01/12/16 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

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Introducing Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent in Britain.
That's independent.co.uk.
And he's the author of a whole bunch of books, most recently, The Rise of Islamic State.
Welcome back.
How are you, sir?
I'm fine, thanks.
Good, good.
Really appreciate you joining us again on the show here.
Sorry about the delay.
Yeah, no problem at all.
Very important piece that you wrote here at The Independent.
The Arab Spring began in hope, but ended in desolation.
And I remember well you advising us on the show back in 2011 that, well, this is possibly the start of something, but it's going to be a really tough row to hoe.
And you really do a pretty good job of kind of taking us through, geographically speaking, kind of through the Arab Spring and what the results have shaken up to be.
And you say that there's at least one partial success that can be attributed to the Arab Spring revolutions.
Is that right?
Yeah, Tunisia.
There's still something surviving their elections there.
Everywhere else, it's not just sort of failed, but it's been a calamity, you know, that Syria is torn apart by war, more than half the population are refugees or displaced, a quarter of a billion dead.
Libya has broken up, is run by these warlords and militias.
Yemen caught up in being attacked by Saudi Arabia, civil war.
Bahrain, the monarchy, the Sunni monarchy, crushed the rebellion very brutally, a lot of people tortured, and is now even more of an authoritarian state than it was in 2011 when this started.
Bahrain has a Sunni monarchy but a Shia majority, they're more oppressed than they were.
And Egypt, of course, which was the most important country where you had what was described as Arab Spring, great hopes, Mubarak goes.
But they never really took over the levers of power, and when there was an election, it was won by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Eventually, the army comes back and now is more authoritarian than ever before.
So, a disastrous run, with the possible exception of Tunisia.
Incredible.
All right, well, so going back to Tunisia there, that's where it started when this young man, I forget his name now, I had learned it there for a while, set himself on fire in frustration over the regulators closing down his vegetable stand.
And there had been, and actually, we should mention Chelsea Manning and the role of the WikiLeaks revelations here in the run-up to it, where in the fall of 2010, all these WikiLeaks cables came out, and some of them described the corruption of the Ben Ali regime in such detail.
And this had become a major controversy in the media in Tunisia in the weeks leading up to this man's self-immolation and then the riots that spread from there and the revolution.
So, for people to go back and try to remember how it was at that time.
So, I guess I'd ask you, if you could, to give us a bit of a thumbnail sketch of how things have developed since then.
I think I remember reading that the Islamists had won an election, but then they'd lost one, and they stepped down from power and let the more left faction come to power in the kind of typical Western democratic way.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I mean, this is the one place where the democratic change seemed to stick.
Why did it work out that way?
Or let's say, why did it not work out that way the other places?
I think in most of these places, like Libya, Egypt, there was a certain wishful thinking, self-deception in the West about who was rising up.
They were always more Islamist than they appeared on the television screens.
There was always more of a civil war that people bore in mind, kept in mind.
Things like Tahrir Square in Cairo were kind of designed for television.
It was a very sort of media-friendly revolution, and everybody talked about the great influence of the social media and so forth.
But at the end of the day, the army remained in power, I mean, potentially in power.
The newspapers, the television still remained under control of the old regime.
And for about a year, they were intimidated by what had happened.
But gradually, they realized that the uprising was very disparate, didn't really know what they were going to do.
The Muslim Brotherhood sort of didn't really want to change the state.
They wanted to take over the state.
They wanted a kind of the same state, but this time it would be operating in a more Islamist way and under the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It didn't work.
They're all in jail now.
Yeah, the ones who are still alive, right?
Sure, yeah.
There was a great hypocrisy about this too, because who was supporting these uprisings in Libya and Syria were countries like Qatar, you know, with the Gulf monarchies.
That's where the money was coming to pay the salaries for the rebel fighters.
It was always absurd to think that you were going to have a secular democratic revolution in Syria that was somehow going to be supported and funded by countries that were absolute monarchies, not only absolute monarchies, but were theocratic.
They had particularly regressive religious beliefs.
So there was a great hypocrisy in the West of thinking, I think, that you could have a revolution with that sort of support behind.
And of course, on the contrary, they backed the most Islamist and often the most jihadi groups who were trying to overthrow the state.
Yeah, now, so in Libya, it seemed like, well, you could contrast it with Bahrain, for example.
In fact, I think David Gregory or one of these hacks asked Admiral Mike Mullen at the time, well, what's the difference between Libya, where we're helping the rebels overthrow the government, and Bahrain, where we're allied with the king who's crushing the rebellion?
And Admiral Mullen said, well, Bahrain is our ally.
In other words, hey, we stationed our fifth fleet there, so shrug.
Yeah, I mean, that's the way it was.
I think even from their own self-interest, you know, the Western powers, the U.S., Britain, and the others, they thought, get rid of these people who don't have been opponents of our foreign policy.
Noticeably, they're not.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Patrick, are you there?
