Stephen Hawking’s support for the boycott of Israel is a turning point

Posted on May 13, 2013 by iPouya

The Guardian: A standard objection to the Palestinian campaign for the boycott of Israel is that it would cut off “dialogue” and hurt the chances of peace. We’ve heard this again in the wake of Professor Stephen Hawking’s laudable decision to withdraw from Israel’s Presidential Conference in response to requests from Palestinian academics – but it would be hard to think of a more unconvincing position as far as Palestinians are concerned.

One of the most deceptive aspects of the so-called peace process is the pretence that Palestinians and Israelis are two equal sides, equally at fault, equally responsible – thus erasing from view the brutal reality that Palestinians are an occupied, colonised people, dispossessed at the hands of one of the most powerful militaries on earth.

For more than two decades, under the cover of this fiction, Palestinians have engaged in internationally-sponsored “peace talks” and other forms of dialogue, only to watch as Israel has continued to occupy, steal and settle their land, and to kill and maim thousands of people with impunity.

While there are a handful of courageous dissenting Israeli voices, major Israeli institutions, especially the universities, have been complicit in this oppression by, for example, engaging in research and training partnerships with the Israeli army. Israel’s government has actively engaged academics, artists and other cultural figures in international “Brand Israel” campaigns to prettify the country’s image and distract attention from the oppression of Palestinians.

The vast majority of Palestinians, meanwhile, have been disenfranchised by the official peace process as their fate has been placed in the hands of venal and comprised envoys such as Tony Blair, and US and EU governments that only seem to find the courage to implement international law and protect human rights when it comes to the transgressions of African or Arab states.

When it comes to Israel’s abuses, governments around the world have offered nothing but lip service; while dozens of countries face US, EU or UN sanctions for far lesser transgressions, it has taken years for EU governments to even discuss timid steps such as labelling goods from illegal Israeli settlements, let alone actually banning them. Yet the peace process train trundles on – now with a new conductor in the form of John Kerry, the US secretary of state – but with no greater prospects of ever reaching its destination. So, enough talk already.

The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

These demands are in line with universal human rights principles and would be unremarkable and uncontroversial in any other context, which is precisely why support for them is growing.

BDS builds on a long tradition of popular resistance around the world: from within Palestine itself to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Historically, boycotts work.

During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for “constructive engagement”. They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.

But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless “dialogue” and fuzzy and toothless talk about “peace” that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.

When we look back in a few years, Hawking’s decision to respect BDS may be seen as a turning point – the moment when boycotting Israel as a stance for justice went mainstream.

What is clear today is that his action has forced Israelis – and the rest of the world – to understand that the status quo has a price. Israel cannot continue to pretend that it is a country of culture, technology and enlightenment while millions of Palestinians live invisibly under the brutal rule of bullets, bulldozers and armed settlers.

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The Failed Neocon Attempt to Destroy an Iranian American Anti-war Organization

Posted on May 10, 2013 by iPouya

From a former AIPAC insider, M.J. Rosenberg: The war over war with Iran has many battlefronts. Inside Washington, the battle line is between a small coalition of peace and security, non-proliferation and religious groups opposing war and favoring a peaceful solution to the stand off with Iran, and a well-funded war machine comprising neoconservative organizations who believe war with Iran should have started years ago.

A central organization within the anti-war coalition is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the largest Iranian-American grassroots organization. NIAC has been at the forefront of opposing war, favoring diplomacy and opposing broad sanctions that only hurt the Iranian people, while, at the same time, rebuking Tehran’s horrible human rights record.

At the end of this five-year process, no evidence was found to substantiate the accusation that NIAC was lobbying for the Iranian regime.

 

With its access to the White House, State Department and media, NIAC has increasingly troubled the war crowd, so much so that it has become one of their favorite targets.

Its leading attack dog, Seyyed Hassan Daioleslam put it like this in an internal email: “destroying” NIAC and its President Trita Parsi “is an integral part of any attack on [former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton and President Obama.” In other words, destroying NIAC would also destroy the administration’s policy of avoiding war with Iran.

Daioleslam has engaged in a massive defamation campaign accusing NIAC of being the lobby of the Islamic Republic of Iran — a ludicrous accusation considering NIAC’s unambiguous support for the Iranian pro-democracy movement but one that would rightly destroy the organization if proven true.

NIAC responded, as it had to, by taking Daioleslam to court for defamation.

No doubt, NIAC knew that in suing Dai it was fighting a David vs. Goliath battle, since the laws are stacked against anyone suing for defamation in the U.S.

But it was worse than that. Not only were the laws stacked against it, NIAC was also significantly outspent because the neoconservatives decided to go all out to deal a death blow to the anti-war forces. In fact, the well-financed anti-Muslim, pro-war and anti-Obama activist Daniel Pipes stepped in to support Daioleslam through the legal arm of his organization, the Middle East Forum. Pipes got Daioleslam a top-notch legal team headed by George Bush’s former White House lawyer Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin, the sixth largest law firm in the world.

At first, Daioleslam’s court room argument was that his statements were accurate and that NIAC should be compelled to open its books so that the veracity of his claim of NIAC’s control by Tehran could be assessed. NIAC complied and Daioleslam’s high-powered legal team went through thousands of emails, documents and calendar entries.

However, to their great frustration, they couldn’t find a shred of evidence supporting Daioleslam’s claims. Instead, the documents revealed a very simple truth: NIAC is an independent grassroots organization supported by the Iranian American community, and which, engages with all parties to the conflict including the U.S., Iranian and Israeli governments.

Failing to prove his main contention, Daioleslam retreated from the assertion that NIAC was the Islamic Republic’s lobby. This was a huge victory for NIAC and, if the lawsuit had been filed in any other country, the conclusion would have been: Daioleslam lost, NIAC won.

Not a good day for the pro-war lobby, but a very good one for Americans who abhor the idea of being embroiled in a third Middle East war.

 

But in the U.S., the plaintiffs (in this case, NIAC) have to go one step beyond proving that they were defamed. Plaintiffs also have to prove that the other side had acted with malice. So NIAC had to prove that Daioleslam knew that he was lying — a tall order under all circumstances. And convincing the very conservative, Bush appointed Judge John Bates – the same judge that got Dick Cheney off the hook in the Valerie Plame case – that Daioleslam acted with malice was probably impossible.

NIAC could not pull that off and the judge responded by shifting some of the legal “discovery” costs ($184,000) from Daioleslam to NIAC. But that was Daioleslam’s only victory.

Not only was the claim that NIAC is a foreign lobby shattered but Daniel Pipes and other neoconservatives had spent considerably more than $184,000 on their efforts to destroy NIAC. They had hoped to shift a much larger chunk of those costs to NIAC to cripple it by emptying its coffers.

But NIAC succeeded in striking out the largest item on Daioleslam’s menu of requests, leaving NIAC with an $184,000 bill, an amount it is appealing. In short, Dailoeslam’s attack backfired, apparently leaving him (or Pipes) heavily in the hole. In fact, during a press call last week, Dailoeslam actually called on reporters to donate and help defray its costs!

So at the end of this five-year process, no evidence was found to substantiate the accusation that NIAC was lobbying for the Iranian regime; the objective of “destroying NIAC” has completely failed as the organization continues to be one of the most prominent voices on Iran policy in Washington; and the vast majority of the cost of the discovery process remains with the defendant and his neo-conservative backers.

