Do Not Blame Instability on Foreign Conspiracies - Blame It on Marginalizing Minorities

Attributing instability to foreign conspiracies is like blaming your household problems on your absent neighbors. Conspiracy advocates are essentially escapists. They are also brainwashed by the old colonial narrative. But if a nation looks at itself from within, it shall soon discover that salvation comes from within. No conspiracy has a chance for success unless a nation is so fragmented that a conspirator could come in through national cracks.

Take a broad look at the history of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire collapsed (1516-1916) because it abused its minorities. Al-Astanah (Constantinople) regarded the Greeks, the Serbs, and the Arabs as empire-servers, not empire co-builders. The so-called Ulamas (Islamic scholars), through their deep ignorance of Islam, advocated disengagement from the west. Those Ulamas were the forefathers of Boko Haram (Western learning is sinful).

But Turkey revived in 1923 with Ata Turk ending the Caliphate and made Turkey secular. The imperial period was no more. However denying the Kurds the right to use their language and have an autonomous status in this 21st century will keep Ankra as the capital of a country which is in constant battle within itself. And if Ordogan fancies himself as the new Islamic Sultan, he must be smoking some strong weed (hashish).

In Syria, now flattened and fragmented, the minority (the Alawites-Shiis) are brutalizing the majority (Sunnis). Under Bashar, a war criminal, Syria has descended from "a failed State" to a "non-State." Bashar (ironically it means in Arabic "good tidings") might keep on fighting. But what he shall end up with is a partitioned Syria, with an Alawite enclave protected by a Russian base and is smaller than Lebanon. Again the disappearance of Syria did not result from foreign machinations. It is the inevitable outcome of a lopsided power sharing between an oppressive minority and an internally-colonized majority.

So it is laughable to still read banners at the entrance of Damascus declaring a blatant fiction: "One Nation With An Eternal Message!!" (Ummatun Wahidah That Risalaton Khalidah).

An Eternal Message has been bequeathed to the Muslims in the Quran -DIVERSITY. For Islam is not "a faith and a State." It is "a faith and a Nation." Islam does not create a State. The Quran gives clear evidence on diversity being both a natural human phenomenon the respect for which is a predicate for good governance. "If your Lord had so willed, He could have made mankind one nation." (Chapter II, Verse 118)

The terms "minority" and "majority" might also apply to women in Saudi Arabia. In spite of the huge oil wealth, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a bifurcated governance: The Governorate in Riyadh, and the Wahhabis in Diriyah. Riyadh rules, and the Wahhabis run the country's social life with a belief in denying gender equality. Whereas women sat on the councils of the Prophet Muhammad, today's Saudi women are subjected to walls, to totally covered faces except for eye peep holes, and to total rule by their male folks. Can this last forever? Impossible. Is 50% of the Saudi population a minority? Yes, a minority in being deprived of rights equal to those enjoyed by the male half of that population.

This may explain why, in Egypt, recent attacks on the Coptic minority (10% - 15%) of the nearly 100 million population have triggered the declaration of emergency laws by the government. Reporters of the New York Times based in Cairo, such as Declan Walsh do no justice to that paper's motto "All The News That Is Fit to Print." It is misleading to read a headline in that paper's issue of April 11, 2017: "Attacks Show Isis' Strategy for Egypt: Gaining Ground by Killing Christians."

Rubbish!! Does ISIS, a faction on the run, has a strategy? Are they gaining ground in Egypt? Could hits and runs or suicide bombings be a strategy -a term reserved for structural command and control? It is ominous for world peace to find the America of Trump so divided upon itself to the point that its unstable President could not accomplish through his first 100 days one single piece of legislation. And daily descriptions in US media of El-Sisi as having engineered a military coup in July 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood shall have no effect on the New Egypt. Egypt is now becoming the only strong State in that volatile region. It is demographically cohesive.

For within the space of a few years, we might have a new Sudan (without Darfur and Kurdufan); a new Libya (back to 3 provinces); a new Yemen (South Yemen and North Yemen); a new Iraq (Kurdistan is gone, and might be followed by a fictitious sectarian divide between the Sunnis of the north, the Shiis of the south). And the non-reconciled Palestinian statelets of Ramallah and Gaza. All the historic outcomes, not of foreign conspiracies, but of uneven minorities - majorities relationship.

But Egypt is, and shall remain, a different story. Though with impoverished educational and public information systems, its DNA of national unity is always pumping reflexive energy.

This energy could be augmented by an Egyptian one person lobby in Washington, D.C. -A Copt, preferably a female, speaking good "American" as Ambassador. 

That would be an enlightened response, representing a true "thinking outside the box." A monumental return to the Egypt bequeathed by Muhammad Ali. From 1832 to 1839, that Egypt has nearly conquered the ailing Ottoman Empire. Cairo's weapon was diversity!!

NOTE: New blog postings shall be periodical, until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War On Jihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"

Striking Syria Is a Legal Strike For Humanity!!

This is not in praise of Trump. It is a salutation for the doctrine of "international humanitarian intervention." It is easy to understand. When a State commits genocidal acts against its own citizens, it is lowering the walls surrounding it (we call it sovereignty) for the outside world to jump over them and say "enough." Bashar Al-Assad has used against his own citizens chlorine bombs, nerve gas, and now, in Idlib, has used Sarine gas. On Tuesday, April 4, about 100 victims, including dozens of children, have suffocated.

By doing so, he has proved that, to him and his supporters, sovereignty meant a fake license in the hands of the State (and Syria is no longer a State except in name only) to kill en masse. How obtuse for him to miscalculate in a big way: that the Trump search for accommodation with Putin is a shield for his murderous regime; that the non-action by Obama on crossing "red lines" shall hold under Trump; that Trump's support for that inaction before the Trump's presidency shall hold; and that the justification used by him as his war on ISIS shall save him from being considered a war criminal.

