“All roads take me into exile, all roads take me away from Baghdad. I am looking for the borders of countries and stories of passers through. We believed our exile would be short.” – Qusas Al-Abireen
I met Koutaiba Al-Janabi on a winter evening last year in London. He told me to look out for his white hair at the train station, and indeed, his Einstein style was easy to spot from a mile away. Open and gentle, his mannerisms were pleasingly familiar, not unlike my own father or uncle, so we took our unhurried time finding the nearest open cafe (where, as expected, he refused to let me pay for our coffees), almost instinctively sharing our migrant stories as we set off.
What initially drew me to his work was a glaring absence of official records, archives and films that tell the story of what happened to the millions of Iraqis who were displaced under <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/world/middleeast/30saddam.html">Saddam Hussein&#8217;s ruthless dictatorship</a>. As if struggling to keep up with its wars, Iraq has fallen victim to the loss of its own memory, each wave of conflict veiling the last, each tale buried namelessly in a mass grave. Many people saw their family members executed in the 1980s after being targeted as dissidents under the Ba&#8217;ath Party regime, while state paranoia was intensifying during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), so they were left with little choice but to escape the country.
It was not unusual for me to sit with an Iraqi of my parents’ generation. Countless times I&#8217;d listened to our family friends over a cup of tea as they recounted episodes of interrogation at university or in prison, ensuring to make special mention of the regime’s comical incompetence, their language etched with fresh curses and metaphors coined during the Saddami era. As we sat with a generous amount of snacks between us, Koutaiba and I discussed the experience of living in the diaspora, and found ourselves sharing family stories of kidnappings, separation and exile.
In his film, Qusas Al-Abireen (or ‘Stories of Passers Through’), director Koutaiba Al-Janabi weaves a personal account that will be familiar to almost every first generation Iraqi living outside of their homeland – that of a reluctant, forced removal from a place they have loved. It is the story of a people not characteristically known to be travellers, now to become wanderers against their will.

Qusas Al-Abireen is semi-autobiographical, what Koutaiba calls a “visual diary” of his exile, taking us through both real footage and acted scenes over a period of 30 years. It is a fairly linear journey from Iraq to Budapest, but patched together like a disjointed tapestry of migration – sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes hard to decipher. Our key character trudges between anxiety and isolation, navigating dark rooms with ageing window frames, or basements with concrete floors, more than once appearing to be walking aimlessly through the dark. This exiled protagonist is played by different actors: the camera looking into a chaotic call centre where he is desperately trying to call home, or briefly lingering on a rejection letter from the Home Office.
Edited in a style akin to a horror or film noir (or perhaps a bad imitation), this film certainly doesn’t give us a sense of the migrant dream. Koutaiba acts as the film’s narrator using his own melancholic, measured, warm Iraqi Arabic for the voiceover to express a continuous longing that has surrendered to grief. It’s impossible to capture the emotion that comes with decades of exodus, so what he delivers is merely this one sentiment that has characterised his lifetime, between never-ending scenes of roads and train tracks.

iraqi-road-to-exile_z-rahim_16_11_19_zr

Iraqi Road to Exile_Z Rahim_16_11_19_ZR

In Qusas Al-Abireen, Koutaiba narrates that he bid farewell to Baghdad at the age of seventeen. He recalls how he tried to make eye contact with his countrymen as he left, but found them as expressionless as statues. “There was real fear,” he says. “When I left, very few people knew apart from my mother. When Saddam first came to power he said he would create secret police in the brain of every Iraqi and this is exactly what he did.” Koutaiba, here, refers to the Orwellian and notorious intelligence network skilfully set up by the Ba&#8217;ath Party. There was at least one spy for every household, clinic and classroom; telephones were bugged and monitored, so people could not speak freely or contact exiled family members abroad; house raids could happen at any point with penalties for those who did not have a photo of Saddam up on their living room wall.
Despite memories of dictatorship, Koutaiba unravels his nostalgia for the Baghdad he left behind in the opening sequence, with iconic palms, photos of cinemas – Sindabad, The White Cinema, Cinema Al-Nujoom – men in black dishdashas, and women in Iraqi abayas hurrying their kids along.
I ask Koutaiba about the following radio broadcast issued by the Iraqi military, its haunting crackles overshadowing the nostalgic elements of the film:
This is the day we’ve been waiting for. To prove to our country, our families and our nation, that the milk we drank from our mothers was pure.
Defending our great Iraq, our glorious Arab nation. Today is our day, our battle and our war, our tradition. Arise brothers… We have to prove that we are the sons of freedom and pureness. And they are the sons of adultery and sin.
The broadcast reverberates over unsettling music and pouring thunderstorms that occur frequently throughout the film. We see this radio, or propaganda machine, on its own elevated table – despised yet respected – next to an abandoned bookcase, an unanswered telephone and a close-up of house keys, as if the toxic words have made every member of the household disappear.
“This was the speech that announced the Iran-Iraq war,&#8221; Koutaiba explains. &#8220;It was the dirtiest war in years – the war that destroyed Iraq. Nearly one million people dead. They played this speech on and on and on, and used the radio against us.&#8221;
As I’m discussing this announcement with Koutaiba, we note that the language used by the Ba&#8217;ath Party, ‘idribuhum fauq al-a‘naaq’ (translated as both ‘hit them over their heads’ or ‘cut their throats’), is not dissimilar to the language we have seen used by Daesh in recent years.

If the words were not bad enough, the radio plays a heavier, more sinister role in Koutaiba&#8217;s life. His father had been in the Iraqi army and was executed in 1963 when Koutaiba was just a child, during the first wave of executions conducted by the Ba’ath Party as they sought quickly to consolidate their control. It was only when they switched on the radio that his mother and six siblings were faced with the shocking news.
In one extended scene, Koutaiba’s family photos appear to be strewn across the floor, what he describes as &#8220;part of his conscience&#8221;, although in reality there were very few original photos left of his family. The lack of evidence of a life before exile had always troubled my conscience too, with just a handful of polaroids surviving to tell my family history. In this harsh social and political climate, photos were often burned by the families who stayed behind, ensuring there was no trace of those who’d left in order to protect them as much as possible.
Throughout our conversation, Koutaiba compares <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2017/10/21/bfi-lff-perspectives-confronting-the-wicked-past/">Iraq under Saddam to Chile under Pinochet</a>, regimes mirroring each other in their crackdowns on dissidents, disappearances and secret mass graves. “They didn’t give us my father’s body. We don’t know what happened. In these mass graves, people become just a number. I think every Iraqi family has lost somebody, whatever the reason.”
The trauma of loss and lack of closure certainly inform Koutaiba’s preferred genres. His latest fantasy / horror, filmed at the Serbian-Hungarian border, The Wooden Man, is currently in post-production and explores themes of escape and refuge. He tells me that he never imagined the growing refugee crisis would reach the point it has.
It strikes me that Koutaiba, whose name comes from the Arabic root ka-ta-ba, meaning ‘to write’ or ‘to record’, has embodied his name well. “Film is one method to reflect how we feel,” he says. “We [Iraqis] don’t appreciate our archives, we destroyed them, Saddam’s photos, everything. We have to keep them. The country needs to build a huge memorial for that period. If you don’t fix the past, you can’t build the future.”
Qusas Al-Abireen is a rare insight into the impact of exile on the Iraqi diaspora who left under Saddam’s Ba’ath government (1968-2003). Although Koutaiba never appears in front of the camera in his own deeply personal story, he leaves the door wide open for Iraqis to find themselves in the details.

koutaiba-al-janabi-border

Koutaiba Al Janabi Border

Koutaiba Al-Janabi will be running a workshop titled ‘The Art of Exile: A Filmmaking Masterclass’ at the BFI Studio on Saturday 15 June, 1 to 5pm. Stories of Passers Through will be screened as part of the session. Book through the BFI website here: <a href="https://whatson.bfi.org.uk">https://whatson.bfi.org.uk</a>. The film was also screened at the <a href="https://www.arabbritishcentre.org.uk/whatson/stories-of-passers-through/">SAFAR Film Festival</a> last year.
<pre>Photo Credits : Koutaiba Al-Janabi</pre>

Stories of Passers Through New_Site

Our editor Zainab Rahim speaks to Iraqi filmmaker Koutaiba Al-Janabi about his film Qusas Al-Abireen.