Yeah, you're cutting out on us.
Well, we're going to break anyway.
We'll be right back, y'all, with Patrick Coburn.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Well, if you've got to have technical difficulties, right at the break is good timing for them, I say.
We've got Patrick Coburn on the telephone line now here.
We're talking about the Arab Spring and this great piece that he wrote for The Independent.
You can also find it at UNZ.com.
The Arab Spring began in hope but ended in desolation.
And I guess at the break we're talking about how America took the side of the king in Bahrain while they took the side of the revolution in Libya.
And the reason why it had nothing to do with democracy or anything like that is just American national interest.
Right, Patrick?
Of course, that's the way they looked at it.
But, you know, when you look what the outcome was, you know, was it in their interest that Libya eventually disintegrated after Gaddafi?
You know, that it's been self-deception to think that the anti-Gaddafi forces could take over?
You know, one thing to keep in mind about...
I always keep in mind about Libya was that when the rebels...their transitional government turned up in Tripoli and after Gaddafi had been pushed out, their first proposal was the abolition of the laws banning polygamy.
Right, and awarding a medal to John McCain.
Yeah.
It's...
So, I mean, that's the kind of guys they were, really.
I mean, it's...
You know, there were a lot of good people there and, as well, that gave me sort of the flavor of what was happening.
Now, it's just, what was this in the interest of the U.S. or anybody else, was it?
I mean, none of the Europeans, because now, people from West Africa who used to work in Libya, they were getting on leaky sinking boats and trying to make it to Italy to try and emigrate to Europe.
You know, the same thing has happened in Syria.
These old countries are also the breeding ground of Islamic states.
So, you know, they kind of acted in there what they imagined with their own best interest to get rid of the governments that were sort of, I guess, opposed to their interests, but not very vigorously, and what they've got is a real disaster instead.
What always strikes me about this is nobody is blamed for it, you know?
You know, Hillary Clinton is blamed, you know, for what she did or did not do in Benghazi, but the overall disaster of American and European policy in Libya is very seldom brought up, so far as I know.
Likewise, in Syria.
Likewise, you know, in what we don't even know where Yemen is, you know?
These have been disasters for the people there, but also disasters which or the ripples for which reach Europe and eventually reach the United States.
Well, no end in sight either.
And, yeah, I mean, it is amazing, the narrative in America still.
John McCain put out a statement today saying, basically shaming Obama for not doing more in Syria to get rid of Bashar al-Assad back years ago.
And, you know, there is no follow-up question, Patrick, that goes, well, Mr. Senator, but who would rule Damascus now?
They don't have to think that far ahead.
They just say, should have done more.
That's all.
Yeah, well, I remember John McCain in 2007 in Baghdad walking down a street in front of a television camera saying how U.S. had trapped in Iraq and here was this safe street which is perfectly safe without revealing he was wearing body armor under his clothes, you know.
Of course, most Iraqis don't have the money to buy body armor.
You know, so there's a big element of hypocrisy in this.
Yeah, he was also surrounded by an entire battalion and Apache helicopters and everything else at the time, too.
Yeah.
Put a Roman emperor to shame.
Yeah, but, man, it's kind of really crazy, this business of, if we get rid of Assad, we got rid of Assad, then, you know, the Madrids would have taken over.
What Madrids?
They were never there.
Well, these believers in Madrid, you know, the Syrian Madrids, the question to ask them is, you know, if they believe in these guys that are very Madrid and they're powerful in Syria, why don't they go and visit them in Syria?
And they never do.
And the reason is, of course, they know they'd end up in the boot of a car pretty soon and shortly afterwards, you know, they'd be held hostage for money, you know, and probably end up in jump suits having their heads chopped off, you know.
So it's very telling that the advocates of the Syrian Madrids make very sure that, you know, they'll interview them outside Syria, they'll talk to them on the phone alongside, but they don't actually visit these powerful people in Syria because they know it's funny.
Indeed.
All right, now, so there was a little bit of an Arab Spring uprising in 2011 in the Shia part of the, I guess, what you'd call the northeast of Saudi Arabia there, where most of the oil is.
But I wonder, and I don't guess there was much of an uprising among the rest of the majority Sunni population there, or Wahhabi population, whatever it is, but no one ever really talks about this, Patrick.
How stable do you think the Saudi kingdom is?
Well, you know, there's an enormous change from then to now.
What's above all is the price of oil.
You know, we're looking now at, what's the price of oil?
It's about $31 now.
You know, maybe we're looking at oil at $20 a barrel.
Now, that's, you know, what stabilizes Saudi Arabia and the oil states.
They can pay everybody in.
You don't have the money.
You can't do that.
You get destabilized.
You know, a place like Iraq.
You know, I remember a former minister telling me, you know, the one time he'd seen the Iraqi cabinet panic is when the price of oil went down.
But then it was going down to about $50.
Now it's down to $30.
