Another unnecessary war |
| by Thomas Gale Moore |
|
As we know, the Bush administration has gifted
us with two wars. It has also promulgated the "Bush Doctrine," which
asserts the nation's right to launch a preventive strike against any country
that could potentially threaten the U.S. At the same time, this administration
has supported expanding NATO to include former parts of the Soviet Union, such
as Georgia and Ukraine. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West has moved
its presence closer and closer to Moscow itself. The Baltic states, which border
Russia, have been brought into the European Union and NATO. Poland, together
with Bulgaria and Hungary, once elements of the Soviet Bloc, are now members
of the EU and NATO.
In addition, the administration has pressured and bribed Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, into authorizing our military to establish anti-missile weapons and advanced radar in the two countries. Although Washington claims that those bases are intended solely to protect against Iranian rockets – which are not advanced enough to threaten the U.S. – Moscow believes that they are being installed with Russian weapons in mind. As a result, Russia feels increasingly that it is being surrounded and pushed into a corner. That is very dangerous. If the Russians were to adopt the Bush Doctrine, they might launch a preemptive strike against America. Sen. McCain has called for expelling Russia from the G8 group of industrial nations and preventing it from joining the World Trade Organization. McCain also wants to establish a League of Democratic states that would not include Russia or China. Which countries are democratic enough to qualify, he has failed to specify. All of these steps isolate Russia further from the West. Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin asserted in her interview with Charles Gibson of ABC news that Georgia and Ukraine deserve to join NATO. Should Russia attack one of them, she acknowledged, we would be obligated to go to its assistance. In other words, we would have to launch a war on Russia. Through 40 years of the Cold War we managed to avoid a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It would be devastating and tragic if now we were to become embroiled in a war with Russia, which has nuclear weapons, plus the intercontinental missiles powerful enough to deliver them to the U.S. If you are hiking in the woods and come across a wild animal, you should always give it a way to escape. Once cornered, the animal will attack you. The same advice applies when dealing with a dangerous country. Never corner it. Unfortunately that is exactly what this administration has been doing with Russia. We have already seen the results of attempting to bring Georgia into NATO. The Russians felt cornered. After we encouraged the Georgian regime to attempt to bring back the wayward territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow felt justified in sending troops into Georgia. Had Bush prevailed and secured Georgia's membership in NATO, we would have been obliged to send troops to help Georgia. In Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, Pat Buchanan stresses British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's promise to the Polish government, a military dictatorship reputedly as anti-Semitic as the Nazis, that Britain would go to war to defend Poland, handing those unsavory rulers the power to force Britain into war. Given the British guarantee, Warsaw was unwilling to negotiate with Germany. Extending NATO to Ukraine or Georgia would allow those unstable states to force the U.S. and other NATO countries into war with Russia. Ukraine's membership would be even more of a provocation than Georgia's. The Crimean Peninsula is a flash point. In 1954, the peninsula was transferred from Russian to Ukrainian administration, partly as a reward to Ukraine, partly because the peninsula was geographically closer to Ukraine. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine claimed the peninsula. The population, however, generally speaks Russian, not Ukrainian, and identifies more with Moscow than with Kiev. In 2001 the population of Crimea was about 52 percent Russian, 24 percent Ukrainian, and 18 percent Tatar, with other groups making up the balance. Under a 20-year treaty with Ukraine that expires in 2017, the Russian navy is stationed in Sevastopol. This provides Moscow with a year-round warm water port with access not only to the Black Sea but ultimately to the Mediterranean. Were Ukraine to join NATO, Russia would be expected to abandon its naval base. Clearly, it would be very unwilling to do so and would probably encourage the local population to demand independence from Ukraine. There have been several attempts by the population of the Crimea to become independent. The peninsula now has considerable autonomy. Recently it has been alleged that Russia has been issuing passports to those in the Crimea who request them. In South Ossetia the Russians have given their passports to anyone who wanted one, leading to the claim that the Russian army was simply protecting its own nationals. The Bush administration has led America into two interminable wars. It has threatened Iran with attacks and has been attempting to box in Russia by adding more countries to NATO, thus giving small, backward countries with unstable governments the power to ignite another war. The U.S. cannot afford a third conflict, either in money or in human lives. We should neither include these states in NATO nor should we build the anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. By cooperating with Russia, we might be able to achieve a great deal of good in the world, but cornering the Russian bear might lead to catastrophe. |
SIS Now Controls 40 Percent of Iraq’s Wheat Crop
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Type Size: Small
September 30, 2014
For
Salah Paulis, it came down to a choice between his faith and his
crop. A wheat farmer from outside Mosul, Paulis and his family fled the
militant group Islamic State early last month. The group overran the
family farm as part of its offensive that captured vast swathes of
territory in northern Iraq. Two weeks later, Paulis, who is a Christian,
received a phone call from a man who said he was an Islamic State
fighter.
