Israel and Syria: Behind the Bombs

Israel & Syria: Behind the Bombs

Dispatches From the Edge

Feb. 17, 2013

Now that the dust has settled—literally and figuratively—from Israel’s Jan. 29 air attack on Syria, the question is, why? According to Tel Aviv, the bombing was aimed at preventing the transfer of sophisticated Russian SA-17 anti-craft missiles to Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, which one former Israeli military intelligence officer said would be “a game-changer.” But there are major problems with that story.

First, it is highly unlikely that Damascus would turn such a system over to Hezbollah, in part because the Russians would almost certainly not have allowed it, and, secondly, because the SA-17 would not be terribly useful to the Lebanese Shiite organization. In fact, we don’t even know if an SA-17 was the target. The Syrians deny it, claiming it was a military research center 15 miles northwest of Damascus that was bombed, killing two and wounding five.  The Israelis are refusing to say anything. The story that the anti-aircraft system was the objective comes mainly from unnamed “western officials.”

The SA-17 is a capable, mid-range, anti-aircraft weapon. Designated “Grizzly” by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it consists of four missiles mounted on a mobile launcher. It has a range of 30 miles, a ceiling of close to 50,000 feet, and can down anything from aircraft to cruise missiles. Introduced in 1998 as a replacement for the SA-11 “Gadfly,” the SA-17 has been sold to Egypt, Syria, Finland, China, Venezuela, India, Cyprus, Belarus, and the Ukraine.

It has a bite. During the 2008 Russia-Georgian War, the SA-17 apparently downed three Russian SU-25s close support attack planes, and an ancient long-range Tupolev-22 bomber. It appears Georgia acquired the anti-aircraft system from the Ukraine without the Russians knowing about it.

The SA-17’s manufacturers claim the system is immune to electronic countermeasures, but every arms maker claims their weapons are irresistible or invincible. The SU-25s and the bomber were downed in the first day of the fighting, before the Russians figured out that the Georgians had a trick up their sleeves and instituted countermeasures. Those apparently worked because the four planes were the only ones the Russians lost. Clearly, however, if one gets careless or sloppy around a “Grizzly,” it can make you pretty uncomfortable.

But “game-changer”? The SA-17 is big and vulnerable, a sitting duck for aircraft armed with long-range bombs and missiles and backed up by electronic warfare capabilities. Israeli counter warfare electronics are very sophisticated, as good—if not better—than the American’s. In 2007 Israeli warplanes slipped through the Syrian radar net without being detected and bombed a suspected nuclear reactor. Damascus acquired the SA-17 following that 2007 attack.

Given that there is open talk by NATO of establishing a “no-fly zone” over Syria, why would Damascus hand over one of its most modern anti-aircraft systems to Hezbollah? And what would Hezbollah do with it? It is too big to hide and is generally used as one piece of a larger anti-aircraft system, which Hezbollah does not have. In any case, it would have been a provocation, and neither Hezbollah nor Syria wants to give the Israelis an excuse to beat up on them. Both have plenty on their plates without adding war with a vastly superior military foe.

In brief, there is no evidence that the attack had anything to do with the SA-17, which, in any case, both Tel Aviv and Washington know would not pose any real danger to Israel. According to UPI, the attack was cleared with the U.S.

So what are some other possible reasons for the attack?

The most obvious target is the Assad regime in Syria, which at first glance would seem to be a contradiction. Wouldn’t Israel bombing Syria unite the Arab countries behind Damascus? Indeed, there were condemnations from the Arab League, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and even some of Assad’s Syrian opponents—although the Gulf Cooperation Council, the league of oil-rich monarchies bankrolling the Syrian civil war, was notably quiet.

But the “protests” were mostly pro-forma, and in the case of Turkey, rather bizarre. Ankara has played a major role in supplying the anti-Assad insurgents, deploying Patriot missiles on its border with Syria, and demanding that the president of Syria step down. Yet Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denounced Assad for not “upholding the dignity of his country” and retaliating against Israel.

According to press reports, Israel is strengthening its forces on the occupied Golan Heights that border Syria and preparing to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side. Israel established a similar “buffer” in Lebanon following its 1982 invasion of that country, a “buffer” that eventually led to the formation of Hezbollah and a humiliating Israeli retreat in 2000.

Israel claims it has no dog in the Syrian fight and is supposedly worried about Islamic extremists coming out on top in the civil war. But for all the hype about Islamists leading a jihad against Israel, Tel Aviv knows that al-Qaeda and its allies pose no serious threat to Israel. It is good politics (and good theater)—in Washington, as well as Tel Aviv—to cry, “the turbans are coming” (quick, give us lots of money and your constitution), but religious extremism and Sharia law hardly pose an existential danger to nuclear-armed countries with large militaries. Fighters from the salafist Jabhat al-Nusrah will not get far marching on Jerusalem.

The bombing attack was certainly a slap in the face to Assad, but not the first, and seems less directed at the Damascus regime than adding yet another ingredient to the witch’s brew of chaos that is rapidly engulfing Syria and the surrounding countries. And chaos and division in the region have always been Israel’s allies. Divide and conquer is an old colonial tactic dating back to the Roman Empire. After World War I, the English used Jews and Arabs as pawns in a game to control the British Mandate in Palestine. In short, the Israelis have learned from the best.

The growing sectarian war between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds stirred up by the Syrian civil war lets Israel stand on the sidelines. Who is going to notice the steady encroachment of settlements on Palestinian lands when the Syria war has killed some 60,000 people, created almost 800,000 refugees, and is destabilizing Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan?

Lastly, there is Iran. Getting rid of Assad would remove one of Iran’s major allies in the region, and also weaken Shiite Hezbollah, the organization that fought Israel to a standstill in 2006.  Assad, says former Israeli Gen. Michael Herzog, “is a linchpin of the radical Iran-Hezbollah axis…his fall would therefore deal a major blow to Tehran, significantly weaken Hezbollah and dismantle the trilateral axis.”

Sectarian chaos in Syria is already washing over into Iraq, where a brutal bombing campaign by Sunni extremists is fueling talk about re-establishing Shiite militias to defend their communities. Islamists are also increasingly active in Lebanon and Jordan.

For several years the U.S. and the Sunni-dominated Middle East monarchies have warned about the dangers of a “Shiite crescent” of Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah. But the idea of a “crescent” was always more hype than reality—Shiites make up about 15 percent of the region, and are majorities only in Iraq, Iran and Bahrain. Lebanese Shiites constitute a plurality. In general, Shiites are the poorest section of the Muslim community and with the exception of Iran and Syria, have long been marginalized politically.  Shiite “domination” has always been a bug-a-boo, not very real but useful for stoking the fires of sectarianism.

And sectarianism is on the march today in the Middle East, financed by the cash-rich Gulf monarchies and the hostility of the U.S. and its allies to authoritarian secular governments. While NATO overthrew the Libyan government and aids the Syrian insurgency in the name of democracy, it has no qualms about supporting the absolute monarchs that rule from Morocco in the west to Saudi Arabia in the east.

Was the ease with which the Israelis penetrated Syrian air space a message to Teheran as well? Certainly although the odds on Israel attacking Iran sometime this spring are rather low (though hardly non-existent). Israel could do a lot of damage to Iran, but it doesn’t have the weapons or the air power to take out Teheran’s nuclear program. Plus the Iranians, while angry about the onerous sanctions—and cranky as ever about negotiations—are carefully diverting their nuclear stockpiles into civilian use.

Israel would need the U.S. to really beat up on Iran, and that does not seem to be the direction that the Obama administration is moving. An attack on Iran would isolate Israel and the U.S. diplomatically, and deeply fracture NATO at a time when Washington is desperately trying to keep the alliance together.

In any case, Tel Aviv and Washington are well aware that Iran does not pose an “existential” threat to Israel. Even if Iran were to build several nuclear weapons—and there is no evidence that they have any intention of doing so—it would face an Israel armed with between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy Iran as a society. Even Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admits Iran does not pose a threat to Israel’s existence.

