10/21/10 – Pepe Escobar – The Scott Horton Show

All right, Shell, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And our first guest on the show today is Pepe Escobar.
I was reading to you guys from his article at the Asia Times yesterday, and the winner is Muqtada.
Welcome to the show, Pepe.
How are you doing?
I'm fine.
Thanks for having me.
Always a pleasure.
Well, I'm very happy to talk to you.
And so, okay, I guess I'll just leave it to you.
First of all, just break it down real quick about the Iraqi election and the different parties, and then we can go on at length about Muqtada al-Sadr and his influence in the future of Iraq.
Okay.
Well, Alawi got 91 seats.
Maliki got 89.
That's the basic size.
So they needed to form a coalition.
And the kingmaker, everybody knew, maybe not at the Pentagon, that would be Muqtada al-Sadr.
So they were trying to court Muqtada, but they didn't know exactly what to do.
The Iranians stepped in with a magnificent plan, I would say.
Let's go to the religious channel.
So they approached Muqtada, spiritual leader.
He more or less convinced Muqtada to give Maliki a try.
They had huge, huge problems, because Maliki was prime minister.against al-Sadr, really, really heavy.
And Muqtada had not forgiven him, at least not yet.
Not till he had the input from his spiritual leader.
And then there was this big meeting in Tehran with everybody involved.
Maliki's people, al-Sadr.
Muqtada himself, because he's studying Qom to become an Ayatollah, a major source of influence.
So in a few years, Muqtada will not only be an extremely strong political leader, but also a religious authority as well.
And his family, the Sadr family, is extremely respected in Shiite Iraq.
So he's doing everything right.
He shared that image of being a little bit out of his head around 2004 and 2005.
So now he's in Qom, he's studying with the elders.
So when you go to Qom, and you get inside those very imposing madrassas, and you're studying Shiite theology, you know, the whole thing changes.
You are in another level.
And probably you get closer to the Mahdi, you get closer to Allah, and you start floating.
And all of a sudden you see the world from a much, much bigger picture.
That's what's happening with our friend Muqtada.
So we had a little bit of intervention from the Iranians, but just to move things over, actually.
It's true, the Hezbollah had representatives over there in that meeting.
The revolutionary gods had representatives in that meeting as well.
But it was up to Muqtada himself to decide, okay, what's the best solution for Iraq, for a Shiite majority, religious majority in Iraq?
And obviously the Ayatollahs in Qom itself also privileged, let's say, a more Shiite-inclined, a religiously-inclined government, instead of Alawi, because they don't trust Alawi because he was a Syriac, he was an ex-Baptist as well.
So the best solution would be this Maliki-Sadr alliance, instead of the alliance privileged by the West, which would be Alawi and maybe Maliki.
Although the West started supporting Maliki years ago, but not in the past two.
So in the end, the Iranians, they did a typical Iranian-Persian chess game.
They won quietly.
It took them two or three months of not even hardcore negotiations, very smooth negotiations, and they got what they wanted, obviously.
Sadrists will have a very strong representation in this next government.
They're going to have probably some important ministerial posts.
And what's the most important thing left out of the whole equation?
The Sunnis.
So what we're going to have, basically, is if this is too skewed towards a religious Shiite government, with some participation by the Kurds, the Sunnis will be left out, most of them voted for Alawi, and what we're going to have is what we had before 2004, 2005, 2006, civil war.
And wait, General Patel and General Obama said the Iraq war was over.
No, it's round three that's going to begin really, really soon.
All right, now here's the thing about that.
Rewind it back to the spring of 2004, and I know that was a long time ago in Iraqi years, and what all they've been through since then.
But when the Blackwater contractors were lynched and burned in Fallujah, and George Bush responded by sending the Marine Corps to slaughter people randomly for, I guess, just revenge sake and show those people we mean business and all that.
At the same time, and there were other reasons, they had shut down Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper, and that had led to some fighting.
That's where Casey Sheehan was killed, and that started the Battle of Najaf, which is Sadr's territory, right at the same time, or right around the same time.
And Sadr had sent his men in pickup trucks up to Fallujah to help the people of Fallujah resist the American attack there.
And for years, in fact, we talked with Bob Dreyfuss about this on the show the other day, how at the end of 2006, Muqtada al-Sadr was trying to cobble together a new coalition that he called the Government of National Salvation, and it was going to take the disaffected Sunnis, some Kurdish factions, I'm not sure if it was Barzani or Talabani was in on it with him or what, but anyway, they were going to come together and create a government that would have a majority, kick Alawi out, or maybe it was Jafari at that time, I forget.
But anyway, the point being that he was a nationalist, Pepe.
He wanted to work together with the Sunnis.
He condemned the Supreme Islamic Council for their plan for strong federalism, the Biden kind of plan of spinning off the south as a Shia stand with Iran.
He wanted Iraqi nationalism, which doesn't necessarily mean he planned to always be fair to the Sunnis in the future or whatever, but I guess I wonder, has that really, it's too late for that now?
Because he must realize that, as you say, if he forms this coalition with Maliki, this is going to start the war again.
The Sunnis will be completely out of power.