The Iraqi Road to Exile: Koutaiba Al-Janabi’s 30 Years from Home

Iraqi photographer Maythem Ridha intimately captures Morocco’s shades and hues 
Maythem Ridha opened his exhibition Beyond Moments: Morocco in <a href="http://www.artsrichmond.org.uk/event-detail.php?eventid=6282&amp;catid=2&amp;id=40">Isleworth’s Redlees Studios</a>. A cluster of buildings with airy, light interiors, give the impression of an artist’s village, providing a serene backdrop to this exhibition. Opening over three days, with sun-dappled photographs lining the walls, it is a journey through Morocco’s backstreets and lesser-seen landscapes. Vivid and vibrant, the photographs travel from mountains to suburban villages to ghettos and encampments. The familiar Moroccan backdrops of crowded bazaars, a blended mass of turquoise and bronze, are there alongside less commonly seen images of landfill sites and extreme poverty and isolation in rural villages. The colours are, as expected, dazzling and the editing fantastic, imbuing an almost painted quality to many of the photographs. 
As a first generation Iraqi professional photographer and filmmaker, Maythem is something of a rarity. His recent exhibition focused on his travels in Morocco, a country he reports having been to several times since his teenage years. His exhibition follows on from previous photography projects centred in Morocco and around the Middle East, including his native Iraq, and deviates from other projects focused around more abstract themes relating to the interface between the environment and the man-made world. Instead, he moves away from landscape and hones in on people and individuals as his subject matter. The exhibition is very much testament to this. There is an almost three-dimensional effect in the intimate way with which he has captured these often un-tapped-into communities. 
Alongside his prints, he also debuted his first published book <a href="http://maythemridha.com/beyondmoments">Beyond Moments: Morocco</a>, which is a beautifully set out collection of all his photographs as well as other prints not included in the exhibition. There is a real pride emanating from him about this project, now being translated into both French and Arabic to reach the very communities it so beautifully captures. 
I had a short interview with Maythem where he took me through his journey, starting with his childhood inspiration for photography in the form of his uncle’s old camera with which everything was documented. At the age of nine he moved to the UK from Iraq and was limited by language in communicating with other children. Thus, photos and visual communication became his only channel. He started taking photography seriously aged 12 after he was gifted a camera. By 16 he was earning extra pocket money photographing school events and selling the photos to parents. His career continued to flourish following this precocious start, starting work at MBC just as Middle East television began to increase in influence, in turn nurturing his talent and enabling him to become a successful filmmaker. Throughout, photography remained his passion. He has now undertaken several photography projects including photographed communities and landscapes across the Middle East. 
There is something of a loss of the arts amongst first and second generation Iraqis in particular. Often raised by parents with strong memories of a fractured homeland and intent on fostering life, hope and opportunity for their children, much of their persuasion centred around clear vocational routes. An unfortunate by-product of this is the notion of the arts as inherently financially unstable, appearing to grow at times into something of a cultural taboo when creative pursuits like photography are mentioned. Maythem therefore stands as quite the inspiration for second-generation immigrant Middle Eastern children. I spoke to him about the photography course which he now runs successfully, taking students both abroad on field trips and in this country. It was heartening to learn that the number of ethnic minority students has increased over the years. So the opportunities grow and the skill-set branches out, both for second and third generation children of immigrants and for the communities they photograph. 
We spoke at length about the trust that he seeks to build with the communities he worked with. His photographs are stark. A naked eye into communities: Berber weddings; children from ghettoes against graffitied walls; women squinting in the sunlight, mistrustful and guarded. This intimacy and trust comes, he tells me, from his ability to communicate in linguistic and cultural terms. His fellow western photographers were unable to reach as far in, or win trust quite so easily. Herein lies the significance of diverse backgrounds in the arts – only then can we also engage diverse backgrounds. The patchwork of humanity grows once connection is formed, and so relationships expand. And we, as viewers, are granted precious entry to worlds we may never have otherwise known. 
Having won the <a href="http://muslimnews.co.uk/news/uk/winners-muslim-news-awards-excellence-2017/">AlHambra Award for Excellence in Arts</a>, Maythem continues to run masterclasses and workshops in photography and filmmaking. He is heavily involved in international projects, and spoke of returning to his native Iraq as the possible focus of future photography endeavours. Iraq, he tells me, is so poorly represented outside of newsreels and disaster footage. As his photobook is translated and published in two other languages, he seeks to open this latest exhibition in Morocco itself as well as further out in the Middle East. His unique position will continue, as he tells me, “…to open barriers. They believe I see things from their perspective rather than as an outsider. And in turn, I portray the communities how I would want my communities, so misunderstood, to be portrayed.” This can only bode well, then, for a new era of photography in the Arab world, by the Arab world. 
You can purchase new photobook by Maythem Ridha here: <a href="http://maythemridha.com/beyondmoments" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en-GB&amp;q=http://maythemridha.com/beyondmoments&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1501829704298000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEW1u06UOWqnZ6aMAw251MSNVwZhw" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://maythemridha.com/beyondmoments</a>. 
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BeyondMomentsMorocco">Follow &#8216;Beyond Moments&#8217; on Facebook here.</a> 
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Maythem-Ridha.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-12853" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Maythem-Ridha-819x1024.jpg" alt="Maythem Ridha - Photography" width="350" height="438" /></a>
<pre><a href="http://maythemridha.com/beyondmoments">Featured photography: (c) Copyright Maythem Ridha</a></pre>

Portraits and Landscapes in ‘Beyond Moments: Morocco’

