Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked You've been took You've been hoodwinked These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them We be on CNN like say our names, been saying, saying three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion All right, you guys, introducing the great Patrick Coburn, he is Middle East correspondent for The Independent and he's the author of a lot of books, the latest being The Age of Jihad and Chaos and Caliphate and his latest for The Independent is called The Major Uprising in Basra and Southern Iraq is what the world should be worrying about now in the Middle East.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing Patrick?
I'm doing good.
Good to be back Great to have you here and great to have you paying attention to what's going on in Iraq for us.
So in Southern Iraq, this is in the predominantly Shiite part of the country, these are supposedly the people or at least their political factions are the ones that control the government and as opposed to the Sunnis who are really on the outs as we've seen and yet there's major discontent down here in Basra.
There have been protests for months and it's getting worse.
So tell us all about it, please Yeah, well, I wrote it because you know, there's lots of attention given what's happening in Syria these days, but Iraq has kind of fallen off the map.
This happens every so often.
I remember in 2014 people had kind of stopped reporting in Iraq until ISIS captured Mosul.
And now this has kind of happened again.
So we've got these very major protests, the biggest in Iraq for years.
I can't remember how many of them.
It's like this in which people in Basra, about two million people in the surrounding areas, all Shia, have finally decided that you know, they sit in the middle of this enormous oil wealth.
70% of Iraq's oil is around Basra and they can't get electricity.
The drinking water suddenly was always bad.
It's gotten worse.
People have been about 15,000 gone to hospital because they can't get clean drinking water.
It mixes with the sewage and the bacteria that cause illness.
There's a prospect of a cholera epidemic.
So they took to the streets.
They burned a lot of government buildings.
They burned the Iranian consulate because they see Iran as being behind a lot of the local militias, which sort of often act as enforcers for the oil companies there.
But you know, what's what's good about this is this is not an sectarian uprising.
It's an uprising of people who are Shia against a Shia ruling elite who they think are basically kleptocrats who are looting the country, which is sort of true, and are also completely dysfunctional.
You know, they had 15 years to hundreds of billions of dollars and they haven't managed to provide a clean water taps in Basra.
So people are furious about that.
You know, if this was a few years back and the Arab Spring, you know, the international media would be all over this.
But so far at least they've ignored it.
But actually it's a quite optimistic thing.
You know, people are demanding their rights.
This is not a sectarian democracy.
Yeah, well, and the price of oil is back up, not to its high, but it's still back up quite a bit.
And so it does raise the question of where is all this money going?
Because it seems like, you know, a lot of what you talk about is some pretty basic infrastructure that could be done for a few tens of millions of dollars and then get it done, right?
Yeah, I think there are a couple of reasons, or actually there are quite a lot of reasons, but two I'd like to highlight.
One is, you know, in Iraq you have a sort of corruption.
You have corruption in all the oil states.
In fact, you have in most countries in the world.
But, you know, in a place like Lebanon, guys might be appointed to a job because, you know, they're a Christian or Sunni or something like that.
In some other countries they, you know, because they're the right relative.
But they take a rake off.
But, you know, at the end of the day, a road or a bridge might be built.
In Iraq, that doesn't happen.
You know, the rake off is the whole lot.
You know, there's nothing there.
There's no road.
There's no bridge.
Iraqi corruption is particularly total.
The other thing is that all the oil states tend to be a bit like that.
You know, you have a corruption at the top.
And you have quite a lot of people plugged in.
In Iraq, about four and a half million people work for the government.
They get a share in the oil revenues.
You have some party machines.
You know, if you want to think about Iraqi politics, you know, it's like sort of New York under Tammany in a way.
That the party machines, they take over a ministry and that's their cash cow.
It's their source of jobs, their source of patronage, source of contract.
And they run it in the interest of their party.
They're not much interested in actually building anything.
So, you know, this has all come to a head.
And I think it's come to a head for a particular reason that before the fall of Mosul last year, after a nine-month siege, Iraqis, particularly Shia Iraqis, you know, were terrified of ISIS.
