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2022-09-12
محمد صادق الحسيني
رغم كلّ الضجيج والصراخ الأميركيّ عن تحرير مناطق او استعادة أخرى وإبراز هجوم أوكراني ضدّ روسيا، فإنّ الأنباء الميدانية التي تصل من ميادين المعارك في أوكرانيا عن نجاح الأطلسي في هذه المهمة باتت مستحيلة ولا تبشر إلا بالكارثة التي تنتظر طغمة كييف ورعاتها الدوليين.
فوزارة الدفاع الروسية تتحدّث عن 4 آلاف قتيل و8 آلاف جريح في صفوف قوات نظام كييف على محورين خلال الأيام الأخيرة فقط…
في المقابل فإنه وعلى الرغم من حملة الأكاذيب والتضليل الممنهج، التي أطلقها رئيس الأركان المشتركة للجيوش الأميركية، الجنرال مارك ميلي، خلال المؤتمر الصحافي المشترك مع وزير الدفاع الأميركي، الجنرال لويد اوستين، الذي عقد في قاعدة رامشتاين الجوية الأميركية في ألمانيا عقب انتهاء لقاء ما يسمّى: مجموعة الاتصال من أجل أوكرانيا (50 دولة)، بتاريخ 8/9/2022 (نص التصريحات موجود على موقع البنتاغون الرسمي)، فإنّ قراءة بين سطور تصريحاته تؤكد ما يلي:
أولأ ـ إنّ خسائر العصابات الأوكرانية، على جبهتي خيرسون في الجنوب وخاركوف في الشرق، قد فاقت كلّ الأرقام المعلنة وكلّ التوقعات أيضاً. حيث بلغت هذه الخسائر، على الجبهتين، ما يزيد على سبعة آلاف مسلح، بين «جنود» ومرتزقة أجانب، ومسلحين أوكرانيين من كتائب آزوف وكاراكن والذراع الأيمن، وغيرها من عصابات النازيين الأوكرانيين.
ثانيا ـ وقد جاء كلام الجنرال الأميركي ميلي، في قاعدة رامشتاين، ليؤكد هذه الأرقام، عندما قال: «… إنهم تكبّدوا خسائر فادحة، عشرات آلاف القتلى والجرحى…» وأضاف، في معرض حديثه عن محاولات التعرّض الفاشلة، التي قامت بها المجاميع المسلحة النازية على جبهات القتال، والتي أسماها الجنرال ميلي: محاولة استعادة المبادرة العسكرية، التي شرعت بها تلك المجاميع بداية الشهر الحالي. اضاف قائلاً: «إنه لمن المبكر تقديم تقييم دقيق عن نتائج هذا الهجوم (المضاد)، وذلك لأنّ العملية لا تزال في بدايتها».
ثالثا ـ لكن الجنرال الأميركي حاول التخفيف، من وقع كلامه الواضح نسبياً، عن فشل المغامرات الهجومية الأوكرانية، وذلك عندما أردف قائلاً: «إنّ القوات الأوكرانية تستخدم أسلحتها بشكل جيد… وهي بذلك تمهّد الطريق لإنجاح المناورة البرية بالقوات».
انّ الضجيج الإعلامي الكاذب، الذي أطلقته آلة الدعاية والحرب النفسية النازية الأميركية الأوروبية، مدّعية نجاح العصابات النازيه الأوكرانية الأطلسية الأميركية (إذ لم يعد هناك شيء اسمه الجيش الأوكراني وإنما هناك خليط من المرتزقة المحليين والأجانب وآلاف النازيين الأوروبيين يقاتلون الجيش الروسي)؛ نقول إنّ هذا الضجيج بعيد كلّ البعد عن الواقع الميداني، في مسرح العمليات، وعلى قاطع خاركوف/ إيزيوم بالتحديد.
وبما انّ الميدان هو الميزان، فإنّ وقائع الميدان تقول، خلاف ذلك تماماً كما أسلفنا في الإجمال أعلاه.
وحتى نعرف ما يجري على مسرح عمليات خاركوف طبقاً للعقيدة الحربية الروسية فقد ارتأينا أن نعود بالتاريخ الى الحرب العالميّة الثانية والعقيدة السوفياتيّة التي قاتلت بالضبط في هذا الميدان ومسرح العمليات المُشار إليه نفسه، وإليكم المقارنة:
أولا ـ لقد قامت الجيوش السوڤياتية، بقيادة المارشال إيڤان كونيڤ والمارشال نيكولاي ڤاتوتين، بتحرير مدينة خاركوڤ، من الاحتلال النازي، بتاريخ 23/7/1943. وذلك بعد معارك كر وفر طاحنة استمرت منذ صيف 1941 وحتى التحرير الكامل للمدينة وإبادة الجيوش الألمانية الغازية على تلك الجبهة، وعلى رأسها فرقة الدبابات الثانية لسلاح الإس إس (قوات الصدمة) الهتلرية. واسمها الألماني الكامل: شتورم شتافِلْ
ثانياـ إنّ الجيوش السوڤياتية كانت قد استدرجت الجيوش الهتلرية النازية، بقيادة الفيلد مارشال الألماني فون مانشتاين، والتي كانت لا تزال تسيطر على كلّ شرق أوكرانيا، الى كمين مدفعي صاروخي هائل (كانت راجمة الصواريخ من طراز كاتيوشا قد دخلت لتوّها الخدمة في الجيوش السوفياتية آنذاك)، وعندما اعتقدت القوات الألمانية انّ بإمكانها البدء بهجوم مضاد، باتجاه خطوط الجبهة السوڤياتية، أطبقت عليها الجيوش السوڤياتية وبدأت في هجومها الاستراتيجيّ، بتاريخ 3/8/1943، والذي انتهى بسحق الجيوش الهتلرية النازية على تلك الجبهة بشكل كامل. وقد استمرت هذه المعركة الكبرى حتى 23/8/1943، عندما أنهت الجيوش السوڤياتية هجومها، بتحرير خاركوف ومحيطها، من الاحتلال النازيّ.
ثالثا ـ وبتاريخ 3/8/2022 (التصادف العجيب للزمان والمكان) كانت القواتالروسية، المكلفة بِمَسْكْ محور خاركوڤ / ايزيوم، على أهبة الاستعداد، لتنفيذ أوامر هيئة الأركان العامة الروسية، التي كانت قد استكملت خططها، المبنية على معلومات استخبارية عالية الدقة، حول نوايا مجاميع القوات النازية التي تحرّكها كييڤ، في محاولة تنفيذ عمليات تعرّض للقطعات العسكرية الروسية، على تلك الجبهة. وكانت هذه هي اللحظة المناسبة، لتنفيذ خطة الهجوم الاستدراجي، المتضمّنة مسبقاً في خطة العمليات لدى الأركان العامة الروسية (خطة شهر آب 1943 نفسها وفي المكان نفسه وضدّ التشكيلات النازية نفسها)، حيث بدأت المجاميع النازية بالتحرك الهجومي، ايّ عملية للانفتاح القتالي، مما جعلها عرضة للسقوط في الكمائن الصاروخية والمدفعية والأسلحة الروسية الأخرى، بدءاً من يوم 6/8/2022 وحتى تاريخ 10/8/2022.
رابعا ـ وعلى الرغم من انّ البيانات الرسمية، التي تصدرها وزارة الدفاع الروسية، حول سير العمليات العسكرية على مختلف محاور الجبهات، في الشرق وفي الجنوب، تتسم بأعلى درجات الدقة والرصانة والمصداقية، فلا بدّ من القول إنّ خسائر المجاميع النازية، خلال الأيام الخمسة الماضية حسب مصادر الميدان، أعلى بكثير من الأرقام التي أوردها الناطق العسكري باسم وزارة الدفاع الروسية، الجنرال إيغور كوناشنيكوڤ.
خامساـ إذ انّ مصادر الاستخبارات العسكرية، في دوائر حلف شمال الأطلسي، تتحدث عن سبعة آلاف قتيل وما يزيد قليلاً عن عشرين ألف جريح، تكبّدتها المجاميع النازية خلال محاولاتها الفاشلة على محاور… جبهة خاركوڤ. هذه ارقام تتمتع، حسب تقديرنا، بنوع من المصداقية، خاصة أنّ الخبراء العسكريين ينطلقون، في حساباتهم للخسائر، من حقيقة أنّ كلّ قتيل يكون مترافقاً مع 3-4 جرحى. وهي أرقام تنطبق بدقة على خسائر الطرف الأوكراني. ويُضاف الى ذلك، طبعاً، الخسائر الكبيرة في المعدات والتجهيزات، التي تقدّرها المصادر، المُشار اليها أعلاه، بثلاثمئة دبابة ومدرعة وسيارات الدفع الرباعي، المجهّزة برشاشات ثقيلة، من عيار ٢٣ ملم و٣٧ ملم.
سادسا ـ في خلاصة الأمر، وبغضّ النظر عن التكتيكات، التي ستتبعها القوات الروسيّة وعن كيفية مناورة القيادة العسكرية الروسية بقواتها، سواء على جبهات شرق أو جنوب أوكرانيا، فإنّ الحقيقة المؤكدة لدى الخبراء هي :إنّ المجاميع النازية الأميركية الأطلسية قد استنفدت آخر ما لديها من موارد، بشرية وتسليحية، وزجّت بها الى أتون محرقة تسبّبت بها قيادة تلك المجاميع في كييف، والتي يُفترض أنها كانت على علم بأنّ محاولة الهجوم، التي خططوا لها، لا يمكن أن تتكلل بالنجاح، لأنّ إخراج القوات من تحصيناتها الدفاعية، ودفعها الى التحرك الهجومي، بدون غطاء جوي، هي عملية انتحارية فاشلة بلا أدنى شك.
سابعا ـ وعليه فإنّ هذه المحاولة الكارثية سوف تكون آخر تحرك من نوعه، تقوم به هذه المجاميع، أيّ أنها، وعوضاً عن استعادة المبادرة العسكرية في الميدان، فإنها فقدت القدرة على المبادرة لأيّ تحرك، مهما كان صغيراً، تماماً كما حصل مع الجيوش الهتلرية في محيط خاركوڤ، في شهر آب نفسه من العام 1943.
