Tag: Iran

Truth & Reconciliation, Part III, by Ross Caputi

Posted on by kathiemm

 

 

Child at Fallujah Maternity and Children’s hospital. Photo by Dahr Jamail, used with permission
Child at Fallujah Maternity and Children’s hospital.
Photo by Dahr Jamail, used with permission

 

There was no casus belli (just cause) for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The leaders of the coalition forces treated the lives of Iraqi civilians with reckless disregard as they bombed and invaded Iraq, citing intelligence they knew to be questionable. The shock-and-awe bombing of Iraq claimed over 7,000 lives, and the subsequent occupation claimed hundreds of thousands more.

The occupation also shredded the social fabric of Iraqi society, exploited a social division in Iraq that previously held little significance, provoked a civil war between the Sunni and Shia communities, and has resulted in entrenched resentments and a divided country.

Entire communities have been displaced, uprooting people, robbing them of their historical bond with their locality. The agricultural system, the historic seed bank, the marshes, have all been forced to change.

The medical and educational systems have been destroyed too. Many Iraqi researchers, instructors, and doctors have been assassinated. Many others have fled the country, leaving these essential services understaffed and incapable of meeting the needs of Iraqis.

Worse yet, pollution from war has left Iraq with a crippling public health crisis. Rises in birth defects and cancers have been reported throughout the country, with extreme rates in cities like Fallujah and Basra. Iraq will remain contaminated with radiation for billions of years because of uranium weapons. And the extent of the contamination from other sources—such as burn pits and lead and mercury from conventional munitions—is still unknown.

The occupation has left Iraq divided, polluted, and silenced under a corrupt political system and an oppressive government that enjoys considerable support from both the US and Iran.

What was taken from Iraqis can never be given back to them in its entirety. The harm our society caused theirs is immeasurable. Reparations are a moral imperative. Though the cause of the harm may be unidirectional, the healing will not be. Assisting Iraqis in the rebuilding of their society will cultivate in us a culture of responsibility, solidarity, and caring.

Join us at Islah [http://www.reparations.org/projects/truth-reconciliation/ in collaborating with Iraqis who are rebuilding the social infrastructure of their society. Help us in confronting the public silence surrounding the crimes committed against the Iraqi people. By campaigning for an international war crimes tribunal too, we hope to collaborate with Iraqis to create the requisite conditions for a future truth and reconciliation commission.

Ross is currently on the Board of Directors of ISLAH. He is also a graduate student and a writer. In 2004, he was a US Marine in the US-led occupation of Iraq. His experience there, in particular his experience during the 2nd siege of Fallujah, compelled him to leave the US military and join the anti-war movement. His activism has focused on our society’s moral obligation to our victims in Iraq, and to the responsibility of veterans to renounce their hero status in America.

Does Nonviolent Resistance Work? Part 3b

Posted on by kathiemm

This is the second of three posts comprising Part III of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

See also Part 1a, Part 1b, Part 1c, Part 2a, Part 2b, Part2c and Part3a.

Libya anti-Gaddafi protest, July 6, 2011
Libya anti-Gaddafi protest, July 6, 2011
Photo by Mbi3000, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Iran, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine and even Syria all reflect examples of uprisings that had a major nonviolent campaign as the lynchpin of popular revolt and managed to change the relations of power in some way.  But none of these uprisings stayed Gandhi-style nonviolent, and it seems these revolutions all had aftermaths ranging from the dubious to the disastrous.

Still, held up against totally violent revolutions that succeeded in overthrowing preceding governments–like those in China 1949, Russia 1917 (the October one), and Cambodia 1975—these dubious nonviolent revolutions look relatively good, if only because the aftermath of the violent revolutions was so hyperbolically horrific.

Even the extreme carnage in Syria (and the specter of a new Cold War between great powers over Ukraine’s Crimea) does not weigh down the partially nonviolent group as much as the Cambodian genocide, Stalin’s purges, and the Great Leap Forward weigh down the violent group.  Of course, I have just cherry-picked anecdotal examples here.  Chenoweth and Stephan (authors of Why Civil Resistance Works) try to root the contrast of more violent versus less violent uprisings in a systematically principled selection of comparison groups, but they come to largely similar conclusions.

