[THS] Robert Fisk: Russia`s Power to change the Middle East

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Russia's Power to change the Middle East

by Robert Fisk

If America can't broker peace in the Middle East, is it time for the Russians to step in?
They have a long history with the region – and aren't hobbled by an Israeli lobby

Thursday, 27 May 2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-power-to-change-1983794.html


I've always claimed that somewhere across the Atlantic – or perhaps somewhere over
the Mediterranean – there lies a geopolitical fault line, perhaps a screen or curtain,
through which the loveable old West (once called Christendom) sees the Middle East,
and then misinterprets all it observes. An Iranian offer of peaceably resolving its
nuclear program becomes a threat and a cause for sanctions. Forthcoming elections
in Egypt are seen as another step towards democracy rather than further one-party
rule by an 81-year old dictator.

The start – yet again – of "indirect" peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis
becomes another partial success for US peacemaking rather than a shameful symbol
that there is no hope for the Palestinians. Yet more slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan
are symbols of al-Qa'ida and Taliban "desperation", rather than signs that we have
lost our war in both countries.

The fault lines between Russia and the Middle East, however, are not so deep, nor
do they obscure so much truth. There are a number of reasons for this. The old
Soviet Union maintained a more-than-colonial hold on a clutch of Muslim republics –
indeed Tsarist Russia had been fighting in Chechnya in the 19th century. Read
Tolstoy's Haaji Murat. "No one spoke of hatred of the Russians," Tolstoy wrote of the
men whose descendants would be fighting Putin's army well over a century later.
"The feeling experienced ... from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than
hatred. It was not hatred, for they did not regard dogs as human beings, but it was
such repulsion, disgust and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures." He
might have been writing of the incendiary anger of the people of Grozny, or of the
savage fury of the Afghans after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Yes, the Russians learned a lot in Afghanistan; and our occupation has now lasted –
it's not a point our jolly generals and prime ministers will tell you – longer than theirs.
Our great plans for the Battle of Kandahar – a battle I suspect will not be fought –
are less ambitious than were the Soviet plans for Herat and Kandahar. But the
Russians remember what happened to them.

Bin Laden once boasted to me that he destroyed the Soviet army in Afghanistan – a
claim which had the merit of some truth. In Moscow five years ago, I listened to
Soviet veterans of Afghanistan – some now crippled by drugs – describing the IEDs
which claimed the lives of their comrades in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the
skinning alive and dismembering of captured Soviet patrols. The Soviets, it will be
remembered, entered Afghanistan for their own interests – Brezhnev feared that the
loss of his Communist ally in Kabul might precipitate attacks from Muslims inside the
southern Soviet Union – but claimed they were fighting to prop up a people's
government led (of course) by a corrupt leader, to bring socialist equality, especially
in schools and healthcare, to train the Afghan army. I won't go on ...

But the Soviets understood much of the Muslim world, certainly the Arab bit of it.
They had spent decades helping to teach their dictators how to rule like the Kremlin
ruled, setting up a hundred mini-KGBs to crush all opposition, flooding them with
arms and military aircraft, training their soldiers to fight their own people.

And when Israel won in 1967, and won again in 1973 and then again in 1982 – one
memorable moment in the Israeli siege of Beirut, I recall, came when the leader of
the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine pleaded with Moscow to air drop
weapons for them into the surrounded Lebanese capital – the Russians witnessed the
humiliation of the Arabs. Russian diplomats spoke far better Arabic than their
American colleagues (the same is true today) and understood the false claims of
support that they – the Russians – were expected to make to the Arab "cause".

So when President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Damascus for a meeting with
President Bashar Assad earlier this month, it was typical of the Arabs to listen to him –
and typical of us that we did not. Far from being impressed with "peacemaking",
Medvedev declared that the Middle East situation was "very, very bad", pleading with
the Americans to take serious action. "In essence, the Middle East peace process has
deteriorated," he said. "A further heating up of the situation in the Middle East is
fraught with an explosion and a catastrophe." And did the Americans listen? Not a bit
of it. Instead, La Clinton flounced up to the Hill to tell America's legislators that the
new Turkish-Brazilian-Iran nuclear deal was not good enough; UN sanctions would
go ahead – with Russian help. Well, we shall see.

After his warning, the President of Russia – which is a member of the infamous
Quartet supposedly run by the equally infamous Tony Blair – then did what Blair and
a host of British diplomats should have done long ago; he went off to see Khaled
Meshaal, the Hamas leader in Damascus, and ask for the release of the Israeli soldier
imprisoned in Gaza – undiscovered by the heroic Israeli army, let it be remembered,
when Israel's warriors stormed into that midden of poverty and injustice almost a
year and a half ago. The Israelis scarcely criticised Medvedev – which they would if
Blair or Hague or Obama were to pay such a visit – but then again, the crazed Israeli
foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, happens to be a Russian, doesn't he?

