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| George Bush and King Abdullah. |
In its
July 2013
report [1] the European Parliament identified the Wahhabi-Salafi roots of
global terrorism. It was a laudable report but it conveniently absolved the
Western powers of their culpability and chose to overlook the role played by
the Western powers in nurturing Islamic radicalism and jihadism since the Cold
War against the erstwhile Soviet Union. The pivotal role played by the Wahhabi-Salafi
ideology in radicalizing Muslims all over the world is an established fact as
mentioned in the European Parliament’s report; this Wahhabi-Salafi ideology is
generously sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf-based Arab petro-monarchies
since the 1973 oil embargo when the price of oil quadrupled and the
contribution of the Arab sheikhs towards the “spiritual well-being” of Muslims
all over the world magnified proportionally; however, the Arab despots are in
turn propped up by the Western powers since the Cold War; thus syllogistically
speaking, the root cause of Islamic radicalism is the neocolonial powers’
manipulation of the socio-political life of the Arabs specifically, and the
Muslims generally, in order to appropriate their energy resources in the
context of an energy-starved industrialized world. This is the principal theme
of this essay which I shall discuss in detail in the following paragraphs.
Capitalism, not
religion, is the original sin of contemporary world:
Peaceful or not, Islam is only a religion just like any
other cosmopolitan religion whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism.
Instead of taking an ‘essentialist’ approach, which lays emphasis on
‘essences,’ we need to look at the evolution of social phenomena in its proper
historical context. For instance: to assert that human beings are evil by
‘nature’ is an essentialist approach; it overlooks the role played by ‘nurture’
in grooming human beings. Human beings are only ‘intelligent’ by nature, but
they are neither good nor evil by nature; whatever they are, whether good or
evil, is the outcome of their nurture or upbringing. Similarly, to pronounce
that Islam is a retrogressive or violent religion is an ‘essentialist’
approach; it overlooks how Islam and the Quranic verses are interpreted by its
followers depending on the subject's socio-cultural context. For example: the
Western expat Muslims who are brought up in the West and who have imbibed the
Western values would interpret a Quranic verse in a liberal fashion; an urban
middle class Muslim of the Muslim-majority countries would interpret the same
verse rather conservatively; and a rural-tribal Muslim who has been
indoctrinated by the radical clerics would find meanings in it which could be
extreme. It is all about culture rather than religion or scriptures per se.
Moreover, I said that Islam is only a religion just like any
other religion. But certain reductive neo-liberals blame the religion, as an
institution and ideology for all that is wrong with the world. I have not read
much history since I am only a humble student of international politics; that’s
why I don’t know what the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition were all about?
Although, I have a gut feeling that those were also political conflicts which
are presented to us in a religious garb. However, I am certain that all the
conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries were either nationalist (tribal)
conflicts; or they had economics and power as their goals. Examples: First and
Second World Wars; Korea and
Vietnam wars; Afghanistan and Iraq
wars; and Libya and Syria wars.
When the neo-liberals commit the fallacy of blaming religion
as a root factor in the contemporary national and international politics, I am
not sure which ancient global order they conjure up in their minds, the Holy
Roman Empire perhaps? Religion may have been a paramount factor in the ancient
times, if at all, but the contemporary politics is all about economics and
power: the Western corporations rule the world and politics and diplomacy is
all about protecting the trade and energy interests of the Corporate Empire.
Thus, the root of all evil in the contemporary politics is capitalism, not
religion, which has been reduced to a secondary role and at times to complete
irrelevance especially in the liberal and secular Western societies.
More to the point, when the neo-liberals blame religion for
all that is wrong with the world, they are actually engaging in a peculiar kind
of juvenile thinking: a child mistakenly assumes that the world can only be
seen from his eyes; and that all the people think exactly like he does. He does
not understands that the outlooks and worldviews and the preferences and
priorities of the people could be very different depending on their upbringing,
circumstances and stations in life. You are not supposed to put yourself in
another person’s shoes because sizes vary; you are supposed to put that other
person in his own shoes, keeping in view his upbringing and mindset and then
prescribe a viable future course of action for his individual and social
well-being.
