Bush is winning by failing -- divide and conquer

And what if Bush is already winning?

Mona Sarkis 27. January 2007

Expansion of the conflicts, fragmentation of the region. Strategy without substance, but with success?

George W. Bush wants the “victory " in the Iraq. It underlined that again in its speech for the situation of the nation. Which he understands by it, remained already in his speech from 10 January nebulös: It is a victory against the terrorism, “will not look like those (victories), which obtained our fathers and grandfathers”. Less heavily with the articulation of its conceptions meanwhile many Middle East observers do. Of Bush strategy in the Iraq as in the entire region first the expansion of the local wars (see Alain Gresh) is, for a fragmentation of the middle east (so Walid Charara of the Lebanese daily paper “Al-Akhbar”) a thesis, for which some speaks and at that above all one concerned: the strategy could function.

Democratic reforms do not stand obviously any longer on of Bush agenda, noticed for Abdel Beri Atwan, editor-in-chief of the per-Palestinian daily paper “aluminium-Quds aluminium-Arabi” appearing in London in its comment to of Bush “more again” Iraq strategy. Priority however has the expansion of the conflicts in the middle east. The humiliating Exekutierung Saddam Hussein - besides at the high Muslim victim celebration - by the USA and their “malicious denomination-oriented allied one " in the Iraq was planned already, in order to advance the polarization between Sunniten and Shiites.

Actually many Iraqi Sunniten are convinced the Shiites revenge at Saddam that it concerns a nationally sanctioned murder, with which to take wanted. Also most Sunniten of the neighboring countries sees itself turning it so and with an increasing mixture from fear and anger against the own Shiite fellow citizens and against Iran as the only Shiite state.

Breaks without borders

Accordingly Hosni Mubarak - from concern over the Iranian - quit already the own Egyptian atomic program at the influential Saudi cleric Abdul Rahman aluminium-Barak adopted at the end of of December a Fatwa, in which he the “Verweigerer” (a devaluing name of the Sunniten for the Shiites, because these had refused their acknowledgment to the “quite led” successors of the prophet) as “disbelieving one” diffamed .

Parents of Algerian students ask the responsible authorities in an open letter in the city Schariaa for the protection of their children from teachers, who would obtain Shiite faith property. And on aluminium-Jazeera.Net approximately 29,000 persons take part in one on-line-inquire around to the worsening security situation in the Iraq. Over 73% accuse Iran.

Pass on, believe this and above all the escalations in Lebanon and in Palestine, which possibly flow into civil wars, of Bush “conquer and divide” - strategy Walid Charara, responsible for the opinion sides of the oppositionnear Lebanese daily paper “Al-Akhbar”. Antoine Sfeir might follow here.

For a long time the director/conductor of the Paris Centre asks d'Etude et de Recherche Politiques (CERPO): Why actually “it says that the USA lose (Iraq) the war, if they reach its principal purpose, the Aufsplitterung of the country?” The sample is, so Sfeirs conviction, to which will transfer entire region:

Some Arab states could disintegrate into small units, which are no correct states more, but religious or ethnical communities. “the USA “aim at small units, a kind of duchies, which do not have real power more and which external world not dangerously to become to be able.

Sunniten: Quiet doubts…

The fact that the ditches between the communities in and outside of Iraq already existed before the US invasion into the Iraq does not deny - nevertheless only the removal of Saddams regime opened the can of the Pandorra. Since that time of the USA operated culture of the force does not set however by any means on the canalization of the breaking out, but on soldiers, with whom a civilian society leaves itself hardly to past.

Thus the daily paper asks “Asharq aluminium-Awsat” in view of the recently accomplished substantial military employments against Sunni insurgent ones in the Bagdader Haifa road:

If the fight for control of a road requires this extent at military employment, what will be if we settled from lain the inside, strongly and almost closed quarters of Bagdad to sp

The newspaper continues to ask, as much death and destruction will have which effects on the relationship between crew and Iraqi population. The stress is on “population” and not on a separate Ethnie. This is remarkable, because the newspaper by the Saudi prince Salman is Abdul Aziz controlled and thus is to be added to the per-American “axle of the moderate ones”.

Straight however its alliance with many Sunni dominated states in the region help the acting US president to what his predecessors had remained refused - a new middle east. So anyhow Edward Luttwak, senior Fellow for preventive diplomacy at Washington centers for the Strategic and internationally Studies, which at the same time regards this access to the region not for the result of a thought out strategy, but as a pure coincidence product.

The result however is the same: Bush succeeded it to bring Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordanian one and the Gulf States on its side by making it impossible for them, in the future the interests of the USA to ignore, because this would run their own interests contrary. To those do not only belong the containment of the terrorism, but also the “thing with the democracy”, with which the USA “do not trouble " their “friends " with appropriate behavior became, like Joseph Samaha spöttelt, editor-in-chief of the decidedly against the western colonial policy arguing “Al-Akhbar”.

Differently than Luttwak he does not welcome the development, since she contributes to dangerous regional tensions and thus to, which he calls the “fall of Arab Spezifizitäten”. But is certain also for it: a slight concession to the superpower the USA, but a “crucial turning point in the history of our region " do not represent the “unconditional” declaration of consent, which the “moderate” Arab dictatorships Condoleezza Rice gave recently in Kuwait.

German original article URL: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/24/24521/1.html