Not a good day for the pro-war lobby, but a very good one for Americans who find the idea of being embroiled in a third Middle East war – so soon after Iraq and with our troops still in Afghanistan – utterly appalling.

M.J. Rosenberg is a Special Correspondent for The Washington Spectator. He was most recently a Foreign Policy fellow at Media Matters For America. Previously, he spent 15 years as a Senate and House aide. Early in his career he was editor of AIPAC’s newsletter Near East Report. From 1998-2009, he was director of policy at Israel Policy Forum. Follow him @MJayRosenberg and @WashSpec.

Posted in Iran, US-Iran Relations | 1 Comment

Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel

Posted on May 8, 2013 by iPouya

The Guardian: Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval described it as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

Hawking’s decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.

In April the Teachers’ Union of Ireland became the first lecturers’ association in Europe to call for an academic boycott of Israel, and in the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies voted to support a boycott, the first national academic group to do so.

In the four weeks since Hawking’s participation in the Jerusalem event was announced, he has been bombarded with messages from Britain and abroad as part of an intense campaign by boycott supporters trying to persuade him to change his mind. In the end, Hawking told friends, he decided to follow the advice of Palestinian colleagues who unanimously agreed that he should not attend.

By participating in the boycott, Hawking joins a small but growing list of British personalities who have turned down invitations to visit Israel, including Elvis Costello, Roger Waters, Brian Eno, Annie Lennox and Mike Leigh.

However, many artists, writers and academics have defied and even denounced the boycott, calling it ineffective and selective. Ian McEwan, who was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011, responded to critics by saying: “If I only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out of bed … It’s not great if everyone stops talking.”

Hawking has visited Israel four times in the past. Most recently, in 2006, he delivered public lectures at Israeli and Palestinian universities as the guest of the British embassy in Tel Aviv. At the time, he said he was “looking forward to coming out to Israel and the Palestinian territories and excited about meeting both Israeli and Palestinian scientists”.

Since then, his attitude to Israel appears to have hardened. In 2009, Hawking denounced Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza, telling Riz Khan on Al-Jazeera that Israel’s response to rocket fire from Gaza was “plain out of proportion … The situation is like that of South Africa before 1990 and cannot continue.”

The office of President Peres, which has not yet announced Hawking’s withdrawal, did not respond to requests for comment. Hawking’s name has been removed from the speakers listed on the official website.

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Jewish settlers are terrorising Palestinians, says Israeli general

Posted on May 2, 2013 by iPouya

The Independent: A senior Israeli army commander has warned that unchecked “Jewish terror” against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank threatens to plunge the territory into another conflict.

In unusually outspoken comments, Major General Avi Mizrahi took aim at extremist Israeli settlers, and said the yeshiva, or religious seminary, in Yitzhar, one of the most radical Jewish strongholds in the West Bank, should be closed, calling it a source of terror against Palestinians.

The general’s comments are likely to put him at odds with Israel’s pro-settler government, which has resisted US-led efforts to curb settlement expansion in a bid to revive stalled peace talks. The foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, himself lives in a West Bank settlement. All settlements are regarded as illegal under international law.

The army has anxiously watched an upsurge in violence by hardline settlers, who in recent months have set fire to a West Bank mosque, burned Palestinian olive groves, and vandalised Palestinian property. Settlers have killed three Palestinians this year.

“What’s happening in the field is terrorism,” General Mizrahi told Channel 2′s Meet the Press, and it “needs to be dealt with.” The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), he said, fears “terrorism against Palestinians is likely to ignite the territories.”

The general’s criticism points to frustration within the army’s high command at their ability to check violent settlers.

Palestinians and Israeli NGOs frequently accuse the army of siding with settlers in conflagrations with Palestinians, prompting the army to respond that it is obliged to protect its citizens and does not set policy.

The number of violent incidents has spiked in recent months, partly because of the murder earlier this year of five members, including three children, from one Jewish family in Itamar, a settlement near Nablus. Two Palestinians were charged with the crime.

Human rights groups suggest that the more radical settlers, many of whom oppose a two-state solution on the premise that the whole of Israel is bequeathed to them by God, are agitating against Palestinian moves to seek statehood recognition at the United Nations in September.

Some fear that the surge in violent attacks against Palestinians could compound rising frustrations with the stalled peace process and trigger more violent riots.

“The army is very afraid that [action by settlers] at a critical moment could set off a Third Intifada,” said Adam Keller, spokesman for Israeli human rights body Gush Shalom, referring to a mass Palestinian uprising.

“The fact that the army is nervous is making the settlers more aggressive,” he said

The Israeli commander General Mizrahi blamed the courts for failing to rein in the most radical of the settlers – a small proportion of the roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers who are living beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

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UC Berkeley: ASUC Senate passes divestment bill SB 160 11-9

Posted on April 18, 2013 by iPouya

Today, I’m especially proud to be a Cal alum: – The Daily Cal: In a dramatic vote that was emotional for all sides, the ASUC Senate voted 11-9 to divest from companies affiliated with Israel’s military early Thursday morning.

The heated debate began Wednesday evening and carried on for 10 hours, continuing into Thursday. Anna Head Alumnae Hall overflowed with hundreds of UC Berkeley students, faculty and community members engaging in a contentious debate regarding the bill, SB 160.

SB 160, authored by Student Action Senator George Kadifa, calls the UC system a “complicit third party” in Israel’s “illegal occupation and ensuing human rights abuses” and seeks the divestment of more than $14 million in ASUC and UC assets from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Cement Roadstone Holdings. According to the bill, these companies provide equipment, materials and technology to the Israeli military, including bulldozers and biometric identification systems.

The final vote, which occurred just before 5:30 a.m., was met with cheering, stomping and cries of joy by supporters of the bill.

Independent Senator and bill co-sponsor Sadia Saifuddin said she saw the vote as the culmination of years of struggle.

“Tonight is not about corporations,” she said. “It’s about asking ourselves before we go to sleep whether our money is going toward the destruction of homes, toward the erection of a wall. I am a working student. And I don’t want one cent of my money to go toward fueling the occupation of my brothers and sisters.”

But across the aisle, opponents of divestment were silent, absorbing the defeat with dismay.

SQUELCH! Senator Jason Bellet decried the bill for ignoring an important side in the issue.

“If we walk away with anything tonight, it’s that this conflict is nuanced,” he said. “But divestment and the language set forth in SB 160 frames Israel as the sole aggressor. This is more than just divesting from three companies. Divestment is undoubtedly taking a side in the conflict.”

The vote was emotional for senators as well as spectators. At least three senators broke down in tears as they gave their final comments following the vote.

Dozens of community members spoke at the beginning of the meeting, pleading their cases to the senate late into the night.

Supporters of the divestment bill — which included Muslim and Jewish students alike as well as members of other campus communities — said they opposed the ASUC and university’s financial involvement with companies that benefit from alleged human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli government.

“There are few experiences more traumatic than losing your home or being forced out of the place you call home,” said UC Berkeley junior Kamyar Jarahzadeh. “This university’s money — our money — is complicit in the deprivation of human rights.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, who said she had visited the Gaza Strip, was present at the meeting and publicly voiced her support for SB 160.

