How ISIS’s Brutal Project in the Middle East was Finally Overthrown

Patrick Cockburn 

Up to its dying days the self-declared Islamic State has retained the ability to top the news agenda, even as its fighters were losing their last battle for bomb-shattered villages in the deserts of eastern Syria. When their spokesman promised retaliation for the massacre of Muslims in the Christchurch mosques his threat was taken seriously.

Given the record of Isis atrocities it is not surprising that nobody can discount its ability to exact revenge through existing adherents, new converts or those using its name to spread terror. This is not just western paranoia: in Syria and Iraq people speak continually of Isis sleeper cells waiting to emerge and exact revenge.

There is a largely sterile debate about whether or not Isis – whose territory once stretched from the outskirts of Baghdad to the hills overlooking the Mediterranean – is dead and buried, as Donald Trump claims. Could it be reborn if the pressure against it is relaxed? The answer is simple enough: Isis is defeated as a state apparatus that once ruled eight million people, but it can persist as a terrorist and guerrilla organisation.

I was in Baghdad in June 2014 when Isis was advancing south towards the capital, capturing cities and towns like Tikrit and Baiji with scarcely a shot being fired. The rout of the Iraqi army seemed total and for several days there was no defensive lines between us and Isis advance patrols. As many as 1,700 Shia air force cadets were massacred amid the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s old palaces on the banks of the Tigris river near Tikrit.

Isis had 100 days of stunning victories in Iraq and Syria but its emirs were never to reach the same level of success again. Instead of focusing all their forces on seizing Baghdad, they moved north and attacked the autonomous and near independent Iraqi Kurdish enclave. The US and its allies started using their devastating air power. If Isis ever had a chance of complete victory, it came and went very quickly.

The success of its blitzkrieg tactics in 2014 depended in part on Isis’s ability to spread terror through the internet by broadcasting its atrocities. Iraqi families would watch them and tell their soldier sons to desert the army and keep out of the fighting. The unexpected capture of Mosul in 2014 gave the impression to many Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria that the forces of the newly declared caliphate were divinely inspired. Isis commanders certainly believed this.

But now with obliteration on the battlefield Isis can no longer make any convincing claim for divine inspiration or support. One of the great attractions of Isis – that it had almost magical powers guaranteeing victory – has gone. For the eight million Iraqi and Syrians whom Isis once controlled, its rule brought nothing but death and destruction. Almost all of Raqqa, its Syrian de facto capital, and much of Mosul, its Iraqi counterpart, are in ruins. Tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs in both countries have died in the relentless US-led bomb and artillery bombardments that finally overwhelmed Isis defences.

But could the thousands of dispersed Isis fighters that the Pentagon says are hiding out in the vast deserts and semi-deserts between Syria and Iraq reorganise and stage a convincing counter-attack? After all, the US “Surge” in Iraq in between 2007 and 2009 was trumpeted at the time as marking the final defeat of al-Qaeda in there, which was Isis under another name. Isis commanders are reported to draw inspiration from that period, arguing that they have come back before and they will do so again.

It is not very likely that favourable circumstances will once more combine in such a way that Isis could relaunch itself. It has lost the advantage of surprise and has too many enemies who may not like each other but know what Isis can do given half a chance. In 2014 it enjoyed a certain tolerance and even support from Sunni states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar which is no longer there.

But this not quite the same as saying that Isis is finished. The deserts of Syria and Iraq are vast and impossible to police in their entirety. Occupation forces, be they Kurds in Raqqa or Iraqi Shia troops in Sunni parts of Iraq, are resented and often hated by Sunni Arabs and Isis could benefit from their disaffection. And even if Isis does not regain such popularity as it once enjoyed in these places, its reputation for homicidal fury means that it does not have to do very much to spread terror.

Isis as Isis has probably had its day. But could it transmute into something else? The defeat of Isis does not mean the defeat of al-Qaeda of which Isis was only a single clone. In north-west Syria Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), despite several changes of name, has been for over a year the largest jihadi or al-Qaeda type movement in the country. In western Idlib, northern Hama and western Aleppo provinces it has displaced other armed opposition groups. It now may have as many as 50,000 fighters and control three million people. HTS might also establish itself as an ally of Turkey in northern Syria which would allow the al-Qaeda brand to live on.

But one should not let such possibilities to run riot and pretend that the old al-Qaeda formula of making war – with suicide attacks as acts of faith – has the destructive power it once did. President Trump is largely right in his claims that Islamic State is destroyed – even if he is grossly, even ludicrously, inflating his own role in its demise.

Ecological Civilization: Could China Become a Model for Saving the Earth?

Evaggelos Vallianatos

Industrialized agriculture is threatening humanity with catastrophe. It feeds global warming and dissolves societies. In addition, its pesticides contaminate and poison drinking water and food.

Undoing rural America

I reached this conclusion from working for the US Environmental Protection Agency for twenty-five years. I summarized my experience in my 2014 book, Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA. This essay reflects my knowledge from that experience.

The industrialization of agriculture did massive damage to rural America, turning most of that beautiful land into medieval plantations. Instead of millions of small family farmers, we now have a few thousand large corporate farmers in charge of rural America and the growing of most food. Democracy and human and environmental health suffered a severe blow. Money and power triumphed.

Catching up

Like many countries, China is trying to catch up with the agricultural superpower illusion of America. Yes, America produces huge amounts of food, but at unsustainable and catastrophic costs and consequences.

There are non-toxic alternatives to coaxing more from an acre of land.

In the United States, the alternative to chemical farming has the name of “organic” agriculture. In the European Union, the alternative is “biological” agriculture. These alternatives are sophisticated modifications of traditional agriculture. They produce and sell food without using pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, genetic engineering, sludge, and radiation. But like industrialized farming, the organic-biological alternatives ignore the size of farms, the plight of farm workers, the kind and size of farm machinery, the use of petroleum and petroleum products like plastics.

