Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt, where they will never return.
Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing twelve people.
The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital, telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Israeli missiles blow up ambulances. Power and water are cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics or oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint.
This is what happened at Al Shifa Hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain.
Israel has shut down 21 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals, including Gaza’s only cancer hospital. The hospitals still operating have severe shortages of basic medicine and supplies. One by one, the hospitals are being picked off. Soon, there will be no health facilities left. This is by design.
Tens of thousands of terrified Palestinians, forced to evacuate by Israel, their homes blasted into rubble, seek refuge from the relentless bombing by camping out in and around Gaza’s hospitals. They hope Israel will not target the medical centers. If Israel abided by the Geneva Conventions, they would be correct. But Israel is not carrying out a war. It is carrying out a genocide. And in a genocide, a population, and all that sustains a population, is obliterated.
Civilian casualties from an Israeli airstrike on the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, November 21, 2023
In an ominous sign that Israel will turn on the Palestinians in the West Bank once it is done flattening Gaza, armored vehicles have surrounded at least four West Bank hospitals. Israeli soldiers have raided the Ibn Sina Hospital along with the East Jerusalem Hospital.
Israel’s settler colonial state was founded on lies. It is sustained by lies. And now, when it is grimly determined to carry out the worst slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” that saw 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed and some 50 massacres by Jewish militias, it spits out one grotesque absurdity after another. It speaks of Palestinians as a dehumanized mass. There are no mothers, fathers, children, teachers, doctors, lawyers, cooks, poets, taxi drivers or shopkeepers. Palestinians, in the Israeli lexicon, are a single contagion that must be eradicated.
Watch this video of Israeli school children singing, “We Will Annihilate Everyone” in Gaza.
Hitler Youth used to sing songs like this about Jews.
Those who embark upon projects of mass killing lie to avoid demoralizing their own populations, lull the victims into believing they will not all be exterminated and stop outside forces from intervening. The Nazis claimed that Jews packed on trains and sent to extermination camps were on work details and had good medical care and adequate food. As for the infirm and elderly, they were cared for in rest centers. The Nazis even created a mock camp for the “resettlement” of Jews “to the East,” – Theresienstadt – where international bodies such as the Red Cross could see how humanely the Jews were treated, even as millions were being exterminated.
At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million Armenians were massacred or died of exposure, disease and starvation during the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire from the spring of 1915 to the autumn of 1916. The Armenian genocide was as public as the genocide in Gaza. European and U.S. consular missions provided detailed accounts of the campaign to cleanse modern-day Türkiye of Armenians.
The Ottoman government, in an attempt to hide the genocide, banned foreigners from taking photographs of Armenian refugees or the corpses that lined the roads. Israel, too, has blocked the foreign press from Gaza, carrying out only a handful of brief and carefully staged visits arranged by the Israeli military. Israel periodically cuts off internet and phone services. Israel has killed at least 43 Palestinian journalists and media workers since the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, many undoubtedly targeted by Israeli forces.
Armenians, like Palestinians, were forced from their homes, gunned down and denied food and water. Armenian deportees were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert, where tens of thousands were shot or died from starvation, cholera, malaria, dysentery and influenza. Israel is forcing 1.1 million Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza and bombing them as they flee. These refugees, like the Armenians, lack food, water, fuel and sanitation. They, too, will soon succumb to epidemics of infectious diseases.
Talat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire, told the United States ambassador, Henry Morgenthau Sr., in words that replicate Israel’s stance, on Aug. 2, 1915, “that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have the Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”
The longer the genocide continues, the more absurd the lies become.
There are big Israeli lies. The obliteration of Gaza and wanton killing of thousands of Palestinians, Israel insists, is a targeted effort to get rid of Hamas rather than a campaign to reduce Gaza to a pile of rubble, carry out mass murder and ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
There are small Israeli lies. Forty beheaded babies. Al Shifa Hospital is a “Hamas command center.” A calendar in Arabic on the wall of a hospital, according to IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is “a guardian [guard] list, where every terrorist writes his name and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.”An Israeli actor dressed up as a nurse and speaking heavily accented Arabic claims to be a Palestinian doctor and to have seen Hamas use civilians as human shields. She says members of Hamas “attacked Al Shifa Hospital” and stole “the fuel and medicine.” Palestinian militants, rather than Israeli tanks, Israel says, are responsible for shelling Al Shifa Hospital. Israel struck a car full of “terrorists” in southern Lebanon, “terrorists” who turned out to be three girls, their mother and grandmother. The explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital was the result of an errant rocket fired by the Palestinians, a claim questioned by The New York Times when it discredited the video based on analysis of its time stamp. Israel said it “responded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to allow Gazan citizens who were sheltering in the hospital and who wish to evacuate from Shifa Hospital towards the humanitarian crossing in the Gaza Strip via a secure axis,” a statement Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, said was “false,” adding “we were forced to leave by gunpoint.” Israeli Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, in a video pilloried by the BBC, shows viewers a meager stash of automatic weapons in a promotional video that magically increases once foreign reporters arrive for a guided tour. The IDF later deleted it.
The lies will be written into the Israeli school books. The lies will be repeated by Israeli politicians, historians and journalists. The lies will be told on Israeli television, films, and books. Israelis are eternal victims. Palestinians are absolute evil. There was no genocide. Türkiye, a century later, still denies what happened to the Armenians.
A Palestinian doctor carries a child as he flees the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, November 21, 2023. Photo | Quds News Network
In wartime, people believe what they want to believe. The lies fill a hunger within the Israeli public that sees the conflict as a binary struggle between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” The lies are a defense against accountability, for if Israel refuses to acknowledge reality, it is not forced to respond to reality. The lies create cognitive dissonance, where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes truth. The lies make any discussion of genocide or reconciliation impossible.
Israel, with the backing of the Biden administration, will continue to snuff out all systems that sustain life in Gaza. Hospitals. Schools. Power plants. Water treatment facilities. Factories. Farms. Apartment blocks. Houses. Then Israel will pretend, like the killers in past genocides, that it never happened.
The lies used by Israel to absolve itself of responsibility will eat away at Israeli society. They will corrode its moral, religious, civic, intellectual and political life. The lies will elevate war criminals to heroic status and demonize those with a conscience. Israel’s genocide, as with the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, will be mythologized, an epic battle against the forces of evil and barbarity, just as we mythologized the genocide of Native Americans and turned our settlers and murderous cavalry units into heroes. The killers in the Indonesian war against communism are cheered at rallies as saviors. They are interviewed about the “heroic” battles they fought nearly six decades ago. Israel will do the same. It will deform itself. It will celebrate its crimes. It will turn evil into good. It will exist within a self-constructed myth. The truth, as in all despotisms, will be banished. Israel, a monster to the Palestinians, will be a monster to itself.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Arab Christian face a common existential threat that can only be overcome through unity amongst themselves and with their counterparts across the lands under the umbrella of a single collective identity.
The destiny of all ethnic and religious groups in the Arab world, in their multitude, is intertwined, making it only possible for Arab Christians to survive the current existential threat by taking up their responsibilities as an integral component of the historical and unifying collective identity, which is made up of the frameworks of the spiritual and social values which Arabism overshadows.
“Will there still be Arab Christians in the next 50 years?” This question has been brought to the forefront on several occasions in the past decade, whether directly or indirectly. However, it was not until 2022 and 2023 that this question was put before the leaders of the Church in the Middle East. It comes as no surprise that the continued presence of Christians in the Middle East is integral to the historical and unifying collective identity [whose social fabric encompasses a multitude of diverse faiths, cultures, and ethnicities] that is made up of the frameworks of the spiritual and social values which Arabism overshadows, and must be addressed thoroughly and swiftly.
Understanding the social fabric of Arab identity
Over the past century and a decade, the region currently known as the Middle East [whose name reflects a geolocation vis-à-vis Europe, and thus becomes inherently entrenched in Eurocentric misconceptions] has been divided into “spheres of influence” by Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Despite the deep-rooted hatred of most Christians toward the Ottoman Empire, which is mostly grounded in the final century of a 400-year-old empire, it must be clarified that throughout Ottoman rule, at least until the empire was weakened in the 1800s, multiple sects have had their churches preserved under the empire.
It is important to note that the Crusades, which happened much earlier, were actually a greater threat to the region that was later divided into spheres of influence between the French and the British. This is mostly because Latinization, as explained in my previous writings, had threatened a multitude of Christian denominations that were indigenous to the land given that any Christian church that does not follow the Latin rite was condemned as heretic.
While a debate of history is not the topic, it serves to remind us that at the core of the identity of Arab Christians has been their coexistence in parallel to other ethnicities, which in turn coexist within the larger Arab national identity. It also underscores that the same religion could extend across a number of ethnicities. For example, Assyrian and Coptic Christians, both of which are part of the Arab national identity, consist of an ethnicity that adopted a Christian religion. In another example, the Kurdish people, an ethnic group that is also a constituent of the Arab national identity, comprises Sunni, Shia and Alawites, Christians, and Zoroastrians.
Arab Christians beyond borders
Since its inception, Lebanon has been dubbed the protector of Arab Christians, however, Arab Christians have never been limited to the Lebanese border. While much can be explained by drawing from a century and a decade of a policy of divide and conquer launched by the West, today, the existential crisis faced by Arab Christians requires a holistic response rather than preoccupation with secondary disputes. Humbleness must be at the core of any solution as the Christians of the Arab world suffer a great deal, and mere rhetoric will not alleviate their pain.
Christians across the Arab world must unite under the banner of Arab Christianity as they suffer the same existential threat, as the invasion of Iraq, the war on Syria, and the occupation of Palestine have altogether targeted Christians of all denominations and ethnicities. The same applies to Egypt and Jordan. While many would like to blame Islam for the slaughter and immigration of Christians, this Western-led heresy must be silenced, for all Arabs face the same destiny if they do not unite.
In Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, [These countries are merely examples given their recent histories] Muslims have time and time again fought alongside Christians for the war was never against a denomination but rather against a larger national identity that once emerged will threaten large-scale economic gains achieved by the West, in the Middle East, throughout the past century and decade.
In Jenin, Palestine, a now majority Muslim city, where Israelis have time and time again attempted to falsely depict Palestinians as not only Muslims that threaten the existence of other religious groups, but also as savages, the fourth oldest church in the world still stands: the Burqin Church of the Greek Orthodox church. This is to show that Islam, in and by itself, has not been a threat to Christians, for the constituents of the Arab national identity have historically established mechanisms of coexistence that had proven successful until their fragmentation through colonization and imperialism.
Also in Jenin, there is a Latin Parish that has also long been protected by the people of Jenin. However, yesterday, the church suffered at the hands of the Israeli occupation Forces who targeted and damaged it. While circumstantial at best, the incident serves to show, once again, that Christians are threatened by the West and Western-supported entities. With that in mind, it would be good to turn to the statements made at some of the latest synods discussing the issue of Christian existence in the Middle East.
سنبقى نراوح مكاننا إذا لم تقم تجربة جديدة لبناء القوس المصري – السوري، كرافعة تاريخية مناهضة بالضرورة للتحالف الإمبريالي – الصهيوني- الرجعي – العثماني.
شكّلت مصر وسوريا، أهم قوس استراتيجي في تاريخ الأمة التي اعتمد نهوضها في كل مرة على هذا القوس وتكامله ضمن خطاب سياسي – اجتماعي متصادم بالضرورة مع موجات الغزو المتتالية، من أوروبا الإقطاعية، مرحلة ما يعرف بالحملات الصليبية، إلى أوروبا الرأسمالية ثم المنظومة الإمبريالية العالمية ومن يتصدّرها في كل حقبة.
إضافة إلى الأدبيات الناصرية وخاصة فلسفة الثورة والميثاق لجمال عبد الناصر، وكتابات نديم البيطار وأنور عبد الملك وعصمت سيف الدولة وسمير أمين وياسين الحافظ، فإن كتابات المفكّر المصري، جمال حمدان، شكّلت ولا تزال الخلفية الاستراتيجية لبناء تصوّرات جيوبولوتيكية تدعم وتؤطر فكرة القوس المصري السوري وأهميته الحيوية لاشتباك تاريخي مع الغزاة وللتأسيس للرافعة الكبرى لنهوض الأمة ووحدتها.
وليس بلا معنى أن محاولات الاقتراب من هذا القوس، اتسمت بملامح وقواسم مشتركة على الصعيدين الإقليمي والدولي، بصرف النظر، أولاً، عن السمات الاجتماعية والطبقية للقوى السياسية النافذة التي تتطلّع إلى دور إقليمي انطلاقاً من هذا القوس، وثانياَ بصرف النظر عن المرحلة التاريخية.
التجربة الأولى.. محمد علي
في العقود الأولى من القرن التاسع عشر، اصطدم حاكم مصر القوي، محمد علي باشا، بقوى محلية وإقليمية ودولية لم ترق لها نهضة مصر وترجمة هذه النهضة بدور محوري، يتكامل مع بلاد الشام من موقع الشوكة والاستقلال في مواجهة الغزاة.
بداية، وبالتقاطع مع مخاوف الباب العالي العثماني من التحالف الوهابي – السعودي (آل السعود وآل الشيخ) اندفعت القوات المصرية إلى الحجاز ثم إلى نجد وخاصة الدرعية وتمكّنت من تصفية الحركة الوهابية، التي كانت قد ارتبطت مع قلم الاستخبارات في شركة الهند الشرقية البريطانية، وفق اعترافات بيركهارت، الذي تحوّل من عالم آثار سويسري إلى مبعوث للمخابرات البريطانية باسم الشيخ عبد الله اللوزاني، وكان من أهم قنوات الاتصال مع الوهابيين وتزويدهم بالمال والبنادق الحديثة.
في مرحلة لاحقة، وبعد أن استشعر محمد علي ضعف الاحتلال العثماني وسلاطينه في إسطنبول، دفع قواته إلى سوريا الطبيعية (سوريا الحالية أو الشام بلغة القوميين السوريين، فلسطين، الأردن ولبنان)، وتمكّنت القوات المصرية بقيادة إبراهيم باشا من سحق الجيوش العثمانية وقتل وأسر عشرات الآلاف منها، ثم الزحف إلى إسطنبول وضرب حصار عليها مقدّمة لإنهاء السلطنة فيها ونقل المركز إلى القاهرة.
خلال هذه السنوات، أطلق المصريون مشروعاً جديداً في المناطق التي حرّروها من الاحتلال العثماني ومن ربقة التحالف السعودي الوهابي، ومن ذلك تحديث الإدارة والجيش وسك العملة، وفرض نمط من الضرائب الحديثة بدل الجباية العثمانية الإقطاعية، وكذلك توسيع البيمارستانات وإقامة العديد من مدارس التجهيز الإعدادية، كما أطلقوا موجة واسعة من التسامح بين المذاهب والطوائف وحوّلوا الأزهر إلى مرجعية فقهية ضمن التوجّه الجديد.
بالطبع وبالتأكيد وبسبب الطبيعة الطبقية للحكم الجديد ونزعاته الرأسمالية المبكرة بالتعاون مع الفرنسيين، ترافقت هذه الإدارة مع أساليب وسياسات استخدمت من قبل خصوم محمد علي للتحريض عليه.
في المقابل، أثارت استراتيجية القوس المصري – السوري أحقاد ومخاوف الاستعمار البريطاني إضافة إلى الباب العالي العثماني، وكذلك قوى عديدة عشائرية وطائفية منها الحركة الوهابية، فتجمّعت كل هذه القوى حول البعثات البريطانية ومعظمها من الجواسيس وشكّلت (جبهة) واسعة ضد المصريين، ومن ذلك:
– تحريض تجار الشام وبيروت والقبائل في فلسطين وشرق الأردن ضد محمد علي وشن حملة واسعة في الصحافة البريطانية نفسها، ويشار هنا إلى حصار إبراهيم باشا، قائد الجيوش المصرية لقلعة الكرك في شرق الأردن، بعد أن هرب إليها عدد من قادة التمرد في جبال نابلس المدعومين من المخابرات البريطانية، ومن المؤسف أن هناك من اعتبر التحالف بين قادة التمرد في نابلس والكرك ضد توحيد مصر وسوريا جزءاً من التاريخ الوطني.
– بيد أن الأخطر من كل ذلك هو مؤتمر لندن الذي عقد بدعم ورعاية عائلة روتشيلد اليهودية وبالتنسيق مع رئيس وزراء الإمبريالية البريطانية آنذاك، وهو دزرائيلي (من أصول يهودية). وقد شارك في المؤتمر إضافة إلى ممثلي الحكومة البريطانية وروتشيلد نفسه، ممثلون عن إمبراطورية النمسا – المجر، وروسيا القيصرية، وقرّروا حشد قوة بحرية وبرية لإجبار محمد علي على فك الحصار عن إسطنبول والانسحاب من سوريا. وعندما أدرك محمد علي صعوبة هذا الموقف بعد تخلّي فرنسا عنه، انصاع لمطالب مؤتمر لندن.
التجربة الثانية.. عبد الناصر
بعد أقل من قرن على تجربة الوحدة المصرية السورية الأولى، تشكّلت ظروف شبيهة إلى حد ما من حيث، ظهور زعيم قوي بكاريزما تاريخية هو جمال عبد الناصر، ومن حيث الدور البريطاني ومعه القوة الإمبريالية الجديدة ممثلة بالولايات المتحدة، ومن حيث الدور التركي، وكذلك دور الوهابية وجماعات التجار وأوساط من القبائل وتجار الدين.
بعد سنوات قليلة من ثورة تموز/يوليو 1952 في مصر، وجدت الثورة نفسها بقيادة جمال عبد الناصر في مواجهة تحديات داخلية وخارجية متشابكة: الكيان الصهيوني، رواسب الإقطاع، وشركة قناة السويس البريطانية وأصابعها من البرجوازية الطفيلية وبقايا حكم الملكية الفاسدة وجماعات حسن البنا مؤسس الإخوان المسلمين والإسلام السياسي المموّل من هذه الشركة.
فكان تأميم قناة السويس في الداخل والتصدي لحلف بغداد في الخارج (الحلف هو الذراع العسكري الجنوبي لحلف الأطلسي ومركزه الإقليمي، التركي – العراقي)، كما أدركت الثورة الناصرية مبكراً أن المعركة في بر مصر شديدة الصلة بالمعركة في بر سوريا والأمة عموماً، بل أن المتروبولات الإمبريالية وخاصة لندن وواشنطن سرعان ما راحت تطوّق الثورة المصرية من خلال محاولات الاستحواذ على الشرق العربي وخاصة سوريا.
وعندما فشلت في جر دمشق إلى حلف أنقرة – بغداد، دفعت القوات التركية إلى احتلال شمال سوريا 1957 وشق الجيش السوري (الفتي) بمجموعات منشقة تحت عنوان (الجيش الحر) مرتبطة بحكومة انتقالية تديرها بريطانيا والولايات المتحدة من تركيا (النسخة الأصلية لما شهدته سوريا في العشرية السوداء)، وقد شارك في حكومة الائتلاف العميلة آنذاك بقايا الرواسب الإقطاعية والبرجوازيات الطفيلية وأوساط ليبرالية وجماعة الإخوان المسلمين والإرهاصات الأولى للوهابية خارج حدود السعودية وقطر.
في هذه اللحظة التاريخية، أصرت القوى الوطنية السورية بكل تياراتها على إقامة وحدة كاملة مع مصر برئاسة جمال عبد الناصر، ومع أن مصر لم تكن مستعدة تماماً لهذه التجربة، فقد تجاوبت معها بسرعة.
وكما في مشهد القرن التاسع عشر، وجدت الوحدة المصرية السورية الجديدة (1958 – 1961) نفسها أمام قوى وأساليب وأدوات وتحالفات وسياسات تشبه سابقتها: بريطانيا من جديد ومعها الولايات المتحدة، تركيا المحمولة من الغرب الرأسمالي الاستعماري، والوهابية بثوبها الجديد، إضافة إلى رشوة وتحريض واسعين في أوساط قبلية وطائفية تحت العنوان نفسه (التخلص من الاستعمار المصري).
أيضاً، إذا كانت اليهودية العالمية قد تحرّكت ضد محمد علي من خلال روتشيلد وبيوتاته المالية في القرن التاسع عشر، فقد عادت في التجربة الجديدة من خلال الروتشيلدية الجديدة وأداتها الكولونيالية الاستياطنية باسم الكيان الإسرائيلي، بل إن هذا الكيان وبتوصية روتشيلد من خلال ما عرف بصندوق اكتشاف فلسطين لتمويل الاستيطان اليهودي، هو الذي نصح بريطانيا والغرب بإقامة “بافر ستيت” يهودي في فلسطين بعد احتلالها، يفصل مصر عن سوريا الطبيعية ولا يسمح بتكرار تجربة محمد علي.
ومن المؤسف أن مصير الوحدة الجديدة لم يكن أفضل من سابقتها بعد الانفصال الذي شاركت فيه قوى متعددة، ولم تشكّل أخطاء الوحدة مبرّراً حقيقياً للانفصال الذي يعود في حقيقته إلى التآمر الخارجي ودور المخابرات البريطانية والأميركية وأعوانهما السياسيين وقوى البرجوازية التي تضرّرت من قوانين التأميم والإصلاح الزراعي. ومن المؤسف كذلك أن مواقف قوى محسوبة على الحركة الوطنية قدّمت غطاء لهذا الانفصال، إضافة إلى رفض جمال عبد الناصر الدفاع عن الوحدة بالقوة، متجاهلاً أنه ما من وحدة قومية في التاريخ قامت بطريقة سلمية ومن دون شلال من الدم.
وما زلنا وسنبقى نراوح مكاننا إذا لم تقم تجربة ثالثة لبناء القوس المصري – السوري كرافعة تاريخية مناهضة بالضرورة للتحالف الإمبريالي – الصهيوني- الرجعي– العثماني، فإما هذا القوس التاريخي وإما كيانات برسم التشظي إلى هويات قاتلة وكانتونات طائفية وجهوية ومجالات حيوية يتقاسمها العدو الصهيوني والعثمانيون الجدد تحت سقف الإمبريالية العالمية.
إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
The last time the Alican checkpoint was opened was reportedly in 1988, when the Turkish Red Crescent sent aid to earthquake-hit Armenia
ByNews Desk-
(Photo Credit: Twitter)
The border gate between Armenia and Turkiye opened for the first time in 35 years on 11 February, to facilitate the transfer of aid to the victims of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred earlier this week.
The death toll from the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks continues to rise, having an estimated toll of more than 34,000 dead in Turkiye and neighboring Syria.
Ankara’s special envoy to Yerevan, Serdar Kilic, shared photos on Twitter of transport trucks passing through the Alican checkpoint on Turkiye’s side of the border.
Kilic thanked Armenia officials for their help, remarking: “I will always remember the generous aid sent by the people of Armenia to help alleviate the sufferings of our people in the earthquake-stricken region in Turkiye.”