If there is one thing that the bombing has accomplished, it is to thicken the walls between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Tel Aviv is deploying anti-missile systems on its northern border and handing out gas masks in the Galilee. It is beefing up its presence in the Golan Heights, and reinforcing its border with Egypt. In the meantime, the Netanyahu administration just announced yet another round of settlement building.

Whether division and chaos, along with those walls and missiles and gas masks, will keep the surrounding anarchy at bay is altogether another matter. Bricks and bombs never produce real security.

 

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Turkey Haunted by Hubris

Turkey Haunted by Hubris

Dispatches From The Edge

Conn Hallinan

Nov. 1, 2012

Two years ago Turkey was on its way to being a player in Central Asia, a major power broker in the Middle East, and a force in international politics. It had stepped in to avoid a major escalation of the 2008 war between Georgia and Russia by blocking U.S. ships from entering the Black Sea, made peace with its regional rivals, and, along with Brazil, made a serious stab at a peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear crisis.

Today it is exchanging artillery rounds with Syria. Its relations with Iraq have deteriorated to the point that Baghdad has declared Ankara a “hostile state.” It picked a fight with Russia by forcing down a Syrian passenger plane and accusing Moscow of sending arms to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. It angered Iran by agreeing to host a U.S. anti-missile system (a step which won Turkey no friends in Moscow either). Its war with its Kurdish minority has escalated sharply.

What happened? The wages of religious solidarity? Ottoman de’je vu?

There is some truth in each of those suggestions, but Turkey’s diplomatic sea change has less to do with the Koran and memories of empire than with Illusions and hubris. It is a combination that is hardly rare in the Middle East, and one that now promises to upend years of careful diplomacy, accelerate unrest in the region, and drive Turkey into an alliance with countries whose internal fragility should give the Turks pause.

If there is a ghost from the past in all this, it is a growing alliance between Turkey and Egypt.

Population-wise, the two countries are among the largest in the region, and both have industrial bases in an area of the world where industry was actively discouraged by a century of colonial overlords (the Turks among them). Ankara recently offered $2 billion in aid to cash-strapped Egypt, and both countries have moderate Islamic governments. Cairo and Ankara have also supported the overthrow of the Assad regime.

“Apparently now Egypt is Turkey’s closest partner in the Middle East,” Gamel Soltan of American University in Cairo told the New York Times. But while Egypt was once the Ottoman’s wealthiest provinces, 2012 is not the world of sultans and pashas, and, in this case, old memories may well be a trap.

Egypt is deeply mired in poverty and inequality. Indeed, it was as much the economic crisis gripping the region as issues of democracy and freedom that filled Tahrir Square. Cairo is in serious debt and preparing a round of austerity measures that will sharpen that inequality. The government of President Mohamed Morsi announced it will slice gas subsidies, which will fall particularly hard on the poor, especially given a jobless rate of over 12 percent and youth unemployment running at more than double that.

At first glance, both governments have a lot in common, particularly because Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are considered “moderately” Islamic. But many in the Brotherhood consider the AKP and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan far too “moderate”—in Turkey it is still illegal to wear a head scarf if you run for public office or work in a government office.   While the West considers Morsi’s and Erdogan’s government “Islamic,” some of the jihadists groups Cairo and Ankara are aiding in their efforts to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria consider the Egyptian and Turkish government little more than non-believers or apostates.  As Middle East expert Robert Fisk puts it, the jihadists are a scorpion that might, in the end, sting them both, much as the Taliban has done to its Pakistani sponsors.

Turkey apparently hopes to construct a triangle among Ankara, Cairo, and the wealthy oil monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (Jordan and Morocco, two other monarchies, have been asked to join). The combination of population, industry, and wealth, goes the thinking, would allow that alliance to dominate the region.

The Council does have enormous wealth at its disposal, but how stable are autocratic monarchies in the wave of the democratic aspirations raised by the Arab Spring? Bahrain’s king rules through the force of the Saudi Army. Saudi Arabia itself is struggling to provide jobs and housing for its growing population, while weighed down by inequality, high unemployment, rampant corruption, and a restive Shia minority in its eastern provinces. Jordan’s monarch is wrestling with an economic crisis and a political opposition that is pressuring king Abdullah II for a constitutional monarchy.

How this new alliance will affect the Palestinians is not clear. Turkey had a falling out with Israel in 2009, and Egypt and Qatar have been sharply critical of Tel Aviv’s treatment of the Palestinians. So far, however, it appears the Islamic group Hamas in Gaza will benefit more than the secular Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank.

With the exception of Bahrain, all the countries involved have large Sunni majorities that, at first glance, would put them on the same page religiously. But most the Gulf monarchs are aligned with radical Islamic groups, some of which have morphed into al-Qaeda-like organizations that have destabilized countries from Pakistan to Iraq. On occasion, these groups have turned on their benefactors, as Osama bin Laden did on Saudi Arabia.

Such Islamic groups are increasingly active in the Syrian civil war, where Turkey finds itself in a very similar role to the one played by Pakistan during the 1979-89 Soviet-Afghan war. Some of the groups Pakistan nurtured during those years have now turned on their patrons. Will Turkey become the next Pakistan? In an interview with the Financial Times, one Syrian insurgent said that many of the rebels were stockpiling ammunition for “after the revolution.”

Bulent Alizira of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Financial Times that Turkey is in danger of becoming “like Pakistan, which became the forward base for the Afghan rebels. If that were to happen, it could confront all the pressures that Pakistan faced and from which it has never recovered.”

And why would the Erdogan government pick a fight with Russia? Russia is a major trading partner, and Turkey is keen on establishing good relations with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) founded by Russia and China in 2001. The organization includes most of the countries in Central Asia, plus observers from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The SCO accounts for 75 percent of the world’s energy resources and population, and coordinates everything from trade to oil and gas pipelines. Why would Ankara irritate one of the major players in the SCO?

Might it be pique at Moscow for blocking more aggressive measures by the UN Security Council to intervene in the Syrian civil war?  Russia, along with China, has consistently called for a political resolution to the Syria crisis, while Turkey has pursued a strategy of forcible regime change.  Erdogan has a reputation for arrogance and letting his temper get the best of him.

“His personal ambitions and overweening certainties may be eclipsing his judgment,” Morton Abramowitz of the Century Foundation told UPI, “and affecting Turkish interests.” Abramowitz served in the Carter and Reagan administrations and was appointed ambassador to Turkey from 1989 to 1991. He is also a director at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Relations between Turkey and Iran have also cooled, in part because of the U.S. anti-missile system, but also because Ankara is trying to overthrow one of Iran’s few allies in the region. In any case, backing Sunni jihadists against the Alawite Assad regime is hardly going to go down well in Shia Iran, or for that matter, in Shia Iraq. The Alawites are a branch of Shism.

Why, too would Turkey alienate major trading partners like Iran and Iraq? It is possible that the wealthy monarchies of the Gulf—who are anti-Shia and view Iran as their greatest threat— made Ankara an offer it can’t refuse. Whether the monarchies can deliver in the long run is another matter.

In the meantime, the Syrian war has unleashed the furies.

*Car bombs have made their appearance one again in Lebanon.

*The Kurds have bloodied the Turkish Army.

*Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured out of Syria, and the fighting inside the country is escalating.

*Anti-aircraft missiles—the Russian SAM-7, or Strela, most likely “liberated” during the Libya war—have made an appearance. The hand-fired missiles may indeed discomfort Syrian aircraft, but if they get into the hands of the Kurds, Turkish helicopters will be in trouble as well, as will any number of other air forces, from Lebanon to Jordan. A Strela was fired at an Israeli aircraft in the Gaza Strip Oct. 16.

Turkey’s role in the Syrian civil war finds little resonance among average Turks. Some 56 percent disagree with the policy, and 66 percent oppose allowing Syrian refugees into the country.

“We are at a very critical juncture,” journalist Melih Asik told the New York Times. “We are not only facing Syria, but Iran, Iraq, Russia and China. Behind us we have nothing but the provocative stance and empty promises of the US.”