وغني عن القول انّ هزيمة الجيوش الألمانية، في معركة تحرير خاركوڤ المدينة والمقاطعة، قد مهّدت الطريق لوصول الجيوش السوڤياتية، منتصرة، الى برلين عاصمة الرايخ الثالث، في شهر أيار من العام 1945.
وهو ما يتوقع حصوله الخبراء مع الدمية النازية الأطلسبة، القابعة في كييف، زيلينسكي… الذي على الأرجح سيتمّ إخلاؤه بمروحية عسكرية أميركية، الى بولندا المجاورة، هذا إذا لم يسبقه الى ذلك قيام الشعب بالانتفاضة ضدّه والقبض عليه وزجّه في السجن أو إعدامه ميدانياً، بتهمة ارتكاب سيل من الجرائم في حق الشعب الأوكراني، والتي ليس أقلها إثقال كاهل الأجيال القادمة لهذا الشعب بالديون، التي سرقها هو وعصابته ولم يستفد منها الشعب الأوكراني في شيء أو رتّبها على شعبه بسبب استئجاره القوات الأطلسية والأميركية بديون آجلة، ولكن لأهداف ربحية أميركية محضة.
بعدنا طيبين قولوا الله…
Filed under: Russia, Ukraine, US-led NATO Alliance, USSR | Tagged: Kharkiv, Kiev Nazi Regime, Nazi Germany, Nazi international battalion, Nazi Ukrainian "Azov battalion", Ukrainian armed forces (UAF), US-mercenaries, USSR Great Patriotic War | Comments Off on الأطلسي ينتحر في أوكرانيا وطغمة كييف تحاكي مصير هتلر!
Ukraine’s military lost over 1,200 personnel in the past day upon its attempt to launch an offensive in the Nikolayev-Krivoi Rog and other areas on order by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Tuesday.
The enemy suffered heavy casualties as a result of the rout of the Ukrainian military’s offensive in the Nikolayev-Krivoi Rog and other areas, the spokesman said.
“In the past 24 hours, in their effective operations the Russian forces eliminated 48 tanks, 46 infantry fighting vehicles, 37 other combat armored vehicles, 8 pickup vehicles with large-caliber machine-guns and over 1,200 Ukrainian servicemen,” the general reported.
In repelling the enemy’s advance, the Russian forces routed the units of the Ukrainian army’s 128th separate mountain assault brigade redeployed from western Ukraine to participate in the offensive, Konashenkov said.
“Five servicemen of that brigade laid down their arms and surrendered,” the spokesman said.
The Russian forces delivered strikes by ground-based precision weapons, eliminating over 200 Ukrainian militants and about 40 foreign mercenaries in the Dnepropetrovsk Region, Konashenkov reported.
“The strikes by ground-based precision weapons in the area of the settlement of Aleksandrovka in the Dnepropetrovsk Region destroyed the following targets: the temporary deployment site and an ammunition depot of the Ukrainian army’s 1st tank brigade. The strikes eliminated over 200 militants, including about 40 foreign mercenaries, more than 20 armored vehicles and a large amount of artillery shells,” the spokesman said.
Over 100 militants of the Ukrainian army’s foreign legion and Kraken armed formation were killed in Russia’s strikes in the Donetsk People’s Republic, Konashenkov reported.
“In the area of Konstantinovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, concentrated fire strikes were delivered against the temporary deployment site of mercenaries from the foreign legion and against the command post of the Kraken nationalist formation. The strikes eliminated over 100 militants and also seven items of military hardware,” the spokesman said.
Russian combat aircraft, missile and artillery troops struck five Ukrainian army command posts in the past day in their special military operation in Ukraine, Konashenkov reported.
“Operational-tactical and army aviation aircraft, missile troops and artillery continue striking military sites on Ukrainian territory. In the past 24 hours, they hit five command posts, including those of the 108th and 65th mechanized brigades near the settlements of Vodyanoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Veselyanka in the Zaporozhye Region, the 35th and 36th marine infantry brigades of the Ukrainian army in the area of Nikolayev and a nationalist formation in the city of Kharkov,” the spokesman said.
The strikes destroyed 52 Ukrainian artillery units, manpower and military hardware in 142 areas. The Russian forces also wiped out three missile/artillery arms and ammunition depots near the settlements of Sarny in the Rovno Region, Krivoi Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk Region and Vernopolye in the Kharkov Region, the general added.
The Russian Aerospace Forces obliterated the production workshops of the Intervzryvprom factory in Krivoi Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk Region, which produced explosives for the Ukrainian army, Konashenkov reported.
“In the city of Krivoi Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk Region, precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces wiped out the production workshops of the Intervzryvprom factory that produced explosives and other items for the Ukrainian troops,” the spokesman said.
In all, the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed 278 Ukrainian combat aircraft, 148 helicopters, 1,837 unmanned aerial vehicles, 370 surface-to-air missile systems, 4,539 tanks and other combat armored vehicles, 822 multiple rocket launchers, 3,357 field artillery guns and mortars and 5,136 special military motor vehicles since the beginning of their special military operation in Ukraine, Konashenkov reported.
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JUNE 23RD, 2022
Have you noticed how every major foreign policy crisis since the U.S. and U.K.’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 has peeled off another layer of the left into joining the pro-NATO, pro-war camp?
It is now hard to remember that many millions marched in the U.S. and Europe against the attack on Iraq. It sometimes feels like there is no one left who is not cheerleading the next wave of profits for the West’s military-industrial complex (usually referred to as the “defense industry” by those very same profiteers).
Washington learned a hard lesson from the unpopularity of its 2003 attack on Iraq aimed at controlling more of the Middle East’s oil reserves. Ordinary people do not like seeing the public coffers ransacked or suffering years of austerity, simply to line the pockets of Blackwater, Halliburton, and Raytheon. And all the more so when such a war is sold to them on the basis of a huge deception.
So since then, the U.S. has been repackaging its neocolonialism via proxy wars that are a much easier sell. There have been a succession of them: Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela and now Ukraine. Each time, a few more leftists are lured into the camp of the war hawks by the West’s selfless, humanitarian instincts – promoted, of course, through the barrel of a Western-supplied arsenal. That process has reached its nadir with Ukraine.
I recently wrote about the paranoid ravings of celebrity “left-wing” journalist Paul Mason, who now sees the Kremlin’s hand behind any dissension from a full-throttle charge towards a nuclear face-off with Russia.
Behind the scenes, he has been sounding out Western intelligence agencies in a bid to covertly deplatform and demonetize any independent journalists who still dare to wonder whether arming Ukraine to the hilt or recruiting it into NATO – even though it shares a border that Russia views as existentially important – might not be an entirely wise use of taxpayers’ money.
It is not hard to imagine that Mason is representative of the wider thinking of establishment journalists, even those who claim to be on the left.
But I want to take on here a more serious proponent of this kind of ideology than the increasingly preposterous Mason. Because swelling kneejerk support for U.S. imperial wars – as long, of course, as Washington’s role is thinly disguised – is becoming ever more common among leftwing academics too.
The latest cheerleader for the military-industrial complex is Slavoj Zizek, the famed Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual whose work has gained him international prominence. His latest piece – published where else but The Guardian – is a morass of sloppy thinking, moral evasion and double speak. Which is why I think it is worth deconstructing. It encapsulates all the worst geostrategic misconceptions of Western intellectuals at the moment.
Zizek, who is supposedly an expert on ideology and propaganda, and has even written and starred in a couple of documentaries on the subject, seems now to be utterly blind to his own susceptibility to propaganda.
He starts, naturally enough, with a straw man: that those opposed to the West’s focus on arming Ukraine rather than using its considerable muscle to force Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table are in the wrong. Opposition to dragging out the war for as long as possible, however many Ukrainians and Russians die, with the aim of “weakening Russia”, as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wants; and opposition to leaving millions of people in poorer parts of the world to be plunged deeper into poverty or to starve is equated by Zizek to “pacifism.”
“Those who cling to pacifism in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine remain caught in their own version of [John Lennon’s song] ‘Imagine’,” writes Zizek. But the only one dwelling in the world of the imaginary is Zizek and those who think like him.
The left’s mantra of “Stop the war!” can’t be reduced to kneejerk pacifism. It derives from a political and moral worldview. It opposes the militarism of competitive, resource-hungry nation-states. It opposes the war industries that not only destroy whole countries but risk global nuclear annihilation in advancing their interests. It opposes the profit motive for a war that has incentivised a global elite to continue investing in planet-wide rape and pillage rather than addressing a looming ecological catastrophe. All of that context is ignored in Zizek’s lengthy essay.
Instead, he prefers to take a detour into cod psychology, telling us that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees himself as Peter the Great. Putin will not be satisfied simply with regaining the parts of Ukraine that historically belonged to Russia and have always provided its navy with its only access to the Black Sea. No, the Russian president is hell-bent on global conquest. And Europe is next – or so Zizek argues.
Even if we naively take the rhetoric of embattled leaders at face value (remember those weapons of mass destruction Iraq’s Saddam Hussein supposedly had?), it is still a major stretch for Zizek to cite one speech by Putin as proof that the Russian leader wants his own version of the Third Reich.
Not least, we must address the glaring cognitive dissonance at the heart of the Western, NATO-inspired discourse on Ukraine, something Zizek refuses to do. How can Russia be so weak it has managed only to subdue small parts of Ukraine at great military cost, while it is at the same time a military superpower poised to take over the whole of Europe?
Zizek is horrified by Putin’s conceptual division of the world into those states that are sovereign and those that are colonized. Or as he quotes Putin observing: “Any country, any people, any ethnic group should ensure their sovereignty. Because there is no in-between, no intermediate state: either a country is sovereign, or it is a colony, no matter what the colonies are called.”
The famed philosopher reads this as proof that Russia wants as its colonies: “Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Finland, the Baltic states … and ultimately Europe itself”. But if he weren’t so blinded by NATO ideology, he might read Putin’s words in a quite different way. Isn’t Putin simply restating Washington realpolitik? The U.S., through NATO, is the real sovereign in Europe and is pushing its sovereignty ever closer to Russia’s borders.