According to Anadolu Agency, the last time the Alican checkpoint was opened was in 1988, when the Turkish Red Crescent sent aid to earthquake-hit Armenia. The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.8, and took over 38,000 lives.
Armenia and Turkiye have been at odds ever since the 1915 Armenian Genocide, which occurred under Turkish Ottoman rule. In the intervening years, Ankara has never taken accountability for its war crimes, despite the two countries attempting to hold reconciliation talks; however, the US, Russia, France, the UK, and many other nations recognize the 20th century conflict as a genocide.
On 14 October 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu disclosed that Turkiye is moving towards normalization with Armenia “in the near future.”
Cavusoglu revealed this to his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, during a press conference in Istanbul: “We negotiate currently which confidence-building steps we can take with Armenia … The next talks will take place in Turkiye or Armenia. We are sincere in our normalization efforts with Armenia.”
Despite the normalization efforts, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was asked about the “Zangezur Corridor,” which would give Azerbaijan unimpeded access to Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic without Armenian checkpoints, remarking that he “didn’t see any issues with it.”
On 6 October 2022, Erdogan and the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Prague to hold the first high-level talks between the two states in over 13 years.
Alexandr Svaranc In today’s geopolitical dynamics, Russia and Turkey maintain a relevant regional presence in strategically important regions of the Near and Middle East, where the interests of the two powers can combine and diverge. However, the ruling elites have a high sense of maintaining a balance of power, respecting national interests, avoiding the prospect of radicalization of conflict situations and seeking decoupling to strengthen regional peace and mutually beneficial cooperation.
It should be recognized that the administrations of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have so far succeeded in finding relatively acceptable solutions to crisis situations through constructive dialogue, guiding the diplomacy of the two countries towards finding joint solutions on the same issue of Syria, overcoming the burden of historical stereotypes and building a new example of a worthy partnership.
In this context, Russia and Turkey have established a number of effective negotiating platforms (in particular the Astana, Sochi and Geneva summits in multilateral and bilateral formats). Russia understands the concerns of Turkish partners on key issues of Turkey’s national security (including ethnic separatism, external threats to territorial integrity and international terrorism). Russia, given its economic, resource, technological, intellectual and military-industrial strength, does not set out to suppress its important geographical neighbor. On the contrary, Moscow is developing a high level of strategic partnership in all the aforementioned areas, making a significant contribution to stabilizing Turkey’s financial and economic situation and strengthening its defense potential, and expects to expand trade with the ambitious goal of reaching USD 100 billion.
The stability and progress of each country depends not least on border security and the normalization of relations with its immediate neighbors. The political course of Turkey’s ruling Justice Party, led by its charismatic leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proclaimed the “Zero Problems with the Neighbors” strategy in the early 2000s. For the Republic of Turkey, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023, the tradition of a post-imperial state remains high, where the complex history of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I was partly transformed into a painful relationship with many of its neighbors, who regained or lost their independence on the wreckage of the collapsed state.
Of course, the declaration of the said strategy without taking into account current realities cannot simultaneously succeed on all directions of Turkey’s borders and requires time and painstaking diplomatic work on bilateral and multilateral levels. At the same time, Turkey has had a number of positive achievements in shaping better relations with Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria and African countries. There is every reason to believe that Ankara is also interested in restoring full-fledged friendly relations with such a key country in the Arab East as Syria.
The peculiarities of the US regional policy in the Middle East have led to widespread destabilization in a number of Arab countries, to the negative phenomenon of the growth of radical Islamic movements with their institutionalization as Al Qaeda and ISIS (both terrorist groups banned in Russia), which eventually led to the chaos in a large part of the Levant. Accordingly, the destabilization of the political situation in the same Syria has provoked ethnic and religious strife, triggered a wave-like flow of a large army of refugees mainly to neighboring Turkey, and caused a significant social and economic crisis which took a heavy toll on the Turkish economy.
For Turkey, the politicization of the Kurdish issue within and near its national borders is an objective concern, forcing the authorities to pursue a tough course to prevent another territorial redistribution and, as a consequence, new social cataclysms in the Near and Middle East. Both Turkey and its reliable partners have to contend with these challenges.
The Russian peacekeeping operation in Syria since fall 2015 has set a new precedent for eliminating the US foreign monopoly in this region. With the arrival of the Russian Air Force, conditions have developed on Syrian territory for more effective interaction with key states in the Near and Middle East (in particular Turkey and Iran) to curb the threat of international terrorism emanating from ISIS (terrorist group banned in Russia) and to find political ways to resolve the accumulated differences in the Syrian-Turkish agenda, combining them with effective peacekeeping operations.
Turkey, which has problems with Kurdish separatism, is very sensitive to attempts to activate the Kurdish militant movement in Syria. This is why, after the Syrian Kurds declared political autonomy in 2014, Ankara recognized the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as a terrorist organization and ally of the PKK, which is banned in Turkey, and the fighting wing of the PYD, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a military opponent. Partly due to the Russian presence in Syria, a number of Turkey’s limited military operations in the north have become a reality in order to avoid the creation of quasi Kurdish independent territorial entities capable of intensifying terrorist and separatist threats to Ankara. In particular:
– Operation Euphrates Shield in 2016-2017 (as a result, the cities of Jarablus and al-Bab were subjected to military mop-ups, 2,000 square kilometers of Syrian territory came under Turkish control with the formation of a security buffer zone there);
– Operation Olive Branch in 2018 to prevent the Kurdish-populated cantons of Jazira, Kobani and Afrin from uniting and the Kurds from reaching the Mediterranean Sea (Afrin ended up under full control of Turkish forces);
– Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, with Turkish military and pro-Turkish Free Syrian Army (FSA) units advancing deep into northern Syria, taking control of new population centers – Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad, cutting the strategic M-4 highway. Thanks to effective negotiations between the Russian and Turkish leaders in Sochi on October 22, 2019, new zones of influence in north-eastern Syria were secured, with the status quo maintained in Turkish-occupied areas and the withdrawal of all Kurdish groups from the entire border with Turkey 30km inland, as well as the establishment of Russian-Turkish patrols in the area.
It should be noted that from operation to operation, Turkey has built up its military forces from special forces units to the use of armored vehicles, artillery and air force with a combination of infantry from the same FSA units, gaining new experience in combat operations in this theater.
In November 2022, with air strikes against Kurdish military bases (in Kobani, Aleppo, Raqqa, al-Hasakah), Turkey announced a new “Operation Claw-Sword” in northern Syria. The formal occasion was the terrorist act of November 13, 2022 in Istanbul’s Istiklal Square, which the Turkish intelligence services recognized to be organized by Kurdish insurgents (in particular the PKK and a Kurdish fighter executor from Syria). Ankara aims to implement a declared plan to establish a 30-kilometer security zone along the entire border with Syria.
Erdoğan has announced his intention to conduct a ground operation involving regular army forces alongside the air operation. He also criticized Russia to a certain extent. Turkey’s leader believes that Moscow has not fully met its obligations under the 2019 Sochi agreements to withdraw Kurds from the 30-kilometer zone. However, the creation of the same “Idlib Security Zone” with Russian participation was, infamously, prevented by the fact that the US refused to withdraw its forces from the zone with the support of local Kurdish forces.
Russia and Turkey have gone a long way towards an effective partnership in the Syrian crisis. Of course, every time Moscow and Ankara make progress in finding new solutions to stabilize the situation in northern Syria, the US, aware of the loss of its own hegemony in the region, finds another form of torpedoing the Russian-Turkish agreements. Accordingly, the Russian-Turkish effective partnership is perceived in Washington as a kind of attack on America’s monopoly and a breakdown of NATO unity, plagued by equally obvious internal contradictions.
Meanwhile, Russia-Turkey relations are progressing with strong results to show for it. Thus, according to Mehmet Samsar, Turkish Ambassador to Russia, the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey by the end of 2022 could be close to USD 50 billion, an increase of USD 15 billion over 2021. The scope of this partnership is expanding: from a gas pipeline to a nuclear power plant, from military and technical cooperation to joint actions for regional peace, from a grain deal to a gas hub. Turkey remains one of the few NATO countries that has not supported total sanctions against Russia in the context of the special military operation in Ukraine, pursues a traditionally pragmatic policy and maintains its role as a reliable partner and effective mediator in relations with its northern neighbor.
The author believes that, in the new year too, the Russian-Turkish situational alliance that has developed in recent years will maintain its momentum of growth, trust and optimization of new opportunities. The coming year 2023 will prove to be a time of intense and important political, economic, military and cultural events in the lives of the two countries. In particular, the next presidential election in Turkey, the launch of ambitious new economic projects (the gas hub, the unblocking of important regional communications, the prospect of a second nuclear power plant near Sinop on the Turkish Black Sea Coast), the establishment of stability in the safe corridor on the Turkish-Syrian border, the approach of peace in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, etc. All this points to a broader agenda of Russia-Turkey relations, where the parties can complement each other and interact effectively.
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Throughout the eight years of war in Yemen, Ankara has seen its policies towards the country shift several times due to Turkey’s own changing political and economic situation.
Turkey’s foreign policy under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is based on the ideology of “Neo-Ottomanism.” Ankara employs soft power and military intervention to promote three priority axes: the Muslim Brotherhood, Pan-Turkism, and moderate Islamism to serve as a model for Sunni activists in the region and beyond from West Asia and North Africa to Central Asia.
Despite Turkey’s active foreign policy in the region, Yemen has been an exception for Ankara owing to several reasons. These include: geographical distance, lack of active foreign policy in Sanaa before the Saudi-led military intervention, and the country having been Riyadh’s backyard for decades.
Western-oriented approaches of previous Turkish governments -with recent priority given to Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean – have also played a part in Ankara’s limited activity in Yemen.
Despite this relative inactive foreign policy, Ankara has swiftly passed through three stages in Yemen: it has veered from supporting the Saudi-led coalition, to silence, followed by de-escalation. At present, Turkey’s preference of diplomacy with neighboring countries has opened the door to similar attitudes towards Yemen.
What does Turkey want in Yemen?
As mentioned, Turkey’s current foreign policy has three axes -among them, the promotion of moderate Islam, which in turn is a projection of soft power. Despite a bitter history of the Ottoman Empire in this corner of Arabia, and unlike the main foreign stakeholders in the conflict, the modern Republic of Turkey is a relative newcomer to the complex political arena of contemporary Yemen.
This has encouraged Ankara to try influencing the hearts and minds of Yemenis through this soft power in order to advance its own interests.
As the effective inheritor of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey presents itself as a Muslim power that is far more responsible and ethical than influential Arab states. In early 2019, Turkey’s Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Çatakli visited Yemen’s southern port city of Aden to discuss the humanitarian situation and infrastructural investments.
Around that time, Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoglu stated that “finding a solution to the Yemeni issue will be one of Turkey’s priorities in 2019,” placing particular blame on coalition partners Saudi Arabia and the UAE for the current humanitarian crisis. More recently, in May, Ankara’s chief diplomat accused Abu Dhabi of fuelling the chaos in Yemen.
Through promoting its soft power, Turkey hopes to forge a role as a provider of humanitarian aid so that after the end of the crisis, it can further develop relations with a future government of Yemen and build a bridge for its future policies.
Given the circumstances, where Turkey has less political and economic influence in Yemen than other competitors – namely, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, and even the US – this may be the best option for Ankara. A prominent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey is also trying to deepen its ideological ties with the Islah Party, widely seen as the Yemeni chapter of the Brotherhood.
Ankara’s strategic interests
From a Realist approach, Ankara’s real interests arguably lie in developing a strong presence in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. In December 2016, Turkey signed an agreement with the northeastern African country Djibouti, to establish a free trade zone of 12 million square meters with a potential economic capacity of $1 trillion.
In September 2017, Turkey established its biggest military base overseas in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and a key city in the Horn of Africa. The lifting of US sanctions on Sudan in the following month, also caught the attention of the Turkish government. As the first Turkish president to visit Sudan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed $650 million in deals, including $300 million of direct investments.
Turkey considers Yemen as the gateway to Africa and the Red Sea; the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, the Gulf of Aden, and the ports of Yemen in the Red Sea are all strategic areas where Turkey can exert influence in the southern entrance of the Red Sea.
The Bab al-Mandab strait is where the oil of the Persian Gulf Arab sheikhdoms is transported to the Red Sea and from there to the Suez Canal to be sent around the world. Therefore, the presence of Turkey can potentially apply political pressure on these oil producing nations.
In this regard, in early 2020, the Yemeni Minister of Transport, Saleh al-Jabwani, traveled to Ankara to negotiate with his Turkish counterpart to form a joint committee for the development of transportation infrastructure in Yemen, including the modernization of ports and airports.
However, while it illustrates Turkey’s intention to invest in and use Yemeni ports to strategic ends, this decision was rejected by the former exiled-Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Three stages of diplomacy in Yemen
At the beginning of Riyadh’s military intervention in March 2015, President Erdogan announced that Turkey supported the coalition’s objective of toppling the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa. He also went onto to criticizing Iran’s regional ambitions in both Yemen and Iraq. “The aim of Iran is to increase its influence in Iraq,” he added, “Iran is trying to chase Daesh from the region only to take its place.”
There were several reasons for Turkey backing the coalition. Firstly, Ankara is engaged in a rivalry with Iran through sponsoring opposing sides in Syria and Iraq, and now in Yemen, with most of power lying with the Iran-allied Sanaa government. The Saudi-backed Islah Party are also among Ansarallah’s main opponents on the ground, who as mentioned earlier have drawn closer to pro-Brotherhood Turkey.
Second, Saudi Arabia’s paradoxical shift toward the Brotherhood changed after King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud came to power in January 2015. His predecessor, the late-King Abdullah, was in favor of eliminating threats from Muslim Brotherhood movements in Arab countries such as Egypt, but under King Salman, Riyadh focused on improving relations with Doha and Ankara to counter Iran, and was less concerned about the Brotherhood.
This provided Ankara with an additional incentive to support the war against Yemen, because it meant weakening Iran while coordinating with the Saudis on their mutual animosity toward the Islamic Republic’s regional role.
A non-interventionist approach was the second stage of Turkey’s diplomacy toward Yemen. Since 2017, along with the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, Ankara felt that it’s alignment with the coalition would eventually prove costly and therefore decided to pursue a non-interventionist policy in Yemen.
Turkey’s economic downturn in 2018 and its decision to normalize relations with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have also influenced this foreign policy shift.
The “active” approach is the latest stage of Turkish diplomacy toward Yemen. After pursuing its destabilizing policies based on a competitive foreign policy with its neighbors over spheres of influence, Ankara gradually realized that pursuing these policies was eroding its own power.
This was especially so following the growing domestic unrest, driven by economic mismanagement and mistrust of the Turkish government. It was around this time that Erdogan pursued a policy of de-escalation with the UAE, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to adapt to the changing political landscape.
A back-door entry into the Yemen conflict
The warming of ties between Ankara and Riyadh has given rise to the speculation that Turkey intends to join the Arab front against Iran and to covertly become involved in the Yemen war. This limited involvement may come in the form of increased support for the Islah or arms sales, especially advanced Turkish drones, to Saudi Arabia in exchange for Riyadh’s investment in Turkey.
In April 2021, Al-Monitorreported that although there was no accurate information about Turkey’s entry into the Yemeni fray, the so-called Syrian National Army, an armed group backed by Turkey, has been working to send dozens of mercenaries to Yemen with a monthly salary of $2,500. Similarly, the Violations Documentation Center in Northern Syria said Turkey’s intelligence agency assigned an opposition commander to recruit fighters to be sent to Yemen.
Additionally, a Turkish armed drone was reportedly downed by Ansarallah-backed forces in the al-Jawf region, further fanning claims about possible Turkish involvement in the conflict. Sanaa’s military spokesman Yahya Saree said the downed drone was a Turkish-built Vestel Karayel aircraft. Saudi Arabia acquired these drones as part of a contract last year with Vestel Defense worth $200 million.
Yemen provides an opportunity for Turkey to further its regional ambitions with potential low-risk and low-cost benefits. The geopolitical and ideological upside of Turkey’s possible presence in Yemen – and Ankara’s recent de-escalation with Saudi Arabia and the UAE – have convinced Turkish officials to take a closer look at this strategic part of the Arabian Peninsula.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
One year after the astounding US humiliation in Kabul – and on the verge of another serious comeuppance in Donbass – there is reason to believe Moscow is wary of Washington seeking vengeance: in the form of the ‘Afghanization’ of Ukraine.
With no end in sight to western weapons and finance flowing into Kiev, it must be recognized that the Ukrainian battle is likely to disintegrate into yet another endless war. Like the Afghan jihad in the 1980s which employed US-armed and funded guerrillas to drag Russia into its depths, Ukraine’s backers will employ those war-tested methods to run a protracted battle that can spill into bordering Russian lands.
Yet this US attempt at crypto-Afghanization will at best accelerate the completion of what Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu describes as the “tasks” of its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. For Moscow right now, that road leads all the way to Odessa.
It didn’t have to be this way. Until the recent assassination of Darya Dugina at Moscow’s gates, the battlefield in Ukraine was in fact under a ‘Syrianization’ process.
Like the foreign proxy war in Syria this past decade, frontlines around significant Ukrainian cities had roughly stabilized. Losing on the larger battlefields, Kiev had increasingly moved to employ terrorist tactics. Neither side could completely master the immense war theater at hand. So the Russian military opted to keep minimal forces in battle – contrary to the strategy it employed in 1980s Afghanistan.
Let’s remind ourselves of a few Syrian facts: Palmyra was liberated in March 2016, then lost and retaken in 2017. Aleppo was liberated only in December 2016. Deir Ezzor in September 2017. A slice of northern Hama in December and January 2018. The outskirts of Damascus in the Spring of 2018. Idlib – and significantly, over 25 percent of Syrian territory – are still not liberated. That tells a lot about rhythm in a war theater.
The Russian military never made a conscious decision to interrupt the multi-channel flow of western weapons to Kiev. Methodically destroying those weapons once they’re in Ukrainian territory – with plenty of success – is another matter. The same applies to smashing mercenary networks.
Moscow is well aware that any negotiation with those pulling the strings in Washington – and dictating all terms to puppets in Brussels and Kiev – is futile. The fight in Donbass and beyond is a do or die affair.
So the battle will go on, destroying what’s left of Ukraine, just as it destroyed much of Syria. The difference is that economically, much more than in Syria, what’s left of Ukraine will plunge into a black void. Only territory under Russian control will be rebuilt, and that includes, significantly, the bulk of Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure.
What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine.
Going forward, by next year the Russians will be applying themselves to cutting off Kiev from NATO weapons supplies. As that unfolds, the Anglo-Americans will eventually move whatever puppet regime remains to Lviv. And Kiev terrorism – conducted by Bandera worshippers – will continue to be the new normal in the capital.
The Kazakh double game
By now it’s abundantly clear this is not a mere war of territorial conquest. It’s certainly part of a War of Economic Corridors – as the US spares no effort to sabotage and smash the multiple connectivity channels of Eurasia’s integration projects, be they Chinese-led (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) or Russian-led (Eurasian Economic Union, EAEU).
Just like the proxy war in Syria remade large swathes of West Asia (witness, for instance, Erdogan about to meet Assad), the fight in Ukraine, in a microcosm, is a war for the reconfiguration of the current world order, where Europe is a mere self-inflicted victim in a minor subplot. The Big Picture is the emergence of multipolarity.
The proxy war in Syria lasted a decade, and it’s not over yet. The same may happen to the proxy war in Ukraine. As it stands, Russia has taken an area that is roughly equivalent to Hungary and Slovakia combined. That’s still far from “task” fulfillment – and it’s bound to go on until Russia has taken all the land right up to the Dnieper as well as Odessa, connecting it to the breakaway Republic of Transnistria.
It’s enlightening to see how important Eurasian actors are reacting to such geopolitical turbulence. And that brings us to the cases of Kazakhstan and Turkey.
The Telegram channel Rybar (with over 640k followers) and hacker group Beregini revealed in an investigation that Kazakhstan was selling weapons to Ukraine, which translates as de facto treason against their own Russian allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Consider too that Kazakhstan is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the EAEU, the two hubs of the Eurasian-led multipolar order.
As a consequence of the scandal, Kazakhstan was forced to officially announce the suspension of all weapons exports until the end of 2023.
It began with hackers unveiling how Technoexport – a Kazakh company – was selling armed personnel carriers, anti-tank systems and munitions to Kiev via Jordanian intermediaries, under the orders of the United Kingdom. The deal itself was supervised by the British military attaché in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital.
Nur-Sultan predictably tried to dismiss the allegations, arguing that Technoexport had not asked for export licenses. That was essentially false: the Rybar team discovered that Technoexport instead used Blue Water Supplies, a Jordanian firm, for those. And the story gets even juicier. All the contract documents ended up being found in the computers of Ukrainian intel.
Moreover, the hackers found out about another deal involving Kazspetsexport, via a Bulgarian buyer, for the sale of Kazakh Su-27s, airplane turbines and Mi-24 helicopters. These would have been delivered to the US, but their final destination was Ukraine.
The icing on this Central Asian cake is that Kazakhstan also sells significant amounts of Russian – not Kazakh – oil to Kiev.
So it seems that Nur-Sultan, perhaps unofficially, somehow contributes to the ‘Afghanization’ in the war in Ukraine. No diplomatic leaks confirm it, of course, but bets can be made Putin had a few things to say about that to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in their recent – cordial – meeting.
The Sultan’s balancing act
Turkey is a way more complex case. Ankara is not a member of the SCO, the CSTO or the EAEU. It is still hedging its bets, calculating on which terms it will join the high-speed rail of Eurasian integration. And yet, via several schemes, Ankara allows Moscow to evade the avalanche of western sanctions and embargoes.
Turkish businesses – literally all of them with close connections to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) – are making a killing, and relishing their new role as crossroads warehouse between Russia and the west. It’s an open boast in Istanbul that what Russia cannot buy from Germany or France they buy “from us.” And in fact several EU companies are in on it.
Ankara’s balancing act is as sweet as a good baklava. It gathers economic support from a very important partner right in the middle of the endless, very serious Turkish economic debacle. They agree on nearly everything: Russian gas, S-400 missile systems, the building of the Russian nuclear power plant, tourism – Istanbul is crammed with Russians – Turkish fruits and vegetables.
Ankara-Moscow employ sound textbook geopolitics. They play it openly, in full transparence. That does not mean they are allies. It’s just pragmatic business between states. For instance, an economic response may alleviate a geopolitical problem, and vice-versa.
Obviously the collective west has completely forgotten how that normal state-to-state behavior works. It’s pathetic. Turkey gets “denounced” by the west as traitorous – as much as China.