Rare documentary from inside Iraq follows the daily struggles of a nurse called Nori 
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival closed with the screening of a brave and moving documentary, Nowhere to Hide (Zaradasht Ahmed). I took a friend as I had a feeling it would be too heart-breaking to watch alone. The film is entirely in Arabic and specifically in the Iraqi dialect, which being of Iraqi origin, made it so much more personal to me. I felt really connected to the characters, like they were part of my family. It was also strangely refreshing to be watching an Iraqi documentary on a western screen. 
It is a documentary that follows the life of one individual, Nori Sharif, a male nurse who works in one of the most dangerous areas in Central Iraq, Diyala, dubbed the ‘triangle of death’. Diyala is a mainly Sunni region in Iraq, which during Saddam’s reign was relatively peaceful. Some Sunni communities enjoyed protection under Saddam Hussein, and were living comfortably. After the fall of Saddam in 2003, they felt hard done by as they lost a lot of their privileges. This created an increasing resentment and opened the doors to insurgent cells forming in the region. Initially they targeted Coalition forces as a sort of resistance, and this later evolved into sectarian violence. To contain these groups, the area was continually targeted by the Iraqi army. 
Filmed by Nori himself in the first person, he is surprisingly good at videography. He has a friendly demeanour and is easy to watch. It feels like we, the audience, are there with him as he invites us into his world. The film begins with the withdrawal of the American forces in 2011 and we witness the jubilation and hope of the Iraqi people in becoming an independent nation. The film follows the everyday life of Nori as he works in Jalawla General Hospital. Nori explains to us how he has had to adapt his skills as a general nurse, from dealing with routine injuries to having to deal with much more complex ones due to the escalation of violence in the area. 
Nori himself is a very sociable and giving person. A father of four, he introduces us to his wife and children. His family life is simple, but a sanctuary that allows him to deal with the rollercoaster of emotions his job takes him on. Nori shows us the resilience of the community around him, where one day they are dealing with the aftermath of a bombing and the next they are attending a wedding. This life of extremes is made possible due to the adaptability of the Iraqi people. They show their resilience by sharing their highs and lows with their family and friends. 
We travel with Nori in the ambulance and we witness his courage as he is often first on the scene after a suicide bomb. We are visually introduced to the utter carnage of the aftermath, but we are spared the very graphic scenes as the director tastefully blurs the lens. This keeps the identity of the victims confidential. The viewer experiences the chaos and the fear of the moment, with people running around trying to locate loved ones. 
Nori then heads to Jalawla General Hospital directly after a suicide bomb. We see the floor covered in blood, and the dead bodies piling up. The basic facilities in the emergency department mean that many people will lose their lives waiting to be treated. Having worked in hospitals in the UK, I can appreciate just how lucky we are to have the high standard of medical care we do. 
Away from the hospital setting, Nori is keen to tell the story of the forgotten people whose lives have been entangled in this vicious war. Nori introduces us to a young woman that was caught in cross fire and was shot in the spine, leaving her partially paralysed. Nori comments that “her bed has become best friend”. The young woman looks at the camera hopelessly as her ambitions in life have been snatched away from her. She has become another victim to this senseless war. 
As Nori tries to make sense of the dire situation ranging from abductions to beadings, we are left confused, as there is no logic to the war or the escalating violence. We hear news sound bites being thrown about, such as ‘sectarian violence’ or ‘tribal violence’, but it is clear that there is no way you can categorise Iraq’s turmoil in one box. 
Another sad reality of Iraq is the decline of trust even within small communities. We witness this first-hand at one point when Nori recognises the suicide bomber’s accomplice at the scene of an explosion, and at another when Nori himself starts to suspect his own neighbours when a car is detonated near his home. We see him under great strain as he tries to comprehend the situation. 
In 2014 the violence escalates and the doctors at Jalawla hospital are forced to flee. Nori is torn between being a selfless healthcare professional and protecting his family. Being in this professional myself I can understand his immense pain. The hospital represented a safe haven, a refuge, a hope and healing for everyone. He has played a big role in that, and this was his life the past 13 years. 
After the film, we had an opportunity to speak to the director Zaradasht Ahmed. I am grateful to Ahmed for letting Nori show us his world, without the influence of the filmmaker. We see the stark truth of this brutal war from the inside. 
Nori explains that the purpose of the war is to paralyse the will and determination of Iraqis. But despite this the Iraqi people’s will is not that easily broken. We live in a bubble in the west, where watching this film makes it feel almost impossible to cope, but as the director reminded us, “humans have power of adapting to anything”. 
An old saying that Ahmed shared with us is “hell is good with people”. He added, “This idea of having a collective feeling helps you tackle the war. The Iraqi people are very good at sharing their sorrow and grief as well as their joy. This is their strength.” Nori’s sentiment in the movie is that “the will to build will always be stronger than the force of destruction”. 
You may ask yourself, how do we help Nori and the Iraqi people? The simplest way is to get as many people as possible to watch this film. That includes getting people in power to watch it, be it in London and Washington. We need them to do more to protect civilians caught up in the violence. 
I left the cinema feeling very unsettled with the state of the world. But every cloud has a silver lining, and I pray that this film highlights the plight of the people of Iraq and other regions of conflict. I hope it sways public opinion to have more empathy towards refugees. This film clearly demonstrates that to uproot yourself and your family, there must be a dire situation that you are escaping from. Just because we lead privileged lives here, it does not mean we should turn our backs on refugees. 
See <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/tag/hrwff2017/">more reviews</a> from this year’s HRWFF London as they are published.
<pre>Photo: London Human Rights Watch Film Festival</pre>

Film Nights for Human Rights: Nowhere to Hide

Kuhel Khalid brings surreal experiences of war to an experimental production at Camden’s People Theatre and the Cockpit 
&nbsp; 
September 11th, symbolically named, is the debut London play by Iraqi director Kuhel Khalid. His plays have been performed in Canada, US, Iran, Syria and Iraq, where he set up his theatre company <a href="https://www.facebook.com/redzonetheatre/">Red Zone</a>, named in contrast to the ‘Green Zone’ area of Baghdad, where foreigners and governmental departments are usually based. 
I went to see the production at the Camden’s People’s Theatre, which from the outside looks like a nondescript council block, but this small, intimate theatre holds big ambitions as a space for innovative and unconventional plays. It supports emerging artists, such as Kuhel, and plays that tackle the political, social and culture issues of the present time. The play, September 11th, despite being named after the attacks that took place nearly 16 years ago, aims to explore issues of Arab identity, western paranoia and the effects the wars on terror have had on contemporary Middle Eastern society since that day. 
The play has five main characters, each emblematic of a component in the chaotic and dehumanising milieu of war: a clergyman figure who doles out retribution, a rebel who is abused and swears vengeance, a woman wearing a burka who personifies the female victim of war, a hunchback figure who exemplifies depravity, and a smartly-dressed woman who is complicit in some of the violence, but is also victim to it. The characters, each through physical theatre and sparing dialogue, depict scenes of the grotesque realities of war where extreme violence is commonplace and the desire for religious deliverance prevails. 
This play sets out to explore these weighty themes through use of allegory and symbolism. For instance, the backdrop of the stage is a large unfinished painting of the Twin Towers, which an artist slowly works on finishing throughout the play. Bakhoor or incense burners, illustrative of both Arabic culture and the process of purification and healing, are situated next to the clergyman’s pulpit on the stage. And a sacrificial lamb carcass lies at the front of the stage alluding to its strong resonance in Islam. 
I spoke to Kuhel, aged 34, about the play and he told me that his style has been fundamentally shaped by the five wars he has lived through. Experimental theatre is important to him because “there is no logic in life,” he says, referring to the traumatic experiences he has witnessed and recreated in his plays. “I try to create a mood in my play of constantly being at unease,” he explains. He aims to paint a picture of the atmosphere in Bagdad, which in addition to the presence of foreign troops, experiences <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/16/baghdad-car-bomb-kills-dozens-in-third-such-attack-in-three-days">regular sectarian violence</a>. 
It is important to Kuhel to bring the sensory experience of Baghdad to British audiences, he adds, because these experiences are what have shaped him as a person. The bizarre instances of actors dropping to the ground in his plays and the constant presence of an austere street sweeper come from experiences that that run painfully deep. The falling actors resemble the time he witnessed an actor gunned down next to him while working in Iraq – the shock of seeing a once living person become lifeless in an instant. The street sweeper character comes from a memory of seeing a Baghdadi street sweeper piling limbs on the road side after a car bomb had detonated, which killed Kuhel’s close cousin. These memories are etched into him and resurrect themselves in his plays. 
Through these connected scenes of absurd and surreal brutality in September 11th, Kuhel re-enacts the visual and physical experiences of living in a war zone, giving the audience a sense of what it can do to people and what it destroys. This play attempts to explore valid questions earnestly: who are we, and what can we trust? 
The use of allegory to encapsulate trauma and scenes of war works well for the most part, but at times, it notably falters. For example, the symbolism the characters are meant to represent, though bold and daring, risks falling into the stereotypes it attempts to tackle. Certain scenes are reduced to spectacle, and meaning, if any, becomes difficult to discern. But what holds the play together are the actors’ brilliant and impassioned performances and Kuhel’s sobering and powerful style of storytelling. 
Kuhel presents an authentic vision in this carnal yet noble play and leaves audiences, as promised, confounded and with “more questions” than before. The importance of such authentic voices cannot be understated in the current political climate. 
September 11th is running for the next two nights at the <a href="http://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/september_11th">Cockpit Theatre</a> (20 – 21 February 2017 at 7.30pm) after showing at <a href="https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/production/september-11/">Camden People’s Theatre</a> last week. 
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-12628" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BODY-September-11th-Camden-Peoples-Theatre-The-Cockpit-Theatre-1024x682.jpg" alt="Statue of Liberty - September 11th - Camden Peoples Theatre - The Cockpit Theatre" width="370" height="247" />
<pre>Photo Credits: Red Zone Theatre</pre>

