01/06/14 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here for MyHeroesThink.com.
They sell beautiful seven-inch busts of libertarian heroes Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul, and Harry Brown.
I've got the Harry Brown one on the bookshelf now.
Makes me smile every time it catches my eye.
These finely crafted statues from MyHeroesThink.com make excellent decorations for your desktop at work, bookends for your shelves, or gifts for that special individualist in your life.
They're also all available in colors now too.
Of course, gold, silver, or bronze.
Coming soon, Hayek, Hazlitt, Carlin.
Use promo code Scott Horton and save $5 at MyHeroesThink.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's the Scott Horton Show.
I'm him.
ScottHorton.org is the website.
You can find all the interview archives, and the whole show archives, and the blog, and all the rest of it there.
ScottHorton.org.
And you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at ScottHortonShow.
All right, our guest on the show today is the great Patrick Coburn, Middle East correspondent for the London Independent, and author of quite a few books.
The latest is Muqtada, Muqtada al-Sadr, The Shia Revival, and The Future of Iraq.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you doing?
Great.
Good.
I appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So, the Anbar province in Iraq, the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, it looks like there's a war on for control of the province.
And they say that Fallujah and Ramadi are both, at least nominally, under control of the Islamic State of Iraq.
Can you tell us what you know about the situation there?
Yeah.
I mean, there is a war on.
It's a complicated civil war.
What's really extraordinary is that al-Qaeda in Iraq, which now operates under the umbrella of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which was meant to be out of business three years ago, or very nearly so, is holding Fallujah, which is only 40 miles west of Baghdad, and had for a time held the center of Ramadi, which is the main city of Anbar province.
Anbar province is actually enormous.
It makes up about a third of Iraq, so it's all of western Iraq.
So, this is a tremendous change that al-Qaeda should be taking over areas this big.
And now, I guess, what about half a year ago, you reported and talked on the show about the fact that the, basically, Shiite army, or at least the army of the Shiite government of Nouri al-Maliki, had withdrawn from the Anbar province.
I guess we're throwing up their hands in, if not outright defeat, they just were giving up on the idea that they could really exercise monopoly control over that territory at that point.
Is that about right?
Well, it's actually worse than that.
I mean, they seem to have devised a mix of repression and conciliation, that they get the worst of both worlds.
That we saw that last year, that there was sort of concessions, and so a nice talk, and then in April, they attacked a protest camp in Hawija, which is near Kirkuk, and killed about 50 people.
And we've seen the same sort of process, really, over the last two weeks.
We've got an election coming up in April in Iraq, a parliamentary election.
That's going to decide the future of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
If he gets a majority, he can run, have a third term, so he wants to look tough.
He wants some successes.
That seems to be what's behind all this.
And, you know, things have got worse, mainly because of Syria.
Syrian al-Qaeda fighters have been crossing over into Iraq.
There's been a big upsurge in suicide bombing.
A lot of the bombers are said to be foreign jihadi, foreign al-Qaeda supporters who've come into Syria, but actually end up by blowing themselves up in Iraq.
The last couple of weeks, the army had an offensive.
Then in one training camp, 24 officers got killed, including a divisional commander.
Then they arrested a senior Sunni MP.
Then they moved into the cities.
Then they said they were moving out of the cities.
Then al-Qaeda moved in.
Then now they said they're going to counterattack.
So it's a great mess.
But the government, basically what comes across is they're making it up by the day and not making it up very well.
Yeah, I read in Reuters that they're resorting to airstrikes, and that can't be good.
Yeah, I mean, because, you know, they've been sort of attacking, showing pictures from drones and so forth.
I don't think that they have much idea what they're attacking.
Civilian casualties are likely to be high.
There's likely to be even more feeling against the hostility against the government.
So I think overall, you know, what are we seeing here?
We're seeing the government in Baghdad, the Shia government in Baghdad, really lose control of Sunni areas, which is west and sort of large part of northern Iraq.
They're more and more confined just to areas held by the Shia.
So it's been a disastrous couple of weeks for Nouri al-Maliki.
Well, now the hawks are saying that this is all Barack Obama's fault, of course, because if only the Americans had stayed, then none of this would have happened.
This is the power vacuum being filled by the bad guys because the Democrats are cowards.
Yeah, it's sort of fantasy land, isn't it?
I mean, this surge was always oversold.
It's true that 2006-2007, al-Qaeda overplayed its hand.