Of course Erdogan also needs to play to the galleries, so every once in a while he says that Crimea should be retaken by Kiev. After all, his companies also do business with Ukraine – Bayraktar drones and otherwise.
And then there’s proselytizing: Crimea remains theoretically ripe for Turkish influence, where Ankara may exploit the notions of pan-Islamism and mostly pan-Turkism, capitalizing on the historical relations between the peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.
Is Moscow worried? Not really. As for those Bayraktar TB2s sold to Kiev, they will continue to be relentlessly reduced to ashes. Nothing personal. Just business.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Members of the Betar Zionist youth movement demonstrate against British policy in Palestine at the tomb of Theodor Herzl in the Jewish cemetery in Vienna.
Former Israeli PM and renowned war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu once stated that Betar founder Vladimir “Jabotinsky’s doctrine will continue to feed the flame of Zionism and guide our path”.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Poland was home to the biggest Jewish population in the world, with 3.3 million Jews living in that country. In the period between the two world wars, Poland was an incubator for the development of extreme right-wing Zionism. Its leading proponent, the Russian-born Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, a poet, journalist and political activist, was the founder of Betar, one of the popular Zionist youth movements in Europe.
Betar was built on a militaristic spirit, characterized by its staunch opposition to socialism, steeped in the exaltation of violence and loyal to Jabotinsky’s charismatic and authoritarian leadership. Although its core base was in Poland, Betar began to reach Jewish communities in other countries. By 1920s, its worldwide membership was about 60,000, of whom three-quarters lived in Poland.
To left-wing and Labour Zionists, who would take command of the newly established “Israel” in 1948, Betarists were regarded “Jewish fascists”, as described by “Israel’s” first prime minister David Ben-Gurion. Two of its members, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, would serve as “Israel’s” prime ministers, while a third, Benzion Netanyahu, would be the father of “Israel’s” longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 1915, Vladimir Jabotinsky immigrated to Palestine in order to fulfill his Zionist dream of a “Jewish state” in the “Promised Land”. But the then-Ottoman ruler of Palestine, Jamal Pasha, quickly discovered the Zionist plots and activities and suspected their loyalty to “the enemy” during wartime, so he decided to deport thousands of them, including Jabotinsky, to British-controlled Egypt. In Alexandria, Jabotinsky began organizing the Jews in a sort of para-military police force, and he soon offered his services to Great Britain proposing to the British commander in Egypt, General Maxwell, to establish a Jewish brigade to join the war effort under British command. But the British General wasn’t impressed and offered the Zionists a logistics role only. The Jews of Alexandria accepted General Maxwell’s offer and thus the “Zion Mule Corps” was formed. Jabotinsky felt humiliated and headed back to Europe.
From the moment Jabotinsky set foot on Polish soil in 1927, he began working hard to transform Betar into a mass movement among the Jews. He founded the Union of Revisionist Zionists, challenging the mainstream Zionism that was already playing a significant role in the lives of Polish Jews in independent Poland which re-emerged after World War I. Jabotinsky also used Betar to enhance his own political status. He broke with mainstream Zionism, advocating a more aggressive, even violent, approach to dealing with the British colonial administration in mandate Palestine and with Palestinian Arabs, and calling for a “Jewish state” stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Peninsula and the Euphrates River in Iraq. Poland was a fertile recruiting ground and its Jewish youth were Jabotinsky’s most important disciples. Between 1919 and 1937, almost 250,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, half of them from Poland, giving Jabotinsky’s organization significant influence there.
In Poland, an environment of anti-semitism prevailed in the late 1930s. There was a feeling among the Poles that Jews were naturally predisposed to communism and were overrepresented in key sectors of the economy. Jews were being targeted by economic boycott, and anti-Jewish legislations were passed. These developments were advantageous to Jabotinsky’s cause. Poland extended diplomatic and military aid to Betar, lending public support to Revisionist positions at the League of Nations and providing military training and weapons to the Revisionists’ armed militia in Palestine, the “Irgun Tsvai Leumi”. Jabotinsky, in turn, presented the Polish government with a plan to send 1.5 million Jews to Palestine over a 10-year period. Polish officials responded warmly to it, regarding it as a practical solution to significantly reduce Poland’s Jewish population. Jabotinsky’s scheme was endorsed by senior Polish politicians, including the foreign minister, the Polish ambassador to Britain, and Poland’s consul general in occupied Al-Quds.
However, Betar’s policies so alarmed Labour Zionists that they warned of exporting “Jewish fascism” to Palestine. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the mainstream World Zionist Organization, was particularly concerned. He even compared Jabotinsky’s Revisionism to Italian fascism. Weizmann’s criticism of Betar was natural, considering the widespread belief that the 1933 assassination of Haim Arlosoroff, the powerful Labour Zionist leader in Palestine, had been the work of Betar activists.
With the eruption of World War II, Betarists, like Menachem Begin, fled the country. Having been imprisoned by the Soviets, he joined the British-controlled army of General Wladyslaw Anders and arrived in Palestine in 1942 where he defected and started his new life between his revisionist-Zionist fellows. During World War II, Avraham Stern, a Betar member, broke ranks with the Irgun and formed his own underground organization, Lehi. Scores of Polish Jewish immigrants flocked to Lehi, which attacked British assets in Palestine and reached out (unsuccessfully) to Italy and Nazi Germany. Yitzhak Shamir was a Lehi leader who personally supervised the brutal killing of the British State Minister, Lord Moyne, in Cairo. The British authorities in Palestine identified Shamir as the person who issued the order for the two assassins who shot Lord Moyne. His name was put on the “Most Wanted” list.
After “Israel” was declared, the Lehi and Irgun members, along with the whole revisionist Zionists were forced to lay down their arms and join the Israeli occupation forces, together with the Haganah of the mainstream Zionism under Ben-Gurion and Weizmann. They formed a political party, Hirut, advocating their extreme-right and expansionist ideology. They remained in opposition for 29 years until 1977, when they won the general elections under the “Likud” coalition and seized power. The old Betarists, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir successively served as prime ministers for a total of 14 years before handing over the leadership to the new generation of revisionist Zionism represented by Benjamin Netanyahu, the son of their old pal Benzion Netanyahu, who served as prime minister for 15 years.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu, whose ideas hail from Jabotinsky’s Revisionism, Betar’s philosophy of living by the sword has become the mainstream in “Israel”, while the old Labour Zionism faded away. In his book “A Place Among the Nations” Netanyahu wrote that “Israel” must display the maximum power towards the Arabs and that Palestinians can only live as “foreigners” under Israeli rule. On July 15, 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the memorial place of Vladimir Jabotinsky in occupied Al-Quds and very passionately said about his fascist idol: “Jabotinsky was the one who forged the foundations for the combat tradition of our youth over the last hundred years. It was one of his significant innovations. He was a pillar of fire lighting the way for our people”. Netanyahu went on and quoted Jabotinsky’s slogan “It is time to show the world a Jewish rifle with a Jewish bayonet”. He concluded his speech by saying “Jabotinsky’s doctrine will continue to feed the flame of Zionism and guide our path”.
لو اكتفى وزير حرب كيان الاحتلال بني غانتس بالقول إن دماراً كبيراً سيلحق بلبنان في أية حرب مقبلة، لما كان كلامه موضوعاً للتدقيق، انطلاقاً من أن القدرة النارية لجيش الاحتلال على إلحاق مثل هذا الدمار، ليست موضع نقاش، بل ما كان سيناقش هو المقارنة بين حجم الخسائر التي ستلحق بلبنان مقارنة بما سيلحق بكيان الاحتلال، في ضوء تطوّر قدرات المقاومة، خصوصاً بعدما أعلن الأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصرالله عن أن خسائر الكيان في أية حرب مقبلة ستزيد عن خسائر لبنان، وهذا أول تصريح من نوعه بهذا المضمون يصدر عن السيد نصرالله، الموصوف بدقة معادلاته، وعدم سماحه الانفعال والحماس أن يدخلا على صياغتها، واعتماده في الحرب النفسية التي يخوضها على معادلات واقعية مدروسة بتحفظ شديد، كما يصفه خبراء الكيان.
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كلام غانتس لا يأتي بعد عام 1982 والانسحاب الإسرائيلي من بيروت، ولا بعد العام 2000 والانسحاب الاسرائيلي من لبنان، بل بعد اختبار جيش الاحتلال فرضية امتلاكه قدرة الدرع الكافية لإلحاق الهزيمة بالمقاومة، في حرب عام 2006، والفشل الذريع الذي مني به جيش الاحتلال في هذه الحرب، ليس بمجرد الفشل في تحقيق هدف سحق حزب الله، أو تجريده من قدرته الصاروخية كحد أدنى أول، أو تطويقه بضوابط دولية رادعة محكمة تمثلت بمشروع نشر قوات متعددة الجنسيات في جنوب لبنان وفق الفصل السابع كحد أدنى ثان، بل بالفشل المكلف الذي أصاب جيش الاحتلال في محاولة الدخول إلى الأراضي اللبنانية، وهي مضمون الحرب البرية التي خاضتها أولية النخبة في جيوش البر والقوات المدرعة التابعة لجيش الاحتلال لأكثر من عشرين يوماً من أيام الحرب الثلاثة والثلاثين، بعدما فشل استنفاد القصف الجوي والبحري والبري فرصه في تحقيق وقف تساقط صواريخ المقاومة على عمق الكيان، وكانت الحصيلة خسائر موصوفة دمرت خلالها عشرات الدبابات وقتل خلالها وأصيب مئات الجنود والضباط، دون تحقيق أي اختراق جدي في خط الحدود، وليس فقط في الوصول إلى المدن الحدودية كبنت جبيل ومرجعيون، فكيف الحديث عن صور وصيدا …وبيروت!
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خلال السنوات التي أعقبت حرب 2006 امتلأت القراءات الاستراتيجية لمراكز الدراسات الإسرائيلية والأميركية، بما فيها الحكومية منها، ومثلها تصريحات كبار القادة السياسيين والعسكريين، بالحديث المتكرر عن تعاظم قوة حزب الله، بالتوازي مع الاعتراف بالفشل في امتلاك القدرة على احتواء هذا التعاظم، سواء عبر الغارات التي تستهدف سورية، او الرهان على تداعيات الحرب السورية، او الاستثمار على تغيير البيئة السياسية اللبنانية، والكلام عن مخاطر التورط في حرب جديدة تزامن مع نتائج أثبتتها مواجهات جيش الاحتلال مع قوى المقاومة في غزة، قبل عام خلال معركة سيف القدس، حيث فشل جيش الاحتلال في تحقيق الردع الموهوم، وعجز قادته عن اتخاذ القرار المكلف بخوض حرب برية، فكيف يستقيم القول عن أن هذا الجيش جاهز لخوض حرب يتجاوز فيها هدف استعادة المهابة، ورد الاعتبار، وتحقيق الردع للتهديد بالوصول، ليس الى بنت جبيل ومرجعيون، بل الى صور وصيدا… وصولاً الى بيروت؟
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كلام غانتس سيصبح موضوعاً للتندر والسخرية، كما هو كلام وزير حربية السلطنة العثمانية أنور باشا قبيل الحرب العالمية الأولى، عندما هدد بدخول موسكو، كما يهدد غانتس بدخول بيروت، والحرب بدأت بالمناسبة من بوابة مواجهة بحرية، وكما كانت تركيا العثمانية قد أصبحت رجل أوروبا المريض قبل أن تسقط بالضربة القاضية، يبدو كيان الاحتلال اليوم رجل المنطقة المريض، في حالة النزع يهلوس ويروّح عن النفس بالثرثرة.
إن تاريخ الاستعمار العثماني لبلادنا وعداءهم للعرب وأطماعهم بضم أراضينا وتواطأهم مع الصهاينة واضح للعيان بشكل يثير الشكوك بأصول حكامهم المشبوهة.
الغريب أن هناك بعض العرب ما زالوا يصدّقون أكاذيب إردوغان التي تدعي الدفاع عن الإسلام
حين قام الرئيس قيس سعيد باتخاذ قراراته الجريئة في 25 تموز/يوليو 2021 كتبت زاوية بعنوان “أول الغيث قطرة” آملة أن يكون هذا التحرك هو الإشارة الأكيدة لاجتثاث ما تبقى من التراث الدموي لعصابة الإخوان المسلمين من الوطن العربي بعد أن أسستها المخابرات البريطانية وفق نظريتهم الاستعمارية “فرّق تسد”، وبعد أن فشلوا في مصر وسورية وتوضح دورهم كأداة تخدم المصالح الإسرائيلية ضد العرب، ولذلك اتخذت دول عربية عديدة إجراءات حازمة ضدهم. وفي الأيام الأخيرة، وبعد أن أخذ الغنوشي يحاول عرقلة خطوات الرئيس قيس سعيد اتخذ الرئيس سعيد قراراً بحلّ البرلمان وحينها لم يعد زعيم عصابة الإخوان المسلمين العميلة في المنطقة “إردوغان” قادراً على التزام الصمت فانبرى يتدخل في الشؤون الداخلية لتونس حيث قال: “إن التطورات في تونس تشويه للديمقراطية وحل البرلمان الذي لا يوجد فيه مسؤولون منتخبون مدعاة للقلق على مستقبل تونس وضربة لإرادة شعبها.”
من الواضح أن خطوات الرئيس قيس سعيد قد أثارت حنق الرئيس التركي رجب طيب إردوغان الذي مازال يمارس النفاق مع كل الأطراف الإقليمية والدولية وهو في حقيقته لا يتعدى كونه زعيم مشروع إسرائيلي يستخدم الإخوان المسلمين كأداة إرهابية ضمن مخطط مجهز من قبل المخابرات الإسرائيلية وبدعم من المخابرات الغربية المعادية للعرب، وإردوغان هذا مجرد طاغية وعثماني جديد يعيد مسيرة أجداده من سلاطين الظلم والتجهيل، ودوره واضح في التواطؤ مع الصهاينة ضد فلسطين وشعبها سابقاً ولاحقاً، وهو الذي يقوم جيشه باحتلال أجزاء من سورية والعراق، وهو من درب وسلح وأرسل مئات الألوف من الإرهابيين لقتل وتهجير الملايين من السوريين والعراقيين في تناغم لا يطاله الشك مع مخططات الحركة الصهيونية في المنطقة وإلحاق بالغ الأذى بالعرب والوطن العربي تاريخاً وثقافة وحضارة وحاضراً ومستقبلاً.
والغريب أن هناك بعض العرب ما زالوا يصدّقون أكاذيب إردوغان التي تدعي الدفاع عن الإسلام أو التعاضد مع جيرانه العرب تماماً كما صدقوا وتوارثوا الكذبة التاريخية المماثلة أن الاحتلال العثماني للأمة العربية كان فتحاً إسلامياً وخلافة إسلامية، وهناك من يصدّق الدعاية التي تروجها المخابرات التركية بأن السلطان عبد الحميد قد رفض الموافقة على إعطاء أرض فلسطين كوطن قومي لليهود، وكثيرون بين ظهرانينا ما زالوا يؤمنون بصحة ذلك حتى هذا اليوم رغم أن الوقائع التاريخية الدقيقة تثبت أن التواطؤ العثماني كان أساسياً وهاماً في تمكين الصهاينة من الاستيطان في فلسطين.
ورغم كل مناورات وفرمانات السلطان عبد الحميد والتي تشبه إلى حد بعيد كل مراوغات ونفاق إردوغان في العقدين الأخيرين فإن الحقيقة التاريخية هي أن السلطان عبد الحميد لعب دوراً فاعلاً في الهجرة اليهودية إلى فلسطين وتنامي المستوطنات، وقد بدأت هذه العلاقة بين السلطنة العثمانية والصهاينة من السلطان العثماني عبد المجيد الأول الذي وقع اتفاقاً عام 1840 مع موسى مونتيفوري بمعاونة هنري جون تيمبل رئيس وزراء بريطانيا يقضي بمنح اليهود امتيازات داخل فلسطين وفي كل أرجاء الدولة العثمانية حيث شكّل هذا الاتفاق بداية سرطان الاستيطان الصهيوني الذي سرى في جسد فلسطين وبدأ يأخذ الشرعية بفرمانات السلاطين المتلاحقة إلى أن جاء عهد عبد الحميد الثاني سنة 1876، ومع عصره بدأ سرطانهم يتوحش ويأخذ أبعاده على أرض فلسطين كلها بدعم من الدول الاستعمارية الغربية.
فقد كانت علاقة السلطان عبد الحميد الثاني وطيدة جداً مع زعيم الحركة الصهيونية العالمية تيودور هرتزل تماماً كعلاقة إردوغان بالصهاينة اليوم، ورغم التحايل من أجل عدم كشف الدعم الحقيقي الذي قدمه للحركة الصهيونية إلا أن الوقائع تثبت عدد وأسماء المستوطنات الصهيونية التي بنيت على أرض فلسطين خلال فترة حكمه من عام 1876-1909. فخلال فترة حكم السلطان عبد الحميد الثاني أسس اليهود ثلاثاً وثلاثين مستوطنة على أرض فلسطين واستحوذوا على مئات الآلاف من الدونمات من أرض فلسطين وقاموا بتهجير عشرات الآلاف من يهود أوروبا إلى فلسطين، وقد تم تأسيس الكثير من هذه المستعمرات في وقت ادّعت فيه الدولة العثمانية أنها شددت من إجراءاتها لمنع دخول اليهود! بل واعترفت الدولة العثمانية بوجود المستعمرات وهو ما سمح للبارون روتشيلد بتسجيل الأراضي التي اشتراها باسمه وسمحت لليهود بشراء الأراضي، فقد كان عدد اليهود في فلسطين عام 1882 أربع وعشرين ألفاً فقط بينما وصل في نهاية القرن التاسع عشر إلى خمسين ألفاً وفي عام 1908 إلى 80 ألفاً أي نحو ثلاثة أضعاف ما كان عددهم عام 1882 .
إن تاريخ الاستعمار العثماني لبلادنا وعداءهم للعرب وأطماعهم بضم أراضينا وتواطأهم مع الصهاينة للسماح لهم بالهجرة والاستيطان في فلسطين العربية واضح للعيان بشكل يثير الشكوك بأصول حكامهم المشبوهة بينما يحاول عملاؤهم من الإخوان بدفع من المخابرات التركية أن يبرّؤوا العثمانيين من هذه الجريمة التاريخية من خلال تلاعبهم بالفرمانات والسرديات والتصريحات ويعتبر أنموذجاً يتبعه إردوغان منذ توليه الحكم في تركيا وتحركاته البهلوانية من سفينة مرمرة إلى كل التصريحات الكاذبة التي يطلقها دعماً للفلسطينيين بينما تتوطد علاقته المخابراتية والعسكرية والاقتصادية بشكل لا لبس فيه مع الكيان الغاصب ويبلغ حجم تبادله التجاري مع هذا الكيان مليارات الدولارات بينما لم يقدم دعماً واحداً للقضية الفلسطينية العادلة سوى التصريحات الكاذبة والمنافقة والتي تهدف إلى التضليل وذرّ الرماد في العيون، بينما يحتل الأرض العربية في سورية والعراق ويشيد القواعد العسكرية في قطر وغيرها تهديداً للدول العربية وشقاً لصفوفها.
إن احتلاله لأجزاء من الأراضي السورية والعراقية وتدخله الخبيث في ليبيا واليوم تطاوله بالتدخل في الشأن الداخلي التونسي كما تدخل في الصراع في ناغورني كاراباخ ضد إيران وفي أوكرانيا ضد روسيا، كل هذا كفيل بتعرية نفاقه واتضاح صورته أمام العالم برمته وخاصة أمام العرب في مختلف أقطارهم وأمام الحليف الروسي الذي أسقط عدداً من طائرات بيرقدار التي أرسلها أردوغان إلى حكومة أوكرانيا لقتال روسيا.
إن الله سبحانه وتعالى وضع المنافقين في الدرك الأسفل من النار لأنهم أخطر من الكافرين، وفي كل عقاب يتقدم المنافقون على الكافرين لأنهم الأخطر على حياة البشر وجميع مناحي حياتهم فكيف إذا كانوا قد مردوا على النفاق باسم الإسلام ماضياً وحاضراً وأتقنوا التلاعب بأدواته لتحقيق أهدافهم الخبيثة.
إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
“The land of liberties” is a fitting label for Lebanon, a remarkable country that deserves it.
Lebanese Media: An Arab Pioneer on Media Silk Road
The right to free press is revered and guarded in Lebanon. Constitutional freedom of expression in Lebanon is guaranteed under Article 13, which states that all forms of expression are protected “within the bounds imposed by law.” For many people, the most arduous way to freedom is not the path of armed struggle, but rather the path of free and brave speech. “The land of liberties” is a fitting label for Lebanon, a remarkable country that deserves it.
Without the sacrifices of the martyrs, this attribute would not have been part of the Lebanese identity. It’s everything on the altar of the press and the sacredness of the free word. The message of peace and freedom of expression may be carried by Lebanon. Because there is no peace without freedom, the two concepts are intertwined in their connection. Several Lebanese journalists were exonerated from the gallows by the Ottoman Empire during the month of May of the year 1958. Since the killed journalists’ mandate was: “We die free and do not live as slaves or captives of others,” May 6 has been declared a feast day for the martyrs in Lebanon.
The Lebanese press has a rich history of events and phases that have been etched into the minds of the Lebanese. The comments of An-Nahar newspaper, held by Chairman of the Board, Gibran Tueni, who took up his pen and walked out into the streets to remind the world that in Lebanon, freedom of speech and expression are taken by pen and not by gun, are well-remembered by all of us. “We promise by Almighty God, Muslims and Christians, that we will remain together in defense of glorious Lebanon forever and ever,” Gibran Tueni swore to the Lebanese people.
As a result of the vast range of freedoms it enjoys, Lebanon stands out regionally and globally. For example, there are television stations in Lebanon for each and every political party. In addition to the many free internet sites, private newspapers are all examples. Freedom of expression is not constrained by any red lines; as long as it does not infringe on the sacred and national sovereignty, you are free to voice your thoughts. Since Arab countries have rigorous monitoring agencies and stringent laws, Lebanon will remain a milestone in the free Arab media.
An unauthorized political journal, “The News Garden,” was published by Khalil El-Khoury in Beirut on January 1, 1858, and is regarded as “the mother of Arab newspapers.” Count Rashid Al-Dahdah, who published the “Barjis” newspaper in Paris in 1858 and Ahmed Faris al-Shidyaq, who published the “Al-Jawa’ib” newspaper in Istanbul in 1861 are just two examples of Lebanese involvement in the publication of Arab newspapers published abroad. According to writer Laila Hamdoun, we find that most of the Arab newspapers were issued by Lebanese intellectuals, for example, the great “Butros al-Bustani” has launched “Nafeer Syria“, Lebanon’s second newspaper, in 1860 in Beirut, appealing for national unity in the wake of the sectarian murders of 1860. The cinema and theatre have also grown popular in Lebanon.
