There aren't enough cards in a pack,
Or violence with which to attack,
Blair's line of defence to Assad,
Through Tony Benn's son's revenge bombing charade.
For what it's worth I wish Momentum good LUCK,
This tradition's destroying the earth,
Boiling grannies alive on sustainable jive,
Pouring bombs on the darker nation's hurt.
What to do, what to do, what to do,
From all we have learnt since 2002,
Assemblage & rhizome, let's transform this biome,
Not (further) poison those dear Syrian's stew.
The fossil fuels will have the last laugh
Yesterday British MPs voted overwhelmingly in support of the third war on Iraq, in my lifetime. In doing so they further endanger the people of Iraq, Syria and Britain, and simultaneously strengthen the white supremacy that they are groomed and encultured to service. It feels like a horrible rerun of 2003, with no lessons learnt and a weaker, wearier opposition.
ISIS do seem to go out of their way to conveniently stamp bastard on everything that they touch, so you really need a decolonial humanic backbone to see through the smoke and mirrors here. The whiteous;y indignant, yet hypnotic 'So what's your solution' disqualification of dissent sung with the war drum creates a false urgency (like the 45 minute Weapons of Mass Distraction lie). Beneath this, the general shallowness of MPs, who are consumers like the rest of us, can be relied upon to deliver the most foolish verdict on the most dubious information. (Remember Jeremy Bowen and The BBC are embedded with Assad The Dog.)
Like in 2003, the anti war opposition is pushed will be marginalised by the masters of this war as they make a dog's dinner out the dogs dinner they co-produced since 2003 out of the dog's dinner they co-produced since 1991.
Beneath There Is No Alternative, lies White Supremacy
Of course there are always a myriad of alternative options to the violence on the table, the thing is that they wont make white structures of power feel like they are saving the world, and that is how they want to feel. Nevertheless, yesterday Caroline Lucas of the Green Party articulated a decent alternative vision of the issue here, while the Stop the War Coalition protests unfolded in multiple locations. The gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, another Green, proposed that the secular liberal-left PKK be armed up for the occasion.
White supremacy is at the heart of this matter, as evidenced by the comparative value accorded to human life. Non white life is waste, trash, unless an agenda can be wrapped around it. It is also a crying shame that we in parts deploy such devaluation of life. Apologies for the commodification-thinking that using such quantities, devoid of soul as we enumerate.
According to Iraq Body Count, since 2003 invasion of Iraq 195 000 humans have been killed. An academic, cluster -sample based effort put the 2003-11 war caused figure of death at 500 000. It is thought that another 500 000, mainly children were killed due to the US imposed sanctions.
Who can forget former US secretary of State Madeline Albright's words that this 'difficult price' was 'worth it'? What, in her mind, was the prize for such a price.
The acts of Saddam remain inscribed on the Iraqi power elite and population. If we attributes all the deaths of the Iran-Iraq war to him, as well has his internal 'contributions' , of Anfal in 1988 against Shia Kurds who sided with Iran, the chemical gas attack on Halabja in 1988 and attacks to suppress uprising Kurds and Shia after the 1991 Gulf War the figure of death may well rise to the million scale.
For reference, 1988 Iraq's official population was 17 million, 1991 18 million and 2013 33 million.
..and its Death Sciences
Technologies of death, domination and transfer develop. From chemical war of the 80s, and stealth 'precision' bombing in the 90s, to daisy cutters and drones more recently. During the Iran-Iraq war George W Bush's Secretary of Attack Donald Rumsfeld met in secret with Saddam to assist him fight Iran, linking him to US suppliers of anthrax and bubonic plague.
During the post 2003 occupation;s disbanding of Iraq's defeated army and debaathification of the civil services armed and empowered inept, corrupt and largely sectarian elites, who couldn't in the end fight for shit and ran away from ISIS leaving their American supplied weapons for free.
This is important to recall the moral high ground that the protagonists of this war assemblage leverage off ISIS, having just recently helped Israel get away with mass murder.
This foolishness is a multi-agent plaza, and I feel awful that my taxes are funding this Coalition government's hi-tech savagery. The deadly hypocrisy of it all is not lost on the Mirror, who provide the following contextualising cost loss estimates (which do not of course account for the damage done to Iraqi life and property by said munitions).