So what happens then? Why, Medvedev stokes the flames by formally announcing
the sale of air-defence systems to Syria – Pantsir short-range surface-to-air missiles –
anti-aircraft artillery batteries and a fleet of Mig-29 fighters. And on the very same
day, what does Obama do? He asks Congress to approve £133m for Israel's rocket air
defence. This is just a month after President Shimon Peres of Israel claimed – to
considerable American scepticism, though of course they cannot show that in the
face of Israeli allegations – that Syria had been sending hosts of mighty (and
outdated) Scud missiles to the Hizbollah in Lebanon. These old behemoths would be
of little use to the Hizbollah, though the latter – who have already claimed to have
20,000 rockets to fire at Israel – slyly chose not to deny the Scud nonsense.

This vast waste of money by the US and Russia and by the Syrians – though not by
the Israelis whose economy floats on US financial grants – simply goes unnoticed in
the West, where we play our little games of UN sanctions and concern for Israeli
"security" (and no concern at all for Palestinian "security"). And where Obama lays
out the red carpet – quite literally – for the corrupt and corrupting Hamid Karzai.

Why, oh why, I keep asking myself, doesn't Obama – who spent months debating a
"surge" (how I hate that word) in Afghanistan – bring in all his foreign policy
"experts" and get a hold on the deepening tragedy of this region? From sea to
shining sea, the US possesses armies of deans of departments of Middle East Studies,
Islamic Studies, Hebrew Studies, Arabic Studies – and yet their wisdom is never
called upon. Why not? Because the foreign policy "experts" – and their disreputable
clones on CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc – want no part of their wisdom. For
Harvard, read the Brookings Institute; for Berkeley, read the Rand Corporation, etc,
etc.

And what lies behind this? I turn to my old mate John Mearsheimer, co-author of The
Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy which became a best- seller among ordinary
Americans – despite the usual ravings of Alan Dershowitz (he of "Judge Goldstone is
an evil man" infamy) – who has now published yet another brave article on the
woeful influence of the Israeli lobby on Washington; actually, it is the Likud party
lobby, but let's not worry about the difference right now. Mearsheimer says that
President Barack Obama has "finally coaxed Israel and the Palestinians back to the
negotiating table", hoping that this will lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in
Gaza and the West Bank. "Regrettably, that is not going to happen," Mearsheimer
states. "Instead, those territories are almost certain to be incorporated into a 'Greater
Israel' which will then be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-
ruled South Africa."

No American president can pressure Israel to change its policies towards Palestinians.
Mearsheimer does not mince his words. "The main reason is the Israeli lobby, a
powerful coalition of American Jews and Christian evangelicals that has a profound
influence on US Middle East policy. Alan Dershowitz" – yes, the same – "was spot on
when he said, 'My generation of Jews ... became part of what is perhaps the most
effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy.'"

It isn't the first time that an American academic has been so blunt. Since 1967, every
US president has opposed the internationally illegal Israeli colonisation of Arab land in
the West Bank. None has been successful. Obama isn't going to have any more luck
that his predecessors. After becoming President, he demanded an end to these
colonies. Netanyahu told him to get lost. Obama – Mearsheimer's accurate words –
"caved in". When Obama demanded no more Israeli building in East Jerusalem,
Netanyahu said Israel would never stop building there because it was "an integral
part of the Jewish state". Obama flunked again.

Netanyahu has yet again repeated there will be no halt in building in that part of
Jerusalem which the Palestinians need as their capital. Obama didn't even respond.
And don't think for a moment that Clinton will – she wants to be the next American
president after Obama.

The flaw of the Europeans, of course, is that they will not themselves take any steps
over Israel because – this is the sublime and false message of all EU foreign ministers
– it is America that has "leverage" over Israel. Yes, it should be America that has
leverage over Israel – given its massive economic subventions to the Jewish state –
but it's not; because, as Mearsheimer says, the lobby has too much control over US
policy in the Middle East. This is not to suggest that there is some kind of Jewish
"conspiracy", merely that this Israeli-Likudist lobby deprives the US of any
independent rights as a negotiator and emasculates American policy by endangering
American relations with the rest of the region.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert – who like many ex-ministers and
presidents tells the self-evident truth when he no longer has the ability to enforce
that truth – says that if the two-state solution collapses (which it will), "Israel will face
a South African-style struggle" and "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is
finished". Mearsheimer's argument is that "the lobby in the US is effectively helping
Israel destroy its own future as a Jewish state".

