04/17/14 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And our next guest today is the great Patrick Cockburn from The London Independent.
He's the author of quite a few books.
The latest, I believe, is Muqtada al-Sadr, The Shia Revival and The Future of Iraq.
Of course, he's a Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
Did I ever say that?
And also, they reprint a lot of what he writes at UNZ.com, U-N-Z, UNZ.com and counterpunch.org.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you doing?
Great, thanks.
Great, great.
I appreciate you joining us on the show.
OK, I think this is the latest piece, latest one I saw.
Syria conflict, a shift for the fading insurgency.
And this is about some developments among the foreign backers who've been supporting the rebellion against Assad in Syria and its effect on the ground there.
So do tell, please.
Well, I think the foreign backers of the opposition in Syria sort of climbed too far up a tree in 2012.
They thought that Assad was going to go immediately.
The only thing we know was where he was going to go into exile, that it was all over and the opposition was going to take power, rather like Libya, where Gaddafi had been overthrown by rebels strongly supported by NATO.
It hasn't happened.
So a lot of people are worried.
They're worried in Turkey.
They're worried in Washington.
They're worried in Riyadh.
They don't know should they support the rebels in Syria, who are the most effective, of which are al-Qaeda linked, or exactly the same as al-Qaeda, or should they just admit that Assad has won.
So this article is about that.
The U.S. has been giving some anti-tank missiles, apparently.
Not very many, but some.
Saudi Arabia just dismissed its head of intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who used to be ambassador in Washington for 22 years.
So there's a state of great confusion as to what the outside backers are going to do about the rebels inside Syria.
Do you think that, say back in 2011 into 2012, that the administration perhaps believed their own nonsense about that this was just a fight between the people and their dictatorship, like in the script, and that maybe they really thought that not only would it be quick and that it was okay for them to say Assad must go because they really thought it was going to happen, but were they really not afraid at all of who was going to take power?
Did it take them that long to realize that the people that they were backing and backing, the Saudis in backing, were ultimately the al-Qaeda in Iraq guys from the last war?
They don't seem to have.
They seem to have had a sort of naive idea.
And they also had a naive idea how quickly Assad would go down.
There were attempts at mediation in Damascus, and at that time the Syrians who were not part of the government say that the U.S. ambassador was encouraging the opposition not to give an inch, not to attend negotiations on the grounds that they were going to win anyway.
So I think that there was a general feeling in Washington and even those in the embassy in Damascus that Assad was finished.
So it became kind of an after-the-fact justification later when they said, well, we just want them to keep fighting and we don't want anybody to win.
That was because who they thought they were backing, who they thought they were going to help win, didn't work out.
That was plan B, was just let them all bleed.
I'm not sure they even had a plan B. I think that a plan requires an organized idea of what you want and how to get it.
And I don't think that it was ever anything as rigorous as that.
Well, I mean, at some point it obviously became clear to Obama that he did not want to go ahead and win the regime change himself and go down in history as the guy who put al-Qaeda in power in Damascus, right?
Like, he eventually realized that this was pushing it too far.
At least the Pentagon realized it for him, apparently.
Yeah, the Pentagon and, you know, it was obvious that popular support for Congress, popular support for the British Parliament weren't going to go along with this.
I mean, if the British Parliament, let's say, had voted in favor of this, would Obama have had second thoughts?
Would he have given it to Congress?
You know, I doubt it.
And certainly, you know, the establishment in Britain was caught by surprise that the support wasn't there.
It wasn't there at a popular level, and it wasn't there in the establishment either.
A lot of people voting against it were very, you know, former diplomats, former generals, people who are generally by no means radical.
Yeah, I think that's an important part of that story that's usually overlooked, but you're right.
They, I don't know how many days before it was that Obama backed down, where the Parliament made Cameron back down, but certainly saved ours in that one.
So now, when it comes to the TOW missiles, I think these are the same missiles that Reagan and the Israelis sold to the Ayatollah back in the 80s, right?
These anti-tank missiles for use against Saddam, who we were backing in their invasion of Iran at the same time.
Is that about right?
It may be, yeah.
I think that, you know, it's probably to a degree tokenism.
The Saudis wanted to give the opposition shoulder-held, man-powered, shoulder-operated ground-to-air missiles.
