic-leaning political parties in the Sunni Middle East is posing the greatest challenge to United States backed pro-status quo block. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Libya, Hamas in Palestine, En-Nehda in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, Al-Islah in Yemen, and the AK Party in Turkey; all these moderate Islamic leaning political parties are challenging the decades-old regional balance.

The populist revolts of the Arab Spring, where many Western backed pro-status quo despots were overthrown, has posed a significant challenge to the durability of the status quo. The United States-led Western block succeeded in turning around the revolution in Egypt with the help of the powerful military and feloul [those connected with the former Hosni Mubarak government] by staging bloody military coup a against democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, yet the sustainability of military regime is highly questionable amid daily reports of massacre and torture. Many Islamist movements, from Turkey to Tunisia, believe that the West has adopted a hypocritical attitude towards Egypt - as it was the case in Algeria.

Tunisia, where the Arab Spring of 2011 started, is also witnessing intrigue against the anti-status quo En-Nehda Party, forced to resign from the government by leftist groups and those in favor of the status-quo after it won the first free and fair elections in the country's history.

Saddam's last words were especially important: "Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians." Not only were his executioners merely agents of neighboring Shi'ite Iran, but by pairing "Americans" and "Persians" he also asserted that Iran was acting in concert with the United States.

The United States was perfectly willing to intervene militarily in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi, a Sunni. But despite intense pressure, Washington has held back on the question of intervening in Syria where the regime is dominated by Alawites, a Shi'ite offshoot. Israel, too, seems to favor the maintenance of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

It is pertinent to say that in Lebanon, Israel has not killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary general, but in Palestine and elsewhere many top leaders Hamas have been killed at the hands of agents from the Israeli secret service. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad can hit leaders all over the world but cannot find a leader right next door? The answer must be that Israel and Hezbollah might have some backdoor understanding.

US rapprochement with Iran will pave the way for the emergence of a new alliance where Iran, Iraq, al-Assad's Syria and Hezbollah will be the new allies of United States and West with Zaydi Shi'ites in Yemen and Ithna-Ashari Akhbari Shi'ites of Bahrain.

Washington foresees the inevitable collapse of the decades-long status quo and is working to create a new Shi'ite-based Middle East where Shi'ite-led regimes will be its future allies. The days of axes of evil and resistance are now numbered as the new alliance between the US and Shi’ite regimes emerge in the energy-rich region. 


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-301013.html

Egypt’s Al-Sisi dragged the country into civil war

Egypt’s Head of the Armed forces’ call for people to authorize him for brutal crackdown of so called “violence and terrorism” resulted in massacre of hundreds pro- Morsi, anti-coup demonstrators in Cairo and elsewhere in the country. The provocative talk by General Al-Sisi, the de facto ruler of the country since the ouster of de jure President Mohammad Morsi, is tantamount to pushing Egypt – the Arab world’s most populous country – into a civil war.

By reference to violence and terrorism, Al-Sisi actually meant the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Mohammed Morsi supporters who have been staging countrywide democratic demonstrations against the coup. Anatolia News Agency reported the death toll in security forces’ brutal crackdown at Rabaa Al- Adawiya square well over 200, more than 500 thousand injured.

On Saturday, condemning the massacre in Egypt; Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said “People were calling on their rulers to desist from the coup and give them back their president. But instead of listening to their people, the coup-stagers in Egypt have responded by sending their gangs with guns and bullets,”

This sinister modus operandi of polarizing society and demonizing political opponents was taken to new heights this week when Junta applied it’s well-thought-out plan to disperse the opposing demonstrators using pretext of fighting to eliminate terrorism and violence.

The atrocious old guards of Egypt are back with the reinstatement of Mubarak era cliques. Two years after Egypt bravely stood against tyranny; its military apparatus has cleverly reintroduced the former regime's men under the cover of so called second revolution.

The US and EU principal backers of the Egyptian Coup d’état that ousted President Morsi are merely condemning the violence, not the atrocities committed by Egyptian security forces. They are ingeniously choosing the words that do not directly implicate the Egyptian security forces of massacring the peaceful protesters, demanding for their legitimate democratic rights.  

Cornered and under enormous attack, the Muslim Brotherhood has proven more resilient than anticipated by its enemies. One needs to understand that the Egypt military coup was devised with one goal in mind and one goal only, the death of the Muslim Brotherhood in the birthplace of political Islam. 

The relentless countrywide protests and demonstrations that hundreds of thousands of people have been holding to express their opposition to the ouster of the first democratically elected President of the country made Junta exasperated.

