12/29/15 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Up next is the great Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
They also keep his archives at unz.com.
This one is called Syrian Civil War, No End in Sight for Terrorism or the Refugees Fleeing to Safety.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you?
I'm fine, thank you.
Good, good.
Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and all those things, too.
Same to you.
Really appreciate you joining us, as always.
So, lots of bad news here.
I know you're just being realistic.
Bottom line in this article, I think, sir, you say that virtually all of the major factions, of which there are uncounted numbers, all of the major factions fighting in the Syrian war, backing one side or the other in the Syrian war, all seem to lack any real powerful incentive to make peace.
They all seem to instead have the incentive to keep on fighting and try to have things more their way before they quit.
And so, nothing but bad news on the horizon.
Is that pretty much right?
Yeah, that's a large part of it.
I was also saying that in Syria in particular, but also in Iraq, sectarian and ethnic differences have got so deep, hatred is so deep, fear is so deep, that you have very few mixed communities now.
You know, Sunni Arabs are going one way, Shia another, Kurds a third way, Christians being almost eliminated.
And it's very difficult to reverse this, and a lot of the refugees that are out of the country aren't going to be able to go home.
They may think they will eventually, but their houses will be taken over by another community or ethnic group or political faction.
So, you know, these countries are sort of, which used to, and one of the reasons I always liked these countries, is they have a diversity of different communities, but that's ending now.
Just as it ended in other places, you know, in the Balkans, you know, we've seen this before, we saw this in Turkey when the Armenians were massacred, now it's happening in Iraq and Syria.
Yeah, well, and that's part of the erasing of those incentives, right?
If you're still living in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city, then there's a lot of incentive to try to work things out.
But if the war goes long enough and bad enough that that's no longer the case, then that incentive to try to work things out is erased, and the incentive to just keep on fighting can still remain.
Yeah, and the most powerful local community or group kicks out the others.
And even, you know, it's, you know, as in the Syrian Kurdish areas, you know, well, they're not particularly, the Kurds aren't particularly sectarian in that area, but they see the Sunni Arabs as being supporters of ISIS, of Islamic State.
If they run away, that's proof that they supported ISIS.
If they stay, they say, oh, that shows that they're sleeper cells, they're waiting to stab us in the back.
So when you have that level of fear and violence, you know, it's difficult for minority communities to survive.
Right.
Now, so I don't even know where to begin, really, when it comes to the different outside powers messing around in the Syrian war.
But, you know, obviously, when the Russians intervened, that was a pretty big call of America's bluff on regime change in Damascus.
And so and they are, after all, bombing ISIS, if not bombing ISIS together, even though the Americans are threatening the Russians for bombing ISIS, just like they are.
But do you think maybe there's room here for a change in the policy, where if America and Russia can at least get their heads together about this, that some kind of nearer term solution could come?
Well, maybe not quite in that way.
I mean, Washington's made pretty clear that they don't intend to team up with the Russians on this one.
On the other hand, they do have parallel interests in Syria, in eliminating Islamic State.
And, you know, the situation's got even more complicated.
But I think it's kind of reaching a new crisis, if you like.
With the Russians coming in, I think that made Washington take it a lot more seriously.
Now, what happens with Turkey?
You know, Turkey's been backing all sorts of rebels in Syria, rather like Pakistan backed the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Now the Turks are being squeezed out in the sort of north of Aleppo.
Do they invade, or do they sit on their hands?
What happens there?
Ramadi's just been taken by the Iraqi army.
That's a success, a big success against the Islamic State.
But is it repeatable, you know?
These victories look great, you know.
But they're against a sort of—until you see that they're against basically a guerrilla army.
Guerrilla armies don't stand and fight if they have any sense.
They pull back.
They wait to make a surprise counterattack.
So the level of violence is going up, and it's still kind of uncertain how the coming year is going to be like.
Now, was this surprising to you at all, the way the Iraqi army was able to take back, if you can call it that, kick the Islamic State out of Ramadi?
Or no, you would have just predicted that, of course, they're going to turn and run just to save their guys and come back later.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't—you see, there's one way that the Islamic State is going to lose.
It's attacked by reasonably well-organized military forces, and they're supported by very heavy U.S. airstrikes being called in.
Then the firepower is too much.
Islamic State is going to lose.
They saw that at Kobani in the Syrian Kurdish area of Syria when they tried to spend four and a half months trying to take the city.
They failed.
They lost about 2,200 fighters.
I've seen the city.
About 70 percent of it smashed up.
In that circumstance, they— All right.
Goddang Skype.
You're making me so angry now.
Holy crap.
Okay.
Sorry about that, guys.
Technical difficulties.
Live radio.
These things happen.
No big deal.
We got the heroic Patrick Coburn back on the line, on the telephone line, the reliable one this time.
And I didn't mention before—I'm very sorry about this.
I really hope that you guys will read The Rise of Islamic State by Patrick Coburn, and you guys know, you regular listeners to this show, who absolutely called it for years leading up to the declaration of the caliphate and has done the best job of anybody covering this story as far as I'm concerned.
The Rise of Islamic State, that's the book.
He writes for The Independent and at unz.com.
And I'm sorry, sir, where we got cut off by the technical difficulties.
You were talking about the Islamic State's failure at Kobani, where the Kurds, backed by American air power, drove them out after a long battle.
Yeah.
That's the pattern of this war, this guerrilla war, that the ISIS have a militarily pretty effective, but they can't really stand up to an infantry backed by heavy air power.
And Ramadi, the Iraqi army doesn't have that many good quality troops.
It has the Golden Division.
It's just the one good division.
It has some other special units, but not that number.
If you put those in one set-piece battle together with U.S. air power, they're going to win.
