Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, How the U.S. Created Middle East Mayhem
By Rebecca Gordon
Posted on October 20, 2015, Printed on October 22, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176058/
To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the
American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle
East from the Chinese border to Libya. Certainly, as the recent Republican
and Democratic presidential debates suggest, Americans have some sense of
what a disaster it was for the Bush administration to use the 9/11 attacks
as an excuse to take out Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. The gravity of the
decision to occupy and garrison his country, while dismantling his party,
his institutions of state, and much of the economy, not to speak of his
military, can hardly be overemphasized. In the process, its clear that the
U.S. punched a giant hole through the oil heartlands of the planet. The
disintegrative effects of those moves have only compounded over the years.
Despite the many other factors, demographic and economic, that lay behind
the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, for instance, its hard to believe that it
would have happened in the way it did, had the invasion of Iraq not
occurred.
Though youll seldom find it mentioned in one place, in the ensuing years
five countries in the region -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen
-- all disintegrated as nation states. Three of them were the focus of
direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a hunting
ground for American drones, and the fifth (Syria) suffered indirectly from
the chaos and mayhem in neighboring Iraq. All of them are now embroiled in
seemingly unceasing internecine struggles, wars, and upheavals. Meanwhile,
the phenomenon that the Americans were ostensibly focused on crushing,
terrorism, has exploded across the same lands, resulting among other things
in the first modern terrorist state (though its adherents prefer to call it
a caliphate).
Those two invasions also loosed another deeply destabilizing phenomenon:
24/7 counterinsurgency from the air and the manhunting drone that was so
essential to it. At first, this was an American phenomenon as U.S. Air
Force planes with their smart weaponry and CIA and Air Force drones, all
hyped for their surgical precision, began cruising the skies of the
Greater Middle East, terrorizing parts of the backlands of the region. In
effect, they acted as agents of disintegration as well as recruitment
posters for expanding terror outfits. The collateral damage they caused
was considerable, even if it has, until recently, been largely ignored in
our world. Hundreds, for instance, died in three of those disintegrating
countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen) when at least eight wedding parties
were obliterated by American air power, and yet few noticed. This may
recently have changed when an American AC-130 gunship eviscerated a hospital
run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Doctors, staff, and
patients were killed, some burned in their beds, because American special
operations analysts believed, according to the Associated Press, that a
single Pakistani intelligence agent might be on the premises. (He evidently
wasnt.) Soon after, the Intercept published a cache of secret U.S.
documents from a new Edward Snowden" on the American drone program in
Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen that offered a strong sense of the
apparently incalculable civilian toll taken in the constant search for
terror targets.
But heres the truly grim reality of the Greater Middle East today: what the
Americans started didnt end with them. The skies of the region are now
being cruised by French, British, Jordanian, United Arab Emirates, Kuwaiti,
Qatari, Bahraini, Moroccan, Egyptian, Saudi, and Russian planes and drones,
all emulating the Americans, all conducting counterinsurgency, all
undoubtedly blasting away civilians. In Yemen, the Saudi air force, backed
and supplied by Washington, recently took up the twenty-first-century
American way of war in the most explicit fashion possible -- by knocking off
two wedding parties and killing more than 150 celebrants.
And can the Iranians, the Chinese, and others, all now building or
purchasing drones, be far behind? We are, it seems, already on a Terminator
Planet. In that light, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon points out
today, this years Nobel Prize to a Tunisian foursome of civil organizations
that struggled to bring peace, not war, to their land has special meaning.
It offers a tiny window on what the world of the Greater Middle East might
have looked like if Washington had never intervened as it did. Tom
The Secret to Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
Keep the U.S. Military Out
By Rebecca Gordon
This years Nobel Peace Prize went to Tunisias National Dialogue Quartet
for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy...
in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. The Quartet is a group of
four organizations -- two national labor unions, a business group, and a
lawyers' association -- whose work helped prevent Tunisia from sliding into
civil war in the years following that revolution.
Seeing the peace prize go to an organization that actually seems to have
kept the peace is cheering news in a month that witnessed the military of
one former Nobel laureate destroying a hospital run by another winner.
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) certainly earned its 1999
Peace Prize by providing medical services to people in more than 80
countries, often working in some of the most dangerous places on earth. On
the other hand, as far as anyone can tell, a weary Nobel committee gave
Barack Obama his prize in 2009 mostly for not being George W. Bush.
Tunisia, home of this years winners, is the country where the Arab Spring
began when a vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, burned himself to death
after the police confiscated the cart from which he made his living. His
lingering death catalyzed a variety of social forces demanding an end to the
U.S.-backed dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. These included young
people, students, and workers -- all with deep economic grievances -- as
well as human rights supporters and some Islamists who hoped to see the
country adopt a version of Sharia law. On January 14, 2011, 10 days after
Bouazizis death and under popular pressure, Ben Ali gave up power and
accepted asylum in Saudi Arabia.
In October 2011, Tunisia held parliamentary elections. A right-wing
religious party, al-Nahda (Renaissance), took 37% of the vote and formed a
coalition government with two other parties, one on the left and the other
composed of secular liberals. Hamadi Jebali, a solar energy scientist and
member of al-Nahda, became the first prime minister. He later stepped down
when fellow party members pressured him to abandon his efforts to build a
coalition government of national unity in favor of a more explicitly
Islamist approach.