I agree with you.
So the next crucial point is, which Sunnis will be part of the government?
Yeah.
What kind of Sunnis voted for Alawi for that matter?
Okay, secular Sunnis, like entrepreneurs from Baghdad, those that didn't leave to Syria, for instance.
There are more than one million in Syria.
And the business of these Iraqi Sunnis in Syria in itself is something very important for the Syrian economy.
If you go to Damascus, almost 50% of the city now is controlled by Sunni Iraqi businessmen.
So which Sunnis will vote for Alawi?
Which Sunnis will contemplate a government that is not sectarian?
Sadr, for the past, I would say at least for the past two years, he's always sending signals that he's still, and he always was, and he always will be, a nationalist.
So the number one Sadr's platform is occupying forces out.
And maybe they're going to have that in 2011, probably not.
We're still going to have 50,000 Pentagon troops, war troops, or non-war troops stationed over there.
But that's number one.
Number two, a nationalist government, and non-sectarian.
Alawi is more, sorry, Malik is more complicated.
Malik from Dawah Party, he's still too Shiite for many Sunnis.
Sadr, no, they don't see Sadr as eminently a Shiite scholar.
They see Sadr as an Iraqi nationalist.
So he's more, he's Iraqi first, and Shiite second, and with Malik exactly the opposite.
So wait a minute, let me ask you, just to clarify there.
You know, Patrick Coburn talks about how, you know, all kinds of Iraqis, all the time you'll hear them say that, oh no, we're all Iraqis, and we're all nationalists, and whatever.
But those Shiites, they're not really Iraqis, they're the Iranians.
And, you know, that kind of thing.
But you're saying that they don't, like the average Sunni resident of Fallujah, for example, or Tikrit, wouldn't necessarily consider Sadr that way, the way they look at the Maliki or Abdulaziz al-Hakim back before he died.
Is that right?
Exactly.
Okay, well, I just want to make sure I understood that point clearly there.
Now hold it, Pepe, we've got to take this hard break.
But we'll be back with Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times, talking Iraqi politics.
Antiwar.com/radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Wharton.
I'm talking with Pepe Escobar.
He writes for the Asia Times.
That's AsiaTimes.com.
And he's got an article here that he could have written at any time in the last six years or so.
The winner is Muqtada, about Muqtada.
I probably did this three or four years ago.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, well, this is the thing, is that the Bush crew, among the Shiite majority that America installed in power there, and, you know, I kind of left out of my narrative there that Muqtada al-Sadr, yeah, he tried to fight with the Sunnis back in 2004, but he also helped the Bata brigades fight a horrible civil war against them in Baghdad in 2006, 2005, 2006, and 2007, really.
And, you know, the drills in people's heads and all that, that was, you know, at least some of his crew responsible for a lot of that.
And it's now 85 percent Shiite city.
But you're saying that the people of the Sunni population, more or less, of Iraq still considers him an Iraqi nationalist.
I wonder, though, then, if that's right, why even deal with the, you know, traitor half of the Dawa party anyway?
Why not just, why wouldn't Sadr just cut a deal with Alawi and make that nationalist, you know, government of national salvation that he talked about four years ago?
Because Alawi is viewed by the Sadrists as a CIA agent, basically.
You know, that's the short answer to your question.
And there are no other Sunni parties that he could make a deal with that have enough power.
They don't have enough votes to cut a majority.
You know, it would have to be Sadr, Sunni parties, and the Kurds.
And, you know, they're absolutely antagonistic on Mosul and Kirkuk, for instance.
So the only possible alliance at the moment, the way the whole thing breaks down, would be Alawi and Maliki, or Maliki and Sadr.
And that's what happens.
You know, Alawi and Maliki, all the Shiite parties, all of them, except from now, of course, Sisi, the Sadrists, they would go against it.
The Kurds are not exactly happy with Alawi as well.
So, you know, this is the only possible outcome, considering the breakdown of parties in Iraq at the moment.
It's extremely imperfect.
And yes, the door is open for a civil war, depending on which Sunnis will be aggregated to this majority, let's put it this way.
Something I learned in your article here, Pepe, is that the Sadrists now dominate not just the Iraqi National Alliance, but they actually dominate the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, now that al-Hakim has died.
And they've had this, you know, shift in power there.
So they actually dominate Skiri now, whatever they call it, Iski.
Yes, but you know, Sisi, as it's called now, with the death of al-Hakim, basically it became a shrinking party, just like a communist in France or something like that, you know.
Sunnis are going to be a minority party, compared to Dawah, which, in fact, it's not Dawah.
It's the figure of Maliki himself that is predominant, because he was in power for all these years.
He consolidated his people in key ministries, in running the machinery of government.
Does Dawah prefer Sadr?
They're completely under the thumb of Maliki because of his power as prime minister.
Yes, absolutely.
But, you know, and the Sadrists, they want, I will not say a piece of the action, but they want some key ministries, especially related to the interior.
Because the interior ministry in Baghdad is still a mess.
It's controlled by militias.
We're not going to see the Sadrists taking care of the interior ministry, but at least it will be divided, split among different militias instead of only one, you know what I mean?
