Forget it, I’m not following the lesson plan today: An unscripted conversation on violence, terrorism, religion and fear

Excellent from my former lecturer in International Law. Now more than ever there must be room to critically analyse the events surrounding the rise of ISIL and how to combat its growth and.  I.e. listen to those who are victims of conflicts around the world, conflicts which help foster such apocalyptic groups.

From Behind the Lectern

Things were ticking along nicely during my Monday morning lecture. Short reading quiz—tick. Get up to Slide 5 in powerpoint-lecture on IR Theory by the first break—tick. Start prepping TAs on logistics of running the post-break simulation on sovereignty during the break—ti…. Interrupted by lingering student who clearly had a question to ask.

The question of course was about what happened in France over the weekend. The attacks that killed over 100 (mostly young) people doing things that my students do on a regular basis without any fear—drinking at a bar, eating at a café, going to a concert, attending a football match. As I talked about the different ways we could address his question and noticed the other students who had begun to linger as we talked, I realized this was a conversation I should be having with the whole group, not just the four or so who were…

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It’s Not Just ISIL Terrorising Iraq, and That is the Point

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a report on the escalating outrages being committed by Iraqi Government Security forces and Shia militias upon Sunni civilians. The alleged crimes documented in the report are reportedly taking place in recently re-captured Iraqi towns and villages in the eastern Diyālā governorate, territory re-captured from The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). (This name chosen by author, as it seems most accurate in describing the group’s current and growing reach) The report from HRW is wide-ranging and detailed and contains very disturbing eye-witness accounts;

A 70-year-old resident of al-Bulour village in Muqdadiyya, who identified herself as Um Mariam, told Human Rights Watch that on December 8, 2014, Muqdadiyya police took her sons, Karim, 33, and Seif, 38, from their home without an arrest warrant. “They burst into the house and grabbed them,” she said. They released the men, who Um Mariam said were civilians, two days later.

But at about 3:30 p.m. on December 12, as their mother watched them approach the al-Bulour checkpoint on their return home, six armed men wearing black or camouflage with their faces covered grabbed the two men. The armed men pushed Um Mariam and threatened to shoot her if she screamed: “I was kissing their hands to make them stop, and they just kicked me off of them,” she said. Immediately afterward, Um Mariam went to file a complaint with the police station commander, who told her the police “couldn’t do anything” about the abduction, she said.

Another brother, Abu Yousif, told Human Rights Watch that unknown men called him shortly afterward and told him his brothers were dead: “Come take your dogs,” they said. “We shot each of them ten times in the chest and threw their bodies.”

Um Mariam and Abu Yousif then fled to Khanaqin, an area in northern Diyala under both Kurdish peshmerga and militia control.

Iraqi government forces and militia abuses has been known in the country and beyond for over a decade but is rarely reported in relation to its relationship to the rapid rise of ISIL. The sectarian-based policies of the central government, based in Baghdad, and violence inflicted on the Sunni population has played a huge part in the rise and appeal of ISIL in the country its Sunni inhabitants and across the world, these factor cannot be underestimated. Even before ISIL were being mentioned as a major force, as late as summer 2013, the former government of the Prime Minister, Nori Al-Maliki were under serious pressure within the country as Sunnis railed against the perceived injustices unleashed upon them by the regime and militias.

From the very beginning of the US-led invasion in March 2003, once the Shia-led political groups and militias regained what they saw as their rightful place as leaders of the country, they embarked on a vengeance campaign against Baathists and any Sunni-led group or individual they labelled a threat. Death squads roamed at will across the country and in particular in Baghdad, leading to an ethnic cleansing of the city which included the virtual end of any mixed Shia/Sunni neighbourhoods that had existed under Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. At the same-time Sunni insurgent groups fought back with a mixture of guerrilla tactics including suicide attacks, bombings and coordinated hit-and-run attacks on coalition forces and then on to the newly-formed Iraqi Security Forces.

Iraq, as a state, has been destroyed by this 10+ years of sectarian violence. The coming-of-ISIL should not be a surprise. The group’s perceived evil in the west and by many others (including the majority of Muslims) is seen as a defence by many Sunnis in Iraq who have come-up against the brutality of the Iraqi-state. This isn’t to say that ISIL are supported across the board by the Sunni population, In Iraq or Syria, but if it is a choice between vengeful security forces and a group which proclaims to be there as a protection, as Patrick Cockburn’s latest Counterpunch article highlights, they will choose ISIL.