Every £33,000 hour a Tornado flies is equivalent to hiring a nurse for a year.
Fire a £1m Tomahawk missile and it takes out a school full of teachers.
Drop a £2m Storm Shadow guided bomb and bang goes the annual bedroom tax of 2,750 households.
I can't help but feel that there would have need no macho posturing if the Scottish referendum had resulted in a successful Yes. But the malaise that makes the Iraqis so vulnerable is refracted within our own communities nearer to home.
Interummahtics
I am a long way from figuring out the internal dynamics of this but Muslim narratives on Iraq vary enormously if you pay attention and don't zone out when the other sect is talking. Fundamentally, I believe our problem is with Ridiculisation and not the War on Terror industry's framing of Radicalisation, and that we must be creative, ecological and decolonial in thought, partnership and political practice.
My focus in recent years has not been on Syria, but Bangladesh, but some things are pretty obvious. It is the self-immolatingly anti-shia scaredy pants of the Arab petroSunnis who seem to have done most to sectarianise the battle for justice in Syria, and the idea that one can overthrow a professionally trained army state with some AKs, has weakened the Palestinian cause. The Arab Sting has really hurt and its beneficiaries are laughing.
Back to Iraq, and we know that a section of Iraqi Shia ex-exiles and kids have always been pro US invasion since before 2003, for valid practical reasons like not wanting their heads kicked in by Saddam any longer. This year especially, the broader Shia part of us, better articulated by young up and coming middle class friendly journalists in the MSM, and not dulled by fucking lobotomising impacts of salaphication has participated, along with Iranian religious authorities in helping to put ISIS at center stage, and backgrounding the legitimate resistance to the Syrian regime.
Social media, though not influential as it thinks itself, is an important space for self affirmation and a kind of forumulaic and visual political dhikr. In many ways the UKbased #No2ISIS campaign resembled the 2013 #SaveBangladesh one, however it was shitter and its alignment with establishment agenda gave it an additionally naff character.
In the field, several brave young Muslim and non Syrian medics like Shaheed Isa Abdur Rahman have been martyred assisting people's humanitarian needs. Our community is open handed, alhamdulillah, and Aid convoys have come and gone (some more clueless than others). Many young people, sociopaths included, now find themselves in the theater of war.
Qualitatively and quantitatively, it feels insufficient, and much of the Ummah probably feels this way. Perhaps only Turkey has done the M word justice as a whole, and it is outfits like their IHH that we could support rather than DIY approaches that will be surveilled and disrupted the shit out of. There are long term resettlement issues in Turkey, and they will be challenged for years to come.
How do we know?
A much loved Shayk was speaking to a gathering of educators recently, he warned people not to meddle on the internet in things they knew nothing about. Perhaps he meant trying to find out whats going on in a non consumptive way, which carries the hazard of being state recrimination.
Unlike during the Chechen wars, the post 9/11 clampdown on physical vitality on the internet makes it harder for systematic alternative and fact based news services to establish themselves. It is a pity that this conflagration has rendered the otherwise great Robert Fisk absolutely useless. Instead we have been 'treated' to all manner of narcissistic and bloody minded rudeboy warriors trying insane methods to redeem their pasts as well as the much discussed ISIS antiporn.
Its not impossible to find out some things though, even officially. An Essex born ambulance driver told Channel 4 earlier this week that a Brit, not fighting for ISIS, had been killed in US airstrikes and the American Muslim journalist, Bilal Abdul Raheem (blog) remains an unusually awesome and reflectful source on these matters. VICE, that annoying, lewd hipster outfit has really raised its reporting game. Its recent feature, The Ghosts of Aleppo gives us an insight into the day to day life of the resistance of the Islamic front in one of humankind's oldest continuously occupied cities.