“We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic. “Come back and we will guarantee your safety. But you must convert and pay $500.”
Related: The War Against ISIS Will Explode Our National Debt
When Paulis refused, the man spelled out the penalty. “We are taking your wheat,” he said. “Just to let you know we are not stealing it because we gave you a choice.” Other fleeing farmers recount similar stories, and point to a little-discussed element of the threat Islamic State poses to Iraq and the region.
The group now controls a large chunk of Iraq’s wheat supplies. The United Nations estimates land under IS control accounts for as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s annual production of wheat, one of the country’s most important food staples alongside barley and rice. The militants seem intent not just on grabbing more land but also on managing resources and governing in their self-proclaimed caliphate.
Wheat is one tool at their disposal. The group has begun using the grain to fill its pockets, to deprive opponents – especially members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities – of vital food supplies, and to win over fellow Sunni Muslims as it tightens its grip on captured territory. In Iraq’s northern breadbasket, much as it did in neighboring Syria, IS has kept state employees and wheat silo operators in place to help run its empire.
Such tactics are one reason IS poses a more complex threat than al Qaeda, the Islamist group from which it grew. For most of its existence, al Qaeda has focused on hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. But Islamic State sees itself as both army and government.
Related: 20 Facts About Baghdadi, the Elusive Leader of ISIS
“Wheat is a strategic good. They are doing as much as they can with it,” said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ union in Makhmur, a town near IS-held territory between Arbil and Mosul. “Definitely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.”
The Sunni militants and their allies now occupy more than a third of Iraq and a similar chunk of neighboring Syria. The group generates income not just from wheat but also from “taxes” on business owners, looting, ransoming kidnapped Westerners and, most especially, the sale of oil to local traders. Oil brings in millions of dollars every month, according to estimates by Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. That helps finance IS military operations – and is why IS-held oilfields in Syria are targets in U.S.-led airstrikes.
“Islamic State presents itself as exactly that, a state, and in order to be able to sustain that image and that presentation, which is critical for continued recruitment and legitimacy, it depends on a sustainable source of income," said Charles Lister, another visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.
Seizing Crops and LivestockIn early August, Kurdish farmer Saeed Mustafa Hussein watched through binoculars as armed IS militants shovelled wheat onto four trucks, then drove off in the direction of Arab villages. Hussein said he does not know what became of his wheat. But he knows that IS runs flour mills in areas it controls and he believes that his wheat was likely milled and sold.
Related: What ISIS Really Wants (Besides Your Head)
He had 54 tonnes of wheat on his farm in the village of Pungina, northeast of Arbil, wheat he had been unable to sell to a government silo or private traders because of fighting in the area. The militants also took 200 chickens and 36 prized pigeons. "What made it worse was that I was helpless to prevent this, I couldn’t do anything. They took two generators from the village that we had recently received from the Kurdish government after a very long process," said Hussein.
Residents are too scared to return even though Kurdish fighters are now in control. "We think the Islamic State laid mines to keep us from going back," said neighbor Abdullah Namiq Mahmoud.
There are scores of similar stories at displacement camps across Kurdistan. "We escaped with our money and gold but left our wheat and furniture and everything else," said farmer and primary school teacher Younis Saidullah, 62, a member of the tiny Kakaiya minority. "Everything we built for 20 years using my salary and our farming: It's all gone. We are back to zero," he said, sitting on the floor of a tent at a United Nations-run camp on the outskirts of Arbil.
Military and Economic PowerAfter Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered Western sanctions, the then-Iraqi dictator built a comprehensive subsidised food distribution system in Iraq. That was expanded under the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program. Joy Gordon, a political philosophy professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and author of the 2010 book “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions,” estimates that two-thirds of Iraqis “were dependent primarily or entirely” on food subsidies between 1990 and 2003.
Related: Here's the Real Key to Defeating ISIS
The system survived the U.S. invasion and years of violence. Now fully run by the Iraqi government, it has been plagued in recent years by “irregular (food) distributions” that have cut dependency, according to a June report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. A former U.S. Department of Agriculture economist estimates that about quarter of Iraqis living in rural areas were dependent on subsidised food before the latest violence, while another quarter used it to top up food they bought.
IS is demonstrating that controlling wheat brings power. As its fighters swept through Iraq’s north in June, they seized control of silos and grain stockpiles. The offensive coincided with the wheat and barley harvests and, crucially, the delivery of crops to government silos and private traders.
IS now controls all nine silos in Nineveh Province, which spans the Tigris river, along with seven other silos in other provinces. In the three months since overrunning Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, IS fighters have forced out hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities and seized hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat from abandoned fields.