Four years ago Turkey set out to build strong ties with other countries in the region—“zero problems with the neighbors”—and decrease its dependence on the US. Today those policy goals are in shambles. But that is where illusion and hubris lead.

—30—

Syria: A Way Out

Syria: A Way Out?

Dispatches From the Edge

There are two tales about the crisis in Syria.

In one, the vast majority of Syrians have risen up against the brutality of a criminal dictatorship. The government of Bashar al Assad is on the ropes, isolated regionally and internationally, and only holding on because Russia and China vetoed United Nations intervention. U.S. Secretary to State Hillary Clinton describes Assad as “a war criminal,” and President Barak Obama called him a “dead man walking.”

In the other, a sinister alliance of feudal Arab monarchies, the U.S. and its European allies, and al-Qaeda mujahedeen are cynically using the issue of democracy to overthrow a government most Syrians support, turn secular Syria into an Islamic stronghold, and transform Damascus into a loyal ally of Washington and Saudi Arabia against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Like most stories, there is truth and fiction in both versions, but separating myth from reality is desperately important, because Syria sits at the strategic heart of the Middle East. Getting it wrong could topple dominoes from Cairo to Ankara, from Beirut to Teheran.

There is no question but that last March’s demonstrations were a spontaneous reaction to the Syrian government’s arrest and torture of some school children in Deraa. What is more, that the corruption of the Assad family—they dominate the army, the security forces, and much of the telecommunications, banking and construction industry, coupled with the suffocating and brutal security forces, underlies the anger that fuels the uprising.

But is also true that outside players—specifically the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the U.S., as well as Sunni extremist organizations—all have irons in the fire. Indeed, there is the profound irony that, while the GCC condemns Syria for oppressing its citizens, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are crushing homegrown democratic movements in their own countries. Or that Washington should be on the same page as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda.

And while there is no denying the brutality of the Assad regime, or that some 7,500 to 8,000 Syrians have died over the past year, Israel’s 2008-09 invasion of Gaza—Operation Cast Lead—killed a greater percentage of Palestinians per capita. When countries in the region tried to stop the Gaza War, it was the U.S. who blocked any UN action. In the Middle East, double standards and hypocrisy are par for the course.

The Syrian crisis is not a simple “good guys vs. bad guys,” democrats vs. a dictator, with the overwhelming majority confronting an entrenched, thuggish elite.

First, while the current uprising represents a substantial number of Syrians, the Assad regime has domestic support. As Jonathan Steele of the Guardian (UK) points out, a recent You Gov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates and funded by Qatar found that, while a majority of non-Syrian Arabs wanted Assad to resign, 55 percent of Syrians wanted him to remain.

The poll was hardly a ringing endorsement of Assad—half of that 55 percent wanted free elections—but it reflects the fact that most Syrians fear a civil war. That is hardly a surprise. The U.S. invasion and subsequent civil war in Iraq flooded Syria with millions of refugees and terrible tales of murder, torture, and sectarian bloodshed. And Syrians had a front row seat for Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.

A Syrian dissident, Salim Kheirbek, told the New Yorker “No more than thirty percent of the people are involved in the resistance. The other 70 percent, if not actually with the regime, are silent, because it is not convincing to them, and especially after what happened in Iraq and Libya. These people want reforms, but not at any price.”

While the recent referendum on reforming the Syrian constitution was widely dismissed by the U.S., Europe and the GCC, it appears that close to 60 percent of the voters turned out to overwhelmingly endorse the proposals.

Part of the Assad regime’s support comes from minority communities, in particular Christians and Alawites, who, make up 10 percent and 12 percent respectively, of Syria’s 24 million people. Alawites are a variety of Shiite, and the sect dominates the government. Sunnis make up the majority. Syria also has Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Bedouin, and Turkomen communities. It is estimated that the country has 47 different religious and ethnic groups.

Alawites and Christians have reason for concern. As a recent New York Times story reported, demonstrators in Hom, one of the centers of the uprising, chanted “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” Al-Qaeda routinely describes Shiites as “a bone in Islam’s throat” and targets Shiite communities in Iraq and Pakistan.

Nor is Syria isolated regionally or internationally. While the Arab League has condemned the Assad government, not everyone in the organization is on board. Damascus has support in Lebanon and Iraq, and neutrality from Jordan (Amman also remembers the chaos of the Iraq war).  Algeria—North Africa’s big dog on the block—has been sharply critical of the League.

“The Arab League is no longer a league and it’s far from Arab,” Algerian State Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadam told Agence France Presse, “since it asks the Security Council to intervene against one of the [the League’s] founding members, and calls upon NATO to destroy the resources of Arab countries.”

On Feb. 15, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Assad to step down, but countries like Brazil and India, while deploring the violence, have made it clear they oppose anything involving military intervention or arming the main opposition force, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Even Turkey, while calling for Assad’s resignation, has begun hedging its bets, and dropped any talk of creating “safe zones” along its border with Syria.

Most countries fear that a Syrian civil war would spread to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and maybe into the Gulf states.

While the situation on the ground in Syria is hardly clear, the Syrian Army and security services appear to be sticking with Assad for now. If that continues, the rebels may keep the pot  boiling, but, without outside intervention by NATO, it is unlikely they can overthrow the regime. On the other hand, after a year of fighting, Damascus has not succeeded in ending the rebellion.

It short, it looks like a stalemate, in which case the current campaign to aid the rebels and force Syria’s president out is exactly the wrong strategy and one guaranteed to prolong the bloodshed.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and several U.S. senators have called for arming the FSA, a particularly bad idea because it is not at all clear who they are. There are persistent reports that the organization includes a goodly number of jihadists from Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In any case, handing out weapons to people you don’t know, to fight people you don’t like is a formula for repeating the Afghanistan disaster.

Second, the demand for regime change—and threats to charge Assad and those around him with war crimes—makes this a war to the death. Why would the Damascus government compromise if the end game is exile and prison?

The only solution to a stalemate is negotiations. The Russians have offered to host such talks, but so far the fractious Syrian National Council says it won’t talk until Assad resigns. The U.S. and the GCC have similar positions. However, talks will only work if both sides have an incentive to enter them, which means dropping the regime change demand, ending the sanctions, and shelving any talk of aiding the FSA.

Maybe events have gone too far, but at this point that doesn’t appear to be the case. Instead of condemning them, the Russians and the Chinese should be encouraged to negotiate a ceasefire and the opposition should take up the Russian’s offer to host talks with the Assad government. The recent referendum can serve as a jumping off point for re-writing the constitution.

For this to happen, however, the regional players, the U.S., and the European Union will have to stop using Syria as a proxy battleground. As Dan Meridor, Israel’s intelligence Minister, told the New York Times, supporting the Syrian uprising was important because, “If the unholy alliance of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah can be broken, that is very positive.”

For whom? Is this about freedom and democracy, or a calculated move on a regional chessboard?

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Traumatic Brain Injuries: The War Comes Home

The Wars Come Home: The Traumatic Brain

Injury Epidemic

Dispatches From The Edge

June 18, 20011

 

 

“We are facing a massive mental health problem as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a country we have not responded adequately to the problem. Unless we act urgently and wisely, we will be dealing with an epidemic of service related psychological wounds for years to come.”

Bobby Muller, President Veterans for America

 

“The multiple nature of it [multiple tours and longer deployments] is unprecedented. People just get blasted and blasted and blasted.”

Maj. Connie Johnmeyer, 332^nd Medical Group

 

According to official Defense Department (DOD) figures, 332,000 soldiers have suffered brain injuries since 2000, although most independent experts estimate that the number is over 400,000. Many of these are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), a term that is profoundly misleading.

 

As David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, points out, “I don’t know what makes it ‘mild,’ because it can evolve into anxiety disorders, personality changes, and depression.” It can also set off a constellation of physical disabilities from chronic pain to sexual dysfunction and insomnia.

