The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol. 2, no.4 (November 2006)
The civil war as a means of imposing the New World Order*
Iraq, Iran, Palestine
TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
The strategic plan of the transnational elite (headed by the US elite) for imposing and consolidating the New World Order (NWO) —namely, capitalist neoliberal globalisation and its political complement of representative “democracy”— in the Middle East is becoming clearer by the day. It is now obvious that the establishment of the New Order in this area —vital for the energy needs of the transnational elite— involves encouraging those trends that will lead to a series of civil wars which, it is hoped, will result in the emasculation of resistance movements and the consolidation of the NWO at minimum economic and human cost to the elites. This tactic has a long and successful history (from the elites’ point of view) and is known as ‘divide and rule’, since it has allowed colonial regimes like Britain to dominate millions of people with only a few thousand soldiers, as in India. In today’s era of rationalised repression, the same tactic has reached unprecedented levels, after the recent “successful” dissolution of Yugoslavia (if one can easily forget the hundreds of thousands killed or crippled).
Firstly, in Iraq, it is now clear that the US/UK part of the transnational elite has been planning the civil war and the consequent “Balkanisation” of the country since the Gulf War in 1991. As Salim Lone,[1] (who served as director of communications for the UN mission in Iraq immediately after the 2003 war) points out, ‘since the collapse of the Soviet Union 15 years ago and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, partition had been seen by US hardliners as the surest way of weakening the most powerful Arab state not in the American camp’. The aim of the strategy, which began to be implemented by the devastating war itself and the consequent crushing embargo, has always been to destroy the Baathist regime (not just the “tyrant” Saddam, as the western media liked to present it) which, since its nationalisation of western oil companies in 1968 —something the West never forgot!— and its attempt to introduce some kind of Arab socialism, enjoyed the support not only of the vast majority of Sunnis but also of a large proportion of secular Shiites.[2] This was so because the Baathist regime was the only type of regime which —precisely because of its secular character— could ensure the unity of Iraq: a hybrid "nation-state" consisting of two competing Islamic branches (Sunnis and Shias) and the (non-Arab) Kurds, formed by British colonialism in the early 1920s with the main aim of securing the control of oil. The same aim was served by the western-backed creation of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, as well as the call to the Shias by Bush senior at the end of the 1991 war to rise against the regime. The inevitable brutal backlash that followed the Shias’ heeding of this call led to the first major conflict in the history of Iraq between Sunnis and Shias, setting the foundations for a future civil war.
No wonder that, after the 2003 war, the Americans re-organised Iraqi political life along sectarian lines, with the July 2003 Iraqi governing council's membership being filled by 12 Shias, 5 Kurds, 5 Sunnis and 3 ethnic-minority representatives, while at the same time the occupying powers were working systematically to eliminate all Sunni influence from national life. However, the final confirmation of these plans came with the draft constitution, designed under the guidance of the occupying powers and just “approved” by an electorate under a brutal military occupation. The constitution not only prevents former members of the Ba'ath party, to which most Sunnis belonged, from holding public office, but it also cedes almost complete territorial control and authority —including control of the all-important oil revenues— to the two principal communities which approved the constitution and in whose regions the oil fields are to be found: the Shias and the Kurds. Given, therefore, the Shia dominance in the South and the Kurdish dominance in the North —the two areas in which almost 80 percent of the Iraqi population live— the "approval" of the constitution was almost a foregone conclusion since it served both the Shia desire for an essentially Islamist regime (a similar regime has already been established de facto in areas like Basra at the expense of women’s rights and other individual liberties[3]), and the Kurdish fervour for independence. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that most Sunnis currently feel that they have no other option but to intensify the civil war, which was imposed on them by the Shiite-Kurdis co-operation with the occupying powers.
The question raised here, however, is: how can the present situation in Iraq secure the consolidation of the New Order? As far as the Kurds are concerned, the recent crushing of the radical PKK movement by the transnational elite (with the active support of the Greek elite, which provided decisive assistance in arresting the PKK’s leader, Otzalan), guaranteed the protectorate nature of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds, after their self-alienation from the neighbouring Arab peoples, are absolutely dependent now on the bayonets of the transnational and Zionist elites for the survival of their "autonomy". On the other hand, the transnational elite’s reliance on the Shiites does create a series of serious contradictions. I do not refer here to the transnational elite’s flimsy propaganda that its war against "terrorism" is supposedly a war against Islamic fundamentalism and its different values —a ludicrous assertion, particularly today, when the new constitution gives Iraqi local religious authorities the final word on family matters, to the dismay of Iraqi women![4] Instead, I mainly refer to the ideological and political relationships between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites —the latter having governed Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution— which could potentially cause problems to the New Order in the area. However, the Yugoslavian example offers a way out for the transnational elite once again.
The military leadership of the transnational elite, working on the assumption that the intensification of the civil war in Iraq will lead to a corresponding significant reduction in the resistance against the occupation, plans to launch an attack against the Islamic Iranian regime, hoping that —as in Yugoslavia— a series of mass air bombardments[5] will suffice, eliminating the need for a costly and dangerous invasion. The massive bombings, in combination with the crushing embargo that will precede them (on a ludicrous pretext like that of the nuclear threat posed by Iran!), are calculated to turn the Iranian modernisers (i.e. the bourgeois class) against the Islamists (who appeal mainly to the lower social strata), leading —as in Yugoslavia— to the overthrow of the present regime. In this way, the strategic luminaries hope to achieve a double aim:
first, the neutralisation of Iran as a "destabilising" factor of the NWO and the parallel strengthening of the Zionist power bloc in the area[6] — which is rising with the decisive help of the transnational elite,
second, the creation of the Iraqi Shia power bloc’s permanent dependence on the transnational and Zionist elites, as its survival, in the face of Sunni resistance, will rely on their military might
Finally, in Palestine, after the transnational and Zionist elites managed (accidentally or not) to get rid of Arafat, who was the link —as well as the unifying element— between the rising Palestinian bourgeois class and the lower social strata, the road lay open for the same elites to create civil war conditions. These elites plan to impose a Palestinian "Bantustan", i.e. a legalised kind of apartheid, which is already being methodically established by the transfer of Zionist settlers from Gaza, the ongoing construction of the Wall etc. The last stage of the partition of Palestine has, therefore, just begun and it is to be imposed either with the agreement of the Palestinian authority or, as in the case of Gaza, unilaterally. In either case, civil war would be inevitable between the bourgeois class (represented by the new leadership of the Palestinian Authority) —which aims to secure peace at almost any cost, so that it will be in a position to exercise its business activities without distraction— and the lower social strata, which are principally going to suffer the consequences of such a "peace" and are today attracted by the resistance organisations. Of course, it is the Arab peoples who will have the final word on all these plans of the elites.ة
* The above text is based on a translation of an article which was first published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily Eleftherotypia on 29/10/2005.
[1] Salim Lone, «Taking Iraq apart», The Guardian (14/10/2005).
[2] see Takis Fotopoulos, ‘Iraq: the new criminal 'war' of the transnational elite’, Democracy & Nature, Vol.9, No. 2 (July 2003).