10/10/13 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay, next up on the show is the great Patrick Coburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
And also, of course, he writes for his brother's old counterpunch.org.
Welcome back to the show, Patrick.
How are you doing?
Pretty good, thanks.
I appreciate you joining us today.
And boy, do I appreciate the journalism you've been cranking out over the last few weeks.
Took a trip to the Middle East, did you?
I was in Syria for a bit, yeah.
Well, and you wrote an article about lawlessness and ruin in Libya that, seen first person there.
Yeah, I mean, I've always been amazed by, over the last two and a half years, how the sort of the fall of Gaddafi was portrayed as black hats against white hats against good against bad, and then completely abandoned by the media just at the moment when Libya was sinking into sort of complete anarchy and gunmen and militias were taking over the country.
Well, but now it seems that they've stopped ignoring it, and maybe they would have preferred it back when they were ignoring it.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, there are not many countries where you can sort of kidnap the prime minister without a shot being fired, and then sort of release him without anybody explaining what had happened.
But you know, it's really, but it's the tip of the iceberg, or it's the moment then what's been happening in Libya suddenly becomes apparent to the rest of the world.
I mean, I don't think outside the oil markets are made, but people noticed over the summer that Libya had stopped exporting oil because militiamen had taken over the oil ports, the oil terminals, and were demanding to be paid off before they'd let any oil there be exported.
In fact, they tried to steal some of the oil and transport it to oil tankers themselves.
So, you know, a general anarchy both in Tripoli and Benghazi, a couple of tribes were fighting it out near Tripoli International Airport without anybody paying much attention in Benghazi, there being a series of assassinations.
There was a protest against the Islamic militias there outside their barracks, and they opened fire and killed 31 people.
All this seems to have, you know, it's very much on the margins of media reporting and reporting from media, you know, that was cramming the hotels in Benghazi and Tripoli two years ago.
Well, and of course, you know, if they were paying attention to it, like I was trying to get at there, if they weren't paying attention to it, it would just be to come up with new excuses to intervene further.
Uh-oh, there are bad guys that we have to fight there now.
Can't let, as we tried to warn them, that, oh, well, you know, here we go, we can't let the guys we're fighting for win, so now we're going to have to intervene even further.
I guess I prefer they just ignore it and let them settle it themselves if they can.
Yeah, I mean, you know, that these sort of, these, you know, if you take the four, you know, big interventions, military interventions post 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, you know, they've all sort of been pretty unhappy, both for those who intervened and for the people in the country.
In these countries, I mean, all these interventions were justified for humanitarian reasons.
We were meant to be helping them, you know, but look at them now.
You know, Iraq, a thousand civilians a month are being killed in Afghanistan.
The war goes on.
Syria, pretty bad.
And Libya, the one that was meant to be the great success, you know, is turning out to be an almost equal disaster.
Well, now you mentioned the kidnapping and then the subsequent release, which is happy news, I guess, of the prime minister there.
But that makes me wonder, what form of a government do they have there at all?
I mean, are we talking about a bunch of like in Somalia where the government was just some exiles in a hotel lobby?
Or is there such a thing as a government of Libya?
Well, there sort of is and sort of isn't, you know, there are people who are ministers and so forth.
Unlike Somalia, there's money because their oil or their exporting oil, there was money.
But it's getting sort of more and more powers sort of held by different people outside the government.
The government had this idea of bringing the militias under control by bringing them into the interior ministry and they would be paid by the government.
But actually, the guys who kidnapped the prime minister this morning seem to be working for the interior ministry and to be paid by the Libyan government.
The same is true of the Libyan shield, the people who were machine gunned protesters in Benghazi, who I just mentioned.
They just wanted their paychecks or what?
Power, you know, kind of power without responsibility.
I think they were getting their paychecks, so they wanted more money, you know.
They sort of, you know, these militias tend to start off, you know, being kind of, you know, defensive for their community.
