Obama and his western allies such as Cameron argue that a policy of air strikes alone could defeat the advances made by 'Islamic state' (IS) forces in Iraq and Syria. Now with the possible defeat of
Kurdish forces fighting IS for control of the city of Kobane, this policy lies in tatters.
IS forces have advanced in the city and could be on the verge of another victory. Amidst reports of horrific scenes of brutal slaughter in the city by the crazed forces of reactionary IS, US air strikes on IS forces failed to halt their advance. Those trapped in Kobane are waging a courageous fight to defeat IS or face certain slaughter.
Obama and Cameron's air strikes policy is also at risk in Iraq with major IS gains in the western province of Anbar (nearly 25% of Iraq). All Anbar's major towns except Haditha and one military base have fallen to IS.
Again the Iraqi army offered little effective resistance. In yet another humanitarian catastrophe, an estimated 750,000 people have already fled Anbar province - up to 180,000 fleeing as IS forces overran the military base near Hit.
IS may now launch a further offensive to try to take the Sunni western part of Baghdad. Anbar province was the centre of the 2003 Sunni uprising against the US occupation.
A crucial element in the IS victories lies in the amount of heavy weaponry and arms they captured from disintegrating Iraqi armed forces. The rapid advances they made over vast areas of Iraq and Syria also show that the IS uprising has become a generalised Sunni uprising.
The brutal response of Shia militias near Baghdad, which have not distinguished between IS fighters and ordinary Sunni people, have driven the Sunni population under the IS umbrella as there is no other force to defend them. Shia militias in Baghdad speak openly of driving the Sunnis out from mixed areas of the city. IS has been able to gain support because of the oppression of the Sunni population under the western installed government of Maliki in Iraq following the US-led occupation.
The Turkish regime of Erdogan consciously held back from intervening against IS forces advancing on Kobane. They fear the consequences that a Kurdish victory would have on the 15 million Kurdish population inside Turkey.
Most fighting in Kobane is led by the PYD - the Syrian branch of the Kurdish PKK in Turkey. The Erdogan regime would be more comfortable with an IS victory over the PYD rather than vice-versa as indicated by the agreement reached for the release of Turkish hostages held by IS. Now Turkish warplanes have cynically bombed PKK bases in Turkish Hakkari province near the Iraqi border.
There can be no trust in any of the regional leaders or western imperialism to resolve this crisis in the interests of all the region's peoples. Western imperialist intervention is only worsening the catastrophe.
The origins of the current slaughter can largely be found in the legacy of western imperialist interventions into the entire region.
No trust can be placed in the Sunni or Shia elite and rulers of the region's countries which aim to use the conflict to gain for themselves. Turkey is looking to strengthen its expansion into Syria and seeking to establish a new mini form of the Ottoman empire.
Obama speaks of assembling a coalition of such Sunni powers as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to oppose IS. However, while these countries' ruling dynasties may not fully support IS's actions, sections of them have been backing IS and all have their own regional interests and their own agendas.
Defeating IS is not their main priority. They can use the fact that IS in the short term can cause more problems for the Shia regimes in order to bolster their own interests.
To combat the horrors of IS and other reactionary sectarian forces in the region, a united movement of Sunni and Shia masses together with the Kurdish, Turkish and all other peoples must be built. To combat the reactionary threat of an IS slaughter in Kobane, such democratic committees need building to form mass militias.
In Turkey, committees of Turkish and Kurdish workers need to be formed and come together in a united way. There must be a struggle to lift Turkey's arms embargo to allow for the arming of such militias. The way forward is to build non-sectarian committees of the Arab Sunni and Shia masses together with the Kurdish people in Iraq in opposition to sectarian forces on both sides.
Such committees could form the basis of a government of workers, peasants and all those exploited by capitalism and imperialism that would guarantee the democratic, national and ethnic rights of all peoples of the entire area based on a democratic socialist federation of states.
by Tony Saunois, Committee for a Workers' International
www.socialistworld.net
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 October 2014
Thursday, 6 June 2013
Stop unmanned drone attacks!