Silo Under AttackOne target was the wheat silo in Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The silo has a capacity of 250,000 tonnes, or approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s domestic annual production in 2013. IS attacked Makhmur on August 7. But even in the weeks before that, the group had found a way into the silo and the Iraqi state procurement system.
Related: How the U.S. Allowed ISIS to Form a Terrorist Army
Abdel Rizza Qadr Ahmed, head of the silo, believes that IS forced local farmers to mix wheat produced in other, IS-controlled areas into their own harvest. The farmers then sold it to Makhmur as if it all had been grown locally. In the weeks before the attack, the silo purchased almost 14,000 more tonnes than it had in 2013. That extra wheat is worth approximately $9.5 million at the artificially high price Baghdad pays farmers.
Ahmed believes IS was looking to make money from the wheat and ensure there was bread available for Sunnis in the areas it controlled. Ahmed said it was not his job to investigate the source of the grain, just to buy it. “We just take the wheat from the farmers and we don't ask 'Where did you get this from?'" he said. Huner Baba, local director general of agriculture, said he too believed that traders and farmers had sold wheat from outside the region.
But Baghdad usually pays its wheat farmers around two months after they deposit their produce and so wheat farmers around Makhmur – and therefore IS – had not yet been paid by the time IS militants entered the town on June 7 and, according to Baba, headed for the silo.
The militants were met by Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, and fighters from the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). After IS took the silo, Baba said, they installed snipers there. He speculates that the militants believed U.S. warplanes would not strike the facility, which is in the center of town.
Related: Republicans - ISIS's Next Target Is America
“They want to get people on their side especially the Arabs. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do anything to the wheat, not to anger people,” he said.
IS held Makhmur for three days before the Kurdish fighters and U.S. air strikes on IS positions – though not on the silo – drove them out. U.S.-led air strikes did hit grain silos in the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Sept 28. A group monitoring the war said the aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain silos for an Islamic State base. There was no immediate comment from Washington.
Smooth TransitionIn many ways, IS is replicating in Iraq strategies it developed in Syria. In the year it has controlled the town of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, for instance, IS militants say they have allowed former employees from Assad’s regime to continue to run its mills. The group has set up a wheat "diwan," or bureau, in charge of the supply chain, from harvesting the crop to distributing flour.
“We are in your warehouse. Why are you not here working and taking care of your business?” the man asked in formal Arabic. “Come back and we will guarantee your safety. But you must convert and pay $500.”
Related: The War Against ISIS Will Explode Our National Debt
When Paulis refused, the man spelled out the penalty. “We are taking your wheat,” he said. “Just to let you know we are not stealing it because we gave you a choice.” Other fleeing farmers recount similar stories, and point to a little-discussed element of the threat Islamic State poses to Iraq and the region.
The group now controls a large chunk of Iraq’s wheat supplies. The United Nations estimates land under IS control accounts for as much as 40 percent of Iraq’s annual production of wheat, one of the country’s most important food staples alongside barley and rice. The militants seem intent not just on grabbing more land but also on managing resources and governing in their self-proclaimed caliphate.
Wheat is one tool at their disposal. The group has begun using the grain to fill its pockets, to deprive opponents – especially members of the Christian and Yazidi minorities – of vital food supplies, and to win over fellow Sunni Muslims as it tightens its grip on captured territory. In Iraq’s northern breadbasket, much as it did in neighboring Syria, IS has kept state employees and wheat silo operators in place to help run its empire.
Such tactics are one reason IS poses a more complex threat than al Qaeda, the Islamist group from which it grew. For most of its existence, al Qaeda has focused on hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings. But Islamic State sees itself as both army and government.
Related: 20 Facts About Baghdadi, the Elusive Leader of ISIS
“Wheat is a strategic good. They are doing as much as they can with it,” said Ali Bind Dian, head of a farmers’ union in Makhmur, a town near IS-held territory between Arbil and Mosul. “Definitely they want to show off and pretend they are a government.”
The Sunni militants and their allies now occupy more than a third of Iraq and a similar chunk of neighboring Syria. The group generates income not just from wheat but also from “taxes” on business owners, looting, ransoming kidnapped Westerners and, most especially, the sale of oil to local traders. Oil brings in millions of dollars every month, according to estimates by Luay Al-Khatteeb, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. That helps finance IS military operations – and is why IS-held oilfields in Syria are targets in U.S.-led airstrikes.
“Islamic State presents itself as exactly that, a state, and in order to be able to sustain that image and that presentation, which is critical for continued recruitment and legitimacy, it depends on a sustainable source of income," said Charles Lister, another visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.
Seizing Crops and LivestockIn early August, Kurdish farmer Saeed Mustafa Hussein watched through binoculars as armed IS militants shovelled wheat onto four trucks, then drove off in the direction of Arab villages. Hussein said he does not know what became of his wheat. But he knows that IS runs flour mills in areas it controls and he believes that his wheat was likely milled and sold.