Violence, Trauma and Absurdity in Kuhel Khalid’s September 11th

The CIA torture report revealed this week lays bare the dark excesses of the War on Terror and its continuing impact on the Middle East 
&nbsp; 
With the publication of the <a href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Executive Summary</a> of the CIA&#8217;s Detention and Interrogation Program this week, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has acknowledged that the CIA&#8217;s actions have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30401100" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">a stain on US history</a>. The UN, human rights groups and legal experts are now asking the Obama administration to prosecute US officials responsible for the torture programme. 
This is just one aspect of the story. In many ways the world&#8217;s sole super power has lost its moral compass post 9/11. Rather than behaving like a global lion America, in the years immediately after 9/11, behaved like Godzilla and lashed out against an undefined enemy. The irony is that the enemy is mutating and resurfacing in ever-more complex forms. 
In the last 13 years the world has hit reverse in terms of respect for the rule of law, human rights and dignity. For much of the globe, deference for America has been replaced by fear. Some critics have described the US as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/a-rogue-superpower_b_4174080.html" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">a rogue superpower</a>. 
9/11 was unprecedented in terms of ingenious cruelty and the whole world poured out its sympathy. But the neocon-influenced Administration mistook this as its right to unleash unprecedented invasions of two sovereign countries, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, all as part of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">War on Terror</a>. This has left a dangerous legacy of death, destruction and violence of historic proportions in those two ancient lands, legacies that are now affecting our lives almost everywhere. How long this will continue is anybody&#8217;s guess. 
The vicious circle of terrorism and counter-terrorism, by disparate Muslim nihilists such as al-Qaeda and the ISIL, and by powerful countries with massive military might, has been shaping the early 21st century. This war seems unending and through this the military industrial complex in developed countries has fattened, the torture industry has become more innovative, hawkish think tanks have flourished and narratives on Muslims have spun out of control. 
Wars are not cost-free, in terms of human and material resources. The two above wars have cost thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars, not to mention the lives lost by innocent civilians and the chaos that has been left in their wake. The massive drain on the US Treasury might have had an impact on the 2008 collapse of its economy, which then spiralled out across the developed world. 
President Obama came to the White House with high expectations and noble promises. But instead he changed the nature of the wars America was fighting and expanded them to such an extent that his presidency will forever be tainted with &#8216;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-combating-the-islamic-state-is-a-resumption-of-the-long-war/2014/09/08/5686f4b4-377f-11e4-9c9f-ebb47272e40e_story.html" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">long war</a>&#8216;. With its particular focus on targeted assassinations worldwide (including of its own citizens), Obama&#8217;s administration has truly opened Pandora&#8217;s Box. 
The emergence of ISIL in Iraq and Syria, a clear by-product of the war on terror, is now tearing apart the already-fractured Middle East. With Syria and Iraq becoming the killing fields, the intractable Palestinian crisis around the corner is all but forgotten. With over 200,000 dead, millions displaced and cities turning into ghost towns, the Syrian tragedy has come to a tipping point. A generation of disaffected, impoverished and angry children is growing up in the Middle East with the frightening potential of turning to nihilism and terrorism. 
The dark politics played by the region&#8217;s mainly despotic regimes, with sectarian agendas (as well as that played by some military powers in the West) is getting darker. Russia and China are playing their own games here as well. A bloody proxy war and the brutality of ISIL has made US-led military intervention inevitable, again. But this is a cycle and the Middle East will mostly be living with a new phase of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">mission creep</a> for generations. 
For decades the Middle East has been run by tin-pot dictators. The current breed of leaders, in the garb of secularism or nationalism, appeared during the Franco-British colonial era from the ashes of a long Arab stagnation. Far removed from Islam&#8217;s egalitarian concept of running public affairs, they resorted to pre-Islamic tribalism. In the absence of an established strong civil society these rulers ran the region like a fiefdom. Some were later replaced by military dictators with the same politics &#8211; incompetent, corrupt and repressive &#8211; and with similar complicity or downright support from western powers. 
Worse than the Soviet-era Communist rulers, these family or military dictators often used the majority religion, Islam, to legitimise their stay in power. At the same time, they promoted themselves as indispensable stooges to their foreign masters. Global powers have been milking these regimes for decades. 
Some among Islamic scholars, rather than standing for the people and Islamic values of truth and justice, have sided with these regimes. This has created a dangerous social division in the region, which has exacerbated the rise of hardcore secularists and their nemesis, the Islamists. With a prison-like political environment there is no public space for open debate and discussion. 
The result, so far, is the creation of generations of angry and impoverished people with their backs against the wall. With nowhere to go they grabbed the opportunity of the Arab Spring that started in Tunisia at the end of 2010. But this proved too much for the dictators. Some Gulf states poured unlimited money to sabotage these democratic gains, to nip the Arab Spring in the bud. The democratic West, being initially ambivalent, threw its hat in with the old guard for reasons of &#8216;national interest&#8217;. This is the game being played in front of our eyes. 
If a drastic change in policy towards the Middle East and the wider War on Terror is not made by America and its allies the world is going to be dragged into deeper and deeper crisis. Post-9/11 world has become more unsafe and we are now at a tipping point of further catastrophe. It is time we build bridges, not create walls of hatred.
<pre> Image from: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-released </pre>

Where Is the End To This Cycle of Tyranny, Terrorism and War?