That these mad jihadis would be coming down the road to murder them and their families.
So corruption, you know, lack of public services, terrible traffic, all these things took a secondary position.
But now that ISIS has been largely defeated, not completely, but largely defeated, then people have time to worry about, look around and see, you know, what a tremendously shabby place they live in.
Lack of health care, lack of education, lack of everything else, despite this enormous oil wealth.
And they want to do something about it.
Right.
Well, and so I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, that's it for the moment.
OK, well, but George W. Bush created a wonderful democracy for them where the majority rules.
And so at least in Iraqi Shiastan, these elections are pretty meaningful.
Maybe, you know, I don't know.
I guess I read that the Sunnis were able to participate in the recent elections in a pretty meaningful way.
And I mean, in the predominantly Sunni regions in Anbar and up in the north and all that near Mosul.
And so can't they just throw the bums out and elect some new guys to their parliament, Patrick?
Well, when the bums are making a lot of money, and I'm talking about billions of dollars, you know, they kind of want to stay where they are.
Partly because they want to go on making money and partly because they don't want to go to jail.
You know, once you have a really corrupt regime, you know, it's either, you know, it's either the palace or the prison cell.
And these guys want to stay in the palaces.
So I think they'll fight quite hard to stay there.
You know, the government rules are trying to buy off people in Basra.
They'll offer jobs and stuff like that.
One of the problems in Iraq, even when they want to buy people off, you know, from the money gets stolen in the way.
You know, you don't just they're not even really capable of making payoffs.
You know, it's a pretty dysfunctional political machine.
All right.
Well, so the wild card is Muqtada al-Sadr and his group in alliance with the communists, as you've reported, came out ahead.
The two groups that the Americans historically are two of the major groups.
I guess there's a lot that America's historically hated the most in Iraq.
Al-Sadr and the communists coming together and their list won, I guess, the plurality and the first chance to form a government.
And yet they've not been able to form a government.
And it's been months now.
And he even they did the recount and the results were the same.
Right.
So now what's the hold up, Patrick?
Well, you know, Muqtada came out ahead and did well, but he didn't.
You know, they got 54 seats out of it's only a kind of small it's nowhere near a majority.
So they have to combine with others.
They were going to combine with the prime minister.
But his because he did nothing about Basra.
And now they said they won't.
They want him out and probably they will get him out.
So, you know, we have this situation here.
It's rather peculiar.
You know, the U.S. sort of, you know, one time was trying to, according to him and I think quite truthfully, was trying to kill Muqtada.
And this was in 2004, but actually he's always represented sort of a real nationalist strain in in Iraq, which is anti-U.S. and anti-Iran wants to keep them both out.
The Muqtada actually told me a story, I saw him a couple of years ago.
And he said the problem about Iraq is, you know, that all the Iraqi factions look for sponsors abroad.
And you once you've got them in there, you can't get them out.
And he said, you know, it's like you've got a mouse in the house, you know, you can you get a cat, you know, then you get fed up with that.
You get a dog, you know, you've got the dog, you know, you get a tiger, you know, and eventually you end up with all these animals in the house.
You can't get them out.
So, you know, the comparison is with Iran, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and everybody else.
So in many ways, you know, there's a pretty positive development in Iraq.
But, you know, it's still a violent place.
There's still so many tensions there, you know, that you can't quite predict what's going to happen.
A lot will depend also what happens in Syria.
That's something that's never really recognized about these wars there.
What destabilizes Syria, destabilizes Iraq and vice versa.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, we certainly heard those warnings from you in the from the beginning of the Syrian civil war about I think you were quoting the Iraqi government saying that American support for the Sunni insurgency in Syria is re-energizing the insurgency in Iraq.
And we sure saw that play out.
So I want to switch to Syria in a second.
But as long as we're talking about southern Iraq here, I want to ask you about the form of the police state there, because so much of what we talk about is the, quote unquote, at least sectarian conflict, you know, between these different power factions.