But what about those nonviolent revolutions which Chenoweth and Stephan count as somewhat successful but after which the relations of power have hardly changed at all?  Or the cases in which the original relations of domination grew even more entrenched since that revolution?  I will discuss one of these cases in the final post in part 3 of this series and in my final series on nonviolence.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

Does nonviolent resistance work? What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (Part 1c)

Posted on by kathiemm

Third in a series by guest author Ian Hansen

This is a continuation of Part 1 of a four-part series: Does nonviolent resistance work?

  • Part 1: What Chenoweth and Stephan get right (also see Parts 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b and 2c)

In her comment on my original post, Dr. Dahlia Wasfi pointed out that Maria Stephan works for the State Department. That does not necessarily mean she personally supports U.S. empire. Historical figures like Mikhail Gorbechev and Zhao Ziyang (former Premier of the People’s Republic of China, who supported the Tiananmen Square protestors and thus fell from power) are reminders that participants in systems and even leaders of systems can facilitate or try to facilitate major humanity-respecting changes in those systems.

Not all servants of a state are enthusiastic supporters of that state’s wars, atrocities, and acts of oppression.

Dr. Wasfi also noted that it is strange for Chenoweth and Stephan to treat the Iranian Revolution as an example of successful nonviolent revolution given the prominent violent elements to that revolution. I have a different reason for discomfort with describing the Iranian Revolution as a “successful” nonviolent uprising. The state that emerged in the aftermath of that revolution treated many of the participants in it with a murderous brutality that recalled the purges of much more violent revolutions. (See Marjane Sartapi’s Persepolis for a firsthand account of a leftist family struggling in the aftermath of the anti-Shah movement they helped support.)

Chenoweth and Stephan admit that violent revolutionary activities co-occurred with the nonviolent civil resistance in Iran and that the post-Shah government was as brutal or more brutal in many ways. Still, they make a good case that nonviolence, while not used by all parties, was the most effective tactic employed in the Iranian revolution. Those who relied more exclusively on nonviolence gained the most power in the subsequent regime. The irony is that this faction then used the power they gained from nonviolence very violently. Chenoweth and Stephan argue—and offer data-based evidence—that this kind of state violence is less likely and less extensive after nonviolent than violent revolutions.

The take-home, then, is that as a matter of probabilities (rather than money-back guarantees), the victorious leaders of relatively nonviolent revolutions (and coups) are less likely to enact purges and genocidal-scope mass killings than are the victorious leaders of relatively violent upsets in relations of power.

Nonviolent revolutions get betrayed, too (as with Iran, and more recently Egypt), but usually the betrayal is gentler and has a lower body count compared to the betrayals enacted by leaders who take power after ultra-violent transformations.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

“Humanitarian intervention?” Imperialism still stinks, Part 4

Posted on by kathiemm

Final in the series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi

Gaza libera. Free Palestine
Photo from WikiMedia Commons, used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The people of lands whose riches are coveted by imperial powers must endure an almost constant battle among those vying for external control. In addition, they must bear the burden of indigenous struggle for independence. Such is the history of much of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Such is the root of much of the conflict in the Middle East today.

The colonial state of Israel continues to expand its borders with illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israeli government maps suggest planned annexation of the majority of this land. Through their expulsion from the 1940s through today, Palestinians remain the largest refugee population in the world.

Countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria finally gained their independence from foreign powers and took control of their oil industries. Along with Iran (following the Islamic revolution in 1979), these three countries were the major forces countering Western hegemony in the region. But those Western powers—and their multinational corporations—want their profitable colonial relationship back.

In the early 20th century, to honor “the spirit of the age” of national independence[1], the imperialists called their colonial possessions “mandates.” Now in the early 21st century, imperialists—armed with far more advanced weapons technologies—call their re-domination of these countries “humanitarian intervention for regime change.” These imperialists  claim that we must save the indigenous people in the Middle East from their states, in particular, from the use of weapons of mass destruction by local powers.

Those claims proved false in Iraq and remain unproven in Syria. In Iraq and Libya, the people are much worse off today than before our “humanitarian interventions” via military assault. Bombing raids and the subsequent replacement of secular states with theocracies have resulted in death, destruction, and further loss of freedoms for the survivors. As Western oil companies and military industries reap the profits, the parasitic colonial relationships are re-established.

No matter what euphemism our government uses for its policy, it’s still imperialism. And it still stinks.

[1] Owen, Roger. “State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd Edition.” Routledge, New York. 2004. p.6