These remarks have been written during my stay in China, the land of civilization, culture, science, and commerce. As a specialist in the “Belt and Road Initiative” that was first introduced in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and in order to highlight the Lebanese role in this effort, I decided to link the free Lebanese press in the Arab world to the Belt and Road Initiative, which aims in part at people-to-people exchange and cultural understanding.
Newspapers in Lebanon, media professionals, and authors claim that “our time today is different from prior periods.” People in Lebanon have long had an eye on the West, and they’ve done it through airing Hollywood films, importing anything dubbed, and keeping tabs on political developments in the West. To that end, I urge Lebanese political and media officials, as the stewards of Lebanon’s culture and language, not to cut ties with the West. At the same time, keep in mind that this is China’s golden period and that this great Asian is no less than the Western nations.
Speaking at the 2016 Media Cooperation Forum’s opening ceremony, Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed his country’s Belt and Road Initiative. Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that the media is a platform for constructive discourse, the sharing of ideas, and collaboration. Without an active and unbiased role for the media, there is no contact between peoples. Without media, the Belt and Road Initiative’s goal of bridging cultures won’t be able to fulfill its full potential.
As a technologically advanced country, China employs the most up-to-date broadcasting techniques in its media partnership with Lebanon. Co-operation between China and the Arab countries in media has become essential. According to Wang Chen of China’s State Council Information Office, media interactions between Beijing and Beirut are a priority for the country.
China has established a tight relationship with Lebanon through television shows that introduce the Lebanese people to the Chinese culture.As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China has recently displayed a keen interest in the Arab world. CGTN Arabic and China Arab TV, two Chinese TV stations, have been introduced to the Arab satellites Nilesat and Arabsat, which transmit documentaries and news about China and the Arab world. To keep up with all of CGTN Arabic and China International Radio‘s social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Wechat), separate department staffed by Chinese and Arabs has been established.
A deal was reached in 2016 between Lebanon TV and China’s state television, whereby Lebanon was provided with certain equipment. National News Agency was given a large number of computers and training workshops by the Chinese government in order to facilitate mutual collaboration.
More seminars and training sessions for journalists and more equipment donations are expected from the Chinese government in Lebanon. Media in Lebanon will focus on Chinese matters, invite Chinese specialists and introduce the Lebanese people and Arabs to Chinese news. As China’s influence in Lebanon grows, it’s feasible that Lebanese media outlets may start publishing content in Chinese. Videos, interviews, and information on Lebanon can be used by the Chinese media to educate the Chinese population about the country. China may invite Chinese journalists and press students to visit Lebanon to learn more about the nation and collaborate with Lebanese journalists in order to speed up the reporting of the news.
Ex-Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Jiang said the media collaboration between China and Lebanon is growing quickly, and he underlined that China is a long-term supporter of both the government and Lebanese media outlets. During the Chinese Spring Festival and Chinese National Day each year, the Chinese Embassy in Lebanon and Lebanon TV work together to broadcast programs in China.
The works of the Chinese Cultural Centre in Beirut (Confucius Institute) should be extended so that it can do other functions, such as translating Chinese films into Arabic. Due to Lebanon’s high cultural value, many Chinese dubbing businesses have shown a desire to cooperate with Chinese media outlets. In order to make Lebanese culture more accessible to the Chinese audience, films from the country will be dubbed. ‘Capernaum’, a film directed by Nadine Labaki, was the first Lebanese film to be dubbed into Chinese.In addition to books and poetry which could enhance cultural exchange.
A plan for successful Chinese-Arab media cooperation is being devised by China, which includes enhancing communication between Chinese and Arab media, establishing a media administrative system that serves the common Chinese-Arab interest, and raising electronic media cooperation.
“Media Silk Road” has emerged in recent years as a term for the media cooperation between Belt and Road Initiative countries. There are four committees that focus on news cooperation, integrated communication, cooperation in program production, and industrial cooperation. The main mission is to promote international peace by fostering cultural exchange between nations. More positive steps are expected to be taken by the international television cooperation community of the Silk Road in order to benefit both Chinese and Arab interests.
As part of the Belt and Road Initiative, the people of participating countries play a significant role in its implementation. As a result, in accordance with the principles of cultural communication and freedom of speech, the media should be a tool to enrich the Arab people’s knowledge about China and the Belt and Road initiative.
Considering Lebanon’s status as a participant of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is expected that Lebanon will play an important role in promoting the initiative in Lebanon and the Arab world. As part of an Arab media strategy for the Belt and Road Initiative, Lebanon might be designated as an authorized media hub in conjunction with the Chinese authorities. There are numerous examples of Sino-Lebanese media and cultural collaboration that have been successful, and this proposed cooperation could be another success.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
In March, it will be eight years since the day Crimea returned to the Russian Federation. This ended its 60-year history as part of Ukraine, which began, not on February 19, 1954, but a little earlier.
What does Ukraine have to do with it?
The Crimean Peninsula became part of the Russian Empire after a series of Russian-Turkish wars. In 1771, Crimean Khan Sahib II Giray gained independence from the Ottoman Empire thanks to Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, who had defeated the Turkish troops on the peninsula. The Khan signed an agreement on alliance and mutual assistance with St. Petersburg. And in 1774, the Ottomans completely abrogated their claims to Crimea, conceding them to Russia, by signing the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca.
Nine years later, Giray’s reforms had angered the Crimean Tatars to the extent that he was forced to abdicate. In order to prevent a bloody power struggle, Russia was forced to send troops to the peninsula. The local nobility swore an oath to Empress Catherine II and received equal rights with the Russian nobility. They also took part in managing the newly created Taurida Region, which existed until the collapse of the Russian Empire. And in 1791, as the result of another defeat, the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Jassy, according to which Crimea belonged solely to Russia. Both the Jassy and Küçük Kaynarca agreements are internationally recognized and considered valid.
The revolutionary events of 1917 led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the emergence of a number of pseudo-independent states on the territory of Ukraine: The Ukrainian People’s Republic centered in Kiev, the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets centered in Kharkov, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic centered first in Kharkov and then in Lugansk, the Odessa Soviet Republic, and the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic in Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region. But after the Central Council of Ukraine signed a separate agreement with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kaiser of Germany, the entire territory of Ukraine and Crimea, which had never belonged to either Germanic country, was occupied by Austro-German troops.
Ukrainian nationalists compiled a number of maps related to this period of occupation, in which they claim the Crimean Peninsula, inhabited at that time mainly by Crimean Tatars, in addition to Russian lands up to Voronezh and the Caspian Sea, not to mention a huge swathe of Poland and a significant part of Moldova. In some of these maps, only the northern part of Crimea is depicted as ‘Ukrainian’, and on others, the entire peninsula.
After the Russian Civil War, the Crimean Peninsula became part of the RSFSR and was declared an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Crimean Tatars and Karaites were declared to be indigenous peoples of the region, and Crimean Tatar and Russian became its official languages. At the same time, the ethnic composition of the peninsula’s population (including Sevastopol) in 1897 and 1926 was as follows: Russians, respectively, 33.11% and 42.65%; Ukrainians, 11.84% and 10.95%; Crimean Tatars, 35.55% and 25.34%.
A ‘New Israel’?
The First World War brought tribulation to many peoples, but it also spawned organizations dedicated to helping people harmed by the hostilities. One of these organizations was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), known in Russia as ‘Joint’.
How does this organization relate to Crimea and the Crimean issue? Directly so. In 1923, the leadership of Joint, which had already provided assistance to famine victims in the Volga region, Belarus, and Ukraine, came to the authorities of the RSFSR with a plan to turn the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in the USSR, who had suffered in WWI and the Civil War, into farmers. The Soviet government, which included a significant number of Jews, supported the plan and created the Agro-Joint corporation (American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation). The authorities also set up a ‘Committee for the Settlement of Working Jews on the Land’ (Kozmet), which distributed land in Ukraine and Crimea to the new farmers for free.
This project did not emerge out of thin air. Even before Agro-Joint’s activities in Crimea, four agricultural communes had appeared on the peninsula from 1922 to 1924. However, the bulk of the migrants (86%) supported by Agro-Joint went to Crimea in 1925-29, after the Jewish section of the CPSU (Yevsektsiya), the most influential contingent in the party, began to promote a plan to create a Jewish ethnic autonomous region, or even a republic, within the USSR’s Black Sea region, stretching from Odessa to Abkhazia, with its center in Crimea. According to some sources, a total of 500,000 to 700,000 Jewish peasants were to be relocated there. And, despite the fact that a Jewish Autonomous Region appeared in the Far East in 1934, the 14,000 Jewish peasant families living in Crimea continued to receive assistance until 1938, when the organization’s activities were banned.
Collapse of the resettlement program
There are many reasons for the failure of the program to create Jewish farms in Crimea and the ban on the activities of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation. Yes, it spent $16 million supplying Jewish agricultural enterprises in Crimea and southern Ukraine with agricultural machinery, livestock, and equipment for infrastructure, not counting credit and loan funds. But it should be noted that a significant share of this assistance was not free. Many farms struggled to pay loans and interest during the crop failure of 1932, which led to famine.
In point of fact, the mass resettlement project had failed. Only 47,740 of the 500,000 Jewish migrants planned were resettled in Crimea before 1939. Of these, just 18,065 worked in the agricultural sector. The rest left for the large cities. In total, Crimea had 86 collective farms employing Jewish settlers, who cultivated only about 10% of the peninsula’s arable land.
The Soviet leadership was highly critical of the fact that the assistance was only being provided to one ethnic group in such a multiethnic region and country. The Crimean Tatar population resented the allocation of funds to create exclusively Jewish regions (Freidorf and Larindorf) on lands that they had previously owned. Consequently, the disenfranchised Tatars prevented trains carrying Jewish settlers from entering the peninsula and did everything possible to harm already existing Jewish farms.
Moreover, in addition to its legitimate activities, Agro-Joint was also engaged in one that directly violated Soviet laws. Namely, it supported underground organizations. On July 23, 1936, the director of Joint’s Russian branch, Joseph Rosen, reported from London to New York: “Our negotiations regarding emigration to the USSR are currently in limbo. The main reason is that a Jewish doctor from Germany whom we brought here has been accused of collaborating with the Gestapo.” This revelation became the reason for shutting down the corporation’s activities in the USSR.
The forcible transfer of their lands to Jewish settlers incited the Crimean Tartars to actively cooperate with the Nazis and take an active part in the Holocaust. As early as April 26, 1942, the Nazis declared Crimea “cleansed of Jews.” Most of those who hadn’t managed to evacuate perished, around 65% of Crimea’s Jewish population. After the peninsula was liberated by the Red Army, the Crimean Tatars themselves were exiled to Central Asia.
A royal gift
Some sources claim that the Crimean Tatars’ eviction in 1944 came as a result of a promise Stalin had made to Franklin D. Roosevelt to clear Crimea for Jewish immigrants. According to the memoirs of Milovan Djilas, the future vice president of Yugoslavia, this pledge was exacted by the US president as a condition for continuing the Lend-Lease supply program, and in exchange for opening a Second Front. Though we will not pass judgement on how true this might be, it’s interesting to note that, even before the peninsula was liberated from the Nazis, the leadership of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee sent Vyacheslav Molotov, the deputy chairman of the USSR’s Council of People’s Commissars, a ‘Memorandum on Crimea’ which contained a proposal for a similar initiative.
Participants in the 1945 Yalta Conference had the opportunity to personally see how Crimea had suffered in the war. The entire Soviet Union, including residents of the neighboring Ukrainian SSR, took part in its restoration. And it was then that Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian and head of the Communist Party of Ukraine, came up with the idea to give the peninsula to Ukraine. According to the memoirs of one of Khrushchev’s staff members, in 1944, he noted: “I was in Moscow and said: ‘Ukraine is in ruin, and everyone is pulling out of it. But if you give it Crimea…’” Khrushchev’s proposal was not accepted at the time. He had to wait until he became the head of the Soviet Union before he could transfer Crimea to Ukraine, which was one of his first acts as premier.
The “difficult economic situation” on the peninsula is often cited among the reasons for the transfer. But, less than 10 years after being liberated from the Nazis, the Crimean economy as a whole had reached pre-war levels, and its industrial development had even surpassed it. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 19 , 1954, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Mikhail Tarasov, gave a justification for this step: “The transfer of the Crimean region to the Ukrainian Republic will strengthen the friendship of the peoples of the great Soviet Union, as well as the fraternal ties between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, and also promote prosperity in Soviet Ukraine, whose development our party and government have always taken a great interest in.” The move was timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s voluntary accession to the Muscovite Kingdom.
Legal nihilism in the USSR and its consequences
The question of the legality of the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was raised even before the collapse of the USSR. The fact is that, according to the Soviet Constitution of 1937, neither the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, nor even the Supreme Soviet had the right to alter the borders of a republic. This was only constitutionally possible after holding a referendum to determine the opinion of the population living in the territory to be transferred. Of course, no referendum was ever held on the peninsula.
In November of 1990, the Crimean Regional Council of People’s Deputies decided to hold a referendum on whether to restore the peninsula’s status as an Autonomous Republic. Of those who took part, 93.26% voted in favor. Thus, Crimea became a participant in negotiating the terms of a new Union Treaty, which Mikhail Gorbachev was preparing at the time. Next, Crimean lawmakers planned to appeal to Gorbachev to cancel the illegal transfer of the peninsula to Ukraine, but the USSR collapsed before they had time to do so. Subsequently, the parliament of the Russian Federation voted on May 21, 1992, to confirm that the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of February 5, 1954, entitled ‘On the Transfer of the Crimean Region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR’, had no legal force, since its adoption was “in violation of the Constitution (Basic Law) of the RSFSR and legislative procedure.
Since the Constitution of the Soviet Union was still in force and there was still no Ukrainian Constitution including Crimean autonomy, the Supreme Council of Crimea adopted its own declaration of independence for a Republic of Crimea. A referendum to decide its fate was planned for August 2, 1992, but the Ukrainian central authorities would not allow the plebiscite to take place.
In 1994, Crimea, which had status as an Autonomous Republic within Ukraine, elected a president who supported reunification with Russia, as did most of the members of the republic’s parliament. In response, Ukraine’s leadership unilaterally abolished the Crimean Constitution, the ‘Act on State Sovereignty of Crimea’, and the post of Crimean president, while banning all the parties that had made up the majority in the Crimean parliament. Against the will of the population, Crimea became Ukrainian.
Odd concern for deportation victims
Crimean Tatars had begun to return to their historical homeland back in Soviet days. The current head of the Mejlis (a body that purports to represent Crimean Tatars), Refat Chubarov, returned to the peninsula with his parents in 1968 and studied and worked in Crimea in the 1970s. It was the same with many other Crimean Tatars (members of this ethnic group who had fought in the Red Army and their families were spared from deportation). But the main surge of returnees arrived in the years after formal recognition (in the late 1980s) that their deportation had been illegal.
After its creation, the Ukrainian state immediately declared itself the defender of the Crimean Tatars and allocated them land for housing construction. However, despite the fact that, according to the Republican Committee on Land Resources of Crimea, 147.7 plots of land were allocated to 100 Tatar families from 2001 to 2005 (as compared to 49.9 for the rest of the population), the majority of ordinary Crimean Tatars received none. Distribution of the land was handled by the Mejlis, which was unregistered in Ukraine and headed by ‘human rights activist’ Mustafa Dzhemilev. In 2013, Crimean Tatar entrepreneurs who run restaurants on the Ai-Petri plateau complained to the author that they had to transfer $12,000 to Dzhemilev’s entourage annually “to protect them from persecution by Ukrainian officials,” and then personally pay bribes to officials anyway.
Ukraine’s support for Crimean Tatars appears odd. Ukraine still refuses to recognize any language other than Ukrainian as official. However, immediately after Crimea rejoined Russia, Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian became state languages in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and Crimean Tatar also received official status throughout the Russian Federation (Ukrainian already had this status at that time). Similarly, after the peninsula’s reunification with Russia, Vladimir Putin personally proposed to the ‘Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People’ that it could continue its activities in Crimea by registering under Russian law, but its leadership refused.
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The history of Crimean-Russian relations has seen many sharp turns, and it is impossible to analyze all of these complex circumstances in detail in this article. The last of these was the return of the peninsula to Russian jurisdiction in 2014. And although this homecoming rectified many of the past illegitimate decisions concerning the fate of the peninsula and its population, it also took place under very ambiguous circumstances. But this is a subject for a separate conversation.
By Olga Sukharevskaya, Ukrainian-born ex-diplomat, legist and author based in Moscow
Although the Israeli occupation displaced a large portion of the people of Diyar Bir Al-Sab’ (al-Naqab) in 1948, these lands are still attributed to their owners, some of whom are descendants of tribes originating from the Arabian and Sinai peninsulas.
Some of Al-Naqab’s Bedouins are descendants from Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula
Diyar Bi’r Al-Sab’, otherwise known as the desert of Al-Naqab, comprises almost half the historical area of the land of Palestine, meaning close to 12,577,000 dunums (1 dunum ~ 1,000 square meters).
Although it’s called a desert, it actually isn’t one; yet, it is a mix of very fertile agricultural land, dry rocky mountainous lands, and sandy lands, and all of them have large amounts of groundwater, according to studies performed by Arab experts in the field, not to mention sizeable mineral riches found in the region.
This large area has been inhabited by Bedouins for hundreds of years, during which they owned title deeds that were written with legible legal wording since the days of the Ottoman Empire. The British mandate also issued them specific deeds that asserted their ownership of the lands. These vast lands are still attributed to their owners, those currently living there, or those displaced, as the Israeli occupation forcibly displaced a large number of them in the Nakba of 1948.
It also worked during the 1950s to forcibly displace a large number of the rest and concentrate them in an area called Al-Siyaj (the fence), robbing them of a large portion of their lands, which it later turned to a closed militarized zone, despite people still living there. The Bedouins were thus left with only 2% of their lands; still, Israeli occupation authorities try today to confiscate what little they have left, and forcibly remove them to ghettos that lack even the basic elements of a normal life.
Bedouin society: A sacred outlook on land
Al-Naqab’s Bedouins are former nomads that used to travel with their cattle according to the seasons from one area to another, each within the recognized boundaries of their lands, as Bedouin tribes have always respected others’ lands, which for them was something they held very sacred, like one’s honor. Later on, they became semi-nomads that lived on raising cattle and agriculture in unrecognized villages, while those who were forcibly concentrated in sedentary towns developed a more comfortable lifestyle, much like that of towns and cities. Still, people still raise cattle in these towns under very restricted conditions.
The Bedouin society is a traditional and conservative society. Some of Al-Naqab’s Bedouin tribes are descended from the Arabian peninsula’s bedouin tribes, and some from the Sinai peninsula’s. In Al-Naqab, a clan is a specific social unit, and the tribe is a grouping of clans that existed in Palestine before 1948, a small number of which remained after the Nakba. In Al-Naqab, clans are split into Rub’, the Rub’ into big families (Hama’el), and each big family split into smaller families.
Al-Naqab historian Dr. Mansour Al-Nasasirah says in his book Badw Al-Naqab wa Bir Al-Sab’ (The Bedouins of Al-Naqab and Bir Al-Sab’: 100 Years of Politics and Resistance) that out of 95 clans that existed in the south of Palestine during the British mandate, only 19 remained in Al-Naqab and Bir Al-Sab’ after the Nakba. These 19 were forcibly gathered after 1948 and taken directly to the Al-Siyaj area northeast of Bir Al-Sab’ until 1967.
It should be said that the number 19 here goes back to the Israeli concept of the remains of the clans that were recognized, despite there being a much larger number of clans, but the idea was to group the ones that were left under these 19 in order to better control them after 1948. These were the clan leaders that Ben-Gurion’s government ‘acknowledged’.
Al-Nasasirah also clarifies that the policies that were applied against Al-Naqab’s Bedouins in the 1950s, after they were grouped in Al-Siyaj, included the separation of clans while keeping peaceful clans intact, forcefully ejecting clans that remained in the western and northern regions of Al-Naqab to Al-Siyaj, appointing new clan leaders, confiscating their lands by passing new laws, robbing them of their historical ownership, and conducting censuses that aim to keep them under strict observation at all times.
A systemic attack on Al-Naqab’s traditions
The people of Al-Naqab respect each other’s land ownership, even if they’re not registered on paper, and they are arbitrated in accordance with the binding Bedouin traditions and rulings in these matters. Land, just as one’s family, is considered something that cannot be assaulted or taken for granted. These traditions were, however, not listed in the rules of the occupation, especially in this period of time. Al-Naqab was a very neglected region for them, until the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion drew attention to it and built his residence there, as he famously said “we wish to protect the desert in Al-Naqab, to protect the vacuum.”
Lastly, censuses show that the population of Al-Naqab is about 380,000, half of whom live in sedentary villages and the other half still steadfast in their villages – which the Israeli occupation authorities do not acknowledge – under living conditions that can be said at best to be unsuitable for human life and the modern way of living in the third millennium. They live in these villages without any infrastructure, water, electricity, schools, or infirmaries, in houses that are all made of tin that can neither protect them from the heat of summer nor from the cold of winter.
The Negev Intifada and Existential Danger.. Where will things go?
Since the 2014 Yemeni revolution, Yemenis have not only proven a great resilience in confronting US-backed Saudi aggression against their homeland, but also revealed a combat strategy like no other.
The Yemeni mountains, with their difficult topography, the social composition of their people, and their solid beliefs, constitute one of the few places in this world that are resistant to the invasion of foreign states and empires states.
Such Traits can also be attributed to the mountains of Afghanistan. In both of these cases, the country’s political capital sometimes fell, as Kabul came under British control for a brief period in the wars of the British Empire, as well as the last NATO war in Afghanistan. The same goes for Sanaa, which was resistant to two Ottoman invasions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ottoman forces did not enter the capital until the day dispute arose between its notables; the ottoman attempt took place in the nineteenth century.
In both the Ottoman and English invasions, when the urban elite conceded, the tribes would just return to their rugged mountains, as if nothing had happened only to revolt after several decades over the established rule. This is what defines a rebellion movement.
What is fundamentally different in the ongoing war on Yemen is that we are not dealing here with a “rebellion” or a “resistance movement” in the academic sense; neither Sanaa has fallen, nor a number of strategic cities in Yemen did. The city of Al-Hodeidah, which is situated in the middle of the western coastal plain of Yemen, did not fall to the Saudi coalition despite being subjected to all kinds of air and artillery bombardment, and its “rebels” did not have to fall back to the mountains, as resistance movements do in asymmetric wars.
Since 2014, every attempt to occupy the capital, Sanaa, ended in a humiliating defeat for the Saudi coalition forces. Hence, the Sanaa forces show an exceptional capability in holding the acquired land.
