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 Global Struggles for Dominance: Noam Chomsky on ISIS, NATO and Russia


Has ISIS taken a foothold inside Europe? Is Erdogan's Turkey in the process of making a huge geopolitical shift that will change the balance of power in one of the most volatile regions if the world? Are NATO and the US moving toward peace or war with Russia? In this latest exclusive interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky offers unique insights on these issues, challenging prevailing narratives about what is happening around the world.

C.J. Polychroniou: The rise of ISIS (also known as Daesh or ISIL) is a direct consequence of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and represents today, by far, the most brutal and dangerous terrorist organization we have seen in recent memory. It also appears that its tentacles have reached beyond the "black holes" created by the United States in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan and have now taken hold inside Europe, a fact acknowledged recently by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact, it has been estimated that attacks organized or inspired by ISIS have taken place every 48 hours in cities outside the above-mentioned countries since early June 2016. Why have countries like Germany and France become the targets of ISIS?

Noam Chomsky: I think we have to be cautious in interpreting ISIS claims of responsibility for terrorist attacks. Take the worst of the recent ones, in Nice. It was discussed by Akbar Ahmed, one of the most careful and discerning analysts of radical Islam. He concludes from the available evidence that the perpetrator, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was probably "not a devout Muslim. He had a criminal record, drank alcohol, ate pork, did drugs, did not fast, pray or regularly attend a mosque and was not religious in any way. He was cruel to his wife, who left him. This is not what many Muslims would typically consider reflective of their faith, particularly those who consider themselves religiously devout." ISIS did (belatedly) "take credit" for the attack, as they routinely do, whatever the facts, but Ahmed regards the claim as highly dubious in this case. On this and similar attacks, he concludes that "the reality is that while ISIS may influence these Muslims in a general way, their animus is coming from their position as unwanted immigrants in Europe, especially in France, where they are still not treated French, even if they are born there. The community as a whole has a disproportionate population of unemployed youth with poor education and housing and is constantly the butt of cultural humiliation. It is not an integrated community, barring some honorable exceptions. From it come the young men like Lahouaiej Bouhlel. The pattern of [the] petty criminal may be observed in the other recent terrorist attacks in Europe, including those in Paris and Brussels."

Ahmed's analysis corresponds closely to that of others who have done extensive investigation of recruits to ISIS, notably Scott Atran and his research team. And it should, I think, be taken seriously, along with his prescriptions, which also are close to those of other knowledgeable analysts: to "provide the Muslim community educational and employment opportunities, youth programs, and promote acceptance, diversity and understanding. There is much that governments can do to provide language, cultural and religious training for the community, which will help resolve, for example, the problem of foreign imams having difficulty transferring their roles of leadership into local society."

Merely to take one illustration of the problem to be faced, Atran points out that "only 7 to 8 percent of France's population is Muslim, whereas 60 to 70 percent of France's prison population is Muslim." It's also worth taking note of a recent National Research Council report, which found that "with respect to political context, terrorism and its supporting audiences appear to be fostered by policies of extreme political repression and discouraged by policies of incorporating both dissident and moderate groups responsibly into civil society and the political process."

It's easy to say, "Let's strike back with violence" -- police repression, carpet-bomb them to oblivion (Ted Cruz), etc. -- very much what al-Qaeda and ISIS have hoped for, and very likely to intensify the problems, as, indeed, has been happening until now.

What is ISIS's aim, when targeting innocent civilians, such as the attack on the seaside town of Nice in France in which 84 people were killed?

As I mentioned, we should, I think, be cautious about the claims and charges of ISIS initiative, or even involvement. But when they are involved in such atrocities, the strategy is clear enough. Careful and expert analysts of ISIS and violent insurgencies (Scott Atran, William Polk and others) generally tend to take ISIS at its word. Sometimes they cite the "playbook" in which the core strategy used by ISIS is laid out, written a decade ago by the Mesopotamian wing of the al-Qaeda affiliate that morphed into ISIS. Here are the first two axioms (quoting an article by Atran):

[Axiom 1:] Hit soft targets: 'Diversify and widen the vexation strikes against the Crusader-Zionist enemy in every place in the Islamic world, and even outside of it if possible, so as to disperse the efforts of the alliance of the enemy and thus drain it to the greatest extent possible.'

[Axiom 2:] Strike when potential victims have their guard down to maximise fear in general populations and drain their economies: 'If a tourist resort that the Crusaders patronise... is hit, all of the tourist resorts in all of the states of the world will have to be secured by the work of additional forces, which are double the ordinary amount, and a huge increase in spending.'

And the strategy has been quite successful, both in spreading terrorism and imposing great costs on the "Crusaders" with slight expenditure.