Petroleum fuels industrialized societies. Their agriculture, transportation, energy and defense industries are largely depended on petroleum. However, petroleum is a major global warming fuel.

Agribusiness and peasants in China

China has a growing sector of industrialized agriculture. China has also more than 200 million peasants practicing traditional farming.

Caught between these two gigantic forces, The Chinese government is campaigning on behalf of environmental protection primarily as an antidote to the ecocidal and destabilizing effects of environmental pollution.

I have had the opportunity of visiting China twice. The Institute for Postmodern Development of China made that possible. Since 2005, this non-profit organization based in Claremont, California, has been the ecological link between China and America.

What is ecological civilization?

Indeed, the first time I heard the term “ecological civilization” was in Claremont where I have been living since 2008. I immediately smiled and connected ecological civilization to fantasy.

The idea, of course, is not entirely utopian. First of all, it is beautiful. It brings to mind heaven on Earth: flourishing villages and towns, peasants working the land without outsiders oppressing them or oppressing each other or polluting the natural world; flowers, monarch butterflies, honeybees, singing birds, sheep and lambs, fig trees, flowering lemon and almond trees, creeks and rivers running through the land, olive groves, grapevines and god Dionysos and his maenad followers indulging in a frenzy of dance and music.

However, Zhihe Wang and Meijun Fan, who direct the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, probably have other dreams for ecological civilization. They grew up in the China of Mao Zedong. They experienced hunger and witnessed the destruction of traditional Chinese culture. They are both trained in academic philosophy. They know China and the West.

They may see ecological civilization as an emerging new global philosophy. Either humans will learn how to live in harmony with the natural world or they will become extinct. Perhaps ecological civilization is a convenient expression for the end of war and a beginning of something better for themselves and China. It may be no more than a slogan or deep belief in a better world.

I joined the discussion about ecological civilization during some of the conferences they sponsored in Claremont. That gave me a chance to talk to Chinese scholars.

Such theoretical perspectives enriched my limited observations in rural China. Chinese peasants told me they love the land they rent from the state. And Chinese agronomists who study peasant farming told me they would love to see a better future for peasant farming.

Americanizing Chinese farming

Nevertheless, China is striving to “modernize” its peasant agriculture. Chinese scientists have been training in America for decades. The Chinese government is funding these scientists to expand the scope of industrialized farming in China. Both the government and the American-trained scientists overlook the fact that peasants are raising most of China’s food.

Industrialized farmers in China are converting peasant land to large factory farms. Such a policy is bound to spark clashes between peasants and large industrialized farmers supported by the government. This looming tragedy is a telling example of how difficult it is to maintain ancient ecological traditions in an age of worldwide ecocide and rapacious ambitions and governance.

The peasant factor

In contrast to the hegemonic American agribusiness and the equally hegemonic if misguided developing Chinese agribusiness, Chinese peasant farming opens an exciting vista of ecological and political insights for a strategy of an agriculture that is largely benign to the natural world, just to those working the land, and healthy to all eating the food peasants grow.

Industrialized agribusiness, be that of the American or Chinese variety, is against ecological civilization. Organic / biological farming and peasant agriculture open the doors to ecological civilization – just a little. They give us but a glimpse of what the future could become.

The first system – agribusiness — is a grab for power; the second is a spark from millennial traditions of wisdom and practice in the raising of food without wounding the land.

There’s also the best of modern science coming under the name of agroecology: the latest findings in agricultural ecology, that could and would complement and enrich peasant practices.

China would do its culture a favor if it turns all its efforts in repairing and strengthening its peasant farming, abandoning its agribusiness as an error. Such a policy shift would tell the world China is serious about ecological civilization – and fighting global warming. At that moment, China might become a model for saving the Earth.

Civilizationism vs the Nation State

James M. Dorsey

Many have framed the battle lines in the geopolitics of the emerging new world order as the 21st century’s Great Game. It’s a game that aims to shape the creation of a new Eurasia-centred world, built on the likely fusion of Europe and Asia into what former Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Macaes calls a “supercontinent.”

For now, the Great Game pits China together with Russia, Turkey and Iran against the United States, India, Japan and Australia. The two camps compete for influence, if not dominance, in a swath of land that stretches from the China Sea to the Atlantic coast of Europe.

The geopolitical flashpoints are multiple. They range from the China Sea to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Central European nations and, most recently, far beyond with Russia, China and Turkey supporting embattled Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

On one level, the rivalry resembles Risk, a popular game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest played on a board depicting a political map of the earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Multiple players command armies that seek to capture territories, engage in a complex dance as they strive for advantage, and seek to compensate for weaknesses. Players form opportunistic alliances that could change at any moment. Potential black swans threaten to disrupt.

Largely underrated in debates about the Great Game is the fact that increasingly there is a tacit meeting of the minds among world leaders as well as conservative and far-right politicians and activists that frames the rivalry: the rise of civilisationalism and the civilizational state that seeks its legitimacy in a distinct civilization rather than the nation state’s concept of territorial integrity, language and citizenry.

The trend towards civilisationalism benefits from the fact that 21st century autocracy and authoritarianism vests survival not only in repression of dissent and denial of freedom of expression but also maintaining at least some of the trappings of pluralism that can include representational bodies with no or severely limited powers, toothless opposition groups, government-controlled non-governmental organizations, and degrees of accountability.