The senate was also set to vote on an opposing bill, SB 158, but the bill was tabled following the long discussion of SB 160. SB 158 “seek(s) investment opportunities that strengthen Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in pursuit of a two state resolution to the conflict” rather than divestment.

Many members of the Jewish community decried SB 160’s targeted divestment from Israel as choosing one side of the conflict at the expense of the other when suffering has occurred on both.

“Divestment does nothing to better the lives of Palestinians,” said political science professor Ron Hassner. “It seeks to undermine, harm and destroy and offers no vision of an Israeli-Palestinian future.”

Opponents of divestment also reminded the senate of the hostile campus climate Jewish students faced after the 2010 divestment attempt. Many said they felt alienated and unwelcome and warned that the passage of SB 160 could affect Jewish students’ decision to come to UC Berkeley.

“We will take home that an amendment asking for a two-state solution was failed,” said SQUELCH! party chair and former Daily Cal columnist Noah Ickowitz. “We will take home that an amendment asking for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was failed. We will take home that this body takes divestment as a weapon of choice when that is not the only weapon in our arsenal.”

The senate passed a similar divestment bill in 2010, but it was later vetoed by then-president Will Smelko.

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Iran’s MEK to open Washington office

Posted on April 12, 2013 by iPouya

The “People’s Mujahideen” or Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization (MEK) went from being listed as a terrorist organization for years to moments later opening up an office in DC.  I wonder what they had to do in order to get the official and public Western aplomb. Lets look at their 10-point future plan for clues. The MEK, believe it or not, now stand for a “market economy.”  The MEK used to be a group that advocated for a “towhidi” classless society in which “the people” controlled the means of production and a MEK-led Iran meant a radical redistribution of wealth in one of the most stratified countries in the world, Iran.  Additionally, take a look at this point: “a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, international and regional peace and cooperation.” They might as well recognize Israel now. I mean, they’ve been working hand-in-hand with Zionism to topple Iran’s government. What’s funny is that some of the pre-revolution MEK fighters were trained by Arafat’s Fatah armed group when it was based in Lebanon in the 70s. They hated the Shah, amongst other reasons, for his support of Israel. At this point it’s safe to say that MEK will sell all its founding principles in order to gain American and Israeli support to topple the government. Oh how the Rajavis, the longstanding rulers of the MEK, have betrayed the MEK’s origins.

The Hill: The Iranian opposition group MEK is opening an office in Washington after the State Department dropped it from its terrorist list last fall.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group of five Iranian opposition groups, announced Tuesday that it is opening a DC office as part of “the Iranian resistance’s expanding efforts inside and outside Iran.” The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is the largest organizational member in the council, according to Near East Policy Research, a pro-MEK group that distributed an invitation to the council’s open house reception on Thursday.

The State Department closed the council’s Washington office in 2002, calling it a front group for the MEK. Since then, the group has earned the good graces of U.S. conservatives by drawing international attention to Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the MEK from its terrorist list last September after an intense lobbying campaign that included millions of dollars paid to prominent lawmakers and former government officials. The group has been accused of killing Iranian civilians and targeting U.S. business and diplomatic interests during the time of the Shah but has since renounced violence.

The council, which labels itself as Iran’s Parliament-in-exile, was founded in Tehran in 1981 and is based in Paris.  It says its aim is to replace Iran’s theocracy with a “democratic, secular and non-nuclear republic.”

“The opening of the office is consistent with the Iranian resistance’s expanding efforts inside and outside Iran, aimed at bringing democratic change to Iran and the timing could not be better with the failure of the nuclear talks and the upcoming Presidential elections in Iran,” the group said. “It [is] of course, more than just opening an office. It sends the strong political message to Tehran that the real Iranian opposition is back in business. And is just across from the White House.”

The council will hold an open house reception hosted by its U.S. representative, Soona Samsami, on Thursday.

Speakers include former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) and Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and a host of former State Department officials of both parties, including U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton as well as John Sano, the CIA’s former deputy director for Clandestine Services.

According to the council, its Ten-Point Plan for the Future of Iran:

  • emphasizes on ballot box as the only criterion for legitimacy;
  • a pluralist system;
  • respect for all individual freedoms;
  • separation of religion and state;
  • complete gender equality, including women’s right to choose their clothing, freedom in marriage, divorce, education and employment;
  • rule of law and justice;
  • commitment to Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
  • a market economy;
  • a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, international and regional peace and cooperation; and
  • a non-nuclear Iran, free of weapons of mass destruction.
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Iraq’s Branch of Al Qaeda Merges With Syria Jihadists

Posted on April 10, 2013 by iPouya

I have long said that the war in Syria is very much connected to Iraq. Now, unfortunately, it’s official. A lot of the jihadists fighting in Syria are jihadists who fought in Iraq but were driven out of the country into neighboring Syria by the so-called “Awakening Councils” (also known as the “Sons of Iraq”). Unable to defeat the insurgency, the US occupation force in Iraq made the tactical decision to buy off those Sunni fighters who were willing to be bought. Many Iraqi Sunnis were disgruntled with the occupation not only because it was a foreign military occupation, but also because the US disbanded the Iraqi army and banished the Baath Party, many members of which were Sunni Iraqis. These people lost their livelihoods at the hands of a foreign army. Thus, in the latter stages of the war with the US bogged down and running out of options, it bought and further armed Sunnis, many of whom had American and Iraqi blood on their hands, to form neighborhood councils and fight and root out the jihadists who couldn’t be bought. Many jihadists were indeed rooted out and they subsequently headed for neighboring countries where they sat and licked their wounds. Some joined other struggles like in Libya in 2011, but now many have brought their ideology and battle-experience to bear in the Syrian War, which for many has been there adopted home. The long-term strategy is to win the war in Syria en route to redemption in Iraq. Indeed, many of the these jihadists who lost in Iraq seek victory in Syria as a stepping stone to re-igniting the war in Iraq.  Today’s announcement that the Nusra Front is one and the same as al-Qaeda in Iraq attests to the transnational jihad unfolding before our eyes. NYT: Iraq’s branch of Al Qaeda said Tuesday that it had merged with the Nusra Front, a group of jihadists fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, in a marriage that appeared to strengthen the role of Islamic militants in the Syrian insurgency and further complicate Western assistance efforts.

The United States has already blacklisted the Nusra Front over evidence of its links with the Islamic State of Iraq, the Qaeda branch. But the news of the merger, made by the branch’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an audio statement posted on jihadist Web sites, was the first time he had announced that they were a single organization.

“The time has come for us to announce to the people of the Levant and to the whole world that Al Nusra Front is merely an extension of the Islamic State of Iraq and a part of it,” Mr. Baghdadi said. He also said the combined group would be called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and would dedicate half its budget to the Syrian insurgency.

In a warning to other Syrian fighters who want Mr. Assad to go but do not share Mr. Baghdadi’s views, he said, “Don’t make democracy a price for those thousands among you who have been killed.”

The warning was quickly rejected by the Free Syrian Army, the rebels’ main fighting organization, which has sought to distance itself from the jihadist groups. “No one has the right to impose any form of state on Syrians,” said Louay Mekdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army. “Syrians will go to the polls to choose their leaders and form their own state.”