Putin’s concern about Ukraine being colonized by the U.S. military-industrial complex is essentially the same as U.S. concerns in the 1960s about the Soviet Union filling Cuba with its nuclear missiles. Washington’s concern justified a confrontation that moved the world possibly the closest it has ever come to nuclear annihilation.
Both Russia and the U.S. are wedded to the idea of their own “spheres of influence”. It is just that the U.S. sphere now encircles the globe through many hundreds of overseas military bases. By contrast, the West cries to the heavens when Russia secures a single military base in Crimea.
We may not like the sentiments Putin is espousing, but they are not especially his. They are the reality of the framework of modern military power the West was intimately involved in creating. It was our centuries of colonialism – our greed and theft – that divided the world into the sovereign and the colonized. Putin is simply stating that Russia needs to act in ways that ensure it remains sovereign, rather than joining the colonized.
We may disagree with Putin’s perception of the threat posed by NATO, and the need to annex eastern Ukraine, but to pretend his speech means that he aims for world domination is nothing more than the regurgitation of a CIA talking point.
Zizek, of course, intersperses this silliness with more valid observations, like this one: “To insist on full sovereignty in the face of global warming is sheer madness since our very survival hinges on tight global cooperation.” Of course, it is madness. But why is this relevant to Putin and his supposed “imperial ambition”? Is there any major state on the planet – those in Europe, the United States, China, Brazil, Australia – that has avoided this madness, that is seeking genuine “tight global cooperation” to end the threat of climate breakdown.
No, our world is in the grip of terminal delusion, propelled ever closer to the precipice by capitalism’s requirement of endless economic growth on a finite planet. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing great ecological damage, but so are lots of other things – including NATO’s rationalization of ever-expanding military budgets.
But Zizek has the bit between his teeth. He now singles out Russia because it is maneuvering to exploit the consequences of global warming, such as new trade routes opened up by a thawing Arctic.
“Russia’s strategic plan is to profit from global warming: control the world’s main transport route, plus develop Siberia and control Ukraine,” he writes. “In this way, Russia will dominate so much food production that it will be able to blackmail the whole world.”
But what does he imagine? As we transform the world’s climate and its trade routes, as new parts of the world turn into deserts, as whole populations are forced to make migrations to different regions, does he think only Putin and Russia are jostling to avoid sinking below the rising sea waters. Does he presume the policy hawks in Washington, or their satraps in Europe, have missed all this and are simply putting their feet up? In reality, maneuvering on the international stage – what I have called elsewhere a brutal nation-state version of the children’s party game musical chairs – has been going on for decades.
Ukraine is the latest front in a long-running war for resource control on a dying planet. It is another battleground in the renewed great power game that the U.S. revived by expanding NATO across Eastern Europe in one pincer movement and then bolstered it with its wars and proxy wars across the Middle East. Where was the urge for “tight global cooperation” then? To perceive Ukraine as simply the victim of Putin’s “imperialism” requires turning a blind eye to everything that has occurred since the fall of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
Zizek gets to the heart of what should matter in his next, throw-away line:
Those who advocate less support for Ukraine and more pressure on it to negotiate, inclusive of accepting painful territorial renunciations, like to repeat that Ukraine simply cannot win the war against Russia. True, but I see exactly in this the greatness of Ukrainian resistance.”
Zizek briefly recognises the reality of Ukraine’s situation – that it cannot win, that Russia has a bigger, better-equipped army – but then deflects to the “greatness” of Ukraine’s defiance. Yes, it is glorious that Ukrainians are ready to die to defend their country’s sovereignty. But that is not the issue we in the West need to consider when Kyiv demands we arm its resistance.
The question of whether Ukrainians can win, or whether they will be slaughtered, is highly pertinent to deciding whether we in the West should help drag out the war, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, to no purpose other than our being able to marvel as spectators at their heroism. Whether Ukrainians can win is also pertinent to the matter of how urgent it is to draw the war to a close so that millions don’t starve in Africa because of the loss of crops, the fall in exports and rocketing fuel prices. And arming a futile, if valiant, Ukrainian struggle against Russia to weaken Moscow must be judged in the context that we risk backing Russia into a geostrategic corner – as we have been doing for more than two decades – from which, we may surmise, Moscow could ultimately decide to extricate itself by resorting to nuclear weapons.
Having propelled himself into an intellectual cul de sac, Zizek switches tack. He suddenly changes the terms of the debate entirely. Having completely ignored the U.S. role in bringing us to this point, he now observes:
Not just Ukraine, Europe itself is becoming the place of the proxy war between [the] U.S. and Russia, which may well end up by a compromise between the two at Europe’s expense. There are only two ways for Europe to step out of this place: to play the game of neutrality – a short-cut to catastrophe – or to become an autonomous agent.”
So, we are in a U.S. proxy war – one played out under the bogus auspices of NATO and its “defensive” expansion – but the solution to this problem for Europe is to gain its “autonomy” by …
Well, from everything Zizek has previously asserted in the piece, it seems such autonomy must be expressed by silently agreeing to the U.S. pumping Ukraine full of weapons to fight Russia in a proxy war that is really about weakening Russia rather than saving Ukraine. Only a world-renowned philosopher could bring us to such an intellectually and morally barren place.
The biggest problem for Zizek, it seems, isn’t the U.S. proxy war or Russian “imperialism”, it is the left’s disillusionment with the military industrial complex: “Their true message to Ukraine is: OK, you are victims of a brutal aggression, but do not rely on our arms because in this way you play into the hands of the industrial-military complex,” he writes.
But the concern here is not that Ukraine is playing into the arms of the war industries. It is that Western populations are being played by their leaders – and intellectuals like Zizek – so that they can be delivered, once again, into the arms of the military-industrial complex. The West’s war industries have precisely no interest in negotiations, which is why they are not taking place. It is also the reason why events over three decades have led us to a Russian invasion of Ukraine that most of Washington’s policy makers warned would happen if the U.S. continued to encroach on Russia’s “sphere of influence”.
The left’s message is that we are being conned yet again and that it is long past the time to start a debate. Those debates should have taken place when the U.S. broke its promise not to expand “one inch” beyond Germany. Or when NATO flirted with offering Ukraine membership 14 years ago. Or when the U.S. meddled in the ousting of the elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Or when Kyiv integrated neo-Nazi groups into the Ukrainian army and engaged in a civil war against the Russian parts of its own populace. Or when the U.S. and NATO allowed Kyiv – on the best interpretation – to ignore its obligations under the Minsk agreements with Russia.
None of those debates happened. Which is why a debate in the West is still needed now, at this terribly late stage. Only then might there be a hope that genuine negotiations can take place – before Ukraine is obliterated.
Having exhausted all his hollow preliminary arguments, we get to Zizek’s main beef. With the world polarizing around a sole military superpower, the U.S., and a sole economic superpower, China, Europe and Russia may be forced into each other’s arms in a “Eurasian” block that would swamp European values. For Zizek, that would lead to “fascism”. He writes: “At that point, the European legacy will be lost, and Europe will be de facto divided between an American and a Russian sphere of influence. In short, Europe itself will become the place of a war that seems to have no end.”
Let us set aside whether Europe – all of it, parts of it? – is really a bulwark against fascism, as Zizek assumes. How exactly is Europe to find its power, its sovereignty, in this battle between superpowers? What vehicle is Zizek proposing to guarantee Europe’s autonomy, and how does it differ from the NATO one that is – even Zizek now seems to be conceding – actually just a vassal of the U.S., there to enforce Washington’s global-spanning “sphere of influence” against Russia and China.
Faced with this problem, Zizek quickly retreats into mindless sloganeering: “One cannot be a leftist if one does not unequivocally stand behind Ukraine.” This Bushism – “You are either with us or with the terrorists” – really is as foolish as it sounds.
What does “unequivocal” mean here? Must we “unequivocally stand behind” all of Ukraine’s actions – even should, say, neo-Nazi elements of the Ukrainian military like the Azov Brigade carry out pogroms against the ethnic Russian communities living in Ukraine?
But even more seriously, what does it mean for Europeans to stand “unequivocally” behind Ukraine? Must we approve the supply of U.S. weapons, even though, as Zizek also concedes, Ukraine cannot win the war and is serving primarily as a proxy battleground?
Would “unequivocal support” not require us to pretend that Europe, rather than the U.S., is in charge of NATO policy? Would it not require too that we pretend NATO’s actions are defensive rather intimately tied to advancing the U.S. “sphere of influence” designed to weaken Russia?
And how can our participation in the U.S. ambition to weaken Russia not provoke greater fear in Russia for its future, greater militarism in Moscow, and ensure Europe becomes more of a battleground rather than less of one?
What does “unequivocal” support for Ukraine mean given that Zizek has agreed that the U.S. and Russia are fighting a proxy war, and that Europe is caught in the middle of it? Zizek’s answer is no answer at all. It is nothing more than evasion. It is the rationalization of unprincipled European inaction, of acting as a spectator while the U.S. continues to use Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
After thoroughly muddying the waters on Ukraine, Zizek briefly seeks safer territory as he winds down his argument. He points out, two decades on, that George W. Bush was similarly a war criminal in invading Iraq, and notes the irony that Julian Assange is being extradited to the U.S. because Wikileaks helped expose those war crimes. To even things up, he makes a counter-demand on “those who oppose Russian invasion” that they fight for Assange’s release – and in doing so implicitly accuses the anti-war movement of supporting Russia’s invasion.
He then plunges straight back into sloganeering in his concluding paragraph: “Ukraine fights for global freedom, inclusive of the freedom of Russians themselves. That’s why the heart of every true Russian patriot beats for Ukraine.” Maybe he should try telling that to the thousands of ethnic Russian families mourning their loved ones killed by the civil war that began raging in eastern Ukraine long before Putin launched his invasion and supposedly initiated his campaign for world domination. Those kinds of Ukrainians may beg to differ, as may Russians worried about the safety and future of their ethnic kin in Ukraine.
