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Thursday, September 10, 2020
POLITICO NIGHTLY: Are we really ready for some football?
CC Newletter 10 Sept - Assange’s Third Day at the Old Bailey: Bias, Politics and Wars on Journalism
The third day of extradition proceedings against Julian Assange at the Old Bailey resumed on the point of politics. Assange as a figure of political beliefs; Assange as a target of the Trump administration precisely for having them. The man sketching the portrait was Paul Rogers, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.
It is no mean feat trying to pin down Assange’s political system. Leftward, rightward, with resistance to the centre? Lashings of libertarianism; heavy doses of anti-war and holding the powerful to account? Such figures tend to be sui generis. In his submitted statement to the court, Rogers suggests a uniform theme. “The political objective of seeking to achieve greater transparency in the workings of governments is clearly both the motivation and the modus operandi of Mr Assange and the organisation WikiLeaks.”
On the stand, Rogers described the Assange method of influence and disruption: the release of the war logs, their influence on public opinion regarding the US imperium’s engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, the revelations of 15,000 unaccounted civilian casualties. The butcher’s bill of the imperium, in other words, was laid bare by the WikiLeaks’ releases.
For Rogers, this approach jarred with various US administrations, but none more so than that of Trump’s. Assange’s entire approach and “what he stands for represents a threat to normal political endeavour.”
James Lewis QC for the prosecution made his effort to narrow, clip and sharpen the focus on Assange, questioning the expanse of political belief being attributed by Rogers. At times, the prosecution seemed suspended in a time capsule, suggesting, for instance, that political opinions were only applicable to governments and leaders. Rogers preferred a more complex picture: the evolving nature of what political opinion might constitute (for instance, it could include “transnational elites” and attitudes towards corporations). The issue of publishing an item or not could also constitute a form of political opinion.
Lewis then went on the attack, grumpy at the length of Rogers’ responses and suggesting that his testimony was biased towards the defence. Why had he omitted the views of such individuals as US assistant attorney Gordon Kromberg, who argued that prosecuting Assange had been a criminal rather than political matter? Again, Rogers took preferred the broad approach. Prosecutors of a certain rank tend to mimic the views of their superiors – that is their due. What mattered were those higher-ups who had initiated a change in policy regarding WikiLeaks to instigate a “politically motivated prosecution”. This could be demonstrated with some plausibility by considering the wider political context of different administrations. The Obama administration had set its heart on not prosecuting Assange; those in the Trump administration had warmed to the idea.
Not quite getting his pound of flesh, Lewis moved on to targeting the reasons why the Obama administration had gone cold on prosecuting Assange. Like many black letter lawyers on this point, the issue of Assange being confined in the Ecuadorean embassy has them in knots. “What would be the point [of arresting Assange] if he’s hiding in the embassy?” posed Lewis. Rogers, rather sensibly, suggested that this would constitute a pressuring move. “It would have made very good sense to bring it at that time, to show a standing attempt to bring Mr Assange to justice.” Lewis had also made a specious point. As investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi points out, individuals such as Edward Snowden have been duly charged despite fleeing the jurisdiction. Practical custody was hardly a necessary precondition to getting that paperwork ready.
Lewis proceeded to till the same ground as that covered in the testimony of Mark Feldstein, attempting to push the suggestion that the case against Assange might yield future charges, at least as believed by himself and his defence team. Rogers offered similar parrying: the Trump administration’s approach to Assange was distinct, its attitudes conveyed through the hostile remarks of former CIA director Mike Pompeo and the then hungry Attorney General Jeff Sessions. A difference in approach might be gathered from President Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence. This was Trump’s possible counter.
Post-lunch interest then turned to Trevor Timm, Director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. As he points out in the submitted statement, “The decision to indict Julian Assange on allegations of a ‘conspiracy’ between a publisher and his source or potential sources, and for the publication of truthful information, encroaches on fundamental freedoms.” WikiLeaks was a pioneer in secure submission systems such as SecureDrop, one that had been emulated by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera.
It was incumbent upon journalists that they “develop relationships with their sources” and attempts to punish publishing activity arising from the use of “leaked documents of public importance” would face First Amendment difficulties.
The Trump administration, however, had proved bolder than its predecessors. The Espionage Act had been previously floated at such journalists as James Bamford, Ben Bradlee, Seymour Hersh and Neil Sheehan. It took Assange’s arrest and charging in 2019 to break with tradition.
The indictment, particularly in alleging that Assange had engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to crack a military computer passport for reasons of remaining anonymous, would criminalise a common news practice and the whole pursuit of national security journalism. Were the prosecution permitted “to go forward, dozens of reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere would also be in danger.”
Lewis took umbrage at Timm’s claim, outlined in his statement, that Trump had engaged in an enthusiastic “war on journalism”. The FPF director was unsparing, suggesting that the indictment of the WikiLeaks publisher was part of this war, “and it is no exaggeration to say the First Amendment itself is at risk.” To Lewis, Timm replied with a salient reminder that Trump had tweeted 2,200 times about the press, describing them at stages as the “enemy of the people”. It was “very telling that Trump’s is the first one to try to bring a case like this since the Nixon administration.”