In the following years, while the al-Nahda party continued to rule, several
prominent left-wing politicians were assassinated, for which the far
right-wing Islamist militia Ansar al-Shariah claimed responsibility. Unhappy
with the Islamist turn of their revolution and furious at what they saw as
the governments inaction after the assassination of leftwing Popular Front
politician Mohamed Brahmi, Tunisians once again took to the streets. There,
as Juan Cole wrote shortly afterwards, they staged enormous
demonstrations. Unions, womens organizations, and student groups all
demanded that al-Nahda step down in favor of a more neutral, technocratic
government.
At this point, the profound political conflict in Tunisia could easily have
turned into an armed confrontation. But it didnt. Instead the countrys
organized political forces, aided by the National Dialogue Quartet, achieved
something remarkable, especially in the context of the present Greater
Middle East. Al-Nahda withdrew from governing and was replaced with a
technocratic caretaker government. Under it, a new, secular constitution
was written and, in October 2014, parliamentary elections were held,
followed by presidential elections that November.
Today, Tunisia continues to face economic and political problems, including
two separate terrorist attacks on foreigners this year, but for now it has
something unique among the Arab Spring countries: an apparently stable,
democratic government.
What Made Tunisia Different?
Of all the countries touched by Arab Spring uprisings, including Egypt,
Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, Tunisia is the only one that has neither
devolved into vicious internal warfare nor reverted to authoritarian rule.
What makes Tunisia different?
In Tunisia, as Juan Cole has suggested and the Nobel committee recognized, a
uniquely strong, organized, and varied civil society, especially trade and
student unions, was key to the countrys transition from dictatorship to
democracy. There were other differences as well. Unlike the Egyptian army,
which had long supported the Mubarak regime, Tunisias relatively small
military was never tightly allied with the Ben Ali government. And, as Cole
says, almost uniquely in the region, its commanders chose to stay out of the
ensuing turmoil.
Egypts military, however, thanks in part to U.S. aid, is among the 20 most
powerful in the world, and has long played a central role in that countrys
politics and economy. After the Arab Spring protests in Cairos Tahrir
Square brought autocrat Hosni Mubarak down, the first elections put a
religious party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in power. However when (as in
Tunisia) Egyptians started to grow restive under the Brotherhoods rule and
returned to the streets in protest, instead of allowing a transition to
secular democracy, the military chose to reinsert itself in political life,
elevating the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who
now serves as president and supreme military commander.
Among other differences with the rest of the Arab Spring states, Tunisia is
a country, rare in the region, with a certain religious homogeneity: more
than 99% of its population is at least nominally Sunni Muslim, so it has not
experienced the sort of sectarian violence that has roiled countries like
Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And as Cole also points out, when Tunisias
secularists came to power, unlike the Sisi government in Egypt, they did not
outlaw and repress the countrys religious parties.
The Biggest Difference
There is one more key difference to mention: since the revolution the United
States has largely stayed out of Tunisian affairs. Admittedly, U.S. military
aid did rise from $17 million before the revolution to $29.5 million in 2012
before dropping again to almost pre-revolutionary levels for the next few
years. Perhaps in response to the growth of Islamic State adherents,
however, the U.S. recently announced that military aid to Tunisia would
triple in 2016. We know that British special forces have been sent to
Tunisia and its certainly possible that U.S. special forces have been there
as well.
For now, however, it appears that the U.S. has not intervened in the
governance of the country. In contrast, Washington has played a significant
role in the affairs of all the other Arab Spring countries. Lets consider
these situations, one by one:
Egypt: Egypt has long been one of the worlds biggest recipients of U.S.
military aid, second only to Israel. When el-Sisi came to power, the Obama
administration briefly withheld aid, but in March 2015 restored the full
$1.3 billion a year it had slated for the Egyptian military. In fact, in
2013 when that army overthrew elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim
Brotherhood, President Obama took care never to describe this action as a
coup d'état, because U.S. law would then have prohibited any military aid
to Egypt. In other words, after Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring rising,
Egyptians essentially traded one U.S.- and military-backed regime for
another.
Yemen: Ali Abdullah Saleh had been president of Yemen for 33 years when Arab
Spring demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, Sana'a, at the end
of January 2011. Between 200 and 2,000 died in the crackdown that followed,
but by November Saleh was out, replaced by one of his deputies, Abdrabbuh
Mansour Hadi, who has since been ousted by the Houthi rebellion.
In Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia have taken the side of the
now-deposed Hadi government in an internal struggle with Houthi rebels. The
Houthi movement -- like everything in Yemen -- is complicated. Its made up
of rural tribespeople from the northern part of the country and is supported
by the Iranians. Houthis are adherents of the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, so
Sunni-Shia tensions have played a part in Yemens collapse, as have
north-south conflicts. (Yemen only became a single country in 1990.) In
February 2015, a British academic expert writing for the BBC described
Yemens condition this way:
[A]nti-systemic movements -- the ragtag Houthi militia astonished by the
lack of resistance to their advance against the flailing transitional
regime; the separatist Southern Movement... marginalized from the National
Dialogue but now taking up arms; fringe Yemeni and foreign Salafist fighters
for al-Qaeda; and divisions of what used to be Mr Saleh's security apparatus
-- are jockeying for power in the new order.
What could possibly make this situation worse?