By Matt Gordon, Bristol East Socialist Party
"To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance," said US president Obama in a major speech recently where he promised to scale back the use of unmanned drones to attack targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
But pious hand-wringing will not bring back the lives of the civilians indiscriminately bombed in their homes by Obama's killer robots.
Nor does one speech change the tactics of the US Military and the CIA on the ground. On 29 May a drone strike in the North Waziristan, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, killed at least four people, including Wali Ur-Rehman, second-in-command of the Pakstani Taliban.
However these attacks are rarely as accurate as that. One source estimates that only 2% of drone attacks kill targets as high profile as Wali Ur-Rehman.
It is also common practice for the Taliban to name a commander as killed only for them to later resurface elsewhere alive and well.
Obama and the US government have consistently downplayed the use of drones and the havoc they cause, but in truth their use has grown exponentially during his presidency. It is yet to be seen if Obama's most recent speech is any more genuine.
Afghanistan is undoubtedly the epicentre of unmanned drone attacks, with 506 incidents in 2012 and no way to verify the number of civilian casualties accurately.
In Pakistan there have been 369 since 2004, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2,541 and 3,540 people have been killed, and that between 411 and 884 of those have been civilians.
On receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, Obama declared that America, "must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war".
But unmanned drones are not used because they are more 'surgical' or less deadly than traditional weapons, they are used because they save the lives of American troops in the short term and so are more politically and financially expedient back home.
For those on the receiving end, a hellfire missile is just as deadly and indiscriminate whether it is fired by a drone or by a piloted aircraft.
The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is an expensive and bloody failure. Obama tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan, making it the mightiest and most technologically advanced military occupation in the world, but still failed to make any real gains against the Taliban insurgency, which is likely to become apparent when combat troops leave at the end of 2014. Replacing human troops with robots will not change this.
Drones terrorise entire populations. This will leave thousands if not millions of people psychologically traumatised and deeply opposed to the United States, and will also continue to fuel anger.
The billions spent on war could instead be used for schools, hospitals and creating jobs - both in America and in Afghanistan. The war and use of drones must be ended now.
"To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance," said US president Obama in a major speech recently where he promised to scale back the use of unmanned drones to attack targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
But pious hand-wringing will not bring back the lives of the civilians indiscriminately bombed in their homes by Obama's killer robots.
Nor does one speech change the tactics of the US Military and the CIA on the ground. On 29 May a drone strike in the North Waziristan, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, killed at least four people, including Wali Ur-Rehman, second-in-command of the Pakstani Taliban.
However these attacks are rarely as accurate as that. One source estimates that only 2% of drone attacks kill targets as high profile as Wali Ur-Rehman.
It is also common practice for the Taliban to name a commander as killed only for them to later resurface elsewhere alive and well.
Obama and the US government have consistently downplayed the use of drones and the havoc they cause, but in truth their use has grown exponentially during his presidency. It is yet to be seen if Obama's most recent speech is any more genuine.
Afghanistan is undoubtedly the epicentre of unmanned drone attacks, with 506 incidents in 2012 and no way to verify the number of civilian casualties accurately.
In Pakistan there have been 369 since 2004, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2,541 and 3,540 people have been killed, and that between 411 and 884 of those have been civilians.
On receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, Obama declared that America, "must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war".
But unmanned drones are not used because they are more 'surgical' or less deadly than traditional weapons, they are used because they save the lives of American troops in the short term and so are more politically and financially expedient back home.
For those on the receiving end, a hellfire missile is just as deadly and indiscriminate whether it is fired by a drone or by a piloted aircraft.
The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is an expensive and bloody failure. Obama tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan, making it the mightiest and most technologically advanced military occupation in the world, but still failed to make any real gains against the Taliban insurgency, which is likely to become apparent when combat troops leave at the end of 2014. Replacing human troops with robots will not change this.
Drones terrorise entire populations. This will leave thousands if not millions of people psychologically traumatised and deeply opposed to the United States, and will also continue to fuel anger.
The billions spent on war could instead be used for schools, hospitals and creating jobs - both in America and in Afghanistan. The war and use of drones must be ended now.
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