THE ROVING EYE Blood on the Iraqi-Syrian tracks
By Pepe Escobar
It was a bloody Monday all across Iraq; two suicide bombers, 11 car bombs, and
19 VBIEDs (Pentagon speak for "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices") -
with nearly 70 people dead and over 300 wounded.
Car bombs in Najaf, another one inside Kut's main market, a bomb set off near
the convoy of the mayor of Baquba, two suicide bombers attacking an Iraqi
counter-terrorism unit in Tikrit, a bomb exploding near a government convoy in
the Mansur neighborhood in Baghdad - the fact that bloody Monday happened less
than two weeks after the Nuri al-Maliki government announced negotiations were
on for Washington to keep at least some of the current 48,000 US troops in Iraq
after the end of 2011 deadline for
American withdrawal raises the inevitable question: who profits from it?
Al-Qaeda in Iraq might profit if its strategy is to keep the US enmeshed in the
Iraqi quagmire - as the key accusation already flying across the Potomac
concerns the "capability" of the Iraqi security forces, with the "overwhelmed
by insurgents" scenario monopolizing the narrative. United States
neo-conservatives, armchair hawks, most inside the Pentagon and virtually all
Republicans also profit - for the same reasons.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq spokesman Mohamed al-Adnani may have lent credence to this
hypothesis, alerting last week in an Islamist website, "Do not worry, the days
of Zarqawi are going to return soon."
Yet if this was a real al-Qaeda in Iraq call, it is destined to fail, just as
al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - killed in 2006 - miserably
failed, his gory methods fought by Sunni Iraqis themselves. It makes no sense
for al-Qaeda in Iraq - not to mention the fact it's deeply un-Islamic - to
indiscriminately bomb majority Sunni and Shi'ite areas alike, with plenty of
civilian casualties, during the holy Muslim fast month of Ramadan.
Stability is always relative
Iraq's bloody Monday follows Syria's bloody Friday - and many in Baghdad are
losing sleep about what is going on in Syria.
Yet as uneasy as Maliki may be with the exploits of President Bashar al-Assad's
vicious security apparatus, his government is not applying any pressure on
Damascus (unlike the Kurds and the majority-Sunni Iraqiya Party, which have
vehemently criticized the Assad regime.)
There are plenty of reasons for it. When still in exile during Saddam Hussein
times, Maliki was always very much welcomed by the Assad dynastic regime.
Maliki - and most Iraqi Shi'ites - fear a Sunni Salafi takeover in the, for the
moment unlikely, event the Syrian regime, controlled by the Shi'ite Allawite
sect, falls.
Shi'ite Tehran, for its part, also fears the same scenario. But this does not
necessarily mean - as it is widely speculated in the US - that Iran, which
indeed brokered the formation of Maliki's parliamentary majority in Baghdad, is
manipulating everything in the shadows.
Maliki - who is personally in charge of the Defense Ministry and the security
apparatus - is close to Tehran. But he is above all an Iraqi nationalist. His
position is much more nuanced - calling for reforms but at the same time
warning that the Assad government must not be destabilized, with the country
plunging into chaos.
Yet the Assad regime's bloodlust could be mistaken for a pathological case.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey is no Maliki - and he's about to
run out of patience. Apparently the Assad regime had bought some time after
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to Damascus last week (see
Why the regime won't fall Asia Times Online, August 13, 2011).
But after regime forces intensified the siege of Latakia over the weekend,
Davutoglu may have had enough. Ominously, this Monday, he announced, "This is
our final word to the Syrian authorities: Our first expectation is that these
operations stop immediately and unconditionally. If the operations do not end,
there would be nothing more to discuss about steps that would be taken."
What's next? Turkey invades Syria with help from the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization?
The possibility that the Assad regime as a whole may be in a suicidal binge
boggles the mind. But the regime is fighting for its life; real democratic
reforms would mean it is finished. As demonstrations keep rolling on, and may
be about to reach the second-largest city, Aleppo, the official line remains;
this is an armed rebellion by Sunni Islamists financed from abroad (that is,
Saudi Arabia and wealthy individuals in the Persian Gulf).
This is partially true - concerning the more radical strands of the Muslim
Brotherhood/Salafi nebula. But it does not explain what Syrian novelist Samar
Yazbek defines as a "Spartacus revolution of slaves against their masters",
which started in the countryside, among the disinherited, and then spread to
the globally connected youth and urban intellectuals.
When a "stable" Baghdad looks at an "unstable" Syria now it tries to evaluate
how popular is the uprising - and to what degree the relentless repression may
cause, for instance, a refugee crisis in reverse, mirroring the sectarian war
in Iraq which created a refugee wave of Iraqis crossing the border to Syria in
2006/2007.
Baghdad also tries to evaluate the stakes in the game played by the House of
Saud - consumed by its cosmic paranoia of the "Shi'ite crescent" bent on
smashing Sunni regimes. To say that Riyadh is hostile towards Baghdad is an
understatement.
And then there's - once again - Kuwait, which in Ottoman times was a mere annex
to what later became Iraq. Members of parliament in Baghdad are now openly
accusing Kuwait of stealing Iraqi oil by practicing slant drilling inside Iraqi
territory. One may imagine history repeating itself again as tragedy - not
farce, because this is exactly what Saddam bitterly complained about Kuwait, in
1990, and the key reason for the Iraqi invasion that led to the first Gulf war.
So yes, Baghdad knows by experience this is a very dangerous neighborhood.
Ergo, it needs powerful armed forces. History will be made once again as tragic
farce if to pursue this aim Baghdad needs to ask for Washington's help - the
very superpower that virtually destroyed Iraq.
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