So there are people, you know, there are chunks of the population just haven't received their salary.
You know, after the cut is done, you know, you get a taxi in Arbil, the capital.
You know, there's two things about the taxi drivers.
One, they don't know where anything is.
And secondly, that they're wearing manila trousers of military fatigue, the reason is that they're soldiers who haven't been paid.
They're trying to make some money driving a taxi to feed their families.
Well, you know, that's one of the reasons also they're appealing now.
You know, that's why I think they executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, this Shia cleric.
They've executed a lot of other people that are accused of being jihadis.
I mean, since the court system is completely unfair, we don't know what they were, but, did.
But, you know, I think that revving up anti-Iranian, anti-Shia feeling among a certain majority in Saudi Arabia is partly to make people forget, you know, that the week before these executions, they had an austerity budget that suddenly Saudi's having to pay more.
You know, in these countries, you had a kind of social contract where the elite monopolized political power.
There was no political liberty.
They took a great deal of the money, but a certain amount went out into government jobs and controlling prices and low prices for fuel and didn't pay for education.
But when they don't have the money to pay that, then you have people begin to get really angry when they notice that what money there is is being stolen by the elite.
Right.
Yeah, it's very interesting the way you say that in this article here, where, you know, they can start to talk about, oh yeah, let's have free market this or that, but in fact, they have a system that's so rigged that you start so-called privatizing the, you know, services at the very lowest level.
What you're really doing is you have a system of patronage where the most of the people with the least are all being kicked off the dole while the kings and their friends make even more than ever before.
Very self-defeating policy over the long term.
There, sounds like.
Yeah, this is one of the things that happened in Syria.
It's not brought up very much, but, you know, neoliberal economics.
Originally, you had the Ba'ath Party under Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, and very authoritarian, very brutal, but, you know, there was a sort of social contract that people, you know, prices were controlled and low.
It was very cheap to live there.
People would get, you know, a lot of things from the state.
They get jobs from the state.
You have neoliberal economics coming in.
In a country where there's no accountability, where there's no, where the legal system is wholly corrupt, and this just becomes a license to plunder by those with political power, those around, those at the top.
Right.
Well, and I guess we're out of time for this, but maybe I'll ask you one thing here real quick at the end.
People say, and you may have actually taught me this years ago, too, actually, Patrick, now that I think about it, that the Turks shutting off the, I forget if it was the Tigris or the Euphrates, I guess the Euphrates, that they had built a new dam and they were kind of putting all kinds of new pressure on the Iraqis and the Syrians as well, and then plus they had some drought.
There's some who say, oh, global warming, this and that, and that this is a big part of it, that everybody's farm went fallow, so they all moved to the cities, but they just moved to the ghettos.
They have nothing to do except fight.
Yeah, I mean, you have, I mean, people in, who arrived and lived in some slum areas of cities and they're these, you know, openly the hardcore for the rebel opposition now.
Also, you know, the way it wasn't just global warming, but such borders there was, you know, it was often corrupt government officials would over-exploit water, digging wells everywhere, you know, would then sell all the water or use it on their own land.
So, yeah, I mean, that sort of, you know, this type of free market economics, you know, it's done too great in Europe or the U.S., it increases inequality.
But, in countries like Syria and Libya and other places like that, they, you know, it's, it puts an unbearable pressure on the mass of the population.
All right, well, it's been a pretty long and ugly five years, but as you say, there's a little bit of silver lining at least there in Tunisia.
And, you know, I have to think that at least in Egypt, the lesson has been learned that when and if they get their act together, they can overthrow their military dictatorship.
And that's, you know, the biggest, most important country in the Middle East right there.
Just how much power they have when they act together.
Yeah, I mean, it's, there's truth in that, but it's also true that the people who have power have also learned the lesson.
Which is, anybody gets out in line, you know, you torture them or you shoot them or you put them in prison.
Yeah.
You know, when there are local student elections and suddenly people who are against their being run by those who have power as opposed to those who don't.
Right.
Yeah, and of course all the Muslim Brotherhood guys have learned the lesson that, geez, I guess Zawahiri was right and we just have to fight after all instead of standing for election because why bother?
Yeah, a lot of them are living that way.
And of course you know, this is also a sort of tremendously impoverished country.
You know, the population living maybe two dollars a day and maybe getting money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
But, you know, as we were saying, those countries don't have much money, don't have the kind of money now that they had previously.
You know, Saudi Arabia had to pay all its bills and needs and it's a hundred and four dollars a barrel, you know, it's thirty dollars a barrel.
They got the reserves but they're going down.
Right.
Alright, well I've kept you over time here, Patrick.
Sorry about that.
I'll let you go now but I sure do appreciate all your work on this and coming on my show all the time the way you do.
As always.
Alright, so that is the great Patrick Coburn from The Independent.
The book is Rise of Islamic State.
It's available on that's unzunz.com and we'll see you all tomorrow.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
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