But I remember reading back in the days of Iraq War Two that the new Shia authorities in the Shia dominated parts of the country, that they were almost as bad as al-Qaeda guys when it came to their enforcement of this really harsh conservatism.
I remember one headline in the Christian Science Monitor was to them, a woman's smile is a crime.
And they're going around cutting, you know, shutting down all the barbershops and all the liquor stores and and this kind of thing.
I just wonder, you know, I haven't heard much about that.
Well, I think they're too busy stealing money.
You know, I don't you know, and they're not as bad as al-Qaeda.
You know, al-Qaeda killed al-Shia, killed almost everybody.
You know, they don't do that.
And they're pretty bad guys, but not in that league.
So but it is, you know, sort of it's very corrupt.
You know, there's a lot of people want to steal money and there's a lot of money to be stolen, too.
There's a lot of money in Basra.
So, you know, so it's difficult to you know, you're attacking a lot of interests there.
And so, you know, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
But it also sort of destabilizes the rest of Iraq.
And of course, what they haven't done is closed down oil production.
Maybe they can't do it.
Maybe they won't do it.
But, you know, they closed down the main port.
The other thing to remember about Iraq is almost all Iraqis are armed.
You know, the government and the police may be better off, but actually all Iraqis have a gun.
So you can quite quickly move from the peaceful protests or, you know, the demonstrators were shouting peace, peace.
They weren't they weren't carrying weapons.
You know, things get rough.
That could change.
Yeah.
All right.
So now, speaking of Syria, there is it looks to be the final assault on Idlib province, which is the last holdout of the formerly, I guess, CIA backed so-called moderates and their al-Qaeda allies there.
And I guess, you know, I read reports, too, that there are still, you know, so-called pockets of Islamic state fighters holding out in the east of the country, too.
So and then, of course, I guess later we can talk about the Washington Post article about how we're there for Iran from now on.
And it's not even in the name of ISIS anymore.
But what's left of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria now, Patrick?
Well, ISIS still has some strength over in the east.
You know, they've been lying low.
How low?
We don't know.
But certainly they've been sort of looking for an opportunity to make a comeback.
So they're still around.
But, you know, they lost they lost Raqqa.
They lost Mosul.
The Islamic State used to be really big, used to be the size of Great Britain.
You know, now it's one town on the Euphrates.
So, you know, they're much weaker than they were.
Now, al-Qaeda, you have these groups in Idlib.
There are really sort of two basic groups there.
There's a sort of al-Qaeda type coalition in the north of Idlib.
And then you have one linked to Turkey that contains sort of the Arar al-Sham as one group.
There was a form of jihadis, a free Syrian army.
Some of these guys used to be called moderates in the past.
And they're in the south of Idlib.
Now, my guess would be if there is going to be an attack, it'll be sort of salami tactics.
They won't try and take the whole thing.
They'll try and take a chunk of it, probably in the south, because the the non-al-Qaeda guys aren't as tough fighters.
They're a bit cut off from Turkey.
They're probably easier meat to attack.
So we'll probably see a situation where the Syrian army will sort of try and take it bit by bit, maybe reach some agreement with some of the factions in the south, like we saw in eastern Ghouta and Daraa in southern Syria.
So this should take a long time.
I don't think there's going to be a sort of mass panzer assault on Idlib to try and take the whole of Idlib.
So what do you make of all these statements by American officials about we know Assad is about to use poison gas.
And once he does, then that means we're going to have to do something about it.
It seems almost too clumsy to be the setup for a false flag attack.
I don't know what else they could be referring to here.
Yeah, I find it a bit mysterious and is it entirely to do with Syria, you know, or is it to do with some, you know, policy battle in Washington, you know, between within the Trump administration, you know, those who want to intervene militarily, those who don't, you know, because, you know, there's bound to be that aspect of it.
So you see the other countries or Germany and France saying the same thing.
So, you know, we'll see, you know, will they intervene?
It's quite sort of maybe they'll do something because, you know, this has been a pretty major defeat for the US and the Europeans.
They may just want to show, you know, we're still in business.
You know, we can still attack.
