Tag Archives: middle east politics
FTAC: Overcoming the Once Communist Feudal Legacy Associated with Soviet-Aligned Dictatorships
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics
absolutism v democratic distribution, feudal political absolutism, feudalism v democracy, Medieval Political Absolutism, medieval v modern, middle east conflict, middle east politics, Post-Apartheid South Africa, post-Cold War History and Politics, Soviet / post-Soviet history, State Sovereignty and Land Base, terrorism
On the Middle East Conflict
BackChannels believes that at the end of WWII, Stalin acquired some part of the middle east that Hitler and the Ottoman Empire had lost. There must have been Nazi agents waiting for arrest or work or both. There had been certainly Arab families or powers who had been aligned with Hitler through Amin al-Husseini, and with the big war over and a two-state offer for the Palestinians and Israel on the table, the same were presented with a choice: peace (and responsible governance) or war focused on the destruction of Israel.
Whether the Soviet Union believed its own rants about the Jews or just wanted to sell and increase its influence through the promotion of anti-Semitic invective pleasing to some Arab ears, BackChannels doesn't know.
What BackChannels does know is that Soviet arms and diplomacy helped maneuver the Arab states into a disastrous war, after which it had to keep its hooks in the region. Pan-Arab Nationalism got its strong bump up (1950s) , and the dictatorships served to block the spread of democratic western liberalism into the region (as much advanced by Israel's establishment). The KGB's grooming of Arafat, the establishing of the PLO, and Arafat's rise from within would follow in the 1960s as would the wholesale development of "state-sponsored terrorism" through the Andropov years.
Fly over all that history, and we're here today with the same "gift" from Russia, the Soviet Era and once Soviet-engineered "Middle East Conflict" that has for remnant the wreckage of old middle east dictatorships — Iraq and Libya at least — and the horror of what has been left — Syria in flames and ruins, ALL of it at the hands of its own leader; Iran environmentally damaged (it did that itself) and economically crippled by way of its own aggression and medieval barbarism.
So this morning started with a comment about moderate and peace-seeking Israelis and Palestinians approaching these issues but with the politically repressive elements born in the Soviet Era or conveyed by it through time armed, entrenched, and powerfully intimidating. The conversational partner noted that for the many participating in the talk, " . . . place and time are all wrong . . . ."
The morning's first response:
One may recognize "too soon" but those with casualties may be more sensitive to "too late".
So, forward in this conversation.
Given the so many Jews involved in middle east peace activities, the onlooking Palestinian Diaspora of the west, the truth about the Moscow business plainly spreading across the web (the story of Russian Influence through Disinformation is just moving across the web these days), you would think someone would figure out that "the west" was not quite the enemy as promoted in the imagination).
Three things make us feel better — basic income; close family — and if not the one in which we're born, then the friends we make; and general and personal security. Perhaps the Israelis and Palestinians who understand that have mutual regard and a few old problems in common.
On Medieval Divisions and Modern Multicultural Democracies
Next: a rhetoric assertion to the effect that multiculturalism has died (in South Africa) and with the implication that the medieval divisions having to do with race and religion — and by extension clans, tribes, and states — were resurgent and, by inference, all that the world has to look forward to is the greater chaos and misery of war already too well known.
The "Rainbow Dream" that Mandela had has NOT died in South Africa!
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/08/27/unfiltered-south-african-president-ramaphosa-on-land-reform-parliament-on-the-same-earlier-this-year/
White South Africa left a legacy of now archaic land ownership arrangements, and some are upset about the state's update or reforms to allow the state to implement policies beneficial to all South Africans.
The state's related economics — there are too many poor! — and extended state security resources have produced conditions for brigandage — theft and murder — at least, and the aggrieved cast that in racial terms.
To better manage its issues, the people of South Africa recently ejected another corrupt communist aristocrat — the kind that take money from their people and immensely aggrandize themselves in the manners known to dictators.
From The Guardian, here's a glimpse into how Jacob Zuma "managed" South Africa:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/zuma
Cheer up: South Africa may avoid the Zimbabwean meltdown at the hands of a nominally communist narcissist (Robert Mugabe, who has been deposed in the past year or so by his own military) and continue its independent development as a modern multi-racial, multi-tribal democracy.
Humankind may never see an end to war, but it may see it diminished. The drawing down would be a real gift to Israelis and Palestinians alike.
This coming December 25 will mark the 26th year out from the dissolving of the Soviet Union (1991) toward a feudal and perhaps Orwellian politics (i.e., continuous war between three nuclear-armed giants and proxies within their spheres of influence all the way down — or, alternatively, the day may be closer to the end of the end of a long argument between the medieval world habituated to "absolute power" — power unquestionable with its brutality — especially toward the innocent — exercised with impunity — and the modern one in which democratic power is so for being checked, subject to criticism, distributed and balanced structurally (Administrations; Courts, Legislatures) and popularly (via free and fair elections).