As we know that politics is a collective exercise for
creating an ideal social matrix in which individuals and their families can
live peacefully and happily, and in which they can maximally actualize their
innate potentials. The first priority of the liberals, especially the
privileged liberal elite of the developing countries, seems to be to create a
liberal society in the developing countries in which they and their families
can feel at home. I don’t have anything against a liberal society, especially
if looked at from a feminist, inclusive and egalitarian angle, but the ground reality
of the developing world is very different from the reality of the developed
world. The first and foremost preference of the developing world isn’t social
liberalization; it is reducing poverty, ensuring equitable distribution of
wealth and economic growth. Liberal ethos and values, important as they are,
can wait; our first preference ought to be to create a fair and egalitarian
social and economic order on a national and international level, only then can
our interests and priorities converge on a single and common goal.
If the liberals are willing to compromise on the foremost
goal of equitable distribution of wealth, then the heavens won’t fall if they
could show a little flexibility and maturity on the subject of the enforcement
of liberal values too, which affects them on a personal level, more than
anything. The socialist liberals of ‘60s and ‘70s at least made sense when they
promoted liberalism along with the promise of radical redistribution of wealth.
But the neo-liberals of 21st century are a breed apart who shrug off abject
poverty and gross inequality of wealth in the developing nations as a secondary
preference and espouse liberal values as their first and foremost priority.
The wellspring of
Islamic radicalism:
If we look at the evolution of Islamic religion and culture
throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, it hasn’t been natural. Some
deleterious mutations have occurred somewhere which have negatively impacted
the Islamic societies all over the world. Social selection (or social
conditioning) plays the same role in the social sciences which the natural
selection plays in the biological sciences: it selects the traits, norms and
values which are most beneficial to the host culture. Seen from this angle,
social diversity is a desirable quality for social progress; because when
diverse customs and value-systems compete with each other, the culture retains
the beneficial customs and values and discards the deleterious traditions and
habits. A decentralized and unorganized religion, like Sufi Islam, engenders
diverse strains of beliefs and thoughts which compete with one another in
gaining social acceptance and currency. A heavily centralized and tightly
organized religion, on the other hand, depends more on authority and dogma than
value and utility. A centralized religion is also more ossified and less
adaptive to change compared to a decentralized religion.
The Shia Muslims have their Imams and Marjahs (religious
authorities) but it is generally assumed about the Sunni Islam that it
discourages the authority of the clergy. In this sense, Sunni Islam is closer
to Protestantism theoretically, because it promotes an individual and personal
interpretation of scriptures and religion. It might be true about the educated
Sunni Muslims but on a popular level of the masses of the Third World Islamic
countries, the House of Saud plays the same role in Islam that the Pope plays
in Catholicism. By virtue of their physical possession of the holy places of
Islam – Mecca and Medina – they are the de facto Caliphs of
Islam. The title of the Saudi King, Khadim-ul-Haramain-al-Shareefain (Servant
of the House of God), makes him the vice-regent of God on Earth. And the title
of the Caliph of Islam is not limited to a nation-state, he wields enormous
influence throughout the Commonwealth of Islam: that is, the Muslim Ummah.
Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the
20th and 21st centuries. There are two factors responsible for this atavistic
phenomena of Islamic resurgence: firstly, unlike Christianity which is more
idealistic, Islam is a more practical religion, it does not demands from its
followers to give up worldly pleasures but only to regulate them; and secondly,
Islam as a religion and ideology has the world’s richest financiers. After the
1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West, the price of oil quadrupled;
the Arabs petro-sheikhs now have so much money that they don’t know where to
spend it? This is the reason why we see an exponential growth in Islamic
charities and madrassahs all over the world and especially in the Islamic
world.
Although the Arab sheikhs of the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Kuwait and some emirates of UAE generally sponsor the Wahhabi-Salafi brand of
Islam but the difference between the numerous sects of Sunni Islam is more
nominal than substantive. The charities and madrassahs belonging to all the
Sunni sects get generous funding from the Gulf states as well as the private
Gulf-based donors.
The phenomena of religious extremism and jihadism all over
the Islamic world is directly linked to the Wahhabi-Salafi madrassahs which are
generously funded by the Saudi and Gulf’s petro-dollars. These madrassahs
attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the Third World
Islamic countries because they offer the kind of incentives and facilities
which even the government-sponsored public schools cannot provide: such as,
free boarding and lodging, no tuition fee at all, and free of cost books and
stationery.