The prosecution preferred returning to that exhausted nag of an idea: that Assange could not be seen as a journalist. A form of fallacious logic came into play: the US Department of Justice had no interest in prosecuting journalists and would be breaching their own prosecutorial guidelines in doing so; Assange was not a journalist, therefore showing appropriate discrimination.
Timm had an appropriate response to this nonsensical approach. “In the US, the First Amendment protects everyone. Whether you consider Assange a journalist doesn’t matter; he was engaging in journalistic activity.” And if the DOJ was in breach of federal rules, it should follow that they be held accountable.
Timm also refused to ingest the prosecution line that the indictment was sufficiently narrow to only cover the publication of documents that had revealed the names of informants working for the US. Other charges in the indictment focused on criminalising the act of possessing the documents. That every claim would implicate journalists across the spectrum, as would “the mere thought of obtaining these documents”. A sinister, dangerous implication.
The prosecution was also caught up in what a “responsible journalist” might do. While the issue of unnecessarily publishing the name of a third party thereby endangering that person might raise matters of ethical responsibility, that, suggested Timm, was a separate question “from what is illegal or legal conduct.” A previous attempt to criminalise publishing the name of a US intelligence source had been made, by Senator Joseph Lieberman among others, in 2010 as a direct response to the WikiLeaks disclosures. But the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination (SHIELD) Act never became law.
As for whether WikiLeaks had behaved appropriately or not in publishing the entire tranche of uncensored US diplomatic cables, despite it not being responsible for leaking the password to the relevant encrypted file containing the documents, Timm was firm. Governments should not have a hand in making such editorial judgments; the question centred on illegality, something which WikiLeaks could not be accused of.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
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Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the long-drawn-out conflict at the Escobal silver mine in Guatemala – the second- largest in the world – is intensifying. The Escobal mine is located in southeast Guatemala, outside the town of San Rafael de las Flores, approximately 40 km from Guatemala City. Since the beginning of commercial production in early 2013, the mine has been embroiled in a conflict wherein the Xinka, a non-Mayan indigenous group and the fifth-largest autochthonous group in Guatemala, has been resolutely resisting extractivist operations.
On 24 August, 2020, more than 90 Guatemalan and international organizations signed a letter, expressing their concern at the persistent impunity for human rights violations against Xinka land defenders. The letter also highlighted an increase in cases of defamation, threats and criminalization of members of the peaceful resistance of Santa Rosa, Jalapa and Jutiapa since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020, for instance, there were 8 cases of criminalization against defenders from Santa Maria Xalapan.
The increased repression of Xinka people is a result of the current correlation of forces in Guatemala which has tilted the balance in favor of the company operating the Escobal mine. In 2010, Tahoe Resource Group, a Canadian mining company, had bought a majority stake of the rights for three separate exploration and exploitation licenses for gold, silver, lead, and zinc in the Guatemalan departments of Santa Rosa and Jalapa from Goldcorp. The Canadian corporation continued to operate the mine until 2018 when it was acquired by Pan American Silver – a Vancouver-based company – for $1.1 billion. Currently, Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei has appointed Juan José Cabrera Alonso, a former General Director for the Pan American Silver company’s Guatemalan subsidiary, Minera San Rafael (MSR), as Special Secretary to the Vice President. This appointment has translated into a guarantee of investment security for Pan American Silver which can now firmly believe that the state would intervene to facilitate capital accumulation through repression. Quelvin Jiménez, lawyer for the Xinka Parliament (the elected ancestral authority of the Xinka people), says, “Now, Pan American Silver has an operator on the inside to protect its interests,”.
Resistance against the Escobal Mine
The contemporary situation at the Escobal mine is deeply enmeshed in a history of Xinka resistance which has ensured that mining operations perennially encounter the powerful force of class struggle. In 2013, the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) granted an exploitation license for the Escobal mine to Tahoe Resources after rejecting more than 250 complaints about the environmental risks of the mining project. Instead of processing these citizen complaints as necessitated by articles 46 to 48 of the Mining Law, the Director General’s office at the Ministry of Energy and Mining rejected the processing of the complaints and instantaneously granted the mining license. All this while, indigenous communities of the municipalities of San Rafael Las Flores, Nueva Santa Rosa, Casillas and Santa Rosa de Lima in the Department of Santa Rosa, and Mataquescuintla and Jalapa in the Department of Jalapa maintained that they were not consulted prior to the awarding of the licenses. Nevertheless, the company decided to ram through the anti-extractivist countercurrents and had to consequently use lethal force to continue its operations. Between 2012 and 2013, seven people were murdered, 29 individuals were physically injured, and 50 community members were arrested in connection with operations at the El Escobal mine. Between 2011 and 2015, over 125 people were criminalized through various legal proceedings. One particular incident of overt shooting neatly encapsulates the murderous methods employed by mining magnates to operate in the countries of the Global South. Apart from depicting the violence of imperialist extractivism, the case also serves as an example of the revolutionary struggle waged by the oppressed masses of the Global South.