History bears testimony to the fact that no country has ever won its civil liberties through the intervention of its military. One has only to look at Turkey and its hard-fought battle for freedom and democracy to realize that a military-installed government will only lead to a democratic void.

On Saturday Egypt's Junta installed Interior Minister; Mohammad Ibrahim speaking at press conference in Cairo vowed to restore Mubarak-era torture cells. In Ibrahim’s own words “The monitoring departments would be reactivated despite their dismantling having been a main demand of the January revolution. He also said the pro-Morsi protestors would be dispersed, and Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested. He described the closure of these departments after the January 2011 revolution– which toppled long-serving president Hosni Mubarak – as a "mistake.""This mistake is being rectified,”

The basic distribution of power within Egyptian society has not changed and will not change any time soon. The Military and the Muslim brotherhood led Islamists are the two main powerful blocks in the country.  The Western-oriented liberals do not have any real power and stand, as we are seeing now; they are only the fringe block striding on the Military’s shoulders.

Writing for the Hindu on July 27, 2013 eminent foreign policy expert Chinmaya R Gharekhan “The genie of people empowerment has come out of the bottle in the largest Arab country and it will definitely not acquiesce n a prolonged power grab by the army. Millions will again take to the streets if they feel their hard won power is slipping away from their hands. The ‘moderate’ Islamist regimes in Tunisia and Libya would no doubt draw their own lessons from the Egyptian upheaval”.

The ouster of Mubarak on 11 February 2011 was a stage managed arrangement on the behest of Egyptian deep state that too; temporarily quell the profound public resentment against the decades of autocracy. After the fall of Mubarak, the same deep state never allowed harbingering a new democratic beginning for Egypt.

Ironically, millions of Egyptians who voted for Morsi's presidential bid in June 2012 feel that their long-fought-for democratic rights have been trampled on by the same military machine that they rose up against in January 2011 as part of the Arab awakening. 

In less than three years time Egypt has seen two paradoxical scenarios, first when hundreds of people killed demanding the ouster of decades old dictator Hosni Mubarak and in second scenario where equal number of people killed, demanding the reinstatement of democratically elected President Mohammad Morsi. In both the scenarios the slayers are the same, Egyptian security forces.

It remains to be seen that whether Junta regime will be successful in its intrigue, like its predecessors who consecutively outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood or Brotherhood will bounce back against all odds.

http://www.radianceweekly.com/370/11042/egypt039s-al-sisi-dragged-the-country-into-civil-war/2013-08-04/covery-story/story-detail/egypts-al-sisi-dragged-the-country-into-civil-war.html

Isolated Erdoğan Vying for Broader Kurdish Ties

It reminds me of the words of prominent Kurdish politician Leyla Zana’s statement last year, wherein she emphasised: “I believe that he [Prime Minister Erdogan] will be able to solve this [Kurdish] issue. I have never lost my faith in him solving this issue. And I don’t want to lose my faith in him.”  ‘Be that as it may’, Zana’s trust is not justified entirely by the September 30 democratisation package announced by Erdogan but termed by many observers as a good beginning of a long process.

To grasp Turkey’s contemporary Kurdish policy, it is essential to put it in perspective with the past. Yet, the Kurdish question is a complex and multi-layered topic and its history is manifold; one could say that there are several histories of the Kurdish question. This starts with Turkey’s “policy of denial”, since the formation of Republic in 1923 by Mustafa Kamal, that the Kurds indeed constitute a minority.

It is worth mentioning here that in 1992 the then Turkish President Turgut Ozal even argued for the recognition of PKK as a participant in Turkey’s political system and for the amnesty of the PKK fighters. Ozal could not resist the military, Kemalist and Nationalist, over the protests of his reconciliation policy. He was forced to surrender the responsibility to deal with the Kurdish question to the military. That has taken the death toll of 40,000 people since the armed struggle started in the early eighties.

Writing for Al-Monitor on 3 October, eminent Turkish journalist and political expert Mustafa Akyol said: “The bulk of the reforms in question relate to Turkey’s most serious and lethal problem: the “Kurdish question,” or the tension between Turkey’s strict official nationalism and the aspirations of its large Kurdish minority. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Turkish Republic tried to “solve” this problem in very crude ways: simply by banning the Kurdish language and culture and suppressing Kurdish revolts with heavy-handed security measures. Yet, since it came to power in 2002, Erdogan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) has replaced both of these long-time policies with legal reforms for Kurdish rights and political dialogue with Kurdish separatists.”