The rhetoric of the western left assumes the cause of Kurdish fighters in Kobane taking little notice of historic events, Turkey’s current responsibilities and its positioning in the Middle East 
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As the situation intensifies between ISIS and Kurdish fighters in Kobane, on the Syrian border with Turkey, increasing attention has been given to how Turkey reacts. Fellow NATO member, the US, is now using airstrikes against purported ISIS targets, but Turkey&#8217;s lack of military action so far has prompted hostile reactions from both western media (in particular the left) and from Kurds themselves. Major protests have taken place in many of Turkey&#8217;s chief towns and cities, and clashes between police and Kurdish demonstrators have left at least 12 people dead. But where does the assumption that Turkey is somehow neglecting its duty by not providing military aid come from? And who does Turkey owe an obligation to? The idea that Turkey, as a nation state, would and should do anything other than, first and foremost, protect its own interests is a problematic one. 
The picture that has been painted is one of Turkey willfully withholding support to those in need of it, right on their own border. That somehow, by not joining the US in taking military action, they are implicitly supporting ISIS. However, the reality is much more complicated. The first thing that must be considered is that the groups that Turkey is now being asked to arm and support with military aircraft are the very groups that have, for the past 40 years, been in an intense and bloody struggle with the Turkish state in trying to create an independent Kurdistan within Turkish borders. 
It is also widely known that during this period of armed conflict, separatist groups like the Kurdistan Workers&#8217; Party (PKK), received military training in the areas of Syria that are now embroiled in the struggle against ISIS forces. This creates the first dilemma for Turkey; the PKK, despite democratic progress under President Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), is still recognised as a terrorist group in Turkey. Therefore, the decision to arm them is not one that Turkey will take lightly. After all, by helping the Kurds against ISIS, Turkey would essentially be defending territory that the PKK and its armed Syrian sister group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are hoping to establish as modern-day Kurdistan within Turkey&#8217;s borders. In many ways, this could pose as much of a security threat to Turkey as having ISIS on its border would. Although Turkey has enjoyed a good diplomatic and commercial relationship with the Kurdish state of northern Iraq, the Kurdish groups that operate within Syria and south-eastern Turkey pose far different geopolitical and ideological challenges – including this threat of establishing an independent Kurdish state within Turkey. 
Whilst the PKK have, in the past few years, abandoned the aim of attaining full independence in favour of more regional autonomy, the establishment of a Syrian Kurdistan could change this. The western left may consider autonomy for minorities in the Middle East as an ideal to strive for, but in the context of the Middle East, which, like Africa, was carved up by European colonial powers according to their own interests, there is a fine line between independence and division. Within the context of Turkey, where the trauma of the disbanding of the Ottoman empire is still embedded within the nation&#8217;s psyche, the need to hold together the relatively small territory that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk managed to salvage after the First World War, is great. Therefore, the prospect of supporting separatist groups like the PKK is not an appealing one. 
Does then, Turkey owe it to its own considerable Kurdish population to protect Kurds across the border? Well the simple answer to this is no. While Turkey has a duty towards its own Kurdish citizens &#8211; one which it has not always fulfilled &#8211; it holds no such obligation to those outside of its borders. In fact, the anger directed towards the Turkish state by Kurds who believe it should be defending their “ethnic brothers” is simplistic in itself. Indeed, if Turkey should be revising its own ethno-nationalist narrative, which it should, then it should not support Kurdish ethno-nationalism by compromising its own interests. 
Ironically, Turkey&#8217;s involvement in Kurdistan is what groups like the PKK have been campaigning against, and the expectation that Turkey should defend the Kurds stands in stark contradiction to the aspirations of Kurdish independence which entities like the PKK have effused. This contradiction was highlighted last night when Salih Muslim, leader of the PYD, called on Turkey to aid the Kurds in Kobane, but also declared that a ground operation by Turkish troops would be seen as an “occupation”. The idea that Turkey should somehow act as a neo-Ottoman patron, benevolently interfering on behalf of its regional subjects is not one that is accepted by the international media when Erdogan is peddling it, so why is it that type of behaviour is more acceptable when suggested by others with the vociferous support of much of the western world? 
As the Turkish president recently declared, Turkish help is a possibility, but it comes at a price &#8211; Kurdish support in overthrowing Syrian President, Bashar-al Assad. Turkey had also made it explicitly clear that if the USA and UK helped to create a buffer zone on the Syrian border, the Turkish armed forces would have defended this area. While this would have worked in Turkey&#8217;s own interest, it would also have created a safe haven for Syrian refugees and provided an extra security measure against the ISIS advance. Even the French president has applauded the suggestion, while America and the UK are still considering it. 
Let us also not underestimate the importance of humanitarian aid. Since the outbreak of the Syrian crisis, Turkey has absorbed more than one million refugees. This is roughly the same number of Syrians that have been permitted entry to Europe since 2011. Additionally, there are over 16,000 refugees from the Iraqi Kurdish Yazidi minority staying in Turkish shelters. Turkey, in line with NATO, and against considerable opposition from its own public, has provided logistical and financial support to the Syrian opposition, and out of that has arisen a serious Islamist threat. Now, unlike the USA and Europe, the biggest threat that ISIS and other militant Islamist groups pose to Turkey is through the spread of their ideologies &#8211; not their military. Therefore, the obvious answer for Turkey is not military intervention outside of its borders, but to stem any foothold that such groups may be seeking to promote within Turkey itself. 
Finally, for all the criticisms of hesitancy when it comes to the call to arms, Turkey does not, unlike western countries, have the option to “withdraw” when the consequences of their intervention become apparent. Turkey must think carefully about its involvement in the region, as any actions and consequences will be felt immediately on its own doorstep. 
While Turkey has much to work on in regards to the obligations it holds to its own Kurdish citizens, the idea that they are somehow duty-bound to aid Kurds outside their borders is simply unrealistic.
<pre>Photo Credits: AA Photo / Hurriyet Daily News</pre>