How about U.S.-supplied missiles and cluster bombs delivered by the Saudi
air force? Washington, of course, long ago made Yemen part of its
battlefield in the global war on terror, using kill lists to send drones
to pick off al-Qaeda terrorists (who might well turn out to be Yemeni
civilians shopping for supplies to celebrate the end of Ramadan or getting
married). Now, the United States has rushed to support Saudi Arabias
intervention against the Houthis in the countrys hydra-headed civil war,
providing munitions, intelligence assistance, and even mid-air refueling for
Saudi bombers, while a naval blockade of the port of Aden has helped shut
off supplies to the country. Seven months of sustained Saudi bombing,
violence, and food and fuel shortages have helped displace more than a
million and a half Yemenis. In August, the U.N.s World Food Program warned
that the country faces famine.
The United States has been involved in Yemen for a while. In fact, when
announcing the restoration of Egyptian military aid, the Obama
administration stressed the importance of el-Sisis cooperation in the fight
against al-Qaeda-style Islamic terrorism, particularly in Yemen (and also
Libya). Now the U.S. finds itself in tactical agreement with these same
Sunni fundamentalists. In a case of intervention making strange bedfellows,
by supporting the Saudis against the Houthis, Washington has ended up on the
same side of this fight as the Islamic State, which has been using its usual
terror tactics in an attempt to drive the Houthis out of Yemens capital.
Libya: The Arab Spring came to Libya, too, when Libyans deposed Muammar
Gaddafi, who had ruled the country since a 1969 coup.
U.S. relations with Gaddafi had been tense at least since 1988 when a
terrorist explosion brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In 2003, Gaddafi acknowledged Libyan responsibility for the bombing and paid
compensation to victims families (although maintaining his own innocence in
the affair). In the same year, Tripoli abandoned its nuclear weapons program
and allowed international inspectors free rein in the country. Washington
reached an accommodation with Gaddafi in 2006, ending all previous
sanctions. Two years earlier, he had also made peace with the European Union
(EU), and in 2010 accepted 50 million Euros from the EU in return for help
preventing African migrants and refugees from using Libya as a transit
corridor to Europe.
However, in 2011, when it became clear that Libyans were threatening to
depose Gaddafi, the Obama administration abandoned him, pushing NATO into
military action. NATO launched a concerted campaign of airstrikes to cripple
his military. Gaddafi died after a convoy in which he was traveling was hit
by a U.S. Predator drone and French jet fighters. Although accounts of his
death vary, it seems clear that, when Gaddafi was left without protection, a
crowd attacked and killed him.
In reporting on his death, the New York Times presciently referred to an
instability that could trouble Libya long after the euphoria fades about the
demise of Colonel Gaddafi. Indeed, chaos followed, spilling into Mali and
other countries as the Colonels weapons arsenals were looted and dispatched
across the region as far east as the Sinai Peninsula and possibly as far
south as Nigeria. In Libya itself, havoc ensued, along with civil war (or
wars) and the rise of a branch of the Islamic State (IS).
As in Iraq, Washington once again proved remarkably skilled at
dictator-toppling, but significantly weaker on its follow-up. Today,
post-Arab Spring Libya is a failed state, riven by violence, and governed
by rival parliaments. In September 2015, the Times reported (with no
apparent irony): Libyans are struggling with a problem that typically
emerges after a bloody regime change: how to reassemble a functioning
country after its brittle, autocratic and repressive government has been
fractured and replaced with warring factions. This is a question the United
States might have thought to ask before getting into the
government-fracturing business.
Bahrain: The Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island on the western side of the
Persian Gulf with a population of 1.34 million. It provides a vital base for
the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and is home to the Navys
Fifth Fleet. As the U.S. State Department puts it, The Government of
Bahrain plays a key role in the Gulfs security architecture and is an
important member of the U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition. U.S. assistance
enables Bahrain to continue to obtain the equipment and training it needs to
provide for its own defense and to operate alongside U.S. air and naval
forces.
The CIAs World Fact Book lists Bahrains form of government as
constitutional monarchy, but it is hardly a democracy. Political parties
are outlawed, and although one legislative house is elected, King Hamad bin
Isa al-Khalifa appoints the prime minister, the cabinet, and the members of
the judiciary. He or his sons occupy most of the highest positions. More
than two-thirds of Bahrains Muslims are Shia, while the royal family and
the ruling elite are Sunni.
The Arab Spring reached Bahrain in January 2011. In the fashion of Egyptian
demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Bahraini protestors occupied the Pearl
Roundabout, a key intersection in the capital Manama, demanding the kings
ouster. Al-Khalifa responded by calling on his allies Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) for help. The Saudis responded by sending 1,000
troops; the UAE sent another 500. Together they routed the demonstrators and
ended the rebellion.
Dozens were killed, thousands were rounded up, and many of the prisoners
were tortured. Once again, the United States took sides, throwing its
support not to the Arab Spring demonstrators but to the king and his
repressive state. Washingtons strategic interests and the desire to keep
the Saudis happy took precedence over any pretense of supporting civil and
human rights. As Middle East expert Toby Jones told NPR in early 2012, If
there is a place globally where there is not just distance but a huge gap
between American interests and American values, its in the Persian Gulf.
Syria: The Arab Spring in Syria began with small demonstrations in January
2011. These grew larger when people in the town of Daraa came out to
protest the torture of young men arrested for putting up political graffiti.