Ummahtic heteregoneity
There are probably British Muslims fighting on all three (basic) sides of the Syria conflict with all manner of different ethical commitments, capabilities and motivations. However, they are, as they were in Bosnia, a minor part of the battlefield theater, despite the hulabaloo. One of Bilal Abdur Raheem's recent reports suggested that Western fighters may be trapped in ISIS, a friend of mine who went on a convoy or two said that Syrians were so happy to see Muslims from the West, since most of them would get taken away by ISIS as soon as they arrived. Gatekeepers wherever you turn ey?
Like I said earlier, Iraq features very differently in the Shia sacred and civilisational geographies than it does in the world of the Arab Sunni. The prevailing view is that Maliki wasn't so bad, and that Syria was a case of external destabilisation in Israel's favour. At the Gaza protests, letterers dotted Hyde Park building equivalences between the ISIS and Israeli agendas. After all, ISIS did sweet fuck all to counter Israeli aggression.
Many of the more excitable Sunnis, were initially pro turning the tables on Assad The Dog, in those heady days of the Arab Sting, we were stung hard with a non critical spirit and unhelpful emotional stoking from certain saudi 'scholars' inexplicably allowed into the UK to bait people. (Duas to all the real scholars in Saudi who have lost position and social mobility for their commitments to truth.) Not to mention the deranged Shia Kuwaiti whose bumsexology pushes the envelope in human worm relations ( erm courtesy of MEMRI).
The lazy days of illusions of a Muslim bloc thinking need to be put back in the draw and the practical politics of transnational heart to heart decolonial alliance building embarked upon. I think most people, save those vying for attention would be inclined to agree.
Labour Efnic Politricks?
Unusually, the Labour member for Bethnal Green and Bow, Rushanara Ali, well known as a thoroughly compromised person of colour, abstained from the vote yesterday and resigned her position in the shadow cabinet. An admirable looking position to take on the face of it.
I must confess that I normally love Mulberries ( ITs a school in the ganj) because these begums are so awesome and are a vital part of the future. But perhaps this one got lobotomised at Oxford during her enwhitening PPE there and reprogrammed into an anodyne new Labour vessel. The investigation continues.
I remember the Altab Ali park protest rally at the beating of Rizwan Hussain at Dhaka Airport in 2008, a noble venture which was in the process of being coopted by the sheer numbers of loser unclejis. Ms Ali was very interested to know which of us were local residents she could 'enrol', and we thought she was a tactless schmoozer. However, she made an interesting attempt to hash out and dignified diasporic position on what the Bangladesh government had effectively and violently told the younger generation of Brilhetis ( British-Sylhetis).
Later in 2010, Rushanara Ali was voted into power as part of joint British Labour Party - Bangladesh Awami League's power games, and her silence on that government's massacre, and the British government's silence about the massacre, in Dhaka last May is despicable. Until she addresses this as she should I do not believe that her self interested gesture politics should be taken at face value.
There are plenty of manageable persons of colour on the conveyor belt.
Al-Akhbar has published a fascinating article from Yazan al Saadi about Bangladeshi fighters for the Palestinian cause in the 1980s. Lord reward them for their sincerity, and free the people of Bangladesh and Palestine from their quagmires.
Volunteers from Bangladesh fighting with Palestinians in Beirut, Lebanon 1982. (Photo: Magnum Photos-Chris Steele Perkins)
This post introduces a supplementary, and in some ways different, narrative for at least some of the fighters, and why they were in Lebanon. The Text below is translated from the memoirs of Maitur Rahman Rentu, who was a close aide to the Awami League Leader, Sheikh Hasina, at the time. His memoirs were banned in Bangladesh as he published them towards the end of the Awami Leagues last period in office. They were bootlegged and many say played an important role in the BNPs 2001 victory.
Motiur Rahman Rentu's Amar Fashi Chai was a brave intervention from a Awami League loyalist who had enough. The author passed away in Paris in 2003.
The portrait is of a party under the much younger leadership of Sheikh Hasina that wanted to overthrow the Bangladesh government but needed military training. It is hard to imagine the Awami League party so weak.