On April 27, 2013, a group of protestors from San Rafael Las Flores approached the entrance of the El Escobal silver mine using a dirt road. To suppress these demonstrations, private security guards hired by Tahoe Resources opened fire on the campesinos, injuring seven of the men. Adolfo Agustín García, one of the men shot by the guards, had his nine-year-old son with him at the demonstration. Tahoe Resources had hired the Golan Group, the same Israeli private security corporation used by HudBay Minerals and Goldcorp to unleash violence against anti-extractivist social movements. In response to the violence, the seven men assaulted by the mining corporation filed a lawsuit in British Columbia in June 2014, accusing the company of negligence for the actions of its security personnel. The case was initially dismissed by Supreme Court Judge Laura Gerow who ruled that the case could not be heard in Canada due to high procedural costs and was better suited for Guatemala’s court system. Her decision was overturned on 26 January, 2017 by the BC Court of Appeal which concluded that Guatemala’s corrupt judiciary placed severe limitations on the plaintiffs’ potential to receive a fair trial. On 30 July, 2019, the six-year long legal battle was brought to an end by Pan American Silver which apologized to the Guatemalan plaintiffs and conceded that “the shooting on April 27, 2013, infringed the human rights of the protestors”,.
Tahoe’s barbarous policies were lent full support by the Guatemalan state which went as far as to enact a campaign of terror to consolidate extractive capital’s dominance. On May 3, 2013, President Perez Molina imposed a 30-day state of siege in the municipalities surrounding the Escobal mine amid a growing number of community-level consultations and plebiscites against mining operations. During the siege, 8, 500 military personnel were deployed in four municipalities and areas of resistance were militarily penetrated by tanks and armored vehicles. The state of siege suspended basic constitutional rights, barred public assembly, allowed the military to indefinitely detain anyone without charge/trial and lifted restrictions on searches and seizures. However, the siege was never authorized by the Guatemalan Congress. For Tahoe Resources, the siege was an important measure through which indigenous resistance to its operations was temporarily subdued. MSR praised the state of siege through a paid ad published in the print media on May 7, 2013. The ad was additionally signed by 36 construction companies which expressed their “respect and support for the government’s decision to re-establish public order and the rule of law in Santa Rosa and Jalapa.”
In spite of state-sanctioned violence oriented towards capital accumulation, the Xinka people did not capitulate to the extractive elites and instead, resiliently opposed the mining bourgeoisie through community actions, international solidarity and organizational strategies. As a result of these revolutionary efforts, the Guatemalan Constitutional Tribunal was forced to halt the Escobal project in 2017 while it investigated allegations of lack of consultation. This judgment was upheld on 4 September, 2018, when the constitutional court confirmed that the Escobal mining license will remain suspended until a consultation in line with ILO convention 169 is completed by the MEM. As per the constitutional court, the consultation comprises of four stages: “1) definition of the area of influence of the project, 2) a pre-consultation phase to determine the process, 3) the consultation itself, and 4) the presentation of consultation results to the Guatemalan Supreme Court.” Flouting the judicial orders of the constitutional court, Tahoe and the MEM declared the completion of stage one of the consultation process on November 15, 2018, without ever informing the Xinka leadership. On top of the patent exclusion of the Xinka people, the company has only included the municipality of San Rafael las Flores – where the mine’s industrial plant is located – as the “area of influence of the project”. In opposition to this definition of the mine’s area of influence, the Xinka Parliament has univocally asserted that the all-encompassing impacts of the mine cannot be reduced to such a small area. It has further criticized the inadequacy of the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) in determining the area of influence with regard to cultural and spiritual impacts.
In the cotemporary period, we are witnessing the direct continuation of ceaseless attempts to sabotage the consultation process laid out by the constitutional court and undercut Xinka resistance. Articulating these regressive efforts aimed at weakening Xinka community’s political potency, a blog post by the NGO Earthworks states: “Rather than the open, inclusive consultation promised in the Court ruling, the Xinka have faced threats, intimidation, and an exclusionary, potentially illegal process that seems to have a preordained outcome: the reopening of a mine that the Xinka say will destroy their way of life”.
Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, attempts are afoot to emasculate the proper participation of the Xinka people. Pan American Silver recently collected signatures and ID numbers from community members who received their donation to dishonestly demonstrate local support for the mining project. Commenting on these manipulative tactics, Luis Fernando García Monroy – on behalf of the Xinka Parliament – said: “COVID-19 isn’t the only health crisis we’re facing. For a decade, communities surrounding the Escobal mine have fought to protect their health from mining activities. Guatemalan courts ordered Pan American Silver to suspend its operations during the consultation and this includes community outreach, which gives rise to tension and conflict. Pan American Silver should tell its employees to stay home and stop trying to buy support for the mine during this significant health crisis,”.
Extractive Imperialism in Guatemala
While the present-day conflict revolving around the Escobal mine is socially situated in the antagonistic relations between the Xinka community and the mining companies, it is also economically embedded in the structures of extractive imperialism in Guatemala. Through this extractive imperialism, the country’s natural resources have been laid open for the over-exploitative practices of multinational companies. The path for this capitalist expansion was paved by the Guatemalan state which instituted a number of laws to attract foreign investment: the new Mining Law of 1997 which reduced the royalty rate for mining companies from 6% to 1% of production value; the General Electricity Law of 1996 which reduced costs for energy-intensive mining projects; the “Maquila Law” of 1988 which exempted exporters from taxes on inputs and the 1998 Foreign Investment Law which expanded rights for foreign investors. With the help of these laws, mineral and metal exports increased from a low of 0.385% of merchandise exports in 2003 to a high of 9.626% in 2011, ten times the rate of Latin America; and mining concessions expanded by over 1000% from 1998 to 2008.
