Middle East Press on Honour Killing, Iraqi Cybercrime and Israelis-Emiratis Connect: New Age Islam's Selection, 4 December 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
4 December
2020
• Honour Killings Against Women Increase In
Southeast Syrian City
By Akhin Ahmed
• Activists Fear Iraqi Cybercrime Law Could
Limit Press Freedoms
By Omar Sattar
• Israelis, Emiratis Connect Over Cinema,
Concern For Nature
By Rina Bassist
• Australian War Crimes And Racist Fantasies In
Afghanistan
By Sahar Ghumkhor
• What Biden Can And Cannot Do For The Kurds
By Yerevan Saeed
• Empower Regular Iraqis To End Their Country’s
Forever War
By Michael Pregent
------
Honour Killings Against Women Increase In
Southeast Syrian City
By Akhin Ahmed
Dec 3, 2020
Dozens of
civil and rights activists held a sit-in Nov. 19 in front of the Palace of
Justice in the city of Suwayda southeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in
protest against the rise of crimes against women and girls that perpetrators
have referred to as "honour killings."
The
protesters held banners reading “We will seek justice,” “The killer has no
honour,” “Crime and honour do not meet,” “Killing women is not honourable,”
“You killed because she was a woman,” “You killed her because you are a
criminal,” “We want the rule of law” and “The law is our security and
protection.”
According
to media sources, the protests came in response to a significant rise of honor
killings against women in Suwayda. Most recently on Nov. 7, locals told police
about a man and a woman who hid the body of a woman in her 30s in a remote area
after the man in question killed her by hitting her in the head with an ax.
Police arrested the suspects and an investigation revealed that they were the
victim’s uncle and mother.
In
response, activists launched on social media an Arabic hashtag that roughly translates
into “We will seek justice,” coinciding with the Nov. 19 sit-in.
Lujain
Hamzah, a civil activist from Suwayda and one of the organizers of the sit-in,
wrote on her Facebook page Nov. 17, “We will seek justice. … There is no honour
in killing. We call on you to hold a silent vigil to protest the killing of
nine women after the sanctions [against such crimes] was reduced under the
pretext of honour. We will demand [justice] for the blood of the victims,
especially the one who was killed in the most heinous way with an ax. Together
we demand [the implementation] of strict sanctions and the protection of our
community from blood and animosity. Honour is supreme, while crime is a form of
decadence that cannot be compared to honour. It is the victims’ right for us to
demand justice. Meeting on Nov. 19, 2020.”
Lynne
Faisal, a women’s rights activist, told Al-Monitor that many women and girls in
Suwayda are killed by their own brothers, husbands or other relatives to get
their inheritance. The men accuse them of obscene acts to justify their crime
as a so-called honor killing, she said.
“In many
cases of honour killings, the coroner’s report proves that the female victim
was a virgin. It turns out later that the killer killed the woman to get her
inheritance,” Faisal said.
Roula
Sabry, a pseudonym for a 35-year-old woman who hails from Suwayda and has been
living in Germany for 10 years, told Al-Monitor about her sister who was slain
five years ago in Suwayda under an honour killing pretext. “When my father passed
away five years ago, my brother wanted to get his hands on my and my sister's
inheritance. After she moved to live with my brother and refused to give him
her part of the inheritance, he killed her under the pretext of honour and fled
the country.”
Sabry
added, “My sister was a virgin and the coroner said this.”
Lilia Jamil
told Al-Monitor about her mother, who was killed by her father 10 years ago
because she refused to give him the gold jewellery and money she had. So he
killed her, claiming she had a relationship with another man.
“My father
would always ask my mother to give him the gold and money that she inherited
from her own father. My mom would refuse, especially since my father gambled.
One day as I returned from school, my father was threatening to kill my mother
if she didn’t give him her gold necklace and money to make up for the losses he
incurred during gambling. When she refused, he stabbed her in the stomach and
heart and claimed that he killed her under the pretext of honour,” Jamil said.
Roula
Kobeiss, a rights activist, told Al-Monitor there has been a significant rise
of honour killings across Syria. “Claiming that the crime against a woman was
an honour killing is an attempt by the killer and society to prove the
legitimacy of said crime and escape punishment.”
Kobeiss
said that “honour killing” is not mentioned in Syrian law, but the latter
includes several legal gaps that allow the killer to circumvent the law and
commit his crime.
