Link This April, a Greek soldier made international headlines when he saved the lives of several refugees off the coast of a Greek island. Antonis Deligiorgis was dubbed the “Greek hero on the beach” but he was more modest: “Without really giving it a second’s thought, I did what I had to do.”
He is not the only one. On Greek islands like Leros and Lesvos, local networks of residents work around the clock to provide food, dry clothes and shelter for newly arrived refugees.
The humble compassion of Antonis and the islands’ residents compares starkly with the stance of most governments – whose main goal appears to be keeping refugees and migrants away from their borders.
In the face of the worst refugee crisis we have seen in decades, wealthy countries are shutting their doors on the world’s 19.5 million refugees.
In the face of the worst refugee crisis we have seen in decades, wealthy countries are shutting their doors on the world’s 19.5 million refugees, and pushing them into the arms of criminal gangs profiting from their desperation. It is not smugglers who are the cause of the problem – it is the governments who have failed to act with the basic human decency that so many people like Antonis Deligiorgis have shown.
This Monday, Amnesty International warned that the global refugee situation has not been this dire since the end of the Second World War 70 years ago. The crisis in Syria is the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of our time, with four million refugees struggling to survive in neighbouring countries and another 7.6 million people displaced within its borders. Less publicized conflicts are also devastating; three million refugees are fleeing human rights abuses in South Sudan, Nigeria, Burundi and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
These people are doing what any of us would when trapped in intolerable circumstances: they flee. To achieve this, they will risk everything. Sometimes the only thing they have left to risk is their lives.
The world’s wealthiest countries are doing shockingly little to help people leave places where their rights and lives are at risk. The international community offers money, but not enough to deal with the unprecedented scale of the crisis. More importantly, wealthy countries are miserly when it comes to offering refugees a new home, in the form of resettlement programs.
This means that the countries shouldering the responsibility for this massive crisis are generally the ones least capable of doing so; 86% of the world’s refugees live in developing nations. Turkey, Pakistan and Lebanon each host more than one million refugees. The global number of resettlement places for refugees from Syria represents a little more than 2% of those living in the neighbouring host countries. And in 2013, fewer than 15,000 refugees from the entire African continent were resettled.
This absence of safe and legal ways to reach sanctuary is literally killing people.
Wealthy countries’ resettlement programs are deeply inadequate. This absence of safe and legal ways to reach sanctuary is literally killing people.
Each year, thousands of people perish in their attempt to seek asylum. They die from starvation and abuse, from drowning, dehydration and disease.
In April 2015, more than a thousand people died in just ten days trying to reach Europe. In May 2015, thousands of people were stranded for weeks on boats off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, while these countries either pushed them out to sea or bickered with each other over what was to be done.
The public outcry over these events has forced governments to act, though grudgingly.
While Malaysia and Indonesia eventually announced that they would allow 7,000 people stranded at sea to land, the protection will be temporary and conditional upon the international community assisting with repatriation or resettlement.
Extra boats deployed to the Mediterranean by European governments are working, as there have been much fewer deaths in the past six weeks. However, the only way to reduce the number of people risking their lives at sea in the hands of smugglers, is for EU countries to agree to resettle significant numbers of refugees and open further safe channels to reach Europe.
Given the obvious shortcomings of the international community’s response to these types of tragedies, many governments seem to be trying to deflect attention away from their failures by characterizing the global refugee crisis as a trafficking or smuggling issue. They are correct, but not in the way they mean. Governments say that smugglers or traffickers are the problem. But in reality, smuggling and trafficking are the result; inadequate government action is the chief cause.
When people are desperate, nothing will stop them from leaving.
When people are desperate, nothing will stop them from leaving. Governments bear moral responsibility for preventing them from using safe and legal channels, thereby forcing them to use the services of smugglers or making them vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers.
The actions of governments compare starkly to the conduct of ordinary people and communities who often treat these newcomers with the dignity that is blatantly missing from the official policies of many governments. Migration has always been part of the human condition. Preventing people from moving, and punishing them when they do, is wrong and doomed to fail.
Governments must end their conspiracy of neglect and address the global refugee crisis, beginning with an unconditional commitment to saving lives first. The funding and resettlement commitments that are urgently required are reasonable and achievable demands. What refugees need is not heroism, but simply basic human decency.
Money trail points to Gaza's feared former security chief By Brian Whitaker Link
Multiple sources have identified Mohammed Dahlan, the former head of Palestinian “preventive security” in Gaza, as a provider of funds for the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) – the “human rights” organisation at the centre of $13 million money-laundering investigation by Norwegian police.
At first sight, the idea of Dahlan – who is said to have a personal fortune of $120 million – as a human rights benefactor seems utterly bizarre but, if true, raises further questions about the nature and purpose of GNRD.
A profile of Dahlan published by the Electronic Intifada website in 2006 said of him:
“Throughout the years, Dahlan’s forces were involved in acts of violence and intimidation against critics, journalists and members of opposition groups, primarily from Hamas, imprisoning them without formal charges for weeks or months at a time. A number of prisoners died under suspicious circumstances during or after interrogation by Dahlan’s forces.