It creates the basis for an unspoken consensus on the values that would underwrite a new world order on which men like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Victor Orban, Mohammed bin Salman, Narendra Modi and Donald Trump find a degree of common ground. If anything, it is this tacit understanding that in the shaping of a new world order constitutes the greatest threat to liberal values such as human and minority rights. By the same token, the tacit agreement on fundamental values reduces the Great Game to a power struggle over spheres of influence and the sharing of the pie as well as a competition of political systems in which concepts such as democracy are hollowed out.

Intellectually, the concept of civilisationalism puts into context much of what is currently happening. This includes the cyclical crisis over the last decade as a result of a loss of confidence in leadership and the system; the rise of right and left-wing populism; the wave of Islamophobia and increased anti-Semitism; the death of multi-culturalism with the brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as its most extreme expression; the Saudi and Russian alliance with ultra-conservative Christian groups that propagate traditional family values; and Russian meddling in Western elections.

Analysts explained these developments by pointing to a host of separate and disparate factors, some of which were linked in vague ways. Analysts pointed among others to the 2008 financial crisis, jihadist violence and the emergence of the Islamic State, the war in Syria, and a dashing of hope with the rollback of the achievements of the 2011 popular Arab revolts. These developments are and were at best accelerators not sparks or initiators.

Similarly, analysts believed that the brilliance of Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Towers and the Pentagon in Washington was the killing of multi-culturalism in one fell and brutal swoop. Few grasped just how consequential that would be. A significant eye opener was the recent attack on the mosques in Christchurch. New Zealand much like Norway in the wake of the 2012 attacks by supremacist Andre Breivik stands out as an anti-dote to civilisationalism with its inclusive and compassionate response.

The real eye-opener, however, was a New Zealand intelligence official who argued that New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance alongside the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada, had missed the emergence of a far or alt-right that created breeding grounds for violence because of Washington’s singular post-9/11 focus on what popularly is described as Islamic terrorism. That remark casts a whole different light on George W. Bush’s war on terror and the subsequent war against the Islamic State. Those wars are rooted as much in the response to 9/11, the 7/7 London attacks and other jihadist occurrences as they are in witting or unwitting civilisationalism.

“The global war on terror has become a blueprint for violence against Muslims. When there isn’t a shooting at a mosque, there’s a drone strike in Somalia. When one Friday prayer goes by without incident, an innocent Muslim is detained on material support for terrorism charges or another is killed by law enforcement. Maybe a baby is added to a no-fly list,” said human rights activist Maha Hilal. Scholars Barbara Perry and Scott Poynting warned more than a decade ago in study of the fallout in Canada of the war on terror that “in declining adequately to recognize and to act against hate (crimes), and in actually modelling anti-Muslim bias by practicing discrimination and institutional racism through “‘ethnic targeting,’ ‘racial profiling,’ and the like, the state conveys a sort of ideological license to individuals, groups and institutions to perpetrate and perpetuate racial hatred.”

The same is true for the various moves in Europe that have put women on the frontline of what in the West are termed cultural wars but in reality are civilizational wars involving efforts to ban conservative women’s dress and endeavours to create a European form of Islam. In that sense Victor Orban’s definition of Hungary as a Christian state in which there is no room for the other is the extreme expression of this trend. It’s a scary picture, it raises the spectre of Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations, yet it is everything but.

Fact is that economic and geopolitical interests are but part of the explanation for the erection of a Muslim wall of silence when it comes to developments in Xinjiang, the Organization of Islamic Countries’ ability to criticize the treatment of Muslim minorities in various parts of the world but praise China for its policy, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s alliance with a man like Victor Orban and his joining the right-wing chorus that has turned Jewish financier and philanthropist George Soros into a bogeyman or the rise of militant, anti-Muslim Buddhism and Hinduism. In fact, the signs of this were already visible with the alliance between Israel and the evangelists who believe in doomsday on the Day of Judgement if Jews fail to convert to Christianity as well as the recent forging of ties between various powerful Islamic groups or countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the evangelist movement.

Civilisationalism is frequently based on myths erected on a falsification and rewriting of history to serve the autocrat or authoritarian’s purpose. Men like Trump, Orban, and Erdogan project themselves as nationalist heroes who protect the nation from some invading horde. In his manifesto, Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch attacks, bought into the notion of an illusionary invader. Muslims, he wrote, “are the most despised group of invaders in the West, attacking them receives the greatest level of support.”

He also embraced the myths of an epic, centuries-long struggle between the white Christian West and Islam with the defeat of the Ottomans in 1683 at the ports of Vienna as its peak. Inscribed on Tarrant’s weapons were the names of Serbs who had fought the Ottomans as well as references to the battle of Vienna. To Tarrant, the Ottomans’ defeat in Vienna symbolized the victory of the mythical notion of a world of inviolable, homogeneous nations. “The idea that (medieval societies) are this paragon of unblemished whiteness is just ridiculous. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so awful,” said Paul Sturtevant, author of The Middle Ages in the Popular Imagination.

Much like popular perception of the battle for Vienna, Tarrant’s view of history had little relation to reality. A multi-cultural empire, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna in cooperation with Catholic French King Louis XIV and Hungarian Protestant noble Imre Thokoly as well as Ukrainian Cossacks. Vienna’s Habsburg rulers were supported not only by Polish armies but also Muslim Tartar horsemen. “The Battle of Vienna was a multicultural drama; an example of the complex and paradoxical twists of European history. There never has been such a thing as the united Christian armies of Europe,” said historian Dag Herbjornsrud. Literary scholar Ian Almond argues that notions of a clash of civilizations bear little resemblance to the “almost hopelessly complex web of shifting power-relations, feudal alliances, ethnic sympathies and historical grudges” that shaped much of European history. “The fact remains that in the history of Europe, for hundreds of years, Muslims and Christians shared common cultures, spoke common languages, and did not necessarily see one another as ‘strange’ or ‘other,’” Almond said.

