The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr. Pub: W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 2006. Hbk: US $25.95.
The imperialist monster is disrupting its own international order. Even the laws of its own heartland are no longer the rules that are supposed to govern its activities. The United States has been trying to jump-start a worldwide diplomatic initiative that will result in military action against Islamic Iran by ignoring the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and by forcing European and Asian governments to line up with US strategy vis a vis Islamic Iran.
The roadside bomb last month that killed the leader of the Anbar Salvation Council (ASC), Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, near his home just outside Ramadi, the capital of the Iraqi province of Anbar, was more than a mere decapitation of an Iraqi leader who had turned against al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia. It highlighted the widening chasm between the salafist insurgent group, whose fortunes have for months been staggered by the US troop build-up, and some of its former allies among the Sunni Arab tribes, and dealt a setback to one of the few success stories in the Iraqi counter-insurgency efforts.
Blackwater: the rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army by Jeremy Scahill. Nation Books, New York, 2007.Pp: 464. Hbk: $26.95.
Iraqis have become victims of violence in many different circumstances since the American invasion of the country in 2003. Many have been victims of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shi‘i communities, in which Shi‘i religious institutions and occasions have been particularly targeted by Sunni militants. Few, however, could have anticipated that the Shabaniyah festival in Karbala on August 28, to mark the anniversary of the birth of the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, would end with over 50 people killed in fighting between Shi‘i gunmen and Iraqi authorities, sparked by the heavy-handed security arrangements in the city.
The fact that the US has suffered a massive defeat in Iraq is no longer disputed by any but the most slavish apologists for the Bush regime. As the reality of the US’s position first became apparent, many Western commentators went through a process of retroactive redefinition of the justifications and objectives of the war, to try ways of making the war look less disastrous that it actually is. Now few even try that.
Perhaps never before in history has a self-declared superpower fallen from glory as precipitously as has the US. In less than 20 years it has gone from a hyperpower to being a spent force unable to deal even with such backward societies as Afghanistan and Iraq.
June turned out to be a month of speeches and conferences for this writer. It began with Imam Khomeini memorial programmes in the UK. These were followed by a visit to South Africa, which was as special as always, and where I spoke at a conference organized by the local office of Crescent International, along with Zafar Bangash and Imam Muhammad al-Asi, as well as speaking at a couple of smaller events. At end of the month there was a major conference on Islamic unity in London, attended by a number of senior figures from around the world, at which I also presented a paper. Inevitably, discussions were dominated by two or three topics: Iraq and the tragic blood-letting there; the problem of sectarianism; and, because they were in the news at the time, the recent developments in Palestine in particular.
Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, by Ahmed S. Hashim. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and New York, US, 2006. Pp: 482. Hbk: $29.95, Pbk: $14.95.
As this issue of Crescent went to press, the Iranian and American ambassadors to Iraq were meeting in Baghdad to discuss the appalling situation in country.
Some three months after US and Iraqi forces launched their much-trumpeted security plan, code-named “Operation Imposing Law” (Fardh al-Qanun), designed primarily to secure the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and the restive al-Anbar province, the Iraqi insurgency has shown no significant sign of waning.
Although US and Iraqi officials talked up the successes of the new Baghdad security plan implemented in early February, events on the ground suggest little has changed. Speaking to the media, officials said that the numbers of deaths in the capital dropped by up to 80 percent in the first five days of the plan.
It is not easy to resist a sense of déja vu while watching the components of the US’s new drive to curb the escalating insurgency and extreme inter-communal violence gripping Iraq fall into place. Earlier attempts to shake up the disastrous US military effort inIraq have been failures. All indications are that the new, much-touted drive, which forms the cornerstone of America’s exit strategy from Iraq, is unlikely to fare any better.
Transforming Saddam Hussain from a monster to a martyr might seem an impossible feat; but that is what the Iraqi authorities have achieved by bungling his execution so appallingly. The haste with which the hanging was carried out on the day some Muslims were celebrating Eid al-Adha, the insulting taunts to which he was subjected, and Saddam’s composure just before his execution, captured on a cell phone and seen globally on the internet, have all turned one of the vilest creatures of the last century into a martyr for millions of people around the world.
It should have been “justice done” by Muslims but it has been turned into “the rise of sectarianism” by the zionist-imperialist masters of the world. Saddam Hussain was used by his imperialist handlers as an agent par excellence during his bloody life, exploited further in his gory death.
Painful though it is to admit it (it would be so much easier to focus on the successful resistance to the US occupation), it is undeniable that the communal strife in Iraq is resulting in a frightening increase in sectarian tensions throughout the Muslim world.
Fate seems to have thought that US president George W Bush needed more dismal assessments of his handling of Iraq after the debacle that befell the Republican party in the recent congressional elections. The report released by the Iraq Study Group on December 6 gives a catastrophic balance sheet of America’s adventurous military invasion and occupation of Iraq
Revolt on the Tigris: The al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq by Mark Etherington. Pub: Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2005. Pp: 252. Hbk: $25.00.
Although representing only a minority of Iraq’s Sunni population, salafist groups have played a disproportionate role in the anti-American resistance and have been responsible for sparking a sectarian war in the country. NASR SALEM discusses the outlook, aims and objectives of Iraq’s salafist extremists...
My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell. Pub: Simon & Schuster, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2006. Pp: 417. Hbk: $27.00.