Apart from madrassahs, another factor that promotes the
Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah
(the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.) Every year millions of Muslim men and
women travel from all over the Islamic world to perform the pilgrimage in order
to wash their sins. When they return home to their native countries after
spending a month or two in Saudi Arabia, along with clean hearts and souls,
dates and “zamzam,” they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and
their “true” and puritanical version of Islam, which some Muslims, especially
the rural-tribal folk, find attractive and worth-emulating.
Authority plays an important role in any thought system; the
educated people accept the authority of the specialists in their respective
field of specialty; similarly, the lay folk accept the authority of the
theologians and clerics in the interpretation of religion and scriptures. Aside
from authority, certain other factors also play a part in an individuals’
psychology: like, purity or the concept of sacred, and originality and
authenticity, as in the concept of being closely corresponding to an ideal or
authentic model. Just like the modern naturalists who prefer organic food and
natural habits and lifestyles, because of their supposed belief in “the
essential goodness of nature” (naturalistic fallacy,) or due to their
disillusionment from the man-made fiascoes, the religious folks also prefer a
true version of Islam which is closer to the putative authentic Islam as
practiced in Mecca and Medina: “the Gold Standard of Petro-Islam.”
Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of
Wahhabi-Salafi ideology throughout the Islamic world is the immigrant factor.
Millions of Muslim men, women and families from all over the Third World
Islamic countries live and work in the energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE,
Kuwait and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on
temporary work permits. Just like the pilgrims, when they come back to their
native villages and towns, they also bring along the tales of Arab hospitality
and their version of “authentic Islam.” Spending time in Arab countries
entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious matters, and having a
cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of Quran, makes one equivalent of
a Qazi (a learned jurist) among the illiterate village folk; and they simply
reproduce the customs and attitudes of the Arabs as an authentic version of
Islam to their communities.
After sufficiently bringing home the fact that Islam as a
religion isn’t different from other cosmopolitan religions in regard to any
intrinsic feature and that the only factor which differentiates Islam from
other mainstream religions is the abundant energy resources in the
Muslim-majority countries of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA) region; and the effect of those resources and the global players’
manipulation of the socio-political life of the inhabitants of those regions to
exploit their resources culminated in the emergence of the phenomena of
Petro-Islamic extremism and violent Takfiri-Jihadism, our next task is to
examine the symbiotic relationship between the illegitimate Gulf rulers and the
neo-colonial powers.
The global
neocolonial political and economic order:
Before we get to the crux of the matter, however, let us
first cursorily discuss that why is it impossible to bring about a major
fundamental change: political, social or economic, on a national level under
the existing international political and economic dispensation? As we know that
the Western so-called liberal-democracies could be liberal, however, they are
anything but democracies; in fact, the right term for the Western system of
government is plutocratic oligarchies. They are ruled by the super-rich
corporations whose wealth is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars, far
more than the total GDPs of many developing nations; and the status of those
multinational corporations as dominant players in their national and
international politics gets an official imprimatur when the Western governments
endorse the Congressional lobbying practice of the so-called ‘special interest’
groups, which is a euphemism for ‘business interests.’
Moreover, since the Western governments are nothing but the
mouthpieces of their business interests on the international political and
economic forums, therefore, any national or international entity which hinders
or opposes the agenda of the aforesaid business interests is either coerced
into accepting their demands or gets sidelined. In 2013 the Manmohan Singh’s
government of India had certain objections to further opening up to the Western
businesses; the Business Roundtable which is an informal congregation of major
US businesses and which together holds a net wealth of $6 trillion (6000
billion) held a meeting with the representatives of the Indian government and
made them an offer which they couldn’t refuse. The developing economies, like India,
are always hungry for the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to grow further, and
that investment comes mostly from the Western corporations.
When the Business Roundtables or the Paris-based
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) form pressure groups and engage in
‘collective bargaining’ activities, the nascent and fragile developing
economies don’t have a choice but to toe their line. State ‘sovereignty’ that
the sovereign nation-states are at liberty to pursue an independent policy,
especially an economic and trade policy, is a myth. Just like the ruling elites
of the developing countries who have a stranglehold and a monopoly over
domestic politics; similarly the neo-colonial powers and their multinational
corporations control the international politics and the global economic order.
