Muslim East: revolutions and counter-revolutions

Power is not given up voluntarily, at least not by those who have usurped it by force in the first place. The Muslim East (Middle East) is witnessing unprecedented uprisings by peoples that were hitherto considered too apathetic to move. There was a sense of resignation until, that is, the uprising in Tunisia sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor who could not take the public insults of a female police officer any longer, changed everything. His act set the entire Muslim East ablaze; the flames are still raging. How many dictators will ultimately be consumed is still uncertain but a clearer understanding of the reality is crucial.



Long entrenched dictators can be dislodged from power; that is often the easy part. It is not the dictators but the system that maintains them in power that must be better understood. Dictators do not rule in a vacuum; they represent the tip of the iceberg. The ingredients that make up this iceberg are the military, the police, the bureaucracy, the political parties (the ones permitted to operate), judges, courts and a vast network of patronage in which businessmen and politicians develop close relations to help sustain the system and the dictator in power. Since everyone’s personal interests are tied to the system, it is not so easy to dismantle. In fact, the system would often sacrifice the individual in order to dissipate public anger and help stabilize and situation. Tunisia falls into this category.

Let us consider specific examples. Both in Tunisia and Egypt, two long-serving dictators — Zine el-Abidine and Hosni Mubarak — were driven from office within a short period. Yet it would be wrong to assume that the systems that sustained them have also gone. In both countries, vested interests are fighting back to subvert gains made by the people. The military appears to be the first but not the only line of defence. There is another, more invidious factor at work: withdrawal of capital from society, leaving protesters and the disadvantaged even more vulnerable. This is evident in both countries.

Billions have been taken out of each country and there is little likelihood that this money would be returned as long as the political environment remains uncertain. Moneyed classes are also linked with foreign financial interests. In fact, they often work in tandem to advance each other’s interests. Foreign governments, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and foreign banks withhold capital at the most critical juncture to force governments to tailor their policies to suit external players. If money is given it comes with powerful strings attached. It is during times of upheavals that governments most urgently need cash because production is disrupted while workers still have to be paid. These are the people that live from one weekly wage to the next.

Further, many societies especially Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, are also dependent on tourism for revenue that dries up in times of political turmoil. Why would foreign tourists wish to visit a country engulfed in riots? Naturally, it affects the livelihood of that segment of society that services the tourist industry. Under such conditions, it becomes easier to turn one group of people against another. This has been attempted in Egypt where government-sponsored thugs, disguised as street vendors, were unleashed against the protesters camped in Tahrir Square accusing them of undermining their livelihood. Revolutionary fervor in the absence of power and authority to make decisions can take people only so far. This is the dilemma facing the young protesters in Egypt. They understand the challenges facing them but appear powerless on many issues. It would be unrealistic to assume that they will gain their rights without further sacrifices and vigilance against subversion.

This is the story of the revolutionaries. There are also counter-revolutions underway in places like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen. After overcoming the initial shock of losing two dictators in rapid succession, especially Mubarak of Egypt who was viewed as the lynchpin of the colonial occupation of the Muslim East, the Saudis were able to formulate a counter-revolutionary strategy. Their first line of attack was Bahrain where they dispatched troops to crush the people’s aspirations. This has largely been successful. They are also deeply involved in Yemen where President Ali Abdullah Saleh, badly injured in a missile strike on his residence on June 3, is undergoing treatment in a Riyadh hospital. He refuses to relinquish power and the Saudis do not appear keen to nudge him out. In contrast, the Saudis are actively involved in undermining regimes in Libya and Syria with Western help and to plant their own agents in power.

The reasons for undermining the regimes in Libya and Syria are not the same. In Libya the aim is to subvert Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s plans to break loose of the Western economic and financial stranglehold, especially in Africa. This is seen as a threat to Western economic hegemony that could inspire people elsewhere to emulate his example and hasten collapse of the West’s financial system. Syria does not pose a financial threat but it is part of the resistance front against Zionist colonialism. Israel’s weakening would undermine Western strategic and military dominance in the region. In both Libya and Syria, the Saudis are acting as Western Zionist agents by financing anti-government rebels.

While there is no single theory that fits all Middle Eastern uprisings, the struggles of peoples in these lands are not only for fundamental rights. There are also external players involved in manipulating local grievances in order to advance their own agenda. This is most clearly evident in Libya and Syria where the people’s legitimate grievances are being exploited for Western political and geo-strategic purposes. In Bahrain, the situation is reversed: the people’s legitimate demands are being suppressed in order to maintain the rule of a corrupt monarchy subservient to the West.

Nuclear assassinations belie Zionist desperation

Thousands of mourners attend the funeral of shaheed Muslim scientist Darioush Rezai in Tehran, 7-24-2011, after he was gunned down by motorcycle assassins.

By Afeef Khan

Imagine a Muslim government popping off American and Israeli scientists because these were perceived to be a threat to the Islamic state and further imagine that this had been going on for the better part of several decades. Imagine if Robert Oppenheimer (1904– 1967) and Edward Teller (1908–2003) were killed right before they could complete their work on creating the first nuclear device of mass destruction. Would any of the victim governments tolerate such a violation of their sovereignty and of the human rights of their citizens? Would they not be preparing for war at the first possible moment because their national (human) assets were being destroyed?