As with most things in life, there are no easy answers for Ukraine. But Zizek’s warmongering dressed up as European enlightenment and humanitarianism is a particularly wretched example of the current climate of intellectual and moral vacuity. What we need from public thinkers like Zizek is a clear-sighted roadmap for how we move back from the precipice we are rushing, lemming-like, towards. Instead he is urging us on. A lemming leading the lemmings.
Feature photo | Graphic by MintPress News
Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Filed under: Colonialism, EU, Europe, Ukraine, United Kingdom UK, US-led NATO Alliance, USA, War on Iraq, WMD | Tagged: Crimea, Cuban missile crisis, Jonathan Cook, Media War, NATO Expansion, NATO/EU colonies, Neo-colonialism, Nuclear War, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, State sovereignty, Tax Dollars at Work, The US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), US proxy wars, US-mercenaries | Comments Off on A LEMMING LEADING THE LEMMINGS: SLAVOJ ZIZEK AND THE TERMINAL COLLAPSE OF THE ANTI-WAR LEFT
By Batiushka
Western Europe and North America are now in dire economic straits. Four EU leaders, from Germany, France, Italy and Romania, have just been to Kiev to plead with Zelensky to start negotiating again and make territorial concessions. The Western media did not much report on the fourth Romanian/German leader, Klaus Iohannis, and showed few photograph of him; possibly because the racists who work in the Western media despise Romania (https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Romanian+Leader+In+Kiev&qpvt=romanian+leader+in+kiev&FORM=EWRE). What they all forgot to mention is that Russia has no need to negotiate and, given the way that it has been treated since 2014 (indeed, since 1991), it is not going to make concessions.
The EU leaders once more made the illusory promise that the Ukraine might soon become a candidate for EU membership (despite the Dutch veto), if it restarts negotiations. This old carrot dangled before the Ukrainian donkey is irrelevant. The EU has more than four countries and four leaders, whatever promise that the Ukraine may become an EU member in 20 years time. Long before that, there will be no Ukraine and probably no EU. The day after their visit, the Johnson clown went to Kiev too, though we do not know what he spoke of. Presumably, he just wanted to show that the UK is a ‘Great Power’ – like the EU?
It is all too late. Negotiations on the Donbass failed for eight years because the West forbade them. They failed again last March in Belarus and Istanbul, for the same reason. The West in its arrogance believed that it could crush Russia using its Ukrainian cannonfodder. This has been displayed for nearly four months now by the reports of State propaganda mouthpieces like CNN, the BBC etc. with their nonsense that President Putin is dying and that Russia is running out of fuel and ammunition! Wishful thinking all the time. Originally Russia just wanted to liberate the Donbass. However, pig-headedness in Kiev means that they will now be forced to take control of the whole country – and perhaps more, if aggression from outside the Ukraine continues. It was all so unnecessary…
The West cannot go on with its suicidal and illegal sanctions against Russia – or rather against itself. The lack of oil, gas, fertilisers and essential raw materials is biting. Inflation is taking off all over the West. In the UK a wave of strikes is threatened. The incredibly unpopular Johnson’s days are numbered. The only problem for Russia is that the rouble keeps rising. Despite interest rate cuts from 15% to 8.5%, the rouble is again at 56 to the dollar. Clearly, further Russian interest rate cuts are, forgive the pun, in the pipeline. Meanwhile, African and Asian leaders have told Zelensky to stop fighting. They want grain (https://news.mail.ru/politics/ 51814770/ ?frommail=1).
Of course, it is true that many of the West’s woes began well before this year, not least with the absurd and totalitarian ‘covid’ restrictions from 2020 on, which bankrupted many companies and led to it printing ever more money and to ever higher and unpayable debts. The West is desperate for the conflict in the Ukraine to end before the autumn cold sets in. Otherwise there are going to be popular revolts in Western countries, with scenes of looting on the streets.
Western arms, usually third-rate from stocks anyway, are making hardly any difference in the Ukraine. Most, together with munitions, get destroyed before they can be used. Much that has been promised cannot be used because it will take months to instruct Ukrainians on how to use them. The rate of attrition of the Kiev Army, up to 1,000 a day according to Kuleba, the Kiev Interior Minister, is simply unsustainable. Once the fortifications in the Donbass, built by Kiev and NATO over the last eight years, have been overwhelmed, there will be a clear run to Odessa, Transdnestria, Kharkov and Kiev or indeed anywhere that Russia wants. This could happen soon.
Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Defence released figures on mercenaries (https://news.mail.ru/incident/51803470/?frommail=1). The picture is dismal for the Ukraine. Of some 6,000 mercenaries in the Ukraine from 64 different countries, some 2,000 have been killed and some 2,000 have fled. Perhaps they thought that they were going to fight in a Third World country, where the enemy just had Kalashnikovs and not world-beating hypersonic missiles? How long the remaining 2,000 or so will remain alive remains to be seen.
Poland supplied the greatest number of mercenaries, with 1,831. Presumably as with other countries like Canada (601 mercenaries), USA (530), Romania (504), Germany and France, the majority of these were actually Ukrainians who have lived outside the Ukraine for some years, rather than native people. In third place for mercenaries from Europe comes the UK with 422, of whom 102 have been killed and 98 have fled. According to General Konashenkov who released the figures, the number of mercenaries coming has stopped and indeed been reversed. It is too dangerous to stay and get killed in the Ukraine.
This leaves the two foolish British mercenaries, not killed in action with the 102 others, but taken prisoner. And also it leaves two captured US mercenaries. There is speculation that the British might plea for their release in exchange for Julian Assange. That would upset the Americans. On the other hand, the British mercenaries, Eslin and Pinner, have already been sentenced to death. If that sentenced is carried out, it is going to make Johnson even more unpopular than he already is. Perhaps that is why Johnson went to Kiev to plead.
Thus, the first or military stage is coming to an end and should be over later this summer. However, this is only the start. The New Ukraine has to be formed. Then there is the demilitarisation and denazification of the rest of Eastern Europe. And there is the economic war, declared by the West, to be finished. On 17June at the International Economic Forum in his native Saint Petersburg, President Putin said:
‘After the Cold War the USA declared itself to be the emissaries of God on Earth, without any responsibility, only with interests….Today’s changes in economics and in international politics are tectonic and revolutionary. The Western elites are in a state of delusion, clinging on to the shadow of the past and denying changing reality…Nothing will be as before…The EU has definitively lost its political sovereignty. The current situation in Europe will lead to an outburst of radicalism and in the probable future a change of elites’.
Here is the future.
Filed under: EU, Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom UK, US-led NATO Alliance | Tagged: Anti-Russian sanctions, Boris Johnson, Denazification of Ukraine, Donbass, Nazi international battalion, Romania, Ruble vs Dollar, Russian Defense Ministry MOD, Ukraine disarming, Ukrainian Nazi Nationalists, US-mercenaries, War on Donbass, Western Wars on Russia | Comments Off on ‘Nothing Will Be As Before’
June 19, 2022
Source: The Wall Street Journal
By Al Mayadeen English
Russia’s airstrikes on the US occupation in Syria raise concerns of escalation.
US military officials are saying that Russian forces have conducted a series of operations against the US occupation in Syria this month.
On Wednesday, Russia carried out airstrikes against the al-Tanf garrison, a region that is occupied by the US, near the Syrian border with Jordan in southeast Syrian, and hosts training bases for US mercenaries in Syria, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Russia had notified the US that it would be conducting the airstrikes in response to attacks made against the Syrian army. The advanced notice of the operation, which took place through a communications line set up years ago, meant that no casualties took place.
Russian jet aircraft, including two Su-35s and one Su-24, were seen flying over al-Tanf shortly after, striking a combat outpost at the garrison, according to a US military officer cited by WSJ.
Army General Erik Kurilla, the head of the US Central Command, said in a statement that the US seeks to avoid miscalculation over actions that could lead to unnecessary conflict, and accused Russia of provocation and escalation.
Currently, an alleged total of about 900 troops from the US occupation forces are stationed in Syria. They are stationed there under the pretense of training the SDF (Kurdish forces) in order to battle ISIS, which was defeated in 2019.
Filed under: ISIS – Daesh, Russia, Syria, USA | Tagged: Syrian Arab Army SAA, Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], The illegal US base in Syrian Al Tanf, US-mercenaries | Comments Off on WSJ: Russia conducted airstrikes against Syria US-led coalition base
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Filed under: Russia, Ukraine, USA, USSR | Tagged: American Education System, Russia vs West, Russian hypersonic missiles, U.S. Navy, US-mercenaries | Comments Off on Andrei Martyanov: Admiral Rickover or how American education was killed.
March 29 2022
By Mona Issa
American. French. Sudanese. German. Colombian. Yemeni. Eritrean. You name it.
It’s the twenty-first century. Corporates have armies. With as little as a few ID papers and almost no governmental regulation, you can take up state-of-the-art arms and be sent to a war that’s not your war, not your battle, and kill people whose names you can barely pronounce. The trade offer? You receive some $10,000 a week. That’s $40,000 a month. That’s more than 30x the American minimum wage for some honest work. You need not read some Veronica Roth, because we’re already living in a dystopian novel.
Let’s address the word “mercenaries.” In the very far away bureaucratic world of secret operations where sharp terms are smoothed down (recalling comedian George Carlin’s usage of post-traumatic stress disorder as a euphemism for shell-shock!), “mercenaries” is a taboo word. Instead, they’re called special forces to drive people away from the clandestine, underground nature of foreign soldier recruitment. An ancient ‘job’ dormant since the Middle Ages, the United States revived the mercenary industry with Bush’s War on Terror, and continued the venture into the UAE and Saudi-led war on Yemen, and now in Ukraine.
Putting Saudi Arabia aside for now – UAE is the perfect orbit state for Washington. With a population of only 1 million with a total of 9 million expatriates, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan does not want to risk it all for a wealthy population that can barely manage a home without housemaids – the UAE is largely operated by foreigners rather than locals. So how was the UAE going to fight this war? An army operated by foreigners – namely US lieutenants and colonels and allies.