But it's always been true that sort of single attacks, you know, these are purely gestures.
They don't mean much.
If there was ever to be a serious military intervention, this goes right back to 2012, 13.
It would have to be sustained military bombing like we saw in Libya after 2011 against Gaddafi or in Iraq after 2014.
So that's the only thing that makes the difference.
People sometimes say, you know, should Obama should have intervened.
But they, you know, what they don't sort of say is Obama should have intervened like we intervened in Libya, you know, of launching a full scale war because anything less is kind of meaningless.
And of course, they don't say that because it would be very unpopular.
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Right.
Well, I mean, I guess if they recognize that they have no good options, I mean, especially now, I mean, apparently all reports are that Trump really did cancel and the CIA obeyed him on this, canceled CIA support for these groups back a year ago.
And so it sure seems too late now to try to intervene on their behalf now that they're completely in a corner.
So maybe a couple of tomahawk missiles to, as you say, kind of for showmanship to prove that they're not to prove they're still in the game while at the same time, they're really just going to go ahead and they have no choice but to let the Syrian army and the Russians finish off these guys.
I think that might well be true.
The Israelis kind of do the same thing.
You know, the Israelis said they launched this tremendous attack.
They attacked 50 Iranian targets.
But then, you know, the reports say that 11 Iranians were killed.
So, you know, how come, you know, either aren't many Iranians there or the Israelis weren't quite as serious as they claim to be.
And it's similar with the U.S., I think, of this, you know, this assertiveness is to show that, you know, Assad and the Russians and the Iranians may have won, but, you know, we're still a we're still a powerful force.
But so we'll see.
I think it's too late for them to do that, even if even if it worked at the same time.
You know, it's sort of.
It's a question of really what Turkey does as well as Turkey is on the border there.
One of the main factions, which is like to come under attack, is basically allied to the Turks.
The Turks have been sending in weapons to live over the last few days.
You know, this would be a big humiliation for Turkey if their guys in Syria were wiped out.
And so probably that's the thing to watch.
And by their guys, you mean Al-Qaeda?
No, there's another group which the Turks have been backing as a sort of alternate to Al-Qaeda.
R.R. Al-Sham or do you know the name of it?
R.R. Al-Sham and I mentioned the Syrian, Free Syrian Army.
Other factions, they're in south Idlib.
It's a little easier terrain there around the north where Al-Qaeda is.
You know, this is very hilly, broken country, very difficult to fight through.
So these are really partly controlled from Turkey in southern Idlib.
And so what do you think Erdogan wants to do here?
He wants to save these groups to use them against the Kurds?
Well, indirectly, he doesn't want to be humiliated in Syria.
He, you know, he remains anti-Assad.
The question, you know, when he has a relationship with Russia, will this survive?
You know, does he have an alternative?
He wants to postpone this offensive and said, you know, he'd persuade people to defect from Al-Qaeda to this pro-Turkish group.
But there's no particular reason why they should do that.
So, you know, Erdogan is in a fix there and, you know, we'll see which way he's going to jump.
Yeah.
So now back to the Islamic State guys in eastern Syria that are still there.
It seems odd since, I mean, I know it's a vast desert out there and everything, but the Americans and their Syrian Defense Forces allies finished rousting the Islamic State out of Mosul, I guess, back at the beginning of the year.
And so and we have, you know, the Marine Corps and obviously Special Operations Forces on the ground there, as well as Iraqi militias where they're the good guys on the eastern side of the border there.
It seems like there are all these groups that it seems strange that there would still be pockets of Islamic State fighters that the Americans and or their Kurdish allies wouldn't have finished off by now.
And, you know, also, I guess there's been a couple of times where it seemed like the Syrian Arab Army was the state army was on its way there to attack some of these Islamic State guys.
And the Americans stopped them and said, you know, you're not allowed to pass, I guess, the Euphrates or whichever line that they claimed.
But in other words, the Americans seem to be de facto protecting these last holdouts of the Islamic State fighters, not using the Kurds against them and protecting them from the Syrian army.