That was evident not only in the Battle of Vienna but also when the Ottomans and North Africa’s Arab rulers rallied around Queen Elizabeth I of England after the pope excommunicated her in 1570 for breaking with Catholicism and establishing a Protestant outpost. Elizabeth and her Muslim supporters argued that Protestantism and Islam were united in their rejection of idol worship, including Catholicism with its saints, shrines and relics. In a letter in 1579 to Ottoman sultan Murad III, Elizabeth described herself as the “most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all kind of idolatries.” In doing so, she sought to capitalize on the fact that the Ottomans had justified their decision to grant Lutherans preferred commercial treatment on the basis of their shared beliefs.

Similarly, historian Marvin Power challenges the projection of Chinese history as civilizational justification of the party leader’s one-man rule by Xi Jinping and Fudan University international relations scholar Zhang Weiwei. Amazon’s blurb on Zhang’s bestselling The China Wave: Rise of the Civilizational State summarizes the scholar’s rendition of Xi Jinping’s vision succinctly: “China’s rise, according to Zhang, is not the rise of an ordinary country, but the rise of a different type of country, a country sui generis, a civilizational state, a new model of development and a new political discourse which indeed questions many of the Western assumptions about democracy, good governance and human rights.” The civilizational state replaces western political ideas with a model that traces its roots to Confucianism and meritocratic traditions.

In his sweeping study entitled China and England: The Preindustrial Struggle for Justice in Word and Image, Powers demonstrates that Chinese history and culture is a testimony to advocacy of upholding individual rights, fair treatment, state responsibility to its people, and freedom of expression rather than civilisationalism, hierarchy and authoritarianism. Powers extensively documents the work of influential Chinese philosophers, writers, poets, artists and statesmen dating back to the 3rd century BC who employed rational arguments to construct governance systems and take legal action in support of their advocacy. Powers noted that protection of free speech was embedded in edicts of the Han Emperor Wen in the second century BC. The edicts legitimized personal attacks on the emperor and encouraged taxpayers to expose government mistakes. The intellectuals and statemen were the Chinese counterpart of contemporary liberal thinkers.

In a lot of ways, Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church have understood the utility of civilisationalism far better than others and made it work for them, certainly prior to the Russian intervention in Syria. At a gathering several years before the intervention, Russia achieved a fete that seemed almost unthinkable. Russia brought to the same table at a gathering in Marrakech every stripe of Sunni and Shiite political Islam.

The purpose was not to foster dialogue among the various strands of political Islam. The purpose was to forge an alliance with a Russia that emphasized its civilizational roots in the Russian Orthodox Church and the common values it had with conservative and ultra-conservative Islam. To achieve its goal, Russia was represented at the gathering by some of its most senior officials and prominent journalists whose belief systems were steeped in the values projected by the Church. To the nodding heads of the participating Muslims, the Russians asserted that Western culture was in decline while non-Western culture was on the rise, that gays and gender equality threaten a woman’s right to remain at home and serve her family and that Iran and Saudi Arabia should be the model for women’s rights. They argued that conservative Russian Orthodox values like the Shariah offered a moral and ethical guideline that guarded against speculation and economic bubbles.

The Trump administration has embarked on a similar course by recently siding in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women with proponents of ultra-conservative values such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq and several African countries. Together they sought to prevent the expansion of rights for girls, women, and LGBT people and weaken international support for the Beijing Declaration, a landmark 1995 agreement that stands as an internationally recognized progressive blueprint for women’s rights.

The US position in the commission strokes with efforts by conservative Christians to reverse civilizational US courts decisions in favour of rights for women, minorities, members of the LGBT community, Muslims and immigrants and refugees. It is what conservative historian and foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan describes as the war within traditionally liberal society. It is that civilizational war that provides the rationale for Russian meddling in elections, a rational that goes beyond geopolitics. It also explains Trump’s seeming empathy with Putin and other autocrats and authoritarians.

The US alignment with social conservatives contributes to the rise of the civilizational state. Putin’s elevation of the position of the church and Xi’s concentration of absolute power in the Communist Party strengthens institutions that symbolize the rejection of liberal values because they serve as vehicles that dictate what individuals should believe and how they should behave. These vehicles enable civilisationalism by strengthening traditional hierarchies defined by birth, class, family and gender and delegitimizing the rights of minorities and minority views. The alignment suggests that the days were over when Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov trumpeted that the West had lost “its monopoly on the globalization process” because there was a “market of ideas” in which different “value systems” were forced to compete.

Similarly, conservative American author Christopher Caldwell asserted that Orban’s civilizational concept of an authoritarian Christian democracy echoed the kind of democracy that “prevailed in the United States 60 years ago” prior to the civil rights movement and the 1968 student protests. Orban’s Hungary epitomizes the opportunism that underlies the rise of the civilizational state as a mechanism to put one’s mark on the course of history and retain power. In Orban’s terms, civilizational means not Christianity as such but those Christian organizations that have bought into his authoritarian rule. Those that haven’t are being starved of state and public funding.

Civilisationalism’s increased currency is evident from Beijing to Washington with stops in between. Trump’s and Steve Bannon, his former strategy advisor’s beef with China or Russia is not civilizational, its about geopolitical and geo-economic power sharing. In terms of values, they think in equally civilizational terms. In a speech in Warsaw in 2017, Trump declared that “the fundamental question of our time is whether the west has the will to survive” but assured his audience that “our civilization will triumph.” Bannon has established an “academy for the Judeo-Christian west” in a former monastery in the Italian town of Collepardo. The academy intends to groom the next generation of far-right populist politicians.

