MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The US conundrum: Why Iran is not Iraq. and Shia Muslim is not Sunni Muslim

The war cries from Washington and London does not carry weight these days. The occupation of Iraq is a disaster. British carved Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire, and ruled through its cronies, till from the early 1920s until the then British-lodged Prime Minister, Nurul Said Pasha, had run away in a woman's dress, and was flayed alive by the people. The people in Whitehall did not know their history as to why Iraq was structured the way it has been. The British were trying to outdo the French, its colonial rivals then, which had already carved Lebanon and Syria from the Ottoman Empire. While the leadership in Syria was Aluwait, the majority was Sunni Muslim. In Lebanon, a concord was reached by the French in the 1940s, by which the president was Maronite Christian, the chairman of the National Legislative Assembly was Sunni Muslim, and the Prime Minister a Shia Muslim. It was British power play that gave the Sunni Arabs power for reasons that had to do with currying favour with the majority Sunni Muslims in Arabia. The United States, with British help, is now trying to reverse this. Britain does not have the power it once had. None of the British territories in the Middle East joined the Commonwealth of Nations, and there are more nations outside the Commonwealth than in. Those in are led by British educated locals, and today, the Commonwealth is not what it used to be. While the British civil servant was better Arab-educated, the Arab Muslim did not prefer to be British-instructed.

Now it is turn of the US to sink in a quagmire of its own making; the very promise it gave the Iraqis when it invaded, proved to be false. Its grip on the country slips by the minute. The War on Terror terrorises it, though it is not viewed as such because it controls the war through its media and deliberate official control of information that seeps through. So its chief, President Bush, to the military commanders on the ground, from politicians and right wink think tanks, all praise the successes in Iraq. No one believes it. Least of all the Iraqis, and the rest of the Middle East. The leaders of the American run Iraq hold American or British or other Western citizenship, who had left Iraq because they could not stand the heat. The elections are yet seen as another US ploy to retain power through indirect means. Saddam Hussein, who had ruled the country since 1969 and never allowed religious differences to surface as it has under the American, and was was careful to align himself with the Arab Muslim, will soon go on trial for acts of state. will soon face trial for keeping the Kurds and Shia leaders more than 20 years ago. The US-appointed president, Jalal Talibani, a Kurd who has lived in the US and holds a US passport, has already said he is against the death penalty, and would leave it to the vice-president whether to allow it or not. This is an ideal cop out. Last week, the Iraqi regime hanged three thiefs, on the vice-president's say so. Meanwhile, the US has announced no plans for rebuilding Iraq it had first destroyed, and is destroying, while it annouces further plans to extend its control the Middle East by threatening to destroy all countries in the region which does not accept its view that it must control the Middle East.

The US difficulties in Iraq have led to two main problems elsewhere in the Middle East: Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. It is glossed over in the general Western media perceptions of the crisis. The Western media and its clones believe the US can only be right when it is wrong. The alternate view has no place in this view. But in the Middle East, as no doubt elsewhere in the world, the alternate press though muted nevertheless report an important local view. The US and the UK was pleased when al-Jazeera TV was broadcast with local views. The format pleased everyone but the contents did not. It reported the views on the ground, often ignored by those in power, but since it is ignored as not important as Washington, London and capitals in the Middle East, all US supported, would have us believe.

The second problem for the West is that Bin Laden, not George Bush, that dictates developments in the Middle East. The US has no policy in the Middle East. It wanted to control it by a perception of its threat. But threat perceptions work only when it is put into practice. To US military was praised as the best in the world with its aweson and most modern of weapons that the enemy has no chance. To equal the threat, Saddam Hussein's armed forces was likewise praised to be a worthy enough threat so that the subsequent killing fields, once the war broke out, could justify the slaughter. So it did. But it was not thought through, and its target dismissed as irrelevant, when it clearly was not. The speed with which it destroyed Iraq militarily in the early days of the war was not two years ago was not matched by the speed of controlling Iraq. More serious, it could not establish its presence. The bumbling stupidities of the civilian US power of the military government, for that was what it was, only made it worse: it allowed the Iraqis, a proud people who resent being colonises, to confront them.