 

MTBI is defined as any incident that produces unconsciousness lasting for up to a half hour or creates an altered state consciousness. It is the signature wound for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are the principal weapon for insurgents.

 

Most soldiers recover from mTBI, but between five and 15 percent do not. According to Dr. Elaine Peskind of the University of Washington Medical School, “The estimate of the number who returned with symptomatic mild traumatic brain injury due to blast exposure has varied from the official VA [Veterans Administration] number of 9 percent officially diagnosed with mTBI to over 20 percent, and, I think, ultimately it will be higher than that.”

 

Serious consequences from mTBI are increased when troops are subjected to multiple explosions and “just get blasted and blasted and blasted,” in the words of Maj. Connie Johnmeyer. Out of two million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, over 800,000 have had multiple deployments, many up to five times or more.

 

But mTBI is difficult to diagnose because it does not show up on standard CAT scans and MRIs. “Our scans show nothing,” says Dr. Michael Weiner, professor of radiology, psychiatry and neurology at the University of California at San Francisco and director of the Center for Imaging Neurodegenerative Disease at the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center.

 

They do now.

 

An MRI set to track the flow of water through the brain’s neurons, has turned up anomalies that indicate the presence of mTBI. However, the military has blocked informing patients of results of the research, and if history is any guide, the Pentagon will do its best to shelve or ignore the results.

 

The DOD has long resisted the diagnosis of mTBI, as it has avoided paying for a successful—but expensive—way to treat it. The price of that resistance is escalating suicide rates and domestic violence incidents among returning soldiers. In 2010, almost as many soldiers committed suicide as fell in battle.

 

MTBI is hardly new. Some 5.3 million people in the U.S. are currently hospitalized or in residential facilities because of it, and its social consequences are severe.

 

A Mt. Sinai Hospital study of 100 homeless men in New York found that 80 percent of them had suffered brain trauma, much of it from child abuse. A study of 5,000 homeless people in New Haven discovered that those who had suffered a blow that knocked them unconscious or into an altered state were twice as likely to have alcohol and drug problems and to be depressed. It also found mTBI injuries were correlated with suicide attempts, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. And a recent study by Dr. Elaine Peskind of the University of Washington School of Medicine found that mTBI is a risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

 

In spite of the documented consequences of mTBI, the military has been extremely tardy in dealing with it. Part of the problem is military culture itself. The Pentagon found that 60 percent of the soldiers who suffered from the symptoms of mTBI refused help because they feared their unit leaders would treat them differently. Many were also afraid that if they reported their condition it would prevent them from getting jobs as police and fire fighters after they got out of the service.

 

Even if soldiers wanted treatment, there are few resources available to them. “There are two things going on regarding vets,” says Col. (ret) Will Wilson, chair of the American Psychological Association’s Division 19 (Military Psychology). “One, there are not enough care providers available, and, two, there are not enough people focusing on the problem outside the military.”

 

Indeed, there are not enough military psychologists to treat the problem, and since the military pays below-market rates for civilian psychologists, up to 30 percent of private psychologists are unwilling to take on soldiers as patients. The cheapest and easiest solution is to shoot up the vets with drugs. A study by Veterans for America found that some soldiers were taking up to 20 different medications, many of which canceled out the effect of others.

 

The situation appears to be even worse for National Guard and Reserve units, who make up almost 50 percent of the troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Veterans for America found that such troops “are experiencing rates of mental health problems 44 percent higher than their active duty counterparts” and that their health care is generally inferior.

 

A Harvard study found that 1.8 million vets under 65 have no health care or access to the Veterans Administration. “Most uninsured veterans are low-to-middle income workers who are too poor to afford private coverage but are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or free VA care,” the study found.

 

Treating mTBI injuries is difficult, but by no means impossible. Dr. Alisa Gean, chief of Neuroradiology at San Francisco General Hospital, who has worked with wounded soldiers at U.S. Army’s Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl, Germany says the old conventional wisdom that brain damage was untreatable is wrong. “We now know that the brain can heal. It has an intrinsic plasticity that allows it to recover, and this is particularly true for the young brain.”

 

A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that “neurons in the adult brain can remodel their connections,” thus “overturning a century of prevailing thought.”

 

One method that has worked effectively is cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CRT) that retrains patients for tasks like counting, cooking, and memory. But CRT takes time and it can be expensive, ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 per patient. However, the DOD’s health program—Tricare—refuses to endorse CRT, because it says there is no scientific evidence that justifies the expense involved.

 

However, an investigation by T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of National Public Radio found that the vast majority of researchers, even those associated with the DOD, sharply disagreed with Tricare’s evaluation of CRT. According to the two reporters, “A panel of 50 civilian and military brain specialists convened by the Pentagon unanimously concluded that cognitive therapy was an effective treatment and would help many brain damaged troops.”

 

The therapy is also endorsed by the National Institutes of Health, the National Academy of Neurophysiology and the British Society of Rehabilitative Medicine.

 

Instead of accepting the advice of its own researchers, however, Tricare hired ECRI—a company which had already done a study concluding that CRT was ineffective—to examine the therapy. But critics charge that the study was so narrow, and the assumptions behind it so loaded, that it was almost a given that the study would conclude the benefits of cognitive therapy were “inconclusive.” Outside researchers blasted the ECRI study, one of them describing it as “hooey” and “baloney.”

 

In spite of the criticism, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England concluded, “The rigor of the research…has not met the required standard.”

 

However, Miller and Zwerdling concluded that Tricare’s resistance to CRT was not about science, but the bottom dollar. According to the reporters, a Tricare-sponsored study found “that comprehensive rehabilitative therapy could cost as much as $51,480 per patient. By contrast, sending patients home from the hospital to get a weekly phone call from a therapist amounted to only $504 a patient.”

 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has already made it clear that he intends to cut the military’s $50 billion annual health budget. No matter how effective CRT is, it’s not likely to get past the brass, who would rather spend the money on weapon systems than on healing the men and women who they so casually put in harm’s way.

 

So far, the military has put the clamps on the new MRI technique. Dr. David L. Brody, an author of the study, told the New York Times that researchers were blocked from giving the MRI results to patients. “We were specifically directed by the Department of Defense not to so,” adding, “It was anguishing for us, because as a doctor I would like to be able to help them in any way. But that was not the protocol we agreed to.”

 

Given that mTBI is so difficult to diagnose, and sufferers are many times told there is nothing wrong with them, that seems an especially cruel protocol. “Many of them [the doctors] were hoping we could give results to their care providers to document or validate their concerns.”

 

In the end it will come down to treatment, and whether the wounded vets will get the care they need, or sit by a phone and wait for their once a week call from a therapist.

 

—30—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Surge: Illusion & Reality

The Surge: Illusion & Reality

Foreign Policy In Focus

Conn Hallinan

Dec. 24, 2007

“Where the dead are ghosts on the fragile abacus

used to calculate loss, to estimate tragedy”

–from Body Count by

poet, Persis Karim

The narrative in the media these days is the success of the U.S. “surge,” which has poured an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq. Last month, war critic and close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa), said, “I think the surge is working.” (SF Chronicle, 12.2.07)Polls indicate that concern over the economy has replaced the war as the major issue for voters, and, that while a majority of Americans want the troops out, those saying that things are going better jumped from 33 percent to just under 50 percent.

Are they going better? Car bombings, sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. troops are down, although 2007 has been the deadliest year of the war for the Americans. But does the reduced violence have anything to do with the surge?

As Patrick Cockburn of The Independent points out, Americans and the U.S. media tend to “exaggerate the extent to which the U.S. is making the political weather and is in control of events there.” (Independent, 12/11/07)

Take the attacks on Americans, which are down. The Sunni-based resistance carried out the majority of those. Sunnis, who constitute five million of Iraq’s 27 million people (there are 16 million Shiites and five million Kurds), dominated the country under Saddam Hussein.