By April, the government of Bashar al-Assad was using tanks and live fire to
put down demonstrations. By July, demonstrators numbered in the hundreds of
thousands. By the end of 2011, demonstrations had given way to armed
conflict as a wide variety of rebel brigades with differing aims and
loyalties began to fight back. Fighters on multiple sides, including the
Assad regime, have been accused of war crimes -- torture, summary
executions, the barrel-bombing of civilians, and the use of poison gas.
The civil war in Syria is the premier humanitarian disaster of the
twenty-first century, spawning the worst refugee crisis Europe has faced
since the end of World War II. As of October 4, 2015, the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that there are 4,185,302 registered
persons of concern (refugees) driven from the country by war. This
figure, says the agency, includes 2.1 million Syrians registered by UNHCR
in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, 1.9 million Syrians registered by the
Government of Turkey, as well as more than 26,700 Syrian refugees registered
in North Africa.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Organization reports at least another
7.7 million internally displaced people, forced by the conflict to leave
their homes. Of a population of 22 million, almost 12 million, more than
half, have been made refugees. The New York Times reports that more than
200,000 Syrians -- almost one in every 100 -- have been killed. In March
2015, the BBC put the figure at 220,000, and in August, the UN suggested
that figure might even have reached 250,000.
And Washington has its fingerprints all over Syrias civil war. As long ago
as 1996, neocons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who would later serve as
advisors to Vice President Dick Cheney, participated in a study group that
produced a paper for the Israeli government. In it, they argued that Israel
can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan,
by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. Such a campaign
would begin, they suggested, by removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq
-- an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- as a means
of foiling Syrias regional ambitions.
The ultimate goal would be a realignment of power in the Middle East, with
Syria destabilized, a Hashemite king ruling Iraq, and a new regional
alliance among Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. Perle & Co. brought this plan to
the Bush White House, where the 9/11 attacks provided a pretext for the
first step: removing Saddam Hussein. It would seem that the neocon dream of
destabilizing Syria has been realized as well, even if not in the way they
expected.
When the 2011 uprising became an armed fight, the United States began
supporting the moderate Free Syrian Army, initially with non-lethal
assistance. Since then, the U.S. has sought to identify non-extremist Sunni
Islamists to equip and set loose on the growing Islamic State, with results
that would be comical if they hadnt been so deadly and disastrous. On
October 9th, the White House and the Pentagon admitted that the $500 million
program to vet, train, and equip moderate fighters in Turkey and Jordan to
be sent back to Syria had been an abject failure. The Obama administrations
new strategy, reported the New York Times, is a revamped program that
briefly screens Arab rebel commanders of existing Syrian units before
equipping them with much-needed ammunition and, potentially, small arms, as
well as, it turns out, TOW anti-tank missiles.
On October 12th, the U.S. airdropped the first 50 tons of ammunition to
these rebel groups, who presumably have been distinguished from the Islamic
State, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, and other extreme outfits by
those brief screenings. The official U.S. position on Assad himself
remains that his leaving power is a prerequisite for any peace settlement,
but the Obama administration prefers to frame its intervention as a battle
against the Islamic State.
Confronting IS in Syria while also opposing Assad has proved problematic, to
say the least. There may well be non-Salafist forces fighting the Syrian
government, but much of the fight against Assad has been carried out by
al-Qaeda affiliates like the al-Nusra Front, or by IS (when they are not
fighting each other, that is). Just as in Yemen, the United States has,
eerily enough, ended up on the same side as its supposed greatest enemies,
al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, the Syrian conflict has been made exponentially more dangerous
for Syrians and the entire world by the intervention of Russia, which
opposes IS, but supports the Assad regime. The last thing the country needed
was to become the site of a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Suffice it to say that U.S. intervention has in no way alleviated the
suffering of the Syrian people, whether caused by Assad -- to whose regime
the Bush administration once sent people to be tortured -- or Islamist
groups like IS.
The Peace Prize: A Long Strange Trip
The history of Nobel Peace Prize recipients is an odd one. The first winner
was Jean Henri Dunant, the Swiss citizen who founded the International Red
Cross and inspired the first Geneva Conventions. The Red Cross itself has
won three times, Doctors Without Borders once. My personal favorite laureate
may be the scientist Linus Pauling, who won twice, once for his
contributions to the anti-nuclear movement and the other time in chemistry.
Along with peacemakers and servants of justice like Martin Luther King, Jr.,
the prize has gone to some more questionable figures, including Henry
Kissinger. Fresh from assisting the military coup that resulted in the death
of elected president Salvador Allende and brought Augusto Pinochet to power
in Chile, Kissinger shared the prize in 1973 with Le Duc Tho of North
Vietnam for the Paris Peace Accords, which were supposed to end the Vietnam
War. Tho had the good grace to decline the prize -- partly on the grounds
that the United States had already violated the agreement.
It seems that this year the committee has chosen well, fixing on the Quartet
that helped Tunisia bring the promise of the Arab Spring to flower. It is
sad indeed that the crucial role of the United States in that remarkable
moment was to repeatedly intervene in ways that changed the temperature
radically, helping to bring a cruel and deadly frost of repression, death,
and destruction to too many countries. There ought to be a grim prize of
some sort for such an achievement.