Turkey’s Duty to Kobane Is Questionable

The legitimate Syrian revolution has long been buried with the rise of new enemies including ISIS and western airstrikes 
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James Foley. Steven Scotloff. David Haines. These are the names of the western journalists reportedly killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a group receiving great attention from the international community. 
What has been under-reported is that ISIS is also responsible for the killing of thousands of Syrians, including Syrian journalists, such as Bassam Raies. But this isn’t a competition; no one is elbowing their way through the media to present themselves with a who-has-suffered-more-at-the-hands-of-ISIS award. This is because the answer is clear: the suffering of Syrians – whose plight the world has brushed aside as it becomes increasingly aroused by the notion of “fundamentalist Muslims” – will ultimately be the forgotten victims of this conflict. Although ISIS has been involved in perpetrating many unforgivable and inexcusable acts, this does not downplay the root cause of their creation, which is the existence of a brutal regime and the deliberate, calculated and systematic massacres this regime has carried out over the last four years. 
The beheading of western journalists by ISIS is apparently the “green light” the international community requires to carry out air strikes in Syria, with Barack Obama and David Cameron stating that they will show that &#8220;Britain and America will not be cowed by barbaric killers&#8221; and that they &#8220;will be more forthright&#8221; in the defence of their values. Yet the Assad regime has also been involved in the killing of many western journalists, such as Marie Colvin, and humanitarian workers, such as Abbas Khan. These incidents do not seem to generate enough political energy to &#8220;defend our values&#8221;. Double standards are rife. 
The scale and horror of the atrocities wrought by the regime are such that no one in the international community is able to quantify how many Syrians have been killed with any degree of accuracy; a ballpark figure of 200,000 was given and now “in excess of 200,000” is usually stated. The international community has done nothing when confronted with evidence, in the form of over 55,000 pictures showing more than 11,000 prisoners of the regime being tortured to death, and 150,000 more at risk of suffering the same fate. 
The Assad forces have continued to do as they please with very little international media coverage and attention. The country continues to undergo further devastation on a daily basis, with the destruction of vital infrastructure being used as a weapon to starve those who oppose the regime, and leaving half of the country’s rapidly declining population in desperate need of emergency humanitarian assistance. Most people have forgotten that on 15 March 2011, an uprising began against a tyrannical regime. Given the way that events have unfolded, many have begun to question the legitimacy of the Syrian revolution and its place in the context of other events across the Middle East. In addition to this, many have been influenced by the regime’s rhetoric in classifying the uprising as a sectarian movement consisting largely of extremists.  All of this has resulted in the Syrian struggle being draped in the garbs of anything other than that which it initially sought to represent. However, amid the terrors of the conflict, many Syrians continue to strive for what they set out to do with awe-inspiring levels of hope, charisma and fortitude. 
Since the very start of the uprising, social media has been engaging those involved in the revolution, through mediums such as Facebook, where voters choose a theme every week. The themes range from showing support to individual regions in Syria, which may have significantly suffered during that particular week, to showing solidarity with conflicts elsewhere in the world. This process is still ongoing and highlights important issues that ordinary Syrians feel strongly about. 
The people of Kafranbel continue to paint comic pictures and raise banners with slogans addressing current affairs in the context of the Syrian revolution. Without fail, whatever happens in any region of the world, from the death of Robin Williams to one of Obama’s speeches, the people of Kafranbel provide their own take on what they see, and they always add their own sincere, and often humorous, touch. This has continued in the face of the ongoing violence in Syria. 
In areas not under ISIS or government control, councils have been set up to try and ensure that lives continue to function as normal, for example, by ensuring a safe and adequate supply of water and food. In fact, aid-workers in Syria frequently comment on how such areas are more willing to address issues than in government-controlled areas. 
Aside from the politics, many in Syria have come together for the betterment of their current lives and for the lives of future generations. The protests that continue in Syria, the many social-based initiatives that have been born, and the continued struggle most Syrians face without any serious international acknowledgement of their situation is undoubtedly admirable. What needs to be emphasised is that although some positive initiatives have been outlined above, it shouldn’t overshadow the dire situation most Syrians are living in, but rather demonstrate that, for many, the essence of their original uprising is still the core of their work and belief. This essence that has been lost in international talks. 
Beyond the tales of destruction, there are glimmers of hope. But as the situation evolves, and as the international community decides which stories are worth discussing, the situation is only deteriorating. International air strikes have killed at least 20 civilians, as this <a href="http://sn4hr.org/blog/2014/10/01/1725/">human rights source</a> reports. Although the ultimate aim is, allegedly, to weaken and destroy ISIS, it is a somewhat farcical endeavour given that no serious action was taken to deal with the reason for ISIS’ existence &#8211; the far-bigger killing machine of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime. 
The Syrians face many enemies, including the government, ISIS and international apathy, and they now have to deal with international air strikes. The air strikes will bring yet more death and destruction to a region that has more than enough of both.
<pre>Image from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-air-strikes-president-obama-undergoes-damascene-conversion-as-isis-forces-america-to-change-tack-9751912.html</pre>

Air Strikes Re-Scorch Syria

Knee-jerk bombing of ISIL is not a long term solution to their atrocities; a more human politics is needed 
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The beheading of British aid worker David Haines on September 13 was the latest monstrosity carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). For British Muslims, it was doubly distressing that this evil act was carried out, apparently, by a British Muslim. The Muslim community here unanimously condemned this barbarism. 
From a moral and theological point of view, an entire community or religion should not be blamed for the actions of a crazy few. But all too often, when people see evil emanating from some Muslims, the potential is there to unfairly put the whole community in the dock. 
There are now fears that ISIL&#8217;s extremism is <a class="InternalLink" href="http://rt.com/uk/188672-isis-right-extremism-uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fuelling Islamophobia and a far-right backlash </a>in the UK. While others have denied there is a growth in the actual number of far-right activists, most observers seem to agree that there is a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment across the UK. This is a big worry for Muslims and a huge burden on our social and political leadership. And of course ISIL&#8217;s rise also re-emphasises the danger of sectarian tensions within the Muslim community. Thankfully, David Haines&#8217; brother, Mike Haines, quoted verses from the Quran and made it clear by saying: &#8220;The <a class="InternalLink" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11095810/The-Muslim-faith-is-not-to-blame-for-Islamic-States-brutal-murder-of-my-brother-says-Mike-Haines.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Muslim faith is not to blame for ISIL</a>, nor is it the fault of people of Middle Eastern descent.&#8221; 
Global crisis 
ISIL has, in fact, created a global crisis and presented world leaders with a challenge they cannot afford to ignore: They must hold their nerve and the civilised world needs to find creative, political, and more importantly, human ways of solving this problem of nihilism in our midst. For that is what ISIL is: a nihilistic movement that is the enemy of hope and togetherness. 
How the global community handles this barbarity is a big question. Certainly Muslims worldwide have unanimously rejected ISIL&#8217;s publicity-seeking terror antics, endlessly repeating that it is a million miles away from Islam&#8217;s teachings. 
The easiest option for some trigger-happy leaders would be to bomb ISIL into the stone age. This may temporarily halt or reduce its power, but it will come back again or re-emerge in another name. 
Violence in the Middle East will not simply go away without ethical politics in the region. We must not forget how al-Qaeda emerged in the 1990s, due in part to a political vacuum in Afghanistan; the result was the Taliban regime that gave shelter to the terrorist group. 
It is now clear that the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a recipe for the influx of al-Qaeda into Iraq that has now morphed into the more vicious ISIL. With swaths of land in Iraq and Syria under its control, it has plunged the Middle East into an even more serious predicament than before &#8211; one in which the viciousness of al-Qaeda and the Assad regime is all too easy to forget. 
Common sense 
Common sense and natural wisdom suggest that a replay of the post-9/11 knee-jerk reactions, and another display of &#8220;shock and awe&#8221; firepower by the US and its allies, would be the worst step: This will give ISIL the propaganda coup it needs and deepen the crisis for all involved. 
US President Barack Obama has at least grasped that reality and said that <a class="InternalLink" href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/09/obama-us-will-not-fight-ground-war-iraq-2014917152136499184.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">US forces will not fight another ground war </a>in Iraq. This is a welcome declaration, but there are big holes in the US-led strategy in the current crisis. With the United States&#8217; resumption of &#8220;the long war&#8221; in Iraq and possibly in Syria, a new open-ended &#8220;war on terror&#8221; (WoT) appears to have started. 
By waging this endless war, the US appears to be digging its heels in the Middle East sand. Gone are the days when the world sighed with relief at Obama&#8217;s declaration in 2010 that the<a class="InternalLink" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/7772598/Barack-Obama-declares-the-War-on-Terror-is-over.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> &#8220;war on terror&#8221; was over</a>. Very few people now believe him. 
The Middle East needs some respite from violence. The US can be a catalyst for this if it decides to become a fair player in the region, with a consistent people-friendly policy. By siding with authoritarian regimes depending on military might alone, the US has so far made things worse in this region. It is an irony that western democracies have one rule, a robust democracy, for their own people but different ones for others. 
You can kill terrorists through fire power, but slaying the demons of terrorism needs something more &#8211; a human dimension in politics, as well as accountability, and allowing local citizens a stake in their public affairs. 
Limitless injustice 
When citizens see only limitless injustice orchestrated by their corrupt and incompetent leaders, sustained by foreign players, the result is a vicious circle of despotism and violence. In an inter-connected global village with instant communication, no country can remain insulated from another. By ignoring others&#8217; peril, we sow the seeds of our own peril at a future stage. 
There are positive examples of global cooperation. Powerful and rich countries &#8211; governments and private citizens alike &#8211; have dug deep to help fellow human beings in developing countries. Britain leads in this area, devoting up to 0.7 percent of its GDP to foreign aid. 
Why can&#8217;t this happen in the political field of weaker countries? Why do the powerful nations often go &#8220;fishing in the muddy waters&#8221; in other parts of the world? The rise of ISIL could have been thwarted if the US had insisted earlier on a non-sectarian inclusive government in Iraq and if mainstream political opposition to Syria&#8217;s brutal regime had received timely support. No wonder some cynics and conspiracy theorists can feel free to accuse the US and its allies of giving ISIL a free hand, so that the terror group can then be used as a bogeyman to continue a long war in the Middle East. 
The emergence of violent extremism and nihilism in some parts of the Muslim world is primarily due to the failure of politics, exacerbated by the harmful influence of foreign powers. Although al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, Boko Haram and ISIL speak in the language of Islam, they have emerged in an authoritarian, corrupt, and incompetent political system. 
We are in the midst of a generational and geopolitical crisis in the Middle East. Until the Arab world can institute minimum democratic accountability and establish basic rights for its people, the region will remain unstable and a breeding ground for violence. As it stands, this will not happen until the US and its close allies stop supporting or propping up brutal regimes. 
Image: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10892898/Iraq-crisis-Q-and-A-Who-or-what-is-ISIS-Is-it-part-of-al-Qaeda.html