“In 1996, Dahlan’s troops were involved in mass arbitrary arrests of opponents of Fatah. In the aftermath of the February-March suicide bombings in Israel, an estimated 2,000 people were rounded up, often arbitrarily. Most of those detained were never charged with a criminal offence or put on trial. Torture and ill-treatment by his forces occurred regularly during interrogation and led to a number of deaths.”
Dahlan has long been beset by allegations of corruption. The Electronic Intifada describes him as implicated in financial scandals as well as human rights violations and, on the other side of the political divide, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (an Israeli organisation) says:
“Palestinian documents captured in 2002 revealed Dahlan’s involvement in major racketeering, including revenues from cigarettes, cement, and the collection of illegal crossing fees.”
Earlier this year there was an attempt to try him for alleged misuse of $17 million in expenses but a Palestinian court ruled the charges “inadmissible”. Dahlan’s lawyer hailed the verdict as “a great victory for the defence but also for the political future of Palestine", praising the “courage” of the judges in demonstrating the independence of the Palestinian judiciary.
If it’s true that Dahlan has been funding GNRD, this could explain why Norwegian police suspect GNRD and Loai Deeb, its founder-president, of money-laundering. According to police, the money they are investigating is “the proceeds of crime”, and this would not be the case if GNRD were simply being funded by foreign governments, even by a circuitous route. Funding by Dahlan would be a different matter if it involved ill-gotten gains.
Geneva conference
Last February, GNRD held a strange but hugely expensive conference in Geneva on human rights and counter-terrorism – an event for which it claims to have spent two years preparing.
Taking advantage of its recently-acquired consultative status at the United Nations, GNRD is due to hold a follow-up meeting on the same topic next week, but this time at the UN’s Geneva headquarters, on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council’s 29th session.
According to a French-language publication, Afrique Asie, the February conference was financed notably businessmen who included Mohammed Dahlan.
Earlier this week a paragraph in Daily News Egypt referred to links between GNRD president Loai Deeb and Dahlan. It didn’t name Dahlan but gave plenty of clues:
"According to an article by the Yemen Economist, Deeb has close ties with a former leader in the Palestinian Fatah movement, who is in turn a close advisor of Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan."
An article on the Lebanese news website al-Akhbar, published last year, describes Dahlan – who left Palestine under a cloud – as “currently a security adviser for Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed”. [Hat tip to Toralf Sandø of Aftenbladet for spotting that.]
Dahlan's battle with Abbas
This still leaves the question of why Dahlan would choose – if that’s what he did – to fund a human rights organisation. Is he feeling remorse?
Probably he is not, but the explanation may lie in an incident three years ago when some documents were leaked to several Palestinian news websites. They also appeared briefly on the website of the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, Wafa, but were hastily deleted.
The official line was that the documents were fakes and that hackers had broken into Wafa’s website and planted them there. However, Palestinian sources cited by the Jerusalem Post said the documents had been circulated by Dahlan and Muhammad Rashid (formerly Yasser Arafat’s financial adviser) in pursuit of their rivalry with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the documents were said to be part of a classified report prepared by the PA’s external security department and named GNRD as a vehicle for influencing public opinion worldwide and gathering intelligence.
The Jerusalem Post’s article continued:
The plan envisages using GNRD as a front for the establishment of an “effective and credible international human rights group that would be based in Geneva and whose goal would be to defend Palestinian causes” and collect information.
The cost of the project is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.
The report points out the important role of NGOs’ in shaping public opinion and affecting decision-making worldwide.
“These NGOs have a green card to enter any place in the world and operate freely under various pretexts,” the report said. “But we in Palestine are lacking many elements of power.”
The report claimed that many Western countries, including France, Britain and the US, have been using human rights organisations as a “striking arm” to affect policies around the world and remove governments from power. The report referred specifically to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and claims that they are funded and backed by Britain and the US, respectively.
The report recommended that the PA set up a similar “striking arm” that would operate out of Geneva and have representation in at least 50 countries. It said that the main mission would be to gather intelligence with the help of Western nationals.
If GNRD was originally intended as an official (but secret) Palestinian front organisation, how do we account for the claims that it is now funded by Dahlan rather than the Palestinian Authority?
An Israeli news report yesterday provided a rather cryptic clue. “Deeb's organisation,” it said, “became a boxing ring in the struggle between Abbas and Dahlan.” The suggestion is that Deeb, who hails from Gaza, eventually sided with Dahlan – for reasons which are as yet unknown.
Connections with Dahlan do not of course negate the previously-reported Emirati influences in GNRD; in fact they strengthen them. Unlike most international human rights organisations GNRD is allowed to have an office in the UAE, while Deeb has family and business interests there. The involvement of Dahlan, with his connections to the Emirati regime, would add a further string.
