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The Caliphate’s Anti-Imperial/Imperial Dualism
A bit more on the tweets by Peter Lee aka Chinahand I had quoted:
Westerners mock pretensns of IS Caliphate bt it seems 2 strike chord among quite a few Muslims: effort to reestablish theocratic rule in 1/3
heartland of Umayyad/Abbasid caliphates, turn page on disastrus century of colonial/postcolonial rule, replace fragmented/corrupt states 2/3
w/ united Islamic power. West passivty validates the caliphate & its transnational strategy. May be PRC/Rus that try 2 draw the line. 3/3
(BTW – Denigrating those ideas because of shortened spelling in a Tweet(!) is petty.)
After further thinking about that I believe that Peter is right. ISIS, the group now claiming a Caliphate, might have had roots in some sectarian scheme the CIA and the U.S. Special Forces were running in Iraq. But it has by now far exceed that realm. The Caliphate is based on original Wahhabi ideas which were in their essence also anti-colonial and at first directed against the Ottoman rulers.
See Alastair Crooke‘s essays, You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Middle East Time Bomb: The Real Aim of ISIS Is to Replace the Saud Family as the New Emirs of Arabia, on the origin and history of these thoughts.
After 1741 the minor Ibn Saud Bedouin tribe collaborated with the radical cleric Abd al-Wahhab to justify its expansion. Several decades later they became too successful and the Ottoman rulers, with the help of their Egyptian army, exterminated the movement and the first Saudi proto-state. When a hundred years later the Ottoman empire fell apart the Wahhabi ideas and the Saudi movement sprang back to life. But the Saudi rulers were now under British imperial influence and that required to put their Puritans down:
Abd-al Aziz, however, began to feel his wider interests to be threatened by the revolutionary “Jacobinism” exhibited by the Ikhwan. The Ikhwan revolted — leading to a civil war that lasted until the 1930s, when the King had them put down: he machine-gunned them.
Wahhabism survived after that but in a crippled form subordinated to the ruling Saud family.
The new Caliphate followers are copies of the original Wahhabis who do not recognize nation states as those were dictated by the colonial “western” overlords after the end of the Ottoman empire. They do not recognize rulers that deviate, like the Saudi kings do, from the original ideas and subordinate themselves to “western” empires. It is their aim to replace them. As there are many people in Saudi Arabia educated in Wahhabi theology and not particular pleased with their current rulers the possibility of a Caliphate rush to conquer Saudi Arabia and to overthrow the Ibn Saud family is real.
In that aspect the Caliphate is anti-colonial and anti-imperial. That is part of what attracts its followers. At the same time the Caliphate project is also imperial in that it wants to conquer more land and wants to convert more people to its flavor of faith.
Both of these aspects make it a competitor and a danger to imperial U.S. rule-by-proxy in the Middle East. That is, I believe, why the U.S. finally decided to fight it. To lose Saudi Arabia to the Caliphate, which seems to be a real possibility, would be a devastating defeat.
Espousing a (reactionary) anti-imperial, anti-colonial ideology while at the same time furthering an imperial project is not as strange as it appears. The U.S. itself is of anti-colonial heritage and is now trying to establish a global empire. This dualism requires some serious doublethink. Billmon wrote a short Twitter essay yesterday on how the originally anti-colonial U.S. and its officials now have to lie to themselves to justify their imperialism. See also Guest77‘s comment on the unconscious doublethink of U.S. officials. They lie to a New York Times reporter one day then read their lies the next morning, believe them and feel confirmed in their false views.
There is not that much difference between the unaltered Wahhabi ideology ISIS espouses and the puritanical believes of the first white conquerors in North America. The anti-imperial/imperial duality is only one commonality. Indeed I believe that there are quite a lot parallels between both movements.
ISIS can imagine themselves to be King Henry VIII I suppose. It doesn’t make them that. They are a weak force who were whipped out of most of Syria by an increasingly powerful Syrian/Hezbollah/Iranian force. They swept into a disgruntled, sparsely populated desert region with an army of Toyotas in a victory that had more to do with a massive PR campaign based on their monstrous violence than their military power. If the Syrian Army can bring the firepower to bear to trounce them, then the US certainly can – and the Saudis certainly can if only because they’ll have the US supporting them 100%.