The U.S. wouldn't go along with that because it would see them very soon be in the hands of the jihadis of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Nusra Front, which is the official representative of al-Qaeda, or its former representative of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant.
You know, what would Washington do when one of the first of these missiles is fired at an American airliner?
So they didn't go along with that.
But, you know, their dilemma is that the fighting against Assad's forces is mainly being conducted by the local franchise of al-Qaeda.
So they say, we should back secular, moderate factions.
But, you know, where are these secular, moderate factions?
You know, them sitting in hotels in Istanbul or Dubai?
But they're not actually at the battlefront.
Right.
They're in line at the bank right now.
I'll get right back to you.
Sure, yeah.
And so, you know, it's a rather extraordinary situation that, you know, we had 9-11.
Al-Qaeda was pretty small then.
And, you know, then we have all this money spent, security expanded, two wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And al-Qaeda type organizations now, you know, control much of northern and eastern Syria and much of northern and western Iraq.
So how come?
Yeah, I mean, they have created what they always say.
It's the failed states.
The lawless territory is where the terrorist groups thrive.
And then they keep creating territory just like that, right in the heart of Arabian civilization, Sunni Arab civilization.
And they just keep doing it over and over.
Who runs eastern Libya now?
You know, again, it's al-Qaeda type jihadis.
So I think it's rather strange there isn't more recognition, I think, of the degree of failure of the so-called war on terror.
You know, if it was a war on terror, then, you know, it's failed 100%.
Well, you know, yeah, it seems, I mean, really, if they would just put a map up on the screen during the news and explain who's who a little bit, then it would be obvious to everyone that, assuming you have to have a forward foreign policy over there, at least one that would make sense would be backing Saddam, backing Assad, backing the Ayatollah, at least being friendly to them in exchange for them helping us keep al-Qaeda down, since, you know, they were the ones who killed all those Americans that day.
Instead, we go after, you know, Israel's preferred enemies in Iran, and we're so hell-bent on weakening them, we'll support our own enemies in Syria just to take Iran down a peg.
It's madness.
Yeah, it's complete madness, and it's failed even on its own terms, you know, but nobody's lost their job.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing of it is, you know, we were just talking with the other Scott Horton about the torture report and how the 20 main findings were leaked, and I saw a thing that I didn't watch, but I saw a thing that reported that none of the Sunday morning news shows last Sunday even mentioned this at all, that McClatchy newspapers had the list of the 20 conclusions of the Senate committee.
They just ignore it outright.
I mean, that's a level of denial and complicity in American media that, you know, it ought to be a shocking example even to people who are used to this, I think, that they can just completely ignore that, and it's the same thing here, really.
If they had to talk frankly about who's who at all, then it would at least be clear, if not what to do, it would at least be clear that what they're doing now is not the right thing, and they need to knock it off.
Oh, yeah, I think that the media in general has been very complicit in just not reporting these things.
The Iraq is hardly reported at all now, and actually Syria isn't reported much so far as I can see.
All right, well, we're going to talk a little bit more about Syria, Iraq, Libya, and the whole terror war over there in the Middle East with Patrick Coburn on the other side of this break, y'all.
He's right now at UNZ.com where they have his collection of five-part series on the next generation of al-Qaeda fighters all across the Middle East, directly due to American foreign policy, of course, as we've been discussing.
More like that on the other side of this short break.
Phone records, financial and location data, PRISM, Tempora, X-Key Score, Boundless Informant.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And I'm talking with Patrick Coburn from The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
And he has this five-part series about the next generation of jihadis.
I guess their generations are only about ten years long each.
We're on the third generation now, fourth generation now.
There's a whole new generation rose up in Iraq.
They're getting to work, and then they have a whole new generation of recruits under them.
Spread from Mali to Pakistan, at least, if not further.
I guess, if you ask the State Department, they would claim that Nigeria is part of that same axis of suicide bombers.
But as we've been talking about, it's American foreign policy that, in the case of Iraq, certainly indirectly helped them.
And in the case of Syria and Libya, we're outright taking their side.
And so I really hope that you guys will go and look at this.
The full five-part series is available at UNS.com.
Al-Qaeda's second act, it's called.
And so I guess you could talk about any part of that you want, Patrick.