Event! "Who Deserves a State? Stories of Jews, Native Americans & Kurds" – Sophia Marjanovic, Anna Langer, Kani Xulam – March 28, 2018, 7-8 p.m., School of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Events and Other PSA's, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kurdistan, Middle East, North America, Politics, Syria, United States of America
American politics, cultural birthright, ethnolinguistic co-evolution, ethnolinguistic cultures and statehood, heritage and land, Israel, Land of the Hebrews, middle east cultures, middle east politics, Native American
School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA)
George Washington Univeristy
805 21st Street NW
smpa@gwu.edu
https://www.google.com/maps/place/George+Washington+University+School+of+Media+and+Public+Affairs/@38.9001909,-77.0469929,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x3e32dedd82d144b3!8m2!3d38.8998277!4d-77.0461775
Political Spychology DeLITEful: Pavel Stroilov's 2011 Pastiche
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Spychology
intelligence history, middle east conflict, middle east politics, Pavel Stroilov, PLO
In the same conversation, Arafat confided:
There are 250,000 Palestinians living in the US. 8,000 of them are university lecturers. Palestinians are highly educated people. Our level of education is higher than the Israelis'.22
May I be so bold as to suggest: the high proportion of American university lecturers among the long-suffering Palestinian people is a factor which needs much more attention from analysts of the Middle East. It may explain a lot.
Under the Soviet and Arab pressure, the PLO was internationally recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" (imagine al-Qaeda being recognized today as the sole legitimate representative of the world's Muslims).
Stroilov, Pavel. Behind the Desert Storm: A Secret Archive Stolen From the Kremlin that Sheds New Light on the Arab Revolutions in the Middle East (p. 45). Price World Publishing. Kindle Edition, 2011,
If a secret gets out but no one hears it or reads about it, does it count?
The key is in the "if no one".
In fact, the professional politico in or around Russian studies knows of, say, the Mitrokhin Archive, Ion Mihai Pacepa, the volumes listed in the "Russian Section" of this blog, and doubtless Russian as well plus an enormous "much else".
The public at large?
Perhaps not so much.
For that, Pavel Stroilov proves easily read, delightfully illuminating, and reliably provocative.
Here's where he begins:
This book, I am proud to say, proceeds from a grand theft aggravated by high treason.
To be more precise, it concludes a whole series of crimes—and puts a stop to it.
I have stolen these secrets from Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet dictator, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I covertly copied thousands of secret Politburo documents from the Gorbachev Foundation Archive, and then smuggled them out of Russia.
Who among the enthused for liberal democracy would not be charmed?
And here within the virtual pages of the Kindle edition, the past catches up with the present:
Comrades and Ayatollahs
…The movement continues in the right direction: the resistance to imperialist forces. Very important roles belong to Syria and even to Iran. In this sense, Iran is our ally, even though we are very different.
Mikhail Gorbachev to Hafez Assad, 28 April 1990
BackChannels joyously recommends reading "Pavel" to Cold War beginners, and, as may be glimpsed from more critical reviews cited, as a way on to the bridge between Cold War history and today Middle East conflicts.
Additional Reference
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/
General Reading Online
Berlinski, Claire. "The Cold War's Arab Spring: How the Soviets Created Today's Middle East." Tablet, June 20, 2012.
Kalinovsky, Artemy. "On the (supposedly) sensational documents from the Gorbachev Foundation Archives." Critical review. LSE Ideas, May 17, 2010.
National Security Archive, George Washington University (portal).
Radchenko, Sergey. "Behind the Desert Storm: A Secret Archive Stolen from the Kremlin That Sheds New Light on the Arab Revolutions in the Middle East by Pavel Stroilov (review). Journal of Cold War Studies, pp. 266-268, 14:4, Fall 2012:
Devoid of any scholarly analysis, the book is full of nonsense, some of it derived from far-fetched interpretations of Stroilov's source material and some borrowed from popular conspiracy theories. Fortunately, Stroilov is relatively brief with his own comments. Most of the book is made up of verbatim transcripts of documents, including memoranda of Gorbachev's conversations with foreign leaders, Politburo transcripts, and various enlightening notes penned by Gorbachev's chief foreign policy aide, Anatolii Chernyaev, and by other officials. Although excerpted and often cited out of context, these documents offer an interesting glimpse into the dynamic of Gorbachev's policymaking and disclose hitherto unknown aspects of Soviet diplomacy during the first Gulf War.