So, in fact, this so-called democratic outcome that was more or less imposed by the White House years ago, this is what happened.
It's a sort of balkanization of Iraq on a more or less Lebanese term, forever.
You always have at least three or four absolutely incompatible factions fighting among themselves.
And you can have one election a week, and the outcome will always be like that, undecided, completely undecided.
And we're not even talking about the Kurds, which have a completely different agenda.
They want an independent Kurdistan.
They will never abdicate from that.
Never.
And obviously everything related to Kirkuk is suspended.
The battle for Mosul is suspended.
But all these things will be back.
It's like the eternal return of the very oppressed in Iraq.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
I'm sure you're familiar with Sidney Blumenthal.
He used to work for Bill Clinton, and his son Max Blumenthal does a lot of great journalism.
And he wrote a lot of pieces for Salon.com over the last decade, really, detailing the split within the Republicans between the neocons and the oil men, realist types.
And one of them has James Baker.
When George Bush gave his speech that you have 48 hours to leave Iraq, but we're invading no matter what you do at this point, James Baker supposedly turned to his friend and said, I told him not to do that.
And, you know, apparently, you know, the father's men were saying that this is what would happen.
But I wonder, what was it that Cheney believed could happen there that would allow for America to have all these bases?
Did he really believe Wolfowitz saying that, yes, this this will make we will be so powerful.
We'll have our as you say in here, our own OPEC.
Screw the Saudis.
We'll we'll put the price wherever we want it now.
And we'll put we'll weaken Iran because we'll make such a democracy there that the people of Iran will want to rise up and have a democracy like us.
I mean, Dick Cheney didn't believe these things, did he?
So how did he think that he was going to get anything but one Muqtada al-Sadr or another saying that his only terms are that America leave, which is what we have.
First of all, they didn't they didn't learn the lesson from Vietnam.
That's number one.
Number two, they didn't know absolutely anything about the Middle East.
And, you know, you could have talked to there are many, many CIA, National Intelligence Agency, State Department specialists on the Middle East.
They speak Arabic.
They know the region.
They live there.
They have local interlocutors.
You know, they would explain to you the extreme intricacy of Iraq for Saddam Hussein.
And Saddam Hussein only lasted that long because he was the only one with his Stalinist method to keep that volcano, you know, relatively peaceful.
After all, this Pandora's box.
And that's exactly what happened.
But obviously, the neocons, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perl, they had no clue about the Middle East.
And in fact, they were.
Well, but, you know, I mean, Dick Cheney was there with James Baker and them.
And this was George Bush senior's excuse when he was attacked by Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby back then was, look, if we'd gone all the way to Baghdad like you guys wanted, then who knows?
Everything would have broken apart.
You got Kurds in Syria, Kurds in Turkey, Kurds in Iran.
You got a Shiite majority that's under the thumb of this minority dictatorship in the capital city.
We don't want to turn all that upside down and have American soldiers bogged down in cities fighting a war like that.
I mean, because they were on the defensive, Colin Powell and his autobiography, right, like all of these guys, Dick Cheney.
And they found the video right at AEI.
It's on YouTube with Dick Cheney in 1994, making his excuse for why they didn't go all the way to Baghdad.
And it's exactly what you would have said.
You're going to know.
Don't do that.
It will be a disaster.
So he did understand.
But I don't know.
I guess he just thought explosions are good enough to just, you know, fire is good enough.
Well, I think we have to go back to our friend, the ancient Greeks.
And once again, rubri.
When you are in power and you are the most powerful vice president in the history of the U.S., you think you're invulnerable.
And that's what they thought.
Okay, we're going to send 100,000, 150,000.
Their army is already shattered.
We take over.
We run Baghdad.
We build 10 military bases.
We give some crumbs to the Shiites.
And we're going to run the place.
And we're going to run the oil.
This is exactly what they were thinking in 2000, all over 2000.
I remember practically each day during the mounting up towards the war in 2002.
They were releasing this on the Washington Post, New York Times, almost on a daily basis.
And people were gobbling that up.
Obviously not.
Yeah, Max Boot wrote The Case for American Empire.
I'm sorry?
Max Boot wrote The Case for American Empire, with no embarrassment whatsoever.
Exactly.
But there was not a hint of realism in all that.
Okay, maybe I'm extrapolating too much.
But if they had a Henry Kissinger in the machinery of government, he would say, Guys, go slow.
First, let's examine our options.
There's not one option.
There are at least three or four anarchic options if this thing goes wrong.
So let's have this in mind before we go.
But no.
For them, there was only one option.
Real men go to Tehran.
Do you remember?
It's not even about that.
Yeah, Junior told me they did have a Kissinger.
They had Brent Scowcroft, his father's best friend.
And he told Scowcroft to go to hell.
Yeah, exactly.
Hey, we gotta go, man.
I'm out of time.
Thank you so much for your time.
We need to do this more often, Pepe.
I really appreciate it.
Always a pleasure, Scott.
Whenever you want it.
Okay, everybody, that is the great Pepe Escobar.
He writes at the Asia Times, this one's called.
And the winner is Muqtada.
Like you didn't already know that.