It is initiatives like Bannon’s academy and the growing popularity of civilizational thinking in democracies, current and erstwhile, rather than autocracies that contribute most significantly to an emerging trend that transcends traditional geopolitical dividing lines and sets the stage for the imposition of authoritarian values in an emerging new world order. Interference in open and fair elections, support for far-right and ultra-conservative, family-value driven Western groups and influence peddling on both sides of the Atlantic and in Eurasia at large by the likes of Russia, China and the Gulf states serve the purpose of Bannon and his European associates.

Civilizationalists have put in place the building blocks of a new world order rooted in their value system. These blocks include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The grouping is centred on the Chinese principle of non-interference in the sovereign affairs of others which amounts to support for the region’s autocratic regimes. The SCO’s Tashkent-based internal security coordination apparatus or Regional Antiterrorist Structure (RATS) has similarly adopted China’s definition of the “three evils” of terrorism, extremism, and separatism that justifies its brutal crackdown in Xinjiang.

Proponents of the civilizational state see the nation state and Western dominance as an aberration of history. British author and journalist Martin Jacques and international relations scholar Jason Sharman argue that China’s history as a nation state is at best 150 years old while its civilizational history dates back thousands of years. Similarly, intellectual supporters of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) project India as a Hindu-base civilization rather than a multi-cultural nation state. Modi’s minister of civil aviation, Jayant Sinha, suggests that at independence, India should have embraced its own culture instead of Western concepts of scientific rationalism. Talking to the Financial Times, Sinha preached cultural particularism. “In our view, heritage precedes the state… People feel their heritage is under siege. We have a faith-based view of the world versus the rational-scientific view.”

Arab autocracies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have stopped short of justifying their rule in civilizational terms but have enthusiastically embraced the civilizational state’s rejection of western notions of democracy and human rights. One could argue that Saudi Arabia’s four decade long global propagation of ultra-conservative strands of Islam or the UAE effort to mould an Islam that is apolitical and adheres to the principle of obedience to the ruler is civilizational in nature.

Islamic law scholar Mohammed Fadel argues that one reason why Arab autocracies have not overtly embraced civilisationalism even though they in many ways fit the mould is the absence of a collective memory in post-Ottoman Arab lands. To explicitly embrace civilisationalism as a concept, Arab states would have to cloak themselves in the civilizational mantle of either pan-Islam or pan-Arabism, which in turn would require regional integration. One could argue that the attempt by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to impose their will on the Middle East for example with the boycott of Qatar is an attempt to create a basis for a regional integration that they would dominate.

The rise of the civilizational state with its corporatist traits raises the spectre of a new world order whose value system equates dissent with treason, views an independent press as the ‘enemy of the people’ and relegates minorities to the status of at best tolerated communities with no inherent rights. It is a value system that enabled Trump to undermine confidence in the media as the fourth estate that speaks truth to power and has allowed the president and Fox News to turn the broadcaster into the United States’ closest equivalent to state-controlled television. Trump’s portrayal of the media as the bogeyman has legitimized populist assaults on the press across the globe irrespective of political system from China and the Philippines to Turkey and Hungary. It has facilitated Prince Mohammed’s effort to fuse the kingdom’s ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam with a nationalist sentiment that depicts critics as traitors rather than infidels.

In the final analysis, the tacit understanding on a civilisationalism-based value system means that it’s the likes of New Zealand, Norway and perhaps Canada that are putting up their hands and saying not me instead of me too. Perhaps Germany is one of the countries that is seeking to stake out its place on a middle ground. The problem is that the ones that are not making their voices heard are the former bastions of liberalism like the United States and much of Europe. They increasingly are becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution.

India’s Grey Clouds of Depression

Moin Qazi

Among the many challenges India faces, the most underappreciated is the ongoing mental health crisis. Mental illness is actually India’s ticking bomb. An estimated 56 million Indians suffer from depression, and 38 million from anxiety disorders. For those who   suffer from   mental illness, life can seem like a terrible prison from which there is no hope of escape; they are left forlorn and abandoned, stigmatized, shunned and misunderstood.

The intensity of mental disorders is particularly worrying in the adolescents. Half of all mental illness starts by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds.

The pathetic state of mental health care in the country coupled with government’s apathy is a cause of great concern. A plausible reason is the sheer scale of the problem. Hence, nobody wants to discuss the elephant in the room. However, the nation cannot afford to ignore the stark reality. There are only about 43 mental hospitals in the country, and most of them are in disarray. Six states, mainly in the northern and eastern regions with a combined population of 56 million people, do not have a single mental hospital. Most government –run mental hospitals lack essential infrastructure, treatment facilities and have a sickening ambience. Visiting private clinics and sustaining the treatment, which is usually a long, drawn-out affair, is an expensive proposition for most families.

The Key facts ·         One in six people are aged 10–19 years. ·         Mental health conditions account for 16% of the global burden of disease and injury in people aged 10–19 years. ·         Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age but most cases are undetected and untreated. ·         Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents. ·         Suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15–19 year olds. ·         The consequences of not addressing adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults. ·         Mental health promotion and prevention are key to helping adolescents thrive.

According to a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare report, India faces a treatment gap of 50-70 percent for mental health care. The government data highlights the dismal number of mental healthcare professionals in India; 3,800 psychiatrists and just 898 clinical psychologists. A large number of them are situated in urban areas. The WHO reports that there are only three psychiatrists per million people in India, while in other Commonwealth countries, the ratio is 5.6 psychiatrists for the same. By this estimate, India is short of 66,200 psychiatrists.

Mental health care accounts for 0.16 percent of the total Union Health Budget, which is less than that of Bangladesh, which spends 0.44 percent. A developed nation’s expenditure on the same amounts to an average of 4 percent. India must find better ways to parlay its impressive economic growth into faster progress in this critical area as maintaining an ignorant stance on the issue will not help in its resolve.