Today, the Iraqi confrontation of US power is so dominant and widespread. Bin Laden, a CIA agent at one time as Saddam Hussein was, alive or dead, is raised to be an iconomic figure. Indeed. I dare say, that it is Bin Laden, not US power, that determines what happens in the Middle East. The US is reduced to a bit player. I think Bin Laden is dead, but in American eyes, he cannot be, for it would then by fighting a dead enemy. Besides, the US does not know what the Arab Street would make of a Bin Laden dead. He is better be kept alive, for him alive is better for US policy in the Middle East. In short, the US has no policy in Iraq nor the Middle East, its role in Iraq so long as it can leave the country and leave it in chaos. Bin Laden, who was not a force in the Middle East, stepped into the breach. No one likes a vacuum. The US is caught in its own propaganda. But neither the Iraqis nor Middle Eastern citizens believe it.

They believe the US stance is not to uphold freedom and democracy but to get ride of the governments in those states that refuse to go along with US and Israel positions for regions. Syria is forced out of Leban for refusing to back the US in Iraq. Iran is facing threats over its nuclear programme because the US is worried over its role in Iraq, especially the countrol it might have on the Shiite political leadership in that country. That it does not is irrelevant. Washington believes Islaim is a worldwide conspiracy. Washington and the Western nations believe Islam to be a world wide conspiracy to put the Christian nations down. The demonisation of Islam is its biggest headache, for it takes position that has no reality that has no reality on the ground. Worse, the US has now no foothold in the Middle East, and the longer it stays in Iraq. The elections in Iraq under US occupational authority has sprung up secretarian and ethic divisions that were kept down by Saddam Hussein but now open up sectarian clashes.

The view is current in the Middle East that the US is covering up its failures and damage in Iraq by orchestrating the terrorist acts: kidnappings, assassinations, indiscriminate bombings and killings all over Iraq. The media has lost interest in Iraq, and so we do not know the truth. The US now talks of 100,000 Iraqis dead: no one believes it. The figure is likely to be ten or twenty times more since the invasion. No one, except the Iraqi, keeps a record, and the 100,000 figure was concocted out of best guesses from a number of sources. The US military took the easy way out by not keeping records of Iraqis they kill, as they keep meticulous records of soldiers and Iraqis killed by the enemy.

What is even more dangerous is the believe that the US is involved, indeed orchestrates, the spate of kidnappings, killing and destruction. It is blames on the rebels, but to this day, not one of the terrorist crimes have been tried. It leads one to suspect that the US is behind the kidnappings, indiscriminate bombings and killings. While it loses ground elsewhere in the Middle East, it raises the ante in Iraq. And opened two fronts: Lebanon and Iran. It uses the broad brush of demonising its enemies, only that it does not work. Pressure on these two countries only strengthen two local forces. Syria is forces out of Lebanon after the car bomb earlier this year killed the Shiite prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. First 30,000 Lebonese demonstrated to get Syria out. Fortyeight hours later, 500,000 demonstrated in support of Syria. Interfering in the local affairs of Lebanon strengthens the regime in Syria and the pro-Syrian forces in Lebanon. At the same time, pressure of the Syrian government gets the Syrian people to back the government come what may. They do not read CNN or read US newspapers to know how terrible their governments are. But they would rally around their government no matter how cruel or anti-American it tends to be.