Any state who dares to transgress becomes an international pariah like Castro’s
Cuba, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or North Korea; and more recently Iran, which had been
cut off from the global economic system, because of its supposed nuclear
aspirations. Good for Iran that it has one of the largest oil and gas
resources, otherwise it would have been insolvent by now; such is the power of
global financial system especially the banking sector, and the significance of
petro-dollar because the global oil transactions are pegged in the US dollars
all over the world, and all the major oil bourses are also located in the
Western world.
There is an essential precondition in the European Union’s
charter of union according to which the under-developed countries of Europe who
joined the EU allowed free movement of goods (free trade) only on the
reciprocal precondition that the developed countries would allow the free
movement of labor. What’s obvious in this condition is the fact that the free trade
only benefits the countries which have a strong manufacturing base, and the
free movement of workers only favors the under-developed countries where labor
is cheap. Now when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and
WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the
world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of
labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, such
global financial institutions espouse the interests of their biggest donors by
shares, i.e. the developed countries.
Some market fundamentalists who irrationally believe in the
laissez-faire capitalism try to justify this unfair practice by positing
Schumpeter’s theory of ‘creative destruction’ that the free trade between
unequal trade partners leads to the destruction of the host country’s existing
economic order and a subsequent reconfiguration gives birth to a better
economic order. Whenever one comes up with gross absurdities such as these, they
should always make it contingent on the principle of reciprocity: that is, if
free trade is beneficial for the nascent industrial base of the underdeveloped
countries, then the free movement of labor is equally beneficial for the labor
force of the developed countries. The policy-makers of the developing countries
must not fall prey to such deceptive reasoning, instead they must devise a
policy which suits their national interest. But the trouble is that the governments
of the Third world are dependent on the global loan sharks, such as IMF and
World Bank, that’s why they cannot adopt an independent economic and trade
policy.
From the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the
21st century the neo-colonial powers have brazenly exploited the Third world’s
resources and labor, but after China’s accession to the World Trade
Organization in 2001 things changed a little. Behind the “Iron Curtain” of
international isolation, China successfully built its manufacturing base by
imparting vocational and technical education to its disciplined workforce and
by building an industrial and transport infrastructure. It didn’t allow any
imports until 2001, but after entering the WTO it opened up its import-export
policy on a reciprocal basis; and since the labor in China is much cheaper than
its Western counterparts, therefore, it now has a comparative advantage over
Western bloc which China has exploited in its national interest.
Asking the neo-colonial powers to act in the interests of
the developing world is incredibly naïve. It’s like asking the factory-owners
to act in the interest of their factory-workers on altruistic grounds. This is
not the way forward, the factory-workers must strengthen their own labor unions
and claim what’s rightfully theirs. The developing countries must form regional
blocs and settle things among themselves. If a country takes interest in the
affairs of its regional neighbor; like if India takes interest in the affairs
of Pakistan, or if Pakistan is wary of the happenings in Afghanistan and Iran,
their concerns are understandable. But what “vital strategic interests” does
the US has in the Middle East where 35,000 of its troops are currently
stationed, ten thousand kilometers away from its geographical borders?
‘Humanitarian imperialism’ is merely a charade, it’s the trade and
energy-interests of the corporate empire which are ‘vitally’ important to the
neo-colonial powers.
Cold War and the
birth of Islamic Jihad:
The Western powers’ collusion and conflicted relationship
with the Islamic jihadists (aka moderate rebels) in Syria isn’t the only instance
of its kind. The Western powers always leave such pernicious relationships
deliberately ambiguous in order to fill the gaps in their self-serving
diplomacy and also for the sake of “plausible deniability.” Throughout the late
‘70s and ‘80s during the Cold War, they used the jihadists as proxies in their
war against the Soviets. The Cold War was a war between the Global Capitalist
bloc and the Global Communist bloc for global domination. The Communists used
their proxies the Viet Congs to liberate Vietnam from the imperialist hegemony.
The Global Capitalist bloc had no answer to the cleverly executed asymmetric
warfare.
Moreover, the Communist bloc had a moral advantage over the
Capitalist bloc: that is, the mass appeal of the egalitarian and revolutionary
Marxist and Maoist ideologies. Using their: “Working men and women of all the
countries, unite!” rhetoric, the Communists could have instigated an uprising anywhere
in the world; but how could the Capitalists retaliate, through “the
trickle-down economics” and “the American way of life” rhetoric? The Western
policy-makers faced quite a dilemma, but then their Machiavellian strategists,
capitalizing on the regional grassroots religious sentiment, came up with an
equally robust antidote: that is, the Islamic Jihad.
