happyliza
The Living Force
New Country – Old Threat
5.7.2014 – Cyprus Today Newspaper
By Colonel John Hughes-Wilson
Up to now we all thought that Isis was the Ancient Egyptian goddess of the family, the downtrodden poor, and the gentle mother of Horus the sun god. Wrong!
Isis now stands for the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, an organisation as far removed from the Egyptian goddess as possible. It is now one of the nastier – if not the nastiest – embodiment of today’s militant Islam.
In the past month Isis’s Jihadi warriors have burst out of civil war-torn Syria and grabbed much of western Iraq. In three days they seized control of the key towns of Mosul and Tikrit and encircled Kirkuk. Iraq’s US-trained and equipped army shed their uniforms and fled in panic as their fanatical enemies bore down on them in an orgy of killing and pillaging. Billions of dollars-worth of military equipment and millions of dollars-worth of real money has been seized by the triumphant invaders.
To make the point even more strongly, Isis have released videos showing how it deals with those it calls “the enemies of God”. These include crucifying their opponents, lining up prisoners of war before shooting them and, in scenes reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazi SS, executing hundreds of captives before and open grave.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has denounced Isis for carrying out “summary executions and extrajudicial killings” in the areas they had captured. Such pious statements will have little effect on the religious zealots now blazing their way through the Fertile Crescent and tearing whole nations apart. Isis and militant Islam are on the march in the Middle East as never before.
The capitulation of the Iraqi military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in the whole region. Ira’s Shi’ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is now a weakened, isolated figure, relying on Shi’ite Iran for support against his Sunni opponents. The collapse of Baghdad has also allowed the Kurds to move in and seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk in the oil-rich region to the north. The map of Iraq is being ripped up.
Two questions now arise from a shocked world: first, who the hell are these maniacs? Secondly, how on earth did this disaster come about?
To answer the first we have to go back over 1,300 years to 632AD, because the problem begins at the moment of Mohammed’s death. The prophet died without sons and without leaving a clear will. His closest male relative was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, whose followers – the Shiat Ali –say that he was the only one with the spiritual authority to succeed Mohammed.
Sunnis on the other hand believed that the Caliphate, or Islamic State, should be led by politically appointed warrior priests, and backed Mohammed’s father-in-law Abu Bakr as the first Caliph or ruler of Islam.
However, just 48years after Mohammed’s death, when Ali’s son Hussein – Mohammed’s grandson – challenged what he saw as the corrupt and tyrannical Sunni leadership of the Caliphate, he was killed by Sunni Muslims at Karbala. This massacre of Mohammed’s grandson and most of his family sent shock waves throughout the Muslim empire. Islam split for ever into the Sunni Caliphate and the Shi’ite “followers of Ali”.
So today’s troubles are really rooted in a historic battle over who should lead Islam. What we are seeing today is nothing less than a bloody continuation of a very old religious civil war. Parallels with Christianity’s Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 between Catholic and Protestants, which laid waste most of central Europe, are inescapable.
So the answer to the question, “who are these people?” is simple: they are bloodthirsty, well-armed religious zealots hungry for loot and determined to reinstate their own new Caliphate to replace the one that lapsed when the last Ottoman Sultan and Caliph of Islam stepped down in 1924.
To the second question, “how did this come about?” the answer is messier. And, unsurprisingly, the British are mainly to blame.
When Britain and Turkey went to war in 1914 great swathes of what was then called Mesopotamia were controlled by the Ottoman Empire. London promised Palestine to the Arabs and sent Lawrence into Arabia to stir up Faisal and his desert tribes. Further east, the British seized the oil ports at the Shatt-al-Arab on the Persian Gulf and began to march north to Baghdad. Although the first force was cut off and captured in 1916 at Kut, by 1918 the victorious British forces had swept north, heading for their real goal: the oil-rich areas of Kirkuk, Mosul and Irbil in Kurdistan. The Anglo Persian Oil Company had many British politicians among its shareholders...
Under s secret backstairs 1916 deal between Britain and France, Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot had carved up the Middle East and redrawn the map, parcelling out any captured Ottoman territories as spoils of war. France got Syria and Lebanon; Britain got Palestine. Faisal and his Arabs were cheated out of their gains and went home with nothing.
