Robert Fisk
BY ROBERT FISK, THE INDEPENDENT
Now President Obama has seen the next US reporter to be threatened with beheading, will he blink?
For centuries, governments told their soldiers and their people to “Know Your Enemy”. The problem with the Isis “Caliphate” – and it is a big problem for President Obama after journalist James Foley’s murder – is that we don’t know who it is. We are told of its butchery, cruelty, its kidnapping of women, its burying alive, its viciousness towards Christians and Yazidis and its public beheadings, but that is all. Even the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, comes across as a mad combination of the Mahdi who murdered Gordon of Khartoum, the assassinated Osama bin Laden and Oliver Cromwell, who did to the civilians of Drogheda what the Muslim Lord Protector al-Baghdadi has done to his enemies.
Foley’s ritual slaughter is enough to dissuade even the most foolhardy of journalists from seeking an interview with al-Baghdadi. Never before in the Middle East has so much land been out of bounds to the Western media. So ignorant are we of this Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – a dark land in which the reports we see of it are their own phone videos – that the Obamas, Camerons and Hammonds can only gnash their teeth at this unspeakable enemy. Easy reaction – but not much to go on. Yet Isis knows how to do one thing: confront Obama with his very own hostage problem, the same conundrum Tony Blair faced when Ken Bigley appeared before the video lens. Do you ignore the warnings, thus proving that you don’t care about your individual citizens when undertaking military operations – which is the truth – or do you turn into Jimmy Carter, curtsy to every whim of your enemies, go down on one knee and tell the Pentagon to “Hold it right there”?
Now Obama has seen the next American reporter threatened with beheading. Will he blink? He can’t, can he?
So I suspect the answer will be what presidents and prime ministers have always done best in the Middle East, and announce that Foley’s murder shows not only just how awful Isis is – but how important it is to go on bombing it in order to destroy the wretched institution. In other words, turn the sadistic Isis reaction to the air strikes into the reason why America is carrying out the air strikes. After all, we were bombarding Isis because it was killing Yazidis and dispossessing Christians and threatening Kurds. And Iraq. Now we have another reason to bomb al-Baghdadi’s “Caliphate”.
For journalists, yesterday was a fearful day. Thirty years ago, Arabs would acknowledge our special role as neutral observers. As the years have gone by – and as journalists have been killed by American military forces and Israeli soldiers and Iraqi rebels (and Arab militias), so our vulnerability has grown infinitely greater. When our chum, the Egyptian Field Marshal Abdol Fottah al-Sissi, locks up journalists for months, precious little do Western governments care about them. When our own masters show so little concern for our fate, is it any surprise that Isis –or Isil or whatever – are prepared to kill them. Sure, we don’t execute them. But that’s not a significance Isis is going to take much interest in.
There are two truths that the West is going to have to face about al-Baghdadi’s savage and dotty “Caliphate”: these executioners began their careers – or their predecessors did – in the video-murderers of the anti-American resistance in Iraq; and however disgusting their activities, there are hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims who live in the area of the Caliphate and who have NOT fled for their lives. This, of course, makes unhappy reading. If the “Caliphate” is so revolting, disgusting, gruesome in its purity-driven brutality, how come all these people – Iraqis and Syrians – did not flee along with their Christian brothers? Are a few thousand armed fighters really able to coerce so many people over such a vast tract of the Middle East?
Let’s go back to the months and years that followed the 2003 Anglo-American invasion. The rebels or insurgents felt able to demonstrate extraordinary cruelty against their captives. I was once offered a videotape in Fallujah of a man having his throat cut by hooded men. It took me some time to realise that the victim was almost certainly a Russian soldier and his murderers were Chechens. Someone had brought this video to Fallujah so that the future butchers of the resistance could learn from it. This is the epic violence which our invasion unleashed.
And most Sunni Muslims stayed in their towns and cities and went on living there while their brothers – the Isis citizens of the future – went about their grisly work. In other words, the “Caliphate” obviously does not appear to be so terrifying to them as it does to us. Is there a problem here? Or is it just a matter, as the Americans seem to think, that the Sunni tribes – those all-purpose mini-societies which we depend on when things go wrong – have only to be bought over or their national government made more “inclusive” after the departure of al-Maliki to bump off al-Baghdadi? These are the questions we should ask.