A significant factor is also the ability of the Yemeni armed forces and Ansar Allah to fight similar types of pitched battles, in which the weaker party does not just strike and flee, but is committed to preserving the land and achieving progress at other times, in a predetermined battlefield.
The Yemeni revolution also emerged from what we can call the ‘Maoist style’ of resistance, and in fact, it enjoys broad popular support without a doubt, but it does not use this popular, civilian environment in hostilities directly but rather wages battles using conventional tactics. It includes hit and run, as well as harassment and ambushes, but still, we find the exact opposite of a regular insurgency or a rebellion in Yemen. The deterrence imposed by Yemen on the coalition of aggression is closer to be a conventional deterrence, rather than the actions of irregular movements. In a simpler sense, usually in the early stages of a revolution, rebels usually have weak capabilities, so they pull benefit from the aggression of the stronger party against civilians as a means to attract the latter to their cause.
In Yemen, the situation is quite different. The Yemeni revolution has a very high popular embrace, and while there is no doubt that these attacks constitute a factor of attraction for the Yemeni society towards the ongoing revolution, but the deterrence equation imposed by the Yemeni armed forces, seems to be aimed primarily at protecting the Yemeni people first, then the infrastructure and institutions of Yemen.
2019 Operation Victory from God
The operation Victory from God carried out by Sanaa forces can constitute a clear example of this type of warfare. The proximity of the operation to the Saudi-Yemeni international borders did not prevent the Yemenis from deluding the Saudi coalition forces and their mercenary brigades by fainting a tactical retreat from the area. Subsequently, the Saudis and their allies chased the retreating forces just to fall into a trap in Jbara valley, where the advancing forces were attacked by Yemeni forces from both flanks in a pincer movement. The operation culminated in the total destruction of several infantry brigades. In the process, hundreds of vehicles were destroyed or damaged, their burning columns appeared in the videos published by the Yemeni military media.
Map showing various phases of the 2019 Operation Victory from God (Credits: english.iswnews.com)
Operations of this complexity and magnitude, not only require a physical presence of forces of a certain size but also require a high level of coordination and professionalism in moving military units and battalions, as well as a high ability to conceal these forces from the eyes of the enemy reconnaissance and intelligence. All these military actions are taking place under the uncontested air control of the US-Saudi coalition.
As it is quite difficult for inexperienced, or guerrilla organizations, to accomplish such combat maneuvers, Ansar Allah and the Yemeni armed forces show a clear superiority over the regular and modern Saudi forces, as they define themselves. Another aspect of the equation is the imposition of deterrence equations on the Saudi coalition, in case civilians or infrastructures structure of the Yemeni state and committed massacres, a balanced response is due.
Destroyed Saudi LAV-25 after the 2019 Operation Victory from God, Yemeni Military Media
This deterrence was achieved by striking sensitive and strategic targets of the countries of aggression, such as oil facilities, military airports, and military centers, with the infliction of a negligible number of civilian casualties. Here, Yemenis accused of being just “rebels” act more faithfully to the ethics and laws of war than the US-backed Saudi coalition, which practices a policy of collective punishment and deliberately bombs civilians.
Sanaa forces regularly use precision weapons, such as the Tochka (OTR-21) missile, to strike the enemy’s military bases. Examples of such strikes happened in Safer, Mocha, and Khamis Mushait Air Bases. In the latter, the commander of the Saudi Air Force, Muhammad bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan, suffered “a heart attack” four days after the Khamis Mushait Air Base was bombed in June 2015. The announcement of the commander’s death came in mysterious circumstances. On the other hand, the US-backed Saudi coalition regularly practices collective punishment and deliberately bombs civilians.
2021 large-scale Jazan operation
“In combat, soldiers fight for their comrades. The primary group motivates people. Cohesion is the bond of trust between members of a group. There are four types of cohesion: horizontal cohesion among peers, vertical cohesion, from subordinate to commander, and organizational cohesion within the army. Cohesive units fight better, suffer fewer casualties, train better, do not disintegrate, require less support, and provide members with a better quality of life.”
This quote comes from a guide for the US Navy from 2002, which shows the importance of the cohesion of military units in terms of their performance, and the difficulty of destroying these units when they are under attack or pressured by fire. During the war in Yemen, the Saudi forces showed very poor cohesion and discipline, even at the beginning of the war, not to mention their gradual decline as the war dragged on.
Yemeni soldiers during the large-scale Jazan Operation, Yemeni Military Media
This can be explained by several factors: at the individual level, we cannot judge due to the absence of perceptual evidence at the level of relations between soldiers, as it may be affected by the constant periodic drafts, or by the high rate of losses, so that replacement becomes necessary. As for the relation between commanders and the army, the relation looks to be negative, as evidenced by the al-Akhbar [Lebanese] newspaper in an article by writer Ali Murad, titled “Bin Salman through the eyes of his officers: We have perished to this child [MBS]!”. The article narrates, through leaks of a former Saudi high ranking officer, the collapse of the fighting spirit of the soldiers since the first months of the war and their lack of belief in its outcome, neither in its cause nor in Bin Salman himself, who is running the war.
In the large-scale Jazan operation that took place in May-June 2021, Saudi performance and the discipline of its soldiers were scandalous; video clips showed the escape of mercenaries of Yemeni and Sudanese nationalities, and some of the fleeing soldiers were wearing Saudi ground forces uniforms fleeing without their helmets, weapons. the complexities of carrying out such an operation of this magnitude lay mainly in transferring offensive forces to the front without being noticed by the enemy. Since ancient times, training soldiers included was not only aimed at increasing their resistance to being “broken,” but also to commit retreats in the most organized fashion, since most losses of the defeated do not happen within the battle itself, but during the process of the retreat itself.
Yemeni soldiers during the large-scale Jazan Operation, Yemeni Military Media
In addition to the above, armored vehicles were completely absent from the front during this operation. The only armored vehicle that appeared was an M-113 personnel carrier, along with dozens of Toyota civilian trucks. During the past years, Saudis were rarely successful in introducing their armor to the battlefield as the results were catastrophic. Yemenis excelled in the destruction of such vehicles, to the extent that they destroyed Canadian LAV-25 armored vehicles using 12.7-caliber anti-material sniper rifles, the bullets of which penetrated the back of its turret and burned it. Many vehicles were burned with only a lighter, the one used for lighting cigarettes.
What will the soldiers of any army think if that army pulls its armored vehicles and tanks, which cost millions of dollars to the rear lines while placing them on the front lines? Won’t the idea that their live flesh is cheaper for their superior cross their minds? On the other hand, Yemenis show military toughness, cohesion, and discipline, much higher than those whom they fight, and who are defined in Western academic literature as a “modern regular army.”
2022 Marib Liberation operation?
A similar operation to Victory from God occurred a few months ago, operation Victory Spring (Rabi al-Nasr), but this time in the vicinity of Marib. The city is controlled by the Saudi coalition and its mercenaries and has seen fierce battles during the years of war. The ongoing battle around the city has been described by many experts as the battle that is going to decide the outcome of the war.
Currently, the Sanaa forces are about 8-10 km away from the strategic city from their closest position in al-Balaq al-Sharqi mountains. Such achievements were a result of the previously mentioned complex operation. In brief, the Yemeni forces eluded the coalition forces that the main attack is going to be launched from the north-western flank of the city, but the main thrust came from the South-west. Despite it being heavily defended as well, the combat readiness of its troops seemed to be meager, as Sanaa forces manages to advance almost 60 km in 2-3 days, a rate that was not expected by the Saudi coalition and neither by their backers. The speed and coordination of that attack prevented the enemy from reacting to it, and as a result, Sanaa Forces now threaten both north and southwestern flanks of the Saudi coalition forces.
Results of the operation Victory Spring (Rabi al-Nasr), (Credits: english.iswnews.com)
By looking at the map, one can only expect that the liberation of Marib is just a matter of time. This assumption is not only based on the material factors in play but also the perseverance of Yemeni forces on previous occasions. Such steadfastness and perseverance made them resist and survive on the harshest wars and sieges launched by the US and its allies against a country in this century.
2022 is, without a doubt, going to be the year for Yemen and its brave people.
A struggle for influence in Shabwa, Brigadier General Nasr Al-Shazly
The weapons captured by the Army and the People’s Committees during Operation Desert Dawn
Sanaa forces end the presence of Hadi forces and the military coalition in Al-Jawf Governorate
A strike at Ataq airport, and a report on the operation deep in the desert
Afghanistan is on many people’s minds lately, though the sentiment is rather mixed. Some think of it as a cause for celebration, others for deep concern, and then there are those who think it an utter disaster that justifies foreign re-entry.
Most of the western concern arises out of 9/11 and the Taliban’s supposed connection to this through Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, however, as Scott Ritter (who was the lead analyst for the 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade on the Soviet war in Afghanistan) wrote:
“The entire Afghan conflict must be examined considering this reality – everything is a lie. Every battle, every campaign, every contract written and implemented – everything was founded in a lie…
Admiral McRaven, when speaking of the operation to kill Bin Laden, noted that there wasn’t anything fundamentally special about that mission in terms of the tactics. ‘I think that night we ran 11 or 12 [other] missions in Afghanistan,’ McRaven noted. Clearly there was a military focus beyond simply killing Bin Laden. It was secretive work, reportedly involving the assassination of Taliban members, that often resulted in innocent civilians beings killed.
It should be noted that, as of 2019, McRaven believed that this kind of special operations activity should be continued in Afghanistan for years to come. So much for the US mission in Afghanistan being defined by the death of Bin Laden. The mission had become death, and the careers that were defined by those deaths.
The fact is the war in Afghanistan did not need to be fought. We could have ended the threat posed by Bin Laden simply by negotiating with the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, providing the evidence we claimed to have linking Bin Laden to the terrorist attacks on the United States. Any student of Afghanistan worth their salt knows the fundamental importance of honor that is enshrined in the concepts of Pashtunwali, the unwritten ethical code that defines the traditional lifestyle of the Pashtun people. If, as we claimed, Bin Laden carried out an attack on women and children while he was living under the protection of Pashtunwali, then his dishonor is that of the Pashtun tribes. To clear their honor, they would seek justice – in this case, evicting Bin Laden and his followers from Afghanistan.
In fact, the Taliban made precisely this offer.
For America, however, this would have been an unsatisfying result. We needed blood, not justice, and we sent our troops to Afghanistan to stack bodies, which they did, in prodigious numbers. Most of these bodies were Taliban. We excused this by claiming the Taliban were providing safe haven to Bin Laden, and as such were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Which was a lie.”
Scott Ritter (who was a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq from ’91-98) had also played a leading role in bringing to the public’s attention the lies told to justify the illegal war in Iraq, which was based off of cooked British intelligence.
It was not just based on the illusion of “justice,” there was a deeper and much more disturbing agenda under the patriotic trumpet blaring.
In this light, Afghanistan is indeed an incredible American “failure,” not only in failing to install their puppet government; it has also failed the American people, however, not in the way most are talking about.
The 20 year, some say occupancy others say terrorizing, of Afghanistan, is estimated at $1-2 trillion. This is only for the case of Afghanistan, it does not account for the total cost thus far of the War on Terror. Such extravagant spending with really nothing to show for it but destruction, the slaughter of innocents, instability and chaos; you would think the United States must be a very rich country to afford such a budget with no clear goal or objective. Instead, what we find is that the American economy is tanking and the living standard is plummeting, while drug use and overdose rates are sky-rocketing and suicide is among the top causes of death in the United States, especially among their youth.
What is going on here? Have the Americans gone mad? Or is there something much much more sinister afoot?
This situation cannot just be explained away as incompetence or the money-making business of war, or even the crazed end-of-world ideologies of neo-conservatives or Zionists, although these are all major factors.
The reason for this is because there has been something operating within the Middle East for much longer, it is even the reason why we call the Middle East and the Far East by such a name, it is the reason for why many countries in this region have the boundaries they do, and was the originator of the Palestine/Israel conflict.
It is also found at the center of the origin and funding of Islamic terrorism as we see in its modern form today.
Whose “Arab Awakening”?
“The renunciation will not be easy. Jewish hopes have been raised to such a pitch that the non-fulfilment of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine will cause intense disillusionment and bitterness. The manifold proofs of public spirit and of capacity to endure hardships and face danger in the building up of the national home are there to testify to the devotion with which a large section of the Jewish people cherish the Zionist ideal. And it would be an act of further cruelty to the Jews to disappoint those hopes if there existed some way of satisfying them, that did not involve cruelty to another people. But the logic of facts is inexorable. It shows that no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.” [emphasis added]
– the concluding paragraph of George Antonius’ “The Arab Awakening” (1938), graduate from Cambridge University, civil servant in the British Mandate of Palestine
Much of what is responsible for the war and havoc in the Middle East today has the British orchestrated so-called “Arab Awakening” to thank, led by characters such as E.G. Browne, St. John Philby, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Although its origins go as far back as the 19th century, it was only until the early 20th century, that the British were able to reap significant results from its long harvest.
The Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, had been, to the detriment of the Arab people, a British led rebellion. The British claimed that their sole interest in the affair was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and had given their word that these Arab territories would be freed and allowed independence if they agreed to rebel, in large part led and directed by the British.
It is a rather predictable feature of the British to lie and double cross and thus it should be of no surprise to anyone that their intentions were quite the opposite of what they had promised and thanks to the Sykes-Picot Russian leak, were revealed in their entire shameful glory.
Once the Arab Revolt was “won” against the Ottoman Empire, instead of the promised Arab independence, the Middle East was carved up into zones of influence under British and French colonial rule. Puppet monarchies were created in regions that were considered not under direct colonial subjugation in order to continue the illusion that Arabs remained in charge of sacred regions such as Mecca and Medina.
In central Arabia, Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the puppet leader of the Arab Revolt laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein (British Cairo Office favourite) abdicated and Ibn Saud (British India Office favourite), was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Al Saud (House of Saud) warriors of Wahhabism were a formidable strike force that the British believed would help London gain control of the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
Hussein ibn Ali’s son Faisal (under the heavy tutelage of T.E. Lawrence, Cairo Office) was bestowed as King of Iraq and Hussein’s other son, Abdullah I was established as the Emir of Transjordan until a negotiated legal separation of Transjordan from Britain’s Palestine mandate occurred in 1946, whereupon he was crowned King of Jordan.
While the British were promising Arab independence they simultaneously were promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 states:
“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”
Palestine had been seized by the British during the so-called “Arab Revolt” on December 11th, 1917 when General Allenby marched into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city. Palestine has remained occupied ever since.
Britain would receive the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing thousands of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.
The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police.
Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.
In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.
The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood
“We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”
– Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
In 1869, a man named Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the intellectual founder of the Salafiyya movement, went to India where British led colonial authorities welcomed him with honors and graciously escorted him aboard a government owned vessel on an all-expenses paid voyage to the Suez. [1]
In Cairo he was adopted by the Egyptian prime minister Riad Pasha, a notorious enemy of the emerging nationalist movement in Egypt. Pasha persuaded Afghani to stay in Egypt and allowed him to take up residence in Cairo’s 900 year old Al Azhar mosque considered the center of Islamic learning worldwide, where he received lodging and a monthly government stipend (paid for by the British).[2]
While Egypt was fighting its nationalist fight from 1879-1882, Afghani and his chief disciple Muhammad Abduh travelled together first to Paris and then to Britain, it was in Britain that they would make a proposal for a pan-Islamic alliance among Egypt, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan against Czarist Russia.[3]
What Afghani was proposing to the British was that they provide aid and resources to support his formation of a militant Islam sect that would favour Britain’s interest in the Middle East, in other words, Afghani was offering to fight Islam with Islam to service British interests, having stated in one of his works “We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”[4]
Although it is said that the British refused this offer, this is not likely considering the support Afghani would receive in creating the intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement with British patronage and the support of England’s leading orientalist E.G. Browne, the godfather of twentieth century Orientalism and teacher of St John Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
E.G. Browne would make sure the work of Afghani would continue long beyond his death by lionising him in his 1910 “The Persian Revolution,” considered an authoritative history of the time.
In 1888, Abduh, the chief disciple of Afghani, would return to Egypt in triumph with the full support of the representatives of her Majesty’s imperial force and took the first of several positions in Cairo, openly casting his lot with Lord Cromer, who was the symbol of British imperialism in Egypt.
Abduh would found, with the hold of London’s Egyptian proconsul Evelyn Baring (aka Lord Cromer) who was the scion of the enormously powerful banking clan (Barings Bank) under the city of London, the Salafiyya movement.[5]
Abduh had attached himself to the British rulers of Egypt and created the cornerstone of the Muslim Brotherhood which dominated the militant Islamic right throughout the twentieth century.
In 1899, Abduh reached the pinnacle of his power and influence, and was named mufti of Egypt.
***
In 1902, Riyadh fell to Ibn Saud and it was during this period that Ibn Saud established the fearsome Ikhwan (translated as “brotherhood”). From the 1920s onward, the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabi orthodoxy with the Salafiyya movement (which would be organised into the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928).
William Shakespear, a famed British agent, forged the first formal treaty between England and Saudi Arabia which was signed in 1915, which bound London and Arabia for years before Saudi Arabia became a country. “It formally recognized Ibn Saud as the independent ruler of the Nejd and its Dependencies under British protection. In return, Ibn Saud undertook to follow British advice.”[6]
Harry St. John Bridger Philby, a British operative schooled by E.G. Browne and father to the legendary triple agent Kim Philby, would succeed Shakespear as Great Britain’s liaison to Ibn Saud under the British India Office, the friendly rival of the Cairo Arab Bureau office which was sponsoring T.E. Lawrence of Arabia.
In Egypt 1928, Hassan al-Banna (a follower of Afghani and Abduh) founded the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), the organization that would change the course of history in the twentieth century Middle East.
Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood was established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company[7] and from that point on, British diplomats and intelligence service, along with the British puppet King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a truncheon against Egypt’s nationalists and later against Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. (For more on this refer to my paper.)
To get the Muslim Brotherhood off the ground, the Suez Canal Company helped Banna build the mosque in Ismailia that would serve as its headquarters and base of operation.[8] The fact that Banna created the organization in Ismailia is itself worthy of note. For England, the Suez Canal was the indispensable route to its prize possession, India, and in 1928 the town Ismailia happened to house not only the company’s offices but a major British military base built during WWI. It was also, in the 1920s a center of pro-British sentiment in Egypt.
In the post-WWI world, England reigned supreme, the flag of the British Empire was everywhere from the Mediterranean to India. A new generation of kings and potentates ruled over British dominated colonies, mandates, vassal states, and semi-independent fiefdoms in Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Transjordan and Persia. To varying degrees those monarchies were beholden to London.
In the half century between 1875 and 1925 the building blocks of the militant Islamic right were cemented in place by the British Empire.
Islamic Banking Made in Geneva/London
Islamic banking [that is the banking system dominated presently by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States] was born in Egypt and financed by Saudi Arabia and then spread to the far corners of the Muslim world. Eventually the Islamic banking movement became a vehicle not only for exporting political Islam but for sponsoring violence. However, Islamic banking did not get off the ground on its own, as Ibrahim Warde (a renowned scholar of international finance) explains in his book “Islamic Finance in the Global Economy,” Islamic banking:
“…operates more out of London, Geneva, or the Bahamas than it does out of Jeddah, Karachi or Cairo…Ideologically, both liberalism and economic Islam were driven by their common opposition to socialism and economic dirigisme…Even Islamic Republics have on occasion openly embraced neo-liberalism…In Sudan, between 1992 and the end of 1993, Economics Minister Abdul Rahim Hamdi – a disciple of Milton Friedman and incidentally a former Islamic banker in London – did not hesitate to implement the harshest free-market remedies dictated by the International Monetary Fund. He said he was committed to transforming the heretofore statist economy ‘according to free-market rules, because this is how an Islamic economy should function.’ ” [emphasis added]
Perhaps the best case study to this phenomenon is the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
BCCI was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries in excess of $20 billion USD, making it the seventh largest private bank in the world.
In the 1980s investigations into BCCI led to the discovery of its involvement in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and that the BCCI had illegally and secretly gained the control of a major American bank, First American, according to Robert Morgenthau (Manhattan DA) who had been investigating the bank for over two years.
BCCI was also to be found guilty for illegally buying another American bank, the Independence Bank of Los Angeles, using a Saudi businessman Ghaith Paraon as the puppet owner. The American depositors lost most of their money when BCCI was forced to foreclose since it was essentially operating a Ponzi scheme to fund illegal activity of all sorts.
According to Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald’s book “The Valediction”:
“Afghanistan offered the opportunity for BCCI to migrate the lucrative heroin business from Southeast Asia [Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam] to the Pakistani/Afghan border under the cover of destabilization. President Carter supported Brzezinski’s provocations into Soviet territory from the minute they got into the White House. He then sanctioned Brzezinski’s plan to use Afghanistan to lure the Soviet Union into its own Vietnam and lied to the public about it when they fell into the trap on December 27, 1979.
…The destabilization kills three birds with one stone. It weakens the Soviets…It acts as a cover for moving the heroin business out of Vietnam/Laos and Cambodia to a safe haven on the Pakistan frontier with Afghanistan – a trade that propped up the British Empire financially for over a hundred years.
…Afghan drug dealer and CIA asset Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…[then organizes] a deal with the renegade gangster, Afghan prime minister, and possible CIA asset Hafizullah Amin…to make Kabul the center of the world heroin trade…pays for the off-the-books operation with drug money brought in by Hekmatyar and laundered through a Pakistani bank…known as BCCI. Everything goes smoothly until the new US Ambassador Adolph Dubs launches a campaign against the destabilization…”
US Ambassador Adolph Dubs was assassinated, just seven months after taking his post, under an extremely suspect situation, on February 14, 1979, to which Gould and Fitzgerald do a superb investigation of, as well as what really happened in Afghanistan in 1979, in their book “The Valediction.”
Investigators in the United States and the UK determined that BCCI had been “set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection.”[9]
This is an incredibly sophisticated operation, and interestingly, uses the very same methods that the City of London has been using for centuries and presently operates to a diabolical perfection today. There is no way that a solo Pakistani financier, even if he was financed by the Sheik of Abu Dhabi, could rise in less than a decade, operating on the turf of ancient banking channels that go back several centuries, to rise to become the seventh largest bank in the netherworld of finance without a little help from the big boys.
On July 29th, 1991, a Manhattan grand jury indicted BCCI on twelve accounts of fraud, money laundering and larceny. Robert Morgenthau (Manhattan DA), who was in charge of the investigation, has described BCCI as “the largest bank fraud in world financial history.”
Through the Rabbit Hole and Out Again
Today, the actions of the United States can best be understood in the context of the Anglo-American Empire, with Wall Street operating as an extension of the ancient banking channels of the City of London and Geneva.