Or you could talk about how things look on the ground in Syria, or I guess not on the ground, on the map, as far as who controls how much territory.
I think you talk in your most recent article about the Lebanon border, the Syria-Lebanon border, being closed down by government forces.
It had been kind of a lawless zone there for a while.
So any of those angles you want to go is fine.
And sorry for being so general in my poor questions.
I think it is interesting, the situation on the ground.
As you said, the government has been securing its position in the center of the country, in the suburbs of Damascus and Homs, the main road north to Homs and then over to the coast.
But I was just looking today at some pictures of a Christian village, an ancient Christian village in the mountains, just outside Damascus, that Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate, had been holding.
And these are the main fighting – Jabhat al-Nusra is the main fighting force of the opposition in western and northern Syria.
And they'd held this Christian village.
These are the guys who are the main opponents of Assad and are strong on the ground.
You look at what have they been doing.
Well, the Christian frescoes, they'd been sort of opening, gouging out the eyes of pictures of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus.
They'd been knocking down crosses.
Fortunately, there weren't many Christians there left to kill, but they'd all fled.
But these guys had been destroying every sign of Christianity or the Christians in this town.
So it's no wonder that the Christian minority in Syria, as in Iraq, think that day is unnumbered, and so many of them have already got out of the country.
Right, yeah, it seems pretty bad.
But then, as we've been talking about this over the years now, you've always said that there never really was a time, regardless of what the White House and Washington, D.C. might have convinced themselves, there never really was a time where the rebels had the upper hand, and they sure don't have it now.
And yet, it sure doesn't seem like Assad is winning this thing either.
And, in fact, I guess if we go back, you said this reminded you of when Lebanon went to war with itself for 15 years.
So I guess I wonder whether you think that there's any kind of peaceful solution to this in the near or even medium term.
Well, not unless the outside powers want it to happen, which really means sitting down with Saudi Arabia and Iran.
You know, it was kind of absurd at the Geneva meeting earlier this year that Iran couldn't be there because it didn't accept that Assad was going to go.
You know, why should Assad go when he controls the 14 Syrian provincial capitals?
He controls 13 of them.
14 of them is controlled by an al-Qaeda type group.
But why should he go?
But there's no question of this being settled without Iran being there.
So I think that whatever they say, the U.S., everybody else, Saudi Arabia, they are prepared to let this go on.
They could end it, and one way they could end it would be getting the Turks to shut the border.
You know, the 500-mile common border between Turkey and Syria, which is basically open for the jihadis and for the opposition rebels to move backwards and forwards.
It's sort of like in Afghanistan.
The Taliban can move back into Pakistan.
And so, you know, as you just said, that means the war goes on.
The government's been doing quite well in the center.
And then the opposition have been attacking in Aleppo, which is pretty close to Turkey.
There's been ferocious fighting there since earlier in the month, and they've been attacking on the Mediterranean coast.
But this doesn't get much reported these days because Western journalists, indeed any journalists, are likely to be kidnapped and killed by the jihadis, by the opposition.
The opposition used to cultivate the Western press, which wrote nice things about them.
And then it turned out that the guys who were looking after the press weren't exactly representative, and they had to flee.
They could no longer protect themselves.
And Western journalists aren't in northern or western Syria anymore, unless they're being kept hostage, unless they've already been taken prisoner.
And now it seems like, you know, you talked about how they could shut the Turkish border if they wanted to.
It seems like another way to say that might be that Turkey and, for that matter, Saudi Arabia and Qatar's involvement in this war is really all at the behest of the United States, at the very least could be stopped, with a word, by the United States.
It's sort of just what they call plausible deniability for NATO's policy, America's policy in Syria, which is to keep this thing going, right?
Yeah, I think that rather than see Assad win, they'll keep it going.
I don't think that they think that the opposition are going to win anymore.
In fact, I don't think they want the opposition to win anymore.
But when they cry helpless and say, well, it's the Saudis that are doing it, that's not true.
Because if they just made a phone call and told the Saudis to knock it off, they would have to knock it off, correct?
Or not?
Yeah, I think that's correct.
Look, the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, was at the end of last year saying rude things about President Obama, why didn't he overthrow Assad.
And at the end of the day, the Saudis know their security depends on the U.S.