Mr. Baghdadi’s announcement came as a backlash appeared to be spreading in Syria over the indiscriminate civilian killings believed to be carried out by jihadist groups, including the Nusra Front, aimed at further weakening Mr. Assad’s power in the two-year-old conflict. These groups have fearsome fighters but do not take orders from the Free Syrian Army, which has criticized attacks on civilians including a recent spree of deadly car bombings.

The jihadist merger also comes as Secretary of State John Kerry hinted during a trip to the Middle East and Europe that the United States was preparing to step up its assistance to the Syrian rebel cause.

While the United States and other Western nations have backed the Free Syrian Army and contributed nonlethal aid to its combatants, American officials have been reluctant to supply weapons, particularly because of concerns that they could fall into the hands of the Nusra Front or affiliates loyal to Al Qaeda. Differences in the degree of Western commitment to the insurgency have been a source of frustration to the Syrian political opposition.

The opposition movement also has struggled with its own divisions over rebel behavior. On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group based in Britain, accused a rogue insurgent battalion operating in Aleppo of arresting, torturing and extorting dozens of residents, mostly between the ages of 18 and 20.

“The Syrian Observatory demands that this battalion stop engaging in these practices immediately, as such behavior does not represent the values of the revolution,” said the group, whose information network inside Syria has emerged as a major source of insurgency news. “On the contrary, they are an extension of the oppressive and brutal methods practiced by the Syrian security apparatus.”

In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that the pace at which families are fleeing the destruction in Syria threatens to double or even triple the number of total refugees seeking shelter in neighboring countries by the end of the year. The agency also renewed an urgent appeal for money to deal with the crisis.

“The numbers look horrendous,” Panos Moumtzis, the refugee agency’s regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, told reporters.

A year ago, the number of Syrian refugees stood at 30,000, and the figure now exceeds 1.3 million, he said. With 200,000 people fleeing across Syria’s borders every month and no political solution in sight, humanitarian agencies fear that they will be trying to support up to three million refugees by the end of the year, Mr. Moumtzis said.

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Photos: Syria in Ruins

Posted on April 8, 2013 by iPouya

I visited Syria in the summer of 2008. I can’t believe large swaths of the country now amount to such harrowing images of destruction. See the photos here.

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A Journey to IRAN by ISA at Penn State University

Posted on April 8, 2013 by iPouya

This is a magnificent video compilation that captures Iran’s diversity, both cultural and geographical. It’s a nice change beyond the regular depictions of a menacing Iranian monolith.

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Syrian government guerrilla fighters being sent to Iran for training

Posted on April 6, 2013 by iPouya

Reuters: The Syrian government is sending members of its irregular militias for guerrilla combat training at a secret base in Iran, in a move to bolster its armed forces drained by two years of fighting and defections, fighters and activists said.

The discreet program has been described as an open secret in some areas loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush a revolt against his family’s four-decade hold on power.

Reuters interviewed four fighters who said they were taken on the combat course in Iran, as well as opposition sources who said they had also been documenting such cases.

Israel’s intelligence chief and a Western diplomat have said Iran, Assad’s main backer, is helping to train at least 50,000 militiamen and aims to increase the force to 100,000 – though they did not say where the training occurred.

No one at Iran’s foreign ministry was available for comment, but Iranian officials have repeatedly denied military involvement in the Syrian conflict, saying they have only provided humanitarian aid and political support for Assad.

A Syrian government security source, who declined to be named, denied that Syria was sending fighters to Iran. “We train our own special forces for this type of combat,” he said. “Since 2006 we have had units trained in guerrilla warfare, why would we need to send people to Iran?”

But if the reports by Syrian fighters are true, the move to train combatants in Iran suggests that their country’s increasingly regionalized conflict has grown well beyond – and could even outlast – a battle for power between Assad’s circle and the opposition.

The fighters also appear to come largely from minority groups that have supported Assad against the mostly Sunni Muslim-led uprising. Such a move could exacerbate the dangerous sectarian dimensions of a conflict that has turned into a civil war that has cost the lives of more than 70,000 people.

REGIONAL INFLUENCE

Iran, a Shi’ite rival to Sunni countries in the Gulf that support the rebels, sees Syria as the lynchpin of its regional influence. Syria has been its conduit to the Lebanese guerrilla movement Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006.

“It was an urban warfare course that lasted 15 days. The trainers said it’s the same course Hezbollah operatives normally do,” said Samer, a Christian member of a pro-Assad militia fighting in rural parts of Homs province in central Syria.

“The course teaches you the important elements of guerrilla warfare, like several different ways to carry a rifle and shoot, and the best methods to prepare against surprise attacks.”

According to fighters interviewed in Homs, most men sent to undergo the training are from the Alawite sect, the heterodox strain of Shi’ite Islam of which Assad himself is a member.

A smaller number were Druze and Christians, whose communities are divided but largely support Assad due to their fears of rising Islamist rhetoric among the opposition.

“The Iranians kept telling us that this war is not against Sunnis but for the sake of Syria. But the Alawites on the course kept saying they want to kill the Sunnis and rape their women in revenge,” said Samer.

“DIE AN UGLY DEATH”

Syrian residents living in areas controlled by the army or militias say irregular forces have been increasingly “regularized” in recent months. These groups now brand themselves as the “National Defence Army” and seem to operate as a parallel force to the official armed forces – more lightly armed but without any of the oversight or responsibilities.

Since 2011, security forces organized groups called “popular committees” for neighborhood watches. These later became militias nicknamed “shabbiha”, from the Arabic word for ghost.

Shabbiha groups have been accused of some of the worst massacres of Sunni civilians, including one incident in the central town of al-Houla, in Homs province, in which more than 100 people were killed, half of them children. Authorities blamed rebels for the killings.

It is unclear how many former shabbiha fighters have been sent on courses in Iran, but some interviewees said they had assembled in groups of around 400 before being flown to Iran in smaller numbers. They believed the offer of training was open to many pro-Assad militias operating across Syria.

Syrian shabbiha fighters say Iran is also training Syrians and supporting their forces inside Syria, so it is not clear why courses have been run in Iran.

The fighters interviewed said they believed the training implied a growing crisis of confidence between Iranian forces and the Syrian army, which has been plagued with corruption as well as defections to the rebel side.

Nabeel, a muscular Christian fighter from Homs nicknamed “The Shameless One”, said Iranian trainers repeatedly lectured on looting, a crime widely committed by fighters on both sides.

“On our first day of training, the Iranian officer overseeing our course said, ‘I know exactly what is going on in Syria and want to tell you one thing: If you joined the National Defence Army for looting and not to defend your country, you will die an ugly death and go to hell’.”

SECRETIVE TRAINING

The trainees interviewed said they were divided into groups. Some trained as ground forces with automatic rifles and mounted anti-aircraft guns, others as snipers.

The groups were all flown from Latakia air base to Tehran International Airport and then directly bussed to an undisclosed location, they said.

“As soon as we arrived we were put on buses with windows covered by curtains and they told us not to open the curtains,” said the fighter Samer.

“We drove about an hour and a half before reaching the camp. It was straight from the airport to the camp, from the camp to the airport. We didn’t see anything other than that camp.”

All four combatants, who come from different towns and different militias, separately described the same experience. They said they were usually grouped into units of about 60 for training. The fighters said they were trained by Iranian officers who spoke Arabic but also relied on translators.

The units also had contact with Lebanese fighters, said the participants, who suspected those men of being Hezbollah militants helping to conduct training or participate in courses.