Wilson Center. Cold War International History Project (portal).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Andropov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
FTAC: Middle East Conflict: Bring "Moscow" to Account for Palestinian Suffering
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Palestinia, Politics, Russia
east v west, Gaza, history, history with integrity, intellectual history, Israel, liberalism, middle east politics, Moscow, Russia, Russian history, Soviet Era, West Bank
The prompt: "The Palestinians went to Poland . . . the Israelis went to refugee camps . . . ."
A Palestinian professor had taken a group of students to Auschwitz, and on the other side, Israelis have toured Palestinian camps — so both statements are true but leave out the third and fourth parties (Soviet Era Moscow and the the post-WWII and 1948 Arab leaderships) responsible for the Arab Apartheid and political conditioning that have produced generations (70 years worth) of confined, politically programmed, and emotionally "weaponized" Palestinians — also unemployed and trapped.
It would be better if Palestinian and Israelis would travel to Moscow and ask Mr. Putin directly why the Soviet Union chose to block democracy and liberalism by transforming a post-war refugee situation into a People Resistance movement that would go on to cover another system for making money and distributing the same through systems of patronage.
Now that Palestinians have had a glimpse of the Jewish history of persecution in Europe (and in Russia) and Israelis have seen how Hamas and the PLO actually regard their people, it would be helpful as well to revisit both Arab and Soviet history at the end of WWII — and then work to get that history more securely into the past, fixed there, remember there, and, ultimately, dismissed in the interest of regional peace and cooperation.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/
End "The Occupation"?
End the preoccupation with the Jews — and End the Hate (once engineered by Moscow).
One may also consider the business of producing and sustaining conflicts for politically criminal profiteering by way of corruption, skimming, and smuggling.
"Iraq . . . only its shell remains" – Kurdish Major General Aziz Weysi Bani
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars
cultural coherence, cultural self-determination, developing democracy, ISIS, Kurdish community, Kurdistan, middle east politics, neo-feudalism, neo-modernity, Peshmerga, political coherence, post-Soviet politics
Posted by Clarion Project, May 9, 2017.
BackChannels has repeated made the case and point that ISIL had been incubated — protected early on from annihilation — by Assad's preferring to fight the west (and democratic liberalism in the distribution of power) first at the outset of the Syrian Tragedy, and that decision had been flanked by Moscow and Tehran.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/04/09/ftac-reprise-how-isil-serves-moscow-damascus-and-tehran/
By electing to make the primary enemy "The West" and only halting the advance of al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda-type organizations at critical points, Bashar al-Assad created conditions in which the true terrorist opposition could gather and grow. While Syrian forces were creating the horrific conditions that would spur the influx of jihadists into Syria while also inducing mass displacement and migration, it turns out that Saddam Hussein's old Baathist officer corps had in mind some similar ideas regarding their own lives as puppeteers.
Haji Bakr was sent by the group into Syria in late 2012, as a part of a tiny advance cluster, with the mission to help plot out the steps for the emergent "Islamic State," to capture as much territory as possible in Syria, and from there to launch an invasion back into Iraq. Haji Bakr settled obscurely in the small Syrian town of Tal Rifaat, north of Aleppo, where he put his immense knowledge of Saddam's intelligence and totalitarian practices to work, charting out the invasion of Syria and emergence of the "Islamic State"—plans that were later meticulously carried out by ISIS.[17]
Haji Bakr was killed by a Syrian rebel group in 2014,[18] but not before he had transmitted his knowledge and intelligence plans learned inside Saddam Hussein's former totalitarian regime to the nascent "Islamic State." The documents he produced, discovered after his death, consist of 31 pages of handwritten organizational charts, lists, and schedules, all of which describe how to step-by-step subjugate a nation.
http://www.icsve.org/research-reports/the-isis-emni-the-inner-workings-and-origins-of-isiss-intelligence-apparatus/ – 12/3/2016.
It is into this greater intersection between "east and west" — actually: feudal dictatorship and western democracy — that the pro-democratic talking Kurdish presence and armed Peshmerga have emerged as forces for modernity.
Given, perhaps, that few in the general public get this far into the machinery of war, it's possible that "Moscow-Tehran" and "baby Damascus" (between them) may now engage ISIS . . . more sincerely, with Moscow recovering some face and flexibility for doing so. As much may account for the Peshmerga's wishing to work with Moscow against ISIS, but as ISIS has made for Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran the most useful enemy, there may be a little bit of funny business in attempting that.
Duplicity would seem much less known where American forces and political resolve have been involved although Turkey's preference for suppressing the Kurds (while developing its own dictatorship) has complicated the Yankee do-good in the Syrian-Iraq theaters.