Often they fight very heroically, you know.
But as time goes on, they're just sort of guys with guns and they very easily turn into racketeers and running protection and then intervening in politics and so forth.
The Parliament building was besieged a couple of months ago.
So the actual nominal government really doesn't have much authority.
And what authority it does have really depends on its relationship with these different militias.
What do you make of the Delta Force raid to arrest this guy who was indicted for participating in the embassy bombings of 1998?
Well, I think, you know, let's put it up in light that Libya doesn't really exist as a sovereign state, you know, governments that can't protect people within their own country.
Let's leave aside what he was accused of, you know.
Governments that can't protect people just sort of landing and abducting people, you know, lose most of their legitimacy.
You know, it's rather extraordinary that the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, should say, you know, this guy, they can run, but they can't hide.
You know, this guy wasn't even trying to hide.
He was living in the family house.
You know, he returned there.
But, you know, leave aside.
And he's been free for 15 years.
Been 15 years.
You know, there were actually people who previously held him with the Iranians, you know.
But, you know, it seems very unclear that there was much evidence against this guy.
But, you know, let's just focus on the fact that, you know, there is somebody living in their family house in Tripoli and the Delta Force, you know, the U.S. can simply land, you know, and seize him.
I mean, this is an abrogation of the sovereignty of any country.
Then to openly say, well, the government sort of quietly said we could go ahead, you know, disgrace the government.
The government isn't doing its primary job.
And, you know, I think it was sort of not really made it much into the national media that people like the Mufti, the sort of supreme religious authority in Libya, had condemned this.
Even the U.N. mission in Libya had condemned it.
Because how can you have a sort of sovereign state when that sort of thing goes on?
Couldn't they have just had him arrested?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Probably not, actually, because, you know, these sort of Islamic groups that which he was a member of, you know, had some sort of relation with al-Qaeda, the fighting group in the 90s.
But these are the guys who sort of also overthrew Gaddafi, you know.
So, you know, it also brings to the fore, you know, this sort of contradictory policy.
On the one hand, we were going to get rid of Gaddafi, this monster who's oppressing the people.
But on the other hand, the guys who did the, who got the most effective on the ground in Libya and getting rid of Gaddafi are people who were, you know, Islamists, like the guy who was picked up in Tripoli.
You know, he was fighting to the west of Tripoli against Gaddafi.
So, of course, they're a lot like him, you know, and a lot of these others who are important to the militias in Libya were changing their pictures on their Facebook to al-Libi, to the guy who was picked up, you know, so there's a lot of sympathy for him.
So I'm not sure they could ever arrest him.
But, you know, by just simply launching a raid, that discredits and weakens any government it puts up in light, because it's a failed state.
Hmm.
Well, and it's a fake state even, it's not even from World War One, it's just from World War Two, right?
Libya.
Yeah, well, yeah, I think I don't really go with that argument.
You know, it's in a sense all governments, all states, you know, have been added to by war.
They've been put together out of this and that, you know, but there are people who feel they're Libyan, you know.
So it's not exactly a fake, you know, any more than Iraq is fake.
You could say that, you know, these were not very, the people were put together, didn't like each other much.
But, you know, states have legitimacy because they're recognized internationally.
Yeah, and I mean, I guess there you have to have some degree of consent of the government and people seeing themselves as part of the same society together and that kind of thing, right?
Sure, yeah.
But, you know, I think that, you know, countries that, places like Pakistan, you know, where the U.S. regularly uses drones within Pakistan against Taliban and others allegedly connected to al-Qaida and so forth, and the Pakistan government sort of denounced it, but at the same time it's very well known and sort of given permission for it to happen.
But, you know, this actually does an awful lot to discredit and reduce the legitimacy of the Pakistan government, particularly the civilian government, that they're sort of two-timing on this.
It doesn't mean that Pakistan is going to have much respect for their government, although the government may think, you know, that's this kind of a smart thing to do.
