For UrShalim, it is Sykes-Picot all over again, partitioning the Middle East under
spheres of western influence 'protecting' different ethnicities. And for Nidal, who is
commenting on UrShalim, westerners are discarding the Arab perception of USrael's
policies in the Middle East as 'conspiracy theories'.
However, if they look carefully at the history of the region and at what is happening now they will discover that there is a troubling similarity between these so-called conspiracy theories and what the US and Israel are planning for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Moussa Bashir at UrShalim and Nidal at Loubnan Ya Loubnan, have recently pointed to this important news item, published only as an AFP newswire which went unnoticed; the US senate voted to partition Iraq. In the first lines of his post, Nidal highlights the contradiction in this short title.
It is not the Iraqi people who voted to partition their country but a foreign power, the US senate.
What follows is an extract translatied from Nidal's article.
The proposal voted in the US senate is what is called the Biden Bill, by the name of
senator Joe Biden. Nidal features the whole text of the bill:
SEC. 1535. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON FEDERALISM IN IRAQ.
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Iraq continues to experience a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian violence.
(2) The ongoing sectarian violence presents a threat to regional and world peace, and
the longterm security interests of the United States are best served by an Iraq that is
stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors.
(3) A central focus of al Qaeda in Iraq has been to turn sectarian divisions in Iraq
into sectarian violence through a concentrated series of attacks, the most significant
being the destruction of the Golden Dome of the Shia al-Askariyah Mosque in Samarra in
February 2006.
(4) Iraqis must reach a comprehensive and sustainable political settlement in order to
achieve stability, and the failure of the Iraqis to reach such a settlement is a primary
cause of violence in Iraq.
(5) Article One of the Constitution of Iraq declares Iraq to be a ``single, independent
federal state''.
(6) Section Five of the Constitution of Iraq declares that the ``federal system in the
Republic of Iraq is made up of a decentralized capital, regions, and governorates, and
local administrations'' and enumerates the expansive powers of regions and the limited
powers of the central government and establishes the mechanisms for the creation of new federal regions.
(7) The federal system created by the Constitution of Iraq would give Iraqis local
control over their police and certain laws, including those related to employment,
education, religion, and marriage.
(8) The Constitution of Iraq recognizes the administrative role of the Kurdistan
Regional Government in 3 northern Iraqi provinces, known also as the Kurdistan Region.
(9) The Kurdistan region, recognized by the Constitution of Iraq, is largely stable and
peaceful.
(10) The Iraqi Parliament approved a federalism law on October 11th, 2006, which
establishes procedures for the creation of new federal regions and will go into effect
18 months after approval.
(11) Iraqis recognize Baghdad as the capital of Iraq, and the Constitution of Iraq
stipulates that Baghdad may not merge with any federal region.
(12) Despite their differences, Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
(13) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated on November 27, 2006, ``[t]he crisis is
political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of aggravation and bloodletting of
innocents are the politicians''.
(b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the United States should actively support a political settlement in Iraq based on
the final provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of
government and allow for the creation of federal regions, consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their elected leaders;
(2) the active support referred to in paragraph (1) should include--
(A) calling on the international community, including countries with troops in Iraq, the
permanent 5 members of the United Nations Security Council, members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council, and Iraq's neighbors--
(i) to support an Iraqi political settlement based on federalism;
(ii) to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq; and
(iii) to fulfill commitments for the urgent delivery of significant assistance and debt
relief to Iraq, especially those made by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation
Council;
(B) further calling on Iraq's neighbors to pledge not to intervene in or destabilize
Iraq and to agree to related verification mechanisms; and
(C) convening a conference for Iraqis to reach an agreement on a comprehensive political settlement based on the federalism law approved by the Iraqi Parliament on October 11, 2006;
(3) the United States should urge the Government of Iraq to quickly agree upon and
implement a law providing for the equitable distribution of oil revenues, which is a
critical component of a comprehensive political settlement based upon federalism;
(4) the steps described in paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) could lead to an Iraq that is
stable, not a haven for terrorists, and not a threat to its neighbors; and
(5) nothing in this Act should be construed in any way to infringe on the sovereign
rights of the nation of Iraq.
In his article, Nidal links to a 2006 article that Biden cosigned with Leslie H. Gelb in
the New York Times on the subject, whish he considers more explicit than the actual text of the bill. He considers the text of the bill as a masterpiece in Hypocrisy. First
because the text has taken the Iraqi constitution as a premise for justifying the
partition plan without concern for the fact that the constitution was voted in October
2005 under US occupation and largely criticized at the time in the Arab world as opening the door to partition. The hypocrisy is also in the last paragraph of the amendment stipulating that such an amendment must not interfere with the sovereignty of Iraq.
"Let's imagine that, last wednesday, the US senate voted to express its 'sentiment' in favor of partitioning France. Or, let's have a bit fun and imagine that the US senate
voted to partition Israel along ethnic and religious lines. What could have been the
reaction of the news ? Unfortunately, there is a prevailing 'logic' today which, if
applied in these two possible cases, no media would judge it interesting to reproduce
and comment this information.