But I don't know if that's deliberate or not or anything or just what is the story behind that?
Do you know?
Yeah, I think it may not be so conspiratorial.
You know, there's no doubt that the U.S. and the Kurds want to stop the Syrian army advancing sort of further west.
There's a place called Deir ez-Zor, Deir ez-Zor province.
Also, the oil fields are there.
They don't want Assad to get control of the oil fields there.
Now, you could say by stopping Assad, in a sense, that's the advantage of Islamic State.
But I don't think that's quite the reason they're doing it.
It's also true that the Turkish attack in Afrin, you know, this Kurdish area up in the north, in the beginning of the year when the Kurds were driven out, that the Kurds may not be keen to eliminate all Islamic State because they want to keep this American alliance, which is directed against Islamic State.
There's also just a thing, you know, this is a very, very big area, you know, that it's quite good guerrilla terrain.
Guys can, you know, hide out in these deserts, particularly if they're prepositioned weapons and food and so forth.
So I think there's that element.
You know, this was a very, Islamic State at its height was a very big, well-equipped organization.
You know, it stands to reason that they have fallback positions and depots of guns and food.
You know, one can see some consequences.
There are more attacks in Iraq now.
There was one, I think, in the last 24 hours, a suicide bomber near Tikrit killed six people.
So we're beginning to see attacks where we didn't see anything before.
And it may be that Islamic State always wanted, you know, to take a punch and then see if we could come back as a guerrilla force, you know, very mobile, no fixed positions, and begin to expand again, particularly as its enemies, you know, the U.S., the Kurds, the Syrian army, the Iraqi army, that all these people are divided.
So it may see opportunities that it didn't have a year ago.
Yeah, that's a good point.
You know, I read a couple of things recently about, I guess, what I'm calling Iraq War three and a half, where the Islamic State is, as you said, no longer a state, but it's just back to an insurgency again.
Zarqawi's old al-Qaeda in Iraq is what we're talking about.
And they're still fighting here, there, and the other place.
I'm not sure where all.
I guess they'll be flinging suicide bombers at Baghdad from now into eternity.
Well, yeah, I mean, there haven't been many, you know, the last really big bomb in Baghdad was in 2016.
It was a big one, about 300 people were killed.
But there hasn't been anything like that since.
They don't seem to have the capacity.
They did.
On the other hand, it may be that they're sort of waiting to stage a big one.
And certainly, you know, Iraqis, although, you know, Baghdad is a much safer city in terms of bombing, assassinations.
Iraqis have been there, spent four years in crisis and war.
So it doesn't take much for them to feel edgy, you know, and feel, you know, it just takes a few attacks for them to feel ISIS is making a comeback and everything's going to go to ruin again.
Yeah.
So there's this report from The Washington Post from, I guess, Monday about with quotes from James Jeffries, who's a Trump administration guy, saying that Trump's former statements that we're only there for ISIS and then he wants the troops out.
Those are canceled and that we're staying in, I guess, Syrian Kurdistan from now on because Iran, the same reason they were supporting the jihadis there in the first place, Iran, Iran, Iran.
So once the war, once the war against al-Qaeda and ISIS that got too out of control, once that's over, that doesn't mean a thing.
That just is some midpoint.
But I wonder what you think their end is.
They don't want to fight Iran.
They don't want to have a real war with Iran.
Right.
How serious do we do we take what Jeffries is saying?
You know, Rex Tillerson was saying the same sort of thing in the beginning of this year.
You know, we're going to stay.
We're going to set up our own, you know, border force.
You know, there's a whole list of things that we're going to do.
And then, you know, shortly afterwards, Tillerson gets the push.
You know, I don't think I can't see the Kurds thinking just because Jeffries says something that that's necessarily going to be U.S. policy in six months time.
You know, in some ways, you know, Trump's instinct that Syria is real trouble is correct.
You know, all these think tanks, all these State Department people, former and current, who say that Trump is naive, you know, and so forth.
You know, when you listen to them, you realize they don't know anything about Syria or Iraq either.