As Guatemala was imperialistically pillaged by transnational companies, a “generalized” atmosphere of extractive capital accumulation was generated. Francisco Mateo, a protagonist of anti-extractivism in Huehuetenango (a city in western Guatemala), a former member of the Departmental Assembly in Defense of Life and Territory in Huehuetenango (ADH) and a member of the Huista Council, a local affiliate of the CPO (Mayan People’s Council), explains how an “integrated” capital accumulation is taking place, comprehensively uprooting entire territories: “We see here a new despojo (dispossession) because we are not talking about a mining project, nor are we talking about an energy project. It is a total concession of territory. Just in Huehuetenango, there are thirty‐six approved mining licenses. There are twenty energy projects, between small, medium, and large. Then there are three petroleum projects in the northern zone…They try to make it seem like these [energy] projects are independent and that they don’t have anything to do with mining. How could that be? Without the energy, there can’t be mining. Thus they are completely interrelated. There is a fusion within capital; there are deals.”
Because of the comprehensive consolidation of extractive capital in Guatemala, there has been a heightened internal war against people who oppose mining and energy projects. To take an example, Bernardo Caal Xol is a Maya Q’eq’chi’ teacher and trade unionist who, for 5 years, has been defending the rights of the communities of Santa María Cahabón who have been affected by the construction of the OXEC hydroelectric plant on the Oxec and Cahabón rivers in the northern department of Alta Verapaz. In response to his activism, companies accused Caal of carrying out alleged acts of violence against employees of NETZONE SA, an OXEC contractor, on 15 October 2015. On 9 November 2018, a court sentenced him to seven years and four months in prison based on trumped up charges. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, says: “Having reviewed the…criminal proceedings against Bernardo Caal, it’s clear that there’s no evidence of the crimes that he’s accused of. On the contrary, the proceedings against Bernardo show the same patterns of criminalization of human rights defenders that we have documented in the country for years.”
In a similar manner, violence against Guatemalan anti-mining activists has solidified. On the night of 5 August, 2020, unknown persons raided the home of indigenous rights defender Ubaldino García Canan in the municipality of Olopa, Chiquimula. García Canan is a Maya Ch’orti indigenous rights defender and has demonstrated against the operations of the mining company Cantera Los Manantiales. He is also a member of the Maya Ch’orti Indigenous Council of Olopa, and has facilitated the organized articulation of indigenous resistance against extractivism. Attacks on Garcia Canan are politically patterned with another Maya Ch’orti’ indigenous leader Medardo Alonzo Lucero, also a member of the Indigenous Council and a leader in the opposition movement against the activities of Cantera Los Manantiales, having been murdered on 15 June, 2020, in La Cumbre, Olopa.
The intensification of violence against Guatemalan dissidents is a natural corollary of extractive imperialism which demands unquestioning obedience to the exigencies of metropolitan capital. For extractive imperialism, the availability of exploitable resources is superior to the existence of human beings. Correspondingly, the capitalist forces operating in Guatemala are having no qualms about enacting violence against those whom they perceive to be hindering the process of accumulation. This profit-oriented violence will continue to exist as long as we live under the regime of predatory capitalism which, in the words of Samir Amin, “has become the enemy of all of humanity.”
Yanis Iqbal is an independent writer from Aligarh, India
Originally published in GreenLeft
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance in name alone. Recent events notwithstanding, the brewing conflict over territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean indicates that the military union between mostly Western countries is faltering.
The current Turkish-Greek tension is only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.
Conflicts of this nature tend to have historic roots – Turkey and Greece fought a brief but consequential war in 1974. Of relevance to the current conflagration is an agreement signed by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively, on January 2. The agreement envisages the establishment of the EastMed pipeline which, once finalized, is projected to flood Europe with Israeli natural gas, pumped mostly from the Leviathan Basin.
Several European countries are keen on being part of, and profiting from, the project. But Europe’s gain is not just economic but also geostrategic. Cheap Israeli gas will lessen Europe’s reliance on Russia’s natural gas which arrives in Europe through two pipelines, Nord Stream and Gazprom, the latter extending through Turkey.
Gazprom alone supplies Europe with an estimated 40% of its natural gas needs, thus giving Russia significant economic and political leverage. Some European countries, especially France, have labored to liberate themselves from what they see as a Russian economic chokehold on their economies.
Indeed, the French and Italian rivalry currently under way in Libya is tantamount to colonial expeditions aimed at balancing out the over-reliance on Russian and Turkish supplies of gas and other sources of energy.
Fully aware of France’s and Italy’s intentions in Libya, the Russians and Turks are wholly involved in Libya’s military showdown between the Government of National Accord (GNA) and forces in the East, loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.
While the conflict in Libya has been under way for years, the Israel-et al EastMed pipeline has added fuel to the fire: infuriating Turkey, which is excluded from the agreement; worrying Russia, whose gas arrives in Europe partially via Turkey, and empowering Israel, which may now cement its economic integration with the European continent.