During the Soviet-Afghan conflict from 1979 to 1988 between
the Global Capitalist bloc and the Global Communist alliance, Saudi Arabia and
the Gulf Arab petro-monarchies took the side of the former; because the USSR
and the Central Asian states produce more energy and consume less of it; thus
they are net exporters of energy; while the Global Capitalist bloc is a net
importer of energy. It suits the economic interests of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) countries to maintain and strengthen a supplier-consumer
relationship with the Capitalist bloc. Now the BRICS are equally hungry for the
Middle Eastern energy but it’s a recent development; during the Cold War an
alliance with the Western countries suited the economic interests of the Gulf
Arab petro-monarchies. Hence, the Communists were pronounced as Kafirs (infidels)
and the Western capitalist bloc as Ahl-e-Kitaab (People of the Book) by the
Salafi preachers of the Gulf Arab states.
All the celebrity terrorists, whose names we now hear in the
mainstream media every day, were the products of the Soviet-Afghan war: like
Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, the Haqqanis, the Taliban, the Hekmatyars
etc. But that war wasn’t limited only to Afghanistan; the NATO-GCC alliance of
the Cold War had funded, trained and armed the Islamic Jihadists all over the
Middle East region; we hear the names of Jihadists operating in the regions as
far afield as Uzbekistan and North Caucasus. In
his
1998 interview [2], the National Security Adviser to President Carter,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, had confessed that the President signed the directive for
secret aid to the Afghan Mujahideen in July 1979 while the Soviet Army invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979. Here is a poignant excerpt from his interview:
Question: “And neither do you regret having supported the
Islamic Jihadis, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?”
Brzezinski: “What is most important to the history of the
world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up
Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
Despite the crass insensitivity, you got to give credit to
Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the guts to speak the unembellished
truth. The hypocritical Western policy makers of today, on the other hand, say
one thing in public and do the opposite on the ground. However, keep in mind
that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the WTC tragedy
in 2001, no Western policy-maker can now dare to be as blunt and honest as
Brzezinski.
All the recent wars and conflicts aside, the unholy alliance
between the Anglo-Americans and the Wahhabi-Salafis of the Persian Gulf’s
petro-monarchies, which I would like to call “the Anglo-Wahhabi alliance,” is
much older. The British stirred up uprising in Arabia by instigating the
Sharifs of Mecca to rebel against the Ottoman rule during the First World War.
After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the British Empire backed King Abdul Aziz
(Ibn-e-Saud) in his struggle against the Sharifs of Mecca; because the latter
were demanding too much of a price for their loyalty: that is, the unification
of the whole of Arabia under their suzerainty. King Abdul Aziz defeated the
Sharifs and united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
in 1932 with the support of the British. However, by then the tide of British
Imperialism was subsiding and the Americans inherited the former possessions
and the rights and liabilities of the British Empire.
At the end of the Second World War on 14 February 1945,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a historic meeting with King Abdul Aziz at
Great Bitter Lake in the Suez canal onboard USS Quincy, and laid the
foundations of an enduring Anglo-Wahhabi friendship which persists to this day;
despite many ebbs and flows and some testing times especially in the wake of
9/11 tragedy when 15 out of 19 hijackers of the 9/11 plot turned out to be
Saudi citizens. During the course of that momentous Great Bitter Lake meeting,
among other things, it was decided to set up the United States Military
Training Mission (USMTM) to Saudi Arabia to “train, advise and assist” the
Saudi Arabian Armed Forces.
Aside from USMTM, the US-based Vinnell Corporation, which is
a private military company based in the US and a subsidiary of the Northrop
Grumman, used over a thousand Vietnam war veterans to train and equip the
125,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guards (SANG) which is not under the
authority of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and which acts as the Praetorian
Guards of the House of Saud. The relationship which existed between the Arab American
Oil Company (ARAMCO) and the House of Saud is no secret. Moreover, the Critical
Infrastructure Protection Force, whose strength is numbered in tens of
thousands, is also being trained and equipped by the US
to guard the critical Saudi oil infrastructure along its eastern Persian Gulf coast where 90% Saudi oil reserves are
located. Furthermore, the US has numerous air bases and missile defense systems
currently operating in the Persian Gulf states and also a naval base in Bahrain
where the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy is based.