But why mercenaries? One reason is numbers. There was no way MBZ was going to send soldiers from his local population of 1 million to war. A foreign population, however, is cost-effective, could be bought in abundance, and will guarantee to prolong the war – especially if major terrorists like ISIS are on the ground.
Another reason is accountability. Because mercenaries operate outside the scope of direct military command – or, at least that’s what we know – Abu Dhabi benefits from zero accountability. Mercenaries can kill, maim and commit other war crimes with no investigation from a legitimate governmental body. They’re bought and sold like a commodity, where corporates, on the long run, can transform into superpowers like states in the new world.
A third reason would be, as an ex-Navy SEAL – Erik Prince – once said: Muslim soldiers could not be counted on to kill fellow Muslims. Sending Muslim soldiers, Emirati or Saudi, to kill Yemenis will bear a conflict of interest.
The Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees in Yemen can testify to witnessing American, Australian, Sudanese, Colombian, Eritrean, and even Yemeni mercenaries, working for Gulf and US interests in Yemen. Some were recruited out of ignorance and poverty, others were recruited out of coercion and deception, and many bear arms for major cash.
Erik Prince is a former US Navy SEAL who was behind the revival of the private security industry.
He also calls himself ‘Kingfish.’
Notoriously known for Blackwater and his involvement in the Iraq War, he established another private military company called Reflex Responses – or R2 – after he sold Blackwater to investors as an escape from controversy. The UAE secretly hired both companies, Blackwater and R2, to go to Yemen.
Blackwater, which has massacred scores of Iraqis and is despised in Iraq more than the US soldiers themselves, has taken pride in employing Colombians and other Latin American military personnel, from soldiers to commanders.
But, why did MBZ’s private army, a project originally launched by Blackwater, consist mostly of Colombians?
As Professor of Strategy at the National Defense University Sean McFate put it, think of the private military industry as the t-shirt industry. In America, it costs 20$ to make, but in Bangladesh, it costs 1$ to make.
Colombian mercenaries are not only cheap, but they are also trained by Washington and are more violent and rigorous than others given they are hardened by guerrilla warfare in Latin America.
The UAE hired 1,800 Colombians on the ground and tripled and quadrupled their salaries.
“They’re pretty tough warriors in my experience,” McFate said. “They obey chain of command, and they have American training.
“When you take them out of Latin America and put them in the Middle East, they have no sort of political affiliation to any Middle Eastern action or country, so they’re just truly loyal to their paymaster. So they got a lot of Latin American ex-special soldiers in Abu Dhabi. Then, as the Emirates went to war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, that’s when the Emirates deployed these mercenaries into Yemen to kill Houthis. And they did. And now we have mercenary warfare in Yemen almost like it’s the Middle Ages again.”
Under the guise of construction workers, Colombian mercenaries became part of an American mercenary army, led by Erik Prince, who scored a $529 million budget from the UAE to create a monster.
“That is to me a pretty crazy part of the evolution of the mercenary business model that was taken from Erik Prince developing it in the US then exporting it to Abu Dhabi – then, all of the sudden, there are Colombians dying in Yemen. It’s hard to track,” said McFate.
“Give me your best man and I’ll beat him. Anyone,” said Abraham Golan, the Israeli-Hungarian owner of Spear Operations Group that has also operated in Yemen to commit targeted assassinations.
Golan was able to convince, over spaghetti and maybe some wine, the security advisor to MBZ that hiring his security company would be more effective than his own army – and, it worked.
On December 29, 2015, a group of mercenaries from the Delaware-based military firm planted a bomb in the Islah political party headquarters in Aden, Yemen. Escorted by UAE military vehicles front and back, one of Golan’s mercenaries, Isaac Gilmore (also an ex-Navy SEAL and Delta Force veteran), jumps from the vehicle, fires bullets at civilians around the block, as his comrade rushes to plant the explosive device just under the building. With an Emirati soldier behind the wheel, the SUV zooms off as soon as the deed is done.
The group that Golan and Gilmore pieced together was a 12-man army, mostly consisting of former French legion officers and ex-US soldiers. The French officers were paid half of what Golan intended to pay – around $10,000 a month – which was even less than half of their American counterparts, a testimony to the commodification of military personnel and ‘market’ value.
The assassination plot to kill Anssaf Ali Mayo, a leader of the conservative Islah party in Yemen, was plotted out over spaghetti at a UAE military base with MBZ’s security advisor and ex-Fatah member, Mohammed Dahlan.
Dahlan fell from grace when he was accused of collaborating with the CIA and “Israel” – and that’s exactly what he did as he sat with Gilmore and Golan. The MBZ security advisor has his hands in a lot of political mess.
A report by Al-Khaleej Online in 2018 exposes Dahlan’s complicity in holding secret training camps in occupied Palestine.
The secret training camps, which held hundreds of Nepalese and Colombian mercenaries, were situated in the Naqab desert in occupied Palestine, where the geological nature of the region looks synonymous with that of Yemen.
Dahlan personally supervised the training and made regular visits and check-ups.
“Mohammed Dahlan visited these camps on more than one occasion to be informed,” sources revealed to Al-Khaleej Online. Dahlan was filled in on the progress of the preparations, in addition to the mercenaries’ training.
And by the way, the Aden operation failed.
There were two ways through which young Sudanese – even minors under 18 – got recruited to Yemen. By force and deception, and by Omar Al Bashir’s thirst for power.
Estimates and reports suggest that up to 15,000 Sudanese mercenaries were fighting in Yemen.
By force and deception: Many Sudanese became victims of forced conscription into becoming mercenaries for a private US firm, Black Shield Security Services.
Responding to online job posts as “security guards,” the UAE-based company would trick the job applicants into signing the contract, only to the surprise of the young men that, all of the sudden, they’re redirected to a military training camp in the UAE to be sent off to either Libya or Yemen. They were offered ‘large’ sums of money, more than they can ever get in an average job in their country which has been experiencing an ongoing political crisis.
The contracts signed by young Sudanese men, which had an e-Visa to enter the UAE from Khartoum attached to it, had “profession: Security Guard” written on them.
Up to 15,000 Sudanese mercenaries were reportedly deployed in Yemen, who, according to the current Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, were reduced to 5,000. Many of them were children.
Official recruitment is also the culprit. Omar Al Bashir, Sudan’s old ruler, whose throne was strangled by sanctions and international pressures, sold his pro-Iran alliance for financial help from the Gulf – which meant sending thousands of Sudanese men and children to kill in Yemen.
To go through with the recruitment, a private company – Rapid Support Forces – or the Janjaweed, a die-hard Bashir-backing militia, scored major bags with Saudi and Emirati officials. Both groups face allegations of systematic rape, indiscriminate murder and other war crimes from the Darfur war in which 300,000 people were killed.
Arriving by the thousands from Sudan to Saudi Arabia, the Sudanese mercenaries were handed US-made weapons and uniforms. Then, they were taken to Al-Hudaydah, Taiz and Aden. Paid in Saudi riyals, 14-year-old amateurs were paid some $480 a month, while experienced officers from the Janjaweed were paid $530 a month – both cheaper than any other mercenary, including Colombians.
The RSF profited $350 million from its role in Yemen.
Ahmed, who was 25-years-old at the time when he was sent to Al-Hudaydah, commented on this experience: “The Saudis would give us a phone call and then pull back.
“They treat the Sudanese like their firewood,” he told the New York Times.
Other than Sudan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have also been paying Eritrea to provide troops and assistance. In 2015, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea revealed that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi signed a deal with Eritrea which allowed the coalition to use Eritrean military bases to attack Yemen. Chad isn’t left from the equation either: RSF mercenaries include hundreds of Chadian men, whose alignment lies with Bashir, hence maintaining an interest to keep him in power.
There are also some 1,000 Pakistani mercenaries fighting in Yemen, despite a majority no-vote in Islamabad’s parliament.
As poverty, war and uncertainty brought millions of Yemenis to prolonged angst, many contemplated turning their back on their own kind.
For around $1,200 a month, Yemenis were compelled to join the Al-Fateh brigade, a mercenary-militia based in Najran, Saudi Arabia, which was formed in 2016. The brigade is an all-Yemeni mercenary hub.
The Saudis recruited over 1,000 mercenaries to the Saudi-Yemen border to defend it.
In a report by the Middle East Eye, one mercenary that goes by the name Anees narrates that some thousand Yemenis were forced to advance towards Jabara valley in Saada province, Yemen, knowing that the valley is under control of the Yemeni armed forces, and that they were positioned just behind them in Najran.
The leaders of Al-Fateh forced the mercenaries to move forward, assuring that Salafi fighters would follow and protect them.
He narrates, “Suddenly, the Houthis started to attack us from the mountains. We tried to withdraw but there were no Salafi fighters backing us up and only the Houthis besieging us from all directions.”
The Yemenis were besieged for four days, abandoned by both the Saudis and the Salafis.
“We were about to die from hunger. We had run out of food. The Saudis and the Salafis did not break the siege on us, so we fought and pushed towards Najran and only few were escaped including me,” Anees said.
Last year, former German soldiers and police officers lodged in an offering to Saudi Arabia to form a group of mercenaries – or, according to German prosecutors, a terrorist organisation – to be sent to Yemen.
Two Bundeswehr soldiers were charged with terrorism by state prosecutors for conspiring to recruit 150 men and former soldiers from the Bundeswehr armed forces. The mercenaries were to be paid $46,400 a month to conduct operations in the Arabian peninsula.
The goal of the mercenary force to be formed was to capture land held by the Yemeni Armed Forces – however, it does not stop there. The mercenary force was also to be sent to other protracted conflicts around the world, with the two convicted terrorists in full conscious awareness that the fighters will have to commit murder and kill civilians to achieve strategic goals.
If the Saudi and Emirati armies were to fight and bleed, the war would not have lasted long with a population of 30 million willing to resist barefoot. Mercenaries played a significant role in the war on Yemen by sustaining the violence on the ground, continuously causing grief.
Many experts would say that the future of warfare is private. The effectiveness of state armies is diminishing, while private firms have proven to get more tasks done – however bloody and sinister.