Anticipating the Israel-led alliance, on November 28, 2019, Turkey and Libya signed a Maritime Boundary Treaty, an agreement that gave Ankara access to Libya’s territorial waters. The bold maneuver allows Turkey to claim territorial rights for gas exploration in a massive region that extends from the Turkish southern coast to Libya’s north-east coast.
The ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ) is unacceptable in Europe because, if it remains in effect, it will cancel out the ambitious EastMed project and fundamentally alter the geopolitics – largely dictated by Europe and guaranteed by NATO – of this region.
However, NATO is no longer the once formidable and unified power. Since its inception in 1949, NATO has been on the rise. NATO members have fought major wars in the name of defending one another and also to protect ‘the West’ from the ‘Soviet menace’.
NATO remained strong and relatively unified even after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the abrupt collapse, in 1991, of its Warsaw Pact. NATO managed to sustain a degree of unity, despite its raison d’être – defeating the Soviets – being no longer a factor, because Washington wished to maintain its military hegemony, especially in the Middle East.
While the Iraq war of 1991 was the first powerful expression of NATO’s new mission, the Iraq war of 2003 was NATO’s undoing. After failing to achieve any of its goals in Iraq, the US adopted an ‘exit strategy’ that foresaw a gradual American retreat from Iraq while, simultaneously, ‘pivoting to Asia’ in the desperate hope of slowing down China’s military encroachment in the Pacific.
The best expression of the American decision to divest militarily from the Middle East was NATO’s war on Libya in March 2011. Military strategists had to devise a bewildering term, ‘leading from behind’, to describe the role of the US in the Libya conflict. For the first time since the establishment of NATO, the US was part of a conflict that was largely controlled by comparatively smaller and weaker NATO members – Italy, France, Britain and others.
While former US President, Barack Obama, insisted on the centrality of NATO in US military strategies, it was evident that the once-powerful alliance had outweighed its usefulness for Washington.
France, in particular, continues to fight for NATO with the same ferocity it fought to keep the European Union intact. It is this French faith in European and Western ideals that has compelled Paris to fill the gap left by the gradual American withdrawal. France is currently playing the role of the military hegemon and political leader in many of the Middle East’s ongoing crises, including the flaring East Mediterranean conflict.
On December 3, 2019, France’s Emmanuel Macron stood up to US President Donald Trump, at the NATO summit in London. Here, Trump chastised NATO for its reliance on American defense and threatened to pull out of the alliance altogether if NATO members did not compensate Washington for its protection.
It’s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members. Even stranger, to see France and Germany taking over the leadership of NATO while the US remains, thus far, almost completely absent.
It is hard to imagine the reinvention of NATO, at least a NATO that caters to Washington’s interests and diktats. Judging by France’s recent behavior, the future may hold irreversible paradigm shifts. In November 2018, Macron made what then seemed as a baffling suggestion, a ‘true, European army’. Considering the rapid regional developments and the incremental collapse of NATO, Macron may one day get his army, after all.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
The United Arab Emirates’ establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel is damaging its efforts to garner religious soft power by projecting itself as a model of Islamic moderation and tolerance and a force for peace. The UAE move has sparked splits within a key group, created and nurtured by the Gulf state, to project its image as a moderate religious power.
The United Arab Emirates’ bold recognition of Israel, earning it valuable brownie points in the West, has come at a cost: a blow to its efforts to earn religious soft power in the Muslim world.
The setback raises questions about the UAE’s strategy of co-opting prominent Muslim scholars with financial incentives to project the Gulf state as a model of tolerance that seeks to promote a moderate interpretation of Islam in a global competition for religious soft power with Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.
The UAE attempt to reap religious support for its opening to Israel encountered blowback when a statement by the Abu Dhabi-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies — one of several UAE-backed groups created to counter similar Qatari institutions and give the UAE effort religious cachet — sparked protests and resignations.
Members of the Forum’s board complained that the statement had been issued without a discussion in the Forum’s board of trustees. The board includes former Jordanian Islamic chief justice and minister of endowments Ahmad Hilayel and Abdullah Al-Maatouq, a Kuwaiti royal court advisor and former religious affairs minister and United Nations envoy.
Hamza Yusuf, the Forum’s vice president and a popular American Islamic scholar who heads Zaytuna College — the United States’ first accredited Muslim undergraduate college — distanced himself from the statement, asserting that he did “not engage in or endorse geopolitical strategies or treaties” and that his “allegiance is and has always been with the oppressed peoples of Palestine, whether Muslim, Christian, or otherwise.”
Similarly, while announcing her resignation from the Forum’s board, prominent American Muslim activist Aisha al-Adawiya, founder of the human rights group Women in Islam, said that there had been “no agreement on any kind of support for the UAE’s deal with Israel.”
So did Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. Mr. Hussein banned Muslims from the UAE from visiting and praying at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
However, the statement issued by Abdullah Bin Bayyah, a Mauritanian politician, religious scholar, and the head of the Forum and president of the Emirati Fatwa Council, took a different tone.
Praising “the wisdom of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces,” the statement asserted that normalization of relations with the Jewish state had “stopped Israel from extending its sovereignty over Palestinian lands” and was a means to “promote peace and stability across the world.”