Winning friends, gaining influence
GNRD's development has broadly followed the path outlined in the leaked Palestinian documents. Although based in Norway rather than Geneva, it has been very active in Geneva and now – having acquired UN recognition last February – it looks set to become more involved there.
Norway, it could be argued, also provides a good alternative base. Its international reputation as a peaceful, liberal country means an organisation based there is more likely to be trusted, and less likely to have its credentials questioned, than one based – say – in the Middle East.
As a bonus, GNRD has been active in Brussels too, building contacts and influence in the European parliament.
GNRD doesn't – yet – have formal representation in 50 countries but it has expanded rapidly, opening offices in Austria, Belgium, Britain,Jordan, Spain, Sudan, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and Zambia. It has also recently been advertising for a researcher/representative to be based in New York, at a salary of $60,000 a year.
Most (but not all) of the "human rights" activities promoted on GNRD's website seem bland and uncontroversial – deliberately so, perhaps. One recent example is its campaign on children's "Right to Play". In contrast to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, GNRD generally avoids direct public criticism of governments over human rights abuses (with the specific exceptions of Qatar and Israel). This, again, maximises its opportunities for cooperation and acceptance.
Coupled with its strenuous efforts to sign "cooperation" agreements with respected organisations and institutions, all this appears to be part of a calculated long-term strategy to win acceptance and ultimately gain influence. Millions of dollars have been poured into that process.
The Palestinian documents also spoke of an intelligence-gathering role but it remains to be seen whether GNRD has engaged in that. However, there was an interesting proposal in the draft International Convention on Counterterrorism circulated by GNRD at its conference in Geneva last February.
The draft outlined a plan to set up an International Council for Counterterrorism under UN auspices which would take responsibility for deciding – on a worldwide basis – which individuals and groups should be designated as terrorists.
"The Global Network for Rights and Development shall execute the work of the General Secretariat of the Council and provide administrative facilitation for its activities."
In other words, GNRD – rather than the UN – would take charge of administering what was envisaged as becoming the main international counter-terrorism body. That, in turn, would have meant giving GNRD access to a great deal of information about terrorist activities all over the world. Posted by Brian Whitaker Saturday, 20 June 2015
Photographs of torture by regime deemed too ‘disturbing’ to exhibit but Syrian opposition urges MEPs to turn words of support on human rights into action The Guardian Link
Visitors look at the controversial photographs of dead bodies at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters
The European parliament has ruled against holding a major public exhibition of photographs documenting torture and abuse in Syrian government institutions, deeming the images too provocative, “disturbing and offensive”, the Guardian has learned.
The MEPs have decided that the photographs, smuggled out of Syria at great risk by a defector from the Assad regime codenamed Caesar, may only be shown at an undetermined future date in a small conference room on the parliament’s grounds. However, few people are likely to see it there and will not be endorsed by the organisation, even though the exhibition and its horrifying images were officially hosted by the United Nations.
A diplomatic source familiar with the discussions told the Guardian: “These photos are a powerful reminder of the systematic torture and mass killings ongoing in Syria – the very least the European parliament can do is bear witness.
“The suggestion that a photo exhibition should be hidden away in a committee room is unheard of, and seriously calls into question the judgment of those responsible for this decision.”
The UN in March hosted an exhibition of 30 photographs out of some 55,000 smuggled by Caesar, a former military photographer who fled the country with the evidence stashed on flash drives. Though warning signs were placed around the exhibition, officials at the time said it was imperative the international community did not “look away” from the atrocities, documented in Syrian government prisons and hospitals.
The war in Syria, now in its fifth year, has claimed more than 220,000 lives.
The spokesperson said the parliament’s public exhibition areas could only host cultural events and exhibits. But correspondence seen by the Guardian showed that MEPs rejected the planned photographs because they were deemed “offensive and disturbing” as well as “provocative”.A European parliament spokesperson confirmed that the College of Quaestors, a body of five MEPs that rules on such matters, had unanimously voted against hosting the photographs in the large exhibition space with its thousands of visitors.
The parliament hosts an annual commemorative event and exhibit on the Holocaust.
Organisers suggested removing some of the more graphic images and to open the exhibition during limited time slots, but the College of Quaestors refused, according to the diplomatic source.
The parliament has also told organisers that it would not officially endorse the exhibition, which was originally scheduled to run for five days but will now only last one day if it goes ahead, the source said.
Mouaffaq Nyrabia, the opposition Syrian National Coalition’s representative to the EU, said in a statement: “The series of photographs taken by the Syrian regime defector ‘Caesar’ present clear and compelling evidence – endorsed by the UN – of Assad’s systematic campaign of murder and torture, and are important testimony to the suffering of Syrians at the hands of this brutal dictatorship.”
He added: “This is why I urge the European parliament to turn its words of support on the protection of human rights in Syria into action, starting with providing full access to exhibit a small number of the ‘Caesar’ photographs.