The disastrous foreign policy of namely Britain and the United States in the War on Terror Crusade has been exposed multiple times. That is, that the very governments who have been shouting the loudest against Islamic extremism and for stability in the Middle East, are the very ones who have been weaponising, training and funding such terrorist groupings. The Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, ISIS (and all its viral variants) would not exist today if it were not for namely Britain’s age old strategy.
So what is the goal?
Well, what does any empire seek? Global domination.
In this light, the War on Terror is exposed for what it truly is. It is meant to impoverish and destroy the national sovereignty of the people, not only of the Middle East (or more accurately Southwest Asia), but as we are seeing clearly today, it has also acted as a slow blood-letting of the western people, whose economies are much weaker today than they were 20 years ago.
While western countries are increasingly unable to provide a proper standard of living, with mass unemployment, lack of healthcare, increased crime and suicide rates, and increased overdoses and homelessness, and pretty much everything you would expect to rise during a Dark Age straight out of a Goya painting, these “first-world” governments are applying further austerity measures on the people, even after prolonged lockdowns, while openly pumping trillions of dollars into wars that not only fund the destruction of entire nations, but funds the global drug, arms and sex-trafficking trade. All of this dirty money then circles back into the London-Geneva fondi, benefitting a select class that has existed and thrived for centuries on this sort of backdrop.
Nobody has benefitted from this War on Terror except the global elite.
So stop getting sucked into the same old same old lies; stop being a slave to the system and let us finally unite and stand up against the true common enemy of the people of the world.
The proposal to London from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was reported by a British Orientalist and author W.S. Blunt, a friend of Afghani’s. It is cited in C.C. Adams, “Islam and Modernism in Egypt.” ↑
Elie Kedourie, “Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam.” ↑
During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe. I therefore feel it necessary to explain my position in detail and share my assessments of today’s situation.
First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy. These are, first and foremost, the consequences of our own mistakes made at different periods of time. But these are also the result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity. The formula they apply has been known from time immemorial – divide and rule. There is nothing new here. Hence the attempts to play on the ”national question“ and sow discord among people, the overarching goal being to divide and then to pit the parts of a single people against one another.
To have a better understanding of the present and look into the future, we need to turn to history. Certainly, it is impossible to cover in this article all the developments that have taken place over more than a thousand years. But I will focus on the key, pivotal moments that are important for us to remember, both in Russia and Ukraine.
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.
The throne of Kiev held a dominant position in Ancient Rus. This had been the custom since the late 9th century. The Tale of Bygone Years captured for posterity the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kiev, ”Let it be the mother of all Russian cities.“
Later, like other European states of that time, Ancient Rus faced a decline of central rule and fragmentation. At the same time, both the nobility and the common people perceived Rus as a common territory, as their homeland.
The fragmentation intensified after Batu Khan’s devastating invasion, which ravaged many cities, including Kiev. The northeastern part of Rus fell under the control of the Golden Horde but retained limited sovereignty. The southern and western Russian lands largely became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which – most significantly – was referred to in historical records as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia.
Members of the princely and ”boyar“ clans would change service from one prince to another, feuding with each other but also making friendships and alliances. Voivode Bobrok of Volyn and the sons of Grand Duke of Lithuania Algirdas – Andrey of Polotsk and Dmitry of Bryansk – fought next to Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich of Moscow on the Kulikovo field. At the same time, Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila – son of the Princess of Tver – led his troops to join with Mamai. These are all pages of our shared history, reflecting its complex and multi-dimensional nature.
Most importantly, people both in the western and eastern Russian lands spoke the same language. Their faith was Orthodox. Up to the middle of the 15th century, the unified church government remained in place.
At a new stage of historical development, both Lithuanian Rus and Moscow Rus could have become the points of attraction and consolidation of the territories of Ancient Rus. It so happened that Moscow became the center of reunification, continuing the tradition of ancient Russian statehood. Moscow princes – the descendants of Prince Alexander Nevsky – cast off the foreign yoke and began gathering the Russian lands.
In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, other processes were unfolding. In the 14th century, Lithuania’s ruling elite converted to Catholicism. In the 16th century, it signed the Union of Lublin with the Kingdom of Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish Catholic nobility received considerable land holdings and privileges in the territory of Rus. In accordance with the 1596 Union of Brest, part of the western Russian Orthodox clergy submitted to the authority of the Pope. The process of Polonization and Latinization began, ousting Orthodoxy.
As a consequence, in the 16–17th centuries, the liberation movement of the Orthodox population was gaining strength in the Dnieper region. The events during the times of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky became a turning point. His supporters struggled for autonomy from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In its 1649 appeal to the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Zaporizhian Host demanded that the rights of the Russian Orthodox population be respected, that the voivode of Kiev be Russian and of Greek faith, and that the persecution of the churches of God be stopped. But the Cossacks were not heard.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky then made appeals to Moscow, which were considered by the Zemsky Sobor. On 1 October 1653, members of the supreme representative body of the Russian state decided to support their brothers in faith and take them under patronage. In January 1654, the Pereyaslav Council confirmed that decision. Subsequently, the ambassadors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Moscow visited dozens of cities, including Kiev, whose populations swore allegiance to the Russian tsar. Incidentally, nothing of the kind happened at the conclusion of the Union of Lublin.
In a letter to Moscow in 1654, Bohdan Khmelnytsky thanked Tsar Aleksey Mikhaylovich for taking ”the whole Zaporizhian Host and the whole Russian Orthodox world under the strong and high hand of the Tsar“. It means that, in their appeals to both the Polish king and the Russian tsar, the Cossacks referred to and defined themselves as Russian Orthodox people.
Over the course of the protracted war between the Russian state and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, some of the hetmans, successors of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, would ”detach themselves“ from Moscow or seek support from Sweden, Poland, or Turkey. But, again, for the people, that was a war of liberation. It ended with the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667. The final outcome was sealed by the Treaty of Perpetual Peace in 1686. The Russian state incorporated the city of Kiev and the lands on the left bank of the Dnieper River, including Poltava region, Chernigov region, and Zaporozhye. Their inhabitants were reunited with the main part of the Russian Orthodox people. These territories were referred to as ”Malorossia“ (Little Russia).
The name ”Ukraine“ was used more often in the meaning of the Old Russian word ”okraina“ (periphery), which is found in written sources from the 12th century, referring to various border territories. And the word ”Ukrainian“, judging by archival documents, originally referred to frontier guards who protected the external borders.
On the right bank, which remained under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the old orders were restored, and social and religious oppression intensified. On the contrary, the lands on the left bank, taken under the protection of the unified state, saw rapid development. People from the other bank of the Dnieper moved here en masse. They sought support from people who spoke the same language and had the same faith.
During the Great Northern War with Sweden, the people in Malorossia were not faced with a choice of whom to side with. Only a small portion of the Cossacks supported Mazepa’s rebellion. People of all orders and degrees considered themselves Russian and Orthodox.
Cossack senior officers belonging to the nobility would reach the heights of political, diplomatic, and military careers in Russia. Graduates of Kiev-Mohyla Academy played a leading role in church life. This was also the case during the Hetmanate – an essentially autonomous state formation with a special internal structure – and later in the Russian Empire. Malorussians in many ways helped build a big common country – its statehood, culture, and science. They participated in the exploration and development of the Urals, Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Far East. Incidentally, during the Soviet period, natives of Ukraine held major, including the highest, posts in the leadership of the unified state. Suffice it to say that Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, whose party biography was most closely associated with Ukraine, led the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) for almost 30 years.
In the second half of the 18th century, following the wars with the Ottoman Empire, Russia incorporated Crimea and the lands of the Black Sea region, which became known as Novorossiya. They were populated by people from all of the Russian provinces. After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire regained the western Old Russian lands, with the exception of Galicia and Transcarpathia, which became part of the Austrian – and later Austro-Hungarian – Empire.
The incorporation of the western Russian lands into the single state was not merely the result of political and diplomatic decisions. It was underlain by the common faith, shared cultural traditions, and – I would like to emphasize it once again – language similarity. Thus, as early as the beginning of the 17th century, one of the hierarchs of the Uniate Church, Joseph Rutsky, communicated to Rome that people in Moscovia called Russians from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth their brothers, that their written language was absolutely identical, and differences in the vernacular were insignificant. He drew an analogy with the residents of Rome and Bergamo. These are, as we know, the center and the north of modern Italy.
Many centuries of fragmentation and living within different states naturally brought about regional language peculiarities, resulting in the emergence of dialects. The vernacular enriched the literary language. Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Grigory Skovoroda, and Taras Shevchenko played a huge role here. Their works are our common literary and cultural heritage. Taras Shevchenko wrote poetry in the Ukrainian language, and prose mainly in Russian. The books of Nikolay Gogol, a Russian patriot and native of Poltavshchyna, are written in Russian, bristling with Malorussian folk sayings and motifs. How can this heritage be divided between Russia and Ukraine? And why do it?
The south-western lands of the Russian Empire, Malorussia and Novorossiya, and the Crimea developed as ethnically and religiously diverse entities. Crimean Tatars, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Karaites, Krymchaks, Bulgarians, Poles, Serbs, Germans, and other peoples lived here. They all preserved their faith, traditions, and customs.
I am not going to idealise anything. We do know there were the Valuev Circular of 1863 an then the Ems Ukaz of 1876, which restricted the publication and importation of religious and socio-political literature in the Ukrainian language. But it is important to be mindful of the historical context. These decisions were taken against the backdrop of dramatic events in Poland and the desire of the leaders of the Polish national movement to exploit the ”Ukrainian issue“ to their own advantage. I should add that works of fiction, books of Ukrainian poetry and folk songs continued to be published. There is objective evidence that the Russian Empire was witnessing an active process of development of the Malorussian cultural identity within the greater Russian nation, which united the Velikorussians, the Malorussians and the Belorussians.
At the same time, the idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians started to form and gain ground among the Polish elite and a part of the Malorussian intelligentsia. Since there was no historical basis – and could not have been any, conclusions were substantiated by all sorts of concoctions, which went as far as to claim that the Ukrainians are the true Slavs and the Russians, the Muscovites, are not. Such ”hypotheses“ became increasingly used for political purposes as a tool of rivalry between European states.
Since the late 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian authorities had latched onto this narrative, using it as a counterbalance to the Polish national movement and pro-Muscovite sentiments in Galicia. During World War I, Vienna played a role in the formation of the so-called Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Galicians suspected of sympathies with Orthodox Christianity and Russia were subjected to brutal repression and thrown into the concentration camps of Thalerhof and Terezin.
Further developments had to do with the collapse of European empires, the fierce civil war that broke out across the vast territory of the former Russian Empire, and foreign intervention.
After the February Revolution, in March 1917, the Central Rada was established in Kiev, intended to become the organ of supreme power. In November 1917, in its Third Universal, it declared the creation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR) as part of Russia.
In December 1917, UPR representatives arrived in Brest-Litovsk, where Soviet Russia was negotiating with Germany and its allies. At a meeting on 10 January 1918, the head of the Ukrainian delegation read out a note proclaiming the independence of Ukraine. Subsequently, the Central Rada proclaimed Ukraine independent in its Fourth Universal.
The declared sovereignty did not last long. Just a few weeks later, Rada delegates signed a separate treaty with the German bloc countries. Germany and Austria-Hungary were at the time in a dire situation and needed Ukrainian bread and raw materials. In order to secure large-scale supplies, they obtained consent for sending their troops and technical staff to the UPR. In fact, this was used as a pretext for occupation.
For those who have today given up the full control of Ukraine to external forces, it would be instructive to remember that, back in 1918, such a decision proved fatal for the ruling regime in Kiev. With the direct involvement of the occupying forces, the Central Rada was overthrown and Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi was brought to power, proclaiming instead of the UPR the Ukrainian State, which was essentially under German protectorate.
In November 1918 – following the revolutionary events in Germany and Austria-Hungary – Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who had lost the support of German bayonets, took a different course, declaring that ”Ukraine is to take the lead in the formation of an All-Russian Federation“. However, the regime was soon changed again. It was now the time of the so-called Directorate.
In autumn 1918, Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed the West Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR) and, in January 1919, announced its unification with the Ukrainian People’s Republic. In July 1919, Ukrainian forces were crushed by Polish troops, and the territory of the former WUPR came under the Polish rule.
In April 1920, Symon Petliura (portrayed as one of the ”heroes“ in today’s Ukraine) concluded secret conventions on behalf of the UPR Directorate, giving up – in exchange for military support – Galicia and Western Volhynia lands to Poland. In May 1920, Petliurites entered Kiev in a convoy of Polish military units. But not for long. As early as November 1920, following a truce between Poland and Soviet Russia, the remnants of Petliura’s forces surrendered to those same Poles.
The example of the UPR shows that different kinds of quasi-state formations that emerged across the former Russian Empire at the time of the Civil War and turbulence were inherently unstable. Nationalists sought to create their own independent states, while leaders of the White movement advocated indivisible Russia. Many of the republics established by the Bolsheviks’ supporters did not see themselves outside Russia either. Nevertheless, Bolshevik Party leaders sometimes basically drove them out of Soviet Russia for various reasons.
Thus, in early 1918, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic was proclaimed and asked Moscow to incorporate it into Soviet Russia. This was met with a refusal. During a meeting with the republic’s leaders, Vladimir Lenin insisted that they act as part of Soviet Ukraine. On 15 March 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) directly ordered that delegates be sent to the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, including from the Donetsk Basin, and that ”one government for all of Ukraine“ be created at the congress. The territories of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic later formed most of the regions of south-eastern Ukraine.
Under the 1921 Treaty of Riga, concluded between the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Poland, the western lands of the former Russian Empire were ceded to Poland. In the interwar period, the Polish government pursued an active resettlement policy, seeking to change the ethnic composition of the Eastern Borderlands – the Polish name for what is now Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and parts of Lithuania. The areas were subjected to harsh Polonisation, local culture and traditions suppressed. Later, during World War II, radical groups of Ukrainian nationalists used this as a pretext for terror not only against Polish, but also against Jewish and Russian populations.
In 1922, when the USSR was created, with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic becoming one of its founders, a rather fierce debate among the Bolshevik leaders resulted in the implementation of Lenin’s plan to form a union state as a federation of equal republics. The right for the republics to freely secede from the Union was included in the text of the Declaration on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and, subsequently, in the 1924 USSR Constitution. By doing so, the authors planted in the foundation of our statehood the most dangerous time bomb, which exploded the moment the safety mechanism provided by the leading role of the CPSU was gone, the party itself collapsing from within. A ”parade of sovereignties“ followed. On 8 December 1991, the so-called Belovezh Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States was signed, stating that ”the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality no longer existed.“ By the way, Ukraine never signed or ratified the CIS Charter adopted back in 1993.
In the 1920’s-1930’s, the Bolsheviks actively promoted the ”localization policy“, which took the form of Ukrainization in the Ukrainian SSR. Symbolically, as part of this policy and with consent of the Soviet authorities, Mikhail Grushevskiy, former chairman of Central Rada, one of the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism, who at a certain period of time had been supported by Austria-Hungary, was returned to the USSR and was elected member of the Academy of Sciences.
The localization policy undoubtedly played a major role in the development and consolidation of the Ukrainian culture, language and identity. At the same time, under the guise of combating the so-called Russian great-power chauvinism, Ukrainization was often imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians. This Soviet national policy secured at the state level the provision on three separate Slavic peoples: Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian, instead of the large Russian nation, a triune people comprising Velikorussians, Malorussians and Belorussians.
In 1939, the USSR regained the lands earlier seized by Poland. A major portion of these became part of the Soviet Ukraine. In 1940, the Ukrainian SSR incorporated part of Bessarabia, which had been occupied by Romania since 1918, as well as Northern Bukovina. In 1948, Zmeyiniy Island (Snake Island) in the Black Sea became part of Ukraine. In 1954, the Crimean Region of the RSFSR was given to the Ukrainian SSR, in gross violation of legal norms that were in force at the time.
I would like to dwell on the destiny of Carpathian Ruthenia, which became part of Czechoslovakia following the breakup of Austria-Hungary. Rusins made up a considerable share of local population. While this is hardly mentioned any longer, after the liberation of Transcarpathia by Soviet troops the congress of the Orthodox population of the region voted for the inclusion of Carpathian Ruthenia in the RSFSR or, as a separate Carpathian republic, in the USSR proper. Yet the choice of people was ignored. In summer 1945, the historical act of the reunification of Carpathian Ukraine ”with its ancient motherland, Ukraine“ – as ThePravda newspaper put it – was announced.
Therefore, modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era. We know and remember well that it was shaped – for a significant part – on the lands of historical Russia. To make sure of that, it is enough to look at the boundaries of the lands reunited with the Russian state in the 17th century and the territory of the Ukrainian SSR when it left the Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as inexhaustible material for their social experiments. They dreamt of a world revolution that would wipe out national states. That is why they were so generous in drawing borders and bestowing territorial gifts. It is no longer important what exactly the idea of the Bolshevik leaders who were chopping the country into pieces was. We can disagree about minor details, background and logics behind certain decisions. One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed, indeed.
When working on this article, I relied on open-source documents that contain well-known facts rather than on some secret records. The leaders of modern Ukraine and their external ”patrons“ prefer to overlook these facts. They do not miss a chance, however, both inside the country and abroad, to condemn ”the crimes of the Soviet regime,“ listing among them events with which neither the CPSU, nor the USSR, let alone modern Russia, have anything to do. At the same time, the Bolsheviks’ efforts to detach from Russia its historical territories are not considered a crime. And we know why: if they brought about the weakening of Russia, our ill-wishes are happy with that.
Of course, inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country, which, while featuring all the attributes of a federation, was highly centralized – this, again, was secured by the CPSU’s leading role. But in 1991, all those territories, and, which is more important, people, found themselves abroad overnight, taken away, this time indeed, from their historical motherland.
What can be said to this? Things change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is only one answer: with respect!
You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms? I will recall the assessment given by one of the most prominent political figures of new Russia, first mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. As a legal expert who believed that every decision must be legitimate, in 1992, he shared the following opinion: the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked.
In other words, when you leave, take what you brought with you. This logic is hard to refute. I will just say that the Bolsheviks had embarked on reshaping boundaries even before the Soviet Union, manipulating with territories to their liking, in disregard of people’s views.
The Russian Federation recognized the new geopolitical realities: and not only recognized, but, indeed, did a lot for Ukraine to establish itself as an independent country. Throughout the difficult 1990’s and in the new millennium, we have provided considerable support to Ukraine. Whatever ”political arithmetic“ of its own Kiev may wish to apply, in 1991–2013, Ukraine’s budget savings amounted to more than USD 82 billion, while today, it holds on to the mere USD 1.5 billion of Russian payments for gas transit to Europe. If economic ties between our countries had been retained, Ukraine would enjoy the benefit of tens of billions of dollars.
Ukraine and Russia have developed as a single economic system over decades and centuries. The profound cooperation we had 30 years ago is an example for the European Union to look up to. We are natural complementary economic partners. Such a close relationship can strengthen competitive advantages, increasing the potential of both countries.
Ukraine used to possess great potential, which included powerful infrastructure, gas transportation system, advanced shipbuilding, aviation, rocket and instrument engineering industries, as well as world-class scientific, design and engineering schools. Taking over this legacy and declaring independence, Ukrainian leaders promised that the Ukrainian economy would be one of the leading ones and the standard of living would be among the best in Europe.
Today, high-tech industrial giants that were once the pride of Ukraine and the entire Union, are sinking. Engineering output has dropped by 42 per cent over ten years. The scale of deindustrialization and overall economic degradation is visible in Ukraine’s electricity production, which has seen a nearly two-time decrease in 30 years. Finally, according to IMF reports, in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Ukraine’s GDP per capita had been below USD 4 thousand. This is less than in the Republic of Albania, the Republic of Moldova, or unrecognized Kosovo. Nowadays, Ukraine is Europe’s poorest country.
Who is to blame for this? Is it the people of Ukraine’s fault? Certainly not. It was the Ukrainian authorities who waisted and frittered away the achievements of many generations. We know how hardworking and talented the people of Ukraine are. They can achieve success and outstanding results with perseverance and determination. And these qualities, as well as their openness, innate optimism and hospitality have not gone. The feelings of millions of people who treat Russia not just well but with great affection, just as we feel about Ukraine, remain the same.
Until 2014, hundreds of agreements and joint projects were aimed at developing our economies, business and cultural ties, strengthening security, and solving common social and environmental problems. They brought tangible benefits to people – both in Russia and Ukraine. This is what we believed to be most important. And that is why we had a fruitful interaction with all, I emphasize, with all the leaders of Ukraine.
Even after the events in Kiev of 2014, I charged the Russian government to elaborate options for preserving and maintaining our economic ties within relevant ministries and agencies. However, there was and is still no mutual will to do the same. Nevertheless, Russia is still one of Ukraine’s top three trading partners, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are coming to us to work, and they find a welcome reception and support. So that what the ”aggressor state“ is.
When the USSR collapsed, many people in Russia and Ukraine sincerely believed and assumed that our close cultural, spiritual and economic ties would certainly last, as would the commonality of our people, who had always had a sense of unity at their core. However, events – at first gradually, and then more rapidly – started to move in a different direction.
In essence, Ukraine’s ruling circles decided to justify their country’s independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation. The common tragedy of collectivization and famine of the early 1930s was portrayed as the genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Radicals and neo-Nazis were open and more and more insolent about their ambitions. They were indulged by both the official authorities and local oligarchs, who robbed the people of Ukraine and kept their stolen money in Western banks, ready to sell their motherland for the sake of preserving their capital. To this should be added the persistent weakness of state institutions and the position of a willing hostage to someone else’s geopolitical will.
I recall that long ago, well before 2014, the U.S. and EU countries systematically and consistently pushed Ukraine to curtail and limit economic cooperation with Russia. We, as the largest trade and economic partner of Ukraine, suggested discussing the emerging problems in the Ukraine-Russia-EU format. But every time we were told that Russia had nothing to do with it and that the issue concerned only the EU and Ukraine. De facto Western countries rejected Russia’s repeated calls for dialogue.
Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia. Inevitably, there came a time when the concept of ”Ukraine is not Russia“ was no longer an option. There was a need for the ”anti-Russia“ concept which we will never accept.
The owners of this project took as a basis the old groundwork of the Polish-Austrian ideologists to create an ”anti-Moscow Russia“. And there is no need to deceive anyone that this is being done in the interests of the people of Ukraine. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth never needed Ukrainian culture, much less Cossack autonomy. In Austria-Hungary, historical Russian lands were mercilessly exploited and remained the poorest. The Nazis, abetted by collaborators from the OUN-UPA, did not need Ukraine, but a living space and slaves for Aryan overlords.
Nor were the interests of the Ukrainian people thought of in February 2014. The legitimate public discontent, caused by acute socio-economic problems, mistakes, and inconsistent actions of the authorities of the time, was simply cynically exploited. Western countries directly interfered in Ukraine’s internal affairs and supported the coup. Radical nationalist groups served as its battering ram. Their slogans, ideology, and blatant aggressive Russophobia have to a large extent become defining elements of state policy in Ukraine.