A survey conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in collaboration with WHO across 11 centres in the country, involving 3,000 people from each city found that 95 percent of those with mental-health problems remain deprived of treatment due to stigma, shame and getting shunned from societies. Three age groups are particularly vulnerable to depression: pregnant or post-partum women, the youth and the elderly.

With resources tight an effective method for successfully tackling mental illness is a major expansion of online psychiatric resources such as virtual clinics and web-based psychotherapies. The economic consequences of poor mental health are quite significant. The cognitive symptoms of depression like difficulties in concentrating, making decisions and remembering cause significant impairment in work function and productivity. A World Economic Forum-Harvard School of Public Health study estimated that the cumulative global impact of mental disorders in terms of lost economic output will amount to $16.3 trillion between 2011 and 2030. In India, mental illness is estimated to cost $1.03 trillion (22 percent of the economic output) during 2012-2030. Estimates suggest that by 2025,38.1m  years of healthy life will be lost to mental illness  in India (23% increase).

The fact is that poor mental health is just as bad as or maybe even worse than any kind of physical injury. Left untreated, it can lead to debili­tating, life-altering conditions. Medical science has progressed enough to be able to cure, or at least control, nearly all of the mental-health problems with a combination of drugs, therapy and community support. Individuals can lead fulfilling and productive lives while performing day-to-day activities such as going to school, raising a family and pursuing a career.

Although mental illness is experienced by a significant portion of the population, it is still seen as a taboo. Depression is so deeply stigmatised that people adopt enforced silence and social isolation. In villages, there are dreadful, recorded cases of patients being locked up in homes during the day, being tied to trees or even being flogged to exorcise evil spirits. Stories of extreme barbarity abound in tribal cultures. In some societies, family honour is so paramount that the notion of seeking psychiatric help more regularly is considered to be anathema to them. Recognition and acknowledgement, rather than denial and ignorance are the need of the hour.

Many a time, mental-health problems are either looked down upon or trivialised. These man-made barriers deprive people of their dignity. We need to shift the paradigm of how we view and address mental illness at a systemic level. Tragically, support networks for the mentally ill are woefully inadequate. There is an urgent need for an ambience of empathy, awareness and acceptance of these people so that prejudices dissipate and patients are able to overcome the stigma and shame.

India’s Mental Health Care Act is a very progressive legislation, and   is the equivalent of a bill of rights for people with mental disorders. Fundamentally, the Act treats mental disorders on the same plane =as    physical health problems thus stripping it of all stigmatizations. Mental health issues get the same priority as physical disorders Conceptually, it transforms the focus of mental health legislations from supposedly protecting society and families by relegating people with mental disorders to second-class citizens, to emphasizing the provision of affordable and quality  care,  , financed by the government, through the primary care system

There have been some encouraging innovations in India, led by voluntary organisations that are both impactful and replicable. Dr Vikram Patel, who is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-founder of the Goa-based mental health research non-profit ‘Sangath’, has been at the forefront of community mental health programmes in central India.

It deploys health workers, some with no background in mental health.  The mission tasks community-based workers to provide low intensity psychosocial interventions and raise mental health awareness and provide “psychological first-aid.” Since they are drawn from the same community, they are able to empathise with the patients. The next stage consists of mental health professionals. The programme uses Primary Health Centres for screening people with mental illnesses.

According to Patel, mental-health support workers can be trained at a modest cost. Given the limited availability of mental-health professionals, such first-aid approaches can be suitably and successfully adapted to community needs with limited resources. The senior therapists can be given basic training in general medicine, psychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, social work and patient management.

His model envisages the involvement of primary care based counsellors and community based workers to reduce the burden of depression in the population. There is no longer any doubt about whether community health workers can be trained and supervised to deliver clinically effective psychosocial interventions. The challenge before us now is how to go beyond pilots and research studies and scale these innovations up in routine health care. Involvement of the social, health and education sectors in comprehensive, integrated, evidence-based programmes for the mental health of young people is vital for strneghtening the overall healthcare framework at the grassroots level.

Mental healthcare initiatives are presently focused on a narrow biomedical approach that tends to ignore socio-cultural contexts.Community mental-health services can offer a mix of clinical, psychological and social services to people with severe, moderate and mild mental illnesses. Also, counselling can make a profound difference and build resilience to cope with despair. Providing psychoeducation to the patients’ families can also help. Unfortunately, in recent decades, academic psychologists have largely forsaken psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. There is need for strengthening the cadre of behavioral health therapists.

Prevention must begin with people being made aware of    the early warning signs and symptoms of mental illness. Parents and teachers can help build life skills of children and adolescents to help them cope with everyday challenges at home and at school. Psychosocial support can be provided in schools and other community settings. Training for health workers to enable them to detect and manage mental health disorders can be put in place, improved or expanded. Such programmes should also cover   peers, parents and teachers so that they know how to support their friends, children and students overcome mental stress and neurotic problems. There is a need for more open discussion and dialogue on this subject with the general public, and not just expert’s .this can help create a more inclusive environment for people with mental illness.

Lewis Carroll very succinctly summed up the plight of today’s human beings in the conversation between the Queen and Alice in her classic .Alice in Wonderland. Here’s the paraphrase: Alice tells the queen that one has to run at the top of one’s speed to excel in a competitive race. The queen disagrees and we see the essence of competitive existence when she tells Alice that in her country one has to do all the running at the top most speed to retain one’s position. But if you want to get somewhere you have to run twice as fast. This is the paradox. Everyone wants to go somewhere. But they don’t know where. This is the reason for the growing incidence of depression in   society.

With simple yet effective steps, we can turn the situation around and build a more accommodating environment for those struggling with mental distress.