On March 8,
on International Women's Day, the Syrian government abolished Article 548 of
the Syrian Penal Code, which had allowed mitigating circumstances as an excuse
for perpetrators of so-called honour killings.
Kobeiss
said, “Traditions and archaic beliefs in our society are the main reasons
behind the killing of women in the Syrian community. A new law that would
sentence the killers to life in prison must be adopted; only then will women be
spared death.”
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/11/syria-suwayda-activists-protest-crimes-women-honor-killings.html
------
Activists Fear Iraqi Cybercrime Law Could Limit
Press Freedoms
By Omar Sattar
Dec 3, 2020
The proposed cybercrimes bill returns to the fore after the Iraqi parliament completed the first reading of the draft last week. This makes it the fourth attempt in which political parties seek to pass legislation codifying freedom of expression in the country. Similar attempts ended in vain in 2007, 2012, 2018 and 2019.
Media and
human rights circles in Iraq believe that the bill — proposed by the committees
of security, defense, legal affairs, education, culture, tourism, human rights,
services, reconstruction, communications and media — is the harshest of similar
laws in the world as it represses freedom of expression and imposes
restrictions on social media sites. On Nov. 26, Human Rights Watch described
the draft bill as “yet another tool to suppress dissent,” in violation of
international law. For its part, the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights
described it as an attempt “to intimidate society.” The Observatory said the
draft law was written based on a police state approach, similar to the one
adopted by the authorities during the October protests and which was intended
to suppress voices opposing it. It denounced the cybercrime law as aiming to
stifle “freedoms and rights'' guaranteed in the Iraqi Constitution amid
widespread objections by civilians and activists.
The draft
is legislation governing the crimes of publication on social media and the
misuse of computers and electronic devices that cause harm to others or
national security. It defines cybercrimes as “a positive or negative criminal
activity involving the use of advanced technology directly or indirectly as a
means or goal to carry out an intentional criminal act in the information
environment.”
However,
some of the articles in the draft angered the Iraqi street, media and even
political elites — such as the article requiring a prison sentence of seven to
10 years and a fine against anyone using the internet and a computer with the
intention of “assaulting principles and religious, family or social values.” The draft states that “whoever incites, aids, agrees or
participates with others to commit a crime stipulated in this law” shall be deemed an accomplice to
the crime. This is among 21 punitive articles, some of which relate to
encroaching on any religious, moral, family, social, or national symbols and
values, promoting hate speech and assaulting authorities without clearly
defining these concepts. This renders the draft a tool in the hands of the
ruling authority to suppress dissent.
Mustafa
Naser, an Iraqi journalist and a free speech activist, is the president of the
Association for Defending Press Freedom in Iraq. He said that the draft in its
current version is different from the versions introduced in previous years,
but it is still incomplete and includes a set of punitive articles opposing the
Constitution, specifically in Chapter 2 on rights and freedoms.
Naser told
Al-Monitor that “the committees that drafted the bill did not even think about
drafting articles to combat hate speech and sectarianism, but rather focused on
the practices and activities of citizens only. “The hefty sanctions in this draft
are mostly related to ambiguous concepts that are not clearly defined and
sometimes violated the Iraqi penal code.”
Among the
most prominent criticisms leveled at the cybercrime bill is that it punishes
whoever incites a crime even when the crime does not actually take place, which
opens the way for prosecution for any tweet or opinion that may be interpreted
as incitement and not a criticism of the performance of the authorities or an
opposing political opinion.
Article 22
provides for a prison sentence and fine for anyone who “creates, administers or
helps to create a site on an information network that promotes or incites to
immorality and obscenity or any programs, information, photographs or films
that violate ethics or public morals.”
Meanwhile,
the parliamentary blocs supporting the draft argue that it meets the need to
regulate activity on the internet and prevent electronic blackmail. Parliament
member and member of the parliamentary Security Committee Badr Al-Ziyadi told
Al-Monitor, “Iraq registers hundreds of cases of electronic blackmail every
day. Websites and computers are misused, and there must be legislation to
regulate this matter and prevent the occurrence of these kinds of crimes that
are not covered by existing laws.”
Regarding
the wide objections to the draft, Ziyadi said, “The Iraqi parliament has
responded to criticisms and proposals. The current version of the law differs
significantly from the previous drafts. Some objections are raised by those who
want to maintain the status quo in order to keep practicing extortion and
illegal acts freely and without any accountability. The parliament presidency
will host human rights and civil society organizations to discuss the current
version of the draft.”