All the things that united us and bring us together so far came under attack. First and foremost, the Russian language. Let me remind you that the new ”Maidan“ authorities first tried to repeal the law on state language policy. Then there was the law on the ”purification of power“, the law on education that virtually cut the Russian language out of the educational process.
Lastly, as early as May of this year, the current president introduced a bill on ”indigenous peoples“ to the Rada. Only those who constitute an ethnic minority and do not have their own state entity outside Ukraine are recognized as indigenous. The law has been passed. New seeds of discord have been sown. And this is happening in a country, as I have already noted, that is very complex in terms of its territorial, national and linguistic composition, and its history of formation.
There may be an argument: if you are talking about a single large nation, a triune nation, then what difference does it make who people consider themselves to be – Russians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians. I completely agree with this. Especially since the determination of nationality, particularly in mixed families, is the right of every individual, free to make his or her own choice.
But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us. As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Our spiritual unity has also been attacked. As in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a new ecclesiastical has been initiated. The secular authorities, making no secret of their political aims, have blatantly interfered in church life and brought things to a split, to the seizure of churches, the beating of priests and monks. Even extensive autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church while maintaining spiritual unity with the Moscow Patriarchate strongly displeases them. They have to destroy this prominent and centuries-old symbol of our kinship at all costs.
I think it is also natural that the representatives of Ukraine over and over again vote against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. Marches and torchlit processions in honor of remaining war criminals from the SS units take place under the protection of the official authorities. Mazepa, who betrayed everyone, Petliura, who paid for Polish patronage with Ukrainian lands, and Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis, are ranked as national heroes. Everything is being done to erase from the memory of young generations the names of genuine patriots and victors, who have always been the pride of Ukraine.
For the Ukrainians who fought in the Red Army, in partisan units, the Great Patriotic War was indeed a patriotic war because they were defending their home, their great common Motherland. Over two thousand soldiers became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Among them are legendary pilot Ivan Kozhedub, fearless sniper, defender of Odessa and Sevastopol Lyudmila Pavlichenko, valiant guerrilla commander Sidor Kovpak. This indomitable generation fought, those people gave their lives for our future, for us. To forget their feat is to betray our grandfathers, mothers and fathers.
The anti-Russia project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians. The people of Crimea and residents of Sevastopol made their historic choice. And people in the southeast peacefully tried to defend their stance. Yet, all of them, including children, were labeled as separatists and terrorists. They were threatened with ethnic cleansing and the use of military force. And the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk took up arms to defend their home, their language and their lives. Were they left any other choice after the riots that swept through the cities of Ukraine, after the horror and tragedy of 2 May 2014 in Odessa where Ukrainian neo-Nazis burned people alive making a new Khatyn out of it? The same massacre was ready to be carried out by the followers of Bandera in Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk. Even now they do not abandon such plans. They are biding their time. But their time will not come.
The coup d’état and the subsequent actions of the Kiev authorities inevitably provoked confrontation and civil war. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that the total number of victims in the conflict in Donbas has exceeded 13,000. Among them are the elderly and children. These are terrible, irreparable losses.
Russia has done everything to stop fratricide. The Minsk agreements aimed at a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbas have been concluded. I am convinced that they still have no alternative. In any case, no one has withdrawn their signatures from the Minsk Package of Measures or from the relevant statements by the leaders of the Normandy format countries. No one has initiated a review of the United Nations Security Council resolution of 17 February 2015.
During official negotiations, especially after being reined in by Western partners, Ukraine’s representatives regularly declare their ”full adherence“ to the Minsk agreements, but are in fact guided by a position of ”unacceptability“. They do not intend to seriously discuss either the special status of Donbas or safeguards for the people living there. They prefer to exploit the image of the ”victim of external aggression“ and peddle Russophobia. They arrange bloody provocations in Donbas. In short, they attract the attention of external patrons and masters by all means.
Apparently, and I am becoming more and more convinced of this: Kiev simply does not need Donbas. Why? Because, firstly, the inhabitants of these regions will never accept the order that they have tried and are trying to impose by force, blockade and threats. And secondly, the outcome of both Minsk‑1 and Minsk‑2 which give a real chance to peacefully restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine by coming to an agreement directly with the DPR and LPR with Russia, Germany and France as mediators, contradicts the entire logic of the anti-Russia project. And it can only be sustained by the constant cultivation of the image of an internal and external enemy. And I would add – under the protection and control of the Western powers.
This is what is actually happening. First of all, we are facing the creation of a climate of fear in Ukrainian society, aggressive rhetoric, indulging neo-Nazis and militarising the country. Along with that we are witnessing not just complete dependence but direct external control, including the supervision of the Ukrainian authorities, security services and armed forces by foreign advisers, military ”development“ of the territory of Ukraine and deployment of NATO infrastructure. It is no coincidence that the aforementioned flagrant law on ”indigenous peoples“ was adopted under the cover of large-scale NATO exercises in Ukraine.
This is also a disguise for the takeover of the rest of the Ukrainian economy and the exploitation of its natural resources. The sale of agricultural land is not far off, and it is obvious who will buy it up. From time to time, Ukraine is indeed given financial resources and loans, but under their own conditions and pursuing their own interests, with preferences and benefits for Western companies. By the way, who will pay these debts back? Apparently, it is assumed that this will have to be done not only by today’s generation of Ukrainians but also by their children, grandchildren and probably great-grandchildren.
The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain. Reaching peace was the main election slogan of the incumbent president. He came to power with this. The promises turned out to be lies. Nothing has changed. And in some ways the situation in Ukraine and around Donbas has even degenerated.
In the anti-Russia project, there is no place either for a sovereign Ukraine or for the political forces that are trying to defend its real independence. Those who talk about reconciliation in Ukrainian society, about dialogue, about finding a way out of the current impasse are labelled as ”pro-Russian“ agents.
Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished.
Today, the ”right“ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea. Hate and anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire consequences.
All the subterfuges associated with the anti-Russia project are clear to us. And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.
The incumbent authorities in Ukraine like to refer to Western experience, seeing it as a model to follow. Just have a look at how Austria and Germany, the USA and Canada live next to each other. Close in ethnic composition, culture, in fact sharing one language, they remain sovereign states with their own interests, with their own foreign policy. But this does not prevent them from the closest integration or allied relations. They have very conditional, transparent borders. And when crossing them the citizens feel at home. They create families, study, work, do business. Incidentally, so do millions of those born in Ukraine who now live in Russia. We see them as our own close people.
Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our partner is defending its national interests but not serving someone else’s, and is not a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.
We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.
I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.
Today, these words may be perceived by some people with hostility. They can be interpreted in many possible ways. Yet, many people will hear me. And I will say one thing – Russia has never been and will never be ”anti-Ukraine“. And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide.
Ankara sees the American withdrawal from Afghanistan as its valuable opportunity to gain several footholds in this country neighboring the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin.
The following is the English translation from Arabic of the latest article by Turkish career journalistHusni Mahali he published in the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news site Al-Mayadeen Net:
With the approach of the complete American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the competition intensified between Turkey and each of Russia, Iran, and other countries, with the aim of gaining more positions, not only in this country but through it in Central Asia in general as well. With the “Taliban” movement controlling more areas, and the Afghan forces fleeing en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahman, and assured him of his country’s support for him in the face of possible developments in the Afghan crisis, after thousands of Afghan soldiers sought refuge in this neighboring country.
Last Tuesday, the Russian army announced the readiness of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems at the Russian base in Tajikistan, which in turn does not hide its concern about the possibility of an explosion in the security situation in Afghanistan, which may be exploited by the various jihadist groups, which some of them are present in Idlib and other areas of Syria, under the protection of Turkey, which prevents President Putin from any action that directly targets these groups.
President Putin also made a second phone call to his Uzbek counterpart Shaukat Mir Daif and discussed with him the details of coordination and joint cooperation to confront possible developments in Afghanistan.
In turn, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “The main problem is the growing threat of terrorist attacks because the Taliban is behaving more aggressively. Also, the terrorist organization ISIS is strengthening its presence in the northern parts of Afghanistan near the border with Russia’s allies.”
And the Russian security announced the thwarting of many terrorist attacks planned by the militants of the Islamist “Tahrir Party”, which is mainly active in the autonomous republics within the borders of the Russian Federation, whose population is mostly Muslims, and their number exceeds 20 million.
Iran – which has a common border with Afghanistan with a length of 936 km, Pakistan with a length of 909 km, and Turkmenistan with a length of 992 km – are closely watching the Afghan developments, given the direct relationship of the matter to Iran’s national security. Last Tuesday, Tehran hosted a meeting between representatives of the “Taliban” and the Afghan government, in an attempt to achieve peaceful reconciliation between the two parties after the US withdrawal at the end of next month.
In turn, Ankara sees this withdrawal as its valuable opportunity to gain several footholds in this country neighboring the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin, namely Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar visited Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan at the end of last month, in a new attempt by Ankara to develop military relations with these two countries, and later with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, all of which constitute the backyard of Russia, which President Erdogan has previously challenged in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania.
He also challenged it by lighting the green light for Atlantic maneuvers which included the British and Dutch provocations in the Black Sea, which Washington, with the support of Ankara, wants to turn into an Atlantic basin after the annexation of Georgia and Ukraine to the alliance. NATO membership mainly includes Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, which overlook the Black Sea, while Turkey controls the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which connect the Black Sea to both the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean.
Ankara signed several military cooperation agreements with Bulgaria and Romania and then sold its drones to Lithuania, Ukraine, Albania, and Azerbaijan, which achieved quick victories in their war with the Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region thanks to Turkish support.
The information then spoke of Turkey’s efforts to establish several military bases in Azerbaijan, including a base near the Caspian Sea (also overlooked by Iran), which is rich in oil and gas. This may constitute a new and dangerous crisis between Ankara and Moscow, which previously expressed its dismay and rejection of Turkish bases in Azerbaijan in general, which President Erdogan will not care about, who did not care about Russian threats in Syria and Libya, and continued to implement what he had previously planned on the road back to the dreams of the Ottoman Empire.
This (Ottoman) empire had many reasons for entering into 16 fierce wars with the Russian Empire, of which it was defeated in 11. Many see President Putin as the heir of this empire, as Erdogan sees himself as the heir to the Ottoman Empire and its Islamist caliphate, which may make the possible Turkish dialogue, coordination, and cooperation with Kabul after the Taliban control it much easier, even if Turkey is the only Muslim country within NATO that has occupied Afghanistan under the leadership of the United States in 2001. After his meeting with President Biden, on the 14th of last month in Brussels, Erdogan announced that Turkey is ready to send additional forces to Afghanistan to protect the security of Kabul Airport and international facilities, which will be contributed by his ally, Sheikh Tamim, Emir of Qatar, who played and still is, an important role in the American reconciliation with the “Taliban”.
Al-Jazeera was the mouthpiece of the Taliban during its war with the “Great Satan” America, at a time when Osama bin Laden sent his tapes exclusively to the aforementioned channel before and after the American occupation and until his death in May 2011, that is, after the emergence of ISIS, and “Al-Nusra” in Syria and Iraq, which are the arenas for America and its new allies to settle scores with the resistance countries and for “Israel”.
All this explains the new US military position in Jordan, adjacent to Syria, Iraq, and “Israel”, after Washington transferred some of its forces from Qatar, where the Al-Udeid base is still located, which is the most important US base in the region. This base was and will remain, the headquarters of the Central Command of the US Air Force in the Middle East, and it houses 100 warplanes used by US forces against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In all cases, and whatever the result of the Turkish moves in Afghanistan, through it in the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and all the countries that overlook them or close to them, it has become clear that the Turkish President was, and will remain, a source of concern for President Putin, especially if Ankara succeeds in its relationship with the Taliban. Everyone was surprised by its (Taliban) agreement with President Erdogan, who declared himself “the protector of Islam and Muslims.”
In turn, the Taliban leaders, with Qatari mediation, might consider cooperating with him, especially if he proves his authority in the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin, an authority that the late President Turgut Ozal sought after fall and disintegration of the Soviet Union. Erdogan sees himself as Ozal’s successor and before him Adnan Menderes, who made Turkey “a fish on American hook” for the period 1950-1960.
Erdogan and others did not ignore the strategic location of Afghanistan, which is rich in gold, iron, cobalt, copper, uranium, and rare minerals, including niobium and molybdenum, which are invested by Chinese companies that control the extraction and export of most of the world’s rare minerals everyone needs in sensitive industries, including warplanes and missiles.
In the end, the bet remains on the possible policies of the Taliban. If they remain on their approach as they were 20 years ago, history will repeat itself, and everyone will return to their interests in the extremist Islamist movements that have become more famous for their brutality after the so-called “Arab Spring,” especially in Syria. Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and the extension of these countries in Africa, the Middle East, Bahrain, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and the Gulf region.
Erdogan has proven that he has a long experience in all of them after he succeeded in establishing and developing distinguished relations with all Islamist movements, both political and armed, many of whose leaders had previously been present and fought in Afghanistan. These leaders had a relationship with “Al-Qaeda”, and later “Taliban”, which seems clear that, with its next actions, it will decide the fate and future of Afghanistan, and all its neighboring countries as well, most of which are within the borders of Russia’s backyard.
This may be the “hidden satanic” reason for Washington’s decision to withdraw, which wants Russia to afflict Afghanistan again as it afflicted it during the Soviet occupation, and Turkey was at the time on the neutral, but this time it will be a direct party, as is the case on many fronts, which it proved with the transfer of mercenaries from Syria to Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. Now, some expect it to transfer their likes to Afghanistan, which is what America might do by transferring what it has of ISIS detainees in Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan!
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One of Israel’s most respected rabbis, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, has released a statement on the status of America as a waning world superpower and a message of hope for Israel to fill the void. Rabbi Eliyahu is the Chief Rabbi of Safed and a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council
The big crisis that is currently happening in America
Regarding the outcome of the US elections, Rabbi Eliyahu explains that the schism is deeper than last week’s incident on Capitol Hill saying: “The big crisis that is currently happening in America didn’t start with the storming of Capitol Hill. It started with the Democratic party’s’ lack of confidence in Trump’s presidency expressed in fiery protests across the United States, and his being labeled in every possible derogatory manner.”
The rabbi added that the lack of Republican trust in America’s election process also contributes to the crisis.
“With tremendous sorrow we can recall this event as part of the process of the US descending from the stage of world history. It’s a sad moment, but it’s happening.”
Pharaoh fell too
Recalling the fall of ancient Egypt, the rabbi uses historic precedent to back up his claim saying: “This is not the first time a superpower fell because of a crisis of values and returns to being an ordinary country among other nations. That is what happened to Egypt and Rome in the old days. That is what happened to the Ottoman Empire approximately a century ago, all the way to the Russian Empire that collapsed 30 years ago, both of whom collapsed due to a failure of values that led to their demise as well as a decline in their great power as world leaders.”
Rabbi Eliyahu also recalled the collapse of France and Great Britain who were once “considered part of the four powers that rule the world,” He added that they collapsed just as Europe as a whole is collapsing because of values…or lack thereof.
Values of political correctness
“The values of justice were replaced with those of political correctness. The family values have been replaced with those of hedonism. The birthrate that fell below the red line caused European leaders to open the floodgates to mass Muslim migration that would fill the void, and Europe started to totally lose its character.”
Rabbi Eliyahu sees the developments unfolding as an opportunity for Israel to step up and take America’s place as the world superpower. He supports his proposition by calling Israel a world leader in family values saying: “We’ve been called upon to fill this vacuum. There are problems inside the State of Israel as well, but unlike Europe, Israel leads the world in the stability of family values. The average amount of children per Israeli woman is double the average of the Western world, and this is what propels Israel’s economy and creativity forward. Israel also leads the globe in the least amount of children from single mothers.”
Regarding a potential insurrection, Rabbi Eliyahu refers to the destruction of the second Temple as evidence that a similar situation cannot reoccur saying “As far as governmental stability is concerned, we are not similar in any way. There cannot be an antigovernmental revolution in Israel. With all the allegations we have regarding this and that corruption in the system of government, none of us have aspirations of a military revolt. We all recall the heavy price of the destruction of the 2nd Temple and it can’t be repeated.”
The rabbi also said that because Israel trails the western world in alcohol and drug consumption.
Not Pretentious, but Torah
Acknowledging that his proclamation could come across as condescending, the rabbi explains that it’s all part of God’s plan saying: “Israel is stable and is called upon to take its place as a world leader in values. I realize that to many people this sounds very pretentious, but this is the template that G-d promised our forefather Abraham.”
And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you (Genesis 12:3)
Reflecting on the Jewish people who he says don’t recognize the opportunity, the Rabbi notes: “The only ones who do not see this is us, and the time has come for us to recall our destiny. We need to prepare for it so that we can fulfill it with all the necessary responsibilities and not make the mistakes that they made.”
يبدو أنَّ بايدن لن يستعجل في حسم ملف تركيا ما دام يشك في أجندات إردوغان الخاصة لإحياء ذكريات الخلافة والسلطنة العثمانية.
مع بدايات الحرب الباردة وتشكيل الحلف الأطلسي في نيسان/أبريل 1949، استعجلت تركيا في مساعيها للانضمام إلى هذا الحلف لمواجهة الخطر السوفياتي الشيوعي، كما كانت تقول آنذاك. وجاءت الحرب الكورية كفرصة ثمينة بالنسبة إلى أنقرة، التي قرّرت إرسال جيشها للقتال إلى جانب الأميركيين، في محاولة منها لإثبات ولائها للغرب، الذي فتح أبواب الحلف لها في شباط/فبراير 1952، بعد أن ضحَّت بحوالى ألف عسكري من عساكرها في كوريا.
وكان انضمام أنقرة إلى الحلف بداية التحالف الاستراتيجي التركي مع أميركا، التي أصبح لها القول الأول والأخير في مجمل تطورات تركيا الداخلية والخارجية، بعد أن أقامت عشرات القواعد البحرية والجوية والبرية في مختلف أنحاء البلاد، وما زالت تحتفظ بـ12 منها، رغم كلّ حالات الفتور والتوتر بين البلدين خلال الفترات الماضية.
وجاء “الربيع العربي” كفرصة جديدة لإثبات ولاء أنقرة في ظل حكم حزب العدالة والتنمية لأميركا، التي أرادت تغيير خارطة الجغرافيا العربية بتسليم السلطة في العديد من دولها للإسلاميين، شرط أن يستفيدوا من النموذج التركي. وقد أثبت هذا النموذج فشله بعد إسقاط حكم الإخوان في مصر وصمود الدولة السورية والتناقضات التي عاشتها تركيا، لينتهي الأمر بها بما هي عليه الآن داخلياً وخارجياً.
لم يمنع ذلك أنقرة من الاستمرار في مساعيها لأداء دور أساسي في مجمل تطورات المنطقة، انطلاقاً من سوريا، وهي قفل كلّ المعادلات التركية اللاحقة ومفتاحها، فأرسل الرئيس التركي رجب طيب إردوغان قواته إلى العراق وليبيا والصومال وأذربيجان وقطر وألبانيا، إضافة إلى مساهمات تركيا في قوات حفظ السلام في لبنان ومالي وجمهورية أفريقيا الوسطى والبوسنة وكوسوفو.
كما أرسلت أنقرة جيشها إلى أفغانستان بعد الاحتلال الأميركي لهذا البلد، إذ قال وزير الخارجية كولن باول في تصريح لـ”نيويورك تايمز” في 11 تشرين الثاني/نوفمبر 2001: “إنَّ بعض الدول الإسلامية، وفي مقدّمتها تركيا، عبرت لنا عن استعدادها لإرسال قواتها إلى أفغانستان، للمساهمة في تحقيق الأمن في العاصمة كابول وجوارها”. وتحتفظ تركيا منذ ذلك التاريخ بحوالى ألفي عسكري في أفغانستان، يقومون بحماية مطار كابول، كما يقومون بتدريب عناصر الأمن الأفغاني، في الوقت الذي تنفّذ الشركات التركية مشاريع تنموية فيها.
وجاء حديث الرئيس إردوغان بعد لقائه الرئيس بايدن عن استعداده لإرسال الجيش التركي وموافقة بايدن على ذلك، ليدفع المعارضة إلى التذكير بتجربة الجيش التركي في كوريا قبل 70 عاماً. وقال فاروق لوغ أوغلو، سفير تركيا السابق في واشنطن، “إن إردوغان، من خلال إرسال الجيش إلى أفغانستان، يسعى إلى كسب ودّ ودعم الرئيس بايدن الذي وصفه بالاستبدادي، وأكد ضرورة التخلص منه”، فيما ذكَّر الجنرال المتقاعد أحمد ياووز بـ”إرسال رئيس الوزراء الأسبق عدنان مندرس الجيش التركي إلى كوريا في بداية الخمسينيات”، وقال: “التاريخ يكرر نفسه. هذه المرة، يرسل إردوغان عساكرنا إلى أفغانستان لحماية المصالح الأميركية، وهو ما فعله في سوريا، وبعد ذلك في ليبيا، فقد زارها وزراء الداخلية والدفاع والخارجية ورئيس الأركان ورئيس المخابرات ومستشارو إردوغان قبل يوم من لقاء بايدن، وذلك إشارة من إردوغان الذي أراد أن يقول لواشنطن إنه على استعداد للتنسيق والتعاون الدائم والشامل مع أميركا في كل المناطق ذات الاهتمام المشترك بما فيها أفغانستان ولاحقاً الصومال ومنطقة الخليج والقوقاز”.
أما رئيس تحرير قناة “Tele 1” الإخبارية، ماردان ينارداغ، فقد اعتبر “حماس إردوغان لإرسال الجيش التركي إلى أفغانستان جزءاً من أيديولوجيته العقائدية التي طبَّقها بالتحالف مع جميع القوى والفصائل الإسلامية، المسلحة منها وغير المسلحة، في سوريا وليبيا”.
حديث الرئيس إردوغان عن ضرورة إشراك باكستان وهنغاريا في المهمة العسكرية التركية يهدف إلى كسب ود “طالبان” ذات الأصول الباشتونية، فيما يسعى من خلال الحديث عن الرئيس الهنغاري أوروبان (قال إنه من أصول عثمانية) لكسب ودّ الاتحاد الأوروبي ودعمه سياسياً ومالياً، من دون أن نتجاهل علاقات أنقرة منذ فترة مع حركة “طالبان” التي توسّطت قطر (حليف إردوغان) بينها وبين “الشيطان الأكبر” أميركا، التي نسيت أنها هي التي احتلّت أفغانستان، فقد أدت واشنطن ومخابراتها مع باكستان، وبتمويل سعودي وإماراتي، دوراً أساسياً في دعم المجاهدين الأفغان خلال الاحتلال السوفياتي، كما ساهمت في تشكيل “القاعدة”، ومن بعدها حركة “طالبان”، وإيصالها إلى السلطة في أيلول/سبتمبر 1996.