Now, what it looks as if ISIS is doing, it's not going to play that game at the moment, but it seems to have pulled out of Ramadi at the last moment, leaving lots of bombs and booby traps behind.
Did the same in Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan a few months ago.
So, you know, this is undoubtedly a success for the Iraqi government, but it could be one could exaggerate it by forgetting what kind of war is being fought here.
Well, and, I mean, what about the occupation of Ramadi?
Maybe we could go back to Tikrit.
The Shia-stan forces drove the Islamic State out of Tikrit.
Did they allow the Sunni population to come back, or is that part of the sectarian cleansing?
No, you know, some people try to come back.
You know, very sectarian, very dangerous.
If you're a Sunni there, you want to go down to Baghdad, you stand a good chance of being kidnapped on the road.
The Sunnis feel that as soon as the Shia or anybody else takes over, they're targeted, they're vulnerable.
So, you know, there isn't any coming together here.
So there's no real sign of this war ending.
You know, you can take these cities, but then if the villages around are still full of ISIS, at some point they'll counterattack.
There's no doubt, you know, that they're being attacked from a lot of directions at the moment.
They're suffering losses, but they're a long way from being defeated.
Now, I'm sure this is a very hard one to answer, really, but if you could try to put yourself in the position of the majority Sunni population of Ramadi, do you think that they much prefer the Islamic State to the Baghdad government's forces, or vice versa?
Or they're just completely stuck, you know, in fear of both sides?
You know, like being stuck between Hitler and Stalin?
Well, you know, these people are terrified.
Nobody's asking them what they want, you know.
They're very similarly in Syria.
When ISIS moves in, they're not too pleased because they know what's going to happen.
They're going to be hit by the airstrikes and artillery.
So what do they do?
You know, last time around, tens of thousands, maybe 70,000 fled towards Baghdad, but they couldn't get into Baghdad, past the checkpoints, because in Baghdad they think, aha, these are the ISIS sleeper cells.
We don't trust these people, so they end up camping beside the road.
So they're in an appalling situation.
In that whole province around Anbar, which is around Ramadi, Anbar province, which is very big, it's about a third of Iraq, and about almost half, about 43 percent of the population has fled.
It's sort of in different parts of Iraq.
And this is the name of the game at the moment, the people drifting around with nobody knowing where they can go.
Yeah.
And it seems like, you know, the Islamic State, they're totalitarians.
They seem like a bunch of madmen, really.
But when the Shiite forces come, and that seems to portend this kind of sectarian cleansing, at least the Islamic State doesn't kick them all out of their homes and just rule over them.
But when the Bata Brigade comes, then, you know, say hi to the power drill or hit the road, right?
Yeah, I mean, this is meant to be the Iraqi.
I mean, maybe the first troops, you know, maybe aren't that sectarian, but the people who follow up are.
So, you know, there's no doubt that the Islamic State is under pressure, not just in Iraq, but in Syria.
There's a lot of fighting against the Syrian Kurds advancing in the last couple of days.
They're being hit by the Americans, they're being hit by the Russians.
But, again, it looks to me as if they have decided they're not going to have another Kobani, they're not going to stand and fight where the other side can use massive firepower against them, that they'll pursue guerrilla tactics, pull back, wait for an opportunity, launch surprise attacks.
But so, I mean, if they continue on that way, do you think the Iraqi government might be able then to sack Fallujah and Mosul and drive them just out into the countryside?
They might, you know, gradually, you know, devastate these cities and so forth.
They might push them out, but this would be a long process, you know, because they'd hold on to the areas where there are 100, you know, villages that are 100% Sunni where they have real support.
And, you know, we'll see now if the Iraqi government's going to try and attack Mosul.
I would have thought it would be quite a long time before they tried that.
And there's something else to be very careful about.
Normally, when Islamic State suffers a setback anywhere, it sort of compensates that by some atrocity, some sudden attack, a suicide attack.
You know, we saw it in Paris the other day.
We've seen it in Iraq many times.
But just as the Iraqi government is, you know, cheering itself on and saying, you know, we're the winners, something really horrible happens.
So one should be very careful about that.
One should look at the news very carefully in the next few days.
Now, this is a little bit off topic, but I'd be willing to bet you have something interesting to say about the relationship between the Islamic State and the wider Islamic world.
There was a statement that was put out by the so-called caliph, Ibrahim Baghdadi, saying, you know, come one, come all to support the Islamic State.
It seemed to be pretty much greeted by ridicule as far as I could tell from reading Western media anyway.
And as you've been discussing, people have been running from the Islamic State for their lives by the millions at this point.
And yet, of course, all the propaganda is they hate us because they're Muslim.
And Islam makes Muslims hate things that are good and true and beautiful and innocent.
And what a demonic, terrible religion they have.
And I just wonder whether you had a comment about the broader Muslim world's reaction to the IS.
It's kind of very much playing the game that ISIS would like them to play, which is to see all Muslims as being the same as ISIS, to visit communal punishment or rejection on Muslims.
After all, a quarter of the world's population is Muslim.
So I think people who sort of talk about Islamo-fascists talking about all Muslims is very much playing to the hands of ISIS.
But there is another thing which has been happening, which is the way in which extreme Saudi Wahhabism, the most sort of fundamentalist, the most reactionary, the type of Islam which treats women as chattels, has increasingly dominated Sunni Islam.
It's done so because it's backed by Saudi money from the state.
You know, you want to build a mosque in Bangladesh or somewhere, you get the money from Saudi Arabia.
So that is a change.
Otherwise, the sort of general demonization of Islam is very much playing to the hands of ISIS.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for coming back on the show, Patrick.
Really appreciate it.
Sorry about those technical difficulties.
No, no.
Thank you.
Happy New Year.
Bye-bye.
Hey, Al Scott here.
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