But in Mesopotamia new countries were born: Trans-Jordan was mandated to Britain, as was a new country carved out in straight lines on the map: Iraq, cutting across ancient tribal, ethnic and religious areas. Iraq was a hotchpotch of Shi’a and Sunni, Kurds and Arabs and warring tribes. Iraq in fact, without a strong central government to hold it together, was always an accident waiting to happen.
Strong government was Saddam Hussein’s speciality. As the dictatorial Ra’ees of his disparate people he and his Arab Socialist Ba’ath party ruled with an iron hand. The 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq ended all that.
In the aftermath of victory, Washington’s viceroys were more concerned with handing our mouth-watering contracts to American corporations that keeping the broken country together. The Iraqi Army and the civil service were told to go home. Iraq fell apart in vicious sectarian fighting.
So when Syria’s “Arab Spring” went sour and erupted into a civil war between Assad’s Shi’a ruling party and the insurgent Sunni Jihadi fighters on Iraq’s western doorstep in 2012, Iraq was in grave danger. With a strong, united government and strong defences Iraq might have survived; but President al-Maliki is a weak ruler and one who has openly favoured Iraq’s Shi’a majority against the Sunni minority – with disastrous results. The old Iraq was split from top to bottom.
It was into this vacuum of a weak, divided country and religious confrontation that Isis and its fighters pounced, ostensibly to help their Sunni brethren. Their proclamation of a new Caliphate and insistence on Sharia law in their new territories merely underscores their determination to carve out a new Islamic country for the 21st century. Isis’s demand that Muslims around the world are now required to pledge allegiance to the new Caliph will have major implications for Britain and the West, not just the Middle East.
Because religious radicalism in the UK and throughout the world is a spreading problem and has been since 9/11. For many young men war is often seen as an exciting rite of passage – finally able to prove themselves as adults, not only to their parents but also to their peers. The influence of religion, desire for adventure, even war-like computer games, all combine as recruiting sergeants for the wannabe jihadi warrior. A whole new generation of young warriors has been trained in Syria. Now they are being encouraged to swear allegiance to a new Caliph and spread their bloody version of Islam in the West.
Isis and its maniacal followers are going to pose a serious problem. The dangerous flotsam of the shipwreck of Iraq and Syria will soon be drifting back on to our western beaches.
5.7.2014 – Cyprus Today Newspaper
By Colonel John Hughes-Wilson
Up to now we all thought that Isis was the Ancient Egyptian goddess of the family, the downtrodden poor, and the gentle mother of Horus the sun god. Wrong!
Isis now stands for the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, an organisation as far removed from the Egyptian goddess as possible. It is now one of the nastier – if not the nastiest – embodiment of today’s militant Islam.
In the past month Isis’s Jihadi warriors have burst out of civil war-torn Syria and grabbed much of western Iraq. In three days they seized control of the key towns of Mosul and Tikrit and encircled Kirkuk. Iraq’s US-trained and equipped army shed their uniforms and fled in panic as their fanatical enemies bore down on them in an orgy of killing and pillaging. Billions of dollars-worth of military equipment and millions of dollars-worth of real money has been seized by the triumphant invaders.
To make the point even more strongly, Isis have released videos showing how it deals with those it calls “the enemies of God”. These include crucifying their opponents, lining up prisoners of war before shooting them and, in scenes reminiscent of Hitler’s Nazi SS, executing hundreds of captives before and open grave.
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has denounced Isis for carrying out “summary executions and extrajudicial killings” in the areas they had captured. Such pious statements will have little effect on the religious zealots now blazing their way through the Fertile Crescent and tearing whole nations apart. Isis and militant Islam are on the march in the Middle East as never before.
The capitulation of the Iraqi military and the rapid advances of the insurgents have dramatically changed the balance of power in the whole region. Ira’s Shi’ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is now a weakened, isolated figure, relying on Shi’ite Iran for support against his Sunni opponents. The collapse of Baghdad has also allowed the Kurds to move in and seize control of the disputed city of Kirkuk in the oil-rich region to the north. The map of Iraq is being ripped up.
Two questions now arise from a shocked world: first, who the hell are these maniacs? Secondly, how on earth did this disaster come about?
To answer the first we have to go back over 1,300 years to 632AD, because the problem begins at the moment of Mohammed’s death. The prophet died without sons and without leaving a clear will. His closest male relative was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, whose followers – the Shiat Ali –say that he was the only one with the spiritual authority to succeed Mohammed.