It became very unpopular among Sunni Iraqis.
And they eventually, many of the tribes turned against them.
But they were never entirely out of business.
One of the reasons probably that they staged those attacks was they knew the U.S. was going.
But I think what Senator McCain has been saying, if they just continued the surge for a bit, everything would have been okay.
This is a very naive, primitive view of Iraqi politics, really the sort of thing that got the U.S. into such trouble after the invasion of 2003.
Yeah, it seems like these guys should have to get an electroshock or something every time they say something like that and leave out the fact that there wasn't a single member of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the American invasion of 2003.
In fact, you know, the way I remember Zarqawi never was a member of al-Qaeda, didn't declare himself loyal to bin Laden and Zawahiri's goals until December, the end of December 2004, almost two full years in the war.
Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the reasons is that, and I think this is one of the great mistakes of the U.S. and Britain and elsewhere, is to think, aha, there's al-Qaeda, which is closely organized, you know, it's like the Pentagon.
And then it's very different from all these other jihadis and, well, mostly, you know, have an ideology very similar to that of Saudi Arabia.
In fact, they're all sort of pretty, they all have similarities.
So I don't think, you know, killing bin Laden and so forth was ever going to have much effect.
I think what's most extraordinary, and I, you know, it amazes me that governments have got away with it since 9-11.
At the time of 9-11, al-Qaeda was a very small organization.
Then we have these enormous budgets for security organizations.
We have all these security measures at airports.
We have gigantic sums of money spent.
You know, what's the result after 12 years, which is al-Qaeda is much bigger than it was then.
You know, it controls the great swathe of territory in northern Iraq through northern Syria, right over to the Mediterranean.
The slogan of al-Qaeda is from, they say, you know, we control from Diyala, which is a province just to the northeast of Baghdad, to the Mediterranean.
Now, you know, what were all these guys doing when this happened?
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Patrick Coburn, and he's Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
And here's a couple of articles I want you all to look at.
A Long Ferment in the Middle East, The Hazards of Revolution.
That's at unz.com as well as independent.co.uk.
And then this one is at both sites as well.
Sunni monarchs back YouTube hate preachers about the, maybe just now beginning, relatively speaking, civil war, Sunni-Shia civil war, or at least this phase of it.
And really all, even the New York Times, Michael Gordon admitted in the New York Times that this whole thing was touched off by the American invasion, and their war to install the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance in power in Baghdad, and really to help them and their Baata Brigade cleanse the city of Sunni Arabs, as they call it.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I think that, you know, how did all this happen?
Well, you know, the surge was never as successful as anybody pretended that it was.
You know, when the surge was, yes, it did do some things on the ground in Iraq, but a lot of it was directed at newsrooms in New York, you know, to get Iraq, prevent Iraq being a main issue in the 2008 election.
And, you know, I remember I was in Baghdad at the time and talking to, you know, reporters for, you know, pretty good reporters for American networks.
They said, we just can't get on air, you know, that somehow our bosses have been persuaded that this war is over and this war is mean won.
We'll be right back after this.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Patrick Coburn from The Independent.
That's independent.co.uk.
And we're talking about Iraq and Syria.
And, you know, this, as you said on the show before, as you've been saying on the show, and in your writing, the Sunni-based insurgency, for lack of a better term, in Syria, which a big contingent of that, a big part of that, are actually veterans of the Iraq war who've gone up to Syria to fight now, how that has re-energized the entire insurgency.
They've been getting the short end of the stick from Nouri al-Maliki all this time.
But now the revolution in Syria has got them thinking that it's time to go back to war.
Enough of this ceasefire that started back in 07.
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's one of the reasons that it's happened.
I mean, Maliki, it's a pretty dysfunctional government.
Last December, sorry, December 4 last, I should say now, at the end of 2012, protests, peaceful protests started against the government of Sunni, about 20% of the population, wanted better rights, they wanted to end persecution, they wanted an end to arbitrary arrests of the young men and women.
And the government really didn't make any concessions or nothing adequate to the protesters.
So what we've been having over the last year is sort of peaceful protest mutate into armed resistance.
And the government always sort of underestimating what it was facing.
And just after Christmas, it closed down the main protest camp.
And that was one of the things which ignited the present explosion.
Well, I mean, what kind of odds you put on this thing?
Does the Iraqi army have the ability to go in there and occupy ground?
Or is this a brand new era?
They can go in there and kill a lot of people.