Not to mention that these guys are far, far from Saudi Arabia – State Dept. “maps” not withstanding. So unless we start to see vigorous unrest in Saudi cities – I think this is not much of a threat. Because any decent highway to Saudi Arabia goes through heavily Shia areas of Iraq which are no go areas for ISIS obviously. There is, perhaps one desert route that they could take, but if the US can’t figure out how to bomb a long convoy of pick ups on a 15 hour journey through the desert then… that says quite a bit too.
The US is clearly up to something. Why all this preposterous talk of “funding the Syrian opposition to fight ISIS” all about? We can go back over a year and a half of reporting from the most mainstream of mainstream sources and find again and again the same refrain: The “moderate” Syrian rebels simply do not exist. [see below] So this is either them buying into a ridiculous plan with a high rate of failure – or it is a ruse.
So we have a continuos stream of talking heads from Congress, think tanks, and the military telling us that ISIS is the greatest threat to the United States (literally ever in the case of a US Senator) telling us what a threat they are, chatter about WMD and dirty bombs like it is the run up to the Iraq War. And the solution involves a bombing campaign in two countries – having recently tried and failed at an extremely similar gambit – in support of a fictitious group which will wipe out this threat? All while Obama is being called weak and pressed to give the green light for military action which is obviously open-ended?
I don’t know – maybe the US has actually backed itself into a corner by flooding Syria with weapons and has created something it isn’t sure of what to do with. But then why all the smoke and mirrors about the opposition? Why all the talking up of ISIS instead of talking them down? Something stinks.
___________
On the non-existence of Obama’s “moderate Syrian Opposition”.
Sep. 12, 2014 – McClatchy
the Syria leg of the strategy President Barack Obama outlined to combat the Islamic State relies heavily on an on-the-ground opposition partner, which still doesn’t exist in any viable form.
Aug, 2014 – Patrick Cockburn
the US and its allies have responded to the rise of Isis by descending into fantasy. They pretend they are fostering a ‘third force’ of moderate Syrian rebels to fight both Assad and Isis, though in private Western diplomats admit this group doesn’t really exist outside a few beleaguered pockets.
May 2014 – Gen. Dempsey
Dempsey noted that the Syrian opposition maintains no governance structure to provide goods, services and security; no force capable of holding ground to administer aid and wage attacks against the regime; and no counterterrorism capability to root out al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the country. “And we’re not on a path currently to provide that,” he said.
Mar, 2014 – Carnegie Endowment
In mid-February, opposition websites circulated a statement signed by 49 different rebel factions in southern Syria. Banding together as the “Southern Front,” they declared themselves to be “the moderate voice and the strong arm of the Syrian people.” For many Syrians, that must sound too good to be true—and it probably was just that.
Aug., 2013 – Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan
“We don’t have an opposition that I think we should be putting in power,” said Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, speaking by phone from London. “The opposition is dominated by al-Qaeda and other extremists, so it’s going to be bad, possibly worse than Assad himself.”
James Fallon, a Middle East analyst
“For the U.S. and Western powers, there is a Syrian opposition that they’d like to see and that doesn’t exist,” said James Fallon, a Middle East analyst at Control Risks in Dubai. “The U.S. knows who it wants to back. It knows what it wants the Syrian opposition to look like. But those groups are only part of a larger, more disperse grouping of opposition.”
Mar, 2013 – Aaron Lund at SYria Comment
the FSA doesn’t really exist. The original FSA [was] a branding operation/ The FSA was created by Col. Riad el-Asaad and a few other Syrian military defectors in July 2011, in what may or may not have been a Turkish intelligence operation. To be clear, there’s no doubting the sincerity of the first batch of fighters, or suggest that they would have acted otherwise without foreign support. But these original FSA commanders were confined to the closely guarded Apaydın camp in Turkey, and kept separate from civilian Syrian refugees.
