generalspeaking

Succumbing to the New Order

"The current order is in tatters. More and more and more people are coming to realize that the system as it is organized, as it is structured, is imploding."
Fawaz Gerges, professor, London School of Economics

Sunni rebels in Iraq have posted pictures on Twitter apparently showing their fighters killing captured Shia soldiers.

The Arab Spring that seemed at first blush to promise so much in the way of aspirational change according to the prognostications of old Arabist hands, has turned out to be simply violent turmoil accomplishing nothing much in the way of rescuing the populations of those countries for whom popular protest seemed to be leading to change, from their traditional state of political/social/religious bondage. What the shift in the power structure did, however, was release the virulent violence of traditional antipathies based on tribal, sectarian and ideological differences within populations.

The populations that made up the human capital of states that were the result of Western imperialistic interference and the populations like those of Turkey and Egypt that represented the traditional nations of Africa and the bridge between the East and the West are agitating for change. While Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya -- resulting from the arrogance of 'map'-drawing by diktat of the West for whom the areas were simply colonial-era holdings from which resources were extracted to the benefit of Western powers like England and France which between them, negotiated for the power to indulge their entitlements -- are being inextricably altered.

The Islamic animosities and resentments between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in the Middle East have come to the boiling point. During the centuries of the Ottoman Empire representing an Islamic caliphate of supreme global authority, the opportunity for tribal friction and social disorder was minimized because the Turks, while exerting their sway over the Islamic ummah, did not sketch out borders that drew in opposing ethnic, tribal and sectarian masses within the shared confines of 'national' borders.

Under those Western-style imperial-designated borders it took the determination of brutal tyrannical rule to ensure that the divided populations would adhere to their allotted places without imposing their grievances of tribal and sectarian opposition. The Kurds of the region are a case in point of a huge difference; excluded from their own regional autonomy and absorbed into the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey; the largest single ethnic group without a land of their own.

Now, with the upheavals taking place in Syria and Iraq, perhaps it's time for the Kurds to persuade Iran and Turkey -- for their part in opposing the al-Qaeda offshoot of Sunni ulta-fundamentalists in their march toward a renewed Islamist caliphate, wreaking death and destruction in their wake -- that it represents a timely urgency to sacrifice a small portion of their border geographies to allow for a full and sovereign Kurdistan.

In Syria and in Iraq where full insurgencies of civil war are taking place, with the regimes in both countries prepared to be as fully brutal as their adversaries, it is within the Kurdish enclaves that anything resembling normalcy and order obtains. And it is the Kurdish Peshmerga militias that represent the best hope for the regimes' militaries to align with in hopes of vanquishing the triumphantly conquering Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant determined to establish their Shariah-ruled state between both countries.

The state of Syria may very well end up holding the ancient city of Damascus, and little else but neighbouring cities and the Mediterranean coast where President Assad's minority Alawite sect can be assured of permanency as a Shiite-dominated portion of Syria aligned with Iraq's new reality holdings around Baghdad and the southern areas of the country. And, of course, their proximity to, and alignment with Shiite-dominated power-house Iran.

A new frontier of changing borders has arisen. It is held by force of arms, a distinct sectarian division resulting in part from the inability of leaders of one Islamic sect to embrace the equality under their rule of the alternating Islamic sect representing the two major divisions within Islam. Exclusion and domination obviously create an aura of repression and resentment, and the blow-back is active resistance and the alignment with a wild-eyed, murderous collective of fanatics sharing the same sectarian base, with their vicious interpretation of Islam.

The Islamic State's (ISIS) advances into Iraq are facilitated hugely by the indifference to their presence by the Sunni Iraqis who have been excluded from the power structure of their country by the ruling majority Shiite politicians as a deliberate measure to keep Sunnis in their place, which is not alongside the majority Shiites. Full acceptance of Sunnis into the Iraqi military has never taken place. As ISIS captures Iraqi military personnel, they exempt the Sunni Iraqis from the fate they have etched out for their Shiite Iraqi military counterparts.

The capture of Mosul and Tikrit heralds a new reality within Iraq, with sundered borders held in place by force of arms and terrorism, and ample killing to instruct any who might doubt the reality of jihad that this state of affairs will not fade into history. It is the Western imposed borders that are set to fade into history, releasing ethnic, tribal, sectarian groups from the bondage of a system that had grown too tired within itself and where the old tyrants that kept those borders intact and the population in thrall have also melted into the past.

There are the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, but time is not on their side and in their favour, necessarily; they are, after all, the funders of al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency that is brutalizing the Middle East. But the future will eventually catch up with them, and they view the future with some trepidation as it is, seeing it in the ambitions of Iran, itself determined to uproot the very idea that though Sunni Islam represents the vast majority, Shiite Islam has powers of resistance and advancing preparations for the future that will look entirely unfamiliar to those accustomed to the current Middle East power structure.

Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Iraq, Islamism, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, June 17, 2014