TRAINING IN LEBANON
Some of those who started a war under the leadership of Kader (Bagha) Siddiqui in protest against the killing of Bangabandhu Shaikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975 met Shaikh Hasina, daughter of Bangabandhu, at her house at Road 32 in Dhanmandi sometime in the first week of January 1982. They proposed a plan to capture Dhaka Cantonment, which was accepted with great pleasure by Shaikh Hasina The plan was: “A group of 25 to 30 thousand committed persons are to be given political education and military training. They would capture Dhaka Cantonment by lauching a commando type attack.” The capture of Dhaka Cantonment meant the capture of state power in Bangladesh. Shaikh Hlasina instructed that this plan should be implemented by all possible means.
Work started about preparation of political workers for the purpose of capturing the cantonment and giving them military training. The workers were to be recruited secretly. One paid special attention to the mind-set, thoughts and personal qualities of these workers. In a short period of time a large group of workers were recruited and trained. Out of these workers a batch was specially selected for military training.
After imparting political education to these recruits, a batch was selected for military training. But problem arose as to where a place for military training would be found and wherefrom arms would be available Military training was not so easy as political training. For military training, at first a safe open area is needed, where the trainees will learn the use of arms through safe arms exercises. During7 l’s great liberation war we used Indian territory for such training. But it is not possible now. Only a few years back India had driven away Kader Siddiqui’s forces from their soil. For military training there was no chance of using Indian soil. Sundarban or Hill-Tracts were also not safe for military training. In the world outside we had no friend. Afganistan was in the control of the staunch fundamentalists. There we have no place. There was no response from the Soviet Union (Russia). In the circumstances Lebanon and the P.L.O. (Palestine Liberation Organization) came up for consideration. Secret communication was established with P.L.O.
Representative in Dhaka, Mr. Ahmed A. Razek. A few meetings were held secretly with Mr. A.A. Razek at the P.L.O. Embassy in Gulshan. Mr. Razek was told candidly that we wanted military training and in return we would give whatever he wanted. Ahmed A Razek asked for one month’s time.
After a month, again a meeting was held with Ahmed Razek. It was decided that P.L.O. would be giving us military training in the soil of Lebanon. In return, we shall have to fight against the lsraelis on behalf of the P.L.O. We agreed. When our first batch would arrive Lebanon they would be given military training and sent to the battlefield straight way to fight the Israeli on behalf of the P.L.O. The first batch would go to Lebanon. After the training of the second batch they would go to war and the first batch would be sent back to Bangladesh. It means, one batch of ours will always fight on behalf of the P.L.O.
P.L.O. would bear expenses of our travel to Lebanon and return to Dhaka. P.L.O. would pay salaries to those of us who would fight for P.L.O.
From time to time all aspects of the plan were intimated to Bangabandhu’s daughter Sheikh Hasina and her advice was taken. In pursuance of the decision of the meeting with P.L.O. first batch was sent to Lebanon in the last week of May, 1982.
After receiving training the first batch started fighting for the P.L.O. in the Israeli border. The second batch was prepared to go to Lebanon. At that time Israel made an attack and occupied Lebanon. All of our fighters became captives in the hands of Israelis. Our plan failed. Parents and relatives of all of our fighters started crying for them. Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina conveniently forgot everything. She remained passive and silent. She never uttered any word about our sons. After this with much difficulty, through Pakistan Red Cross our fighters who were captives in the hands of the Israelis were brought back to the country.
If you want to look into the lives of the corrupt psychopaths that run Bangladesh today in their formative political phase (1980-1996) this source is a useful point of entry. From the UK point of view, it expands our understanding the role and relationships of Sheikh Rehana and her family (which includes prospective Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq) in the party, its decisions and possessions.
Last week, the ultranationalist bloc in Bangladesh, The Shahbag, was burning effigies of Imran Khan. He had dared to comment on that crown jewel of Bangladesh's 'internal affairs', the dubious trials of those accused of crimes during the 1971 Bangladesh War. Please note that I have been against these trials since before they existed, as they are based on a false history and a narrative which makes the head go fat (mota), and unable to handle other truths.
It is what I call a motanarrative, a story that possesses you so much it gives you brain damage. Imran Khan's speech in his parliament was rare (video), and took place in the context of the aftermath of the judicial murder of Abdul Quader Mollah in Dhaka on 12th December by a judicial system whose credibility is at an extreme low point.
