William O. Beeman--Chickens Come Home to Roost in Georgia - NAM

Chickens Come Home to Roost in Georgia - NAM

Chickens Come Home to Roost in Georgia
New America Media, News Analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Aug 12, 2008

Editor's Note: The Bush Administration's push for access to oil from the Caspian Sea and it's desire to isolate Iran precipitated the Russian invasion of Georgia. William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has lived and worked in the Middle East region for more than 30 years.

No one should be surprised that U.S. interference in the Caucasus has led to the Russian invasion of South Ossetia. By mixing into the volatile politics of the Caucasus, and trying to recruit the governments there to become American "plumbers" for a variety of purposes, the United States has only drawn Russian fire.

The Caucasus was one of the last territories added to the Russian Empire in the 19th century. It was captured from the Qajar Empire of Iran. The Caucasians never were fully incorporated into Greater Russia, and maintained a fierce cultural separatism. Georgia in particular was proudly nationalistic, with a distinctive language, cuisine, literary tradition and writing system.

It is arguable that had Josef Stalin not been Georgian, the Caucasian region might never have been part of the Soviet Union. Georgia chafed under Soviet rule, and the wily Soviets enlisted other Caucasian minorities to keep the peace in the region, including the Ossetians. However, Stalinist nationalities philosophy made sure that no one ethnic group ever became too strong. One way to do this was to draw borders in such a way that groups would be split by administrative boundaries. The division between North and South Ossetia was one of these divisions.

The fall of the Soviet Union created three new independent nations in the Caucasus: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Almost immediately the ethnic enclaves in all of these nations began to fulminate for territorial reunification with their co-ethnic populations in other nations. These included South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Nakhchivan in Armenia, which is mostly Azerbaijani; and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, which is mostly Armenian.

Enter the United States. U.S. interests in this region were vastly different than that of the people of the region, or of Russia. The United States wanted access to Caspian Sea oil, and it wanted to contain Iran. The Caucasian nations were ideal for both purposes. The United States blasted ahead with no regard for the historical tensions in the region.

Therefore the United States blindly pursued a steady policy of propping up the dictatorial regimes of the region. Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia are among the most corrupt nations on earth, and it was easy to buy a government. The price for this support was unquestioning alliance with the United States and its regional policies.

Access to Caspian oil was one burning policy goal of all administrations since 1990. The easy route for transport of petroleum products from the region would be through Iran's well developed pipeline system. Literally just a few miles of pipeline would connect the Azerbaijani oil fields to the Iranian system. However, Washington was ready to do almost anything to avoid providing any economic benefit to Iran. Hence, working with U.S. petroleum producers, they constructed a difficult and tortuous pipeline across Azerbaijan and Georgia, to emerge in Turkey for shipping to the world. Many millions in government bribes changed hands to make this happen.

As Iran became a target of the George W. Bush administration, having friendly powers in the Caucasus became a priority for the Washington establishment. The Velvet Revolution in Georgia was aided by the United States. In Azerbaijan, the United States virtually installed the current president, Ilham Aliyev, son of the previous president for life, Heydar Aliyev. The election itself was highly controversial. Heydar Aliyev was in Cleveland, Ohio for medical treatment, and was rumored to have died four months before his son was elected. The United States government was reportedly involved in the cover-up, and supported Ilham's election despite mass protests among Azerbaijani citizens.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has close ties to the United States, having graduated with law degrees from Columbia and George Washington Universities. He was the leader of the Rose Revolution in 2003, which ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister, and striking a blow for Georgian independence. Elected president in 2004, he also greatly improved ties with Israel, and received an honorary doctorate from Haifa University, and has allowed Israeli intelligence to operate in Georgia. All of this endeared him to the Bush administration.

The United States tried to engineer the entrance of Georgia into NATO in April, 2008, but was surprised when 10 NATO members vetoed the proposal. Russia viewed this as a hostile act on the part of the United States.

President Saakashvili's presidency has not stopped continual ethnic violence from breakaway regions in his country. The South Ossetia conflict is only one of the latest, but it was different in that it serves as a smokescreen for Russian attacks on Saakashvili's government.

If Saakashvili should be ousted from office, a major U.S. and Israeli outpost would be lost. The fate of the oil pipeline would be in danger, and pressure on Iran would lessen considerably. All of these outcomes are seen as disastrous for the Bush administration. Thus all of the high-minded rhetoric about Georgian sovereignty coming out of Washington is ultimately cynical. If U.S. interests were not at stake, no one would care.

William O. Beeman---Will the U.S. Support Terrorists to Destabilize Iran? (New America Media)

Will the U.S. Support Terrorists to Destabilize Iran?

New America Media, News analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 07, 2008

Editor’s note: All attempts to justify a military attack on Iran have failed and the US is now looking at supporting fringe and terrorist groups to destabilize the country. It won’t work, says NAM contributing writer, William O. Beeman, but it will destabilize the region for years to come. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. The second edition of his book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press.

Elements of the Bush administration have begun to resemble semi-insane Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" with regard to Iran. Reckless and obsessive to destroy Iran’s regime, they fondle their ball bearings, and pursue any scheme that they believe will get rid of the mullahs before the inauguration of the new American president in January 2009.

In desperation, they have turned to supporting fringe-level ethnic separatists—all of whom are terrorists and enemies of the United States who are also hostile to Iran. This strategy is truly the last gasp of a failed Middle East policy. It is ill-conceived, and if continued, will foment continued violence in the region for years without affecting the Iranian regime in any significant way.