I spent some time in Vietnam. When i arrived in 1965, the US forces stood at 49,000 but when I left it was was 500,000. The US eventually lost the war there. Similarly, The Iraqis are united in their aim to throw out the invader. The Syrians do not like the pressure their government is under and would rally to its aid no matter what. In Lebanon, the US cannot dictate terms. So why should Washington believe it can control the shots in Teheran? Twenty years as an Islamic theocracy has not dulled the Iranian worldview. The Iranian knows it had had more peace in 25 years of an Islamic government than it had in 50 years of an American rule. There is a freedom allowed no where else in the Middle East, and the government does not intrude in the people's lives. It is an autocratic government but it is an elected one. There is, I dare say, more freedom under the mullahs in Teheran than there is in Malaysia. With this one difference, that the unity of the Iranians are such that they will defend their government and their nation to the death. They spill their blood to protect their state. Death in the defence of their state is glory. Death does not have the terror and fright it has in the West, especially if it is on the battlefield. The US moves to punish individual Middle East states for its failings. But each attack is seen collectively as an attack on the Arabs and Muslims. So one Muslim hurt in one country is the hurt of all. The unifying factor here is Osama Bin Laden. I have to harp on the Iraq experience before I can of Iran. The attack on Iran is targetted in the say it was on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the other states. Iran is not in the Middle East, but it is a Muslim country. So there is a unity of purpose against Washington's threat in all Muslim and Middle East countries. That is a greater inhibitor of Washington's threats than the Iranian response.

Washington has misread Iran. It believes that 25 years after the Islamic theocrats took over power in Iran, the country is modernising faster than its rulers. But the rulers also know how to relax. There is, as I said, more freedom in Iran than there is in many democratic countries of the Third World, indeed even of the first world. It also knows that Iranian self-respect alone would have them rise in support of their government in front of a military attack. The Iraqi attack on Iran in the 1980s unified both countries towards their government than any other factor. Washington's belief that Iranians like Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonalds is a good reason for them to support an external military attack to pressure the Iranian government is misplaced. It might work in Russia or Central Asia, but never in Iran and in the Middle East. A military attack will only unify the people against the invader, as in Iraq.

Besides Iran is not an industrial pushover. According to latest figures, Iran's per capita GDP of US$1,641 is double Indonesia's. Its surplus of $5256m is more than Denmark's or Qatar's. In terms of purchasing power, it is the 22nd largest economy in the world, just behind Turkey but above Poland. The media demonises Iran and it does North Korea. But the US is caught in its own media frenzy. It cannot attack North Korea as it cannot Iran. The surrounding countries may not like the two states, but they use it as a buffer or stalking horse for their own political and nationalistic reasons, none of which has any raison d'etre with Washington's plan for the area. If Washington should attack either, they would be held to a painful military humiliation the likes of which it has not seen. For all that its rhetoric has done is to cause the neighbours to worry about US intentions. The US now wants the countries surrounding North Korea to pressure Pyongyang. It has already lost the initiative there. In the Middle East it has lost the initiative after the mess it created in Iraq.

So the question of whether the US would attack Iran is irrelevant and misplaced. The Iranians will fight and deliver a bloody response. But it has already lost the war because the Shias rule there, and Shiite is not looked with favour among Arab Sunnis. The Iranians are not Arab. it would bring the US into the widening quagmire of its making in the region. We should be looking at this larger picture, especially how the natives view the crisis than follow the dictates of the think tanks. Too little of that is done, which is why we get our perceptions wrong. The think tanks tell us to think out of the box. They do not know what they say. The very idea of think tanks is to think out of the box. Socrates was killed for it. Thinking within the box is to regurgitate current views in different ways. How does that help the policy maker. He should be presented with vigorous views that goes against the grain. We do too little of that. My view on a possible US attack on Iran is of little use, if the larger context of US policies in the Middle East is ignored. Which is why I have addressed this question in the way it has. This question would not have risen if Iraq had not been attacked. Because Iraq has gone so badly, and Washington has no cure or that, it threatens its neighbours to let the world forget their difficulty in Iraq. This might fool some people, as indeed it has. But not the people who live in the region who have been held hostage to invaders for thousands of years. It must not be forgotten that the US is only the latest in the thousands of invasions the Middle East and indeed Iran has seen in a few thousand years of civilisation. In short, an attack on Iran shortens the US odds on its remaining a superpower and as a force in the Middle East. Iran is only a sideshow that harps on US political debacles in the world, with potent consequences in the Middle East.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com