Initially the Sunnis formed an alliance with al-Qaeda that turned out to be a disaster. Al-Qaeda, an extremist Sunni organization, targeted Shiites, whom it considers heretics. The relentless bombings and shootings culminating in the 2006 bombing of the Golden mosque in Samarra, spurred Shiite militias, like Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, to counterattack.

The Sunnis suddenly found themselves fighting a two-front war against the Americans and the Shiites, a war they can never win. They soon were driven out of large sections of Baghdad by the Shiites, while absorbing massive casualties from the U.S. military campaign.

These defeats forced the Sunnis to turn on al-Qaeda and to reach a détente with the U.S. In return, the new Sunni militias—like the Baghdad Brigade, the Knights of Ameriya, and the Guardians of Ghazaliya—were given vehicles, uniforms, flak jackets and $300 a month for each member by the Americans. The so-called “Sunni awakening” soon fielded 77,000 militia members, larger than the 60,000-member Mahdi Army and half the size of the Iraqi Army.

But, according to the Sunday Times, many of these Sunnis were formerly al-Qaeda members, and the current “truce” with the Americans is little more than a tactical maneuver to buy time. “Of course the coming war is with the [Shiite] militias,” Baghdad Brigade intelligence officer, Abu Omar, told the Times. “God willing, we will defeat them and get rid of them just as we did with al-Qaeda.” (The Sunday Times, 11/25/07)

The flashpoint may come if the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki continues dragging its feet in integrating the Sunni militias into the security forces. “If the government continues to reject them [the Sunni militias],” says Baghdad Brigade commander Abu Maroff “let it be clear this brigade will eventually take its revenge.”

Baghdad is calmer because the city has gone from one of mostly mixed neighborhoods to a city of rigid ethnic enclaves guarded by sectarian militias. While this has reduced the level of violence in the short run, it hardly bodes well for the future.

In short, the “surge” has very little to do with the reduction of violence in Baghdad, and virtually nothing to do with the relative peace in Western Iraq. Both are the quiet that follows in the wake of ethnic cleansing.

Iraq’s south has been mostly calm, but, once again, this has nothing to do with the surge. The U.S. has few forces in the region, and the British have been driven out of Basra. They are currently bunkered down in an airport. The major violence in the south has been between rival Shiite factions, in particular al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq’s (SICI) Badr Brigade. Sadr’s forces generally represent the bulk of the Shiite masses. The SICI has fewer followers, but much more money, the Badr Brigade and, most importantly, the support of the U.S. Army.

Following a major shootout in August between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade in Karbala, Sadr and SICI head Abdul Aziz al-Hakim signed a ceasefire. For Sadr, the truce has more to do with avoiding a fight with the SICI while the latter can call on the U.S. to back it up, than with any sudden conversion to the surge. (Asia Times, 12/14/07) Speaking in a mosque Dec. 7, al-Sadr told the Americans, “Get out of our land. We don’t need you or your armies, the armies of darkness; not your planes, tanks, policies, meddling, democracy, fake freedom.” (McClatchy, 12/9/07)

The recent car bombings in the southern provincial capital, Amarah, were not the work of al-Qaeda—which has no presence in the largely Shiite south—but a sign of growing tension between rival Shiite groups. At stake is 80 percent of Iraqi’s oil revenues and control of the country’s only port, Basra.

Iraq’s north is relatively calm because it is controlled by the powerful Kurdish militia, the Persh Merga. But violence is on the increase in Mosul, in part because insurgents driven out of Baghdad have moved north. But also because Sunnis and Shiite Arabs have buried their differences and unite to resist what they fear will be Kurdish domination. Attacks in Mosul during November jumped from 80 to 106 a week. (New York Times 12/6/07)

The most volatile issue in the north is Kurdish autonomy and an upcoming referendum that will decide who controls the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and the strategic city of Mosul. An autonomous Kurdish region is something most Arab Iraqis—and all of Iraq’s neighbors—oppose. The Turks, Syrians and Iranians worry that an autonomous “Kurdistan” will stir up similar moves for autonomy in their countries. And the Baghdad government fears that it will lose the revenues from the northern oil fields.

The peace in the north has all the stability of a powder magazine.

“We are now funding all the major Iraqi warring parties, the Sunnis, the Shiias and the Kurds,” says former CIA and National Security Agency official Bruce Reidel. “They are happy to take our weapons and our money, but they’ve not necessarily brought into the same strategy as we have.” (SF Chronicle, 12/2/07)

While the U.S. will have to begin drawing down troops this coming June, the Bush Administration says it intends to remain in Iraq. Last month Bush and al-Maliki signed an agreement that, according to the Financial Times, “paves the way for a possible long-term U.S. presence in Iraq.” (Financial Times, 11/27/07)

Certainly the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is being built with that in mind. When finished, the $736 million project will cover 104 acres, with 21 buildings reinforced against bombs and mortars. The huge complex will cost $1.2 billion a year to run. (Vanity Fair, 11/07)

According to a BBC/ABC poll, with the exception of the Kurdish north, Iraqis not only oppose the U.S. presence, 57 percent of them support attacks against coalition forces. Even the Maliki government has to tread softly in this area. Speaking to the press last week, Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said “permanent forces or bases in Iraq for any foreign forces is a red line that cannot be accepted by any nationalist Iraq.” (Associated Press, 12/11/07)

The success of the surge is an illusion. “Nothing is resolved in Iraq,” says Cockburn. “Power is wholly fragmented. The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies in Iraq. It has become a land of warlords in which fragile ceasefires might last for months and might equally collapse tomorrow.”

–30—

“Even if the surge works, Iraq is Volatile,” by Carolyn Lockhead, SF Chronicle, 12.2.07

“Only one thing unites Iraq:hatred of the US,” by Patrick Cockburn, Independent, 12/11/07

“American-backed killers strut across Iraq,: by Hala Jabar, The Sunday Times, 11/25/07

“It’s a fragile ‘quiet’ in Iraq,” by Brian Dowing, Asia Times, 12/14/07

“Iraq awaits a fiery Shiit cleric’s next move,” by Jamie Gumbrecht, McClatchy Newspapers, 12/9/07

“Pushed out of Baghdad Area, insurgents seek hub in north,” by Michael Gordon, New York Times, 12/6/07

“US paves way for long-term stay in Iraq,” by Steve Negus, Financial Times, 11/27/07

“Iraq Rejects Permanent US bases,” by Peter Graff, Associated Press, 12/11/07

The Road To War

The Road To War

SF Examiner

April 19, 2002

Sometime this fall, probably before the mid-term elections, the U.S. will likely be at war with Iraq. Not because Iraq is a threat to our security or engaged in terrorism. It will happen because more than a decade ago a small cabal of political heavyweights in the administration of George Bush the First sat down and drew up a blueprint to rule the world. X-File fantasies? Not unless the New Yorker Magazine has decided to join the “I was abducted by aliens” crowd.

In the magazine’s April 1, 2002 edition writer Nicholas Lemann records one of the downright scariest set of interviews to appear in print since Richard Nixon’s Oval Office ravings about nuclear war. In them, the key movers and shakers in the present Bush Administration lay out the plan they have been following since Sept. 11, a plan that will that launch this country into a series of regional wars aimed at insuring that the U.S. will remain the supreme power in the world.

Almost before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney called together a group of players to chart out a strategy for the post-Cold War world. The names should be familiar, because they run the present administration: Sec. Of Defense William Rumsfeld; Dep. Sec. of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Sec. Of State Colin Powell; And Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff.

The goal was to “shape” the world in order to, in the words of another team member, Zalmay Khalizad (now special envoy to Afghanistan), “preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future.” In his book “From Containment to Global Leadership?” Khalizad argues that it is “vital” to prevent such a rival from developing and “to be willing to use force if necessary” to stop it.

The tone of these people is chilling. Our allies are cast as a bunch of lily-livered whiners, international agreement are dismissed as straitjackets, and the “enemy”portrayed as a mob of wogs, easily scattered by a show of cold steel. In his Middle East briefing of senior White House staff, Bernard Lewis of Princeton (another “team” member) argued that “in that part of the world nothing matters more than resolute force and will.” Homework was undoubtedly the collected works of Cecil Rhodes and Rudyard Kipling.