Launching 59 missiles by the US navy on April 6 against the Syrian Shayrat airfield from which the Sarin attack on Idlib was launched demonstrates a general fault line in Arab thinking about America. That comprehension deficiency boils down to the non-understanding of the U.S. as a compartmentalized State.

Because of the decline in education in the Arab homeland, the process of thinking about issues is very linear: things are either white or black; relations are based on being a friend or a foe; if you take from me, it is a zero-sum situation whereby I lost totally and you gained totally. No nuancing, no compartmentalization.

How is America compartmentalized? A modern State can do many things simultaneously, regardless of the surface appearance of contradictions. Here are actual examples from the recent episode of striking Syria -a strike which may lead to other strikes in the coming days:

• The US national security council has just been reorganized: separating national security from politics;
• The professionals of the 17 US security agencies, together with the Pentagon and the military contracting industry have chased away the opponents of globalization, like Steve Bannon, from meddling in war and peace issues;
• The "America First" of Trump has been re-interpreted to mean: yes for rebuilding the infra-structure, but no for disengagement from the world;
• Investigating the connections between the Trump team and Russia shall go on, while Trump is allowed to garner the glory of a tough America to himself;
• The UN could be downgraded, while Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, is upgraded to have a seat on the US national security council;
• The issue of human rights within States can be ignored as encumbering US diplomacy with those States.But the Syria attack on the UN Convention Against the Use of Chemical Weapons cannot be set aside;
• While Trump was dining with the Chinese President at his Florida privately-owned southern White House (Mar-A-Lago) -the U.S. navy was nullifying through that missile attack on the Assad regime, the presence of fixed Russian bases on the Syrian coast.

This is the essence of American mixing of party politics, strategy, national interest and diplomacy in a composite whole with so many facets that rotates all the time like a strobe light in a darkened night club. 

As a result of this constant dynamic, the American strike on the Syrian Shayrat airbase, is expected to be followed by others. For the message telegraphed by American compartmentalization is not aimed only at Bashar who can no longer aspire to rule over a united Syria. 

The message is complex as it is directed, not from the White House, which under Trump is a house divided onto itself, but from the myriad of tissues which can only be deciphered by constant analysis. Deciphering here means being turned into ordinary writing, whose impact may last only for a short period, only to be replaced by fresh analysis.

This is a message that says, for now, the following:

• To the Gulf: there is no American abandonment; just pay for your own defense, and America, with two huge navies in the Mediterranean and the Gulf, shall keep its finger on the trigger;
• To Russia: there is a difference between asserting your power in your "near abroad" (the Ukraine...etc.) in the south, and your pressure on the "near abroad" (the Baltics ...etc.) in the north. The latter is shadowed by NATO, through Poland and Scandinavia;
• To North Korea: watch out, Pyongyang, we are watching. We have 37,000 American troops in South Korea. And your emboldened nuclear missile technology is a threat to East Asia and America's west coast. The time has come for planting nuclear weapons in South Korea;
• To ISIS: you may live on as free lancers of marauding hit and run; but Mosul (Iraq) and Raqqa (Syria) shall be over-run; and
• To regional strong Arab States, such as the New Egypt: we can cooperate in specific well-defined areas. The war on terror and American private investments are examples.
• The Russian thesis of "no intervention in internal affairs" has been well served by the Soviet and later Russian use of the veto in the UN Security Council. A non-changeable thesis since 1945. But this doctrine draws its life from another doctrine, namely, sovereignty.

But Moscow, on its attack at the UN Security Council on the American strike, ignores the growth of the doctrine of international humanitarian intervention. A doctrine which has grown out of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (protection of civilians in times of war), augmented by the UN Conventions against genocide, civil and political rights, the use of chemical weapons, and the non-resort to weapons of mass destruction.

Russia's present resort to the UN Security Council shall be of no avail. And if push comes to shove militarily in the eastern Mediterranean, America's military and economic power shall overwhelm Putin's Russia. Putin may have overplayed his hand, thinking that a Trump-Putin detente might preempt America's military actions.

Even a possible Putin blackmail of Trump for the latter's presumed sexual indiscretions while in Moscow in 2013 might cause the Trump administration to look the other way. It shall not.

While Putin may be the sole actor in Russia, Trump is beholden to the complexity of a compartmentalized America -a country of 50 States stitched together in one. The economy of California alone is bigger than the economy of France. And the half trillion dollars budget of the Pentagon makes America militarily ahead of the next 20 sovereign States of today.

Should America be the world's gendarme? No!! But at these times of our world being in disarray, a swift military action by the US is intended for several purposes. High among these purposes is the projection of US military power. This power is exercised now without a Congressional declaration of war.

For the enemy is diffuse, terrorism has neither boundaries nor uniforms nor real faith, unpredictability by a receding ISIS is outmatched by the unpredictability of a constantly innovating military "lean and mean" American machine.

Syria is expected to be hit again and again. The Syrian UN representative might babble on at the Security Council about "criminal aggression." But who is listening and what could an enfeebled international organization do, except to record a hollow speech? 

"Take Assad's air force out" is the new norm. The real action on Syria is now in Washington, D.C., and Moscow, and Brussels (on billions of dollars for reconstruction).

In the era of "universal jurisdiction," any State can act. Yet, in the Arab world, complexities are tiresome. Analysis is deficient. Resort to vocalization is a national pastime. Arab media are nearly comatose!!

NOTE: New blog postings shall be periodical, until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War On Jihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"