Rebecca Gordon is a TomDispatch regular. She teaches at the University of
San Francisco and is the author of Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches
in the Post-9/11 United States and the forthcoming American Nuremberg: The
Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post 9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books, 2016).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Rebecca Gordon
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176058
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, How the U.S. Created Middle East Mayhem
By Rebecca Gordon
Posted on October 20, 2015, Printed on October 22, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176058/
To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the
American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle
East from the Chinese border to Libya. Certainly, as the recent Republican
and Democratic presidential debates suggest, Americans have some sense of
what a disaster it was for the Bush administration to use the 9/11 attacks
as an excuse to take out Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. The gravity of the
decision to occupy and garrison his country, while dismantling his party,
his institutions of state, and much of the economy, not to speak of his
military, can hardly be overemphasized. In the process, its clear that the
U.S. punched a giant hole through the oil heartlands of the planet. The
disintegrative effects of those moves have only compounded over the years.
Despite the many other factors, demographic and economic, that lay behind
the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, for instance, its hard to believe that it
would have happened in the way it did, had the invasion of Iraq not
occurred.
Though youll seldom find it mentioned in one place, in the ensuing years
five countries in the region -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen
-- all disintegrated as nation states. Three of them were the focus of
direct American interventions, the fourth (Yemen) was turned into a hunting
ground for American drones, and the fifth (Syria) suffered indirectly from
the chaos and mayhem in neighboring Iraq. All of them are now embroiled in
seemingly unceasing internecine struggles, wars, and upheavals. Meanwhile,
the phenomenon that the Americans were ostensibly focused on crushing,
terrorism, has exploded across the same lands, resulting among other things
in the first modern terrorist state (though its adherents prefer to call it
a caliphate).
Those two invasions also loosed another deeply destabilizing phenomenon:
24/7 counterinsurgency from the air and the manhunting drone that was so
essential to it. At first, this was an American phenomenon as U.S. Air Force
planes with their smart weaponry and CIA and Air Force drones, all hyped
for their surgical precision, began cruising the skies of the Greater
Middle East, terrorizing parts of the backlands of the region. In effect,
they acted as agents of disintegration as well as recruitment posters for
expanding terror outfits. The collateral damage they caused was
considerable, even if it has, until recently, been largely ignored in our
world. Hundreds, for instance, died in three of those disintegrating
countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen) when at least eight wedding parties
were obliterated by American air power, and yet few noticed. This may
recently have changed when an American AC-130 gunship eviscerated a hospital
run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Doctors, staff, and
patients were killed, some burned in their beds, because American special
operations analysts believed, according to the Associated Press, that a
single Pakistani intelligence agent might be on the premises. (He evidently
wasnt.) Soon after, the Intercept published a cache of secret U.S.
documents from a new Edward Snowden" on the American drone program in
Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen that offered a strong sense of the
apparently incalculable civilian toll taken in the constant search for
terror targets.
But heres the truly grim reality of the Greater Middle East today: what the
Americans started didnt end with them. The skies of the region are now
being cruised by French, British, Jordanian, United Arab Emirates, Kuwaiti,
Qatari, Bahraini, Moroccan, Egyptian, Saudi, and Russian planes and drones,
all emulating the Americans, all conducting counterinsurgency, all
undoubtedly blasting away civilians. In Yemen, the Saudi air force, backed
and supplied by Washington, recently took up the twenty-first-century
American way of war in the most explicit fashion possible -- by knocking off
two wedding parties and killing more than 150 celebrants.
And can the Iranians, the Chinese, and others, all now building or
purchasing drones, be far behind? We are, it seems, already on a Terminator
Planet. In that light, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon points out
today, this years Nobel Prize to a Tunisian foursome of civil organizations
that struggled to bring peace, not war, to their land has special meaning.
It offers a tiny window on what the world of the Greater Middle East might
have looked like if Washington had never intervened as it did. Tom
The Secret to Winning the Nobel Peace Prize
Keep the U.S. Military Out
By Rebecca Gordon
This years Nobel Peace Prize went to Tunisias National Dialogue Quartet
for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy...
in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011. The Quartet is a group of
four organizations -- two national labor unions, a business group, and a
lawyers' association -- whose work helped prevent Tunisia from sliding into
civil war in the years following that revolution.
Seeing the peace prize go to an organization that actually seems to have
kept the peace is cheering news in a month that witnessed the military of
one former Nobel laureate destroying a hospital run by another winner.
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) certainly earned its 1999
Peace Prize by providing medical services to people in more than 80
countries, often working in some of the most dangerous places on earth. On
the other hand, as far as anyone can tell, a weary Nobel committee gave
Barack Obama his prize in 2009 mostly for not being George W. Bush.
Tunisia, home of this years winners, is the country where the Arab Spring
began when a vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, burned himself to death
after the police confiscated the cart from which he made his living. His
lingering death catalyzed a variety of social forces demanding an end to the
U.S.-backed dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. These included young
people, students, and workers -- all with deep economic grievances -- as
well as human rights supporters and some Islamists who hoped to see the
country adopt a version of Sharia law. On January 14, 2011, 10 days after
Bouazizis death and under popular pressure, Ben Ali gave up power and
accepted asylum in Saudi Arabia.
In October 2011, Tunisia held parliamentary elections. A right-wing
religious party, al-Nahda (Renaissance), took 37% of the vote and formed a
coalition government with two other parties, one on the left and the other
composed of secular liberals. Hamadi Jebali, a solar energy scientist and
member of al-Nahda, became the first prime minister. He later stepped down
when fellow party members pressured him to abandon his efforts to build a
coalition government of national unity in favor of a more explicitly
Islamist approach.