Sunnis on the other hand believed that the Caliphate, or Islamic State, should be led by politically appointed warrior priests, and backed Mohammed’s father-in-law Abu Bakr as the first Caliph or ruler of Islam.
However, just 48years after Mohammed’s death, when Ali’s son Hussein – Mohammed’s grandson – challenged what he saw as the corrupt and tyrannical Sunni leadership of the Caliphate, he was killed by Sunni Muslims at Karbala. This massacre of Mohammed’s grandson and most of his family sent shock waves throughout the Muslim empire. Islam split for ever into the Sunni Caliphate and the Shi’ite “followers of Ali”.
So today’s troubles are really rooted in a historic battle over who should lead Islam. What we are seeing today is nothing less than a bloody continuation of a very old religious civil war. Parallels with Christianity’s Thirty Years War from 1618 to 1648 between Catholic and Protestants, which laid waste most of central Europe, are inescapable.
So the answer to the question, “who are these people?” is simple: they are bloodthirsty, well-armed religious zealots hungry for loot and determined to reinstate their own new Caliphate to replace the one that lapsed when the last Ottoman Sultan and Caliph of Islam stepped down in 1924.
To the second question, “how did this come about?” the answer is messier. And, unsurprisingly, the British are mainly to blame.
When Britain and Turkey went to war in 1914 great swathes of what was then called Mesopotamia were controlled by the Ottoman Empire. London promised Palestine to the Arabs and sent Lawrence into Arabia to stir up Faisal and his desert tribes. Further east, the British seized the oil ports at the Shatt-al-Arab on the Persian Gulf and began to march north to Baghdad. Although the first force was cut off and captured in 1916 at Kut, by 1918 the victorious British forces had swept north, heading for their real goal: the oil-rich areas of Kirkuk, Mosul and Irbil in Kurdistan. The Anglo Persian Oil Company had many British politicians among its shareholders...
Under s secret backstairs 1916 deal between Britain and France, Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot had carved up the Middle East and redrawn the map, parcelling out any captured Ottoman territories as spoils of war. France got Syria and Lebanon; Britain got Palestine. Faisal and his Arabs were cheated out of their gains and went home with nothing.
But in Mesopotamia new countries were born: Trans-Jordan was mandated to Britain, as was a new country carved out in straight lines on the map: Iraq, cutting across ancient tribal, ethnic and religious areas. Iraq was a hotchpotch of Shi’a and Sunni, Kurds and Arabs and warring tribes. Iraq in fact, without a strong central government to hold it together, was always an accident waiting to happen.
Strong government was Saddam Hussein’s speciality. As the dictatorial Ra’ees of his disparate people he and his Arab Socialist Ba’ath party ruled with an iron hand. The 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq ended all that.
In the aftermath of victory, Washington’s viceroys were more concerned with handing our mouth-watering contracts to American corporations that keeping the broken country together. The Iraqi Army and the civil service were told to go home. Iraq fell apart in vicious sectarian fighting.
So when Syria’s “Arab Spring” went sour and erupted into a civil war between Assad’s Shi’a ruling party and the insurgent Sunni Jihadi fighters on Iraq’s western doorstep in 2012, Iraq was in grave danger. With a strong, united government and strong defences Iraq might have survived; but President al-Maliki is a weak ruler and one who has openly favoured Iraq’s Shi’a majority against the Sunni minority – with disastrous results. The old Iraq was split from top to bottom.
It was into this vacuum of a weak, divided country and religious confrontation that Isis and its fighters pounced, ostensibly to help their Sunni brethren. Their proclamation of a new Caliphate and insistence on Sharia law in their new territories merely underscores their determination to carve out a new Islamic country for the 21st century. Isis’s demand that Muslims around the world are now required to pledge allegiance to the new Caliph will have major implications for Britain and the West, not just the Middle East.
Because religious radicalism in the UK and throughout the world is a spreading problem and has been since 9/11. For many young men war is often seen as an exciting rite of passage – finally able to prove themselves as adults, not only to their parents but also to their peers. The influence of religion, desire for adventure, even war-like computer games, all combine as recruiting sergeants for the wannabe jihadi warrior. A whole new generation of young warriors has been trained in Syria. Now they are being encouraged to swear allegiance to a new Caliph and spread their bloody version of Islam in the West.
Isis and its maniacal followers are going to pose a serious problem. The dangerous flotsam of the shipwreck of Iraq and Syria will soon be drifting back on to our western beaches.