Posted by: guest77 | Sep 15 2014 0:46 utc | 44
OT but amazing, NYT
Holder Says Private Suit Risks State Secrets
By MATT APUZZOSEPT. 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — In his first year in office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. put new limits on when the government could dismiss lawsuits in the name of protecting national security. Now, in what he has said is likely his final year, Mr. Holder has claimed broad authority to do just that in a case unlike any other.
The Justice Department intervened late Friday in a defamation lawsuit against United Against Nuclear Iran, a prominent advocacy group that pushes for tough sanctions against Tehran. The government said the case should be dropped because forcing the group to open its files would jeopardize national security.
The group is not affiliated with the government, and lists no government contracts on its tax forms. The government has cited no precedent for using the so-called state-secrets privilege to quash a private lawsuit that does not focus on government activity.
The lawsuit, by a Greek shipping magnate, accuses United Against Nuclear Iran of falsely accusing him of doing business with Iran. The businessman, Victor Restis, subpoenaed the group for its donor list and all information it had collected about him. That was when the Justice Department stepped in.
Photo
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. intervened on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit that does not focus on government activity. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images “There is no precedent, literally, for what the government is attempting to do,” said Abbe D. Lowell, a lawyer for Mr. Restis.
Under President George W. Bush, the government used the state-secrets privilege to defeat lawsuits over the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program and the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture of terrorist suspects. The government’s power in such cases is absolute. Once it declares that information would jeopardize national security, a judge cannot force the government to reveal it.
In 2009, Mr. Holder tightened the requirements for asserting the privilege. The attorney general must personally approve each case, and “only when genuine and significant harm to national defense or foreign relations is at stake.”
The case most similar to Mr. Restis’s lawsuit is a government scientist’s defamation claim against Penthouse magazine for a 1977 article describing Pentagon research on dolphins. But the government’s interest in that case was clear: The allegations focused on government science, and a senior Navy security official was on the witness list.
The government interest here is less clear. Typically, an assertion of the state secrets privilege is accompanied by a sworn public statement from a senior official — the secretary of defense or C.I.A. director, for example. Those statements, while circumspect, help explain the government’s interest.
In this case, however, the Justice Department said that “the concerned federal agency, the particular information at issue and the bases for the assertion of the state-secrets privilege cannot be disclosed” without jeopardizing national security.
If United Against Nuclear Iran possesses American classified information, it is not clear how the group obtained it. Government intelligence agencies are prohibited from secretly trying to influence public opinion.
Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story “I have never seen anything like this,” said Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented clients in other cases that have been quashed because of state secrets. “If there’s something in their files that would disclose a state secret, is there any reason it should be in their files?”
Another possibility is that the Justice Department is trying to protect foreign relations with Israel, a vital ally. In court documents, Mr. Lowell has accused United Against Nuclear Iran of being financed by unidentified foreign interests. He has tried to force the testimony of Israel’s former intelligence chief and a prominent Israeli businessman, who he said helped pass information about his client.
Lee S. Wolosky, a lawyer for United Against Nuclear Iran, said the group had received no money from foreign donors. He said nobody on its advisory committee — which includes Meir Dagan, the former Israeli intelligence chief — was involved in Mr. Restis’ case. The group has repeatedly said the lawsuit is meritless.
“It is clear that U.A.N.I. and its leaders know they have no defense, and so are hoping to get the government to make this case go away,” Mr. Lowell said. “The bigger question now turns to why the government is doing U.A.N.I.’s bidding and exactly what relationship U.A.N.I. has with the U.S. government, other countries and its web of undisclosed financial supporters.”
Mr. Lowell could argue that the lawsuit should continue without the information he was seeking, but Mr. Wolosky said he expected the case would be dismissed.
“U.A.N.I. will continue to speak out against those who undermine the security of the United States, our friends and allies by doing business in Iran,” Mr. Wolosky said
Posted by: okie farmer | Sep 15 2014 6:37 utc | 66
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