When Bush addressed the nation Sept. 20, he called on the American people and our allies to join a “war on terrorism.” But in the intervening six months, the goals of that war have changed drastically. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told Lemann that the policy was not just to go after terrorists, but to prevent the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction in “the hands of irresponsible states.”

This is a handy little distinction, because on Feb. 5 the CIA said there was no evidence Iraq has engaged in any terrorism directed at the US or its allies. And while the Administration has trumpeted the fact that Iraq stopped all arms inspections three years ago, no one outside of Washington (with the exception of British Prime Minister Tony Blair) actually thinks Iraq has such weapons. As Scott Ritter, former head of the United Nations Special Commission on Concealment says, “It was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, strictly from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq had been disarmed.”

Would it make a difference if Iraq agreed to inspections? Nope. When asked that question by CNN, Powell replied that “even then the United States believes the Iraqi people would be better served with a new kind of leadership.”

The latest rationale for invasion is that Iraq has ties with Al Qaeda, a charge based more on tortured logic than intelligence. CIA Director George Tenet told Congress last month that, while there was no evidence that such ties exist, still and all, the “mutual antipathy” that the two had for the U.S. “suggests that tactical cooperation between the two is possible.” If one can find two flimsier words than “suggests” and “possible” to launch a war, I would love to hear them.

The lack of evidence linking Iraq to terrorism is deeply disturbing to our allies. Even Bush’s strongest ally, Great Britain, is split on an invasion. More than 122 Labor Members of Parliament have signed a petition opposing any attack.

By shifting the target from terrorism to weapons that might fall into the hands of terrorists, virtually any county on earth becomes a target. The Administration has already lined up Syria, Iran, Somalia and the Sudan once Iraq is toppled. The fact that invading any of these countries would violate international law and the UN charter doesn’t faze the White House. But there will be a cost for all this.

As Canada’s Foreign Minister Bill Graham said, “Nobody is supporting Saddam Hussein, but everyone recognizes in international politics you have to have a process where, before you invade a sovereign country, there has to be a reason for it, or we are going to lead to international chaos.”

Shiites vs. Sunni: The Pandora Strategy

Shiites vs. Sunni: The Pandora Strategy

Dispatches From the Edge

Conn Hallinan

4-4-2007

In 1609 a terrible thing happened. Not terrible in the manner that great wars are terrible, but in the way that opening Pandora’s Box was terrible: King James I of England discovered that dividing people on the basis of religion worked like a charm, thus sentencing the Irish to almost four centuries of blood and pain.

If the Bush Administration is successful in its current efforts to divide Islam by pitting Shiites against Sunnis it will revitalize the old colonial tactic of divide and conquer, and maintain the domination of the Middle East by authoritarian elites allied with the U.S. and the international energy industry.

Its vehicle, according to the New York Times, is an “American backed alliance” of several Sunni-dominated regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, “along with a Fatah-led Palestine and Israel.”

The anti-Shiite front, according to the Saudi-owned news site, Elaph, will also include Turkey and Pakistan.

The target is not simply Iran, but the so-called “Shiia Crescent,” a term first coined by King Abdullah of Jordan. The “Crescent” includes Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Alawai-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The Alawites are of Shiia origin. Suddenly rhetoric like the “eastern tide,” and the “Persian menace” have begun appearing in official newspapers in the region, despite the fact that the average Arab does not view Iran as a threat.

A recent Zogby International poll of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) found that close to 80 percent of those polled considered the U.S. and Israel the biggest threats to their security, while only 6 percent listed Iran. Further, fewer than 25 percent believe Iran should be pressured to halt its nuclear program, while 61 percent think Iran has the right to a nuclear program even, if it results in nuclear weapons.

In fact, Iran’s opposition to the U.S. and support for the Palestinians is widely popular in the region.

Writing in Al-Ahram Weekly, Omayma Abdel-Latif, project coordinator for the Carnegie Middle East Center, says, “The consensus in both Sunni and Shiia circles appears to be that attempts to emphasize Sunni-Shiia rivalries are intended to deflect attention from both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and continued Israeli aggression. That the U.S. is working to fuel such tensions is almost an article of faith for Muslims on both sides. In its attempt to create an anti-Iran alliance, they say, the U.S. is resorting to a strategy which aims to raise the specter of sectarianism across the Muslim world.”

Abel-Latif is not alone in her analysis. “One might be forgiven for surmising that the current thrust of U.S. policy in the Middle East and through the Muslim world is to exacerbate and instrumentalize Sunni-Shiite divisions,” says Middle East expert and author Fred Reed.

While much of the “Shiia threat” talk seems aimed at Iran, Hezbollah and Syria—the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is generally excluded because it is allied with the current occupation forces led by the U.S. and Britain—the real target may be a good deal bigger.

“Could it be that the U.S. endgame is to weaken Islam from within,” asks Lebanese writer Jihad Azine in An-Nahar, “and divert attention from targeting U.S. interests to targeting the Shiia?”

One major concern for the U.S. is oil. While oil production in the U.S., Mexico, and the North Sea is declining, U.S. consumption is predicted to increase by one-third over the next 20 years. By 2020, two-thirds of all U.S. oil will be imported, and since 65 percent of the world’s remaining oil reserves are in the Middle East, one doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to conclude a strategy of divide and conquer is aimed at keeping strategic control of those resources.

Keeping up tensions in the Middle East is also enormously lucrative for U.S. arms companies. Since 2006, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman have spent—or will over the next year— $138 billion on arms purchases.

The division between Sunnis and Shiia dates from shortly after the Prophet Mohammad died in 632. But as London School of Economics Middle East expert Fred Halliday points out, the distinctions “are small, far less than those between Catholics and Protestants in Christianity,” and conflict between the two “is essentially a recent development, a product of the Middle East political crisis in recent decades.”

Halliday argues that the wars in Kashmir and Afghanistan encouraged the division because militant Sunni groups were the heart of the resistance. The real divisions may be small, but religious conflict has always been a surrogate for something else. In Ireland it divided native Irish from Protestant settlers and kept the two at one another’s throats. In Egypt, the British manipulated Copts against Muslims; in Cyprus, Christian Greeks against Muslim Turks.

In its campaign to divide and conquer, according to journalist Seymour Hersh, the Bush administration has ended up bolstering “Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Martin Indyk, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, says, “The Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite cold war. The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq; it’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated.”

“Blowback” has already happened. As Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations told the New York Times, “Who cannot remember that to contain the so-called ‘Shiite Crescent’ after the 1979 revolution, the extremism of the fundamentalist Salafi movement was nourished by the West—only to transform into Al-Qaeda and the Taliban? Why should the same policy in the same region procure any different results now?”

While the Shiia are represented as a single entity, in fact there are enormous differences among Shiia communities. They are a majority in Iran, but Persians are ethnically different than Arabs. The Shiia constitute the bulk of the Muslim population in Lebanon, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been sharply critical of Iraq’s Shiia government for working hand in glove with the U.S. occupation.

In any case, Shiia make up only 12 to 15 percent of the Muslim world and, outside Iran and Iraq, constitute a majority only in Yemen. Traditionally they “are under represented,” according to Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Socially and economically, Shiia communities are more marginalized, less educated, and poorer.”

The fact that Shiia communities—particularly in Lebanon and Iraq, but also in Saudi Arabia—are suddenly on the radar screen has less to with any kind of Iran-driven conspiracy than with growing resistance to the sect’s traditionally second-class status in the Middle East. The “divisions” are political and economic, not sectarian, says Abdel-Latif.

According to Halliday, Shiites and Sunnis have intermarried and shared holy sites for centuries. “Actual and direct conflict between Sunni and Shiia (as distinct from suspicion and communal difference) has until recently been remarkable by its absence.”

But as the Irish found out to their woe, small differences, if linked to a wider policy, can turn esoteric matters of theology into a life and death matter. “These fires, once lit, can destroy forms of co-existence that have existed for centuries,” points out Halliday.