Mr. Bin Bayyah’s defense of the statement reflected the UAE’s definition of moderate Islam as one that is state-controlled and preaches absolute obedience to the ruler. He insisted that “international relations and treaties are among the initiatives that fall within the policy-making purview of the ruler.”
Despite longstanding relations with Abu Dhabi’s ruling Al-Nahyan family, Mr. Bin Bayyah was long aligned with their nemesis as vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, that was established to provide guidance to European Muslims through the dissemination of religious opinions.
The two groups were headed and founded by Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the world’s most prominent living Islamic scholars who is widely viewed as a spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatari support of the Brotherhood is a main driver of the more than three-year-old UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state. The Emirates and the kingdom earlier designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, including Crown Prince Mohammed and his foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, began courting Mr. Bin Bayyah in early 2013.
They invited the cleric to the Emirates the same month that Egyptian President and Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi – the post-2011 revolt democratically elected head of state — was toppled by a UAE-backed military coup.
In a letter Mr. Bin Bayyah sent three months later to the IUMS, he announced that he was resigning from the group. He wrote: “the humble role I am attempting to undertake towards reform and reconciliation (among Muslims) requires a discourse that does not sit well with my position at the International Union of Muslim Scholars.”
Mr. Bin Bayyah wrote his letter after the IUMS had bitterly denounced the Egyptian coup and condemned the subsequent brutal repression of the Brotherhood and he published it to demonstrate to Emirati leaders that he had ended his association with Qatari-supported Islamic groups.
The courting of Mr. Bin Bayyah emanated from Prince Mohammed’s realization that he needed religious soft power to justify the UAE’s wielding of hard power that started with the Egyptian coup and expanded with military interventions in Yemen and Libya.
The emergence in recent years of Mr. Bin Bayyah – a celebrated Islamic jurist whom Islam scholar Usamaa Al-Azami dubbed “counter‐revolutionary Islam’s most important scholar” – as the religious face of the UAE coincided with the 93-year-old Mr. Qaradawi’s withdrawal from public life.
The backlash sparked by Mr. Bin Bayyah’s statement highlights the Achilles heel, at least in the Muslim world, of the UAE’s religious soft power ploy.
“The counter‐revolutionary Islamic political thought that is being developed and promoted by Bin Bayyah and the UAE suffers from certain fundamental structural problems that means its very existence is precariously predicated on the persistence of autocratic patronage,” Mr. Al-Azami asserted. “Its lack of independence means that it is not the organic product of a relatively unencumbered engagement with political modernity that might be possible in freer societies than counter‐revolutionary Gulf autocracies,” he added.
Mr. Al Azami’s criticism goes to the heart of a debate, particularly in Turkey and Indonesia, on Islam’s ability to recontextualize itself and break away from the shackles of outdated concepts and traditions without being freed from control by states that seek to impose a self-serving vision of the faith.
Expressed more bluntly, Yahya Birt, a scholar of British Islam and a convert to the faith, who has researched UAE-backed clerics, argued that there is discrepancy between how they project their sponsors abroad and the reality on the ground.
“The extracted price of government patronage is high for ulema (religious scholars) in the Middle East. Generally speaking, they have to openly support or maintain silence about autocracy at home, while speaking of democracy, pluralism, and minority rights to Western audiences,” Mr. Birt said.
The backlash to the support of the UAE recognition of Israel by the Forum and Mr. Bin Bayyah suggests a serious flaw in the Gulf state’s approach to religious soft power: It targets first and foremost Western corridors of power rather than the Muslim community at large.
An initial version of this story was first published by Inside Arabia
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is also a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture in Germany.
The president of US Donald Trump is of course too much meant to be busy for the November 2020 elections, and despite the stand-off with China on many fronts, particularly in South China Sea, will not be able to ‘look-that-hard’ into with China until the elections are over, which is not ‘that much’ to India’s liking, yet Israel, which is actually ‘US in Action’ has stood with India, for much to its ideology, by supplying all ‘intelligence-drones’ weapons etc, has now finally jumped into the India-China muddle as The Hindu 1 reported ‘Israel hopes India-China tensions will ease soon, Israel hopes that tensions between India and China will ease and it is in talks with both countries on trade agreements, according to an Israeli official’. It has been learnt that Gilad Cohen, the deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Division of Israeli Foreign Ministry is talking to the Indian government about trilateral cooperation in areas such as — agriculture, technology and water. “The combination of the three countries can be for the benefit of all three sides.” he said. With Israel and the United Arab Emirates set to sign the historic deal to normalise relations at a White House ceremony on September 15, Israeli officials in Tel Aviv have proposed trilateral cooperation among Israel, UAE and India. On the question on the recent border tensions between India and China, Gilhad Cohen said, “We have very good relations with India. We have good relations with China… We try to have good relations with all of Asia.” “We hope tensions will be sorted out in peaceful ways and tension will reduce, this is what we desire”’ was reported in IndiaToday on September 10, 2020 2 . But, at the same tine , to give a setback to China, Israel and US had begun to collaborate with India into developing the next generation of emerging technologies as was reported in ZeenewsIndia on September 8, 2020 3 .