The reading
of this bill in Iraq's parliament comes at a time when the issue of freedoms is
subject to a wide debate after the campaign of assassinations and kidnappings
of many activists, media professionals and protesters since the end of last
year to date — especially those who participated in supporting the popular
protests that broke out in October 2019 against the ruling parties.
This raised
the ire of the media quarters in particular. Moayad al-Lami, head of the Iraqi
Journalists Syndicate, believes that the draft violates the Constitution by
repressing freedom of the press in the country, which is "already
undermined and under constant pressure."
Lami called
for amending the draft in accordance with the provisions on freedoms in the
Iraqi Constitution. “The cybercrime law must be a legislation to protect
everyone. We will resort to legal means of recourse should the law be passed in
its current version, which was rejected by the majority of civil society
organizations and various media organizations.”
It is
expected that the massive protests and objections to this bill will lead to the
postponement of the vote on it or to its amendment at the very least. But if
the parliamentary blocs insist on passing it this time, they will be confirming
the opinion that this law will help them run the early general elections
scheduled for the upcoming summer away from popular criticism and possibly by
suppressing dissenting voices by means of the punitive provisions of the law.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/12/iraq-parliament-cybercrime-freedom.html
-----
Israelis, Emiratis Connect Over Cinema, Concern
For Nature
By Rina Bassist
Dec 3, 2020
As Israeli
legislators from across the political spectrum sent well wishes to the United
Arab Emirates on its 49th National Day yesterday, Israeli artists also
congratulated their new Middle East friends. French-Israeli singer Ishtar
recorded a special greeting in Arabic. Singer Eyal Golan, actor Sasson Gabai
and musician Aviv Geffen sent their greetings in English. "I am so glad we
are all part of one family, which is the peace family," said Geffen.
Normalization
between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is being driven first and foremost
by common diplomatic, security and economic interests. Every day we hear about
new economic joint ventures and delegations of business people visiting each
other. Still, ties between the civil societies, universities and non-profit
groups are also advancing, arguably even faster than bilateral trade.
The Abu
Dhabi Film Commission, the Israel Film Fund and the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film
& Television School announced two months ago they had reached an agreement
for cooperation in the fields of film and television. A joint statement
published less than a week after the Sept. 15 normalization ceremony at the
White House read, "Under the new agreement, the film commissions will
create an intercultural cooperation, creating content with the goal of
promoting tolerance, education and developing a deeper cultural understanding
between the Emirati and Israeli people."
The agreement
establishes joint film workshops and training initiatives and lays plans for a
regional film festival that would alternate between the two countries,
showcasing Israeli and Emirati productions and co-productions.
The
Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School is considered Israel’s leading institution of
its kind, and its graduates man the helm of the booming Israeli film industry.
For several years now its Great Master’s visit program has regularly hosted
renowned filmmakers and encouraged its students to participate in programs
abroad. Still, the school considers the Abu Dhabi agreement a unique
opportunity for Israeli film students and is keen on advancing this new
partnership.
Sam
Spiegel's enthusiasm is certainly shared by its Emirati counterparts. Abu Dhabi
Film Commissioner Hans Fraikin said, “This new partnership between the UAE and
Israel will be extremely beneficial for our burgeoning Emirati film and
television community by allowing our talented content creators to broaden their
landscapes and develop skills from diverse expertise.”
Not
counting bilateral trade, the world of cinema is not the only domain to benefit
from normalization. In another interesting cooperation initiative, an agreement
was signed in November between the International Fund for Houbara Conservation
in Abu Dhabi and the Israel Nature & Heritage Foundation to collaborate on
conservation work in Israel. The Nov. 23 memorandum of understanding outlined
cooperation in the next five years on research and field efforts to save the
African Houbara bird and other endangered species.
In a
communique shared with Al-Monitor, Vilnai said, "Through the agreement,
the Israel Nature & Heritage Foundation will benefit from the vast
knowledge accumulated by the International Fund for Houbara Conservation about
the biology, behaviour and population movements of the Houbara and other
species and from the fund’s expertise in conservation and rehabilitation of
natural habitats."
Shaul
Goldstein is the director of the Nature and Park Authority, under which the
Nature & Heritage Foundation operates. He too was thrilled over the
agreement signed with the Emirates, inviting these future partners to visit
Israel and to consider additional forms of cooperation.