“The situation in Syria is now a global crisis, whose impact upon Europe has repeatedly been made clear. Europe can and must play a more proactive role in achieving a political transition in Syria, and accountability must be central to these efforts.”
Alyn Smith, a Scottish National party MEP and the lead sponsor of the exhibition, said hosting it at a meeting room was a “decent compromise” given the sensitive nature of the photographs, and the fact that it would be hosted on the European parliament’s grounds.
“I think it’s really important for parliament to host that exhibition,” he said. “We must not close our eyes to the fact that this is happening.”
In February 2010, a man named Joseph Stack deliberately flew his small airplane into the side of a building that housed a regional IRS office in Austin, Texas, just as 200 agency employees were starting their workday. Along with himself, Stack killed an IRS manager and injured 13 others.
Stack was an anti-tax, anti-government fanatic, and chose his target for exclusively political reasons. He left behind a lengthy manifesto cogently setting forth his largely libertarian political views (along with, as I wrote at the time, some anti-capitalist grievances shared by the left, such as “rage over bailouts, the suffering of America’s poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants”; Stack’s long note ended: “the communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed”). About Stack’s political grievances, his manifesto declared that “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”
The attack had all of the elements of iconic terrorism, a model for how it’s most commonly understood: down to flying a plane into the side of a building. But Stack was white and non-Muslim. As a result, not only was the word “terrorism” not applied to Stack, but it was explicitly declared inapplicableby media outlets and government officials alike.
The New York Times’s report on the incident stated that while the attack “initially inspired fears of a terrorist attack” — before the identity of the pilot was known — now “in place of the typical portrait of a terrorist driven by ideology, Mr. Stack was described as generally easygoing, a talented amateur musician with marital troubles and a maddening grudge against the tax authorities.”
As a result, said the Paper of Record, “officials ruled out any connection to terrorist groups or causes.” And “federal officials emphasized the same message, describing the case as a criminal inquiry.” Even when U.S. Muslim groups called for the incident to be declared “terrorism,” the FBI continued to insist it “was handling the case ‘as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer’ and that it was not being considered as an act of terror.”
By very stark contrast, consider the October 2014, shooting in Ottawa by a single individual, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, at the Canadian Parliament building. As soon as it was known that the shooter was a convert to Islam, the incident was instantly and universally declared to be “terrorism.” Less than 24 hours afterward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared it a terror attack and even demanded new “counter-terrorism” powers in its name (which he has now obtained). To bolster the label, the government claimed Zehaf-Bibeau was on his way to Syria to fight with jihadists, and the media trumpeted this “fact.”
In his address to the nation the day after the shooting, Harper vowed to learn more about the “terrorist and any accomplices he may have had” and intoned: “This is a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.” Twitter users around the world en masse used the hashtag of solidarity reserved (for some reason) only for cities attacked by a Muslim (but not cities attacked by their own governments): #OttawaStrong. In sum, that this was a “terror attack” was mandated conventional wisdom before anything was known other than the Muslim identity of the perpetrator.
As it turns out, other than the fact that the perpetrator was Muslim and was aiming his violence at Westerners, almost nothing about this attack had the classic hallmarks of “terrorism.” In the days and weeks that followed, itbecame clear that Zehaf-Bibeau suffered from serious mental illness and “seemed to have become mentally unstable.” He had a history of arrests for petty offenses and had received psychiatric treatment. His friends recall him expressing no real political views but instead claiming he was possessed by the devil.
The Canadian government was ultimately forced to admit that their prior media claim about him preparing to go to Syria was totally false, dismissing it as “a mistake.” Now that Canadians know the truth about him — rather than the mere fact that he’s Muslim and committed violence — a plurality no longer believe the “terrorist” label applies, but believe the attack was motivated by mental illness. The term “terrorist” got instantly applied by know-nothings for one reason: he was Muslim and had committed violence, and that, in the post-9/11 West, is more or less the only working definition of the term (in the rare cases when it is applied to non-Muslims these days, it’s typically applied to minorities engaged in acts that have no resemblance to what people usually think of when they hear the term).
That is the crucial backdrop for yesterday’s debate over whether the term “terrorism” applies to the heinous shooting by a white nationalist of nine African-Americans praying in a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Almost immediately, news reports indicated there was “no sign of terrorism” — by which they meant: it does not appear that the shooter is Muslim.
Yet other than the perpetrator’s non-Muslim identity, the Charleston attack from the start had the indicia of what is commonly understood to be “terrorism.” Specifically, the suspected shooter was clearly a vehement racist who told witnesses at the church that he was acting out of racial hatred and a desire to force African-Americans “to go.” His violence was the byproduct of and was intended to publicize and forward his warped political agenda, and was clearly designed to terrorize the community he hates.
That’s why so many African-American and Muslim commentators and activists insisted that the term “terrorist” be applied: because it looked, felt and smelled exactly like other acts that are instantly branded “terrorism” when the perpetrator is Muslim and the victims largely white. It was very hard — and still is — to escape the conclusion that the term “terrorism,” at least as it’s predominantly used in the post-9/11 West, is about the identity of those committing the violence and the identity of the targets. It manifestly has nothing to do with some neutral, objective assessment of the acts being labelled.