The point that I am trying to make is that left to their own
resources, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies lack the manpower, the military
technology and the moral authority to rule over the forcefully suppressed and
disenfranchised Arab masses, not only the Arab masses but also the South Asian
and African immigrants of the Gulf Arab states. One-third of Saudi Arabian
population is comprised of immigrants; similarly, more than 75% of UAE’s
population is also comprised of immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and
Sri Lanka; and all the other Gulf monarchies also have a similar proportion of
the immigrants from the developing countries; moreover, unlike the immigrants
in the Western countries who hold the citizenship status, the Gulf’s immigrants
have lived there for decades and sometimes for generations, and they are still
regarded as unentitled foreigners.
Petroimperialism and
the Western energy interests:
A legitimate question arises in the mind of a curious reader
, however, that why do the Western powers support the Gulf’s petro-monarchies,
knowing fully well that they are the ones responsible for nurturing the
Takfiri-Jihadi ideology all over the Islamic world; does that not runs counter
to their professed goal of eliminating Islamic extremism and terrorism? When
you ask this question, you get two very different and contradictory responses
depending on who you are talking to. If you ask this question from a Western
policy-maker or a diplomat that why do you support the Gulf’s despots? He
replies that it’s because we have vital strategic interests in the Middle East
and North Africa region; by which he means abundant oil and natural gas
reserves and also the fact that the Arab Sheikhs have made substantial
investments in the Western economies at a time of global recession and the
outsourcing of most of manufacturing to China. Thus, the Western policy-makers’
defense is predicated on self-interest, i.e. the Western national interests.
When you ask the same question, however, from the
constituents of the Western liberalism that what is the Western policy in the
Middle East region? The constituents’ response is quite the opposite, they
don’t think that the Western powers control the Middle East, or the global
politics and economics in general, for their trade and energy interests; they
believe that the motives of the Western powers are more altruistic than
selfish. The constituents of the Western liberalism mistakenly believe in the
counterfactual concepts of humanitarian and liberal interventionism and the
responsibility to protect.
Coming back to the question, why do the Western powers prop up
the Middle Eastern dictators knowing fully well that they are the ones
responsible for nurturing Islamic jihadism and is it possible that in some
future point in time they will withdraw their support? It is highly unlikely at
least in the foreseeable future. The Western powers have become so dependent on
the Arab petro-dollars that they would rather fight the Arab tyrants’ wars for
them against their regional rivals. Presently, there are two regional powers
vying for dominance in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Syrian civil
war is basically a Sunni Jihad against the Shi’a Resistance axis. The Shi’a
alliance is comprised of Iran and Syria, the latter is ruled by an Alawi (Shi’a)
regime, even though the majority of Syria’s population is Sunni Muslims and the
Alawites constitute only 12% of the population. Lebanon-based Hezbollah (which
is also Shi’a) is an integral part of the Shi’a Resistance axis. And recently
the Nouri al Maliki and Haider al Abadi administrations in Iraq, which also has
a Shi’a majority, have formed a tenuous alliance with Iran.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia has long-standing grievances against
Iran’s meddling in the Middle Eastern affairs, especially the latter’s support
to the Palestinian cause, the Houthis in Yemen, the Bahraini Shi’as and more
importantly the significant and restive Shi’a minority in the Eastern Province
of Saudi Arabia where 90% of Saudi oil reserves are located along the Persian
Gulf’s coast. On top of that Saudi Arabia also has grievances against the US
for toppling the Sunni Saddam regime in Iraq in 2003 which had formed a bulwark
against the Khomeini influence in the Middle East because of Saddam’s military
prowess. Furthermore, in the wake of political movements for enfranchisement
during the Arab Spring of 2011, Saudi Arabia took advantage of the opportunity
and militarized the peaceful and democratic protests in Syria with the help of
its Sunni allies: the Gulf monarchies of Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Jordan and
Turkey (all Sunnis) against the Shi’a regime of Bashar al Assad.