There's about 900,000 people in the security force forces in Iraq.
But it's always in many ways a way to a way of sort of stopping up unemployment.
A lot of these units sort of had never been trained, they don't have any exercises.
I mean, they have guns and people with guns can kill people.
But since it's dominated by the Shia, and they're facing the Sunni, I think a lot of people are going to die are dying.
But you know, can they take it?
Can they hold it?
I doubt it really.
They don't have the manpower.
I mean, this is they don't have the political sophistication to conciliate the Sunni.
So I think they'll kill a lot of people.
But that never got anybody very far in Iraq.
I mean, you just you kill one guy, you know, his younger brother will replace him.
So would you say the same thing about the future?
Would you say the same thing about the Shiite Baathists in Syria to then that I mean, you've been saying all along that the rebels can't sack Damascus there.
But then again, it looks more and more like the government of Damascus can't really take back the some of the provinces that they've lost.
Is that a mirror image going on?
It seems to be the case, you know, that the on the other hand, you know, the rebels now have divided between ISIS, the Iraqi Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which is Al Qaeda, and the others, all the other rebel groups who are now fighting their sort of civil war within the civil war.
So this must be good news for Assad and must mean that the rebels as a whole get weaker.
So but even so, it will be very difficult for Assad to win an all out victory.
Well, and I guess, you know, we saw this in Iraq, too.
And this is I guess why I'm a little bit surprised to see the level of fighting by Al Qaeda in Iraq, as well as in Syria, and Iraqi Al Qaeda in Syria all this time is because they really wore out their welcome fast in Iraq, the people of Iraq.
I mean, I guess most of what they called Al Qaeda in Iraq were foreigners who traveled there, at least, you know, a great percentage of them.
And they were such jerks with all their suicide bombings of marketplaces and all that kind of thing.
Instead of fighting the occupation, they got the Sunni Iraqis into a civil war with the Shiites and which they lost, and all this.
And so everybody hated their guts, because they're horrible.
And that same kind of thing, it sounds like is what's going on here in Syria as well, where the local Syrian Sunni Arabs are saying, Hey, thanks, but no thanks for your help anymore, because we don't want to do what you say either.
Yeah, they're an incredible bunch of people, you know.
And, you know, one of the things that touched off the present one was that a well-respected militant from one of the other rebel groups was kidnapped by Al Qaeda in the next, held for several days, and then his sort of badly tortured body turned up just about a week ago.
And, you know, there were pictures all over the internet of what the guy looked at, like, you know, a sort of smooth young man before he was picked up by Al Qaeda, and what he looked like a week later, you know, which he's basically been torn apart.
So, you know, for reasons of anger at that, or just plain fear that they're going to be next, all the other non-Al Qaeda organizations are sort of rallying against them.
But will they be able to wipe these people out?
No, I don't think they will.
I think it'll end up with some sort of agreement that Al Qaeda will be more careful in how it handles these people, but I don't think they're going to go out of business.
All right, now, it's almost silly to talk about this in a way to try to divide which groups are which there, but it seems like the Free Syrian Army, they've all hightailed it to Turkey or whatever, they're gone.
And so this new group, they're calling it, at least in English and the American media, they're calling it the Islamic Front, and this is basically what, everybody except the ISIL, and then does that include Jabhat al-Nusra, or are they fighting on the same side?
No, they have quite good relations with them.
The thing about the Islamic Front is it's paid for by Saudi Arabia, that's the key fact.
That's why these guys have come together.
They're on a Saudi payroll.
I mean, some organizations within it more than others, but effectively, it's paid for by the Saudis.
So it's very jihadi, very Islamic, it wants Sharia law, it's been involved in a number of massacres, but it's anti-Al Qaeda, as well as being anti-Assad.
But the key fact about it is that this is a proxy for Saudi Arabia.
Well, and I mean, is that even a safe bet that they would stay loyal to Prince Bandar rather than switching to Ayman al-Zawahiri, and switching to even the ISIL guys that they're supposed to be fighting now?
Well, you know, first of all, what these guys believe isn't that much different from Al Qaeda.
You know, they're deeply sectarian, they believe that all Shia are heretics and should be killed.
Similarly, they've killed a lot of Christians.
You know, ideologically, they're very much the same.
Okay, so now what about the war spreading to Lebanon?
Well, that's sort of happening, you know.