It may be a little late in the day for it, but a growing body of commentators are coming to the consensus that the term fascism can be justly applied to the running situation in Bangladesh. A letter to America? Tahmima Anam's New York Times article was not the best intervention from a Bangladeshi on the subject of Bangladesh-Pakistan relations on 1971. That prize goes to this letter to Imran Khan, as well as people of balanced mind and silenced tongue, which addresses issues of Truth and Reconciliation. However it was a powerful contribution, from an author with a right to audience granted primarily by her inherited symbolic capital, and western academic credentials. For those who do not know and who should, Tahmima Anam is the daughter of Mahfuz Anam, editor of the Dhaka based and Transcom associated Daily Star. She has a masters in Creative Writing and wrote an anthropology PhD at Harvard University on the intriguingly titles Fixing the Past: War, Violence, and Habitations of Memory in Post-Independence Bangladesh. She is also responsible for the Hay Festival Dhaka, critiqued this year as the end of the line eyewash for an elite covering up a massacre. My comments on the piece are in [square brackets], although the title sounds agreeable, I have several problems with it.
As I would expect, it misreads Anthony Masceranas, the Christian Pakistani journalist who blew a whistle on the deeds of the Pakistan Army; and Hamoodur Rahman, the Bengali-Pakistani judge whose commission report on the matter was only declassified nearly 30 years after the War.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — It was a Paksistani [sp] journalist, Anthony Mascarenhas, who gave the world the first detailed account of Bangladesh’s war of independence. In April 1971, soon after the army of Pakistan started suppressing the secessionist movement in what was then still the eastern part of the country, it invited Mr. Mascarenhas to report on the conflict, believing he would buttress the false propaganda of a just war. Mr. Mascarenhas promptly moved his family, and then himself, to Britain knowing that soon he would no longer be able to live in Pakistan.
Zahedul I Khan
Tahmima Anam
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“For six days as I traveled with the officers of the 9th Division headquarters at Comilla I witnessed at close quarters the extent of the killing,” Mr. Mascarenhas wrote in a lengthy, damning report published under the headline “Genocide” in the June 13, 1971, edition of The Sunday Times.
“I saw Hindus, hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand after a cursory ‘short-arm inspection’ showed they were uncircumcised. I have heard the screams of men bludgeoned to death in the compound of the Circuit House (civil administrative headquarters) in Comilla. I have seen truckloads of other human targets and those who had the humanity to try to help them hauled off ‘for disposal’ under the cover of darkness and curfew.” [Note how Anam has been silent about the truck loads of human bodies removed from the scene of the Motijheel Massacre on 6th May 2013, attacked in the dead of night by cover of darkness Ref: Audio eyewitness Account, Hospitalised victim account 1, Hospitalised victim account 2, Hospitalised victim account 3, Hospitalised victim account 4 , secretly filmed policeman in a taxi stating 400 were killed]
Four decades later, Mr. Mascarenhas’s government still insists on denying the past: the mass killing of civilians (perhaps as many as three million [Anam knows this is patently untrue yet repeats this figure for emotional effect. Ref: The journalist who was present when the 3 million death toll was first stated by a fresh out of jail Mujib]), the targeting of Hindus, the systematic rape of thousands [Recent, detailed research by Sarmila Bose appreciates much of the Brave Masceranas account, but also finds limitations to his informant network] . On Dec. 16, Pakistan’s National Assembly adopted a resolution expressing concern over the recent execution of Abdul Quader Mollah, a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s leading Islamic party, who was convicted by a Bangladeshi court [a highly problematic trial] of committing murder and rape while collaborating with the Pakistani Army during the 1971 war. Calling Mr. Mollah a Pakistani sympathizer — and the independence of Bangladesh “the fall of Dhaka” — a multiparty majority of the assembly complained that Mr. Mollah was sentenced because of his “loyalty to Pakistan” [This was quite dumb on the part of the Pakistanis, and suggests a lack of homework] and asked the Bangladeshi government to drop all other cases against the Jamaat leadership.