However, why did the Western powers preferred to join this
Sunni alliance against the Shi’a Resistance axis? It’s because the Assad regime
has a history of hostility towards the West; it had also formed a close working
relationship with the erstwhile Soviet Union and it still hosts a Russian naval
facility at Tartus; and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, has emerged over the
years as the single biggest threat to the Israel’s regional security. On the
other hand, all the aforementioned Sunni states have always been the steadfast
allies of the Western powers along with Israel; don’t get misled by the public
posturing, all the aforementioned Sunni states along with the Western support
are in the same boat in the Syrian civil war as Israel.
Hypothetically speaking, had the Western powers not joined the
ignoble Syrian Jihad which has claimed 250,000 lives so far and made millions
of Syrians refugees, what could have been an appropriate course of action to
force the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Jordan, not to engage in fomenting
trouble in Syria? This is a question of will, if there is will there are always
numerous ways to deal with the problem. However, after what has happened in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria only a naïve neoliberal will prescribe a
Western military intervention anywhere in the world. But if military
intervention is off the table, is there a viable alternative to enforce justice
and to force the states to follow moral principles in international politics?
Yes there is.
The crippling “third party” economic sanctions on Iran in
the last few years may not have accomplished much, but those sanctions have
brought to the fore the enormous power which the Western financial institutions
and the petro-dollar as a global reserve currency wields over the global
financial system. We must bear in mind that the Iranian nuclear negotiations
were as much about Iran’s nuclear program as they were about its ballistic
missile program, which is a much bigger “conventional threat” to the Gulf’s
petro-monarchies just across the Persian Gulf. Despite the sanctions being
unfair, Iran felt the heat so much that it remained engaged in the negotiations
throughout the last few years, and finally the issue was amicably settled in
the form of the Iran nuclear deal in April 2015. However, such was the
crippling effect of those “third party” sanctions on the Iranian economy that
had it not been for Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves, and some Russian,
Chinese and Turkish help in illicitly buying Iranian oil, it could have
defaulted due to those sanctions.
All I am trying to suggest is, that there are ways to
arm-twist the Gulf’s petro-monarchies to implement democratic reforms and to
refrain from sponsoring the Takfiri-Jihadist terror groups all over the Islamic
world, provided that we have just and upright international arbiters. However,
there is a caveat: Iran is only a single oil-rich state which has 160 billion
barrels of proven crude oil reserves and around 4 million barrels per day
(mbpd) production. On the other hand, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies are
actually three oil-rich states: Saudi Arabia with its 265 billion barrels of
proven reserves and 10 mbpd of daily crude oil production; and UAE and Kuwait
with 200 billion barrels (100 billion barrels each) of proven reserves and 6
mbpd of daily crude oil production; together their share amounts to 465 billion
barrels, almost one-third of the world’s 1477 billion barrels of total proven
crude oil reserves; and if we add Qatar to the equation, which isn’t oil-rich,
as such, but has substantial natural gas reserves, it must take a morally very
very upright arbiter to sanction all of them.
Therefore, though sanctioning the Gulf petro-monarchies
sounds like a good idea on paper, but bear in mind that the relationship
between the Gulf’s petro-monarchies and the industrialized world is that of a
consumer-supplier relationship: the Gulf Arab states are the suppliers of
energy and the industrialized world is its consumer, therefore, the Western
powers cannot sanction their energy-suppliers and largest investors, if
anything, the Gulf’s petro-monarchies have in the past “sanctioned” the Western
powers by imposing an oil embargo in 1973 after the Arab-Israel war. The 1973
Arab oil embargo against the West had lasted only for a short span of six
months but it had such a profound effect on the psyche and the subsequent
strategy of the Western powers that after the embargo the price of crude oil in
the international market quadrupled; the US imposed a ban on the export of
indigenously produced crude oil outside the US’ borders which is still in
place; and the US started keeping a strategic oil reserve amounting to two
months of fuel supply for its total energy needs for the military purposes that
includes jet fuel for its aircrafts and petrol and diesel for the armored personnel
carriers, battle tanks and naval vessels.
Recently, some very upbeat rumors about “
the Shale Revolution” [3] have
been circulating the mainstream media. However, the Shale revolution is
primarily a natural gas revolution: it has increased the ‘probable-recoverable’
resources of natural gas by 30%. The ‘shale oil’ on the other hand, refers to
two very different kinds of energy resource: one, the solid kerogen, though
substantial resources of kerogen have been found in the US’ Green River
formations, but the cost of extracting liquid crude from solid kerogen is so
high that it is economically unviable for at least another 100 years; two, the
tight oil which is blocked by the shale, it is a viable energy resource, but
the reserves are so limited, around 4 billion barrels in Texas and North
Dakota, that it will run out in a few years.