“There were some groups from Hezbollah training at the same base but there was no communication between our groups. They did their thing, and we did ours,” said Sameer, another militiaman from Homs. “I think their training was tougher than ours.”

GULF SEEKS TO “BLEED” IRAN

Iran has supported and helped train Syria’s army under long-standing military cooperation agreements, but a push into training its paramilitary forces could aggravate regional rivals such as Israel, which is particularly wary of Syrian groups increasing coordination with Hezbollah, or Saudi Arabia.

“If the Saudis felt that the Iranians are really moving this game up, they will be sure to check that escalation by increasing assistance to rebel fighters,” said Michael Stephens, a Doha-based analyst for the security think tank RUSI.

“Saudi Arabia is totally focused on this as a way to make the Iranians bleed … keep the Iranians bogged down in this proxy war, bleed them dry.”

The fighters described the training as far superior to skills they had been taught in courses inside Syria.

“Before I could only hit targets 50 percent of the time, now I can hit a target around 90 percent of the time,” said Samer.

“In Syria, they made the priority defending the place we are in, no matter the price. In Iran, they told us to save our lives. If you lose the position but survive, you can recoup and regain the site another day. If you die, your position will eventually be lost.”

Posted in Iran, Syria | 1 Comment

The Unknown Arab Uprising: Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia Keep the Protest Movement Alive

Posted on April 5, 2013 by iPouya

The Global Post: Editor’s Note: When Arab Spring protests broke out in Saudi Arabia in 2011, the government reacted quickly. It pumped $130 billion into the economy, including hiring 300,000 new state workers and raising salaries. It also brutally cracked down on dissent, in some cases breaking up peaceful protests with live ammunition. While the carrot and stick approach worked in some cities, the Shia Muslims in the Eastern Province continued to protest. Shia make up some 10-15 percent of the Saudi population and have long rebelled against discrimination and political exclusion.

Demonstrations continued in the city of Qatif but got little publicity because foreign journalists are banned from reporting there. Correspondent Reese Erlich, on assignment for GlobalPost and NPR, managed to get into Qatif, meet with protest leaders and become the first foreign journalist to witness the current demonstrations. This is his account:

QATIF, Saudi Arabia — Night has fallen as the car rumbles down back roads to avoid the Saudi Army’s special anti-riot units. To be stopped at any of the numerous checkpoints leading into Qatif, would mean police detention for a Western journalist and far worse for the Saudi activists in the car. They would likely spend a lot of time in jail for spreading what Saudi authorities deem “propaganda” to the foreign media.

In Saudi Arabia all demonstrations are illegal, but here in Qatif residents have defied the ban for many months. At least once a week the mostly young demonstrators march down a street renamed “Revolution Road,” calling for the release of political prisoners and for democratic rights.

The anti-riot units deploy armored vehicles at strategic locations downtown. The word on this night is that if demonstrators stay off the main road, the troops may not attack.

Foreign journalists are generally denied permission to report from Qatif. Activists said this night was the first time a foreign journalist has been an eyewitness to one of their demonstrations. Asked if the troops will use tear gas, Abu Mohammad, the pseudonym used by an activist to prevent government retaliation, says, “Oh, no. The army either does nothing or uses live ammunition.”

I really hope it will be option #1.

Suddenly, young Shia Muslim men wearing balaclavas appear, directing traffic away from Revolution Road. All the motorists obey the gesticulations of these self-appointed traffic cops.

Minutes later several hundred men march down the street, most with their faces covered to avoid police identification. Shia women wearing black chadors, which also hide their faces, follow closely behind, chanting even louder than the men.

One of their banners reads, “For 100 years we have lived in fear, injustice, and intimidation.”

Despite two years of repression by the Saudi royal family, Shia protests against the government have continued here in the Eastern Province. Though Shia are a small fraction of Saudi Arabia’s 27 million people, they are the majority here. Most of the country’s 14 oil fields are located in the Eastern Province, making it of strategic importance to the government.

Shia have protested against discrimination and for political rights for decades. But the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 gave new impetus to the movement. Saudi Arabia is home to two of Islam’s most holy cities, and the government sees itself as a protector of the faith. But its political alliances with the US and conservative, Sunni monarchies have angered many other Muslims, including the arc of Shia stretching from Iran to Lebanon.

Saudi officials claim they are under attack from Shia Iran and have cracked down hard on domestic dissent.

 Saudi authorities are responsible for the death of 15 people and 60 injured since February 2011, according to Waleed Sulais of the Adala Center for Human Rights, the leading human rights group in the Eastern Province. He says 179 detainees remain in jail, including 19 children under the age of 18.

The government finds new ways to stifle dissent, according to Sulais. Several months ago the government required all mobile phone users to register their SIM cards, which means text messaging about demonstrations is no longer anonymous.

Abu Zaki, another activist requesting anonymity, says demonstrators now rely on Facebook and Twitter, along with good old word of mouth. Practically everyone at the recent Qatif protest march carried iPhones. Some broadcast the demo in near real time by uploading to YouTube.

Organizers hope their sheer numbers, along with government incompetence, will keep them from being discovered. “The government cannot follow everybody’s Twitter user name,” says Abu Zaki. “The authorities have to be selective and, hopefully, they don’t select my name.”

When protests began, demonstrators called for reforms. But now, younger militants demand elimination of the monarchy and an end to the US policy of supporting the dictatorial king.

Abu Mohammad, Abu Zaki and several other militant activists, gather in an apartment in Awamiyah, a poor, Shia village neighboring Qatif. In this part of the world a village is really a small town, usually abutting a larger city. Awamiyah is one such town, chock full of auto repair shops, one-room storefronts, and potholed streets. It is noticeably poorer than Sunni towns of comparable size.

Strong, black tea is served along with weak, greenish Saudi coffee. The protest movement in Qatif, they observe, resembles the tea more than the coffee.

Abu Mohammad tells me protests have remained strong because residents are fighting for both political rights as Saudis, and against religious/social discrimination as Shia.

Shia face discrimination in jobs, housing and religious practices. Dammam, the largest city in the area, has no Shia cemetery, for example. Only six Shia sit on the country’s 150-member Shura Council, the appointed legislature that advises the king.

“As Shia, we can’t get jobs in the military,” says Abu Mohammad. “And we face the same political repression as all Saudis. We live under an absolute monarchy that gives us no rights and steals the wealth of the country.”

The government denies those claims of discrimination and repression. In Riyadh, Major General Mansour Al Turki, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, is the point man who often meets with foreign journalists. Al Turki is smooth and affable and practiced at the art of being interviewed by Westerners.

He dismisses Shia charges of discrimination as simply untrue.

“These people making demonstrations are very few,” he tells me. “They only represent themselves. The majority [of Shia] are living at a very high level.”

Such assertions, however, don’t account for the frequent and sizable Eastern Province demonstrations supporting Sheik Nemer al Nemer. The charismatic Shia cleric has long been a thorn in the government’s side. His willingness to speak out against discrimination and call for militant action endeared him to the younger generation of activists. For months he avoided arrest by shifting residences and only appearing in public during large rallies.

Then in July 2012 authorities made an arrest while he was briefly visiting his house in Qatif. He was shot and seriously wounded. Police claim it was an armed shootout in which they fired in self defense.