To remind the reform process under AKP government led by Prime Minister Erdogan, we have to revisit the 18 December 2002 regulation concerning the language of Radio and broadcast. This regulation authorised the state owned Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) in the non-official language.  

The lifting of a common oath taken by school children is also a reform that may win some Kurdish hearts and minds, since it used to begin with the proclamation, “I am a Turk,” and end with a bizarre line that reflected the totalitarian aspects of Turkey’s founding ideology: “Let my existence be a gift to Turkish existence!” In Erdoğan’s own words he uttered during a mass opening ceremony in Adana on 5 October “Lining up kids every morning and making them chant slogans from the 1930s, the Cold War and the era of the Iron Curtain, is not nationalism. Nationalism is building classrooms where those kids can receive education in humane conditions.”

While Erdogan’s reforms might indeed be “just a half-full glass,” as prominent Turkish journalist and editor of Hurriyat daily, Murat Yetkin, in his 1 October 2013 editorial, puts it, but there is no major political party in the country that offers anything better.

Among numerous negative developments ‘from Iraq to Syria and from Iran to Egypt’ in the region, Ankara’s only consolation is its deepening ties with the Kurds of the region ranging from Iraq to Syria to Iran and of course among its own Kurdish population with the help of ongoing peace process.

The ties between Turkey and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq have deepened in last few years and both the sides refer to it as “strategic relations”. Without a doubt, their annual volume of trade, which has reached $9 billion in 2012, lends the impression of strategic depth, but the springtime weather along the Ankara-Erbil axis remains a bit unstable.

If Turkey manages to complete its terrorism settlement process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), it will have great influence on other Kurdish populations in the region, said Abdulbaset Sieda, former head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), Syria’s political opposition in exile. Sieda, who is Kurdish, was the leader of the SNC between June and November of last year. He is also an academic who has written a number of books on the Kurdish population in Syria.

Regionally isolated Erdogan is now solely banking on deepening Turkish-Kurdish ties that are not only limited to his own Kurdish population inside Turkey and with the Kurds in Iraq who are ruling the northern part of the country almost independently from Baghdad.

A visit of Syrian Kurd leader Saleh Muslim to Turkey has cleared the mistrust with Syrian Kurds. Turkey has okayed the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD) administration in the Northern part of Syria that borders with Turkey. Turkey’s backing of the regional Kurdish conference in Northern Iraq is a growing signal of broader Turkish-Kurdish understanding that is not only limited to solving its local Kurdish issue. Though, Turkey very well knows that solving its own Kurdish issue is a must before erecting a grand alliance with the Kurds of the region.

Turkish Government’s peace process with the rebels of Kurdistan workers Party (PKK) is going through withdrawal process of PKK fighters from Turkish territory to the mountains of Kandil governed by autonomous Kurdistan Regional government in Iraq. The Turkish Government, through accord with the Kurdish fighters, wants the bloodshed to be stopped which has taken a toll of 40,000 people since arms struggle started in the year 1985.

There have been previous instances when Turkish authorities reached the peace deal with PKK guerrillas but that truce could not last long and PKK fighters took the arms again. But this time it looks like that the process is comprehensive and having huge impact on regional power equation since the Kurds are divided in four countries of the region namely Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Though, the peace process between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has cleared the first stage yet it has many internal and external challenges and obstacles on the path ahead, so far both the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and the PKK seem to be fully committed to the signing of a peace agreement that will have far-reaching consequences for Turkey and beyond. If peace prevails, everybody stands to gain something – except Iran, Syria and of course, Nouri Al Maliki’s Iraq.

http://radianceweekly.in/portal/issue/capital-punishment-why-doesnt-it-deter-a-murderer/article/erdogan-vying-for-broader-kurdish-ties/

Erdoğan’s Morally Correct Stand on Egypt & Syria

Prolonged Arab awakening and its reverse in Egypt had put Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan into immense complexity. The country presented by its leader as a role model of Muslim democracy, is now facing a paraxial situation from Syria to Iraq and from Egypt to Iran. Turkey, once a trouble shooter of the region, is now embedded in regional chaos, where almost every country in the region is unstable. Prolonged Syrian civil war, Egyptian coup, Iraq’s sectarian strife, tensions with Iran on regional issues and, last but not the least, growing uneasiness with Arab monarchies that are now in opposite camp supporting the military coup in Egypt whereas Erdoğan vehemently opposed the coup against Islamist leaning President Mohamed Morsi.

