Benign Origins Of ISIS Until It Rose To Catastrophic
Heights
Saeed Naqvi
Every Joint
Secretary’s room in the Ministry of External affairs had a neatly folded copy
of the International Herald Tribune on the coffee table. This was the pattern
in the 70s and 80s. In mid 90s, after economic liberalization and the birth of the
global live media following Operation Desert Storm, TV sets appeared in South
Block. BBC and CNN became fashionable.
Nationalism,
that hopelessly limiting sentiment, surfaces when one is away from home. Since
I had spent time with newspapers in the UK and the US in the 70s, I found it
demeaning that the Indian establishment should be passive recipients of news
and analysis doled out from London, Atlanta or New York. If information is
power, then those who wield this power control the drift of international
discourse. Chinese, Russians, Iranians are not classical democracies but have
learnt this lesson. We, in our ignorance or obsequiousness, have not.
Since 1991 the
West has been involved in wars, big and small, almost continuously. What have
been our sources of information on, say, Darfur, or Kunduz, Helmand, Kosovo,
Yemen and the running battlefields of Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen – and scores
of other theatres? Oh, we do not care. Then why would anyone need us the High
Table? In most instances our sources have been the same – either the US media
or, in a roundabout way, western intelligence.
Ofcourse, there
have been excellent ambassadors, like V.P. Haran in Damascus when Syrian
troubles began. He had independent sources of information on the battlefield. Are
there many others? Without having our own global network, we make ourselves
pathetically dependent on others for information. In the absence of
information, one sided discourse on world affairs is launched which we, willy
nilly, have to adopt as our own.
Let me give you an
example where I saw conventional wisdom being forged on information which was
patently false. The pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s statue in front of
Palestine hotel in Baghdad has been marketed as the fall of a tyrant which led
to a popular upsurge and that this would not have been possible without the US
occupation of Iraq in April 2003. Since the CNN amplified this symbolic triumph
of “democracy over tyranny”, a clip of the toppled statue has been committed to
posterity as a CNN blurb. What really happened was what I saw. And it was quite
different.
On April 3, the
US troops had entered Baghdad. The CNN and BBC coverage of the troops entering
Baghdad was riveting. Obviously, Vice President Dick Cheney, a mastermind of
the Iraq operation, also found the TV coverage heady.
He, and his
cohorts, must have realized that this high pitch excitement could not be
sustained forever. An event had to be televised which signaled American victory.
What could be more telegenic than the pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s statue
in Baghdad’s Firdous square?
The message
would be uplifting. Freed by the Americans, a people, groaning under a tyrant’s
yoke have risen and torn down the iconic statue. But, in implementing the idea Americans
sensed a problem. People, it turned out, had not arisen. How could victory then
be choreographed without the peoples’ participation? Baathist control over the
people in Baghdad was iron clad. That was one reason for people not celebrating
Saddam’s fall. The other, deeper reason surfaced when the Americans, without
any long term vision, replaced the Baathist power structure in Baghdad with a
Shia one. People who were really “freed” by Saddam’s removal were the Shias in
the South and East – 65 percent of Iraq.
US officials in
Iraq did some quick thinking. Shia clerics like Ayatullah Baqar al Hakeem and
Muqtada Sadr were urgently contacted. Sadr, scion of a respected clerical
order, had mesmeric control on the large Shia ghetto on the outskirts of
Baghdad known as Saddam city. Shia refugees from the south had been settled
here after an uprising in 1992 which was brutally crushed by Saddam Hussain.
Surely, this lot would have reasons to celebrate Saddam’s fall.
When Baghdad
citizens did not come out to help bring down Saddam’s statue, requests went out
to the Shia clerics to mobilize crowds. A two pronged strategy was devised: a
US armoured carrier would help pull down the statue with the help of a rope
around the statue’s neck. Footage, from a low angle, would make the hotel staff,
journalists, hangers on look like a burgeoning crowd. But that would not amount
to jeering mobs? Well, they would have to be driven from the Shia ghetto.
Overnight, the ghetto was renamed Sadr city in gratitude to Muqtada Sadr. That
is when Shia crowds came onto the streets of Baghdad, beating Saddam Hussain’s
photographs with shoes. “Tabarrah” or cursing the enemy is a old Shia
tradition.
The choreography
for the event was devised in the following fashion.
Dick Cheney
will, in a live telecast to the American Society of News Editors, “Salute US
troops in Iraq”. In the meanwhile, Saddam’s statue will have been pulled down
by the marines. Camera will occasionally cut to the statue dangling from its
pedestal. Commentary will establish it as the work of angry, anti Saddam
crowds. For crowd scenes, cameras will position themselves outside Sadr city
where crowds will trample Saddam’s photographs and spit on it. Commentary will
never identify these as Shia crowds. The scene has to be marketed as a popular
upheaval.
Cheney’s speech
would be spliced in. “across Iraq, senior religious leaders have come forward
urging their followers to support our coalition, another sure sign that Saddam
Hussain’s regime is clearly doomed.”
The clerics
Cheney is thanking are Shias from Sadr city to Najaf and Karbala. The “doomed”
regime are the Baathists. Later, senior American columnists even recommended
Ayatullah Sistani for the Nobel Peace Prize. Shias were the allies. An alarmed
Saudi Arabia saw Iranian influence at their border with Iraq.
In Iraq who could
blame simmering Sunni anger: from beneath the Baathist skins, the second layer
of the “Sunni” had broke through.
This Sunni
impulse of the erstwhile Baathists, having been in the drill for governance
under Saddam Hussain came in handy for the Americans to teach Shias like Prime
Minister Nouri al Maliki a lesson. Maliki had the temerity to deny the
Americans the US Status of Forces agreement in 2011, which would protect
Americans in Iraq from local laws.
It was a worrying
scenario.
A Shia Iraq
having a 1,500 kms border with Iran which then was on the brink of a major
breakthrough with the US, was a source of great anxiety to two steadfast US
allies – Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Thomas Friedman
of the New York Times asked President Obama in the course of an interview in
August 2014, why US Air Force had not attacked the ISIS when it first reared
its head. By his response, Obama gave the game away:
“That we did not
just start taking a bunch of air strikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came
in was because we would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki.” The ISIS
was an asset then.
Nouri al Maliki
was shown the door in September 2014 and a US handpicked Prime Minister Haider
al Abadi was ushered in.
By this time
ISIS had acquired a life of its own.
The cat and
mouse that is going on with the ISIS in Fallujah is part of this sequence on
which more later.
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