The Sheik was unarmed, according to his brother, Mohammad al Nemer. He says his brother hasn’t been publicly charged, but has been told that he faces a long jail term for instigating unrest against the king and organizing illegal demonstrations.

Four police bullets shattered his brother’s thigh bone, says al Nimer. “If he doesn’t receive proper medical care, he will have a lame leg for the rest of his life.”

Al Nemer’s popularity has grown exponentially since his arrest, with graffiti demanding his release sprouting up throughout the area and marchers regularly chanting his name.

Shia leader Sheik Mohammed Hassan al Habib offers understanding of the continuing protests. The cleric lives in a modest home on a side street outside Qatif. Sheik al Habib adds something special to the usual proffering of tea and coffee: Swiss chocolate.

Al Habib tells me that the Eastern Province movement seeks democratic reforms while maintaining the power of the monarchy.

“We need to give real power to the parliament,” he says. “The government should allow establishment of political parties, freedom of speech and assembly.” But the king would still have final authority, he concedes.

“We don’t want toppling or removal of the regime,” he emphasizes.

He acknowledges, however, that many younger protestors have given up on reform. For example, activist Abu Mohammad says, “People now want the overthrow of the ruling family as a reaction to the escalation of repression in Qatif. I think the best form of government for Saudi Arabia is constitutional monarchy like they have in Britain.”

While calling for a UK-style constitutional monarchy is rather tame by western standards, it’s treasonous in Saudi Arabia.

“People must complain through the legal process,” argues the Ministry of Interior’s al Turki. The legal process does not include calling for an end to the monarchy.

Al Turki adds that the opposition is controlled by Iran and seeks to establish a Shia Muslim dictatorship. The Iranian government does “affect such people,” he says. “But its influence is very limited.”

Al Habib denies the movement is directed from Iran. In fact, he criticizes the Iranian government for its treatment of demonstrators demanding democracy after the 2009 presidential elections.

“I was in Iran in 2009,” he says. “That was their legitimate right to demonstrate. The Iranian government should not have repressed them.”

But the “Iranian threat” remains a cornerstone of Saudi policy, justifying, for example, sending Saudi troops to neighboring Bahrain in March 2011 to help put down that country’s indigenous, Arab Spring uprising. It also justifies massive US military sales to the Saudi armed forces.

Because of oil riches, Saudi Arabia’s ruling family has been a high priority for US presidents dating back to Franklin Roosevelt. The US sent its first military mission to the kingdom in 1943 and began training Saudi troops in 1953. The US built up Saudi Arabia’s military as part of Cold War competition with the USSR. Saudi Arabia provided a steady flow of oil to the west; the US didn’t interfere with the royal family’s internal repression.

In recent times, Saudi Arabia has allowed the US to establish a drone base on Saudi territory, and it continues to receive massive US military aid.

In 2010, the US Congress passed legislation calling for $60 billion in military aid to the Saudis over 10 years. In 2011, the Obama administration allocated $30 billion of that to purchase US-made, advanced fighter jets and other hi-tech equipment.

Saudi Arabia spends 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on the military, ranking it third highest in the world on a per capita basis. Both US and Saudi leaders argue that such aid allows the kingdom to defend itself from outside attack.

Speaking of the $30 billion package, Andrew J. Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, says the sales would “enhance Saudi Arabia’s ability to deter and defend against external threats to its sovereignty.”

Unfortunately, Saudi armed forces have not proven to be adept at such defense. When Iraq invaded nearby Kuwait in 1990, the Saudi military was virtually helpless in defending itself against the perceived threat. The US and European allies fought the Gulf War while the Saudis footed the bill.

Saudi Arabia’s arms have proven effective, however, in quelling domestic dissent. In response to the repression, the State Department report on human rights offers a pro forma list of “reported” problems in Saudi Arabia. “The most important human rights problems reported included citizens’ lack of the right and legal means to change their government….”

Activists sharply disagree with US support for the royal family, pointing to the difference between US stands on Syria and Saudi Arabia.

“America supports the royal family because they protect its interests,” says Abu Zaki. “The pressure is growing. People are getting angrier and angrier” at US policy.

The Saudi royal family used a combination of repression and economic improvements to quell protests that broke out around the country in 2011. Authorities announced a $130 billion spending program that would hire 300,000 more state workers, raise salaries, and build subsidized housing.

But neither government spending nor harsh crackdown have so far deterred the protesters in Qatif.

The demonstrators see themselves waging a political battle in which popular support can overcome the government’s repressive apparatus. The Shia of the Eastern Province are the only Saudis regularly holding protest marches, but as Shia cleric Al Habib tells me, Sunnis in other parts of the country also call for reform.

“We work with reformers who don’t care about your sect,” he tells me. “They look only for reforms. We hope Sunni and Shia will get together one day to pursue this goal.”

After a sip of black tea and a final piece of chocolate, we say goodbye to the cleric and head out to that night’s demonstration. Somehow we manage to avoid the checkpoints. And for that night, at least, there was no violence.

Posted in Arab Spring, Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy | Leave a comment

Iraqi Sunnis await a Baghdad spring

Posted on April 3, 2013 by iPouya

The Guardian: Abu Saleh sits in a striped tent pitched by the side of the highway joining Jordan and Syria with Iraq and reflects on the latest, improbable twist in his 10-year career fighting those he considers the enemies of his fellow Iraqi Sunnis.

A decade ago, when the Americans rolled into Ramadi in their tanks and Humvees, the former Saddam regime security officer led a group of Sunni fighters who took the fight to the occupiers with improvised explosive device (IEDs) and ambushes.

The scars of their insurgency are still visible in Ramadi’s industrial quarter: deserted shops riddled with bullet holes, metal shutters twisted like foil, black soot covering the walls.

But Abu Saleh and his fellow fighters lost their way, he says. “We made mistakes. We took people randomly. Some of us resorted to kidnapping to fund the resistance, then it became an industry, detaining people inside their neighbourhood, planting IEDs in front of people houses.” He explains how the resistance fragmented into competing groups, how they began to fight each other and al-Qaida and how their neighbours eventually turned on them.

By 2009 they had been, in effect, run out of town by a local militia hunting them on behalf of the Americans. Like thousands of other Iraqi Sunnis, Abu Saleh took refuge in neighbouring Syria.

Now in his mid-30s, Abu Saleh is back in Ramadi, borne on a tide that sprung from the revolutions of Tahrir Square and Benghazi and gathered force amid the bloodshed in Syria. Abu Saleh and other Iraqi Sunnis believe it is a tide that could flow all the way to Baghdad, sweeping away the Shia government they despise.

Outside Abu Saleh’s tent, a familiar scene unfolds. Thousands of men line the highway standing in long, neat lines praying on coloured prayer mats placed on the ground, in effect blocking the main route linking Iraq to Jordan and Syria.

After prayers the men gather in front of a podium planted in the middle of the road and demonstrators catalogue a long list of grievances: corrupt and brutal security forces who detain them at will, draconian anti-terrorism and “de-ba’athification” laws that are tailored to target their community, thousand of their sons and fathers languishing in prisons for years.

The grievances are punctuated by anti-Shia rhetoric, accusing them of being Iran’s agents, and threats to march on Baghdad. “Baghdad is ours and we won’t give it back!” the crowd thunders in response to one rabid orator after another. Some demonstrators wave Saddam-era Iraqi flags as lines of heavily armed soldiers and riot police look on.