Although, the Canadian oil sands and the Venezuelan heavy
crude are environmentally polluting energy resources but economically they are
viable sources of crude oil. More than the size of the oil reserves, however,
it is also about the per barrel extraction cost, which determines the profits
for the multinational oil companies and in that regard the Persian Gulf’s crude
oil is the most profitable. Moreover, regarding the US’ supposed energy
independence after the so-called “Shale Revolution,” the US produced 11 million
barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in the first quarter of 2014; that is, more
than Saudi Arabia and Russia’s output, each of which produces around 10 million
bpd, but the US still imported 7.5 million bpd during the same period of time;
that is, more than the oil imports of France and Britain put together. More
than the total volume of oil production, the volume which an oil-producing
country exports determines its place in the “hierarchy of petroleum” and the
Gulf’s petro-monarchies constitute the top tier of that pyramid.
Conclusion:
Although, it’s a fact that rather
than modern nation states, the Gulf’s petro-monarchies appear more like
medieval fiefdoms that are ruled by the Arab princes at whim, but I’m of the
opinion that certain powers deliberately kept them backward and ignorant in
order to exploit their resources.
The CIA-sponsored coup against
the democratically elected government of Dr. Mosaddegh after he nationalized
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; the assassination of King Faisal after he
imposed a collective Arab oil embargo against the West in 1973; the division of
ethno-linguistically homogeneous Arabia into numerous tiny states the size of
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Trucial States (UAE); Sykes-Picot agreement and
divide and rule policy at its best; the creation of a Western outpost in the
form of Israel right next to the strategically critical Suez canal and Persian
Gulf; training and arming the armed forces of the undemocratic and illegitimate
Gulf despots by the Vinnell Corporation and numerous other governmental and private
Western security firms; contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars, like
the Al Yamamah arms deal, to provide military hardware to the Gulf’s tyrants by
the Western military-industrial complex; stationing tens of thousands of US
Marines in their aircraft-carriers and numerous leased military bases in the
Persian Gulf that holds 800 billion barrels of world’s 1500 billion barrels of
proven crude oil reserves.
All this evidence points finger
only in one direction: that is, “The Carter Doctrine of 1980,” which states: “Let
our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital
interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force.” Like I said before that it’s
not the Bedouins riding on camels who are a threat to the global peace, but the
bankers and lawyers trained and educated at Harvard, Yale and Princeton who
hold the reins of the former in their hands.
Notwithstanding, it is generally believed that political Islam is the
precursor to Islamic extremism and jihadism, however, there are two distinct
and separate types of political Islam: the despotic political Islam of the Gulf
variety and the democratic political Islam of the Turkish and the Muslim
Brotherhood variety. The latter Islamist organization never ruled over Egypt
except for a brief year long stint, it would be unwise to draw any conclusions
from such a brief period of time in history. The Turkish variety of political
Islam, the oft-quoted ‘Turkish model,’ however, is worth emulating all over the
Islamic world. I do understand that political Islam in all its forms and
manifestations is an anathema to the liberals, but it is the ground reality of
the Islamic world. The liberal dictatorships no matter how benevolent they may
be, had never worked in the past, and they will meet the same fate in the
future.
The mainspring of Islamic extremism and militancy isn’t the
moderate and democratic political Islam, because why would people turn to
violence when they can exercise their right to choose their rulers? The
mainspring of Islamic militancy is the despotic and militant political Islam of
the Gulf variety. The Western powers are fully aware of this fact, then why do
they choose to support the same forces that have nurtured jihadism and
terrorism when their ostensible and professed goal is to eliminate Islamic
extremism and militancy? It is because it has been a firm policy-principle of
the Western powers to promote ‘stability’ in the Middle East rather than representative
democracy. They are fully cognizant of the ground reality that the mainstream
Muslim sentiment is firmly against any Western military presence and interference
in the Middle East region. Additionally, the Western policy-makers also prefer
to deal with small groups of Middle Eastern ‘strongmen’ rather than cultivating
a complex and uncertain relationship on a popular level, certainly a myopic
approach which is the hallmark of the so-called ‘pragmatic’ politicians and
strategists.