A third
non-commercial initiative for cooperating with the Emirates came from the
Ministry of Health. On Aug. 24, even before the normalization agreement was
official, the Israeli and Emirati health ministers agreed to cooperate. Health
Ministry director Hezi Levi visited the Emirates on Aug. 31 to discuss
cooperation in battling obesity and fighting the coronavirus pandemic as well
as medical training programs and student exchanges. They also discussed
cooperation in emergency situations.
On Sept.
10, representatives of the nonprofit Rachashei Lev organization, which supports
children with cancer, visited the Gold International Cancer Center in Dubai. An
agreement between two will facilitate exchange of both knowledge and
volunteers. "We are proud and excited to take part in the historic peace agreement
between Israel and the UAE. As part of the first official medical delegation
from Israel, we were invited to examine advanced medical technologies and
groundbreaking treatments. We are so excited about this new deal, as we know it
will serve as a fantastic tool in the development of new and innovative
treatments for our heroic children," the group posted on Facebook.
Last but
not least comes sports. Israeli athletes have been ostracized in past years by
Arab athletes who refused to compete against them and by Arab countries who
refused to host them for events. On Oct. 23, the two countries' soccer leagues
signed a memorandum of understanding to bolster cooperation. Two days later,
the Israeli team Maccabi Haifa announced a cooperation agreement with the
Emirates' Al-Ain. The two teams plan to meet soon for a friendly match in Abu
Dhabi. Senior officials from the soccer associations of both countries are also
in close contact. For them, as well, a friendly game between the two national
soccer teams is just a question of time.
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/12/israel-united-arab-emirates-bahrain-cinema-sports-soccer.html
------
Australian War Crimes And Racist Fantasies In
Afghanistan
By Sahar Ghumkhor
3 Dec 2020
Last week
the distressing details of a four-year inquiry into the Australian Defence
Force’s war crimes in Afghanistan were finally released to the public. The
country grappled with the scale of the violence: at least 23 deadly incidents;
39 Afghan civilians, including children, killed; at least 25 Australian
soldiers of the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) involved.
The report
described a savage practice of “blooding”, where young special forces soldiers
were instructed by senior commanders to make their “first kill” and a “culture
of secrecy”, where witnesses remained silent and murderers covered up their
crimes by planting weapons and radios on dead bodies.
While the
details of the crimes have been widely reported on, there has been a curious
reluctance in Australia to explain the violence and trace its racist origins.
The local media coverage of the revelations had a defensive tone.
Military,
academic and mental health experts appeared on Australian TV screens to buffer
the allegations by speaking of the integrity of the military and concerns over
the impact on the image and morale of the defence forces. Australian officials
and commentators tried to present the war crimes as an act of a few “bad
apples” just as their American counterparts did with the uncovered torture and
murder at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Even when
the horror of the war crimes was on full display and the sheer scale of the war
crimes and depraved practices undeniable, white innocence was still desperately
gasping for redemption.
But what
struck me the most as an Afghan living in Australia watching this fiasco
unravel was how the coverage of the inquiry on Australian TV ended with the
promotion of a mental health helpline for members of the military and their
families. This, in a year of protests against uniformed men terrorising
civilian populations and basking in impunity taking place around the world.
The tone
deafness was incredible and the narcissism – diabolical. Absent in the media
coverage was any concern for the victims and the feelings of Afghans and Afghan
Australians. Many of us carry the scars of war and many were certainly
retraumatised by these findings.
Army Chief
Angus Campbell did offer an apology to Afghans on the day of the report’s
release. But he also curiously repeated the report’s conclusion that these
crimes did not occur in the “heat of battle”. That is, we have 39 illegal
murders and an untold number of others which must be “legal”, as they occurred
in what the Australian army decided was the “heat of battle”.
This is how
the spellbinding fog of the so-called “war on terror” transforms civilians into
“collateral damage” or suspect terrorists, monsters into heroes, freedom
fighters into terrorists and terrorists into Muslims. The racial economy of the
“war on terror” has made Black and brown lives cheap, disposable, not worth
acknowledging or grieving. More than half a million people have been killed in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq in the “heat of battle”, but the gruesome
details of their murders will not make it into any report.