As corporations overshadow governmental authority, warlords and investors will be more keen on keeping ‘security firms’ going in so-called “conflict zones in the Middle East,” where the flow of weapons and the funding for violence come from Western neoliberal democracies.
While the use of mercenaries was dishonorable in recent times, the West has been promoting its use. As the foreign fighters are used to carry out targeted assassinations and other forms of murder, states and governmental bodies take in less and less responsibility and accountability for the humanitarian disaster that comes with the recruitment.
A UN Mercenary Convention in 2001 forbids the recruitment of mercenaries in conflict: Only 36 countries supported the convention. Some of the countries that did not ratify it are the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, India, Japan and Russia.
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MAY 06, 2021
The New Great Game 3.0 is just beginning with a hat tip to Tacitus and dancing to the Hindu Kush groove
By Pepe Escobar with permission from the author and first posted at Asia Times
One cannot but feel mildly amused at the theatrical spectacle of the US troop pullout from Afghanistan, its completion day now postponed for maximum PR impact to 9/11, 2021.
Nearly two decades and a staggering US$2 trillion after this Forever War was launched by a now immensely indebted empire, the debacle can certainly be interpreted as a warped version of Mission Accomplished.
“They make a desert and call it peace,” said Tacitus – but in all of the vastness of the Pentagon there sits not a single flack who could imagine getting away with baldfacedly spinning the Afghan wasteland as peaceful.
Even the UN bureaucratic machinery has not been able to properly account for Afghan civilian deaths; at best they settled for 100,000 in only ten years. Add to that toll countless “collateral” deaths provoked by the massive social and economic consequences of the war.
Training and weaponizing the – largely inefficient – 300,000-plus Afghan Army cost $87 billion. “Economic aid and reconstruction” cost $54 billion: literally invisible hospitals and schools dot the Afghan landscape. A local chapter of the “war on drugs” cost $10 billion – at least with (inverted) tangible results: Afghanistan now generates 80% of the world’s opium.
All these embarrassing facts disappear under the shadow play of 2,500 “official” departing troops. What really matters is who’s staying: by no means just a few out of some 17,000 “contractors,” over 6,000 of whom are American citizens.
“Contractor” is a lovely euphemism for a bunch of mercenaries who, perfectly in tune with a shadow privatization drive, will now mingle with Special Forces teams and covert intel ops to conduct a still lethal variation of hybrid war.
Of course this development won’t replicate those David Bowie-style Golden Years in the immediate post-9/11 era. Ten years ago, following the Obama-Petraeus surge, no fewer than 90,000 contractors were dancing to the Hindu Kush groove, lavishly compensated by the Pentagon and dabbling in everything from construction, transportation and maintenance to “enhanced interrogation services.”
Collectively, this shadow army, a triumph of private enterprise many times cheaper than the state-sponsored model, bagged at least $104 billion since 2002, and nearly $9 billion since 2016.
Now we’re supposed to trust CENTCOM commander General Kenneth McKenzie, who swears that “the U.S. contractors will come out as we come out.” Apparently the Pentagon press secretary was not briefed: “So on the contractors, we don’t know exactly.”
Some contractors are already in trouble, like Fluor Corporation, which is involved in maintenance and camp construction for no fewer than 70 Pentagon forward operating bases in northern Afghanistan. Incidentally, no Pentagon PR is explaining whether these FOBs will completely vanish.
Fluor was benefitting from something called LOGCAP – Logistics Civil Augmentation IV Program – a scheme set by the Pentagon at the start of Obama-Biden 1.0 to “outsource logistical military support.” Its initial five-year deal was worth a cool $7 billion. Now Fluor is being sued for fraud.
The current government in Kabul is led by a virtual nonentity, Ashraf Ghani. Like his sartorially glamorous predecessor Hamid Karzai, Ghani is a US creature, lording it over a rambling military force financed by Washington to the tune of $4 billion a year.
So of course Ghani is entitled to spin a rosy outlook for an Afghan peace process on the pages of Foreign Affairs.
It gets curioser and curioser when we add the incandescent issue that may have provoked the Forever War in the first place: al-Qaeda.
A “former security coordinator for Osama bin Laden” is now peddling the idea that al-Qaeda may be back in the Hindu Kush. Yet, according to Afghan diplomats, there is no evidence that the Taliban will allow old-school al-Qaeda – the Osama/al-Zawahiri incarnation – to thrive again.
That’s despite the fact that Washington, for all practical purposes, has ditched the Doha Agreement signed in February 2020, which stipulated that the troop pullout should have happened this past Saturday, May 1.
Of course, we can always count on the Pentagon to “enhance security and stability” in Afghanistan. In this Pentagon report we learn that “AQIS [al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent] routinely supports and works with low-level Taliban members in its efforts to undermine the Afghan government, and maintains an enduring interest in attacking US forces and Western targets.”
Well, what the Pentagon does not tell us is how old-school al-Qaeda, pre-AQIS, metastasized into a galaxy of “moderate rebels” now ensconced in Idlib, Syria. And how contingents of Salafi-jihadis were able to access mysterious transportation corridors to bolster the ranks of ISIS-Khorasan in Afghanistan.
All you need to know, reported on the ground, about the crucial first years of the imperial adventure in Afghanistan is to be found in the Asia Times e-book Forever Wars, part 1.
Two decades later, the politico-intel combo behind Biden is now spinning that the end of this particular Forever War is an imperative, integrated to the latest US National Security Strategy.
Shadow play once again reigns. Withdrawal conditionals include the incompetence and corruption of the Afghan military and security forces; that notorious Taliban-al-Qaeda re-engagement; the fight for women’s rights; and acknowledging the supreme taboo: this ain’t no withdrawal because a substantial Special Forces contingent will stay in place.
In a nutshell: for the US deep state, leaving Afghanistan is anathema.
The real heart of the matter in Afghanistan concerns drugs and geopolitics – and their toxic intersection.
Everyone with transit in the Dubai-Kandahar axis and its ramifications knows that the global-spanned opium and heroin business is a matter very close to the CIA’s heart. Secure air transport is offered by bases in Afghanistan and neighboring Kyrgyzstan.
William Engdahl has offered a concise breakdown of how it works. In the immediate post-9/11 days, in Afghanistan, the main player in the opium trade was none other than Ahmed Wali Karzai, presidential brother and a CIA asset. I interviewed him in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital, in October 2001 (the interview can be found in Forever Wars). He obviously did not talk about opium.
Ahmed Karzai was snuffed out in a Mafia-style hit at home, in Helmand, in 2011. Helmand happens to be Afghanistan’s Opium Central. In 2017, following on previous investigations by Seymour Hersh and Alfred McCoy, among others, I detailed the workings of the CIA heroin ratline in Afghanistan.
Whatever happens next will involve layers and layers of shadow play. CENTCOM’s McKenzie, at a closed-door hearing at the US House Armed Services Committee, basically said they are still “figuring out” what to do next.
That will certainly involve, in McKenzie’s own assessment, “counter-terrorism operations within the region”; “expeditionary basing” (linguistic diversion to imply there won’t be any permanent bases, at least in thesis); and “assistance” to Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (no details on what this “assistance” will consist of).
Now compare it with the view by major Eurasian powers: Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran, three of them members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), with Iran as an observer and soon full member.
Their number one priority is to prevent any mutating Afghan jihadi virus to contaminate Central Asia. A massive 50,000 troop-strong Russia-Tajikistan military exercise in late April had exactly that in mind.
Ministers of defense of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) met in Dushanbe with the objective of further fortifying the porous Tajik-Afghan border.
And then there’s the Turkmen-Afghan border, from which the opium/heroin trail reaches the Caspian Sea and diversifies via Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Moscow, even more than the CSTO, is particularly worried by this stretch of the trail.
The Russians are very much aware that even more than different opium/heroin routes springing up, the top danger is a new influx of Salafi-jihadis into the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Even if analyzing it from completely different perspectives, Americans and Russians seem to be equally focused on what Salafi-jihadists – and their handlers – may come up with in post-9/11, 2021 Afghanistan.
So let’s go back to Doha, where something really intriguing is afoot.
On April 30, a so-called extended troika – Russia, the United States, China and Pakistan – issued a joint statement in Doha on their discussions regarding a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan.
The extended troika met with the Kabul government, the Taliban and host Qatar. At least they agreed there should be “no military solution.”
It gets curioser and curioser again: Turkey, backed by Qatar and the UN, is getting ready to host a conference to further bridge the gap between the Kabul government and the Taliban. Realpolitik cynics will have a ball wondering what Erdogan is scheming at.
The extended troika, at least rhetorically, is in favor of an “independent, sovereign, unified, peaceful, democratic, neutral and self-sufficient Afghanistan.” Talk about a lofty undertaking. It remains to be seen how Afghanistan’s “neutrality” can be guaranteed in such a nest of New Great Game serpents.
Beijing and Moscow will be under no illusions that the newly privatized, Special Forces Afghan-American experiment will eschew using Salafi-jihadis, radicalized Uighurs or other instant assets to destabilize what in effect should be the incorporation of Afghanistan to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (where it’s already an observer) and the larger Eurasia integration project.
An extra-intriguing piece of the puzzle is that a very pragmatic Russia – unlike its historical ally India – is not against including the Taliban in an overall Afghan settlement. New Delhi will have to go along. As for Islamabad, the only thing that matters, as always, is to have a friendly government in Kabul. That good old “strategic depth” obsession.
What the major players – Russia and China – see in the framework of a minimally stabilized Afghanistan is yet one more step to consolidate the evolution of the New Silk Roads in parallel with the Greater Eurasia partnership. That’s exactly the message Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered during his recent visit to Pakistan.
Now compare it with the – never explicit – strategic deep state aim: to keep some sort of military-intel “forward operating base” in the absolutely crucial node between Central and South Asia and close, oh so close, to national security “threats” Russia and China.
The New Great Game 3.0 is just beginning at the graveyard of empires.