Would their media, pundits, commentators, opinion makers, and policy executives not be in overdrive condemning the blatant disregard of international law, the arrogance of power, and the ideological foundations of Islam that permit the Muslims to go out and take the lives of innocent researchers who want nothing more than to advance the cause of their people? Would not the cacophony of these voices be so loud, so pervasive, and so convincing that anyone asking for calm would be summarily drowned out on the way to a military resolution of the crisis?

Yet when eminent Muslim scientists, who have pursued the “nuclear option”, are being regularly and consistently assassinated or found dead in “tragic accidents” for the better part of 65 years, there has been no outcry, no sympathy, no support, and no concern from those who make a living out of pointing the finger at terrorists and their state-sponsored support networks. When a Muslim scientist gets killed, it is hardly newsworthy — a brief note in various news outlets suffices to present this on-going tragedy in a largely forgettable way. In effect, no one is making a federal case out ot it.

The consistent pattern of such attacks, the breadth of the area covered from Pakistan to North Africa, and the length of time it has gone on without redress or punishment ought to warrant action from the United Nations. But unfortunately one of the perks of power in a world controlled by Christian imperialism and Jewish Zionism is to make forward-thinking Muslims pay for self-determination with their lives while throwing self-accountability at the feet of impotent international bodies who rubber stamp the depredations and ravages of potentates, princes, and presidents. So far, for the scores of Muslim scientists killed, perhaps even hundreds, no realistic investigations have taken place and none of the likely perpetrators in the United States (CIA) and Israel (Mossad) have been targeted for justice; and nor have their governments been held accountable for hiring and training death squads to go out and murder Muslims.

The latest case involves the tragic murder of Darioush Rezai, a 35-year-old Iranian electronics engineer, whose identity was apparently mistaken for a nuclear scientist that was to be killed by the same Israeli assassins. The now shaheed Darioush and his wife were heading out to work on the morning of 7-23-2011 when they were assaulted by motorcycle gunmen brandishing automatic weapons; Darioush could not survive his fatal injuries and his wife, also strafed by the gunfire, is in critical condition at a Tehran hospital.

This incident marks the fourth Iranian nuclear scientist or physicist targeted by CIA/Mossad assassins in the last four years, and continues the long tradition of earmarking Muslim nuclear scientists and heads of state of Egyptian, Lebanese, and Pakistani origin for termination. The inset on the next page gives a short list of the Muslim researchers who either lost their lives to foreign plots or have been threatened with the same; in fact, there are many others whose stories may never be adequately told. And it is not only individuals who have been targeted; the nascent nuclear programs in Iraq (1981, Operation Babylon), Libya (2003, War on Terror), and (apparently) Syria (2007, Operation Orchard) have all been overtly destroyed by the same Israeli government, which is given a free hand to operate without threat of reprisal from the dominant power culture in evangelical America.

In the world today, why haven’t North Korean, Brazilian, and Indian nuclear scientists been on the CIA/Mossad/MI6 hit list? Why is the Nuclear Services Group, under pressure from US industrialists and the Pentagon, looking for loopholes in the NPT so that it can sell nuclear technology and tons of spent uranium to India, which by not signing the NPT does not differentiate between its civilian and military nuclear program? Is this not a blatant violation of the NPT by the US and its satellites in Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada, in stark contrast to the very minor (not substantive) reporting violations by the Islamic Republic? And in times past, when Chinese and South African research teams were enriching weapons grade uranium at a time when their power was on par with the power of the Islamic Republic today, why weren’t their scientists targeted for assassination?

The answer is simple: none of these countries and their peoples represent a credible threat to the security of Israel? And the United States would rather see Israel secure than to see itself alive in the domain of global geopolitics. All of this places Pakistan in a rather precarious position, because it is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons. It appears to have barely survived the failed-state scenario, hanging on by a very thin thread as this issue of CI goes to press. For ten years, the US tried to destabilize the country from within so that it could be declared a failed state thereby giving the “international community” (read that Israel’s proxies in the US and EU) the green light to go and occupy Pakistan’s nuclear facilities and delivery mechanisms. This strategy was complicated not only by America’s failure to win decisive victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also by the civil uprisings in the Muslim East. With the twin realities of the rising influence of Iran and the wave of overthrown dictators in Arabian countries, the Saudi monarchy is feeling the heat like never before and is after nuclear technology like a hungry dog after a bone.

This is where Pakistan needs to be extra careful, at home as well as in its diplomatic overtures to its neighbors. The Israelis will not countenance Washington “giving” Saudi Arabia any kind of nuclear technology, not the least after Obama’s obsequious call for a nuclear-free world. The new calculation in Washington is that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would be far safer in Saudi hands — a lifelong friend of Tel Aviv and Washington, and a lifelong obstacle to Islamic self-determination. If Pakistan willingly or surreptitiously gives the Saudis any nuclear capability after the Saudis hang a suite of carrots in front of it to relieve it of its economic and endemic energy problems, then Pakistan will be immediately ravaged by the “international community” as the king of rogue nations. On the other hand, if its own tortuous road to nuclear independence quickens its heartbeat to a moment of reflection, Pakistan will know that Washington and Riyadh are on the same team, and that the road to policy independence goes through Tehran.