25.08.2016

Imperialists bearing gifts

Yassamine Mather examines the changing alliances in the war in Syria

Last week’s comments by Owen Smith, suggesting “Isis should be invited to peace talks aimed at ending the Syrian civil war” have led to expressions of indignation and condemnations all around. The accident prone, vacuous Smith seems to walk from one controversy to another. Now, it seems, in trying to imitate Jeremy Corbyn, he has made yet another foolish statement.

As the Morning Star pointed out, while Isis is a “terrible murderous organisation”, the “British press and media’s indignation at the comment made by Owen Smith is hypocritical”, conveniently forgetting that western governments speak daily with the backers of Islamic State; that the international and internal policies of some of the states with whom UK, US and European countries have extensive political and economic relations - countries such as Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar - are not much better than Isis; and throughout history governments have spoken with political leaders and organisations they had previously labelled terrorist murderers.

The British mass media talks of Isis, in Iraq and Syria, as if it is an alien force descended from another planet, isolated from the rest of the region. Nothing could be further from the truth. The group is very much part of the regional and world economy. It sells oil, cotton and works of arts on a daily basis. Funds from these transactions are held in banks in Turkey and the Arab Emirates of the Persian Gulf.

Saudi Arabia’s role in the creation of Al Qaeda, supported by the United States and Britain in the Afghan wars of the 1980s, is well documented and undisputed. Even Hillary Clinton has described how the US government created and funded Al-Qaeda in order to fight the Soviet Union.

In the last few weeks the German press has followed a number of stories connecting Saudi Arabia with jihadist groups involved in terror attacks in Europe at a time when the monarchy is supposed to be helping Berlin’s security forces in the fight against terror. According to a report in Der Spiegel, German security forces have proof that the jihadi inspired attack on a train near Wurzburg, and a failed bomb attack in Ansbach, were supposedly orchestrated by men in Saudi Arabia. The attackers got their instructions online (in chat rooms) from within the kingdom. According to the Spiegel report: “Several telephone numbers show that the two young men were in close contact with the terrorist organisation ‘Islamic State’ (IS) in Saudi Arabia.”

First of all we have the Saudi origins of Wahhabi Islam, often described as “ultraconservative”, “austere”, “fundamentalist” and “puritanical”. The sect’s founder, Al Wahhabi, was a hardline opponent of Shias; he preached against the “cult of saints” (or Imams, in the case of Shia Islam), he opposed idolatry (shark) as well as innovation and impurities. An insignificant preacher in a remote part of the kingdom, he found power and influence after a pact with a local leader Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the current dynasty in Saudi Arabia. The alliance between followers of ibn Abd al-Wahhabi and Muhammad bin Saud’s successors (the House of Saud) proved to be a durable one.

In recent years, especially after the overthrow of the Ba’ath regime in Iraq, the regional and political interests of Saudi Arabia have given additional impetus to Wahhabism.

When Bashar Assad decided to suppress the opposition movement in Syria, Saudis found an ideal opportunity to intervene in the country’s civil war, financing jihadi/Wahhabi groups. Many of these groups were not only seeking to topple the Assad government - they wanted to create a new “caliphate” under the control of ‘Islamic State’. The Saudi government clearly opposed this latest stage in the development of jihadism - the establishment of the caliphate - however, by all accounts quite a number of Saudi religious organisations and foundations as well as a number of wealthy individuals, many of them relatives of the extended Al Saud family, are sympathetic to the aims of IS and do send large contributions to finance the organisation. Although Saudi ministers claim that in recent months they have started “monitoring” such money transactions, according to Sebastian Sons, Middle East expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), “there is no way to exert total control over them. Firstly, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have the capacity to do so. And secondly, one has to say that there is serious doubt about whether they have the political will to do so.”

All this means that the rest of the world will have to live with the reality of more attacks being orchestrated by IS, so long as the ‘international community’ fails to address those of its allies who support, trade with and finance it. And for the peoples of the region, of course, IS bombings and Syrian, Russian, not forgetting US air raids, continue to take their toll.