All attempts to justify a military attack on Iran have failed. Iran’s continuing nuclear program remains the Bush administration’s prime bulwark against Iran, but it is a very weak bulwark. There is still no evidence whatever for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Last December’s National Intelligence Estimate stated clearly that no current nuclear military program exists. Iran remains unwilling to halt uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes that is guaranteed to them under the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty, but responded positively on July 4 to European calls for negotiations on the nuclear issue, undercutting the Bush hard line (and effecting a drop in oil prices).

Other accusations against Iran are equally feeble. Claims of its support for attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq have failed for lack of any evidence. Iran’s supposed “proxy” attacks on Israel through Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas strain credulity, since these two groups are acknowledged by all credible experts to formulate their political agendas independently from Iran.

Continually frustrated in their attempts to launch any legitimate attack against Iran, Vice President Cheney and a group of die-hard neoconservatives hovering in and around his office, particularly his former Middle East adviser David Wurmser, have long been rumored to be engineering active support for dissident opposition groups who share their goal to overthrow the current Iranian regime. Many of these groups are aligned with non-Persian ethnic factions in Iran, notably Arabs, Kurds, Azerbaijanis and Baluchis. Serious analysts in the region have tended to dismiss these efforts as silly and ineffective. Nevertheless, neoconservative organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Near East Policy and the Hudson Institute have quietly championed the idea that Iran could be successfully dismembered along ethnic lines.

The American Enterprise Institute has long been a hotbed for debate over these plans. In October 2005, it hosted a conference entitled “The Unknown Iran: Another Case for Federalism?” in which the specter of an ethnic dismemberment of Iran was raised. The AEI has subsequently been host to several conclaves where this idea of fomenting ethnic violence has been discussed, in which representatives from dissident groups are regularly invited to hold forth.

The host of the 2005 conference Michael Ledeen and his cronies Michael Rubin, Danielle Pletka and Myrav Wurmser, the wife of Cheney’s former adviser, David Wurmser, have a curious rhetorical stance regarding Iran’s ethnic dissidents. They write long pieces pointing out that Persians are a minority in Iran, that ethnic groups are restive, that the central government lacks support from the fringe elements in the population. Then in the last paragraph they suddenly deny recommending that ethnic dissident groups be supported. Likewise Ledeen calls incessantly for the overthrow of the Iranian government, then denies that he is calling for military action.

The military continues to entertain the dismemberment of Iran and retired military officer and novelist Ralph Peters proposed the idea in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal. His article, ”Blood Borders” champions national independence for every ethnic group in the Middle East, redrawing the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey.

The problem would not be so acute, except for the fact that these groups, now somewhat ineffective, would be truly bad news if provided with significant U.S. aid and weapons. They would never be effective at eliminating the Iranian government, but they could become a source of instability and violence throughout the region for years to come. Because they are basically all anti-American in their orientation, the United States will also be harmed if they are strengthened.

Iran specialists have been aware of these groups for years, and largely discounted them. However, assertions of active United States support for them, awakened by journalist Seymour Hersh in the July 7 issue of the New Yorker, have become real cause for concern. The groups include:

*The M.E.K—Mujaheddin-e Khalq—officially a terrorist group in the United States for having killed Americans before the Revolution. They are Marxist in orientation, and are despised in Iran, since they were protected by Saddam Hussein all during the Iran-Iraq war, and are directly supported by the United States today.

*The PJAK—the “Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan,” a trans-national Kurdish militant organization dedicated to an independent Kurdistan. They are supported by the United States when they launch attacks against Iranian forces, but faulted when they launch attacks against Turkish forces in Turkey.

*The Jundallah—based in Sunni Muslim Balochistan. They are supported by extreme conservative Salafi groups in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi movement also forms the religious philosophy of the Taliban of Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. Claims of U.S. support for Jundallah are now several years old. In April 2007 Brian Ross and Christopher Isham of ABC News reported that the United States had been aiding Jundallah to attack Iranian targets. Jundallah’s leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, appeared on the Iranian service of the Voice of America, where he was identified as "the leader of popular Iranian resistance movement." More disturbing are Jundallah’s wider connections. As Seymour Hersh points out: “Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.”

Sunni Arab separatists in the Southeast Iranian province of Khuzistan, especially in its capital, Ahwaz, have been active since the time of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. There is no identifiable organization as with the other groups above, but Iranian security forces claim that the current round of violence, which includes the assassination of an Iranian Shi’ite cleric, Hojjat ol-Eslam Hesham Seymari on June 26, 2007, were “trained under the umbrella of the Americans in Iraq." The militants have also been linked with the London-based Ahvaz Arab People's Democratic-Popular Front.

The Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, SANAM or GAMOH, led by Mahmudali Chehregani was founded in 1995, and is perhaps the weakest of the ethnic separatist movements today. Nevertheless, Chehregani was hosted in Washington by the U.S. Department of Defense in June 2003, according to the Washington Times, and addressed a number of neoconservative venues. One difficulty with this movement is Chehregani’s antipathy to Kurds, whom he calls “guests” in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.

These separatist movements continue to have support in some legislative circles. Two of the most avid supporters are Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, both Republicans. Both favor removing the MEK from the list of terrorist organizations, and Brownback served as host to Mahmud Ali Chehregani in Washington.

No serious analyst of Iranian affairs believes that a strategy of ethnic division would bring down the central government of the Islamic Republic. Iran expert Vali Nasr, who teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University was quoted by Hersh as saying, “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. . . . working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.” Not to mention serious consequences for the United States.