Ever since the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (pronounced Rajab Tayyab Erdogan) led AK Party (AKP) came to power in 2001, Turkey has started looking increasingly to its Muslim and Arab Eastern neighbours. Prime Minister Erdoğan has personally shaped excellent rapports with various regional leaders, including Basher Al-Assad, Ahamdinejad of Iran, and the late Ghaddafi of Libya. His personal efforts have put Turkey in the core of Middle Eastern geopolitics and simultaneously improved Turkey’s commercial and political standing in those countries.

From the time when the Arab uprising against dictators started in the spring of 2011 and reached the Syrian hinterland, Erdoğan personally tried to direct Al-Assad to solve the crisis but he forgot that Al-Assad is an ingrained dictator and would not take his advice sufficiently seriously. Erdoğan personally felt disregarded when Basher Al-Assad did not heed to his advice and refused to implement the reforms advised by Erdoğan and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

The ‘zero problems with neighbourhood’ policy architected by foreign minister Davutoğlu suddenly turned into ‘zero friends in the neighbourhood’ as Al-Maliki of Iraq also started bickering against Turkey on Iran’s behest. Now Turkey is in a war-like situation with Syria, diplomatic strife with Iraq and Iran and has seriously troubled relations with Israel, even after the accomplishment of long awaited apology. Another huge setback was the Egyptian military coup that has severely crippled Erdoğan’s regional manoeuvres.  The entire Middle Eastern schematic that Erdoğan has shaped in the last 10 years has been fatally disturbed by the regional upheaval.

Undoubtedly, it is imperative for Turkey to emerge victorious from the Syrian quagmire for its own standing in the Middle East. It is extraordinarily difficult for a country like Turkey to live in the atmosphere of animosity in the bewildered region because Turkey is expected to lead the region politically and diplomatically. I am of the belief that Turkey’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-European (EU) partners have put Turkey in a situation where she can neither withdraw herself nor can she act militarily to cleanse the Syrian swamp.

Fist the coup d’état and now the bloody massacre of anti-coup, pro-Morsi supporters in Egypt has exacerbated Erdoğan where he likened the new military leader Al-Sisi to Pharaoh. The regional pro status-quo consisting of US-EU-Israel and Arab monarchies openly backing the coup has isolated Erdoğan. It remains to be seen how Erdoğan would manage his country’s relationship with the GCC monarchies who are the foremost backers of military coup in Egypt. Turkey that has been at odds with Iran on Syrian issue is now also at odds with Saudi Arabia on the Egyptian coup. It will turn out to be a humongous task for Erdoğan to manage the souring ties with two regional heavyweights on two different issues.

The Syrian crisis has opened the Pandora’s box of Shia-Sunni conflict in the entire west Asian region that was long subdued due to the US invasion of Iraq, Israeli-Palestine conflict and Turkish-Iranian bonhomie in the pre-Syrian crisis period. Now the region has divided along sectarian lines, where Sunnites are Supporting Sunnites and Shiites are backing Shiites. The problem has taken a sectarian tone from Yemen to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia to Syria and Iraq to Lebanon. The Syrian crisis has turned the greater Middle East in a Shia-Sunni turf war in which one side has Iran, al-Maliki, Hezbollah and al-Assad and the other has the Saudi-Qatar-led GCC and Turkey.

This bloody sectarian conflict will not be resolved in next few months or years. As the geopolitical events unfold, we will witness a quasi-permanent fratricidal intra-Islamic sectarian war for decades in the west Asian region, culminating into major cartographical changes. The US strategic retreat from the Middle East and pivot to East Asia will finally allow history to reemerge in the Middle East uncontaminated by the hegemonic order imposed by the Western-US’ hyper-power.

Many Turkish experts are of the opinion that Erdoğan has hastened his disenfranchisement with the brutal regime of Bashar-Al-Assad. He should have moulded his policies in a way that provided him the prominence of regional statesman so that he could mediate in the ominous sectarian conflict as a neutral power broker. By getting involved in the crisis he has become a part of problem himself and misplaced the advantage of neutrality for solving the impending sectarian catastrophe in the region.

Suffice it to say that though isolated in the region, Turkey of today under Erdogan’s leadership has set the benchmark of democratic and ethical governance in the most unstable region ruled by west backed despots. Turkey is the only country in the region that took equally tough stand against the dictator of Syria and Egypt’s coup and now the junta regime. Morally correct stand of Erdoğan administration, in the wake of regional crisis will pave the way for a stronger Turkey in the post status-quo Middle East and North Africa.

http://radianceweekly.in/portal/issue/erdogans-morally-correct-stand-on-egypt-syria/article/erdogans-morally-correct-stand-on-egypt-syria-2/