The point here is not, as some very confused commentators suggested, to seek an expansion of the term “terrorism” beyond its current application. As someone who has spent the last decade more or less exclusively devoted to documenting the abuses and manipulations that term enables, the last thing I want is an expansion of its application.
But what I also don’t want is for non-Muslims to rest in their privileged nest, satisfied that the term and its accompanying abuses is only for that marginalized group. And what I especially don’t want is to have this glaring, damaging mythology persist that the term “terrorism” is some sort of objectively discernible, consistently applied designation of a particularly hideous kind of violence. I’m eager to have the term recognized for what it is: a completely malleable, manipulated, vapid term of propaganda that has no consistent application whatsoever. Recognition of that reality is vital to draining the term of its potency.
The examples proving the utter malleability of the term “terrorism” are far too numerous to chronicle here. But over the past decade alone, it’s been used by Western political and media figures to condemn Muslims who used violence against an invading and occupying force in Afghanistan, against others who raised funds to help Iraqis fight against an invading and occupying military in their country, and for others who attack soldiers in an army that is fighting many wars. In other words, any violence by Muslims against the West is inherently “terrorism,” even if targeted only at soldiers at war and/or designed to resist invasion and occupation.
By stark contrast, no violence by the West against Muslims can possibly be “terrorism,” no matter how brutal, inhumane or indiscriminately civilian-killing. The U.S. can call its invasion of Baghdad “Shock and Awe” as aclassic declaration of terrorism intent, or fly killer drones permanently over terrorized villages and cities, or engage in generation-lasting atrocities in Fallujah, or arm and fund Israeli and Saudi destruction of helpless civilian populations, and none of that, of course, can possibly be called “terrorism.” It just has the wrong perpetrators and the wrong victims.
Then there is all the game-playing the U.S. does with the term right out in the open. Nelson Mandela, now widely regarded as a moral hero, was officially a “terrorist” in U.S. eyes for decades (and the CIA thus helped its allied apartheid regime capture him). Iraq was on the terrorist list and then off it and then on it based on whatever designation best suited U.S. interests at the moment. The Iranian cult MEK was long decreed a “terror group” until they paid enough influential people in Washington to get off the list, coinciding with the U.S. desire to punish Tehran. The Reagan administration armed and funded classic terror groups in Latin America while demanding sanctions on the Soviets and Iranians for being state sponsors of terrorism. Whatever this is, it is not the work of a term that has a consistent, objective meaning.
Ample scholarship proves that the term “terrorism” is empty, definition-free and invariably manipulated. Harvard’s Lisa Stampnitzky has documented “the inability of researchers to establish a suitable definition of the concept of ‘terrorism’ itself.” The concept of “terrorism” is fundamentally plagued by ideological agendas and self-interested manipulation, as Professor Richard Jackson at the the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand has explained: “most of what is accepted as well-founded ‘knowledge’ in terrorism studies is, in fact, highly debatable and unstable” and is “biased towards Western state priorities.” Remi Brulin is a scholar who specializes in the discourse of “terrorism” and has long documented that, from the start, it was a highly manipulated term of propaganda more than it was a term of fixed meaning — largely intended to justify violence by the West and Israel while delegitimizing the violence of its enemies.
What is most amazing about all of this is that “terrorism” — a term that is so easily and frequently manipulated and devoid of fixed meaning — has now become central to our political culture and legal framework, a staple of how we are taught to think about the world. It is constantly invoked, as though it is some sort of term of scientific precision, to justify an endless array of radical policies and powers. Everything from the attack on Iraq to torture to endless drone killings to mass surveillance and beyond are justified in its name.
In fact, it is, as I have often argued, a term that justifies everything yet means nothing. Perhaps the only way people will start to see that, or at least be bothered by it, is if it becomes clear that not just marginalized minority groups but also their own group can be swept up by its elasticity and meaninglessness. There is ample resistance to that, which is why repulsive violence committed by white non-Muslims such as yesterday’s church massacre is so rarely described by the term. But that’s all the more reason to insist on something resembling fair and consistent application.
Rarely has amateurism in American foreign policy in the Middle East been as glaring and shocking as it has been in the past year with regard to Washington’s policy toward ISIS.
In the United States during the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to follow more closely than usual news, analysis and political discussions about how Washington should respond to the threat of ISIS, and the experience has been frightening. In almost every aspect of American policy related to Iraq, Syria and ISIS – threat analysis, addressing key underlying causal factors, policy formulation, geo-strategic coordination, military strategy and operations, and public diplomacy – Washington’s approach has consistently asked the wrong questions, identified the wrong threats, used the wrong tools, and applied wrong policies. No wonder it has resulted in cumulative failures.