It has been reported that tourists in France will be protected by armed forces and soldiers at holiday sites, including beaches. How much of this development is linked to the refugee crisis in Europe, where millions have been arriving in the last couple of years from war-torn regions around the world?

Hard to judge. The crimes in France have not been traced to recent refugees, as far as I have seen. Rather, it seems to be more like the Lahouaiej Bouhlel case. But there is great fear of refugees, far beyond any evidence relating them to crime. Much the same appears to be true in the US, where Trump-style rhetoric about Mexico sending criminals and rapists doubtless frightens people, even though the limited statistical evidence indicates that "first-generation immigrants are predisposed to lower crime rates than native-born Americans," as reported by Michelle Ye Hee Lee in The Washington Post.

To what extent would you say that Brexit was being driven by xenophobia and the massive inflow of immigrants into Europe?

There has been plenty of reporting giving that impression, but I haven't seen any hard data. And it's worth recalling that the inflow of immigrants is from the EU, not those fleeing from conflict. It's also worth recalling that Britain has had a non-trivial role in generating refugees. The invasion of Iraq, to give one example. Many others, if we consider greater historical depth. The burden of dealing with the consequences of US-UK crimes falls mainly on countries that had no responsibility for them, like Lebanon, where about 40 percent of the population are estimated to be refugees.

Are the US and the major western powers really involved in a war against ISIS? This would seem doubtful to an outside observer, given the growing influence of ISIS and the continuing ability of the organization to recruit soldiers for its cause from inside Europe.

Speculations to that effect are rampant in the Middle East, but I don't think they have any credibility. The US is powerful, but not all-powerful. There is a tendency to attribute everything that happens in the world to the CIA or some diabolical Western plan. There is plenty to condemn, sharply. And the US is indeed powerful. But it's nothing like what is often believed.

There seems to be a geopolitical shift underway in Turkey's regional political role, which may have been the ultimate cause behind the failed coup of July 2016. Do you detect such a shift under way?

There certainly has been a shift in regional policy from former [Turkish Prime Minister] Davutoğlu's "Zero Problems Policy," but that's because problems abound. The goal of becoming a regional power, sometimes described as neo-Ottoman, seems to be continuing, if not accelerating. Relations with the West are becoming more tense as Erdogan's government continues its strong drift towards authoritarian rule, with quite extreme repressive measures. That naturally impels Turkey to seek alliances elsewhere, particularly [with] Russia. Erdogan's first post-coup visit was to Moscow, in order to restore "the Moscow-Ankara friendship axis" (in his words) to what it was before Turkey shot down a Russian jet in November 2015 when it allegedly passed across the Turkish border for a few seconds while on a bombing mission in Syria. Very unfortunately, there is very little Western opposition to Erdogan's violent and vicious escalation of atrocities against the Kurdish population in the Southeast, which some observers now describe as approaching the horrors of the 1990s. As for the coup, its background remains obscure, for the time being. I don't know of evidence that shifts in regional policy played a role.

The coup against Erdogan ensured the consolidation of a highly authoritarian regime in Turkey: Erdogan arrested thousands of people and closed down media outlets, schools and universities following the coup. The effects of the coup may, in fact, even strengthen the role of the military in political affairs as it will come under the direct control of the president himself, a move that Erdogan has already initiated. How will this affect Turkey's relations with the US and European powers, given the alleged concerns of the latter about human rights and democracy inside Turkey and about Erdogan's pursuit of closer ties with Putin?

The correct word is "alleged." During the 1990s, the Turkish government was carrying out horrifying atrocities, targeting its Kurdish population -- tens of thousands killed, thousands of villages and towns destroyed, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) driven from their homes, every imaginable form of torture. Eighty percent of the arms were coming from Washington, increasing as atrocities increased. In the single year, 1997, when atrocities were peaking, Clinton sent more arms than the sum total [sent to Turkey] throughout the entire post-war era until the onset of the counterinsurgency campaign. The media virtually ignored all of this. The [New York] Times has a bureau in Ankara, but it reported almost nothing. The facts were, of course, widely known in Turkey -- and elsewhere, to those who took the trouble to look. Now that atrocities are peaking again, as I mentioned, the West prefers to look elsewhere.

Nevertheless, relations between Erdogan's regime and the West are becoming more tense and there is great anger against the West among Erdogan supporters because of Western attitudes toward the coup (mildly critical, but not enough for the regime) and toward the increased authoritarianism and sharp repression (mild criticism, but too much for the regime). In fact, it is widely believed that the US initiated the coup.