If events could be analysed then on September 9, 2020 Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa took the 235th Core Commanders meeting 4 , and it gave a clear message that China and Pakistan are in alignment against India, and in its wake, this message from Israel has arrived, and immediately it came to light that PM Modi has had a telephonic talk with King Salman of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on September 9, 2020 in which the two leaders exchanged views of global challenges following COVID-19 5. Modi is said to have expressed his appreciation to KSA for the leadership during its on-going presidency of G20 grouping along with ‘special thanks’ provided to Indian expatriates during the pandemic. The statement issued was typically aligned on the sarkari lines, but what mattered was just yet to arrive.
King Salman of KSA just thereafter dialed to China president Xi Jinping. The Chinese news agency CGTN informed on September 9, 2020, that Chinese president had talks with Uruguayan president on initiatives during COVID-19 and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The report contained eight small paragraphs, and in its last paragraph it referred to King Salman calling up Jinping 6. This quick chain of events does show as to how shaky the Indian situation is as ‘Bajwa meeting, Israel calling, Modi dialing, King Salman talking and China listening’ is happening in such a quick succession, is a proof enough that something big is on the cards. This situation was inevitable in its consequences as it was quite warranted, particularly, after the horrendous meeting of India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh with Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe had ended in a deadlock, towards which I had written an article in CounterCurrents ‘Is War Imminent’ on September 6, 2020 7 . On September 8, 2020, I wrote another article in CounterCurrents ‘For Iran China is In. India Not’, which is a thread to what all was coming. ‘Any positive-report from Indian aspect was being awaited but which did not arrive. This leaves Rajnath Singh (read India) to maneuver-out from inside the Gulf-states a standpoint against Pakistan which is raring to go against India alongside China. Hence, the great-game is now entering into its next phase as a ‘threat’ to Pakistan from Gulf-states, to the advantage of India, might be on the anvil, but winds of change are also blowing as China has started to discard oil-import from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which has slipped to the third position in terms of crude oil supply to china’ 8 . And, exactly the same has taken place. KSA has been put into order to help India out of the morass of China-Pakistan cauldron.
What is interesting is to note than King Salman did not call Pakistan but instead to China and China gave it a last paragraph for its details! Now Indian external affairs minister S Jaishankar is on his visit to Moscow to meet Russian and Chinese counterparts to anyhow try to defuse the situation building-up with China, now in Arunachal Pradesh too, apart from what has happened in Ladakh. But, skeptics feel that when Rajnath Singh could not ‘tame-the-tide’ to India’s advantage how would Jaishankar do it? Perhaps, India’s only last recourse is to seek Russian solidarity as its final shield against China. I wrote a detailed article on the same lines in CounterCurrents ‘India not able to fully abandon Russia’ on September 2, 2020 9 . Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi is also in Moscow,
World politics in the recent months has perhaps spiraled more around Israel, US, China, Pakistan, UAE etc and it hasn’t been very late when Israel had shunted out China and shelved its contracts when US secretary of state Mike Pompeo visited Israel on May 16, 2020 10 and had warned against Chinese investments in Israel. Thus, it is more than clear that Israel cannot be ‘as friendly’ with China as it is with India, and this latest and the first-of-its-kind statement by Israel is by all standards a support to India, as India had very much expected US president Donald Trump to join-its-war-rhetoric with China but US did not hit the radar! Now, India is putting-into-use its offices in Israel, which are now very cordial with KSA and UAE, particularly after the normalisation of ties between UAE-Israel on August 14, 2020 11 , to make KSA and UAE put pressure on Pakistan to abstain from entering the ‘war-arena’ between China and India.
But, isn’t it a fact that India is trying for something into a ‘dead-end’ as KSA has already tried-in-vain to browbeat Pakistan in recent times and it could not yield ‘the-desired-result’ to its maneuvering . A long-standing article by Ali Awadh Asseri , former KSA diplomat to Pakistan, in ArabNews 12 on August 17, 2020, on the eve of Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa visit to Riyadh, after Shah Mehmood Qureshi diatribe against KSA for doing ‘precious-little’ for Kashmir inside the 58 nation member Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), is so full of threats to Pakistan, to make it succumb to KSA tactics but Pakistan did not budge. In the same contexts I wrote two articles in CounterCurrents ‘Israel Threatens Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Ditches Pakistan on Kashmir’ on August 12, 2020 13 and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Humiliates Pakistan on August 25, 2020 14 . But, KSA prevailing-over Pakistan seem to be some wishful-thinking as now much waters has flown down the Thames, since the ‘situations’ were made to take to the ugly turns.
If Pakistan had budged to KSA pressure then Qureshi must have long been given ‘marching-orders’ but Qureshi is very much in the middle-of-affairs, and his presence resuscitates the policy of Pakistan establishment he reflected. PM Modi, might have again be caught on a wrong foot by scheduling KSA ‘into’ for the purpose. It is hence, in all likelihood that India’s Rajnath Singh and Jayshankar would be hopping to Riyadh in near future , to fill into the vacuum, to be created, by the absence of Pakistan expatriates as very soon they are to be dispatched-off. Pakistan, it does seem to have gone ahead to tie its future with a new emerging bloc i.e. Turkey, Iran, Malaysia and China with Russia support. The biggest scourge for India is Pakistan’s growing proximity with Russia which is to the doing-of-China 15.