The only way ISIL can be dismantled in the long-term in its original base in Iraq is through a real unity government in Baghdad. Al-Maliki has been removed, but the current Prime Minister, Haider Al-Abadi, does not seem willing or capable of reversing the sectarian trends installed in governance and has little control over the various militia groups, as described in the HRW report. These militias are known to be taking training and direction to some real extent by Iranian forces, on-the-ground. The Kurdish Peshmerga, understandably given their history of persecution under Saddam Hussein’s rule and mistrust from the Shia-led governments, are interested in protecting Greater Kurdistan only. At this point any real unity seems impossible within Iraq due to this bitter Shia/Sunni and Kurdish divide that wracks the country and wider-region.

The sectarian-nature of the conflict is so entrenched that perhaps only an honest, influential and outside broker has any chance of bringing the moderates together. It cannot be the US or European powers involved in the invasion due to the huge part they had to play in the current situation. It is easy to, and many have, blame the Iraqis and their sectarian politics solely for the current situation, but none of this would have been possible without the illegal invasion by the US-led coalition and subsequent brutal occupation, which handed all power to the Shia majority of the country without real consideration for this huge transfer of power. The UN has remained powerless in the region since they were side-lined in the run-up to the invasion in 2003 and coincidentally played a part in legitimising the militias in their call for the relief of the town of Amirli over fear of fresh ISIL massacres. The militias re-taking of Amiril bought a relief from the very real ISIL threats but led to the ransacking of the town and surrounding villages by these very same militias. China has suggested that it may be willing to be involved militarily, but has offered nothing in the way of long-term diplomatic or humanitarian assistance that will really help the people of Iraq.

The Iraqi people of all denominations are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Apart from the brave, indigenous and international humanitarian workers, risking their lives in the country, who is there left to turn to for the beleaguered peoples of Iraq and the wider region?

By Jonathan Woodrow Martin

Originally published on Counterpunch

The British Parliament Vote to Recognize Palestine

Members of the British House of Commons voted last night to recognise Palestine as a state.  This non-binding resolution, tabled by Labour MP Grahame Morris, will not change this current government’s stance on the issue but has laid the groundwork for a change when this government is voted out of office.  Unfortunately an amendment was tabled alongside the original motion due to internal (and external) Labour Party friction and fear which urged the recognition of Palestine within a “negotiated two-state solution“.  This returned to the model of giving Israel an overwhelming position on whether Palestine is a state or not. Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP, opposed the amendment stating;

I oppose an amendment that seeks to make British recognition of Palestine dependent on the conclusion of successful peace negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

Neither Israel nor Palestine’s right to exist should be subject to veto or any kind of conditions and we must actively challenge any refusal by either side to deny the other’s right to exist.

Members of all sides of the house stood up and gave their views. Many remarked on the thousands of e-mails and letters they had received from their constituents urging them to vote to recognise Palestine.  Some of what the members said was either inaccurate or misleading but was at least based on a clear and passionate support of the Palestinian people.  For example there was much support for the strategy of Mahmoud Abbas and his presidency.  Despite the fact that many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip see his role as a collaborator with the occupation, members of the house rose to argue that this vote would support the moderates in Palestine such as Abbas and his government.  They failed to acknowledge that this way of moderation had achieved nothing in the West Bank apart from a huge expansion of illegal settlements, thousands of arrests and hundreds of deaths. Not that Hamas has achieved much for the people it represents, yet each time Palestinians violently resist at least the international community wakes up during these periods and calls for a just solution.  When negotiations take place between the unequals, everyone seems to look the other way and pray that the Israeli leadership will show some magnanimity. Keep praying.

There was even the occasional Israel-firster, who stood and spoke to make the debate livelier. Robert Halfon, a Conservative MP, made the extraordinary decades-old and much widely ridiculed claim that there is already a Palestinian state, Jordan. Halfon went on to say that if a Palestinian state was recognised;

There would be three Palestinian states, one that already exists in Jordan and two statelets, run by Hamas and by Fatah.”

A member of his own party intervened with;

Surely the member is not suggesting that because hundreds of thousands of Palestinans fled and were forced across the border into Jordan that they should accept this as their state?

Halfton failed to respond to this remark. Indeed according to him Palestinians who stayed in the West Bank were happy under the rule of King Abdullah of Jordan up until the 1967 war;

Abdullah even called himself the King of Jordan and Palestine as his country controlled the West Bank.