This
normalisation of violence by the West in certain parts of the world creates
spaces where practices like “blooding” – the merciless murder of civilians and
detainees as a rite of passage – flourish. It is where the slaughter of
defenceless people as a bonding ritual to make white men into warriors is
deemed acceptable. It is where white men, drunk on their own saviour fantasy,
come to see themselves as all-powerful, as untouchable.
But why
“blooding”? There is something primal about the word. It has a dehumanising
effect, reducing locals to animals to be sacrificed for a higher purpose – a
manifest destiny – in a coming-of-age ritual. “Blooding”, “warrior culture” and
“Zulu” – the name some SAS units adopted – are steeped in histories of colonial
violence.
Australians
should be intimately familiar with these themes. After all, this nation has a
prolific history of “blooding” rituals, dispossession and naked violence
against native populations.
Today the
white men return to the former imperial frontier to pursue boyhood ideals of
adventure, discovery and unbridled aggressions. Afghanistan is not a graveyard
of empires as the mythology insists, it is where the imperial imagination is
set free to act out its darkest fantasies with no legal or moral restraint.
And just
like in colonial times, when white men went after trophies, including human
ones, today they collect body parts of dead Afghan civilians and their
prosthetics to use as drinking vessels.
The desire
for possession of body parts, even plastic ones, is a dark pathology,
especially when they are snatched from a land covered with landmines and
inhabited by so many broken bodies, where prosthetic parts are inaccessible to
many. I wonder about the Australians who witnessed the theft of a dead Afghan
man’s prosthetic leg or knew where it came from, but nevertheless, relished
drinking beer from it.
I think
about the mutilated face of Aisha Mohammedzai, the Afghan girl who appeared on
the front cover of Time magazine in 2010, who was then flown to the US and offered
a plastic nose. Plastic body parts are powerful commodities in Afghanistan:
white men can give them as a gift and can take them away as punishment.
Perhaps the
even more insidious part of this story is how the white men can kill at will,
mutilate corpses, steal body parts and still come away feeling like heroes.
Indeed,
despite the reports of war crimes piling up and murder of civilians spiking,
the overarching Western narrative of the Afghan war has continued to present
Western armies as saviours.
The war in
Afghanistan has been considered the “good war”, unlike the invasion of Iraq
which some eventually denounced as the “bad war”, the one built on lies. One
has to wonder, however, how the anti-war movement came to believe that the same
people who lied to us about Iraq somehow had the best of intentions in
Afghanistan.
There is
nothing that makes Westerners feel more powerful than the official rationale
for the invasion of Afghanistan: going to war for the sake of Muslim women, to
protect them from Muslim men.
But people
forget that the original justification was not the protection of Afghan women.
The US and its allies initially declared they were invading as an act of
self-defence because Afghanistan was harbouring al-Qaeda and its leader Osama
bin Laden, who was accused of ordering the 9/11 attacks.
But none of
the conditions for self-defence were sufficiently met to secure legal approval.
There was no ongoing armed threat against the US by the time of the invasion,
the Security Council did not meet in time to sanction it, Afghanistan was not
an aggressor nation, harbouring bin Laden did not warrant a military
intervention and the Taliban was actually open to negotiate.
Once the
war began, America and its allies were in murky legal territory and they knew
it. The motives for the war quickly shifted from self-defence to defending
Afghan women and removing the Taliban. The new paradigm of militant
humanitarianism (responsibility to protect) became the cover-up narrative for
the illegal origins of the war.
This
humanitarian pretence has disarmed Afghans of the right to self-defence and
self-determination. The idea of the “good war” has been so tenuously guarded
that the plight of Afghan women has become dogma and Afghan political will that
does not align with the humanitarian paradigm and its vision for the future of
the country has been automatically labelled a threat.
As evidence
of horrendous war crimes mounts, Westerners, including Australians, continue to
hold on to the racist fantasy that they are fighting a “good war” in
Afghanistan, that they have the moral right to demarcate the boundaries of the
battleground, that they can decide who is a civilian and who is Taliban.
In “the
heart of darkness”, these delineations do not really mean anything, they are
mere cloaks for monsters and the nations that birth them. For many Afghans,
this is the real revelation of the Australian inquiry.
----
Sahar Ghumkhor's research explores the
intersections of race, gender and psychoanalysis.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/3/australian-war-crimes-and-racist-fantasies-in-afghanistan/
---
What Biden Can And Cannot Do For The Kurds
By Yerevan Saeed
3 Dec 2020
Many Kurds
across the Middle East welcomed Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the
recent elections in the United States. The former vice president is known to be
sympathetic to the Kurdish cause and his presidency is expected to bring some
relief from the harmful policies Trump pursued.