Similar scenes have been played out in several Sunni cities in recent weeks in the runup to the charged 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion. Every Friday, thousands of peaceful demonstrators have poured into the streets of Ramadi, Mosul and Falluja mimicking the Arab spring protests elsewhere in the region.

In Mosul and Falluja, tent cities have sprung up in public squares. Some have even demonstrated in Sunni areas of Baghdad, braving the draconian Friday security measures imposed on them.

But perhaps more remarkable is the scene inside the tent. Among the tribal sheikhs and activists around Abu Saleh are former enemies and victims, men who feared him and men who hunted him on behalf of the Americans. Sensing an opportunity, Sunni factions have put aside their differences to mount a common front against Baghdad.

Abu Saleh, rotund and balding, explains how a week after the first demonstrations in Sunni cities, he and other fighters commanding the remnants of Sunni insurgent groups held a series of meetings to form a pact and use the momentum in Sunni cities.

“Call us the honourable nationalistic factions – people here are still sensitive to using words like mujahideen or resistance. We decided to sign a truce with the tribal sheikhs, other factions and even moderate elements in al-Qaida,” he said.

“The Sunnis were never united like this from the fall of Baghdad until now. This is a new stage we are going through: first came the American occupation, then the resistance, then al-Qaida dominated us, and then came internal fighting and the awakening … now there is a truce even with the tribal sheikhs who fought and killed our cousins and brothers.

“The politicians have joined us and we have the legitimacy of the street. To be honest, we had reached a point when people hated us, only your brother would support you.”

One of the things that transformed the reputation of men such as Abu Saleh in the eyes of their fellow Sunnis has been their involvement in the Syrian conflict, a few hundred miles west along the highway.

The conflict pitted Sunni rebels against government forces and Alawites, backed by Iran, also patrons of Iraq’s Shia leadership. Weapons flowed to the rebels from the Iraqi tribes – sold for a comfortable profit – while the Iraqi Shia prime minister toed the Iranian line and lent his support to the Syrian regime. With both sides using the same sectarian rhetoric, it was easy to join the dots between the two conflicts.

Abu Saleh found himself fighting his old war in a new field. He lent a hand to the novice Syrian rebels and joined the fight, commanding a unit of his own operating in the city of Aleppo and the countryside north of it.

“We taught them how to cook phosphate and make IEDs. Our struggle here is the same is in Syria. If Syria falls, we are liberated; if we are liberated, Syria will be liberated. We have the same battle with Iran – by defeating them we break the Shia crescent of Iran, Syria and Lebanon.”

Abu Saleh claims that once he and his men had been accepted back in Ramadi, they formed three battalions that had hit convoys carrying supplies to Syria as well as an Iraqi army helicopter.

In another echo of recent Arab uprisings, Abu Saleh says he and other Sunni leaders have now secured support from wealthy Gulf state figures who funded them during the early years of their insurgency against the Americans.

After the truce between Sunni groups, he says, a meeting was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, between a united front of Iraqi factions and representatives of “charities” from the Gulf.

The Iraqis asked for money and weapons; after a decade of war their arsenals were almost depleted. What didn’t get destroyed by US or Iraqi forces was sold to the Syrians. They needed money to train and recruit new fighters but more importantly a religious sanction from the religious authorities for a new round of fighting.

The Gulf figures asked for more time and a second meeting was held in Amman, this time attended by a higher-ranking group of officials from the both sides. The answer was yes: the “charities” would offer support as long as the Iraqi Sunnis were united and used their weapons only after Iraqi government units used force against them. Another Sunni leader confirmed to the Guardian that the Amman meetings had taken place.

“There is a new plan, a grand plan not like the last time when we worked individually,” another commander told me. “This time we are organised. We have co-ordinated with countries like Qatar and Saudi and Jordan. We are organising, training and equipping ourselves but we will start peacefully until the right moment arrives. We won’t be making the same mistakes. Baghdad will be destroyed this time.”

Posted in Arab Spring, Iran, Iraq, Syria | Leave a comment

Caught Shopping While Iranian: Diasporic Solidarity and the Globalization of Collective Punishment

Posted on April 3, 2013 by iPouya

Jadaliyya: In recent years, the Iranian New Year, Norooz, has become a fairly predictable time for US presidents to gesture towards “dialogue” and mutual respect between the United States and the Iranian people, while criticizing the repressive policies and nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). George W. Bush spoke often of the Iranian people’s right to live in a “free society,” and ended his presidency with an opulent haft sin display in the dining room of the White House. More recently, Barack Obama has taken to YouTube to deliver his missives to the Iranian people, and to frame his sanctions regime as an exercise in supporting human rights. At a time when US-led sanctions are creating an artificial shortage of medicine and contributing to soaring inflation in Iran, the Norooz message has become a handy public diplomacy technique for the US government, and another juncture where culture is leveraged as foreign policy. Obama expresses his support for human rights and freedom in Iran, and then wishes Iranians a happy new year (in Persian!), while the sanctions programs strengthened by his administration collectively punish civilians and inch the country towards humanitarian crisis.

Inducing regime change in Iran has long been a foreign policy fantasy among US officials, particularly if the bill could be footed in non-American and non-Israeli lives and suffering. Under Obama, sanctions have become the preferred policy tactic on his oft-cited table of policy options for pressuring Iran on its nuclear program. As was the case with Iraq in the 1990s, there seems to be consensus in the beltway that the astronomical human suffering was, in the words of Madeleine Albright, “worth it.” Despite the fact that the Iranian regime has not ceased uranium enrichment, along with evidence of the harmful effects of the sanctions program, there are factions in the Iranian diaspora that have also taken a pro-sanctions stance. Iranian American advocacy groups have issued statements and reports in support of the sanctions, qualifying their support by saying pressuring the regime through sanctions weakens its power and fuels greater demands for political and social freedoms. Another commonly heard refrain is that the sanctions are actually targeting IRI officials who are converting national monies into personal fortunes, and that the hardships facing the Iranian population is more reflective of decades of economic mismanagement by the regime than of the effect of the sanctions.

While diasporic support for sanctions exists, other Iranian American advocates and organizations have condemned the sanctions for imposing severe hardship on the Iranian people while maintaining a critical stance regarding the IRI. These fissures are productive of cultural politics of solidarity, in which the claim to membership in the Iranian nation is interrogated, as is loyalty to the “Iranian people.” These contests have become more visible as the effects of the sanctions manifest in settings and circumstances that go beyond Iran’s borders. Increasingly, we are seeing the sanctions being invoked at sub-state levels and by private sector actors to target Iranian nationals and US citizens of Iranian origin outside of Iran. As a result, there is a need for a deeper engagement with the movement of the effects of sanctions across borders; such an engagement yields important questions worth investigating on both the growing institutionalization of discrimination and the diasporic politics of solidarity.