You keep in with the U.S., but you sort of denounce them at the same time.
It doesn't really doesn't work.
Well, now, so as far as Libya goes, do you think we're going to see more and more interventions like this Special Forces raid, or even worse, training up an army?
I sort of do.
I mean, the other thing about this kind of raid is, you know, you get the guys who aren't trying, who actually aren't trying to hide too much, you know, you don't get the guys who, you know, are really tough operatives.
You know, so this guy is an operative for al-Qaida.
What's he doing?
Sitting in his family house and driving around like anybody else.
You know, the same argument could be over, you know, the assassination of scientists and others in Tehran.
You know, it's sort of implied by Israel and the others that these are really, you know, these are the sort of J. Robert Oppenheimer of the Iranian nuclear program.
But guys who are really important have bodyguards.
You know, they don't drive around in their own cars.
They take different routes.
They, you know, they have safe houses and so forth.
So I think all this boasting by Kerry and by the administration in Washington about getting these guys, you know, is actually, you know, it's baloney.
The guys are really important on sitting in their family house.
Yeah.
Well, but now again, do you expect more of that, though, from the Americans?
Well, you know, there's a political domestic political imperative to go after al-Qaida.
You know, there is an enthusiasm, Moronix, post 9-11 in the U.S. and as I understand it, you know, to go after al-Qaida in a way that there isn't to get involved in wars in Syria or Iraq or elsewhere.
You know, the justification for Afghanistan was meant to be the presence of al-Qaida, although they were all in Pakistan.
They weren't in Afghanistan.
The reason al-Qaida was brought up was that there was public support for intervention if it was targeting al-Qaida.
So I think those domestic political incentives will go on.
It's a popular thing to do.
It's doable.
It's saleable, you know.
And the administration can grandstand and say, look, we got out another of these al-Qaida guys.
You know, they also sort of treat al-Qaida as though it was the size of the Pentagon.
You know, we brought out the deputy operations commander, you know, a few hundred guys.
And, you know, where al-Qaida really counts is in Iraq and Syria, which they're very serious organizations.
But actually they're directed more against the Shia, entirely against the Shia Muslims and not against the U.S.
That's the big difference.
Right.
Well, and by the way, I've kind of gotten in the habit and maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but I've basically been referring to any Libyan or Syrian veterans of the Iraq war who fought against the American occupation there on the side of the Sunni-based insurgency as al-Qaida, as though anybody basically who was a Saudi, a Libyan, a Syrian who went to Iraq to fight in that thing was a member of al-Qaida in Iraq or the so-called Islamic State, fought with the Zarqawiites.
Is that an oversimplification or that pretty much is how?
Well, you know, it's something that's good enough to get on with.
Generally, the means by which Libyans went to Iraq, these were sort of al-Qaida type connections and money and safe houses and so forth.
On the other hand, Zarqawi's outfit was, you know, initially not connected to al-Qaida at all.
It was actually even more extreme than al-Qaida and, as I said, was directed more against the Shia Muslims of Iraq and elsewhere than it was directed against the U.S. or the U.K.
Yeah, it wasn't even though Colin Powell had used Zarqawi as the bogus link between Osama and Saddam, he in fact was wanted by Saddam and had told Osama no and didn't declare loyalty to Osama until the end of 2004, almost two years into the war.
Yeah, and also one of the deceptive things about this was saying he was in Iraq.
Yeah, he was in Iraq and a bit controlled by the Kurds, where Saddam's rule did not run.
And he was there for a very good reason.
He would have been arrested by Saddam if he'd been in the other part of Iraq.
So he's on this mountainous part of Iraq, above Kurdistan, not so far from Halabja, and well outside the zone of control of Saddam Hussein.
Well, and it ended up being well reported even by NBC News and others that the Pentagon had actually begged George Bush to let them go to Kurdistan and kill him before the war so that he would not be on the loose after the fall of Baghdad.