Related: What ISIS Really Wants (Besides Your Head)
He had 54 tonnes of wheat on his farm in the village of Pungina, northeast of Arbil, wheat he had been unable to sell to a government silo or private traders because of fighting in the area. The militants also took 200 chickens and 36 prized pigeons. "What made it worse was that I was helpless to prevent this, I couldn’t do anything. They took two generators from the village that we had recently received from the Kurdish government after a very long process," said Hussein.
Residents are too scared to return even though Kurdish fighters are now in control. "We think the Islamic State laid mines to keep us from going back," said neighbor Abdullah Namiq Mahmoud.
There are scores of similar stories at displacement camps across Kurdistan. "We escaped with our money and gold but left our wheat and furniture and everything else," said farmer and primary school teacher Younis Saidullah, 62, a member of the tiny Kakaiya minority. "Everything we built for 20 years using my salary and our farming: It's all gone. We are back to zero," he said, sitting on the floor of a tent at a United Nations-run camp on the outskirts of Arbil.
Military and Economic PowerAfter Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait triggered Western sanctions, the then-Iraqi dictator built a comprehensive subsidised food distribution system in Iraq. That was expanded under the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food program. Joy Gordon, a political philosophy professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and author of the 2010 book “Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions,” estimates that two-thirds of Iraqis “were dependent primarily or entirely” on food subsidies between 1990 and 2003.
Related: Here's the Real Key to Defeating ISIS
The system survived the U.S. invasion and years of violence. Now fully run by the Iraqi government, it has been plagued in recent years by “irregular (food) distributions” that have cut dependency, according to a June report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. A former U.S. Department of Agriculture economist estimates that about quarter of Iraqis living in rural areas were dependent on subsidised food before the latest violence, while another quarter used it to top up food they bought.
IS is demonstrating that controlling wheat brings power. As its fighters swept through Iraq’s north in June, they seized control of silos and grain stockpiles. The offensive coincided with the wheat and barley harvests and, crucially, the delivery of crops to government silos and private traders.
IS now controls all nine silos in Nineveh Province, which spans the Tigris river, along with seven other silos in other provinces. In the three months since overrunning Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, IS fighters have forced out hundreds of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities and seized hundreds of thousands of tonnes of wheat from abandoned fields.
Silo Under AttackOne target was the wheat silo in Makhmur, a town between the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. The silo has a capacity of 250,000 tonnes, or approximately 8 percent of Iraq’s domestic annual production in 2013. IS attacked Makhmur on August 7. But even in the weeks before that, the group had found a way into the silo and the Iraqi state procurement system.
Related: How the U.S. Allowed ISIS to Form a Terrorist Army
Abdel Rizza Qadr Ahmed, head of the silo, believes that IS forced local farmers to mix wheat produced in other, IS-controlled areas into their own harvest. The farmers then sold it to Makhmur as if it all had been grown locally. In the weeks before the attack, the silo purchased almost 14,000 more tonnes than it had in 2013. That extra wheat is worth approximately $9.5 million at the artificially high price Baghdad pays farmers.
Ahmed believes IS was looking to make money from the wheat and ensure there was bread available for Sunnis in the areas it controlled. Ahmed said it was not his job to investigate the source of the grain, just to buy it. “We just take the wheat from the farmers and we don't ask 'Where did you get this from?'" he said. Huner Baba, local director general of agriculture, said he too believed that traders and farmers had sold wheat from outside the region.
But Baghdad usually pays its wheat farmers around two months after they deposit their produce and so wheat farmers around Makhmur – and therefore IS – had not yet been paid by the time IS militants entered the town on June 7 and, according to Baba, headed for the silo.
The militants were met by Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, and fighters from the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). After IS took the silo, Baba said, they installed snipers there. He speculates that the militants believed U.S. warplanes would not strike the facility, which is in the center of town.
Related: Republicans - ISIS's Next Target Is America
“They want to get people on their side especially the Arabs. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do anything to the wheat, not to anger people,” he said.
IS held Makhmur for three days before the Kurdish fighters and U.S. air strikes on IS positions – though not on the silo – drove them out. U.S.-led air strikes did hit grain silos in the northern Syrian town of Manbij on Sept 28. A group monitoring the war said the aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain silos for an Islamic State base. There was no immediate comment from Washington.
Smooth TransitionIn many ways, IS is replicating in Iraq strategies it developed in Syria. In the year it has controlled the town of Raqqa in northeastern Syria, for instance, IS militants say they have allowed former employees from Assad’s regime to continue to run its mills. The group has set up a wheat "diwan," or bureau, in charge of the supply chain, from harvesting the crop to distributing flour.
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