BackChannels feels that Washington and others may try to match Moscow in the realm of corrupt "realpolitik" but may suggest that working modern ideals against bad deals may better suit everyone's future. Moscow may make a show of shutting down ISIS, but its clinging to dictatorship and totalitarian show business bodes ill for genuinely western and western-leaning cooperation.
"Right now, Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds can't live together under a single administration."
While the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews and mighty independent about being so, Baloch, Kurdish, and Pashtun communities, among others, continue to struggle against the dominance of hitherto more powerful states.
BackChannels would promote ethnolinguistic cultural community and political autonomy — i.e., what is really meant by the term "cultural self-determination of a People" — with central and margin-bearing features. To get there, however, requires great strength in independent cultural identity plus the cooperation of tribal leaders in producing a coherent unified proto-national politics.
Is the once communist Kurdish PKK the same as it was back in the 1970s, and may that account for some turn toward Moscow today?
BackChannels hasn't that answer today. The last time this editor looked into that question was 2007 (as a rank political science beginner on an entirely different blog: http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2007/10/turkeys-pkk-hot.html — Turkey looked every inch a democracy back then; and the PKK looked like old bandits holed up in caves and just about finished as a political force.
Oh my how things have changed!
At this time, it appears that fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria has brought the multiply suzerain Kurdish community together as never before. Now it needs to sustain its cohesion and strength against the pressuring of the errant Arab and Persian worlds once swayed by the Soviet Union and still hungover from the increasingly anachronist experience.
A little BackChannels rah-rah for the home team:
What has given the American model its power has been first and foremost the immense adventurousness and imperialism of the British Empire AND it's intellectual experience and loading with equal measures Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultural experiences. Had the ideals of the Cyrus Cylinder held sway in the middle east, the conversation would be quite different, but its Magna Carta that has worked its will through the western experience and now returns to intercede on behalf of cultures overrun by gross and malign power.
From the Kurdish general:
"Iraq needs to be divided into three neighboring countries, and each country to govern themselves according to the reality of the region. Sunni and Shia Arabs have different approaches in making relations with others. The Kurdish approach is different than both of them. These things have to be considered, so then each one will be responsible for their people, place and country. And these three groups are better as neighbors. Our message for the world is that Iraq is no longer the same, only its shell remains."
At the moment, Turkey is not what it was either!
BackChannels suggests the United States would do well to deepen the bond with the pro-democracy forces of the Kurdish political community.
FTAC – Summation – Syria and Red Brown Green
Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Syria
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, middle east politics, Syria
The schematics I feel I've observed over the years:
Post-Soviet –> neo-feudal Russia that has been quietly addressed (by sanctions; by a precipitous drop in oil prices and related revenues) as an extension of the former era.
"Putin-Assad-Khamenei" as an arc of power in the region and "Putin-Khamenei" as a hub for the greater development of political absolute power elsewhere.
"Syndicate Red Brown Green" — Putin's Russia, KGB-to-FSB; new national socialist movements (Hungary); Islamists.
The cultivation of Daesh, self-generated but perhaps manipulated by Khamenei to serve as a Sunni foil for his regime's Shiite expansion, serves narrative artifice that has been "Assad vs The Terrorists" — an horrific piece of political "theater of the real".
All of that may be breaking up through the fragmenting of Syria, but nothing is near over, and, indeed, the anarchy and chaos developed in the space will have to be addressed on multiple levels, from combat and counterterrorism effort to some kind of refugee management and resettlement. Count out "Putin, Assad, Khamenei" as being of any help at all.
I had just seen a group of pictures featuring starved Syrian children, the latest in "war porn", and it had featured an image of a starving adult man bearing a resemblance to President Obama.
Agitprop?
Not only agitprop, but propaganda from what appeared to me to be an anti-western, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist "news agency" promoting victimization on one hand while isolating itself on the other.
BackChannels has been to this evil place before: "It's Hard Helping You When You're Anti-Semitic, Among Other Things" (March 19, 2014).
Written about the "Obamastarvingman" and the more evidently starved youngsters:
I don't like the top figure's resemblance to Obama — it smacks of propaganda, an attempt at not quite subliminal suggestion.
While "Syndicate Red Brown Green" put together the political theater that may be titled, "Assad vs The Terrorists", the children shown, and of course noncombatant adults as well, were the kind of Syrians killed or punished by, in essence, their own feudal lords.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights may have additional information on the casualties of the breathtaking disaster that has taken place in Syria in the post-Soviet and now feudal context managed by Putin, Assad, and Khamenei. Obama watched; NATO watched; we watched. However: the continuing promotion of anti-Semitism, anti-westernism — basically hateful and undemocratic rhetoric (because it's dishonest and disingenuous speech) — leaves the Syrian victims of Assad's grandiose play ("Assad vs The Terrorists") disenfranchised, helpless, and isolated.
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