And what do we do? We go on supporting all the outrageous dictators and
potentates of the region, encouraging them to trust the US, to make more
concessions to Israel, but to keep their people down. We do sometimes ask them to
be "more democratic". This was a George W Bush idea – summed up by his wife,
who thought King Abdullah of Jordan and his wife were good examples of democrats
– this, in an unconstitutional monarchy! I do sometimes wonder at the irony – and
the hypocrisy – of European countries which urge democracy on the Arabs.

We all want little Houses of Commons dotted over the Middle East at a time when
most EU countries are turning into presidential-style nations. The prestige of the real
House of Commons has been steadily deteriorating for years – no British paper, for
example, even carries a parliamentary page today – and Blairite rule has a lot to do
with this. Perhaps that's why this wretched man doesn't push the democracy thing
too much in the Middle East.

Yet, it is all true. Arab rulers are so sure of themselves that they now say boo to the
golden goose. When the Obama administration criticised Hosni Mubarak's decision to
continue its three-decade-old emergency law – Clinton said the extension ignored "a
broad range of Egyptian voices" – the Egyptian foreign minister blithely replied that
the statement was "overly politicised", adding that the criticism was aimed at the US
media and human rights groups. He was absolutely right about the latter.

So is the American age ending? Alas, not yet. Perhaps some of our illusions about the
Middle East are being amended. Perhaps the latest attacks in Iraq, and the more
spectacular ones in Afghanistan, including the astonishing attack on Bagram air base
– I thought we were supposed to be fighting the Battle of Kandahar, not the Battle of
Bagram – will force us to acknowledge more truths. That the Muslim people – not
their corrupt leaders – cannot be put down, will not be put down, even when the
insurgencies against the West are as ruthless as they are regressive. But are we
learning? The US sends flocks of drones over Pakistan, shoots missiles into Waziristan,
a Pakistani-born American then tries to bow up a car bomb in Times Square in
revenge – and the Americans then in revenge use drones to kill 15 more men in
Pakistan, and then ... Readers can write the next bit for themselves.

On top of all this, we still graft our own extraordinary preemptive history onto this
massive conflict. I'm often reminded of the way we went to war in Northern Ireland
in the early 1970s. We journalists arrived there with little historical knowledge, save
for a vague image of the Punch cartoon Irishman, drunk and carrying a cudgel,
anxious to kill without reason all the refined Englishmen who came to invade his
country – and the faint memory that Catholic Ireland was neutral in the Second
World War (true), that de Valera paid a visit of condolence to the German legation on
Hitler's death (true), that Irishmen refuelled German U-boats (untrue).

The Muslims find themselves in a similar situation; we believe they want to Islamicise
the West (untrue), they want to expand into the West – untrue, they did that in
Andalucia – that their expansion is achieved by the sword. Do we really believe that
Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, was invaded by Arabs? There's
even the Second World War bit – that the Arabs were pro-Nazi. Well, it's true that the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met Hitler and made several disgraceful broadcasts against
the Jews though he did not – as Israel's propagandists claim – ever visit Auschwitz.
But then again, Anwar Sadat was a spy for Rommel in Egypt – and would happily
have watched the Wehrmacht continue on its way to Palestine – but he became
Israel's greatest Arab friend, invited to Jerusalem when he wanted to make peace.

But our preconceptions go much further back – to the days when we generally used
the word "Turk" for Muslims. In Italy, they were using the word "Turks" as a curse
before the 16th century. As Swedish diplomat Ingmar Karlsson discovered when
researching for a paper he delivered in Istanbul in 2005, the Italians used to have a
phrase "puzza come un Turco" which meant "he stinks like a Turk". Today, we still
use the phrase "to talk turkey" and my own 1949 Random House American College
Dictionary gives one definition of "Turk" as "a cruel, barbarous, or tyrannical person".

And so it goes on, not without a little help from our dear Pope at Regensburg. Yet
Arabs became Roman emperors and were visiting the east before us. When Vasco Da
Gama "discovered" India and reached Calicut (Calcutta) on 20 May 1498 – I owe this
possibly apocryphal story to Warwick Ball in his remarkable Out of Arabia – he was
greeted by an Arab from Tunisia with the words "May the devil take you! What
brought you here?" But a contemporary chronicle from Hadramaut (in modern-day
Yemen) describes how French vessels appeared at sea one day heading for India.
"They took about seven (Arab) vessels, killing those on board and making some
prisoners. This was their first action, may God curse them!" The Europeans were
arriving in the Indian Ocean when we think the Arabs were trying to enter Europe.

Maybe that was the original fault line. Or it was the Crusades? Or the Ottoman
Empire – remember how Turkey was "the sick man of Europe"? – or our lies to the
Arabs about Palestine? Or the Iranian revolution? Or our unconditional support for
Israel? Or our fostering of all those awful dictatorships? But it's time we got rid of
fault lines, saw the reality of history and listened – dare I repeat it? – to the likes of
Dmitry Medvedev.