وجاء مقتل أسامة بن لادن في الأول من أيار/مايو 2011 كمؤشر مهم على فتح صفحة جديدة في المخطط الأميركي في المنطقة العربية، إذ حلَّت “داعش” محلّ “القاعدة”، ثم بقيت الساحة لـ”جبهة النصرة” بعد مقتل البغدادي، مع استمرار الصراع على مناطق النفوذ بين القاعدة و”داعش” في أفريقيا، وربما لاحقاً في أفغانستان وآسيا الوسطى، بعد استلام “طالبان” السلطة هناك.
كل ذلك مع استمرار اهتمام دول الجوار الأفغاني بهذا التغيير المحتمل، إذ تجاور أفغانستان الصين بحوالى 75 كم من الحدود البرية القريبة من منطقة مسلمي الإيغور، والآلاف منهم يقاتلون في سوريا.
بدورها، تراقب إيران تطوّرات الوضع في أفغانستان، التي تمتدّ حدودها معها إلى حوالى 950 كم، ويعدّ حوالى 15% من سكان أفغانستان من الشيعة. أما الاهتمام الأميركي، وبالتالي الأوروبي، بهذا البلد، فله أبعاد مختلفة، إضافةً إلى موقعه الجغرافي وثرواته المعدنية المختلفة، وأهمها أن 90% من مختلف أنواع المخدرات التي تصل أوروبا وأميركا تأتي منه.
لم تبالِ هذه الدول الغربية بقنابل باكستان النووية، في الوقت الذي تقيم الدنيا وتقعدها على احتمالات امتلاك إيران مثل هذا السلاح الذي قد يهدد “إسرائيل”، بحسب ادعاءات هذه الدول وحلفائها في دول الخليج. ويعرف الجميع أنها تتنافس في ما بينها، ومعها تركيا، لكسب باكستان إلى جانبها، لأنَّ من يكسب هذا البلد، الذي يتميز بحدود بطول 2650 كم مع أفغانستان، يتقدم على الآخرين في كسب موطئ قدم استراتيجي في المنطقة، وهي بوابة الانفتاح على جمهوريات آسيا الوسطى الإسلامية ذات الأصل التركي، وهي أيضاً الحديقة الخلفية لروسيا.
تراقب روسيا بدورها كلّ التطورات عن كثب، لما لها من ذكريات سيّئة في أفغانستان، كانت كافية لسقوط الاتحاد السوفياتي. ويعرف الجميع أن الرئيس بوتين لن يسمح لأحد بأن يكرر هذه التجربة، مع استمرار أميركا والحلف الأطلسي وحلفائهما في مساعيهما لتضييق الحصار عليها، كما يعرفون أن تركيا هي الحليف الأهم والأكثر تأثيراً في مشاريع واشنطن. وقد كانت في سنوات الحرب الباردة مخفراً متقدّماً للدفاع عن الحلف الأطلسي ضد حلف “وارسو”.
وقد انضم معظم أعضائه السابقين، باستثناء أوكرانيا وروسيا البيضاء ومولدوفا، إلى الحلف الأطلسي، مع استمرار مساعي الرئيس إردوغان لضم أوكرانيا وجورجيا إلى الحلف. ويرى البعض في ذلك محاولة جديدة من إردوغان، وقد تكون الأخيرة، لإثبات قوته للحليف الأكبر بايدن.
ويبدو أنَّ الأخير لن يستعجل في حسم ملف تركيا، ما دام يشك في أجندات إردوغان الخاصة لإحياء ذكريات الخلافة والسلطنة العثمانية، ولو بتسميات مختلفة يريد لها أن تدغدغ مشاعر أنصاره وأتباعه في الداخل، وبين إسلاميي المنطقة والعالم، وخصوصاً بعد أن أصبح الحاكم المطلق للبلاد، وسيطر على جميع أجهزة الدولة، وأهمها جيش أتاتورك، الذي يريد له أن يتحول إلى جيش انكشاري ينفّذ تعليماته، ويخدم مشاريعه ومخططاته، ولو كان ذلك بخطوة إلى الأمام وخطوتين إلى الوراء!
Nasser became the catalyst for an Arab Revolution for independence, a revolution that remains yet to be finished, Cynthia Chung writes.
In the 1950s the so-called enemy of the West was not only Moscow but the Third World’s emerging nationalists, from Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt to Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. The United States and Britain staged a coup d’état against Mossadegh, and used the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist movement and the grandfather organization of the militant Islamic right, in an attempt to remove Nasser, the leader of the Arab nationalists.
In the 1960s, left wing nationalism and Arab socialism spread from Egypt to Algeria to Syria, Iraq and Palestine. This emergence presented a threat to the old imperialist game of Great Britain, to which the United States was a recent recruit of, and thus they decided to forge a working alliance with Saudi Arabia intent on using Wahhabi fundamentalism as their foreign policy arm in the Middle East, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.
This paper will go through the carving up of the Middle East under Sykes-Picot, the British creation of Saudi Arabia and Israel and the British occupation of Palestine, the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood and Nasser’s fight for Arab independence. In a follow-up paper, I will discuss the role of the City of London in facilitating the bankroll of the first Islamic fundamentalist state Saudi Arabia, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist apparatus.
An “Arab Awakening” Made in Britain
“The renunciation will not be easy. Jewish hopes have been raised to such a pitch that the non-fulfilment of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine will cause intense disillusionment and bitterness. The manifold proofs of public spirit and of capacity to endure hardships and face danger in the building up of the national home are there to testify to the devotion with which a large section of the Jewish people cherish the Zionist ideal. And it would be an act of further cruelty to the Jews to disappoint those hopes if there existed some way of satisfying them, that did not involve cruelty to another people. But the logic of facts is inexorable. It shows that no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.”
– the concluding paragraph of George Antonius’ “The Arab Awakening” (1938)
Much of what is responsible for the war and havoc in the Middle East today has the British orchestrated so-called “Arab Awakening” to thank, led by characters such as E.G. Browne, St. John Philby, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Although its origins go as far back as the 19th century, it was only until the early 20th century, that the British were able to reap significant results from its long harvest.
The Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, had been, to the detriment of the Arab people, a British led rebellion. The British claimed that their sole interest in the affair was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and had given their word that these Arab territories would be freed and allowed independence if they agreed to rebel, in large part led and directed by the British.
It is a rather predictable feature of the British to lie and double cross and thus it should be of no surprise to anyone that their intentions were quite the opposite of what they had promised and thanks to the Sykes-Picot Russian leak, were revealed in their entire shameful glory.
If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, Hussein ibn Ali the Sharif of Mecca, a candidate which was approved by the British Cairo office as suitable for British strings. T.E. Lawrence, who worked at the Cairo bureau is quoted as saying:
“If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, the present representative of which is Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca….If properly handled the Arab States would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of jealous principalities incapable of cohesion…” (1)
Once the Arab Revolt was “won” against the Ottoman Empire, instead of the promised Arab independence, the Middle East was carved up into zones of influence under British and French colonial rule. Puppet monarchies were created in regions that were considered not under direct colonial subjugation in order to continue the illusion that Arabs remained in charge of sacred regions such as Mecca and Medina.
In central Arabia, Hussein, Sharif of Mecca, the puppet leader of the Arab Revolt laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein abdicated and ibn Saud, the favourite of the British India Office, was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Al Saud warriors of Wahhabism were a formidable strike force that the British believed would help London gain control of the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
Hussein ibn Ali’s son Faisal (under the heavy tutelage of T.E. Lawrence) was bestowed as King of Iraq and Hussein’s other son, Abdullah I was established as the Emir of Transjordan until a negotiated legal separation of Transjordan from Britain’s Palestine mandate occurred in 1946, whereupon he was crowned King of Jordan. (For more on this history refer to my paper.)
While the British were promising Arab independence they simultaneously were promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 states:
“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”
Palestine had been seized by the British during the so-called Arab Revolt on December 11th, 1917 when General Allenby marched into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city. Palestine has remained occupied ever since.
Britain would receive the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.
The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police.
Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.
In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.
The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood
In 1869, a man named Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the intellectual founder of the Salafiyya movement, went to India where British led colonial authorities welcomed him with honors and graciously escorted him aboard a government owned vessel on an all expenses paid voyage to the Suez. (2)
In Cairo he was adopted by the Egyptian prime minister Riad Pasha, a notorious enemy of the emerging nationalist movement in Egypt. Pasha persuaded Afghani to stay in Egypt and allowed him to take up residence in Cairo’s 900 year old Al Azhar mosque considered the center of Islamic learning worldwide, where he received lodging and a monthly government stipend (paid for by the British). (3)
In 1879, Cairo nationalists in the Egyptian Army, led by the famous Egyptian hero Ahmed ‘Urabi, organised an uprising against the British role in Egypt. Afghani was expelled from Egypt by the Egyptian nationalists that same year.
Ahmed ‘Urabi served as prime minister of Egypt briefly, from July 1882 to Sept 1882, however, his movement for Egyptian independence was eventually crushed by the British with the shelling of Alexandria in July 1882 followed by an invasion which resulted in a direct British occupation of Egypt that would last until 1956. It would be Gamal Abdel Nasser who would finally end British colonial rule of Egypt during the Suez Crisis, whereupon the Suez canal was nationalised and the British military bases expelled.
While Egypt was fighting its nationalist fight from 1879-1882, Afghani and his chief disciple Muhammad Abduh travelled together first to Paris and then to Britain, it was in Britain that they would make a proposal for a pan-Islamic alliance among Egypt, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan against Czarist Russia (4).
In addition, the crisis in Sudan, was in the middle of a tribal religious rebellion against the British led by a man named Mohammed Ahmad a Sudanese sheikh who proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or savior, and was leading a puritanical Islamic revolt. (5)
What Afghani was proposing to the British was that they provide aid and resources to support his formation of a militant Islam sect that would favour Britain’s interest in the Middle East, in other words, Afghani wished to fight Islam with Islam, having stated in one of his works “We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”(6)
Although it is said that the British refused this offer, this is not likely considering the support Afghani would receive in creating the intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement with British patronage and the support of England’s leading orientalist E.G. Browne, the godfather of twentieth century Orientalism and teacher of St John Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
E.G. Browne would make sure the work of Afghani would continue long beyond his death by immortalising him in his 1910 “The Persian Revolution,” considered an authoritative history of the time.
In 1888, Abduh, the chief disciple of Afghani, would return to Egypt in triumph with the full support of the representatives of her Majesty’s imperial force and took the first of several positions in Cairo, openly casting his lot with Lord Cromer, who was the symbol of British imperialism in Egypt.
Abduh would found, with the hold of London’s Egyptian proconsul Evelyn Baring (aka Lord Cromer) who was the scion of the enormously powerful banking clan (Barings Bank) under the city of London, the Salafiyya movement. (7)
Abduh had attached himself to the British rulers of Egypt and created the cornerstone of the Muslim Brotherhood which dominated the militant Islamic right throughout the twentieth century.
In 1899, Abduh reached the pinnacle of his power and influence, and was named mufti of Egypt.
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In 1902, Riyadh fell to Ibn Saud and it was during this period that Ibn Saud established the fearsome Ikhwan (translated as “brotherhood”). He collected fighters from Bedouin tribes firing them up with fanatical religious zeal and threw them into battle. By 1912 the Ikhwan numbered 11,000 and Ibn Saud had both central Arabia’s Nejd and Al-Ahsa in the east under his control.
From the 1920s onward, the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabi orthodoxy with the Salafiyya movement (which would be organised into the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928).
William Shakespear, a famed British agent, forged the first formal treaty between England and Saudi Arabia which was signed in 1915, which bound London and Arabia for years before Saudi Arabia became a country. “It formally recognized Ibn Saud as the independent ruler of the Nejd and its Dependencies under British protection. In return, Ibn Saud undertook to follow British advice.” (8)
Harry St. John Bridger Philby, a British operative schooled by E.G. Browne and father to the legendary triple agent Kim Philby, would succeed Shakespear as Great Britain’s liaison to Ibn Saud under the British India Office, the friendly rival of the Cairo Arab Bureau office which was sponsoring T.E. Lawrence of Arabia.
In Egypt 1928, Hassan al-Banna (a follower of Afghani and Abduh) founded the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), the organization that would change the course of history in the twentieth century Middle East.
Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood was established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company (9) and from that point on, British diplomats and intelligence service, along with the British puppet King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a truncheon against Egypt’s nationalists and later against Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
To get the Muslim Brotherhood off the ground, the Suez Canal Company helped Banna build the mosque in Ismailia that would serve as its headquarters and base of operation. (10) The fact that Banna created the organization in Ismailia is itself worthy of note. For England, the Suez Canal was the indispensable route to its prize possession, India and in 1928 the town Ismailia happened to house not only the company’s offices but a major British military base built during WWI. It was also, in the 1920s a center of pro-British sentiment in Egypt.
In the post-WWI world, England reigned supreme, the flag of the British empire was everywhere from the Mediterranean to India. A new generation of kings and potentates ruled over British dominated colonies, mandates, vassal states, and semi-independent fiefdoms in Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Arabia and Persia. To varying degrees those monarchies were beholden to London.
In the half century between 1875 and 1925 the building blocks of the militant Islamic right were cemented in place by the British Empire.
Nasser Leads the Fight for Arab Independence
In 1942, the Muslim Brotherhood would earn their well-deserved reputation for extremism and violence by establishing the “Secret Apparatus,” an intelligence service and secret terrorist unit. This clandestine unit functioned for over twelve years almost entirely unchecked, assassinating judges, police officers, government officials and engaging in goon squad attacks on labor unions and communists.
Throughout this period the Muslim Brotherhood worked for the most part in an alliance with King Farouq (and thus the British), using their clandestine forces on behalf of British interests. And throughout its entire existence it would receive political support and money from the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabi establishment (more on this in part 2 of this series).
The Secret Apparatus would be smashed into pieces by Nasser in 1954.
After WWII, the faltering Farouq regime lashed out against the left in an intense campaign of repression aimed at the communists. The Cold War was beginning. In 1946, prime minister Isma’il Sidqi of Egypt who was installed as head of the government with the support of Banna, openly funded the Muslim Brotherhood and provided training camps for its shock troops used in a sweeping anti-left campaign. Sidqi resigned in Dec 1946 after less than one year as PM due to massive unpopularity.
As King Farouq began to lose his grip on the Egyptian people, the Brotherhood distanced itself while maintaining shadowy ties to the army and to foreign intelligence agencies and always opposed to the left.
The Palestine War (1947-1949) resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel at the cost of 700,000 displaced Palestinian Arabs and the destruction of most of their urban areas.
The territory that was under British administration before the war was divided between the State of Israel (officially formed May 14th, 1948), which captured about 78% of it. In opposition to Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan captured and later annexed the West Bank, and Egypt captured the Gaza Strip, with the Arab League establishing the All-Palestine Government, which came to an end in June 1967 when the Gaza Strip, along with the West Bank, were captured by Israel in the Six-Day War.
The Egyptian people were furious over these developments, and the reign of British puppet King Farouq who had done nothing to prevent the dismantling of Palestine was on extremely shaky ground. In response to this, Farouq’s accord with the Muslim Brotherhood broke down, and in December 1948, the Egyptian government outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. Weeks later a Brotherhood assassin murdered prime minister Mahmoud El Nokrashy.
Two months later, in Feb. 1949, Banna was assassinated in Cairo by the Egyptian secret police.
For Arab nationalists, Israel was a symbol of Arab weakness and semi-colonial subjugation, overseen by proxy kings in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
On the night of July 23, 1952, the Free Officers, led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, staged a military coup that launched the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, overthrowing the British puppet monarch. The Free Officers, knowing that warrants had been issued for their arrest, launched the coup that night, storming the staff headquarters in Cairo.
Cairo was now, for the first time, under the control of the Arab people after over 70 years of British occupation.
The seizure of power by the Free Officers in Egypt came during an era when the entire Arab world from Morocco to Iraq was locked in the grip of imperialism. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were French colonies; Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman and Yemen were British colonies. Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were kingdoms ruled by monarchies installed by London. And Egypt under King Farouq was the political and economic center of the Arab world.
A growing surge of Arab nationalism arose in response to the Free Officers’ actions in Egypt. The powerful Voice of the Arabs radio in Cairo was reporting to the entire Arab world that they had found their independence movement, and that Nasser was at its helm.
From 1956 to 1958 Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon underwent rebellions, Iraq’s king was toppled, and Syria united with Egypt in Nasser’s United Arab Republic, part of Nasser’s strategy to unify the Arab world.
In Algeria, moral and material support was given from Cairo towards the Algerian revolution that finally won them independence from French colonial rule in 1962.
That same year, Yemen underwent a Nasser-inspired revolt, triggering a proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia against Egypt, with Nasser stating in a 1962 speech, “Yemen’s fight is my fight. Yemen’s Revolution is our Revolution.”
Nasser’s leadership and the inspiration he stirred were so strong that even as late as 1969 the year before Nasser’s death, Libya’s king was overthrown and Sudan’s right-wing regime was eliminated by military leaders loyal to Nasser.
Nasser had managed to threaten the very heart of Anglo-America’s post-WWII strategy in the Middle East. Nasser understood, that if the vast oil fields in Saudi Arabia were under Arab control, the potential for an economic boom would be enormous for all Arab states, such that the old game of imperialism by Britain and France could no longer retain its chokehold on Arab independence.
Not only was Egypt a military rival to Saudi Arabia, not only did Cairo clash with Riyadh in a shooting war in Yemen, not only did Nasser inspire Arabs in Saudi Arabia with republican ideals but the Egyptian leader even won over some of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. This group was led by Prince Talal to form the ‘Free Princes’, which defected to Egypt demanding the establishment of a republic in Saudi Arabia!
What was really going on during the period of 1954 to 1970, under Nasser’s leadership, was a war between two competing visions for the future of the Middle East; an Arab world of independent but cooperative Arab republics utilising their natural resources to facilitate an economic boom in industrialisation vs a semi-feudal scattering of monarchies with their natural resources largely at the West’s disposal.
The real reason why the British and Anglo Americans wanted Nasser removed, was not because he was a communist or because he was susceptible to communist influence; it was because he refused to obey his would-be foreign controllers and was rather successful in this endeavour, bringing their shadowy actions uncomfortably close to the light and inspiring loyalty amongst Arabs outside of Egypt including those sitting on top of the oil.
What especially worried London and Washington was the idea that Nasser might succeed in his plan to unify Egypt and Saudi Arabia thus creating a major Arab power. Nasser believed that these oil wells were not only for the government of those territories to do with as they wished but belonged to all Arab people and thus should be used for the advancement of the Arab world. Afterall, most Arabs are aware that both the monarchies themselves and the artificial borders that demarcate their states, were designed by imperialists seeking to build fences around oil wells in the 1920s.
Nasser understood that if Cairo and Riyadh were to unite in a common cause for the uplifting of the Arab people, it would create a vastly important new Arab center of gravity with worldwide influence.
In 1954 Egypt and the United Kingdom had signed an agreement over the Suez Canal and British military basing rights. It was a short lived. By 1956 Great Britain, France and Israel concocted a plot against Egypt aimed at toppling Nasser and seizing control of the Suez Canal, a conspiracy that enlisted the Muslim Brotherhood.
In fact, the British went so far as to hold secret meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood in Geneva. According to author Stephen Dorrill, two British intelligence agents Col. Neil McLean and Julian Amery, helped MI6 organize a clandestine anti-Nasser opposition in the south of France and in Switzerland, (11) in his book he writes “They also went so far as to make contact in Geneva…with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, informing only MI6 of this demarche which they kept secret from the rest of the Suez Group [which was planning the military operation via its British bases by the Suez Canal]. Amery forwarded various names to [Selwyn] Lloyd, [the British foreign secretary].”
British prime minister Anthony Eden, Churchill’s handpicked successor, was violently anti-Nasser all along and considered a British coup d’état in Cairo as early as 1953. Other than such brash actions, the only political force that could mount a challenge to Nasser was the Muslim Brotherhood which had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Nasser’s long postponed showdown with the Muslim Brotherhood occurred in 1954, this was timed to add pressure during the rising frustration concerning the British-Egyptian negotiations over the transfer of the Suez Canal and its military bases to Egypt. The British, after over 70 years of direct occupation in Egypt, were not going to give up on one of their most prized jewels, their gateway to the Orient, so easily.
From 1954 on, Anthony Eden, the British prime minister was demanding Nasser’s head. According to Stephen Dorrill’s “MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations”, Eden had ranted “What’s all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or ‘neutralising’ him, as you call it? I want him destroyed, can’t you understand? I want him murdered…And I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt.”
Nasser would not back down, and in the first few months of 1954 the Muslim Brotherhood and Nasser went to war, culminating in Nasser outlawing them as a terrorist group and a pawn of the British.
On Oct. 1954, a Muslim Brotherhood member Mahmoud Abdel-Latif attempted to assassinate Nasser while he was delivering a speech in Alexandria, which was live broadcasting to the Arab world by radio, to celebrate the British military withdrawal.
Panic broke out in the mass audience, but Nasser maintained his posture and raised his voice to appeal for calm, and with great emotion he exclaimed the following:
“My countrymen, my blood spills for you and for Egypt. I will live for your sake and die for the sake of your freedom and honor. Let them kill me; it does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor, and freedom in you.”
The crowd roared in approval and Arab audiences were electrified. The assassination attempt backfired, and quickly played back into Nasser’s hands. Upon returning to Cairo, he ordered one of the largest political crackdowns in the modern history of Egypt, with the arrests of thousands of dissenters, mostly members of the Brotherhood.
The decree banning the Muslim Brotherhood organization said “The revolution will never allow reactionary corruption to recur in the name of religion.” (12)
In 1967, there was a Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, which was started by Israel in a coordinated aerial attack on Egypt, eliminating roughly 90% of Egyptian air forces that were still on the ground, followed by an aerial attack on Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Israel then went on to conduct a ground attack with tanks and infantry, devastating whole Arab regions.
Despite the disastrous loss to Israel, the people of Egypt refused to accept Nasser’s resignation and took to the streets in a mass demonstration calling for Nasser’s return. Nasser accepted the call of the people and returned to his position as president where he remained as until his death in Sept 1970.
Five million people turned out on the streets of Egypt for Nasser’s funeral, and hundreds of millions more mourned his death throughout the world.
Although Nasser had devastatingly lost a battle, the Egyptian people along with their Arab compatriots understood that the fight for Arab independence was not lost. The dream of dignity and freedom, in forever opposition to the shackles of tyranny could not be buried now that it had been stirred to its very core. Nasser would be the catalyst for an Arab Revolution for independence, a revolution that remains yet to be finished.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 