I have been having some almighty regrets recently.
Back in the early 2000s, whilst sitting in a bar in Belgium talking to some Americans and some locals, we (the Americans and me) launched a vitriolic attack on the others for their unwillingness to remove Saddam Hussein from power. What a bunch of white flaggers they were! Well no. Although we knew it back then, the war in Iraq was really about the oil (the US capture of the Ministry of Oil was one of the first things they did in Baghdad) and not the removal of Saddam Hussein. I naïvely thought Blair and Bush should have just come out and said it - we want to remove Saddam from power because of his horrific treatment of the Kurds and other minorities. But in fact they cooked up some cock-and-bull story about him having a deadly arsenal of lethal weapons. I personally thought they would have got a lot more sympathy from the UN Security Council and the EU dove countries (France and Germany in particular) if they had just said they were going in to remove a brutal dictator and liberate the people of Iraq.
How much I regret that now.
I look back and realise what a ridiculous notion it was to try to undermine the very embodiment of Middle Eastern stability that was the four-headed monster of Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the king of Saudi Arabia and the Ayatollah in Iran, not to mention Gaddafi in Libya.
There is a saying in the Middle East: "Better a hundred years of dictatorship than a day of anarchy." And this is what Blair and Bush forgot about when they tried to enforce democracy on volatile lands that don't function like those found in Europe or North America. By trying to install a benign regime on a multi-ethnic, multi-faith country like Iraq, where there were many various victims of Saddam, they were opening Pandora's box. We know that now. I have always believed democracy is not good for everyone, but for some reason I got waylaid by Bush and his British stooge. I thought, OK, the reason is stupid, but that bastard needs to be taught a lesson.
Wrong.
I am quite sure, if we had just left the Middle East alone to sort it out with each other, not just in the nineties, but way back at the end of the French and British Empires, there would not have been half of these troubles as we have now. Quite possibly, the Arab world would have set up an enlightened, tolerant and progressive secular system where Muslims, Jews and Christians would also have flourished. But it would not have been a democracy like ours. It would have been an absolute monarchy run from either Riyadh, Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo or Jerusalem, rich in oil and minerals, trading over time with the Soviets and then the Russians, the US, the Chinese, the EU and Africa. Due to their skills in business, the rulers would probably have made every other nation on Earth strike bargains to get what they wanted. It would have been the richest land on the planet. The scientific research and factory production of the region, stretching potentially from Mauritania in the west to Kuwait in the east, Khartoum in the south and Aleppo in the north, would have outproduced the West. Muslim science was far more advanced than Europe right up until, and in some cases beyond, the Renaissance. Rule by minority, coups d'état and flitting between monarchies and republics might have been the norm, but the people would have been far more peaceful had they had the chance to be united and peaceful. That is the key - a rich country at peace is always going to flourish, given the chance.
No wonder why the Middle East was divided along lines drawn up by the British and the French after the colonial period: keep them fighting each other, and it'll keep them poor and undeveloped for centuries to come. And unfortunately, that's what has happened. The number of wars fought in the name of politics, people or religion in that area is second to none, and the repression, fear and indignation many in those lands have felt at the hands of our rulers in the West is just as strong and must be redressed as soon as possible. It is impossible to redraw the borders now - the leaders in the various countries where stability fortunately reigns would find it difficult to accept - but I think there is a case for doing something practical with Syria, Iraq and Kurdistan now. We forget the hundreds of minorities, both religious and ethnic, spread through the region - Assyrian, Kurdish, Alawite, Yazidi, Druze, Shabak, Zoroastrian, Baha'ï people all living there, getting on with their daily lives, and concentrate our thoughts on the Sunni and Shia, as the two largest groups. And we shouldn't. We should help establish some kind of federation of peoples in that region, with a firm, strong hand on the wheel, steering it towards secular tolerance and non-violent acceptance of all people living there, a society based on a common identity through history and memory, whose inhabitants look out for each other.