And Bush refused to allow them to do it because he needed his excuse.
Yeah, I think, you know, once you get involved in this sort of thing, you know, this pretense that there was a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam, you know, I remember a big piece in The New Yorker with lots of evidence and what looked like convincing evidence.
But actually, it was it was it was nonsense.
They'd found some guy who was a prisoner with the Kurds who said, yeah, he'd been to Kandahar and he'd talked to al-Qaeda and he'd talked to people from the Iraqi government.
But it turned out he couldn't describe what what Kandahar looked like.
You know, frankly, if I was in a Kurdish prison, I'd promise anybody anything.
But, you know, this was put forward as a justification for the war and for a time was very influential.
Yeah.
Well, and that's really the root of all of this.
I mean, obviously, history goes way, way back and everything.
But the root of all evil in the 21st century is the invasion of Iraq, which destabilized every country in the region and said about, you know, well, we're talking about Libya and Syria here.
These wars are a direct consequence of the invasion of Iraq.
Yeah, I think so.
And they're somewhat similar, all these these four wars, you know, and have had a rather similar and disastrous outcome.
I might also say that the media reporting has always been rather similar.
You know, it's been lots of stuff about, you know, the the firefights and so forth.
Not much about the politics and really not much interest about what happened when a foreign intervention goes away.
You know, it's sort of a couple of years ago, even to this day, you know, Iraq is written about as if, you know, nothing much was happening there.
But in fact, this is a country still riven by civil war in Libya until the last 24 hours.
You know, people weren't acceptable over the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, you know, didn't really get much mention in the media.
The fact the whole place was in an uproar, it wasn't exporting oil, the militias were ruling the streets really scarcely got a mention.
Right.
Yeah, the context was like a Richard Nixon limited hangout, the context of what are the Mujahideen doing running around Benghazi at will in the first place wasn't being asked at all.
Sure, you know, it was very inadequately reported when I was outside Benghazi in 2011, you know, and there were a million on the front line.
I think there were more journalists and camera crews than there were militia men, you know, but the main danger was getting run over by these militia pickup trucks with a heavy machine gun in the back, you know, a shell would go off in the distance and they'd suddenly slam on the accelerator and, you know, you had to jump out of the way.
This wasn't, you know, what destroyed Gaddafi was NATO intervention, which means the US, UK and France.
So, you know, you had a takeover by these militias and often these were brave and committed guys.
But, you know, it wasn't the reason Gaddafi fell.
So there was a great political vacuum there that the militias and political opposition have turned out to be completely incapable of filling.
Now, on the Syria deal, as far as the chemical weapons, you've been reporting in the Independent and you've been explaining on this radio show all along since the Syrian war broke out that there are no indications as of yet that the Assad government is anywhere near collapse.
He is winning and I guess all things being equal would win, depending, I guess, on the levels of foreign intervention against him.
But my question is, with the deal over the chemical weapons being what it is, does that mean that, in effect, the Americans are backing off of the policy of regime change and they're telling Assad that he can stay because he's got to be the one to give them the weapons?
And so far, they're saying that he's doing a real good job of giving up everything.
Isn't that an interesting change of tone by Kerry?
Yeah, I think that, you know, what's happened is that the US previously and its allies was its objective was, you know, getting rid of Assad.
Now its objective is getting rid of his chemical weapons, which is a big change, you know, and something that is kind of distressing for the opposition, the Syrian opposition.
You know, why did it change?
Well, I think, you know, use of chemical weapons.
And by the way, I really do think that it was Assad who used those chemical weapons.
I mean, maybe not personally, but I think the only people who could have used it would be the Syrian armed forces.
But, you know, then suddenly the US was in a position, did they actually really want to overthrow Assad?
And I think when they looked at the opposition and they looked at, you know, these al-Qaeda linked groups that would have taken power or taken a large share of power in Damascus if Assad went, they thought, well, no, we prefer Assad.