Well that’s fine then, as long as the dictator was happy to accept his own legitimacy?! This is the same old rubbish that has been spouted for decades by both those in Israel and their supporters in an attempt to delegitimise the Palestinians as a people, as a people who belong to and have existed on the land of Palestine as a people for centuries.

For some this vote was all about being anti-Israel because literally none of the members who voted for the motion had anything better to do than stand with, for this briefest of moments and with conditions, the Palestinian people who have suffered for over half a century at the whim of successive Israeli governments. Whether this motion does anything to advance the cause of the Palestinian people in their search for justice or actually enforces the status quo is moot.  The vote passed and the recognition within the British body politic that the British people will no longer put up with British support and silence in the face of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians also passed.

Israelis should not despair but be optimistic about the continuing plummet of international citizenry and government support for their government’s policies against the Palestinians.  One day this growing pressure from outside may force those within Israel to re-evaluate what they are told by their government and military and lead to a demand for a real and just peace with the Palestinians.  When this day comes, the sky is the limit for both Palestinians and Israelis.

Jonathan Woodrow Martin

Originally published on Counterpunch on October 14th, 2014.

Keeping the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War Under Wraps

24-hours after a report claiming the UK government is the most transparent in the world, the 6-year wait for The Chilcot Inquiry in to the Iraq War to be published was extended until after the general election in May this year.

I was present for one of the eyewitness-sessions of the enquiry when former Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared, back in 2010. Whilst he blathered on about the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran (which still hasn’t happened, even after decades of neo-con doom-mongering) I wondered how difficult it was to completely wrap yourself in an ideology to protect your being from the glaring mis-truths you have to speak and actions you carry out. It obviously takes a high degree of a certain kind-of-intelligence to do this, no-one doubts that Blair was and is an intelligent man, in this way. However, that intelligence was completely consumed by the Iraq invasion and subsequent set of disasters that have be-set that country and region since. He looked like a haunted man that day, let alone today.

It wasn’t JUST Blair though. He was the prime minister at the time and he certainly set the tone and action for the UK joining the US politically and militarily on this mis-adventure. I do doubt that the ever-cautious Gordon Brown (at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer) would have been so hasty to join the lunatics in the Pentagon and Oval Office if he had been prime minister at the time. However, it was Parliament which made the final decision to join the invasion, overwhelmingly, 412-149. (This final vote took place one-day before the invasion began).

Were the Members of Parliament, who voted for the invasion, blinded by the intelligence (or lack of) coming from the UK and US security forces? Were they too busy being whipped in to frenzy by the media (Murdoch) and party whips? Was there a sense of left-over imperial pride in re-entering the scene of previous British conquests in the early 20^th century in the then named Mesopotamia? I don’t know. It must have been a tricky time for many, and many still carry the scars of their terrible decision-making today, most notably Tony Blair. It is easy to conclude that it was the faulty (made-up) intelligence that fooled these members of parliament, but even if the intelligence had been 100% correct, that Saddam Hussein had a large WMD programme and was potentially looking to build nuclear weapons, were those reasons, based on old assumptions and half-truths that had been known for decades, reason-enough to commit your armed forces to a hasty assault on a sovereign nation? If so, we in the UK should prepare for invasion as our government pushes ahead in replacing our nuclear “deterrent”.

You will have heard and read a lot about how what is happening in Iraq and the wider-region has nothing to do with the US-UK led invasion. Or will you? Most reports I have seen on the likes of BBC television news offer very little context on how Islamic State (IS) came to exist and how, most importantly, they are accepted or at least tolerated as an alternative by Sunni populations in Syria and Iraq in comparison to their sectarian governments who are seen as waging war on them. In the aftermath of the invasion, the American and British systematically destroyed the Iraqi state as existed under Saddam Hussain’s Baathist and Sunni-led dictatorship and turned the country completely over the previously persecuted Shia majority of the country, without any real thought or concern for the consequences this would have on the citizens of Iraq. If the invasion was illegal under international law (which to this laymen, it clearly was) these actions were tantamount to the prolonged torture of an entire country and its people (not to mention Abu Ghraib).

When The Chilcot Inquiry is eventually published, clearly at a time which best suites those under the microscope and wider establishment and not the British public, who were, it should be remembered, overwhelmingly against the invasion, what will we discover that we do not already know? The invasion was an utter disaster for the people of Iraq, yet not one of the decision-makers has ever felt any justice for this. History books, enquiries and public anger are not enough. Where is the International Criminal Court (ICC) when you need it?