In the following years, while the al-Nahda party continued to rule, several
prominent left-wing politicians were assassinated, for which the far
right-wing Islamist militia Ansar al-Shariah claimed responsibility. Unhappy
with the Islamist turn of their revolution and furious at what they saw as
the governments inaction after the assassination of leftwing Popular Front
politician Mohamed Brahmi, Tunisians once again took to the streets. There,
as Juan Cole wrote shortly afterwards, they staged enormous
demonstrations. Unions, womens organizations, and student groups all
demanded that al-Nahda step down in favor of a more neutral, technocratic
government.
At this point, the profound political conflict in Tunisia could easily have
turned into an armed confrontation. But it didnt. Instead the countrys
organized political forces, aided by the National Dialogue Quartet, achieved
something remarkable, especially in the context of the present Greater
Middle East. Al-Nahda withdrew from governing and was replaced with a
technocratic caretaker government. Under it, a new, secular constitution
was written and, in October 2014, parliamentary elections were held,
followed by presidential elections that November.
Today, Tunisia continues to face economic and political problems, including
two separate terrorist attacks on foreigners this year, but for now it has
something unique among the Arab Spring countries: an apparently stable,
democratic government.
What Made Tunisia Different?
Of all the countries touched by Arab Spring uprisings, including Egypt,
Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, Tunisia is the only one that has neither
devolved into vicious internal warfare nor reverted to authoritarian rule.
What makes Tunisia different?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199336431/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199336431/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20In Tunisia,
as Juan Cole has suggested and the Nobel committee recognized, a uniquely
strong, organized, and varied civil society, especially trade and student
unions, was key to the countrys transition from dictatorship to democracy.
There were other differences as well. Unlike the Egyptian army, which had
long supported the Mubarak regime, Tunisias relatively small military was
never tightly allied with the Ben Ali government. And, as Cole says, almost
uniquely in the region, its commanders chose to stay out of the ensuing
turmoil.
Egypts military, however, thanks in part to U.S. aid, is among the 20 most
powerful in the world, and has long played a central role in that countrys
politics and economy. After the Arab Spring protests in Cairos Tahrir
Square brought autocrat Hosni Mubarak down, the first elections put a
religious party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in power. However when (as in
Tunisia) Egyptians started to grow restive under the Brotherhoods rule and
returned to the streets in protest, instead of allowing a transition to
secular democracy, the military chose to reinsert itself in political life,
elevating the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who
now serves as president and supreme military commander.
Among other differences with the rest of the Arab Spring states, Tunisia is
a country, rare in the region, with a certain religious homogeneity: more
than 99% of its population is at least nominally Sunni Muslim, so it has not
experienced the sort of sectarian violence that has roiled countries like
Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. And as Cole also points out, when Tunisias
secularists came to power, unlike the Sisi government in Egypt, they did not
outlaw and repress the countrys religious parties.
The Biggest Difference
There is one more key difference to mention: since the revolution the United
States has largely stayed out of Tunisian affairs. Admittedly, U.S. military
aid did rise from $17 million before the revolution to $29.5 million in 2012
before dropping again to almost pre-revolutionary levels for the next few
years. Perhaps in response to the growth of Islamic State adherents,
however, the U.S. recently announced that military aid to Tunisia would
triple in 2016. We know that British special forces have been sent to
Tunisia and its certainly possible that U.S. special forces have been there
as well.
For now, however, it appears that the U.S. has not intervened in the
governance of the country. In contrast, Washington has played a significant
role in the affairs of all the other Arab Spring countries. Lets consider
these situations, one by one:
Egypt: Egypt has long been one of the worlds biggest recipients of U.S.
military aid, second only to Israel. When el-Sisi came to power, the Obama
administration briefly withheld aid, but in March 2015 restored the full
$1.3 billion a year it had slated for the Egyptian military. In fact, in
2013 when that army overthrew elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim
Brotherhood, President Obama took care never to describe this action as a
coup d'état, because U.S. law would then have prohibited any military aid
to Egypt. In other words, after Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring rising,
Egyptians essentially traded one U.S.- and military-backed regime for
another.
Yemen: Ali Abdullah Saleh had been president of Yemen for 33 years when Arab
Spring demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, Sana'a, at the end
of January 2011. Between 200 and 2,000 died in the crackdown that followed,
but by November Saleh was out, replaced by one of his deputies, Abdrabbuh
Mansour Hadi, who has since been ousted by the Houthi rebellion.
In Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia have taken the side of the
now-deposed Hadi government in an internal struggle with Houthi rebels. The
Houthi movement -- like everything in Yemen -- is complicated. Its made up
of rural tribespeople from the northern part of the country and is supported
by the Iranians. Houthis are adherents of the Zaidi branch of Shia Islam, so
Sunni-Shia tensions have played a part in Yemens collapse, as have
north-south conflicts. (Yemen only became a single country in 1990.) In
February 2015, a British academic expert writing for the BBC described
Yemens condition this way:
[A]nti-systemic movements -- the ragtag Houthi militia astonished by the
lack of resistance to their advance against the flailing transitional
regime; the separatist Southern Movement... marginalized from the National
Dialogue but now taking up arms; fringe Yemeni and foreign Salafist fighters
for al-Qaeda; and divisions of what used to be Mr Saleh's security apparatus
-- are jockeying for power in the new order.
What could possibly make this situation worse?