The Bangladesh Left in the Glorious War for Liberation: A brief note

Farooque Chowdhury 

The glorious War for Liberation in Bangladesh turned powerful with the participation of people – the downtrodden, the exploited. They came from poverty-ruled rural areas; they came from machine shops chained to capital; they came from educational institutions – teachers and students primarily identifying with the aspiration of the exploited.

To this huge human spirit, the bell of liberty was ringing the song of liberation from exploitative property relation. The communists, broadly identified as Left, were at the forefront in conveying this message of smashing down the exploitative property relation: A life liberated from all forms of exploitation as exploitation chains life, exploitation cripples and distorts life, exploitation stifles life.

The masses of the exploited people in Bangladesh were always with these fighters in the Left camp engaged with a relentless fight in ideological and cultural, political, economic and organizational areas. Despite deviations and delusions, flaws and failures, the Bangladesh Left – fractured into factions – always upheld the banner of liberation. The camp followers, with a history of organizing people’s struggle in different parts of the country, always labored to organize the marginalized, the muzzled.

The major part of the Left camp was always standing for an armed struggle. The effort gained momentum since March 25, 1971, the black day the Pakistan state unleashed its genocidal military campaign on the unarmed civilian population engrossed in its political fight in the form of a peaceful, non-cooperation movement. It was a major stroke by the state itself to make it wither away from this landmass.

A few factions of the Left were preparing them in advance for such an encounter with the Pakistan state. However, these factions had to experience limitations originating from history and class that grounded many of their political and organizational moves.

Nevertheless, they organized and carried on the fight since the earliest moments of this phase of Bangladesh people’s struggle for emancipation – encounter the state with armed form of struggle. Rifles and bullets replaced festoons and banners, protest marchers and demonstrators turned into guerrilla fighters, unarmed street barricades were left behind for making an ambush targeting the enemy. It was a transformation in struggle in form and organization – armed struggle as the main form of political fight, and, guerrilla units and armed organizations as the main form of organization. The form and organization spanned all over the country with variance in proportion, force and intensity. Sacrifices were very high, many of which are yet to be accounted.

But, this saga mostly goes unreported, the bravery goes unsung, and the martyrs go unnamed. Haidar Akbar Khan Rano as editor has assembled writings – descriptions and analyses of politics and power of the Left in the glorious War for Liberation in 1971 – in his Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa, The Left in the Liberation War in Bangladesh (Tarafdar Prokashani, Dhaka, December 2018). The 480-page book of history and politics presents writings and interview from most of the factions of the Bangladesh Left, irrespective of shade of red and change of color at later stage. The 13 writings in the book are, among others, by Moni Sing, leader, now deceased, of the once-Moscow-leaning Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), Kazi Zafar Ahmed, once a fire brand Left student and labor leader turned prime minister under a military ruler, and Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, once a fire brand student and labor leader and now a presidium member of the CPB. It also includes writings by Manjurul Ahsan Khan and Mujahidul Islam Selim, former and present presidents of the CPB respectively, both of whom played a leading role in securing the CPB from liquidation during the Gorbachevite-wave in Bangladesh, Haidar Anwar Khan Juno, a student and cultural leader and one of the main organizers of a guerrilla force in an area that remained liberated all through the 9-months of the armed struggle. The volume includes a number of political documents also.

“The problems of contemporary history”, writes R Palm Dutt, “raise in an especially sharp form all the problems of history in general.” (Problems of Contemporary History, “History and truth”, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1963) Dutt, in the preface of the book, also raises the problem as he writes, “Contemporary history is a dangerous subject to handle. It is full of explosive material. Much essential information will not be known until many years later, as documents are released and memoirs published. Passions and partisanship can obscure objective judgement. Anyone who attempts to write contemporary history in any more durable form than a current journalistic article is laying his head on the block for the executioner.” Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa isn’t free from the problems Dutt mentions. The reality is impossible to escape.

Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, the editor of Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa, writes:

“The War for Liberation in 1971 is the most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh. People of this country spontaneously began resistance war against the raiding Pakistan army. The people began the resistance war everyplace in this land. Armed forces and units, relatively smaller and bigger in size, got organized in different areas of the country. Nationalists as well as communists and Lefts organized these armed units and forces.”

The editor tells about the communists and Lefts:

They fought heroically, organized liberated zones; and all these were done without any external help. More than a hundred martyrs are from the ranks of the communists and Lefts. But the bourgeois information/publicity media never refers to or mentions these acts and sacrifices.

So, Haidar Akbar Khan Rano, with his own initiative, took up the responsibility of documenting this heroic chapter of struggle of the exploited of Bangladesh. A great job, no doubt. One may say, this is today’s fighters’ one way of admitting debt to the fallen comrades, and to the people.

The book is a part of a people’s history. It tells struggles for the cause of the exploited. This book will be dug into for composing a people’s history in future. “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should,” writes Howard Zinn, “I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win.” (A People’s History of the United States, Longman, London, 1980) Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa has done this – disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when […] people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win – within its capacity.

Limitations are difficult, almost impossible, to avoid. This book is no exception. There’s possibility that a researcher would question a number of facts presented in the book; but that doesn’t nullify the premise of and rest of the facts presented there, and that doesn’t deny the fact of millions of the poor’s participation in the glorious War for Liberation. This poor part of the society, the multitude, was the main strength of the War for Liberation. The book once again announces this fact.