But here we need to discuss the real meaning of nationhood. For some, it is a very small thing - the village or region you live in; for others it is about speaking the same language; having the same religion; sharing similar values, etc... And therein lies the fundamental problem - who would be happy now, sharing a state with former oppressors? Who would welcome the rule of someone from another group that does not represent you? It is too late to (re-)establish trust amongst the peoples of Iraq and Syria, and I fear we will only see peace if the various groups are allocated lands and told to go there unless they want to become foreigners in their own homes. Events like the Simele massacre in the early thirties are reasons why it is much too late to do much about it all.
The Islamic State is the result of the constant stigmatising, oppression and stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims by the West. It is the result of a century of mishandling of their situation, needs and values. It is the reason why wars were fought that did not need to be fought. It is why Israel feels justified in its brutal handling of Palestinians. It is why Bush and Blair felt they needed to enforce democracy there. It is why the Islamic State can recruit people from Birmingham, Brussels and Bergen. It is why oil has become so important, that we all have our hands dirtied in the muddy waters of Middle Eastern violence.
And after those awful wars of the 1990s and 2000s, the West has grown weary of it all. There is no appetite for more war. But when I see the reports coming out of Iraq, of the brutal treatment of those who don't want to play any part in the growth of the Islamic State, a truly terrifying and extreme band of militants, I think this is the first time a military strike is justified. And not just that - I think a land war is going to have to happen, in order to recalibrate the entire region. I was utterly horrified when I read that the US was still "considering" dropping humanitarian food and drink parcels to the Yazidi people stuck up the mountains of Sinjar. What did they mean, "considering"? There is nothing to "consider", just do it. But this is all the fault of those politicians who listen too much to peace protesters.
Peace is a good thing - we all want peace - but do they think this group of weapon-wielding nutjobs will say "OK, brothers and sisters, let's smoke a joint and forget it all"? No. This is a group that believes not in diversity or tolerance, but the unswerving and unquestioning devotion of all under their control to allegiance to their supreme leader and ultimately to their values, misinterpreted from the Qu'ran. They will stop at nothing. They even spoke about raising their black flag on the Palace of Westminster and the White House amongst others.
Pacifism in this instance is in fact just the lazy and simplistic way of letting the belligerents get what they want. It is washing their hands of the whole thing and condemning hundreds of thousands of people to die at the hands of those butchers, either through starvation and dehydration up a mountain, suicide out of fear of what is to come, or execution for apostasy. These extremists are brutal and nothing but the total removal of the organisation and re-integration into society of its members is necessary. The West has always been the one that has gone in to re-establish peace in areas of conflict - Bosnia-Hercegovina, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, amongst other places, always too little, always too late, often due to its own self-serving policies in the first place. Well now it's really time for the US and its allies to act, and do something for the benefit of mankind in the cradle of civilisation, and stop humming and hawing about legitimacy and mandates. That didn't stop them in the other wars, why should it now?
The hardest task is going to be trying to re-educate the younger members of the IS militants, so they can once again take their place in civilised society. It can be done, as the conclusion of other wars or ideology have proven, but it will not be easy. And in order to re-establish a proper, lasting peace in the region, a truth and reconciliation council not dissimilar to that in South Africa will be a good start, hopefully allowing the emergence of heirs apparent to take place: people who have suffered and can find room to rebuild their land in the new order.
Furthermore, the old stigmas attached to Islam and Arabic speakers need to be allowed to die. A slow increment in mutual respect needs to be established as soon as possible, and the full integration of all people respecting the law should be allowed to happen. But this will not happen while we continue to advocate the brutal subjugation by proxy of groups such as the Palestinians. We need to press the reset button on the relationship between us and the whole of the Middle East and the Maghreb countries. We need to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we need to stop our hypocritical mendacity towards the Gulf States, and we need to reduce our reliance on oil. All these things require one tiny thing: the US gun, oil, anti-climate and arms lobbyists to bring a halt to their interests for the benefit of mankind. For it is the sale of weapons and arms, and thus petrol, that keeps the immoral fat cats of business in profit. And to get them to change tack is very, very unlikely. We have trashed the Earth to sustain their wealth; why let people get in the way of short-term profitability?
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