And no one can be certain where those fires will spread and who they will burn.

The Forever War

The Forever War

SF Examiner

Conn Hallinan

Dec. 14, 2001

Back in the early ‘70s, Joe Haldman’s quirky book, the Forever War won science fiction’s double crown, the Hugo and Nebula awards. The novel is about a war against faceless and unfathomable aliens called the Taurans, a war which can never be won, but which a small cabal has no interest in ending. And so it goes on for century after century across time and space.

The U.S. is presently engaged in just such a war. It is not war by the dictionary definition: “A conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or parties within a nation.” It is not war according to the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Sec. 8) which states that only “the Congress shall have the power to declare war…and makes rules concerning captures on land and water.”

The Congress has not declared war, in part because there is no entity to declare war on. We are bombing a country we are not at war with. Our enemy is “terrorism,” which is not a person, place or thing, but a concept. It might be simpler to say we are at war with things we don’t like.

So is it pedantic to point out that the Congressional resolution passed in the wake of Sept 11 was not a declaration of war, but only authorized the President to take whatever steps he saw fit to defend the nation? It isn’t if the President’s definition of “defending the nation” is about to metastasize into a war with at least nine other countries (at last count)—Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, North Korea, Colombia, and Iran.

“Afghanistan is just the beginning,” said the President said in laying out his doctrine: “If anyone harbors a terrorist, they’re a terrorist. If they fund a terrorist, they’re a terrorist. If they house terrorists, they’re terrorists…if they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable.”

He then accused Iraq of manufacturing biological weapons (along with Libya, Syria and Iran) and demanded that North Korea allow inspections to determine if it is “developing nuclear weapons.” Trying to keep up with the guy leaves one breathless.

But the accusation aimed at Iraq, according to Vincent Cannistaro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism and National Security Council director of intelligence, is “supported by little validated intelligence.” Moreover, he added “there is no evidence that Iraq is targeting Americans for violent acts or has collaborated with the terrorist groups that have been killing us.”

But evidence is not what a right-wing cabal with growing influence over the Administration’s foreign policy is interested in. Led by Secretary of Defense William Rumsfeld and DOD official Richard Perle, it is concentrated in an 18-member body called the Defense Policy Board. Board members include Henry Kissinger, former Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, former Defense Secretary Harold Brown, and former Vice-President, Dan Quayle.

The Board is a reincarnation of the old Committee on the Present Danger, which back in the ‘70s and ‘80s scutted the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement II and détente with the Soviet Union. The Committee also played an important role in pumping up the military budget (creating the massive budget deficits of the Reagan era), and pushed for intervention in Central America. Perle and Rumsfeld were charter members of the old Committee, and Perle presently chairs the Defense Policy Board.

These are people who passionately want to spread the war to Iraq and beyond and don’t care much about building coalitions or what Perle calls “insipid internationalism.” They are unilateralists on everything from global warming to arms control, and they hate international law. For good reason. They were in charge when the U.S. was hauled before the World Court and found guilty for illegally mining Nicaragua’s harbors. Needless to say they love military tribunals and hate international courts.

The Board surrounds itself with a cloud of columnist flack ranging from William Safire and Charles Krauthammer to Hollywood gossip gleaner, Liz “Let’s get on with this war” Smith, proposing everything from dismembering Iraq to using nuclear weapons. One thing they all agree upon is that it is time for the U.S. to reshape the globe the way the Board wants and anyone who gets in the way gets flattened by a precision guided bomb or Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Their instrument will be Rumsfeld’s New Model Army of Special Forces and massive air power, which will pummel any country into submission. While it may destroy Al Queda, it will aqlso plant acres of dragon’s teeth among the civilians caught up in our “air surgery,” dragon’s teeth that will require yet new wars in other places against people we know nothing about.

As our president said last week in Kentucky, “Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win.” Even if the war takes forever and ever and ever.

The Algebra of Occupation

The Algebra of Occupation

Dispatches From The Edge

Conn Hallinan

Nov. 29, 2007

In 1805, the French Army out maneuvered, outsmarted and out fought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would flounder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas.

In 1967 it took six days for the Israeli Army to smash Egypt, Jordan and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, a Shiite militia fought the mightiest army in the Middle East to a bloody standstill in Lebanon.

In 1991 it took four days of ground combat for the U.S. to crush Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War. U.S. losses were 148 dead and 647 wounded. After more than five years of war in Iraq, U.S. losses are approaching 4,000, with over 50,000 wounded; 2007 is already the deadliest year of the war for the U.S.

In each case, a great army won a decisive victory, only to see that victory cancelled out by what T.E. Lawrence once called the algebra of occupation. Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I, Lawrence put his finger on the formula that has doomed virtually every military force that has tried to quell a restive population.

“Rebellion must have an unassailable base…it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area. It must have a friendly population…sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by a 2 percent active striking force, and 98 percent passive sympathy. Granted mobility, security…time and doctrine…victory will rest the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive.

There is an inexorable trajectory to this process: an army vanquishes another army, only to find that wars don’t always end when generals surrender and capitals fall. When a few locals take up arms because they object to being occupied by “aliens,” the occupiers act like armies, which are designed to kill people, not to win their hearts and minds.

So the occupiers break down doors and search for weapons, terrorizing and humiliating people in the process. They call in air strikes, which kill innocent bystanders. They choke off commerce and impose curfews to teach the locals a lesson, lessons that are never learned. For over 800 years the English beat, imprisoned, transported, shot, and hung hundreds of thousands of Irish, and it made the natives not the slightest bit quieter or more respectful. Indeed it made them quite the opposite.

In this process of trying to get the occupied to accept defeat, a certain corruption of spirit begins to seep into the soul of an army, transforming it from a war-fighting machine into a kind of monster.

Listen to some of these voices:

Reporter Chris Hedges, who talked with solders, officers, and medical personnel in Iraq, said his interviews “revealed a disturbing pattern of behavior by American troops: innocents terrorized during midnight raids, civilian cars fired upon when they got too close to supply columns. The campaign against a mostly invisible enemy, many veterans said, has given rise to a culture of fear and even hatred among U.S. forces, many of whom… have, in effect, declared war on all Iraqis.”

Sgt. Camilo Mejia told Hedges that, as far as the deaths of Iraqis at checkpoints, “This sort of killing of civilians has long ceased to arouse much interest or even comment.”

Except among the survivors and relatives, of course, who now know who their enemy is.

“Our children are being killed. Our homes are being destroyed. We are bombed. What should we do?” asks Abdul Qader, who lost seven family members in a June 29 U.S. air strike that killed 60 people in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person [Osama bin-Ladin],” one man told the New York Times. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan.”

Israeli psychologist Nofer Ishsai-Karen and psychology professor Joel Elitzur interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories. They found that the soldiers routinely engaged in murder, assault, threats and humiliation, and many of them enjoyed it.

“The truth is I love this mess—I enjoy it. It is like being on drugs,” one soldier told them. Another said, “What is great is that you don’t have to follow any law or rule. You feel you are the law, you decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories, you are God.”

One soldier told a story about seeing a four-year old boy playing in the sand in his front yard during a curfew in Rafah. The soldier says his officer “grabbed the boy. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock…the next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.”

A few hours with the works of Goya will give one an idea of how the French Army behaved in Spain.

An occupation is not a war against an army, it is a war against all. There are no front lines and no distinguishing uniforms, only an ambush or a roadside bomb that strikes without warning.

And when one does, a veteran told Hedges, “people just open up.” A roadside bomb in 2005 set off a massacre by U.S. Marines in Haditha that killed 24 civilians. On Mar. 4, 2007, following a suicide bomb, Marines in Afghanistan went on a rampage that killed 12 civilians.

Occupation is only possible if the occupied are reduced to a category that places them outside the boundaries of a shared humanity So the Iraqis becomes “Hajji,” just as two generations ago the Vietnamese became “Slopes.” The Israeli right routinely refers to the Palestinians as “cockroaches.”

