EAST ON FIRE

This year the whole world is marking the centenary of the start of the First World War. Even now its causes are a subject of arguments and discussions in world historiography. It is customary to regard the assassination of [heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne] Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian patriot, Gavrilo Princip, as the spark that started the military operations. But it is also generally known that the shot fired in [the Bosnian city of] Sarajevo was only a pretext. Numerous factors nudged circumstances towards the Great War. In the main these were the aggressive plans of the great European states and the intended new division of the world. By that time, there were hardly any territories on Earth that had not been seized by the European powers. But the most enticing little piece, the extremely rich lands of the Middle East were under the control of the Ottoman Empire, "the sick man of Europe", whose heritage needed to be divided up.

For 400 years there had not been any civil strife and religious wars on those territories. But English emissaries had started to appear among the nomadic Arab tribes from the beginning of the 19th century. They were precisely the ones who were largely to promote the growth of Arab nationalism based on Islamic fundamentalism. The teachings of the Arab Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhabi became increasingly popular among the Bedouin tribal leaders in the desert. One of them, Sharif and Emir of Mecca Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi, on the instructions of the "legendary" English spy, Laurence of Arabia, concluded an agreement with the British government to bring about an uprising of the Ottoman Turks, in exchange for a pledge of acknowledgement of independence by the English.

Thus, during the First World War the European powers easily defeated the Ottoman Turks with some help from the Islamic fundamentalists and divided up the Middle East. This is how the secret Sykes-PicotAgreement came into being between the governments of Great Britain, France, Russia and later Italy as well, in which the spheres of interests in the Middle East were demarcated after the First World War.

In keeping with the agreement Great Britain received a territory embracing modern Jordan, Iraq and the area around the town of Haifa. France was allocated the south-eastern part of Turkey, Northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The agreement renounced the pledges made to the Arabs by Laurence of Arabia relating to the creation of a national Arab state on the territory of Greater Syria in exchange for their support for British forces in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire. So, the Sheikh's dream was not destined to come true.

The countries of the Middle East were only able to acquire nominal independence in the mid-1950s. But this independence did not bring stability and prosperity to this region. True to the principle of "divide and rule", British diplomacy did everything to ensure that there would be reasons for and causes of conflicts in that region for ever more.

Firstly, the colonialists did not actually go away anywhere at any time, and the Western transnational companies were extremely successful in developing the region's rich resources. Secondly, the states of the Middle East were in actual fact artificial formations, bringing together irreconcilable ethnic and religious communities. Regimes were set up in the Middle East which were not initially accepted by the population. Thus, the Sunni minority was in power in Iraq, while the majority of country's population are Shiites even today. In Syria the Alawites, who only account for 20 per cent of the population, took up the reins of government. So, civil unrest would underpin the future of these countries like a delayed-action mine.

In the second half of the 20th century the Middle East became the arena for a geopolitical struggle between the USA and the USSR. Acts of terrorism, coups d'?tat and civil wars became everyday occurrences in that region. Coups d'etat were organised against those leaders who tried to play their own game and wanted to feel independent. This is what happened to the Shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. He was reinstated on his throne after "Operation Ajax" conducted by the US and British special services in 1953, as a result of which the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown. He had nationalised Iran's petroleum industry the year before, from which British petroleum companies had enjoyed the profits up until then. This was essentially the first case in world history when US and English special services had carried out an operation to overthrow the government of a foreign state for the sake of the interests of transnational companies.

But at the end of the 1970s Shah Reza Pahlavi himself began to pursue a more independent policy. Strange as it may seem, revolution flared up again in Iran, as a result of which Imam Rouhullah Khomeini, who had lived in Paris up until then, came to power, helped by those same Western special services. But something incredible happened here: after Khomeini had consolidated his positions in the country, he began to pursue a policy that was hostile towards the West.

Such a "betrayal" could not remain unpunished. The USA and Great Britain set another of its loyal allies in the Middle East, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, on Iran. The officials in Washington referred to Saddam Hussein as "our strong man" in the region. The Western countries even turned a blind eye to the fact that Saddam bombed the Kurdish settlements in the north of his state from time to time. After an eight-year-long war, the internal political situation in Iraq was extremely complicated. There were food shortages in the country, acute social problems and the national question. But instead of resolving the problems, Saddam Hussein made the situation even worse by occupying neighbouring Kuwait. 

Although it was waged with a UN mandate, the subsequent "Gulf War" aimed at liberating Kuwait became the start of a process of mission creep for the American military in the Middle East. The beginning of the 1990s is recalled for the appearance of numerous American military bases on the territories of the Arab countries, among which Saudi Arabia, the USA's chief ally in the region, a country with a Wahhabist ideology, particularly stands out.

After the ill-starred events of 11 September 2001, the USA was given carte blanche to intervene in Middle Eastern countries under the guise of the fight against Islamic terrorism. It is extremely noteworthy here that the USA blamed the "Al-Qaeda" organisation for the terrorist act of 9/11, which was managed by terrorist No.1 of all times and peoples, Osama bin Laden. This Osama had in his time been one of the field commanders of the Afghan Mujahideen, who had fought against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia and… the USA. As a result, the Americans got the opportunity to intervene in Afghanistan, a country that was very important from a geopolitical point of view, and two years later the USA with Great Britain at its side decided to put an end to what had started in Iraq back in 1991.