Filed under: 9/11, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, China, Pakistan, Russia, The Islamic Republic of Iran, USA, War on Afghanistan | Tagged: Deep State, Graveyard of empires, McKenzie, Pentagon's Wars, Pepe Escobar, Russian-led CSTO, SCO, The US Central Command (Centcom), Uighurs, US Withdrawal from Afghanistan, US-mercenaries, Zawahiri | Comments Off on An empire in love with its Afghan cemetery
By Abir Bassam
November 24, 2020 – 10:49
It is a dirty war that has been going on in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Almost nine and a half tragic years have passed. The three countries were subjected to all kinds of terror and brutally destroyed. Actually, what has been going on is a world war! All weapons were used and tested and many countries were involved.
It was a real dirty war, in which the West and the Americans and their allies in the region have used the worst kind of men: a group of collaborators and barbaric terrorists.
The worst kinds of mercenaries from all over the world were sent to Syria. They practices the ugliest inhumane deeds: they decapitated heads, literally ate hearts, and burned people alive to death.
These groups were directly led by generals from the U.S., France, and Turkey. This information was supported by different informed resources that reported capturing French, British, and Turkish officers since 2015, in particular, during the invasion of Idlib. The district was invaded by a tenth of thousands of terrorists from Nusra, especially its group Fateh al-Sham which is directly supported and trained by Turkey, and Ahrar al-Sham which was directly supported by the Americans. The invasion was directly led by the Turkish tank battalions and the NATO alliances.
By December 2015, the northeast of Syria was also invaded by another terrorist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. ISIS was created with the utmost attention of Hilary Clinton, during Barak Obama’s administration. This was revealed by Donald Trump during his election campaign in 2016. ISIS swept over the al-Jazeera region and extended to Palmira through the Syrian Desert and occupied Homos, the biggest Syrian district. It was directly protected by the American extending military bases in northern Syria and the eastern base in al-Tanf. ISIS attacked both the Syrian government forces and the opposition factions.
The plan was to allow ISIS invasion of northern-eastern Syria territories and western-northern Iraqi territories in order to terminate the opposition factions in the region. It was carefully planned by Obama’s administration and in particular his vice president Joe Biden, the new president of the United States of America.
Under the pretense of fighting terrorism, the Americans were back in Iraq and restored bases in Iraq, built new ones in Syria and reestablished new militia groups in the area of the northeast, mainly Kurdish groups. They were trained and equipped by the Americans. For the U.S., it was a necessary step to launch a Kurdish federalism on the Syrian territories.
Nonetheless, the U.S. had set the return plan before withdrawing from Iraq in 2010. Upon its departure, the American administration empowered the al-Qaeda group in Iraq, and supported its existence, as Trump declared and accused Hillary Clinton of being the mastermind behind it. ISIS was basically the American approach to siege Syria, and eventually, apply the plan of division in the region and establish a Kurdish state.
Saying that may seem to be naive and simple. However, executing the plan required initiating “revolutions” in other Arab countries, recruiting media specialists, recruiting special personnel to initiate eruptions by social media, and consuming billions of dollars in the process, of which the Saudi kingdom and Qatar were the main contributors.
In 1992, I was on a visit to al-Hassaka and al-Qamishli. I was just a young beginner in journalism. I was conducting an investigation report about the Yazidis. At that stage, a large number of Yazidis and Kurds were immigrating to Syria. They escaped the biased and brutal treatment of Saddam Hussein and the fanatic Turks. These Kurds were building a wide network in Europe. They bought sympathy and support to establish a federation in Iraq in 1996. The process was facilitated by the Americans after the second Persian Gulf War in 1991 as Saddam’s power was fading.
The idea of having a similar kind of federation in Syria became appealing to both the Americans and Israelis. The size of Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad’s presence in the Iraqi Kurdistan is not a secret anymore. It is an established fact. The Americans also facilitated the Israeli presence in northeast Syria, especially those who came with American nationality to work in the oil fields.
The Turkish president Erdogan was one of the supporters of the American plan to dismantle Syria. Erdogan was able to recruit Qatar to the best interest of Turkey. Both countries were discontent with the Syrian government’s refusal to allow building the Qatari gas pipeline to Turkey through its territories. Syria saw that a move that would discomfort its allies in Russia and Iran. However, Erdogan had bigger plans in Syria. In the northwest region, Erdogan mainly saw the Idlib and Aleppo districts as the extent of Turkey, and a head starts to initiate the Ottoman dream.
This dream vanished to thin air when Syria started liberating the area occupied by ISIS in West Euphrates, and al-Gab plain after cleaning the Damascus area, Homos, and the center of Syria from terrorism with unlimited support from Russia. The second shock Erdogan received when the Americans started supporting the establishment of the Kurdish federation in al-Hassaka.
The Kurdish militia was founded in October 2015 under the name Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF]. SDF in its formation includes Kurds from Syria and others who came mainly from Turkey and other countries, most of them do not speak Arabic, unlike the Syrian Kurds. 60% of the militia includes Arab Syrians, according to the Pentagon. There are other nationalities included among the formation of SDF, who are Turkmens, Armenians, Circassians, and Chechens, who came from all over Asia.
In 2016, SDF updated its constitution from a separate federal state into an Autonomous Administration of Northern and East Syria [NES] and declared SDF as its official defense force, which complicated the Syrian political scene, furthermore. Now NES or SDF are cooperating with the official American forces in east-north of Syria and serve as “the Southern Lebanese Army, [SLA]” in South Lebanon during the Israeli occupation in South Lebanon. As SLA has tried to establish an independent state in South Lebanon, SDF or NES is trying to acquire the same course.
Since 2018 the Syrian army, with the help of allies – Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah- has been able to liberate most of the occupied lands. However, the liberation coincided with the rise of economic pressure on Syria. The price of the Syrian lira if compared to the American dollar dropped and its purchasing value decreased. It was due to the economic sanctions that were imposed on Syria, and lately “Caesar Law” which was activated in the mid of June 2020.
In 2018, the American troops withdrew from the north of Syria and were redeployed in the al-Hassaka district around the Syrian richest oil fields. The American companies, in particular ARAMCO, are now draining the Syria oil to the interest of NES and financing the American troops stationed in the northern-eastern area of the Euphrates in Syria. Actually, Syria is facing an internal problem with the lack of petroleum resources. The hard winter is coming and the lines for buying the diesel needed for heating the houses will be crowded as much as the lines for gasoline.
After burning and stealing the wheat plains in the al-Jazeera district by the Americans and the Turks, the bread prices went 25% higher. Shortage in bread supplies was triggered by the government’s decision to set the bread rations. The Americans were literally applying Kissinger’s policy which states that nations are ruled by bread, not by arms. The shortage of bread and petroleum products is new to the Syrian population; therefore, the successive Syrian governments are facing major challenges since the beginning of 2019.
Caesar Law added additional pressure on the countries that may establish economic and commercial deals with Syria. The law was imposed at a time in which the world is suffering from COVID-19 epidemic, which spread in Syria as well. In addition, Syria needs to deal with the issue of the Syrian refugees. It is a dilemma that needs to be dealt with appropriately. The refugees’ dilemma is used as a political card to force the Syrians to submit to the American political demands, which are set on two levels: national and international.
On the national level, the international community wants to pressure the Syrian government into implementing a new constitution based on the sectarian division of power, just like Lebanon, which would diminish the presidential authority and redistribute it, as it happened in Tunisia and Sudan, which would divide the power of the head of the state. The second issue is related to the question of the forcibly disappeared people, who were kidnapped or killed by the rebel groups, and treating the killers and kidnappers as political opponents without subjecting them to trials. This issue will be a matter of conflict, and will not be accepted by those whose families and friends were kidnapped or killed. This fact was revealed a few days ago by the new Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr. Feisal Muqdad.
On the international level, the requirements of the international community, i.e. the U.S., have become common knowledge. Since 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, came to Syria and laid down the U.S. demands: dismantling Hezbollah arms, ending Syrian support to the resistance groups in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq, and ending cooperation with Iran in the region. The end means, as usually explained, is ensuring the security of Israel.
Naturally, the Syrians refused American demands. Therefore, we should make no mistake and assume that what had happened in the Arab region under the pretense of “Arab Spring” was meant for the destruction of Syria in order to dismantle it into minor sectarian states that can be easily controlled to the best interest of “Israel” and America.
Hence, Syria requires two essential needs to start its reconstruction process: the first is lifting the sanctions imposed on it; and the second is to end the American occupation in the northeast area. However, the West insists on linking lifting the sanctions to the political process. But when it comes to the achievement of the liberation from the Americans this process cannot be realized unless the national resistance would be highly activated in the northeast of Syria. It is America that we all know. It did not end its occupation of Vietnam, Korea, and eventually Iraq in 2010 until the number of causalities becomes unbearable in the American community.
Syria’s essential needs were clearly stated by its president Bashar Al-Assad on two occasions, the first was during a video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the 10th of November. The second time was in his speech at the opening of the International Conference on the Return of the Refugee in Damascus [ICRRD] on the 11th of November.
During his visit on the 5th of November to the exhibition “Producers 2020” in “Tekia Sulaymaniyah” in the capital, Damascus. It was attended by producers from the Aleppo governorate whose facilities, workshops, and shops were damaged during the war. President al-Assad talked about the economic impact of the issue of shortage of oil supplies and burning the wheat fields in northeastern regions.
He also explained that the economic problem was clearly becoming worse when the banks in Lebanon blocked the Syrian deposits. President al-Assad said that there is vagueness about the Syrian deposit’s estimations. Its assessment ranges from 20 billion dollars to 42 billion dollars. The blockade has been going on for years. He added the crisis began years before the Caesar Law and began years after the siege. It coincided with the money disappearance in the Lebanese banks. Furthermore, al-Assad declared that we do not know what the real number is, and this figure for an economy like the Syrian one is a frightening number.
Al-Assad’s declaration became one week before ICRRD to which Lebanon was invited. Was this a message to Lebanon? It could be, although many observers have denied it. The denial is basically based on Syria’s previous special treatment of Lebanon. Lebanon in the Syrian considerations are two contradictory facts: the first, Lebanon is an opening to the western world with bipolar swings. The first swing expressed in the historical Arab and regional ideology.