Institutionalizing Discrimination

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is the governmental body responsible for enforcing and defining the Iran sanctions. Since the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1996, the sanctions have been targeted towards limiting companies from doing business with Iran or investing in the Iranian energy sector. In 2006, the ILSA was renamed the Iran Sanctions Act, and along with a series of presidential executive orders, the sanctions subsequently have been tightened to include (among other provisions) regulations at the individual level as well. While OFAC has issued clarifications and exemptions to the sanctions, commercial entities are left to their own devices to determine what constitutes violating the sanctions. This has resulted in the de facto outsourcing of enforcement from OFAC to companies to comply with export regulations. In practice, this means that malls and college campuses have become the front lines of US foreign policy, where sales clerks and bank tellers double as export control specialists. Given that Americans’ knowledge of culture, geography, and history has never inspired confidence, it is not surprising that shopping while Iranian is becoming seen as a threat to US national security.

Two recent events highlight how the sanctions are contributing to an institutionalization of transnational discrimination against Iranians and US citizens of Iranian origin. In June 2012, Sahar Sabet—a young woman of Iranian origin (and US citizen)—was not allowed to purchase merchandise at an Apple Store in Alpharetta, Georgia after an employee there overheard her speaking in Persian with her uncle and cited “bad relations” between Iran and the United States as the reason for refusing the sale. While media reports suggested that the iPad was for a family member in Iran, the purchase of the iPad was intended for Sabet’s older sister, a resident of North Carolina. The Apple employee in Alpharetta cited the company policy of not selling or exporting Apple goods to Iran and North Korea, and said that the policy will always be to “not sell to anyone from Iran.” Since this story broke, there have been reports of similar incidents at other Apple Stores.

In December 2012, TCF Bank sent notices to twenty-two Iranian students at the University of Minnesota who had accounts with the bank that their accounts were to be closed without explanation. It should be noted that TCF has a special (if not exclusive) relationship with the University of Minnesota. TCF Bank is the official U Card Bank and the only bank that can connect student U Cards to a checking account. When asked for comment by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a spokesperson for TCF said “nationality had nothing to do with the decision” and “banks have to follow regulations that shut down accounts that appear to be connected with terrorist funding or money laundering.” TCF sent the notice of account closure before collecting any information from the students, in effect suggesting that being Iranian was reason enough to be suspect. Another Iranian student at the University of Minnesota was not permitted to open an account at TCF after the bank teller saw his Iranian passport. Subsequently, TCF has sent detailed questionnaires to the Iranian students, in an attempt to collect evidence after presuming a level of guilt on the part of the students. While TCF is the latest institution to target its Iranian customers, it is not the first. To take another example, TD Bank in Canada has similarly frozen or blocked the accounts of Iranian nationals and Iranian Canadians.

It would not be entirely accurate to say that the sanctions are generating discrimination against Iranian nationals and those of Iranian origin, since discrimination and anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States are not new. More troubling are the ways in which these “new” ways of legal compliance reinforce forms of exclusion that map on to decades-old processes of marginalization of Iranians in the United States. Notably, national origin, political intent, and language are being openly acknowledged by retailers as selection criteria to determine who may or may not use their products and services. Without clearer guidelines and intervention from the federal government, it is clear that the sanctions are being over enforced and used indiscriminately by a growing number of private sector actors in the name of avoiding liability. What remains uncertain is whether this silence by the US government represents a calculated outsourcing of its dirty work to the private sector.

Wither Diasporic Solidarity?

Not surprisingly, these incidents have also generated debate among diasporic Iranians over whether to respond and how. After her ordeal, the nineteen-year-old Sabet (who described her experience as “very hurtful and embarrassing”) advised anyone Iranian not to say anything about Iran or being Iranian in Apple stores, to avoid being refused service. In several conversations with Iranian friends and acquaintances in Atlanta, I heard others angrily voice a desire to educate Apple (and a broader US audience as well) that Iranian Americans should not be subject to such treatment, since they not only oppose the IRI, but because they are also an accomplished, educated, and affluent ethnic community in the United States as well.

Playing up “model minority” attributes may be an understandable impulse in moments of increased public scrutiny and suspicion, but accommodating racist norms that presume all Iranians to be inherently untrustworthy is not an effective strategy to overcome institutional exclusion. One’s citizenship status, language, level of education, religious beliefs, or penchant for identifying as “Persian” over “Iranian” should not be the basis to individually opt out of discrimination. Moreover, meeting such exemptions alone does not refute a larger paradigm of guilt by association, which increasingly confronts Iranian nationals and citizens of Iranian origin alike.

In Minneapolis, the Iranian students at the University of Minnesota have received tepid support and are viewed with some wariness by the local Iranian community in the Twin Cities. Some here have proposed vetting the students to see whether they are affiliates of the IRI before offering their public support to the students. The claim that vetting the students in such a manner is a non-issue—if they have nothing to hide—echoes claims made by US law enforcement officials who defend the use of profiling practices.

It is also indicative of a historical amnesia on the part of those Iranians who have lived in the United States for decades, but somehow have forgotten the history of surveillance and harassment that Iranians in the United States have been subjected to in the past. The Minnesota students are not the first Iranians to come to the United States as international students and have to prove they weren’t Iranian spies as well. Following the hostage crisis of 1979, Jimmy Carter implemented an “Iranian Control Program,” which targeted nearly sixty thousand Iranian students studying in the United States, interrogated them on a case-by-case basis, and ordered the deportation of over three thousand individuals who were found to be out of legal status.

Borrowing from Marx, if such measures were tragic in 1980, then what is happening now is farcical. Those claiming to need proof of innocence of the Iranian students before supporting their right to access their own funds and pursue their education are reproducing this history and unwittingly demonstrating that rights in the United States remains tiered, with different registers and protections available to different groups. What kind of solidarity can be spoken of when it is contingent upon those most affected by the sanctions having to prove their innocence? Why the attendant belief that US citizens of Iranian origin need to act and self-represent in particular ways to be seen and accepted as good Americans? Why validate the view that anyone who happens to be in the United States with an Iranian passport is an extension or affiliate of the Iranian regime? Taking such positions affirm that being Iranian is reason enough to be suspect, and so Iranians have to do more to prove themselves worthy of the right to immigrate, live, bank, shop, and go to school in the United States.

Any “community” is diverse in its political views and in its willingness to speak and be seen in particular ways. Diasporic ambivalence towards the sanctions—and the effects they produce—indicates the contested nature of solidarity among Iranians, as well as ethical and ideological stances that constrain the possibilities of collective action against collective punishment. In this case, “solidarity” has so far amounted to a patronizing declaration of “let’s wait and see,” which justifies the trampling of Iranian international students’ rights and interests in the United States and increasing hardship in Iran in the name of winning “liberty” there. David Cole has mapped this “their liberties our security” argument, in which non-citizens’ rights are seen as expendable in the name of US national interests and security. Introducing and examining the role of diaspora into this idea highlights the complex ways in which Iranians in the US may also serve as key figures in upholding this discourse, which has the dubious distinction of hurting Iranians in Iran and increasingly constraining their own right to equal protection under the law in the United States. Of course, this position may change the next time the educated, affluent (and self-important) US citizen of Iranian origin gets treated like an ”ordinary” Iranian, Arab, or Muslim.

Simplifying solidarity to binaries of pro-US/anti-IRI and pro-IRI/anti-sanctions—and casting the players therein as “good Iranians” versus “bad Iranians”—eliminates alternate meanings and agentive possibilities. Moreover, such binaries render invisible the growing number of voices who critically interrogate indiscriminately punitive US policy towards Iran along with the repression and brutality of the IRI. Thankfully, the Iranian American community speaks with many voices, even if they are not all heard equally.

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