Soon, everyone becomes an enemy.

When U.S. helicopter gun ships killed 16 people Oct. 23 in a small northern Iraqi village near Tikrit, military officials said the dead were insurgents, because many of them were “military-age males,” a category that embraces about one-third of the population.

Not many “hearts and minds” were won this past October near Tikrit.

But “winning over the population,” continues to be the illusion of every occupier. Testifying before Congress, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure, and promoting good government.”

And then there is the real world.

A Pentagon survey found that only 38 percent of Marines and 47 percent of Army solders thought civilians should be treated with dignity. Some 45 percent of the Army solders and 60 percent of the Marines said they would report the killing of innocent civilians.

A recent ABC/BBC poll found that 78 percent of Iraqis say things are getting worse, almost 80 percent want U.S. troops out, and 57 percent of them support violence against Coalition forces.

Those are the “algebraical factors” of occupation, and as Lawrence concludes, “against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.”

Northern Iraq’s Tangled Webs

Northern Iraq’s Tangled Webs

Foreign Policy In Focus

Conn Hallinan

June 15, 2007

There are few areas in the world more entangled in historical deceit and betrayal than northern Iraq, where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans have played a deadly game of political chess at the expense of the local Kurds. And now, because of a volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish politics, coupled with the Bush Administration’s clandestine war to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government, the region threatens to explode into a full-scale regional war.

A series of bombings and attacks over the past year in Turkey touched off the current crisis. The Turks attribute the violence to the Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) The PKK fought a bitter war against the Turks from 1984 through the 1990s. Ankara’s campaign to repress its Kurdish population during that period ended up killing some 35,000 people, destroying 3,000 villages, and forcibly relocating between 500,000 and 2 million Kurds.

The Kurds make up about 20 percent of Turkey and Iraq and have a significant presence in Syria and Iran. There are between 25 to 30 million of them, and they represent one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without a country, a status that has long aggrieved them.

The current crisis began late last month when the Turks declared martial law in three provinces that border Iraq, massing troops, armor, and artillery, and threatening to invade if the U.S. and the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki do not suppress the PKK.

But things are never quite what they appear in northern Iraq:

*While the Turks are indeed concerned about the activities of the PKK, Ankara’s real agenda is to block any possibility of an independent Kurdish nation on their border. The Turkish Army is also whipping up nationalism in an effort to influence the outcome of the July 22 Turkish elections.

*The U.S. considers the PKK a terrorist organization, but the Bush Administration is also using the organization to launch attacks into Iran and stir up ethnic animosities among Iranians.

*The Islamacist Maliki government, with its ties to extremist Shiite militias and Iran, is no friend of the secular and socialist-minded PKK. But Maliki needs Kurdish support in his battle with former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose coalition of former Baathists, Sunnis, secular Shiites, and disgruntled Kurds that has designs on bringing down Maliki’s government.

*And while the current Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)—a coalition of the formerly warring Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party—has no great love for the PKK, the organization is tough and battle-hardened and has become an invaluable ally against a rising tide of Islamicism in the Kurdish region.

Turkey is deeply worried that an upcoming plebiscite in Kirkuk could make the oil-rich city the Kurds claim as their capital a part of Kurdistan. The Turks charge that the Kurds are trying to influence the outcome of the vote by driving 200,000 Turkomen and Arabs out of the city, and moving in 600,000 Kurds, reversing the 1980s population shift when Saddam Hussein forced many Kurds out of Kirkuk, moveing in Arab families to take their place.

In order to keep the KRG as an ally, the Maliki government is backing the plebiscite and supporting a plan to remove 12,000 Arab families from Kirkuk and send them back to their original homes in central and southern Iraq. (Asia Times, 6/5/07)

The Turks fear that if Kirkuk joins Kurdistan, it will give the Kurds the economic base they need to build a Kurdish state, which will, in turn, stir up Turkey’s restive Kurds to demand independence or autonomy.

Ankara blames the U.S. for ignoring the issue of Kirkuk and turning a blind eye to the PKK.

“It is widely acknowledged,” says Syrian historian and journalist Sami Moubayed, “that the PKK cannot operate out of northern Iraq without the full blessing of Maliki, [Iraqi] President Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) and the United States.” (Asia Times, 6/5/07)

Rather than suppressing the PKK, the U.S. is using its offshoot, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK), to attack Iran. (Associated Press, 2/2/07) According to a Financial Times investigation last year, U.S. Marines are working with Iranian minorities to see if “Iran would be prone to violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.” (Financial Times, 2/24/06)

Farsi speakers dominate Iran, but they only make up a slim majority of the country. The rest of the population consists of Kurds, Arabs, Azeris and Baluchs. The U.S. is also supporting a violent Baluch group, the Jundallah, which killed 11 Revolutionary Guard this past February in southern Iran. (ABC News, 3/3/07)

“I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot, with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups in Iran,” says Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations. (ABC News, 5/22/07)

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that PRJAK is also receiving help from Israel, and that there are some 1200 Israeli intelligence agents in northern Iraq. (Sacramento Bee, 3/10/06)

According to Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli expert on the Kurds, Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq “to undermine Iran’s influence” and “the Iranian government itself.”

From Ankara’s point of view, Turkey is paying the price for both the White House’s crusade against Iran and the weakness of the current Maliki government.

Maliki is beset by a Sunni insurgency, and growing American impatience with his failure to rein in sectarian violence and to pass proposed hydrocarbon legislation that would open Iraq to western oil companies.

But Maliki is allied with the Shiite militias who are waging that sectarian war, including Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. And Maliki’s Kurdish allies are opposed to the proposed oil legislation because it would block the Kurds from cutting their own deals with oil companies. (Financial Times, 1/23/07)The law is also deeply unpopular with the average Iraqi. Oil workers recently struck in an effort to derail it.

The U.S. is hoping the KRG will rein in the PKK. One anonymous Iraqi official told The Sun, “The Americans want the Kurds to make their life easier. They need the Kurdish government to show they are willing to tackle terrorism in the north… maybe alert Turkey of a threat, act on intelligence, arrest some people, make an effort.” (New York Sun, 6/7/07)

However, the KRG has a problem with a growing wave of Islamicism in Kurdistan. The PKK is strongly secular—it was formerly the Kurdish Communist Party—and, in a fight with Islamic extremists it would be an invaluable ally. (Financial Timesw, 6/5/07) On top of which, the PKK is widely respected for its long struggle against the Turks, and if the KRG were to turn against the PKK it might not go down well with the average Kurd.

Even if the KRG reins in the PKK, it might not be enough for Ankara, because Turkey wants to roll back any movement that would create an independent Kurdistan.

But that genie is already out of the lamp. The well-ordered and relatively peaceful Kurdish region has a working parliament, several universities, and Kurdish language radio and television. It has essentially been a functioning country since 1992 when the Americans and British established a “no fly” zone over the area following the end of Gulf War I.

Whatever the Turks want, Kurdistan is already a reality.

Part of the current crisis is a reflection of Turkey’s internal politics. Beating the anti-Kurdish drum is part of the Turkish Army’s strategy to whip up nationalism in order to weaken the religious government of Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the July elections. (Financial Times, 6/8/07)

The major danger is that the tension between Turks and Kurds could quickly get out of hand. For the past few weeks the Turkish Army has been shelling Kurdish villages in Iraq and sending small units across the border. A miscalculation by either side could quickly escalate, which is exactly what the U.S. fears.

“Fighting between Turks and Kurds in Iraq could spread to Turkey itself,” says Henri J. Barkey, chair of International Relations at Lehigh University and widely considered to be the top U.S.-Turkish scholar. This, he said, could lead to “ a severe rupture in U.S.-Turkish relations,” and “deal a fatal blow” to U.S. efforts in Iraq. (Asia Times, 6/5/07)

Northern Iraq has always been a complicated place, but the U.S. war has sharpened the tensions which have plagued it for over a century. Now those tensions have pushed the region to the brink of chaos.