Countering the Demon of Terrorism

The roots of ISIS leave few unstained 
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ISIS (also known as ISIL) is the acronym for the terrorist organisation known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant">the Levant</a>). Since June 2014, the group has been referring to itself simply as the Islamic State (IS), and has conquered a large swath of land that straddles the Syria-Iraq border with an estimated area equivalent to the state of Jordan. 
The Iraq War and Syrian Civil War 
ISIS has its origins in Iraq’s Al-Qaeda offshoot which, in 2006 began calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Though Al-Qaeda had no significant presence in Iraq prior to the 2003 Iraq War, and was indeed hostile to the regime of Saddam Hussein; in the chaotic aftermath of the war, Al-Qaeda was able to establish itself as a terrorist force in the country. While Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, it is the Bush administration’s choice to start a second Gulf War that should be seen as one of the most important causal acts in creating the precursors of ISIS in Iraq. 
In addition to a destabilised Iraq, the Syrian uprisings have also been an important factor. The current conflict started after incipient peaceful protests against the Assad regime in early 2011 were met with violent state repression. Such repression helped create increasingly radicalised opposition groups that countered the transgressions of the Assad regime with similarly gruesome crimes. It is this violent anarchy in Syria, which persists to this day on a horrifying scale, that has provided fertile ground for the establishment of ISIS. 
The Rise of Sectarian Tensions 
Perhaps the most immediate cause for the extraordinarily rapid expansion of ISIS in these regions is that it has faced almost no resistance from the populations in the primarily Sunni territories it has conquered. This is because, with the rise of bitter sectarianism between the Shi‘a and Sunni populations following the Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War, both the Sunni majority in Syria and minority in Iraq have suffered much persecution at the hands of the ruling regimes. 
Iraq’s most important leader of the last decade, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, had become <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/06/mosul_s_collapse_is_nouri_al_maliki_s_fault_iraq_s_prime_minister_failed.html">notorious</a> for his calculated attacks against Sunni political leaders and populations, exacerbating sectarian tensions and alienating Sunni regions that felt powerless and disenfranchised. Similarly, in Syria, most of the opposition targeted by the Assad regime is Sunni. In the territories conquered by ISIS, with its virulent anti-Shi‘ism, the tables have now turned completely. 
Of course, no geopolitical situation of this scale ever has a single cause. Some go back in time and blame the postcolonial dismemberment of the region. ISIS appears <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/jun/25/map-isis-hates/">particularly exercised</a> by the ‘evils’ of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. One could also cite the <a href="http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/the_west/">long history of interference</a> of major Western powers, most notably the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_policy_in_the_Middle_East">United States</a>, which has tended to support brutal dictators in the region, who in turn have kept civil society severely emasculated. 
Regional powers also hold a good deal of the blame in dealing with the aftermath of the illegal American invasion. The problem with the blame game, however, is two-fold. Firstly, superpowers never accept blame, but rather act in accordance with the insightful <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/260802-crime-once-exposed-has-no-refuge-but-in-audacity">remark</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus">Tacitus</a>, that ‘their crimes once exposed have no refuge except in audacity’. 
Secondly, it is always possible to go back further into history, taking another step along the chain of events that led to the current predicament. This allows people’s biases to influence which starting point they choose, however specious it may be. Hence, much of the mainstream western media effectively blames the same region that they <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15234-how-the-media-fueled-the-war-in-iraq">clamorously</a> and disastrously <a href="http://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/iraq-and-the-media/">demanded</a> be invaded in 2003. 
Is ISIS popular among Muslims? 
An important question arises as to the popularity of ISIS among Muslims worldwide. Among a global population of around 1.6 billion Muslims, even according to the highest estimates, <a href="http://rt.com/news/183048-isis-grow-expand-jihadist/">ISIS forces</a> make up a negligible 0.0006% of the Muslim populace. And yet they are by far the largest Muslim terrorist organisation by numbers. Most Muslims around the world are horrified at their behaviour, which has been <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/08/21/muslim-leaders-have-roundly-denounced-islamic-s/200498">condemned</a> by Muslim leaders and organisations the world over. 
The only place they seem to have support is among some Sunnis in parts of Iraq and Syria, but this is widely acknowledged to be due to their opposition to the Iraqi and Syrian regimes that have been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/sectarian-conflict-iraq-maliki-us">persecuting</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/middleeast/in-homs-syria-sectarian-battles-stir-fears-of-civil-war.html?pagewanted=all">the</a> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/27/us-syria-killing-family-idUSTRE80Q06J20120127">Sunni</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-iraq-a-sunni-revolt-raises-specter-of-new-war/2014/01/06/280f9216-7714-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html">opposition</a> <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21580618-islamists-government-proving-harder-opposition-power-religion">for</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/middleeast/fading-hopes-of-unity-in-iraq-as-sectarian-tensions-rise.html?pagewanted=all">many years</a>. The popularity of ISIS among these Sunni groups at present is almost certainly not because of the sudden popularity of jihadist ideology, but because of the manner in which Sunnis have been terrorised in both Syria and Iraq over the past few years. 
Under such circumstances, ISIS, who <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-leader-preaches-holy-war-abu-bakr-albaghdadi-puts-persecution-of-shiasat-heart-of-his-ideology-ahead-of-push-on-baghdad-9590571.html">persecute the Shi‘a</a> at every opportunity, can present themselves as saviours of persecuted Sunnis. The grave danger this entails is that it can only make ISIS more popular in the Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. Perhaps the most effective way to prevent the growth of ISIS is to do what we can to prevent the ongoing cycles of violence in both Syria and Iraq that only exacerbate sectarian tensions in the region. Sadly, the cycles of violence seem destined to persist for the foreseeable future, at least in Syria, given the lack of any meaningful efforts to put an end to the violence on the part of international powers. 
There’s no question that ISIS plays up its Islamic bone fides. But can a group that claims to be Islamic automatically be considered representative of Islam as followed by the majority of the world’s Muslims? For many commentators, this is simply taken to be the case, particularly by those who are not experts on Islam. The vast majority of the world’s Muslims, by contrast, will do what they can to dissuade others from arriving at the conclusion that Islam plays a central role in the formation of such organisations. 
A Bleak Future? 
The reality is that all ideologies, religious or otherwise, are liable to have both moderate and extreme manifestations. The European Enlightenment, seen as a legacy to be proud by much of modern Western civilization, gave us Secular Liberalism, but it also gave us Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Christianity is the modern world’s largest religion, and is a source of solace for millions, but there also exists the extreme Christian right in the US, whose Presidential candidate of choice, George W. Bush, helped create a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tables">death toll in Iraq</a> of appalling proportions—far greater than what any extremist non-state actor in the 21st century has managed to rack up. 
Ultimately, the negligence and paralysis of the international community, alongside the inefficacy of the region’s states in the face of the Syrian conflict has permitted the creation of horrors that may haunt us for many years to come. When all sides have blood on their hands, who can be a saviour?
<pre>Image from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions</pre>