How about U.S.-supplied missiles and cluster bombs delivered by the Saudi
air force? Washington, of course, long ago made Yemen part of its
battlefield in the global war on terror, using kill lists to send drones
to pick off al-Qaeda terrorists (who might well turn out to be Yemeni
civilians shopping for supplies to celebrate the end of Ramadan or getting
married). Now, the United States has rushed to support Saudi Arabias
intervention against the Houthis in the countrys hydra-headed civil war,
providing munitions, intelligence assistance, and even mid-air refueling for
Saudi bombers, while a naval blockade of the port of Aden has helped shut
off supplies to the country. Seven months of sustained Saudi bombing,
violence, and food and fuel shortages have helped displace more than a
million and a half Yemenis. In August, the U.N.s World Food Program warned
that the country faces famine.
The United States has been involved in Yemen for a while. In fact, when
announcing the restoration of Egyptian military aid, the Obama
administration stressed the importance of el-Sisis cooperation in the fight
against al-Qaeda-style Islamic terrorism, particularly in Yemen (and also
Libya). Now the U.S. finds itself in tactical agreement with these same
Sunni fundamentalists. In a case of intervention making strange bedfellows,
by supporting the Saudis against the Houthis, Washington has ended up on the
same side of this fight as the Islamic State, which has been using its usual
terror tactics in an attempt to drive the Houthis out of Yemens capital.
Libya: The Arab Spring came to Libya, too, when Libyans deposed Muammar
Gaddafi, who had ruled the country since a 1969 coup.
U.S. relations with Gaddafi had been tense at least since 1988 when a
terrorist explosion brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In 2003, Gaddafi acknowledged Libyan responsibility for the bombing and paid
compensation to victims families (although maintaining his own innocence in
the affair). In the same year, Tripoli abandoned its nuclear weapons program
and allowed international inspectors free rein in the country. Washington
reached an accommodation with Gaddafi in 2006, ending all previous
sanctions. Two years earlier, he had also made peace with the European Union
(EU), and in 2010 accepted 50 million Euros from the EU in return for help
preventing African migrants and refugees from using Libya as a transit
corridor to Europe.
However, in 2011, when it became clear that Libyans were threatening to
depose Gaddafi, the Obama administration abandoned him, pushing NATO into
military action. NATO launched a concerted campaign of airstrikes to cripple
his military. Gaddafi died after a convoy in which he was traveling was hit
by a U.S. Predator drone and French jet fighters. Although accounts of his
death vary, it seems clear that, when Gaddafi was left without protection, a
crowd attacked and killed him.
In reporting on his death, the New York Times presciently referred to an
instability that could trouble Libya long after the euphoria fades about the
demise of Colonel Gaddafi. Indeed, chaos followed, spilling into Mali and
other countries as the Colonels weapons arsenals were looted and dispatched
across the region as far east as the Sinai Peninsula and possibly as far
south as Nigeria. In Libya itself, havoc ensued, along with civil war (or
wars) and the rise of a branch of the Islamic State (IS).
As in Iraq, Washington once again proved remarkably skilled at
dictator-toppling, but significantly weaker on its follow-up. Today,
post-Arab Spring Libya is a failed state, riven by violence, and governed
by rival parliaments. In September 2015, the Times reported (with no
apparent irony): Libyans are struggling with a problem that typically
emerges after a bloody regime change: how to reassemble a functioning
country after its brittle, autocratic and repressive government has been
fractured and replaced with warring factions. This is a question the United
States might have thought to ask before getting into the
government-fracturing business.
Bahrain: The Kingdom of Bahrain is a small island on the western side of the
Persian Gulf with a population of 1.34 million. It provides a vital base for
the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and is home to the Navys
Fifth Fleet. As the U.S. State Department puts it, The Government of
Bahrain plays a key role in the Gulfs security architecture and is an
important member of the U.S.-led anti-ISIL coalition. U.S. assistance
enables Bahrain to continue to obtain the equipment and training it needs to
provide for its own defense and to operate alongside U.S. air and naval
forces.
The CIAs World Fact Book lists Bahrains form of government as
constitutional monarchy, but it is hardly a democracy. Political parties
are outlawed, and although one legislative house is elected, King Hamad bin
Isa al-Khalifa appoints the prime minister, the cabinet, and the members of
the judiciary. He or his sons occupy most of the highest positions. More
than two-thirds of Bahrains Muslims are Shia, while the royal family and
the ruling elite are Sunni.
The Arab Spring reached Bahrain in January 2011. In the fashion of Egyptian
demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Bahraini protestors occupied the Pearl
Roundabout, a key intersection in the capital Manama, demanding the kings
ouster. Al-Khalifa responded by calling on his allies Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) for help. The Saudis responded by sending 1,000
troops; the UAE sent another 500. Together they routed the demonstrators and
ended the rebellion.
Dozens were killed, thousands were rounded up, and many of the prisoners
were tortured. Once again, the United States took sides, throwing its
support not to the Arab Spring demonstrators but to the king and his
repressive state. Washingtons strategic interests and the desire to keep
the Saudis happy took precedence over any pretense of supporting civil and
human rights. As Middle East expert Toby Jones told NPR in early 2012, If
there is a place globally where there is not just distance but a huge gap
between American interests and American values, its in the Persian Gulf.
Syria: The Arab Spring in Syria began with small demonstrations in January
2011. These grew larger when people in the town of Daraa came out to
protest the torture of young men arrested for putting up political graffiti.