The most recent disappointment is how the U.S. government (and many other Arab and European states, to be fair) have emphasized public diplomacy and the offering of a “counter-narrative” to the message of ISIS as a key pillar in the strategy to defeat the group. This is part of a wider mistaken and failed response to ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other such criminal movements, one that seeks to emphasize and activate “moderate Muslims” and “moderate Islam” or to highlight the brutal and barbaric acts of ISIS as a means of reducing the flow of its recruits. Ever since the idiocy of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror in 2001-2002, the American government has assumed that positive media messages through a public diplomacy campaign would dry up recruits to Al-Qaeda – and now to ISIS.
Well, that approach has proved to be a colossal failure and a waste of money, despite a succession of consistently clueless strategies that have spent billions of dollars on television, radio, websites, social media and other means to check the growth of Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The result to date is that Al-Qaeda and ISIS are the fastest growing political brands in the Arab world, and are infiltrating some other parts of the world as well.
What do American leaders need to finally get the point that public diplomacy as a core weapon in the fight against ISIS is no weapon at all, but a terrible self-induced delusion and hoax? It seems that day is still far off, because this week we learn via the New York Times of an internal State Department memo that, “paints a dismal picture of the efforts by the Obama administration and its foreign allies to combat the [ISIS] message machine.”
The memo to Secretary of State John Kerry by Richard A. Stengel, the State Department’s under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, paints a sad picture of a public diplomacy multinational coalition in disarray, but also proposes a more focused and enhanced effort to do more of the same kind of messaging using social media to counter ISIS narratives. The Times notes that, “State Department officials have repeatedly said that ‘countermessaging’ [ISIS] is one of the pillars of the strategy to defeat the group. But Obama administration officials have acknowledged in the past that the group is far more nimble in spreading its message than the United States is in blunting it.”
The tragedy is not just that public diplomacy procedurally has failed; it is also the profound analytical failure of emphasizing “messaging,” which totally misses the point of why people from many different backgrounds gravitate to ISIS, or simply do not resist it. ISIS and Al-Qaeda can only be fought by cutting out from beneath their feet the policies and conditions in the Arab region that deeply offend and threaten ordinary citizens, and ultimately turn a very small number of them into ISIS recruits.
The ISIS appeal to those people succeeds because their real life conditions – poverty, corruption, tyranny, occupation, subjugation, colonization, drone attacks, foreign invasions, humiliation, hopelessness – push them into desperate quests for something that offers them an alternative life. Some end up in ISIS – not because of the group’s messaging, but because the policies of Arab, Israeli, American, British, Russian and other governments over the decades have sucked the life and hope from the lives of hundreds of millions of Arab men and women.
The appeal of ISIS is that it offers a shock-therapy alternative to the dismal conditions that define the precarious lives of perhaps half the Arab world’s 375 million citizens – maybe over 150 million people who barely meet their daily basic needs, have no educational qualifications for decent work, and face a future of almost certain perpetual poverty and misery.
That kind of desperation is the consequence of failed governance across the Arab world. The world’s most powerful country should snap out of its analytical silliness and political dishonesty, and admit that this kind of dark dynamic tearing apart the Arab world cannot be fought with Facebook “likes.”
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR. He and can be followed on Twitter @RamiKhouri.
ارتفع التفاؤل في الأسابيع الماضية فيما يتعلق بحسم الصراع في سوريا، بعد أن تحقق تقدم كبير في الجبهتين الجنوبية والشمالية وفيالقلمون، حيث ظهر أن "كل القوى المسلحة" قد اتحدت، وأن القوى الإقليمية التي كانت تتنازع الكتائب المسلحة قد توافقت على الحسم.
فقد كان الوضع العسكري يعاني من جهة من نقص كبير في السلاح، النوعي منه خصوصا، ومن جهة ثانية من "التناقضات" التي تحكم العلاقة بين الكتائب المقاتلة والمجموعات الأصولية (داعش "تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية" والنصرة وجيش الإسلام خصوصا)، وبالتالي من ضعف التنسيق بين الكتائب المقاتلة ذاتها ربما بسبب "الممولين"، أو ضعف الخبرة.
لهذا كان التقدم المفاجئ في هذه الجبهات لحظة أعطت الأمل بأن تغيرا قد حصل سوف يقود إلى الحسم. خصوصا هنا عند قطاعات في المعارضة من "الثرثارين" على النت، الذين يتفاءلون ويتشاءمون حسب الموسم، ويغردون مع الموجة، ويشتمون كل مخالف أو مختلف، فهذه هي مهمتهم في "الثورة".
"نشهد الآن توقفا في التقدم العسكري، وسكوتا عن معارك كانت ستفتح في حلب ودمشق. وبالمقابل نشهد تقدما لداعش تحقق في تدمر، وحلب.. ربما التقدم الذي يجري هو ذاك المتعلق بالصراع مع داعش في الشمال الشرقي، حيث جرت استعادة تل أبيض وقرى محيطة بها"
وقد بلغ التفاؤل حد "الجنون" أحيانا، وإطلاق كل مخزون ماعلمته "مدرسة الأسد" من شتائم وطائفية. ولكن أيضا تشدد فيرفض أي كلام عن الحل السياسي على أساس أن الانتصار باتمحتما وقريبا.