A few snippets                                                      

The Mookteejooddhe Baampantheeraa presents a lot of facts, from which following are only a few in brief:

Moni Sing writes:

The CPB, National Awami Party and Bangladesh Students Union [all these had inclination to pre-Gorbachev Moscow] organized a guerrilla force with 5,000 members. They joined the War for Liberation. Moreover, the two political parties and the student organization organized 12,000 youths, and sent them to the Liberation Force under the provisional government of Bangladesh. Thus, for the War for Liberation, these left political parties and student organization organized in total 17,000 young Freedom Fighters. Our guerrilla teams entered all the districts of occupied Bangladesh. These guerrillas conducted actions in Dhaka, Cumilla, Noakhali, Chattogram, Rangpur, and in different parts of the northern Bangladesh. Our comrades died during the war. Comrades staying within occupied Bangladesh built up organizations for the war and helped the guerrillas conduct operations. Our guerrillas sunk a ship at the Chattogram Port. At Betiara on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway, nine members of our guerrillas died in a fight with the occupying Pakistan army. The Pakistan army killed Shahidullah Kaiser, member of our central committee. (“Mooktee jooddha o communist party”, pp. 15-30)

Rashed Khan Menon writes:

The single uniformity of idea among the squabbling pro-Peking communist factions and sub-factions was: an independent Bangladesh to be achieved through an armed struggle. The slogan that dominated the peasants’ conference at Sahapur, Pabna, in 1968 was Workers and peasants rise up with arms for an independent Bangladesh. Maulana Bhashani [dubbed as the Red Maulana by a part of the MSM] convened this conference. Thousands of peasants from all over Bangladesh joined the conference defying prohibitory order issued by the Martial Law authority. East Pakistan Students Union (Menon group) and East Pakistan Sramik Federation, student and labor organizations of Poorba Baanglaa Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries [East Bengal Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, henceforth CR, a pro-Peking faction] issued the call for an Independent, People’s Republic of East Bengal. The call, along with an 11-point program, was made at a public meeting held in Dhaka city on February 22, 1970. The call was made following CR’s decision. The student and labor organizations were rechristened as Poorba Baanglaa Beeplobee Chaatra Union and Poorba Baanglaa Sramik Federation. Immediately after March 25, 1971, the fateful day the occupying Pakistan army began its genocide in Bangladesh, the CR began organizing armed struggle. The center of this activity was Shibpur, Narsingdi, a few dozen kilometers from Dhaka. Golam Mostafa Hillol died while collecting arms. He was the first martyr from the rank of the CR. Armed struggle was initiated in Bagerhat by organizing peasant and student members of the peasant and student organizations under the CR. This force in Bagerhat continued armed fight against the occupying Pakistan army. The CR members led seizure of firearms from a local armory of police in Pirojpur. That was at the formal beginning of the armed struggle. Fazlu led the seizure. He was later caught by the Pakistan army, and brutally murdered. This unit in Pirojpur kept the Pakistan army on its heels throughout the entire period of the armed struggle. Many members of the CR joined armed fights in different areas under a number of sector commanders. Shahidullah Khan Badal played the main role at the training facility for the freedom fighters at Melaghar, Tripura. Most members of the urban guerrilla unit [popularly known as the Crack Platoon] were members of the student wing of the CR. They carried on heroic operations within the Dhaka city. The Platoon paid a heavy price with a number of martyrs, who were brutally tortured, and then, shot or bayoneted dead. I [Menon], on behalf of the CR, assisted our armed fighters in Dinajpur, Rangpur and Rajshahi. In this task of coordinating armed struggle in the northern districts, I had to work in close collaboration with Sector Commanders Wing Commander [later Air Vice Marshal] Bashar and Lieutenant Colonel Kazi Nuruzzaman, Captain Noazesh and Squadron Leader [later Air Vice Marshal] Sadruddin. Mohammad Toaha, a leader of East Pakistan Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [a pro-Peking faction following the Naxalbari approach] successfully organized liberated zone in the river shoal areas in Noakhali. Under his leadership, land was redistributed among the landless peasants in the liberated zone. Moreover, he had no skirmish with the freedom fighters operating under the provisional government of Bangladesh. He established contact with the provisional government also. (“Bangladesher saadheenataa o mooktee jooddhe baampantheeder voomeekaa”, pp. 31-41)

Kazi Zafar Ahmed tells:

The National Coordination Committee for Liberation War was formed in a meeting in June. Deben Sikdar of Poorba Baanglaa Communist Party, Nasim Ali of Bangladesher Communist Party – Haateear group, Amal Sen of Communist Songhatee Kendra, Dr. Saif-ud-Dahar of Communist Karmee Sangha and me from CR were members of the committee. The CR guerillas, about 10,000, fought in Shibpur, Monohardi, Raipura and Kaliganj, places within dozens of kilometers from Dhaka. The occupying Pakistan army failed to organize any auxiliary force in support of its occupation in this area. Our headquarters was in this area. About 5,000 CR guerrillas operated in the southern part of Cumilla. About 5,000 guerrillas organized by CR joined the liberation force under the leadership of Kader Siddique in Tangail area. In Satkhira area, a force of 2,000 CR guerrillas was organized. About 3,000 CR guerrillas operated in Bagerhat-Bishnupur-Raghunathpur area. A force of about 2,000 CR guerrillas was organized in Atrai, Naogaon. A force of a few hundred CR guerrillas was organized in Boalmari and Madaripur. A few hundred CR guerrillas operated in Chattogram and Raojan area. These guerrillas mainly operated in the city area. In the Feni area, a force of a few hundred guerrillas operated. (“Kazi Zafar Ahmader saakkhaatkaar”, pp. 71-80)

The book carries many such information by other leading Left leaders/theoreticians/fighters.

Documents

The book presents six documents of a number of communist parties/factions/alliance. These documents, from 1968 to 1971, are related to the War for Liberation, and independence.

In the book, reminiscences, three in total, remind readers of the brave people looking at the eyes of death while they joined the armed struggle. These tell the people’s courage, and their ever-ready heart to make supreme sacrifice for their best love – motherland, to all of us, Bangladesh, Aamaar sonaar Baanglaa, my golden Bengal.