And, you know, that's made a real change in the situation.
I don't think Assad was going to go down before, but I don't think he was, you know, because it was a genuine stalemate to a degree.
It still is.
You know, it's still it's a measure of the weakness or strength of both sides that you have Damascus with government and rebel held districts, with neither able to push the other side out to a genuine stalemate.
And the only real way of dealing with this, I think, is to have at least a cease negotiations of at least a ceasefire on both sides.
They're very dependent on outside support and getting a ceasefire, reducing the level of violence.
And then you might be able to have some talks.
But you kind of need to do that.
And I mean, ceasefires are good simply because less firing, less dead bodies.
You'll say, oh, but no, but the ceasefire, lots of people are still shooting.
Yeah, but a lot of people are not shooting.
I think in Lebanon during the civil war, I think somebody, a friend of mine worked out, we had about six hundred and forty seven ceasefires and everybody sort of laughed at them.
But actually you went out on the street and there was a ceasefire and you didn't when there was no ceasefire.
Well, yeah, I guess you got to just keep trying.
But now.
So, I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is they've already achieved the state in Syria that they have in Iraq, too, which is stalemate, but still with violence.
Right.
Where the Sunnis can't retake Baghdad, but the Shiite government, America and Iran installed in Baghdad, can't really conquer and really rule over the Anbar province either.
And I think you report and talked about on the show about how many of them were withdrawing from even the pretense of occupying the Sunni areas of Iraq.
And then.
So I wonder whether, I mean, is it the case we're already looking at a new state being drawn or at least the dissolution of the former states of Iraq and Syria?
But an area certainly where the states nominally in charge don't have any authority.
I mean, this is wholly true of northeast and northern Syria, although there's an area where the Kurds have taken over, who are also fighting on us around the Free Syrian Army.
In Iraq, yeah, the government still has control to a degree of some of these areas, but it's sort of it's limited.
You know, it's sort of it's more tenuous than it was.
They have garrisons.
The Iraqi army is real big, but their control is much less than it was in all these Sunni areas.
So, OK, overall, looking back a couple of years, you know, with the I mean, we haven't had a chance to talk about Egypt, obviously, and time is short.
But I guess overall, can you tell us your kind of general appraisal of the Arab Spring and America and Saudi Arabia's counterrevolution against it and how things are shaken out?
Because a lot of hopes were raised pretty high, you know?
Sure.
Yeah, it's been pretty disappointing, you know, I think, perhaps particularly Egypt, because there I thought they stood a better chance of something.
It didn't have quite the same tradition of violence as Iraq or Syria, because quite developed, you know, and there, you know, so you have the sort of intelligence and the others uniting with the army to get rid of a government of Muslim brothers who, you know, had been elected.
People, they keep saying, you know, with large crowds assembled, you know, that were against it.
But, you know, elections are elections.
And so I think that, you know, it's all gone sour.
That's sort of basically the counterrevolution has done pretty well in these places.
But it's not sort of over.
It hasn't sort of settled things either.
That's why, you know, I think we're looking forward to a sort of era of war.
So I don't know if it's going to be a 30 years war, which reminds me of the Lebanese civil war, which went on for 15 years.
Disaster.
Well, yeah, I remember you said back then at the beginning of 2011 that, you know, any real progress along these lines is going to take a long, long time to sort themselves out.
Yeah.
One of the problems is, I think, the way the media reported it is sort of, you know, somehow you've powered or gone to the people, you know, like sort of May 68 in Paris and so forth in Tahrir Square.
It hadn't.
The army was still a predominant force in the predominant force there.
Look, I guess we're getting to the end of that.
And I hear you.
Go ahead.
Thank you very much, Patrick.
Appreciate it.
That's a great Patrick Coburn, everybody from the London Independent.
And we do have to go.
I was actually going to keep him overtime a little bit because I got so many more questions, but his phone is ringing and taxi theme songs playing.
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