In his last weeks, Osama bin Laden was expressing his revulsion at the sectarian nature of “Islamist” attacks – he even received a translation from Yemen of an article I wrote in The Independent in which I described al-Qa’ida as “the most sectarian organisation in the world”.
Things have moved on. At least when I met bin Laden, I didn’t fear for my life.
Yes, how come ISIS emerged out of no where? May be some people know where they came from and do not want to tell us?
Einstein showed us that “relativity” depends upon from whence one observes a reality.
Or as the brothers in the hood say, “payback is a …..”
Surely the beheading of a captive is immoral, unlawful, gruesome, etc.
Now compare that beheading to the burning, bombing, mutilations, torture and destruction of thousands, tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
It’s all relative, isn’t it?
This unknown group names ISIS , can’t be muslims. They created to spoil the names of Islam. A real Muslim who follow the true teaching of Islam will do such a heinous crime against humanity.
This group must be taken seriously and punished by the civilised world ASAP.
Many discrepancies within Fisks analysis, as to be expected by a writer for the Independent, but notwithstanding:
1. We know exactly who they are. ISIS formed as an Al-Qaeda faction out of the dregs of the resistance in Iraq against the US invasion 2003. in 2013, Al-Qaeda disowned ISIS after six months of its refusal to concentrate on Iraq and leave Syria to Jabhaat-al-Nusra and other factions of the Syrian rebellion, and after it claimed responsibility for the death of a senior Al-Qaeda commander in Syria.
ISIS is much like the Qawasameh tribe, which is a faction within Hamas that doesn’t tend to listen to Hamas orders and frequently sabotages Hamas missions by going for all out explosive violence-something even the state of Israel has admitted. The Qawasameh tribe was responsible, according to the Israeli state and the US state dept, for the killing of the three Israeli teens before Operation Brothers Keeper came into effect in the hunt for the alleged ‘kidnapped’ teens-that was the pretext anyway. incidentally, the state of Israel razed the homes of the Qawasameh suspects to the ground a few days ago in Hebron as a punitive measure-another war crime and violation of International Law, but then war crimes are just a passing fancy for that government.
In ideological terms, IS practices an extreme interpretation of Wahhabism, itself a particularly bloodthirsty ideology, and as all my Ahmadi Muslim brothers and sisters will know, the Promised Messiah himself warned us about the dangers of Wahhabism to both the Muslim and Western world, in his book the “British Government and Jihad”.
The trees are bearing their dark fruit now, of course, at the peril of all, but when do powerful empires ever listen to the “little guy”?
To further interpret what Fisk is implying by “where do they come from”-no, the sunnis in Mosul and Tikrit are not, in fact, in cahoots with ISIS , nor do the majority of them agree with their interpretation of Islam. If anyone has been following the news on ISIS since day one, they will know that ISIS relaxed some of their extreme notions in cities like Mosul to gain support among the average sunnis who were sick of the sectarianism in the forms of mass imprisionments , executions, carried out extensively by the Al-Maliki regime and his incompetent, corrupt and ruthless army against Sunni civilians, . This was written about by Ex-US soldier and whistleblower Bradley Manning in a NYT Op-Ed as he witnessed it as well as his government’s complicity in it (The US), and of course a;rely ignored by the mainstream press:
“Those of us stationed there were acutely aware of a more complicated reality.
Military and diplomatic reports coming across my desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed.I was shocked by our military’s complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under the American media’s radar.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/opinion/sunday/chelsea-manning-the-us-militarys-campaign-against-media-freedom.html?_r=0
Cause equals effect.
As Patrick Cockburn writes:
“Anger at these abuses is relevant to what is now happening. The majority of Sunni Arabs in Mosul – attitudes will be different among Kurds and minorities – are wary of Isis but terrified of what a vengeful Iraqi army will do if it retakes the city. Past experience, based on what happened in Mosul in 2003 when insurgents briefly took the city, shows that Sunni men, regardless of their actions or sympathies, will be vulnerable to arrest, torture and execution. Isis may have seized Mosul with a small force, but if the Iraqi army tries to take it back tens of thousands of Sunni will fight to defend it.The same is true in the rest of Sunni Iraq. Isis may have begun the assault, but many other groups have joined in. We are now looking at a general uprising of the Iraqi Sunni. Those taking over Saddam Hussain’s hometown of Tikrit are not Isis, but his old adherents who are putting up posters of the late dictator.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-west-must-take-up-tehrans-offer-to-block-an-isis-victory-9537866.html
Thus, Fisk’s memory is short and he forgets that ISIS first gained strength in Iraq in late 2013-early 2014 due to the major unrest caused by the oppression of Sunnis by Maliki, as well as former ba’athist/Saddam loyalists.