In the last few weeks a number of interrelated events have paved the way for an increasingly dangerous situation in the Middle East, and IS is far from being the only problem. On Friday August 19 a near-clash between US and Syrian (according to some reports, Russian) warplanes over Kurdish Hassaka in the north of Syria marked a new phase in the multinational confrontation. The US Obama administration is increasingly concerned about the growing Russian-Iranian-Syrian alliance. The incident occurred when US jets flew in protective formation over the Kurdish positions, the day after they had been attacked by Syrian (some Middle East sources say, Russian) jets.

According to the website Debka:

The US jets came within a mile of the two Syrian Su-24 fighter jets approaching the Kurdish enclave of Hassaka, and warned them off. Without responding the Syrian planes turned tail.

The US Defense Department reported that when the incident began, “coalition forces on the ground” tried reaching the Syrian jets on a “common radio frequency” but received no response. It may be assumed that the Russian tracking and reconnaissance systems spread across Syria and the eastern Mediterranean picked up the American communications and, had they wanted to, could have passed the US warnings on to Bashar Assad.

Russian president Putin is clearly encouraged by the deal he struck with Turkish president Erdoğan in early August. Turkey has subsequently made peace with Iran, and in a U-turn (no doubt linked to conspiracy theories associated with the alleged coup against Erdoğan) is no longer part of the US-led coalition to overthrow the Syrian dictator. On the contrary, the promise by Russia to oppose any attempt to achieve full independence by Kurds in Syria or Iraq was sufficient to add Turkey to the Iran-Russia-Syria axis.

Turkey is concerned about the connection between Kurdish YPG forces in Syria and the “people’s protection units” of Abdullah Öcalan’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based in the Kurdish areas of Turkey. Turkey and Iran’s Islamic Republic are also concerned about the possibility of Iraqi Kurdistan becoming an independent state (with US help) and both countries are also worried about the new alliance between the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party and the state of Israel.

Back in May 2016 the US administration found itself making contradictory statements on the Syrian wing of the PKK and its military arm, the YPG. According to the US state department, the PKK is officially designated a terrorist organisation, yet the YPG is not. In Syria, the YPG Kurds have proved themselves to be a reliable fighting force against IS. The US administration fears that the Kurdish YPG in Syria may be looking for a new alliance with Moscow, following accusations by the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu that the YPG were hired soldiers of Russia, along with the Syrian Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD). Addressing members of the Justice and Development Party on February 16, he said, “Neither Daesh [IS] nor YPG are primary components of these territories. The YPG and the PYD are legionnaires and hired soldiers of Russia.”

According to the Al-Monitor website, throughout the spring of 2016 there was a tacit alliance between Russia and the United States with respect to supporting YPG. However this seems to have changed as a new alliance between Russia, Turkey and Iran in support of Assad was forged over the summer months. In the ever shifting alliances of this multi-faceted war, last week Syrian (may be Russian) planes were attacking YPG forces, while US planes were defending them. This week saw the arrival of Turkish tanks on Syrian soil. According to Turkish media, their military operations, involving artillery, rocket and air strikes, had destroyed 70 targets in the Syrian border town of Jarablus.

Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the operation was against both Islamic State and Kurdish fighters - one assumes with the approval of the Assad regime. There seems to be no end to the misery facing the Kurds.

Last week it became clear that Iran’s Islamic Republic has allowed Russian military planes to use an airbase in central Iran near Hamadan, the first foreign recipient of such a facility since the February uprising of 1979 and in direct contravention of the country’s constitution. According to US and Iranian government sources, the use of the air base by Russian planes was approved by the United States government, adding yet another complicated dimension to the current conflict in Syria.

There are indeed many sides fighting in Syria, some with conflicting interests and, unfortunately, none of them is better than the others. Fighting between the Syrian army and Kurdish forces continued over the weekend. For most of the last 5 years of the Syrian civil war, the Assad regime and YPG Kurdish forces had kept out of each other’s way. While Syrian government forces concentrated on fighting Sunni Arab rebels in Western Syria, the Kurds were mainly fighting Islamic State in northern Syria ... Turkey’s U-turn has changed all that.

yassamine.mather@weeklyworker.co.uk