The US is also condemned for asking for evidence before extraditing Gulen, who Erdogan blames for the coup. Not a little irony here. One may recall that the US bombed Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to turn Osama bin Laden over without evidence. Or take the case of [Emmanuel "Toto"] Constant, the leader of the terrorist force FRAPH [Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti] that ran wild in Haiti under the military dictatorship of the early '90s. When the junta was overthrown by a Marine invasion, he escaped to New York, where he was living comfortably. Haiti wanted him extradited and had more than enough evidence. But Clinton refused, very likely because he would have exposed Clinton's ties to the murderous military junta.

The recent migration deal between Turkey and the EU seems to be falling apart, with Erdogan having gone so far as to say publicly that "European leaders are not being honest." What could be the consequences for Turkey-EU relations, and for the refugees themselves, if the deal were to fall apart?

Basically, Europe bribed Turkey to keep the miserable refugees -- many fleeing from crimes for which the West bears no slight responsibility -- from reaching Europe. It is similar to Obama's efforts to enlist Mexican support in keeping Central American refugees -- often very definitely victims of US policies, including those of the Obama administration -- from reaching the US border. Morally grotesque, but better than letting them drown in the Mediterranean. The deterioration of relations will probably make their travail even worse.

NATO, still a US-dominated military alliance, has increased its presence in Eastern Europe lately, as it is bent on stopping Russia's revival by creating divisions between Europe and Russia. Is the US looking for a military conflict with Russia, or are such moves driven by the need to keep the military-industrial complex intact in a post-Cold War world?

NATO is surely a US-dominated military alliance. As the USSR collapsed, Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a continent-wide security system, which the US rejected, insisting on preserving NATO -- and expanding it. Gorbachev agreed to allow a unified Germany to join NATO, a remarkable concession in the light of history. There was, however, a quid pro quo: that NATO not expand "one inch to the East," meaning to East Germany. That was promised by President Bush I and Secretary of State James Baker, but not on paper; it was a verbal commitment, and the US later claimed that [that] means it was not binding.

Careful archival research by Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, published last spring in the prestigious Harvard-MIT journal International Security, reveals very plausibly that this was intentional deceit, a very significant discovery that substantially resolves, I think, scholarly dispute about the matter. NATO did expand to East Germany; in later years to the Russian border. Those plans were sharply condemned by George Kennan and other highly respected commentators because they were very likely to lead to a new Cold War, as Russia naturally felt threatened. The threat became more severe when NATO invited Ukraine to join in 2008 and 2013. As Western analysts recognize, that extends the threat to the core of Russian strategic concerns, a matter discussed, for example, by John Mearsheimer in the lead article in the major establishment journal, Foreign Affairs.

However, I do not think the goal is to stop Russia's revival or to keep the military-industrial complex intact. And the US certainly doesn't want a military conflict, which would destroy both sides (and the world). Rather, I think it's the normal effort of a great power to extend its global dominance. But it does increase the threat of war, if only by accident, as Kennan and others presciently warned.

In your view, does a nuclear war between the US and Russia remain a very real possibility in today's world?

A very real possibility, and in fact, an increasing one. That's not just my judgment. It's also the judgment of the experts who set the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; of former Defense Secretary William Perry, one of the most experienced and respected experts on these matters; and of numerous others who are by no means scaremongers. The record of near accidents, which could have been terminal, is shocking, not to speak of very dangerous adventurism. It is almost miraculous that we have survived the nuclear weapons era, and playing with fire is irresponsible in the extreme. In fact, these weapons should be removed from the Earth, as even many of the most conservative analysts recognize -- Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and others.

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Agitation and uncertain politics

If political confrontation persists for some time, the political situation will become uncertain. The simmering discontent will then persist. However, some sudden triggering development either because of the confrontation between the PML-N and the opposition or because of adventurism on the part of the prime minister in his interaction with the establishment can create an entirely new political scenario. 》》》
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1157615/agitation-uncertain-politics/

Holy Lands by Nicolas Pelham review – positive thinking about the Middle East


An impeccably qualified author, frustrated with media negativity, sees a solution in pluralism and a revival of overlapping faith communities
Representatives of Iraq’s Shia ayatollahs shepherd Christian bishops round the Imam Ali shrine in the holy city of Najaf. At the nearby University of Kufa the dean of the Islamic Law faculty runs a Talmud class as part of his inter-faith programme. Rabbi Michael Melchior, a former Israeli deputy foreign minister, crafts an alternative peace agreement for Palestine with Nasr al-Din al-Shaer, Hamas’s former deputy prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority. Meanwhile, in Istanbul local Muslim and Christian leaders broach the idea of reconsecrating Hagia Sophia, once the seat of the Byzantine patriarch and later the Ottoman caliph’s favourite mosque, as a shared sanctuary where each of the two religions could pray on Fridays and Sundays.