الآن نشهد توقفا في التقدم العسكري، وسكوتا عن معارك كانت ستفتح في حلب ودمشق. وبالمقابل نشهد تقدما لداعش تحقق في تدمر، وحلب. ربما التقدم الذي يجري هو ذاك المتعلق بالصراع مع داعش في الشمال الشرقي، حيث جرت استعادة المدينة الحدودية تل أبيض وقرى محيطة بها، بعد استعادة عين العرب. وأيضا معارك مع داعش في ريفالحسكة. ليظهر الوضع الآن مربكا، ومشوشا، وربما يتراجع الحماس بـ"الانتصار"، أو يصاب البعض ممن تحمس بالإحباط.
لكن لا بد من القول بأن الوضع معقد، ويجب أن يفهم على ضوء كل التدخلات والتداخلات التي باتت أمرا واقعا، كما على ضوء المساومات والمفاوضات الدولية، وليس انطلاقا من لحظة جرى فيها التقدم.
لقد تحقق تقدم مهم في الجبهة الجنوبية، وظهر في لحظة أن الكتائب تزحف نحو دمشق. لكن قامت جبهة النصرة باعتقال عناصر القوات الدولية في القنيطرة فأربكت التقدم، حيث كان يعني ذلك خدمة للسلطة التي أرادت أن تجعل "المجتمع الدولي" في صفها ضد الثورة، ثم بعد تحرير نوى حاولت جبهة النصرة فرض سلطتها فطردها مقاتلو المدينة، وبعد ذلك سيطرت على نصيب الأمر الذي أدى إلى إغلاق الحدود الأردنية السورية، رغم انسحابها بعدئذ.
مشكلة جبهة النصرة مع محافظة السويداء قديمة بعد أن كانت خطفت العديد من شبابها، بالتالي حينما جرت السيطرة على اللواء 52 والتقدم نحو مطار الثعلة، ارتبك الوضع نتيجة خشية "الدروز" من دورها، وقد ظهر بعد ممارسات النصرة أن كل تقدم في الجبهة الجنوبية بات مرتبكا، رغم أن الكتائب هناك اعتبرت أنها تنظيم متطرف تجب مقاطعته، وعملت على "سحب" الشباب السوري منه.
في الشمال الغربي كانت جبهة النصرة قد عملت على تصفية العديد من الكتائب المسلحة التي تقاتل السلطة، وأوجدت وضعا يشل كل صراع معها. ولهذا لم يتحقق تقدم مهم إلا حين توافقت "الدول الداعمة" -السعودية وقطر وتركيا- على "توحيد الجهد". لهذا تحقق تقدم كبير فرض السيطرة على محافظة إدلب. وكان يبدو أن التقدم مستمر، خصوصا أنه تاخم "المناطق العلوية"، وكان يشير إلى محاولة السير نحو حماة.
ما حدث في مشفى جسر الشعور أثار ارتباكا من مساومات جرت، لكن الأكثر أهمية هو أن التقدم توقف تماما. وكأن "تعليمات" صدرت بذلك، أو أن الدعم العسكري قد توقف، ومن ثم قامت جبهة النصرة بمجزرة ضد دروز أربك كلية الوضع، وأظهر أن منطق هذا التنظيم هو فرض سلطته الأصولية كأولوية وكأساس.
في القلمون يحاول حزب الله القتال من أجل استعادة مواقع، وقد زادت شراسته هناك دون أن يحقق تقدما، رغم أن دور داعش في القلمون كان مربكا للكتائب المسلحة، التي اشتبكت معه وهي تقاتل حزب الله. والقتال ما زال مستمرا.
"إذا كانت إيران لم تعد تستطيع إرسال جيوش للدفاع عن السلطة، وبات دور حزب الله ينحصر في جبهة القلمون بالأساس، وبالتالي بات وضع السلطة صعبا؛ فإن المحاولة التي تبدو ممكنة هنا تتمثل في ما يمكن أن يستتبع سيطرة داعش على مدينة تدمر"
في الغوطة الشرقية قام جيش الإسلام باستعراض عسكري "كبير"، وظهر أنه يستعد للتقدم نحو دمشق بعد جولة "مهمة" قام بها زعيمه زهران علوش، لكن لم يتحرك شيء إلى الآن، وبدا أن الوضع هناك يجب أن يبقى هادئا.
إذن، سواء كانت هناك محاولة للاستمرار في التقدم على الجبهة الجنوبية، فإن الجبهة الشمالية سكتت، وجبهة حلب لم تتحرك، وكذا جبهة دمشق. هذا الأمر يشير إلى أن تحريك الجبهات كان يهدف إلى زعزعة ميزان القوى، وإظهار القدرة على الحسم لكن دون تحقيق الحسم. وهو أمر -كما يبدو- يتعلق بالدول الإقليمية التي فرضت ذاتها جزءا من معادلة الحل في سوريا عبر ذلك، ويبدو أنها أرادت إرسال رسائل أكثر مما أرادت تحقيق حسم ظهر في وقت ما أنه ممكن.