There is no doubt the Pakistani Army committed war crimes in 1971. Yet in history books and schoolrooms throughout Pakistan, the army’s atrocities are glossed over. [Just like we gloss over how Bengali Nationalists committed atrocities on their adversaries before during and after the war]
This denial prevails despite an official study by the Pakistani Army. Just after the war, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto set up an independent judicial commission to investigate atrocities committed in East Pakistan in order to understand why the army had failed there. When the Hamoodur Rahman [interesting fact, Hamoodur Rahman was Bengali] Commission report was published in 1974, it documented how, under the pretense of quashing a rebellion, the Pakistani Army had planned and carried out the execution of intellectuals, soldiers, officials, businessmen and industrialists, and had buried them in mass graves. [ I don't think Anam has read the report properly, which does include crimes of Pak army, but is heavily geared towards military failure analysis and documenting crimes of Mukti Bahini before and during the war. You can read it HERE]
The commission recommended that the Pakistani government set up a special court to further investigate misconduct by the army. This never happened, and the report remained classified for nearly three decades. Five Pakistani heads of state have visited Bangladesh since 1971 without extending a formal apology. The closest any of them came to recognizing Pakistan’s wrongs was Pervez Musharraf, who wrote in 2002 in a visitors’ book at a war memorial near Dhaka, “Your brothers and sisters in Pakistan share the pains of the events of 1971. The excesses committed during the unfortunate period are regrettable.”
Bangladesh’s own efforts to deal with its messy birth were unsuccessful [with success being measured in what?] — until 2008, when the Awami League was voted into power partly on a mandate to hold a war crimes trial [ Hardly, it did not headline their manifesto but was enthusiastically backed by a strong special interest group] that would bring to justice the people who collaborated with the Pakistani Army in 1971. (By then Bangladeshis [Who she lobbies for] had grown weary of successive governments’ turning a blind eye to crimes many of their own families had endured.) The International Crimes Tribunal was created in 2009; 12 men have been charged so far; three of them have been convicted, including Mr. Mollah.
From the outset, the court was dogged with criticism [Moot mention used well here, to avoid: Skype scandal, judicial incompetance, inequality of witness rights, abduction of a defence witness, harrassment of defense team ]. It has been accused of skirting international procedural standards and of being politically motivated: Most of the accused are members of Jamaat-e-Islami. In December 2012, President Abdullah Gul of Turkey requested “clemency” for the defendants, on the grounds that they were “too old” to stand trial. On the eve of Mr. Mollah’s appeal, Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly warned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh that Mr. Mollah’s execution would create instability on the eve of the general election set for Jan. 5.
Whatever one thinks of these trials or the death penalty generally [ More liberal mooting from a writer who is anything but liberal] , the sentence against Mr. Mollah was handed down by an independent [No, influenced by both executive and activists] court in a sovereign country [Hmm, high dependance on aid, international labour not to mention India] on the basis of extensive eyewitness testimony [ Momena, the critical witness in his case was only 13 years old in 1971 and changed her story in way that looks forced. It is not hard to buy or scare people in Bangladesh] . And Mr. Mollah’s execution on Dec. 12 had widespread public support. Never mind Prime Minister Hasina’s flaws: At least she has had the political courage to take a stand against whitewashing the past [ By Banglawashing the past with a false, self serving narrative which is slowing being peeled away], while the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia, has reinforced her ties with Jamaat by remaining silent on the matter [Key strategic objective for secular illiberals like Tahmia Anam is to disrupt the alliance between the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami Opposition parties]
But then, a few days after Mr. Mollah’s execution — precisely on the anniversary of Pakistani Army’s surrender to independent Bangladesh [Rather defeat at the hands of the Indian-led armed forces] — the Pakistani National Assembly adopted its denialist resolution. Instead of supporting Bangladesh’s efforts to come to terms with its brutal birth [You cannot be serious? nobody apart from the Indians support the sham trials], Pakistan is pouring salt into its wounds. Pakistan, it is high time you apologize. [Today's Pakistan is not yesterday's Pakistan, and although investigation, sorrow and tawba are crucial, so too is an investigation of and apology from the Awami League, Mukti Bahini and friends]
Tahmima Anam is a writer and anthropologist, and the author of the novel “A Golden Age.”