Some might call these phenomena aberrations, but for Nicolas Pelham they are evidence that the narrative of relentless negativity and narrow-minded sectarianism in the Middle East conveyed by most media is simplistic and wrong. It is rare to come across a book on the region that charts a positive path for the future; rarer still to find one that advocates religious leadership and pragmatic communalism as the means for reaching peace.

Pelham’s credentials are impeccable. Now working for the Economist and previously for the Financial Times, he is one of the few western correspondents covering the region who speaks fluent Arabic and combines academic understanding of Middle Eastern culture and history with a reporter’s eye for vivid detail. His book focuses largely on Iraq and Israel/Palestine, though there are fascinating interviews with Abu Qatada, the veteran jihadi preacher, who turns out to be surprisingly bawdy in the privacy of his Jordanian home, and with Ara Sarafian, an exiled Armenian historian who sees Ottomanism, underpinned by democracy, as the best way to ensure Turkey’s peaceful development.

Pelham is more ambitious. He believes a revival of Ottoman values offers the best hope for the whole Middle East. Many previous writers have praised the religious pluralism of the Ottoman empire and its rulers’ tolerance of different cultures. Historians have used this record to counter those in the contemporary debate who accuse Islam of prejudice and suppression of other religions. Pelham takes a similar stand when he writes that Europe used to be a region from which, rather than to which, minorities fled, and that the Ottoman empire was where many found refuge.

But his broader point is that the past is not merely to be examined: its best aspects can be revived in today’s circumstances. He argues that the relative harmony of the Turkish empire arose from the rulers’ decision to administer it on sectarian lines, devolving authority to the leaders of the numerous faith communities, or “millets”. “Patriarchs, chief rabbis and Muslim clerics headed semi-autonomous theocracies that applied religious laws. But while the millets governed their respective co-religionists, they had no power over land … There were no ghettoes or confessional enclaves. Territorially, the powers of their respective leaders overlapped,” he writes. The system was milletocracy.

It came to an end with the collapse of the Ottoman empire in the first world war. Milleticide was committed by the Young Turks whose nationalism led them to repress or expel minorities and by western leaders who attempted to refashion the region by making it a patchwork of homogenous states. Pelham takes an especially dim view of Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian Nobel peace prize-winner, who sanctioned the ethnic cleansing of the defunct Ottoman empire’s Turkish and Greek communities under the guise of population exchange. “Unmixing the populations of the near east will tend to secure true pacification of the near east,” he argued. Pelham does not spare the decision-makers in London and Paris, who had a similar strategy. The British government partitioned Jerusalem into separate religious quarters, and then did the same for the whole of Palestine. As early as 1870, France had abolished Algeria’s millet system and granted French citizenship to Algeria’s Jews but not to its Muslims.

“The unmixing of sects triggered a century of wars designed to turn holy communities into holy lands,” Pelham argues. “The faith community acquired the trappings and attributes of a nation state. Defence of the land took precedence over universal values … Thus transformed, the region’s millets proved as ruthless as contemporary jihadis.” The generals of the Young Turks eradicated the Armenian millet in eastern Turkey as well as the Greek millet in the west. Jewish nationalists extirpated 85% of Palestine’s Muslim millet. In the latest chapter of milleticide, the Islamic State group has homogenised the area it controls by destroying the mosaic of Yazidis, Assyrian Christians and Shia Muslims who had lived for more than a millennium in Mesopotamia.

Pelham has harsh things to say about the House of Saud, whose rulers have let developers build a Muslim Las Vegas in Mecca and who deny non-Muslims access, though the Prophet had lived in the city with his Christian and Jewish wives. He has better things to say about the few places in northern Israel where Jews and Arabs have created bohemian neighbourhoods of mutual tolerance.

These are the green shoots of the revival of the millet system that Pelham believes is the best way to end today’s sectarian monopolies. Instead of peace negotiations that focus on border demarcation and partition, as in the two-state solution for Israel/Palestine, he advocates the decoupling of state from territory. It’s a one-state solution in which Arabs and Jews are equal citizens but with the additional element that as well as individual liberties there should be an acknowledgement of autonomous confessional systems as in those of the Taif agreement which ended Lebanon’s civil war. He points out that in Jordan and Israel religious courts prevent individuals from marrying outside their sect but he says precedent suggests that once existential fears subside, religious leaders can display pragmatism. The cult of victimhood and suspicion of Shiism that currently pervades Sunni communities is at its most extreme form with Isis but also prevalent among other Iraqi Sunnis and throughout the Sunni-majority Gulf states. It could be eased if religious leaders were freed from their fears of exclusion and enabled to go back to the traditions of tolerance and openness that once characterised the region.