To begin with, the USA and then Great Britain accused the Iraqi regime of supporting "Al-Qaeda", in spite of the fact that Saddam Hussein was himself an opponent of the Islamic fundamentalists. What followed was what might have served as an extremely complicated scenario for a tragicomedy. Thus, at a Security Council session on 5 February 2003 the US Secretary of State at the time, Colin Powell, showed a test tube allegedly containing malignant anthrax bacilli as evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and this provided the rationale for the invasion. But, as later became clear, this test tube only contained washing powder. According to data from one of the leading British research groups, Opinion Research Business (ORB), more than one million civilians perished in Iraq in 2003-2008 alone.

The southern region of Iraq, which is well-known for its immense reserves of oil, had been under the control of British forces for many years, and it is not surprising that after the intervention British energy companies stepped up their activity there. There is no oil in Afghanistan, but this country has sadly become known for another "valuable" commodity, namely opium poppies. In 2001, the "Taliban" prohibited the growing of opium poppies, but, after the NATO intervention in that year, production of it soared. In 2008, the growth rate had increased 44-fold, reaching 8,200 tonnes per year, compared with 185 tonnes in 2001.

When Barack Obama was elected US president, unlike his predecessors, he was not a creature of the defence-industry and energy circles, but was more of a financial oligarch. Changes relating to the Middle East could be seen in US policy. According to the specialists a process of "strategic withdrawal from the region" began.

There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the euphoria following the "lightning victory" ended, and ever-increasing numbers of coffins containing the bodies of American soldiers kept coming back to the USA. They had not managed to completely annihilate the Taliban in Afghanistan, and uprisings against the NATO armies were occurring from time to time. There were no particular difficulties with the oil wells, because they were guarded by mercenaries working for private military companies, but the returning coffins were bound to have an impact on the socio-political situation. Things were even worse from an economic point of view. On the other hand, in building up its economic and military might, China was throwing down an ever stronger challenge to US interests in the world.

Correspondingly Obama announced a new military doctrine on 5 January 2012. It stated that America cannot allow itself to fight two wars at the same time. One direct war could be permitted and several indirect military operations in various regions of the world. But the USA began to transfer more than half of its military machine to the Asia-Pacific region to counteract China.

So, the Americans' "official departure" from the Middle East region started. The departure was brought about in such a way that the USA's rivals, primarily China, Russia, Iran and partly the EU could not take advantage of the situation. So, yet another process of manipulation and coups d'?tat started, which has gone down in world history under the modest name of "Arab spring". The Middle Eastern countries have become sucked into an abyss of chaos one after the other: Tunisia,Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Syria… And in each country the Islamists have appeared on the scene. Back at the beginning of the millennium, the then editor-in-chief of the French International Radio (RFI) station, the well-known Arabic specialist, Richard Labeviere called the fundamentalists "the watchdogs of American-style globalisation". He believes that the Islamic fundamentalists and the transnational corporations controlling US policy have one and the same enemy, namely nation states.

Today you cannot actually talk about centralised power in Yemen. In Egypt, after a year of the incompetent government of the "Muslim Brotherhood", the military, backed by the popular masses to a certain extent,  have come to power, but there will not be stability in that country for a long time to come. The once flourishing Libya has already been divided up into three warring parts; as far as Syria is concerned, it has been divided up into four or even five small parts. Iraq, yet another country to which the USA and Great Britain "have brought" democracy, has in actual fact fallen apart. After the Americans had withdrawn, the authority of Nouri al-Maliki could not stand on its own two feet for long.

Many people prophesied that complete chaos would begin in Iraq, in which the Islamists would naturally be involved as well. As a result, the sadly "notorious" grouping in Syria, "The Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant" suddenly stepped up its activity in Iraq, dividing the country de facto into three parts. We can judge from two facts who is backing them. In June the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" published an article on the leader of ISIL [ISIS], [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi. When the latter was arrested by NATO soldiers, he repeatedly had contact with the commander of the international forces in Iraq, General [David]Petraeus, who subsequently became the director of the American Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]. An interview with one of the organisation's commanders, Ahmet Gunduz, can serve as another piece of circumstantial evidence; he specifically says in the interview that in Iraq they are fighting against Iran, Russia and China… 

The situation in the Middle East is a blazing fire capable of becoming a serious threat to many countries. From North Africa this fire may spread to Europe where there are many Muslim immigrants; from Syria and Iraq it may spread to Turkey and then to the former Soviet republics, to Iran, Central Asia, and even reach the bounds of Russia and China where Muslims in the north of the country have become noticeably more active of late. The only places that it might not reach are the islands of Great Britain and the USA. But that might happen in the future too, and in our time chaos and conflagration are increasingly destroying absolutely innocent people. Ancient and rich lands, the homeland of the three main religions and many civilisations are being destroyed. And it looks as if that fire will keep blazing away for a long time to come.