I mean, we've had bombs in Tripoli and in Beirut, that the sort of local Al Qaeda commando was picked up and subsequently died.
It's been mysterious about how he died, but he is dead.
But you know, it's clear, you know, with these bombings and assassinations and so forth, that Lebanon is being sucked into this.
Now, how far will this go?
You know, I hope maybe it won't happen that fast, but you know, that's the general direction.
It won't happen that fast, but the Lebanese have had 15 years of this, they're not eager to go back, with 15 years of civil war, they're not eager to go back to it.
But it could happen, and you can sense Lebanon slipping, slipping quite slowly, but slipping into the sort of turmoil of the Syrian civil war.
Right.
Well, yeah, you know, three years ago, at the dawn of the so called Arab Spring, when I talked to you, then you said, well, hold your horses, because well, that's my paraphrase.
Just wait a minute, because this is going to be a long, hard fight.
And nobody really knows what they're doing.
And there are a lot of opposing sides and allied sides and a lot of tough rows to basically, a lot of turmoil before we see the rights of man take hold in the Middle East as a governing philosophy.
Sure, yeah.
But I think that, I mean, I'm afraid that's turned out to be all too correct.
You know, I think a lot of media was pretty, foreign media was pretty naive in thinking that this was going to be a new sort of velvet revolution, like sort of Czechoslovakia, whenever it was 1989.
And, you know, we have sort of Egypt, Libya, anarchy, Egypt, the army back in control, having shot about 1000 people.
You know, in most of these countries, things are worse than they were.
But maybe, you know, the story isn't over yet.
The revolutions have long periods when they seem to go backwards, suddenly they go forwards again.
But just at this moment, the situation doesn't look too good.
Yeah.
Well, it seems like and I don't want to build it up too much.
But it seems like the possible nuclear deal with Iran could really be a big thing.
And I saw where the Saudi King said something along the lines or, you know, the foreign minister said, you know, yeah, maybe that would be all right.
And it seems like that could really be perhaps a possible first step toward nipping the Sunni Shia Arab civil war in the bud rather than just, you know, seeing this go on as a proxy war between Saudi and Iran from now on.
Yeah, I think the Saudis on the one hand, their main sort of priority is opposing Iran.
On the other hand, the maybe they think maybe we can do a deal, you know, I never quite understood why they're so worried about the Shia of Iran, because, you know, the Shia can really only be a factor whether in countries where there are a lot of Shia, there are only about four of them.
Almost all the Muslim countries in the world I have at least, you know, certainly 90% of them, about 1.6 billion in the world, 90% of them are Sunni and the Shia aren't going to make any headway in countries where they're dominant.
Right?
Yeah, the Saudis don't have too much to lose.
I don't think.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
It's great.
Talk to you as always, Patrick.
I really appreciate it.
No, don't.
Thank you.
All right.
That's the great Patrick Coburn, author of Muqtada and foreign correspondent, Middle East correspondent for the independent.co.uk.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here to talk to you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State, The Cold War Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex and the Power Elite.
In the book, Swanson explains what the revolution was, the rise of empire and the permanent military economy, and all from a free market libertarian perspective.
Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of the Future Freedom Foundation, says the book is absolutely awesome and that Swanson's perspectives on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis are among the best I've read.
The poll numbers state that people agree on one thing.
It's that America is on the wrong track.
In The War State, Swanson gets to the bottom of what's ailing our society, empire, the permanent national security bureaucracy that runs it, and the mountain of debt that has enabled our descent down this dark road.
The War State could well be the book that finally brings this reality to the level of mainstream consensus.
America can be saved from its government and its arms dealers.
First, get the facts.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson, available at your local bookseller and Amazon.com, or just click on the book in the right margin at ScottHorton.org.
Fourth Amendment violations need massive computers and the water to cool them.
That water is being supplied by the state of Utah.
Fact.
There's absolutely nothing in the Constitution which requires your state to help the feds violate your rights.
Our message to Utah?
Turn.
It.
Off.
No water equals no NSA data center.
Visit offnow.org.
Why does the U.S. support the tortured dictatorship in Egypt?
Because that's what Israel wants.
Why can't America make peace with Iran?
Because that's not what Israel wants.
And why do we veto every attempt to shut down illegal settlements on the West Bank?
Because it's what Israel wants.
Seeing a pattern here?
Sick of it yet?
It's time to put America first.
Support the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and push back against the Israel lobby and their sock puppets in Washington, D.C.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.you