India is now all out into giving a message to Gulf-states, as The Hindu BusinessLine informs on September 8, 2020 that ‘For Gulf-States China is a temporary friend’ 16, meaning thereby, that China is now to be advised by Pakistan vis-à-vis Gulf-states, therefore, India is now ready to replace Pakistan inside the Gulf-states, and that the real friends from now onwards are to be India, Israel and US for the Arab-states. UAE and India have already started to take-off their relationship to the next level as UAE ambassador to India has expressed that UAE and India need to have an open-sky policy instead of a mere airspace agreement 17 , hence, Modi might have this time fired the wrong salvo as Pakistan, has given a clear proof, that it no more tends to be cowed by KSA. India is now a natural ally of KSA as Iran and China too have entered into a historic deal of 400 billion USD of ‘trade and military partnership’ for the next 25 years 18. Meanwhile UAE-Israel companionship has started to reach to next-levels as hotels in UAE have been told to cater to Jewish Kosher food reports The Jerusalem Post 19 and Arab League has also refused to condemn the UAE-Israel embassy move on the demand from Palestine reports Al Jazeera on September 10, 2020.
As for the Indian side, let’s see if Jayshankar is able to break some juggernaut in Moscow.
The writer is a former Uttar Pradesh State Information Commissioner. He writes on international politics.
References:
1-https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/israel-hopes-india-china-tensions-will-ease-soon/article32563515.ece
2- https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/israel-proposes-trilateral-cooperation-uae-india-china-1720311-2020-09-10
3-https://zeenews.india.com/india/setback-for-china-as-us-israel-agree-to-collaborate-with-india-in-developing-5g-technology-2308406.html
4- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDPVtRzNBA
7 https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/is-war-imminent/
8- https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/for-iran-china-is-in-india-not/
9- https://countercurrents.org/2020/09/india-not-able-to-fully-abandon-russia/
11- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/world/middleeast/palestinians-israel-uae-annexation-peace.html
12- https://www.arabnews.com/node/1720441
14- https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/kingdom-of-saudi-arabia-humiliates-pakistan/
18- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/world/asia/china-iran-trade-military-deal.html
19- Abu Dhabi tells hotels to provide kosher meals following UAE-Israel deal
20- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/arab-league-ministers-agree-condemn-uae-israel-deal-200909141524785.html
The group, Buffalo Springfield, with both Neil Young and Stephen Stills as members, had a major hit song For What It’s Worth, in 1967. It was the lyrics that are almost frighteningly valid in today’s socio-political climate:
For What It’s Worth
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It’s s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
Digest the lyrics if you would… carefully. It is as if 53 years have come and gone and all is in vain for we who cherish the need for change. Perhaps, and I mean this most sincerely, the only change we may see is that of a Fascist nation reminiscent of the ‘ Mother of All ‘ fascist nations. Need I have to spell it out folks? Weimar Germany was created soon after WW1, it’s child tortured by economic despair. Adolf and his gang would never had reached such a pinnacle of power if not for that. Matter of fact, in the 1928 elections his party actually lost seats in the Reichstag when Germany saw a bit of an upward economic bounce. That was then and this is now folks. Another phony populist demagogue assumed power when the eight years of Neo Liberal bullshit under Obama saw ‘ Hope and Change’ go by the wayside. It is actually ironic that Hitler was more progressive on economic issues than Trump ever was. Now, we can say that Hitler was much more overtly racist than Trump and his minions, given what the Germans did to the Jews, Communists, Socialists , unions and all the other political parties. Yet, what Trump and his entire administration have done is give a ‘ backhanded acceptance’ to the violent Proto Nazis like those in Charlottesville, Virginia. Shades of Kristallnacht when we see far right wing thugs, many wearing police uniforms, who hurt and maim the unarmed. Sad.
Read my lips folks: There will never be a large scale revolution here in Amerika. Perhaps if we had been invaded and occupied like many of our European cousins, who share our white bread mindset, then an upheaval might occur. And, as with many previous revolutions, where violence achieved a change in power, the final result would see more upheavals in the vein of the French Revolution. They chopped off the heads of lots of evil, greedy people, and then began to chop off each other’s heads. NO, a true and viable revolution has to come from a change in mindset, an almost devout mission to do what Gandhi taught, that being Peaceful Non Cooperation. It may begin with a handful of brave souls who sit and block the engines of corporate power. If the mass of fellow citizens then marches to join them, no despotic regime will be able to take hold. As the late Jim Morrison said in one of his songs: ” You got the guns but we got the numbers!”
This Proto Fascist president, along with his administration, Republican Congress and the myriad of white supremacist followers, needs to be booted out in November. The ‘ Lesser of two evils’ party opposite is just that, but for now they are the only lifeline , as frayed as it is, to stop this madness. They tell you in left wing circles, as I myself have always stated, that ‘ Voting is not the answer’ . Well, this time it is. Once, if possible, we see the Trump Train derailed, then the ‘ Left’ needs to walk away from the Demoncrats to never return… for ‘ What It’s Worth’ .
Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
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