Some even
hope that the Biden administration may oversee the fulfilment of the Kurdish
dream for an independent state. After all, it was Biden who in May 2015 told
Masoud Barzani, then president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq
(KRI): “We will see an independent Kurdistan in our lifetime”. But are such
hopes realistic?
There is
little question that Biden has been a staunch supporter of the Kurds for nearly
three decades. In 1991, he denounced former President George H W Bush for
allowing Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein to recapture the liberated Kurdish
areas in northern Iraq. In 2002, he addressed the KRI’s parliament, reassuring
members that “mountains are not your only friends”.
After the
2003 invasion of Iraq, Biden advocated for a federal model in which Kurdish,
Sunni, and Shia regions are established to help alleviate the sectarian
tensions driving the civil war. This move was welcomed by the Kurds, who saw it
as a guarantee of their autonomy.
Biden also
harshly criticised the Trump administration’s policies on the Kurds. In 2019,
Trump gave the green light to Turkey to attack Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces
in northeastern Syria, for which Biden called him “the most reckless and
incompetent commander in chief we’ve ever had”.
But the
president-elect is also a realist, and when he takes office on January 20,
2021, he will pursue the best interests of his country. His willingness to
support the Kurds will be limited by the broader US agenda in the Middle East
that he will set.
He had a
similar approach as vice president tasked with dealing with Iraq and Syria
under the two administrations of President Barack Obama. During that time,
Biden repeatedly tried to leverage his personal relationships with Kurdish
leaders to advance the US interests and in fact, in some cases he prevented
Kurds from strengthening their strategic position vis-à-vis Baghdad.
While
supporting Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, Biden pressured Erbil to come to terms
with Baghdad. He personally asked Barzani to delay the vote on the KRI
constitution because it had included the disputed province of Kirkuk as an
integral part of the Kurdish region. This would have sparked an ethnic conflict
in Iraq between Kurds and Arabs and undermined US interests in Iraq.
In 2010,
Biden, along with Obama, personally asked Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani to give
up his position as president of Iraq in favour of Ayad Allawi, the head of the
Iraqiya coalition, which had won the elections earlier that year. This move
would have meant giving up a post allocated to the Kurds, which would have
greatly diminished Kurdish power in Baghdad. Talabani rebuffed the request and
stayed in his post.
Biden also
supported Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose decision to cut Erbil’s
budget in 2014 and purge Kurds from the Iraqi Army caused a lot of resentment
in the KRI.
So while
Biden has expressed much support for the Kurds in rhetoric, in practice, his
record is mixed at best. As a person who deeply believes in human rights and
freedom, he may want the Kurds to have an independent state, but he also
understands the consequences this may have in one of the most challenging
geopolitical regions of the world.
In 2007, he
warned Kurdish leaders against pursuing independence by saying: “You will be
eaten alive by the Turks and the Iranians, they will attack you, there will be
an all-out war” and emphasising that the US would not be able to protect them.
Yet
interestingly, senior Kurdish officials told me during my recent trip to the
KRI that Biden’s assertion in May 2015 about “an independent Kurdistan” and
ambiguous remarks Obama made regarding the Kurds’ national aspiration were
viewed as a departure from Washington’s long-held policy of a united Iraq. They
also noted that this set in motion the Kurdish bid for independence, which
culminated in the 2017 referendum.
“We thought
that that was a green light to go ahead because they did not tell us, ‘don’t do
it,’” said one official. Another journalist with close ties to Barzani, echoed
this sentiment, adding, “We understand clear messages and statements and the
United States did not give us that.”
Therefore,
it is important for the next US administration to clearly articulate its policy
towards the Kurds in order to avoid potential misunderstandings that could have
real-life implications for the stability of the region.
The Kurds,
for their part, should manage their expectations about what Biden can do for
them. Instead of waiting on the US to provide support or solve their disputes,
they should focus on what they can do for themselves: strengthening Kurdish institutions,
upholding the rule of law, tempering down internal political tensions, and
embracing freedom of speech and democracy.
Progress on
all of these issues will be welcomed by the new administration, which at the
very least will provide some level of foreign policy predictability and
stability – a much-needed change after four years of Trump’s erratic leadership
and reckless decision-making.
