End of Sykes-Picot will not usher a new ME

Zafar Bangash

Shawwal 04, 1435 2014-08-01

Special Reports

by Zafar Bangash (Special Reports, Crescent International Vol. 43, No. 6, Shawwal, 1435)

The ISIS takfiris may have ripped the Sykes-Picot agreement of a century ago but what they plan to replace it with is hardly what Muslims are looking for.

Exactly a century after the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) was drawn up to draw arbitrary lines in the sand dividing the Middle East, the borders are being redrawn again. This time, however, even more blood is being spilled under the spurious pretext of establishing the Khilafah. There is no shortage of clowns and megalomaniacs in the world, especially the Middle East. The self-styled khalifah, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (real name Ali Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai) is no exception; he has burst on the scene but his flamboyant claims are soon likely to come up against the harsh reality of life in the region.

Few Muslims would shed any tears for the end of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy that so shamelessly ripped apart the last vestiges of the khilafah even though it had become a shell by the time it was abolished in March 1924.

Few Muslims would shed any tears for the end of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy that so shamelessly ripped apart the last vestiges of the khilafah even though it had become a shell by the time it was abolished in March 1924. The Sykes-Picot (British-French) conspiracy dismembered the region into nation-States giving birth to such monstrosities as Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia whose ultimate objective was the implantation of the Zionist cancer in the heartland of the Middle East. Jordan was historically part of Palestine that in turn was part of historical al-Sham that comprised Lebanon as well. There was no such entity as ‘Saudi’ Arabia before the brigand Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, a British agent, burst on the scene. Through ruthlessness and guile, he outsmarted Sharif Hussain of Makkah who had hitherto enjoyed relative autonomy from the Ottoman central authority in Istanbul.

The humiliation of Muslims is total; the plight of the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and their unending brutalization by the Zionists is a stark reminder of what is wrong in the Muslim world.

Some Muslims have welcomed the establishment of the khilafah, nostalgically harking back to the days of Islamic glory. Muslim frustration with the sad state of the Ummah today is completely understandable and indeed justified. There are few if any success stories the Muslim regimes can talk about. The humiliation of Muslims is total; the plight of the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and their unending brutalization by the Zionists is a stark reminder of what is wrong in the Muslim world. Under such circumstances, some Muslims may feel empowered by the announcement of establishment of the khilafah but a serious Islamic institution requires much more than a bunch of thugs brandishing Kalashnikovs and wresting control of some territory in a tribal feud. Nor can the blood-letting of innocents be used to establish such a noble institution. The actions of al-Baghdadi/al-Samarrai and his band of thugs are a complete perversion of Islam. Interesting also to note that the self-appointed khalifah has not uttered a single word of condemnation of Zionist crimes in Gaza even though he has demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him!

So what exactly is going in the Middle East?

Beyond the Muslims’ emotional fascination with the Khilafah—a serious issue no doubt—we must analyze the current situation properly. Nothing happens in a vacuum; al-Baghdadi did not emerge out of thin air. He was nurtured and groomed by the Americans even if they did not sign a formal contract with him. There are many ways to achieve one’s objectives.

Al-Baghdadi, however, is one cog in a larger wheel that the US and its allies have been spinning in the Middle East for decades. The disruption of the Middle East is part of a broader US-zionist plan for the region whose ultimate objective is the targeting of Islamic Iran. Turmoil in the region enables the Zionist regime to have a free hand to do what it likes. This is exactly what it has been doing in Gaza throughout July.

Beyond the zionists’ biannual itch to attack and brutalize Gaza, a tiny sliver of land that is home to 1.7 million Palestinians, the manner in which other Muslim majority countries have been destabilized serves only US-zionist interests. It should be immediately clear that while countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and now Iraq again have been disrupted, the medieval monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE etc have remained largely unaffected. Are we to assume that the people in these countries are happy under the heel of a single family rule?

In Egypt, the people’s legitimate aspirations have been undermined by unleashing the military against them. The Egyptian old guard is back at the helm and it has gone about a killing spree that would put even the Zionists to shame. In Yemen, controlled change was ushered in to ensure US-zionist-Saudi interests are protected. Libya, Syria and Iraq have been targeted to totally disrupt these societies. In Libya, the situation is so bad that people long for the days of the now-deceased Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, lynched by a US-trained and supported mob.

Events in the Middle East are being manipulated according to US plan. On March 2, 2007, Wesley Clark, a retired four-star American general, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that soon after 911, he went to the Pentagon to meet the top officials there. Here is what he told to Amy Goodman:

“About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary [of Defenc Donald] Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary [Paul] Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re too busy.’ He said, ‘No, no.’ He says, ‘We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ This was on or about the 20th of September [2001]. I said, ‘We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I guess they don’t know what else to do.’ So I said, ‘Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?’ He said, ‘No, no.’ He says, ‘There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.’ He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.’ And he said, ‘I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.’

In the same radio interview, Clark revealed the following:

“So I came back to see him [the general at the Pentagon] a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ‘I just got this down from upstairs’— meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office—‘today.’ And he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.’”

It is all there, coming not from some conspiracy theorist but a retired American four-star general that had contemplated seeking the presidential nomination. Going over the list, we can see that both Afghanistan and Iraq have been disrupted, with Iraq again at the receiving end for a second round of bloodletting. Somalia and Libya have been rendered failed states with total lawlessness gripping both. On July 14, the airport at Tripoli was bombed destroyed 90 percent of Libya’s aircraft fleet. Sudan has been split from South Sudan going its own way. Syria is engulfed in foreign-instigated war waged by mercenaries flooding into from all over the world.

Lebanon is also under threat, again. Nearly a million Syrian refugees have had to seek shelter in the tiny country (total population 4 million) while the Zionist rampage is underway in Gaza. In 2006, the Zionists attacked Lebanon with the specific aim of destroying the resistance movement Hizbullah. Instead, the Zionist invaders were given such a beating that with tails between their legs, they fled in ignominy. They do not, however, give up. Even in defeat they plan other devious ways to undermine Hizbullah so that it can maintain its hegemony in the region. The Zionists and the Americans are closely involved in supporting the takfiris to cause mayhem and disruption in the region.

Add to that the mayhem in Pakistan where the society is falling apart, and one can begin to see what the US and its allies have planned for the region. Another version of this plan outlined by Colonel Ralph Peters in his June 2006 article, titled ‘Blood borders’ published in the American Soldier magazine. In it, Peters outlined how numerous countries were to be divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. The Iraqi province of Kurdistan is virtually an independent state, thanks to US and allied policies. The Zionists, too, have been actively supporting and instigating Kurdish separatist aspirations. Should it materialize, Kurdish independence will not remain confined to Iraq: Turkey, Syria and Iran will all be adversely affected by it.

Where does al-Baghdadi fit into this larger picture? He has been unleashed to instigate sectarian warfare. This is a raw nerve that can be touched to arouse demons in even otherwise sensible people. The poison of sectarianism, like tribalism and nationalism, can cause havoc in societies. What we are witnessing in the Middle East is this mindless violence based on tenuous concepts. Ultimately, all these projects will fail or at the very least end in creating unstable and dependent societies but in the process, much innocent Muslim blood will be spilled.

Those Muslims that have latched on to the sectarian or ethnic agenda promoted by the west should seriously consider whether this is the way to go about creating independent states. The century mayhem that resulted from the Sykes-Picot agreement with the Zionist monstrosity planted in the heartland of Islam should give pause for Muslims to consider where they are heading with the latest demonic plan of the west.