2. On mentioning Fallujah, Fisk forgets what happened in Fallujah. He tells us of the barbarity of the beheadings that took place there, but conveniently leaves out the barbarity of the use of chemical weapons such as depleted Uranium and phosphorous on civilians in Fallujah, all who were conveniently classed as militants. In case anyone doesn’t know, these weapons burn your flesh and skin to the bone, and are strong violations of the Geneva conventions.The majority of those militants were villagers armed with sticks and stones against probably the best military in the world. It’s important to note that sunnis and shias and other religions in Fallujah came together to resist against the US army (The Shia Cleric Muqatada-al-Sadr himself gave a speech calling for them to “stand together in the time of resistance from their occupiers’) despite being outnumbered and unmatched in their puny weapons against the US military prowess.
It is hard, however to get an accurate understanding of what exactly went on in Fallujah, and exactly how many civilians died, because most civilians and journalists are barred from entering the region . However, Iraqi babies are still being born with deformities. We all know now what happened in Vietnam, I suppose we must give it thirty years or so for the war crimes perpetrated in Fallujah to come to light.
Two Distinct Dilemmas!
Assalaamu ‘Alaykum
The seeds of animosity was sown in the Middle East way back in the 18th century by the British and French Imperialists and Colonialists. The Orientalists could not bare the notion of Islam, per.se. Edward Said (1935-2003) – the Palestinian-American analysed in his book ” Orientalism ” published in 1978, the Orientalists’ thoughts on Islam;his other book “The Question of Palestine “, published in 1979 is relevant to today’s tragedies in the region. Also, Uri Avnery’s book ” Israel Without Zionism ” published in 1968 is appropriate to the present atrocities in Gaza by the Zionists.
After WWII, Britain and France were severely weakened, thus they were bound to loosen their grips on their colonies. But, the Middle East presented a brain-teaser, due to the regions Black Gold. In came America (Pentagon/Washington). J William Fulbright (1900-1995) – a former Chairman of the U S Senate Committee on Foreign Relations – clearly defined the U S Foreign Policy in his book ” The Arrogance of Power ” published in 1966. Albeit, the book was about the Vietnam War, yet the mindset of Pentagon/Washington lingers on in the Middle East; Fulbright was fiercely against the Vietnam War. Of course, the thirst for OIL is insatiable.
Noam Chomsky, born 11926) – linguist and Emeritus Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been analysing the American (Pentagon/Washington) Foreign Policy over the last five decades. Unfortunately, the Corporate Media seems to have an on-going grip on its listeners and readers. Thus, Pentagon/Washington have mastered the art of flying False Flags, their cronies in Europe slavishly follow suit.
The so-called Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the toxic ideology of Wahhabism. Al-Qaeda, the Islamists/Jihadists, Isis, and all those with the same abhorrent mindset take their cue from the Wahhabists, but with alterations here and there. Thus, whatever variations on their part, they are the Cancer in Al-Islam, per se. It should be mentioned, en passant, that the centuries old Muslim Malaise is deplorable.
The needs of Pentagon/Washington together with their close allies and those of Saudi Arabia are reciprocal. That “Kingdom” is one of the biggest Exporter of OIL, also the biggest, if not the biggest, Importer of Advanced Military Hardware, and the most expensive Western products. Thus it’s a two-way traffic.
The Muslim World faces two distinct dilemmas. First, The Decay Within, second the Neo-Colonialism. The silence from Muslim Academics in The West is deeply regrettable.
G S Hodgson (1926-1968) – Professor of World History at the University of Chicago – wrote: ” If Islam can be shown to be capable of providing truthful vision to illuminate the Modern conscience, then all Mankind, and not only Muslims, have a stake in the outcome.
” WE explain the Signs in detail for those who reflect” 10:24 The Noble Qur’an. Let us all reflect.
Wassalaam
Umar Solim – England