-----
Yerevan Saeed is a Research Associate at Middle
East Research Institute. He is a PhD candidate at the School for Conflict
Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR), George Mason. He previously served as White
House Correspondent for Kurdish Rudaw TV, and has worked for news agencies
including the New York Times, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe,
the BBC and the Guardian as a journalist and translator.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/3/what-biden-can-and-cannot-do-for-the-kurds/
----
Empower Regular Iraqis To End Their Country’s
Forever War
By Michael Pregent
December
03, 2020
This has
been a terrible year for Iraq. Well, 2020 started out great with the killing of
Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 2, but it went downhill from there. I will revisit the
anniversary of the Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis strike a bit later, as
we get closer to its one-year anniversary — and so will the Iraqi militias.
Iraq’s 2021
depends on the actions taken by the Trump administration over the next seven
weeks and those taken after inauguration day on Jan. 20.
President
Donald Trump’s Iraq and Iran team would be wise to sanction the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij, and the Quds Force in its entirety
for human rights abuses, and do the same with Iraqi militia leaders, political
parties, and militias tied to Iran. Sanctions for documented human rights violations
and abuses would be lasting and would stay in place regardless of who is in
office in 2021. Lifting sanctions on individuals and entities tied to human
rights abuses would be impossible for the Biden administration to justify to
the American people, especially to moderate Democrats.
Moderate
Democrats will have more power in Congress, even though they lost seats due to
the radical positions taken by members like Rep. Ilhan Omar. These moderate
Democrats still see Iran as an oppressive terrorist state and want it held
accountable.
Let us look
at the 2021 Iraqis do not want. It is a year where a Biden administration — one
that has advertised a pro-Iran policy — would accelerate the end of what is
left of Iraq’s sovereignty. It would clear the way for the Quds Force and its
proxies to have four more years to further solidify their control of Iraq,
destabilize the Levant, and threaten US allies in the region.
All we have
to do is look at what Soleimani did with the last two years of the Obama
administration and the initial two years of the Trump administration, when
Brett McGurk and Jim Mattis ignored the Quds Force commander’s growing
influence in Iraq and Syria and urged Trump to do the same.
Esmail
Ghaani, Soleimani’s successor, has ordered subordinated Iraqi militias not to
provoke the US while Trump is in office and await Tehran’s favored candidate —
as assessed by the US intelligence community — Joe Biden. Tehran favored Biden,
while the Iranian people wanted Trump. And Baghdad took Tehran’s position
despite the majority of Iraqis favoring Trump. In both cases, the people under
oppressive rule wanted Trump, while their oppressors hoped for Biden.
The
Iran-aligned Iraqi militias have been ordered not to attack the US Embassy or
US mission in Iraq until after Biden’s inauguration. It will be hard for them
not to attack on Jan. 2, the one-year anniversary of the strike on designated
terrorists Soleimani and Kata’ib Hezbollah leader Al-Muhandis, but the US will
be ready to respond under Trump.
While Ghaani’s
militias are taking a tactical pause, they are still killing Iraqis and the
international community should take action, along with the US, to designate and
sanction these criminals.
The
Nasiriyah killings of last week — by militias loyal to Tehran — should not go
unpunished by Iraqis. They are the very people waiting to be empowered by the
US to make the chant of “Iraq Hurra! Iran Barra!” (Iran out, Iraq is free) a
reality.
It is time
to empower the Sunni-Shiite organic anti-Iran resistance in Iraq through a turn
away from Baghdad and an engagement with those Iraqis who are willing to
forgive the US and allow it to correct its mistakes. There are Iraqi leaders
inside and outside of Iraq encouraging a new US approach. These Iraqis are
pro-US, anti-Iran, and are even willing to make peace with Israel over time.
It is time
to end this forever war by granting victory to those who are willing to die for
an Iraq that is free from Iran’s malign influence.
How do we
achieve victory? Give Iraqis victory.
Listen to
Iraqis over Iraq’s ruling class. Listen to the Iraqis that are willing to die
for their rights and freedom from Iran. Listen to the Iraqis that taught us to
defeat Al-Qaeda. Listen to the Iraqis that told us not to use Iran’s militias
against Daesh. Listen to the Iraqis that tell us how to end this forever war.
Listen to the Iraqi people instead of those in power and those Americans who
benefit from forever wars.
----
Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer,
is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1772121
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