By April, the government of Bashar al-Assad was using tanks and live fire to
put down demonstrations. By July, demonstrators numbered in the hundreds of
thousands. By the end of 2011, demonstrations had given way to armed
conflict as a wide variety of rebel brigades with differing aims and
loyalties began to fight back. Fighters on multiple sides, including the
Assad regime, have been accused of war crimes -- torture, summary
executions, the barrel-bombing of civilians, and the use of poison gas.
The civil war in Syria is the premier humanitarian disaster of the
twenty-first century, spawning the worst refugee crisis Europe has faced
since the end of World War II. As of October 4, 2015, the U.N. High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that there are 4,185,302 registered
persons of concern (refugees) driven from the country by war. This
figure, says the agency, includes 2.1 million Syrians registered by UNHCR
in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, 1.9 million Syrians registered by the
Government of Turkey, as well as more than 26,700 Syrian refugees registered
in North Africa.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Organization reports at least another
7.7 million internally displaced people, forced by the conflict to leave
their homes. Of a population of 22 million, almost 12 million, more than
half, have been made refugees. The New York Times reports that more than
200,000 Syrians -- almost one in every 100 -- have been killed. In March
2015, the BBC put the figure at 220,000, and in August, the UN suggested
that figure might even have reached 250,000.
And Washington has its fingerprints all over Syrias civil war. As long ago
as 1996, neocons Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who would later serve as
advisors to Vice President Dick Cheney, participated in a study group that
produced a paper for the Israeli government. In it, they argued that Israel
can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan,
by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. Such a campaign
would begin, they suggested, by removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq
-- an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right -- as a means
of foiling Syrias regional ambitions.
The ultimate goal would be a realignment of power in the Middle East, with
Syria destabilized, a Hashemite king ruling Iraq, and a new regional
alliance among Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. Perle & Co. brought this plan to
the Bush White House, where the 9/11 attacks provided a pretext for the
first step: removing Saddam Hussein. It would seem that the neocon dream of
destabilizing Syria has been realized as well, even if not in the way they
expected.
When the 2011 uprising became an armed fight, the United States began
supporting the moderate Free Syrian Army, initially with non-lethal
assistance. Since then, the U.S. has sought to identify non-extremist Sunni
Islamists to equip and set loose on the growing Islamic State, with results
that would be comical if they hadnt been so deadly and disastrous. On
October 9th, the White House and the Pentagon admitted that the $500 million
program to vet, train, and equip moderate fighters in Turkey and Jordan to
be sent back to Syria had been an abject failure. The Obama administrations
new strategy, reported the New York Times, is a revamped program that
briefly screens Arab rebel commanders of existing Syrian units before
equipping them with much-needed ammunition and, potentially, small arms, as
well as, it turns out, TOW anti-tank missiles.
On October 12th, the U.S. airdropped the first 50 tons of ammunition to
these rebel groups, who presumably have been distinguished from the Islamic
State, the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, and other extreme outfits by
those brief screenings. The official U.S. position on Assad himself
remains that his leaving power is a prerequisite for any peace settlement,
but the Obama administration prefers to frame its intervention as a battle
against the Islamic State.
Confronting IS in Syria while also opposing Assad has proved problematic, to
say the least. There may well be non-Salafist forces fighting the Syrian
government, but much of the fight against Assad has been carried out by
al-Qaeda affiliates like the al-Nusra Front, or by IS (when they are not
fighting each other, that is). Just as in Yemen, the United States has,
eerily enough, ended up on the same side as its supposed greatest enemies,
al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, the Syrian conflict has been made exponentially more dangerous
for Syrians and the entire world by the intervention of Russia, which
opposes IS, but supports the Assad regime. The last thing the country needed
was to become the site of a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Suffice it to say that U.S. intervention has in no way alleviated the
suffering of the Syrian people, whether caused by Assad -- to whose regime
the Bush administration once sent people to be tortured -- or Islamist
groups like IS.
The Peace Prize: A Long Strange Trip
The history of Nobel Peace Prize recipients is an odd one. The first winner
was Jean Henri Dunant, the Swiss citizen who founded the International Red
Cross and inspired the first Geneva Conventions. The Red Cross itself has
won three times, Doctors Without Borders once. My personal favorite laureate
may be the scientist Linus Pauling, who won twice, once for his
contributions to the anti-nuclear movement and the other time in chemistry.
Along with peacemakers and servants of justice like Martin Luther King, Jr.,
the prize has gone to some more questionable figures, including Henry
Kissinger. Fresh from assisting the military coup that resulted in the death
of elected president Salvador Allende and brought Augusto Pinochet to power
in Chile, Kissinger shared the prize in 1973 with Le Duc Tho of North
Vietnam for the Paris Peace Accords, which were supposed to end the Vietnam
War. Tho had the good grace to decline the prize -- partly on the grounds
that the United States had already violated the agreement.
It seems that this year the committee has chosen well, fixing on the Quartet
that helped Tunisia bring the promise of the Arab Spring to flower. It is
sad indeed that the crucial role of the United States in that remarkable
moment was to repeatedly intervene in ways that changed the temperature
radically, helping to bring a cruel and deadly frost of repression, death,
and destruction to too many countries. There ought to be a grim prize of
some sort for such an achievement.
Rebecca Gordon is a TomDispatch regular. She teaches at the University of
San Francisco and is the author of Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches
in the Post-9/11 United States and the forthcoming American Nuremberg: The
Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post 9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books, 2016).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
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Copyright 2015 Rebecca Gordon
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
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