ولا شك في أن الحسم بهذه الطريقة لا يقود حتما إلى تشكيل نظام جديد، بالضبط نتيجة تشتت القوى، ووجود داعش والنصرة، وبالتالي فهو يعني الفوضى، وانهيار الدولة دون مقدرة على بناء دولة جديدة.
لكن ونتيجة لهذا الأمر يبدو أن الوضع بات يخضع للصراعات الإقليمية، ولميزان القوى الذي يحقق مصالح كل منها. وقد بات الصراع "على الأرض" جزءا من ذلك، أو هكذا تحاول الدول الإقليمية، في ظل مفاوضات أميركية إيرانية من الواضح أن الملف السوري جزء منها.
وإذا كانت إيران لم تعد تستطيع إرسال جيوش للدفاع عن السلطة، وبات دور حزب الله ينحصر في جبهة القلمون بالأساس، وبالتالي بات وضع السلطة صعبا، فإن المحاولة التي تبدو ممكنة هنا تتمثل في ما يمكن أن يستتبع سيطرة داعش على مدينة تدمر.
لقد سهلت السلطة لداعش السيطرة على المدينة، وتركت كميات كبيرة من السلاح والذخائر، وهو الأمر الذي يفرض التفكير في "الخطوة التالية"، حيث إن هذه الوضعية تسمح لداعش بأن تتقدم نحو الجنوب، ولقد لامست المناطق الدرزية، ويمكن أن تسير نحو اللجاة فتربك وضع الجبهة الجنوبية.
كما أنها يمكن أن تتقدم نحو ريف دمشق فتضع جيش الإسلام بين فكي كماشة السلطة وداعش، ومن ثم يمكن أن تدعم وجودها في القلمون، وهو ما يشكل خطرا على الجبهة هناك. كما أن السلطة سمحت بتقدم داعش نحو حلب، وربما هذا هو الأمر الذي أوقف محاولة إكمال السيطرة عليها.
في هذا المجال يمكن التوقع بأن السلطة بعد أن ضعفت كثيرا وباتت دون دعم حقيقي تحتاجه تماما، تريد أن تحول الصراع إلى صراع بين داعش والكتائب المسلحة، ومن ثم تقوم النصرة بإرباكات في العديد من المواقع لشل مقدرة الكتائب المسلحة. كل ذلك في سياق تعزيز وضعها، وربما إفشال التفاهمات التي تجري دوليا وإقليميا.
"الإنجازات العسكرية يجب أن تعتمد على الكتائب المحلية وحدها، وأن تبدأ بإنهاء كل المجموعات الأصولية التي تشوش، وتربك، و"تطعن في الظهر". بمعنى أن بيئة الخلفية يجب أن تكون سالمة لكي يكون التقدم ممكنا"
لكن الأمر هنا يتمثل -كذلك- في أنه ليست السلطة وحدها من "يساعد" داعش، بل هناك دول إقليمية تلعب بها، وأيضا قوى دولية، مثل أميركا التي قاربت حربها "ضد داعش" السنة، في حين أنها باقية وتتوسع "تحت حماية الطيران الأميركي"، ويخضع تكتيكها العسكري لسياسة أميركية واضحة، كما ظهر في العراق، وفي الشمال الشرقي من سوريا. نستخلص من كل هذا التوصيف أن الحسم العسكري ليس واردا، وأن كل ما يجري يخضع للعب دول إقليمية وقوى دولية من أجل إنهاك البلد، والوصول إلى حل توافقي فيما بينها هي، وليس كما يريد الشعب السوري، رغم أن إنهاك وضعه يجعله يأمل بحل سياسي، لكن ليس بأي ثمن كما أرادت السلطة منذ البدء، بل على أساس رحيل الأسد وسلطته.
ولا شك أن هذا الأمر ينتظر وصول الدول الإقليمية والقوى الدولية إلى أن الحل بات ضرورة، وأنه يجب وضع نهاية لمجزرة طويلة كان بطلها نظام اعتقد أن سوريا ملك خاص له، وبمساعدة قوى إمبريالية أرادت كل هذا التدمير لسوريا كما فعلت في العراق، وأقصد هنا أميركا. ولكن بـ"مجهودات مخلصة" من دول وقوى أخرى كثيرة.
أخيرا فإن الإنجازات العسكرية يجب أن تعتمد على الكتائب المحلية وحدها، وأن تبدأ بإنهاء كل المجموعات الأصولية التي تشوش، وتربك، و"تطعن في الظهر". بمعنى أن بيئة الخلفية يجب أن تكون سالمة لكي يكون التقدم ممكنا