Jonathan Woodrow Martin

Originally published on Counterpunch on 22nd January, 2015.

The Nuclear Option for the British Elections

There is a chance that at the end of voting come the 2015 General Election in the United Kingdom, the nation’s nuclear “deterrent” and its renewal may become central to the formation of a coalition government. Imagine it, one of the biggest nuclear powers in the world committing to the dismantling of its nuclear weapons industry. How could this happen?

The current coalition, The Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat junior partners have looked to commit to replacement of Trident but no definitive decision has been made, indeed this does not have to be made until 2019, when the programme will have to begin, in time to replace the current Trident system. The main investment decision on the programme has been tasked to take place by 2016. The orthodox-thinking of the right-wing Conservative party and the collapse of principles of the Liberal Democrats (who are facing a near-wipeout in the next election) made for a fairly easy decision to look to replace the missile system, something which the formal opposition, The Labour Party, also supports. However what happened north of the border in the Scottish referendum in 2014 has opened up an intriguing possibility for those opposed to the continuation of the nuclear madness in this country.

The near-victory of the Scottish National Party (The SNP and supported by The Scottish Greens) in the referendum to break the union between Scotland and England continues to resonate across The United Kingdom. The SNP have pushed the Labour Party in to second place in Scotland and look set to win a majority of Labour seats in the General Election. This has the many-fold effect of making it very difficult for the Labour Party to secure an overall majority at Westminster Parliament and makes the possibility of a coalition between the Labour Party and SNP quite possible.

The SNP, under leader Nicola Sturgeon, are quite clear on the current Trident system and its successor. It is a resounding “No”. Indeed Sturgeon has done an Obama and made the scrapping of the system and its replacement a red line in any talks on a possible coalition. Labour have “hit back” with a dismissal of this;

The Shadow Foreign Secretary said that a minority Labour government would exclude Britain’s nuclear deterrent from any negotiations with other parties if there is a hung parliament.

He echoed Ed Miliband by refusing to categorically rule out a deal with the SNP but told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that “defending this country” would not be the subject of political horse-trading.

Ridiculous statements for two reasons. Firstly, this is from the same party that led us to war in Iraq, the single most critical factor in the development of the terrifying levels of threat this country lives under today. Secondly, the mantra like reference to deterrence rings very hollow. What is this country being defended from with these useless weapons? ISIS? The still non-nuclear weapons state of Iran?

I digress. On-the-face of it then, there is no chance right? SNP want Trident gone, Labour will not allow this. Wrong. If a coalition with the SNP is Labours only chance of government, you can bet your bottom-dollar (pound) that everything will be on the table, including Trident. Firstly there are some within the Labour ranks who would support the dismantling of the system, if not in the positions of power, therefore there would be little opposition to this acceding the SNP demand within the party and possibly much support. Secondly there would be little opposition to this move by the UK population with a fairly even-split on support for and against possession of the weapons, with a small percentage strongly in favour of keeping the weapons, my point being that it is not an issue such as the NHS or Pensions. People are not going to march to keep the weapons, but they will and do march to abolish them.

This is not to underestimate the strong foundational vested-interests in the continuation of the nuclear weapons industry. Pension funds, our lovely-cuddly Banks and other shady investment groups are invested in companies involved in the industry, the US has a strong stake in wanting the UK to stay a nuclear weapons industry, and the thousands of jobs that could be at risk will no doubt be trotted out. Apart from that the multi-national companies actually involved in the industry, BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Babcock International and The Redhall Group are hardly uninfluential or public-serving entities and will no doubt fight dirty if this becomes even a remote possibility.

Despite these aligned corporate powers, the waking up of the left in UK and across Europe (see Greece and Spain) may become irresistible to a voting public seeking an end to austerity. It is not just the SNP who oppose the continuation and renewal of Trident. The Green Party of England and Wales also support the abolishment of weapons and are rising steadily in the polls and could play a part in the waking-up of a rapidly-rising share of the population’s younger voters to green issues, including the abolishment of these weapons. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has for decades looked to end the madness and recently attracted tens of thousands of protestors to London for their “Wrap-up Trident” demo.

There is a will there amongst many same-minded people and organisations and if given a chance they could help force an unprecedented move; the willing disarmament by a world power of their nuclear arsenal.

Jonathan Woodrow Martin

Originally published on Counterpunch on February 3rd, 2015.