The opposition between republicans and democrats in the US senate is artificial. Iraqis will have to hang on either of these two positions: Republicans refusing the partition of Iraq and promising more war until the final victory or democrats refusing war but promising partition along ethno-religious lines, meaning ethnic cleanesing.
Iraq's prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki says he is opposed to such a 'catastrophic'
scenario but the latest news from the US are that Maliki does not seem to count too much despite his puppet stance toward the occupation. A leaked memo from December 2006 shows Stephen Hadley accusing Maliki of consolidating Shia Power in Baghdad.
The Missing Links blog notes that the Iraqi vice president launches the same day the
Biden amendment is voted the Iraqi National Pact supporting the principle of a federal
Iraq. Received in the white house by GW Bush in December 2006, at the time Maliki was criticized in Washington, he is the first high profile Sunni politician supporting
federalism. It is strange to realize that while the news are mumm about the text of the Biden amendment and the text of the Iraqi National Pact, they are flooding us with information about the 'Progress' of the National Pact as promoted by Tariq El-Hashemi.
As our media have never layed out the historic context coloring the perception of
citizens in the ME of such a move, except when they denounce Arabs' love for conspiracy theories, the European reader can never imagine the disturbing particular logic in which the US senate vote can be seen by Arabs.
For UrShalim the vote is simply the repetition of the Sykes-Picot agreements
partitioning the Middle East under spheres of western influence 'protecting' different
ethnicities.
In one of my first posts on this blog I reminded readers how political analysis, showing the Middle East, this craddle of human civilisation, as the victim of continuous ethno-religious confrontations, is dangerous and preposterous.
In another article, 'Political Coup in Lebanon', I reminded readers how the ambitions of a regional power, close to the US, is to partition the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
Nidal is referring here also to the text of Oded Yinon.
If we look at the Iraq war from this perspective it becomes evident that the invasion of
Iraq was the sinister project of Zionists and Neoconservatives to destruct all Israel's
neighbours in small ethno-religious entities similar to Israel. My Arab friends are
convinced that that was the chief objective in invading Iraq and remodeling the ME.
The western reader has evidently never heard of the analysis and opinions of Arabs,
notably Iraqis, who see in the invasion of Iraq the realization of the Zionist project
through Neoconservatives. Westerners have but contempt for the Arab view on what is happening to them, they discard these views by labelling them as conspiracy theories.
It is therefore unnecessary to inform the western reader about these views as it is
unnecessary to inform him about the mercenaries whose only role in Iraq is to inflame sectarian tensions and provoke confrontations resulting in the partition of the country.
This belief is particularly present among Iraqi refugees. It is also unnecessary to
watch this movie aired on the website of the Nation showing how Blackwater has actively participated in the sectarian wars in Iraq. Better not to see those things, better to lower our head, and most importantly not to make any link between what is happening to Iraq and Arab 'conspiracy' theories."
UrShalim comments the US senate vote to partition Iraq this way: "You may still call it a conspiracy theory but I now call it strategic planning. But we are not the planners of course."
"We can approve of UrShalim's opinion here or disapprove of it but there is one thing we cannot disregard: the importance of such perceptions which are at the heart of regional politics and individual discussions. Because if we are to look at a certain coherence in all what is happening now in the Middle East we are forced to adopt UrShalim's conclusion: "If the US succeeds in dividing Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon and others will be next. It is just a matter of years.""
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=36905&s2=04
A New Map of Iraq.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues ...This is the New Iraq that America brought to us.
This is American Freedom and Democracy. This is American Liberation. This is my Dear Raouf. This is the gentle, kind, Raouf. This is his body. These are the marks of the New Iraq.
These are the hands and arms that embrace us daily in the New Iraq. This is the
Iraqi body. With its streams, mountains, rivers and skies...Look at it well. Scan it
well like you scan our irises. Make prints out of it, like you take our digital
fingerprints....Look well, very well (...) This is the new Iraqi body, the partitioned
body, the divided body... This is the new Iraqi body, the raped, violated, tortured,
mutilated Iraqi body... This is the new Iraqi body, the invaded, occupied, Iraqi body..
The new Iraqi body, the piece of meat of Liberation... The kingdom within that has been spoiled and broken without, losing its sacredness, its integrity, its identity...
This is the spirit made flesh, that you spit on, insult, scar, wound, stab, piss on, behead, chop, drill, amputate and murder.
This is your doing. Your Violence. Your Brutality. Your Greed. Your Evilnesss. Your
Silence. Your Apathy. Your Indifference. Your Negligence. Your Irresponsibility. Your
Immorality.
Your Selling out... Yes You, Right and Left. Yes You. Americans and
Westerners alike. Yes You, Iranians. Yes You, Israelis.
Yes You, Arabs.
This is the New Iraq. This is You....__,_._,___
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