Understanding ISIS and the Prospects for Peace

ISIS is yet another addition to decades of cruelty suffered by the Middle East; the West cannot ignore its role in the crises 
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The Arab world, the heart of ancient civilisation and birthplace of the three Abrahamic faiths, is now haunted by a mounting monstrosity: the so-called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Islamic State</a> (IS). Their <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28862268" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">latest online video release</a> purporting to show the beheading of US journalist James Foley by a killer with a British accent is shocking. Muslims across the world have expressed their abhorrence to this group; the main British Muslim umbrella group, the MCB, has called their actions <a href="http://www.mcb.org.uk/not-in-our-name-british-muslims-condemn-the-barbarity-of-isis/" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">psychopathic violence</a>. 
IS&#8217;s atrocities are just a horrible addition to many years of cruelty in the region. For decades tin pot dictators, power-hungry militaries and monarchical autocrats have played havoc with their own people &#8211; killing opponents, bulldozing cities, gassing villages, pilfering state wealth, and above all, allowing foreign powers to turn the region into a theatre of war and anarchy. Some did this in the name of Arab nationalism and others used religion as a political ploy. 
All this started with the dismal social degeneration of the once powerful Ottoman Empire and its disastrous support for Germany in WW1 a century ago. The political naivety of the collapsing Ottomans and mindboggling Arab opportunism was then used by the British Empire to orchestrate an anti-Ottoman revolt from its Arab provinces. In a secret <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Sykes-Picot Agreement</a> Britain and France decided to bring strategically important Ottoman Arab territories into their sphere of influence; with artificial boundaries they created pliant Arab states. 
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/07/15/world-war-i-and-the-arab-revolts/">WW1</a> caused death and destruction on an industrial scale; most deceitfully it sowed the seed of long term enmity between the Arab people. The worst case was in historic Palestine which, because of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration,_1917" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Balfour Declaration</a>, created a generational conflict between two people &#8211; the Jews and Muslims. 
Fast forward: today the Middle East is reaping what was sown 100 years ago. The reign of terror in Baathist Syria and Iraq, military autocracy sapping the energy of Egyptian people and depravity of Gulf monarchies (with varying degrees) have some links with European colonial enterprise designed to milk Arab wealth. 
The continuous brutalisation of the Palestinian people and Israeli illegal settlement expansion &#8211; with direct or indirect support from the US and its allies &#8211; has proved long term lethal. <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/07/20/palestines-mountains-of-blood-and-shattered-bones/">Gaza carnages</a> by the Israeli military machine every few years is one such example. 
However, the latest nail in the fractured Arab body came from the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which took place in spite of international outcry. Driven by a neoconservative agenda and with breathtaking arrogance, the US jettisoned all international legality in Iraq; it was imperial hubris at its worst. Under a US &#8216;shock and awe&#8217; barbarity Iraq, once a centre of Muslim civilisation, saw a replay of Mongol savagery of 1258. The Geneva Convention was thrown out of the window and the world witnessed the death, destruction and humiliation of a people by an occupying power. 
When the world&#8217;s sole superpower adopts a &#8216;might is right&#8217; policy, autocratic forces elsewhere find cues to do the same to their adversaries; the result is a &#8216;Law of the Jungle&#8217; and loss of moral compass that we see now in many parts of the world. 
The demonic evils of the IS, which is neither Islamic nor a state, has horrified us all. By terrorising and killing ordinary people and posting revolting images online, the group is handing over massive propaganda weapons to Islamophobes everywhere. 
We must not forget the fact that IS is, in-part, a by-product of a brutal and immoral invasion of an independent Iraq by America, not dissimilar to the way Al-Qaeda emerged after Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 
Dangerous proxy wars are now haunting Iraq and Syria, following sectarian lines In spite of historic theological and political differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, the Muslim world was spared from a bloodletting that Europe saw between the two branches of Christianity in the Middle Ages. The current Sunni-Shia violence, though a sign of extreme degeneration within today&#8217;s Arabs, has something sinister behind it &#8211; the impact of foreign domination. 
Nobody expects the US and its close allies to come and rescue the Arabs from their current misery; but it is for their own &#8216;national interest&#8217; in an inter-connected world that these global powers avoid replicating their past misdeeds. Beggaring the neighbour is not only unethical, but also counter-productive in the long run. The Arabs expect some degree of ethics in the Middle East policy from the US and its allies; but what they see now is double standard. Is the blood of ordinary people killed by IS&#8217;s cruelty in Iraq different from the blood of innocent people in Cairo&#8217;s <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/12/egypt-rab-killings-likely-crimes-against-humanity" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rab&#8217;a massacre</a> last year? 
Iraq is trying to form a <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/08/iraq-new-pm-urges-country-unite-2014815111338737983.html" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">unity government</a> under domestic and international pressure, it is vital America and its allies make sure their humanitarian assistance does not end up in another &#8216;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">mission creep</a>&#8216;. 
America, still an <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21601535-no-other-country-comes-close-americas-hard-power-its-lead-slipping-unrivalled" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">unrivalled global military force</a>, has an extra obligation to be fair for the sake of world peace. Like a wheel global power rotates, the US will one day lose its supremacy; common wisdom demands it does not remain on the wrong side of history for so long. 
Meanwhile the Arabs will not be in such a perilous state forever. They have a uniquely rich religious heritage to stand up and have also a history of shaping destiny themselves when they are at their worst. What they probably most need now is a new breed of trusted leadership with vision, wisdom and political acumen. They have missed a golden opportunity of the 2011 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring" target="_hplink" rel="noopener noreferrer">Arab Spring</a> due to the dearth of this political leadership, and also because of conspiratorial vested interests. But one day, hopefully not too long in future, they will rise up again and unshackle themselves from this continuing humiliation. 
No light may now be visible at the end of the Middle East tunnel, but it is just a matter of time when this new force will rise from the ashes.
<pre>Image from: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/isis-scud-dud-missile-likely-not-operational-us-officials-say-n145916</pre>