You know, it may be that I don't suppose Trump knows much about the detail there.
But his general instinct that, you know, there's nothing but trouble for him in Syria and they might well be wise to get out, you know, is probably correct from the U.S. point of view.
And I think that, you know, there's such sort of hostility to Trump, I mean, just like my mind, that people don't take on board that, you know, the general position that the U.S. is best out of Syria is a pretty sensible one.
Yeah, well, I mean, I guess the problem here this whole time, right, has been they keep doing these things, at least in part to spite Iran.
They can't really attack Iran.
But so they thought that invading Iraq would somehow give them leverage over Iran.
And then when that didn't work, it only made Iran more powerful.
They decided, well, we'll get a consolation prize by taking out Assad.
I mean, Obama even explained that to Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, that that's what we're doing, trying to weaken Iran by hurting Assad.
And so that hasn't worked.
That's actually improved Iran's position in Syria as well and made Syria more dependent on Iran than ever.
So they're really frustrated, these anti-Iran hawks, all the neocons and all the pro-Likud guys and all the people in the State Department who can't get over the revolution of 79 or whatever their problem is.
You know, they can't imagine quitting the field now when they have done so much for their major nemesis.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's been very self-destructive, obviously.
You know, why has Iran's influence grown?
You know, it's entirely because of decisions taken in Washington, you know, invading Iraq in 2003, the, you know, trying to get rid of Assad, even in Syria, trying to, you know, weaken Hezbollah, same thing.
You know, actually, you know, the influence of Iran in the region, you know, is generally due with the U.S.
Sometimes, I mean, I was in Iran some years ago, you know, and they were saying, you know, it's sort of 2000 and 2001, you know, Iran had Saddam, who was very hostile to Iran on one side and the Taliban were very hostile to Iran on the other, you know, and the U.S. has demolished all these enemies of Iran.
I think that all these things that, I think economic pressure in Iran, that does have an effect.
I don't think it'll lead to a regime change in Tehran.
But these military attempt, you know, to get Iran out of Syria, you know, this is not a sort of an enormous Iranian army in Syria.
It's just the Syrian government has seen Iran as its strategic allies since 79, you know, 79, 80.
That isn't going to change.
So, you know, this is just sort of really pretty childish.
The longer they stay there, you know, the Kurds would like an agreement with Assad because above all, they're terrified of Turkey coming in.
So, but the U.S. obviously doesn't want them to reach an agreement.
So, you know, in a way you can keep stirring the pot in Syria, which is bad for the Syrians.
But I doubt if it's going to do the U.S. much good either.
Well, you know, when you mentioned that the Rex Tillerson statement that never mind Trump, we're staying for Iran.
I think that you had reported this back then, too.
But I think it was pretty clear at the time that that was what had provoked the Turkish invasion, that Turkey, that Erdogan had then said to Putin, see, they're staying.
They're going to support the Kurds, just like I said, they were going to and not leave.
And so now and that was what provoked the invasion of Afrin, right?
Yeah, I mean, you know, this was seen as a provocation by, as you say, by both Turkey and Russia.
The Russians withdrew their air umbrella over Afrin and basically gave permission for the Turks to invade it.
And so, you know, this was provoked by this kind of crazy Tillerson statement.
That's what I was saying.
The point I was trying to make earlier is that, you know, crazy that Trump is in many ways.
One shouldn't see, you know, this narrative that's been produced that somehow there are adults in the room who are preventing him blowing up the world.
You know, well, the adults in many ways are as dangerous or not more dangerous than Trump when it comes to Syria and Iran.
You know, they're very militaristic.
They're pretty ignorant of what the situation is on the ground.
They have a very bad track record.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you very much again for your time on the show, Patrick.
I really appreciate it.
Not at all.
Thank you.
That's the heroic Patrick Coburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, the author of a great many books, including The Rise of Islamic State, The Age of Jihad and Chaos and Caliphate.
Find him at independent.co.uk and UNZ.com.
All right, y'all, thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com and reddit.com slash Scott Horton Show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