Pelham is enough of a realist to know that hard-line governments, decades of vested interests and the pressures from prejudiced media will make it difficult for public consciousness to change. But he makes a powerful case that a regional alliance of overlapping millets, not connected with territorial boundaries, offers a better vision for restoring stability to the Middle East than the current agendas for conflict management.

Holy Lands by Nicolas Pelham review – positive thinking about the Middle East
by Jonathan Steele, theguardian.co


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Fethullah Gulen on 'GPS': Failed Turkey coup looked 'like a Hollywood movie'


Fethullah Gulen, the reclusive cleric accused by Turkey of hatching a military coup attempt, concedes that his supporters could have been involved in the putsch but again denied any direct connection.
"There might have been some sympathetic people [to Gulen] among them," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pointed the finger of blame for the failed uprising squarely at Gulen.
A bitter rival of the embattled President, Gulen is the leader of a popular movement called Hizmet. But the government refers to his group as the "Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization."
The 77-year-old imam, who left Turkey for the United States in 1999, has been living in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
On GPS: Who organized the coup to overthrow Ergodan? 01:00
In the CNN interview, he called for an international organization to investigate government claims connecting him to the coup attempt.
"If there is anything I told anyone about this verbally, if there is any phone conversation, if one-tenth of this accusation is correct ... I would bend my neck and would say, 'They are telling the truth. Let them take me away. Let them hang me,'" he said.
The July 15 uprising claimed the lives of 270 people, including 24 accused in the plot. It also triggered a wave of arrests, detentions and dismissals of those suspected of any involvement.
Erdogan, in an earlier interview with CNN, vowed revenge for what he called "a clear crime of treason."
But Gulen has repeatedly denied government claims he has directed sympathizers to destabilize the Erdogan regime.
"Some people staged a scenario, then someone who is seemingly a fan, has led some people into this," he said.
"It looks more like a Hollywood movie than a military coup. It seems something like a staged scenario. It is understood from what is seen that they prepared the ground to realize what they have already planned."
In a statement earlier this month, Gulen suggested the coup attempt could have been staged. Asked on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" if he thought Erdogan might have planned the coup, Gulen said he would "consider such a claim a slander."
"I would submit myself to God before I make such an accusation, knowing I am accountable to God."
Supporters describe Gulen as a moderate Muslim cleric who champions interfaith dialogue. Promotional videos show him meeting with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in the 1990s. He also met frequently with rabbis and Christian priests in Turkey.
Gulen has a loyal following -- known as Gulenists -- in Turkey. They subscribe to the Hizmet movement.
Nongovernmental organizations founded by the movement, including hundreds of secular co-ed schools, free tutoring centers, hospitals and relief agencies, have been credited with addressing many of Turkey's social problems.
The preacher and his movement also spawned a global network of schools and universities in more than 100 countries.
In the United States, the academic empire includes the largest charter school network in Texas, Harmony Public Schools.
Within Turkey, volunteers in the Gulen movement also own TV stations, the largest-circulation newspaper, gold mines and at least one Turkish bank.
"I have always been against coups, and I cursed them," he said. "I would curse people who resort to coups against democracy, liberty, republic."
Still, Turkey has formally requested Gulen's extradition.
But under an agreement with Turkey, Washington can only extradite a person if he or she has committed an "extraditable act." Treason -- such as that implied by Erdogan's demand for Gulen's extradition -- is not listed as such an act in the countries' treaty.
Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has said the coup attempt was the biggest piece of evidence but that Turkey would provide thousands of pieces of evidence of Gulen's involvement to the United States.
Gulen said returning to Turkey would only complicate matters.
"They will do whatever it takes, but if they could provide evidence for one-tenth of what they have been claiming and take me back by force, there is not much I can say about this," he said of the government. "What matters is whether or not they can do this by means of law, and I don't think this will happen with the will of God."
Erdogan and Gulen are former allies whose relationship fell into a bitter feud.
Asked if he had a message for Erdogan, Gulen said: "I only pray that he would not go to the presence of God with all these sins he committed."
CNN asked Erdogan's office for response to comments by Gulen in the interview but has not yet received a reply.
Fethullah Gulen on 'GPS': Failed Turkey coup looked 'like a Hollywood movie'
by RAY SANCHEZ, edition.cnn.com
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/31/world/fethullah-gulen-turkey-fareed-zakaria-gps/
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http://salaamforum.blogspot.com/2016/07/turmoil-in-turkey-and-our-attitude.html