And the second swing is expressed in the lining towards a Western ideology, with the tendency to sign normalization agreements with “Israel”. The second group was of great concern to the Syrians since the creation of Lebanon. It is known as the right-wing groups, who allied with the Americans and the Israelis.
The second fact, Lebanon as a state is based on providing services and tourism. It is considered to be the lung that Syria needs to breathe with. However, this lung health became worse since 2011, when the United States accused the Lebanese Canadian Bank of laundering terrorism money. And then again in 2016, since many banks faced the same accusations and were prohibited to deal with customers that the U.S. listed them as Hezbollah members.
Accordingly, the Lebanese banks froze several balances for many customers and in particular the Syrian customers that were importing goods to Syria through Lebanon after imposing an embargo on Syria. It is clear for the Syrians, regardless of the unique relationship with Hezbollah, it is about time that Lebanon should release these balances, and pay its debts to Syria, especially the debts that have been accumulating since 1990, which are the revenues from selling electricity.
Syria, as President al-Assad explained, will need its money in the process of rebuilding the country’s main infrastructure and vital installations, which were destroyed during the liberation war against the terrorist groups. It is a call for Lebanon to join forces with Syria to demand lifting the embargo and to be excluded from Cesar Law consequences because Lebanon needs to open up to Syria for commercial trades towards the east, in particular, to Arab countries, or Lebanon will be demanded to pay back its debts.
The Americans were pushing Syria and the region since 1973 towards peace and normalization treaties with “Israel”. However, Syria has proven that such an agreement would be difficult to execute unless it was a “peace for land” agreement, which would ensure the right of return of the Palestinian people. An equation, nor the Israeli, neither the Americans are willing to sign for. In addition, Syria’s main condition, during the negotiations held in Oslo in 1992, was the return of all occupied Arab territories. However, the series of recognitions Trump has approved throughout his reign made the return to the negotiation table almost impossible. It also pushed into more complications with the relation between Syria and Lebanon since the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005. The need to separate the Syrian-Lebanese course in the peace process is becoming a must for the Americans. A need until today could not be achieved.
Syria now is subjected to American pressure that requires its approval to initiate peace and normalization agreements with Israel. This goal so far was difficult to achieve, especially after Trump’s recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel. Even Syria’s allies, in particular Russia, cannot force the Syrians to give up part of their land. Syria’s war on terror has spared all its allies the tragedy of dragging this war into their own territories.
Hence, Syria prepaid in blood for the security of its “friends” now. History will, sooner or later, reveal this fact. Syria’s insistence on the unity of its land, and its refusal to have any divided authority is now a fact. The Syrians cannot compromise it, and the allies cannot go against it. The course of negotiations the allies led in Astana and Sochi has affirmed it. However, this fact has complicated the Syrian scene furthermore. It might even force the Americans to lead directly the war in the region, whether in arms or diplomacy, since the proxies have proven their disabilities.
Filed under: Al Qaeda, America, American Wars, France, ISIS – Daesh, kurds, Libya, Qatar, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Yemen | Tagged: Ahrar Al-Sham, Barack Obama, Caesar’s law on Syria, East Euphrates, Fragmentation of Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Nusra Front), Homs, neo-Ottoman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Zionist entity, Syria reconciliation, Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], Syrian Occupied Idlib, The illegal US base in Syrian Al Tanf, US President Joe Biden’s administration, US-mercenaries | Comments Off on Syria: The complicated scene
January 23, 2020
To stay that there has been some strange stuff coming out of the White House lately would be an understatement. If President Donald Trump knew a bit more about history, he would understand that countries that rent out their national armies to serve as mercenaries usually wind up holding the short end of the stick. There is the example of Pyrrhus of Epirus in the third century B.C., for whom the expression “Pyrrhic victory” was coined, and, more recently there was the British employment of 30,000 Hessian and other German soldiers in the American revolution. Hessian regiments were rented out by their prince to the King of England to pay the expenses of his government. The use of mercenaries by the British was cited by the colonists as one of their principal grievances and the Hessians became the losers in one of the few early colonial victories at Trenton.
There is currently considerable evidence surfacing suggesting that Trump views the United States military as some kind of mercenary force, a cash and carry security option for those who can come up with the dough. In a recent interview that Trump gave to Laura Ingraham of Fox News, the president boasted that “We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia. I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”
Some readers might just suspect that they’ve heard language like that before, but they are most likely recalling The Godfather part 1 movie where Marlon Brando playing a young Vito Corleone was running a protection racket for small businesses and shopkeepers in New York’s Little Italy. Corleone first had to kill the Black Hand extortionist Don Fanucci in order to take over his racket, something that has a certain resonance with what is going on currently in Iraq.
Trump has long complained that America’s allies are not paying enough to compensate the United States for the protection that it provides all over the world. He has pressured allies to pay for the U.S. military presence, even demanding that the Iraqis and South Koreans should reimburse the construction costs of airfields and other defense installations that have been used as bases by the American army and air force. Indeed, not surprisingly, the only country that gets away with having a U.S. base without any Trumpean demand for compensation is Israel, which actually gets the base plus more than $3.8 billion a year in “aid.”
In the case of the Saudis, the government in Riyadh has ponied up the money to pay for the Trump relocation of 3,000 American soldiers. The move is intended to help protect the Kingdom from possible attack by Iran or its proxies, a particular concern given the devastating attack staged by an unidentified someone on the major Saudi oil refinery on September 14th. One might recall, however, that the “unholy” presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia prior to 9/11 was a major grievance successfully exploited by al-Qaeda, resulting in 15 of the 19 presumed airline hijacking terrorists being Saudis.
Trump’s logic on the issue is that of an accountant who works for a protection racket. He looks to make a profit, without regard for the collateral costs that cannot be entered in double entry book keeping. The reality is that sending soldiers to places where they should not necessarily be largely because some foreign country can foot the bill loses sight of the fact that some of those people being ordered abroad will die. That is unacceptable and it makes the American Army little better than a mercenary force, hardly a “force for good” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would have it.
Kelley Vlahos of The American Conservative reports how the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia will man “…assets designed to help the Saudi military guard against Iranian attacks, including four Patriot batteries, a terminal high-altitude area defense system, or THAAD air defense system, and two squadrons of fighter jets. She also observes the “clincher” in the deal, which is that “…one important aspect of the deployment is the presence of American forces in more locations across the kingdom. They believe Iran has demonstrated its reluctance to target American personnel, either directly or indirectly, in part because Trump has made clear that would trigger a military response.”
In other words, as Vlahos observes, U.S. military personnel would be serving as human shields for the Saudis, to deter possible Iranian attacks. That sounds like a very bad bit of thinking on the part of whichever lunkhead in Washington came up with the scheme.
If the Saudi case were not bad enough, the Washington Post has also recently published an article extracted from a new book entitled A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, which includes detailed accounts of meetings between the president and his senior staff.
The book is admittedly designed as a hit piece on Trump and it tends to beatify the military and its senior officers while also uncritically accepting America’s global role, but some of the invective hurled at the generals and admirals by Trump is, quite frankly, disgusting. One particular meeting held at the Pentagon’s top security Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting room called “The Tank” is reported in detail, clearly from the notes and recollections of participants or possibly even from a recording. It took place six months into the Trump administration on July 20, 2017, and included Vice President Mike Pence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the leaders of the military branches. Trump’s personal “strategist” Steve Bannon was also in attendance. Per the article, Mattis and other cabinet members present had arranged the meeting because they had become alarmed by Trump’s lack of knowledge of the key international alliances forged by Washington following after World War II. Trump had been routinely dismissing America’s allies as worthless.
Mattis, Cohn, and Tillerson used PowerPoint presentations for ninety minutes in the belief that it would keep Trump from getting bored. The graphics showed where U.S. troops were stationed and explained the security arrangements that had led to America’s global defense and national security posture.
Trump occasionally spoke up when he heard a word he didn’t like, describing American overseas bases as “crazy” and “stupid.” His first complaint was over his perception that foreigners should pay for U.S. protection. Regarding South Korea he fumed, “We should charge them rent. We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”
Trump also called NATO useless, not because of their lack of a raison d’etre, but instead based on what they owed. “They’re in arrears,” he shouted and gesticulated, as if they were late on their rent payments, before directing his ire against the generals. “We are owed money you haven’t been collecting! You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”
Trump then got specific, naming Iran, saying of the nuclear pact with that country, which he had not yet withdrawn from, “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.” And Afghanistan? A “loser war. You’re all losers. You don’t know how to win anymore.”
Trump then went into a rage as he demanded oil to pay for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off. Where is the fucking oil? I want to win. We don’t win any wars anymore…We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.” Glaring around the room he concluded “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
The only one in the room who responded to Trump’s tirade was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who objected “No, that’s just wrong Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true. The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune. That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die… They do it to protect our freedom.”
After the meeting ended and the participants were departing, Tillerson famously shook his head and opined “He’s a fucking moron.”
In a follow-up meeting in December, Trump called together his generals and other senior officials in the Situation Room, the secure meeting room on the ground floor of the West Wing. The subject was how to come up with a new policy for Afghanistan. Trump started the discussion by saying “All these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be making a profit. We could turn a profit on this. We need to get our money back.”
Tillerson was again the only one to respond: “I’ve never put on a uniform, but I know this. Every person who has put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck. They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about how much we as a country value their service.” Trump was angered by the rebuke and three months later Tillerson was fired. Mattis subsequently resigned.
Even if one discounts, as many do, the rationalizations made by senior military officers and diplomats for staying the course in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where they admittedly have screwed the pooch, there is something deplorable in a bullying president who sees everything in transactional terms, buying and selling. Sending American soldiers into potential death traps like Saudi Arabia as part of a non-existent strategy to make money is beyond criminal behavior. People on both sides die when the decision making coming out of the White House is bad, and there has been no president either more ignorant or worse in that respect than Donald J. Trump.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), House of Saud, IRAQ, Korea, US-led NATO Alliance, USA | Tagged: Donald Trump, US-mercenaries | Comments Off on An Army for Hire: Trump Wants to Make Money by Renting Out American Soldiers
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 