So they don't want an intelligence chief who's on real bad terms with the U.S.
So he's out of a job.
It's all a bit mysterious, but that seems to be the main reason.
So yeah, I think the U.S. could do it if it felt that it really was being damaged by what goes on in Syria.
But I think all this sort of humanitarian bleating and we can't think how to end it is really hooey.
Well, you know, when you mentioned Libya there and how that turned out, I guess we have sort of a general picture of chaos.
But Nick Terse added to our understanding this week with a couple of pieces over there at Tom Dispatch, including one about AFRICOM training up and special forces training up the Libyan army at the Canary Islands and or in Bulgaria, I think he was saying.
And it seems like that's a major mission there now to create a state where there is no longer one in Libya.
What are the odds you putting on that being a success?
Well, not great.
You know, it's sort of, you know, foreign intervention is always presented as, you know, bringing peace back to our country, to supporting the moderates, et cetera.
But once you have foreign intervention, it tends to delegitimize the government, which is dependent on foreigners, which it's seen as a local proxy.
And you've seen that happen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and we like to see it happening in Libya.
But overall, you know, you can you look at the area and the whole really from from Libya to Afghanistan, the political temperature is going up all the time.
Now, for all the stupidity of this, you know, from the national interest point of view, from even a Western kind of general citizen point of view, doesn't it seem like really this is just the same cynical old game?
And they figure out that, you know, really, even though September 11th was a really big one and that kind of thing, that they don't really figure that a stateless band of terrorists pose that much of a long term threat.
And they're so horrible everywhere they go that they end up making themselves not very welcome, you know.
And so, you know, it seems like they've decided that, you know what, let's go ahead and support Jihad.
If we can use them as our shock troops and get things done.
You know, like you talk about the hate preachers fueling sectarianism.
That seems like another thing where if the Americans really were concerned about this and really insisted that the Saudis made these guys knock it off, that they would.
But instead, they have this giant project to use the people who are inspired by these hate preachers to go off and be their shock troops.
Right?
Yeah, I think there's that.
I think there's also, you know, the government's like to have a threat, a credible threat that it can present to people and therefore explain their own budgets, explain restrictions on civil liberties, justify wars, justify, you know, an increase, enormous increase in security forces and security bureaucracies.
And, you know, you see that with the war on terror.
But it's not actually, that becomes a justification for an expansion of the power of the state in the U.S. and Britain or in France or wherever.
Actually pursuing the war to that conclusion is very much a sort of secondary consideration.
I think it's a bit like the war on drugs.
You know, it's sort of, you had a whole bureaucracy built up, you had a great amount of money spent.
This was justified to the voters by saying they were under threat from this.
But, you know, again, it's a war that was never likely to win and the guys waging it weren't really trying to win it.
I think that both are kind of a way of masking expansion of the power of the state by making people feel threatened.
And, you know, from time to time they've even talked about maybe having a drone war against terrorists in Syria.
The very same ones that they haven't even finished backing yet.
Well, you know, it's kind of weird, but they try and draw a great line in the sand.
And you see this in the newspapers and New York Times and so forth, saying in Libya, you know, there are very few Al-Qaeda people who are actually on the line ringing up somebody in northwest Pakistan to get their orders.
But there are lots of organizations that are exactly similar to Al-Qaeda.
They believe in the same thing of creating an Islamic state.
They believe in the subjugation of women.
They operate in the same way through suicide bombing.
So, you know, often there's a sort of pretense, and you see the Obama administration doing that and Bush before him, that they're winning great victories by firing drones into some hill village in Yemen or Waziristan in Pakistan.
But they are sort of defining Al-Qaeda as being a pretty tiny organization, which they're killing important officials in, you know, the deputy head of operations or something.
This is kind of fictional.
And while they ignore these much larger Al-Qaeda-type organizations in Syria and Iraq and Libya and elsewhere.
Well, and it's not over yet.
It's going to be like this for a long, long time to come, it looks like.
And I'm sorry because we're way over time here, but thank you so much for your time again on the show, Patrick.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you.
Everybody, that's the great Patrick Coburn.
He's Middle East correspondent at The Independent, independent.co.uk.
And, of course, he's the author of Muqtada about the Shiite militia leader in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr.
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