Sunday, 6 April 2008
Saturday, 22 March 2008
Five Years On
The following article was first published in the Independent on 19/03/2008 which was written by Robert Fisk.
Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".
But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.
Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?
Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.
As the Americans came storming up Iraq in 2003, their cruise missiles hissing through the sandstorm towards a hundred Iraqi towns and cities, I would sit in my filthy room in the Baghdad Palestine Hotel, unable to sleep for the thunder of explosions, and root through the books I'd brought to fill the dark, dangerous hours. Tolstoy's War and Peace reminded me how conflict can be described with sensitivity and grace and horror – I recommend the Battle of Borodino – along with a file of newspaper clippings. In this little folder, there was a long rant by Pat Buchanan, written five months earlier; and still, today I feel its power and its prescience and its absolute historical honesty: "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.
"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."
How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year.
On our historical radars, not even Crassus appeared, the wealthiest Roman general of all, who demanded an emperorship after conquering Macedonia – "Mission Accomplished" – and vengefully set forth to destroy Mesopotamia. At a spot in the desert near the Euphrates river, the Parthians – ancestors of present day Iraqi insurgents – annihilated the legions, chopped off Crassus's head and sent it back to Rome filled with gold. Today, they would have videotaped his beheading.
To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate. And now we have the man who changed his mind on the legality of war – and did so on a single sheet of A4 paper – daring to suggest that we should test immigrants for British citizenship. Question 1, I contend, should be: Which blood-soaked British attorney general helped to send 176 British soldiers to their deaths for a lie? Question 2: How did he get away with it?
But in a sense, the facile, dumbo nature of Lord Goldsmith's proposal is a clue to the whole transitory, cardboard structure of our decision-making. The great issues that face us – be they Iraq or Afghanistan, the US economy or global warming, planned invasions or "terrorism" – are discussed not according to serious political timetables but around television schedules and press conferences.
Will the first air raids on Iraq hit prime-time television in the States? Mercifully, yes. Will the first US troops in Baghdad appear on the breakfast shows? Of course. Will Saddam's capture be announced by Bush and Blair simultaneously?.
But this is all part of the problem. True, Churchill and Roosevelt argued about the timing of the announcement that war in Europe had ended. And it was the Russians who pipped them to the post. But we told the truth. When the British were retreating to Dunkirk, Churchill announced that the Germans had "penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their tracks".
Why didn't Bush or Blair tell us this when the Iraqi insurgents began to assault the Western occupation forces? Well, they were too busy telling us that things were getting better, that the rebels were mere "dead-enders".
On 17 June 1940, Churchill told the people of Britain: "The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune." Why didn't Blair or Bush tell us that the news from Iraq was very bad and that they grieved – even just a few tears for a minute or so – for the Iraqis?
For these were the men who had the temerity, the sheer, unadulterated gall, to dress themselves up as Churchill, heroes who would stage a rerun of the Second World War, the BBC dutifully calling the invaders "the Allies" – they did, by the way – and painting Saddam's regime as the Third Reich.
Of course, when I was at school, our leaders – Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, or Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in the United States – had real experience of real war. Not a single Western leader today has any first-hand experience of conflict. When the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began, the most prominent European opponent of the war was Jacques Chirac, who fought in the Algerian conflict. But he has now gone. So has Colin Powell, a Vietnam veteran but himself duped by Rumsfeld and the CIA.
Yet one of the terrible ironies of our times is that the most bloodthirsty of American statesmen – Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz – have either never heard a shot fired in anger or have ensured they did not have to fight for their country when they had the chance to do so. No wonder Hollywood titles like "Shock and Awe" appeal to the White House. Movies are their only experience of human conflict; the same goes for Blair and Brown.
Churchill had to account for the loss of Singapore before a packed House. Brown won't even account for Iraq until the war is over.
It is a grotesque truism that today – after all the posturing of our political midgets five years ago – we might at last be permitted a valid seance with the ghosts of the Second World War. Statistics are the medium, and the room would have to be dark. But it is a fact that the total of US dead in Iraq (3,978) is well over the number of American casualties suffered in the initial D-Day landings at Normandy (3,384 killed and missing) on 6 June, 1944, or more than three times the total British casualties at Arnhem the same year (1,200).
They count for just over a third of the total fatalities (11,014) of the entire British Expeditionary Force from the German invasion of Belgium to the final evacuation at Dunkirk in June 1940. The number of British dead in Iraq – 176 – is almost equal to the total of UK forces lost at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45 (just over 200). The number of US wounded in Iraq – 29,395 – is more than nine times the number of Americans injured on 6 June (3,184) and more than a quarter of the tally for US wounded in the entire 1950-53 Korean war (103,284).
Iraqi casualties allow an even closer comparison to the Second World War. Even if we accept the lowest of fatality statistics for civilian dead – they range from 350,000 up to a million – these long ago dwarfed the number of British civilian dead in the flying-bomb blitz on London in 1944-45 (6,000) and now far outnumber the total figure for civilians killed in bombing raids across the United Kingdom – 60,595 dead, 86,182 seriously wounded – from 1940 to 1945.
Indeed, the Iraqi civilian death toll since our invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.
Yet in a sense, all this is a distraction from the awful truth in Buchanan's warning. We have dispatched our armies into the land of Islam. We have done so with the sole encouragement of Israel, whose own false intelligence over Iraq has been discreetly forgotten by our masters, while weeping crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.
America's massive military prestige has been irreparably diminished. And if there are, as I now calculate, 22 times as many Western troops in the Muslim world as there were at the time of the 11th and 12th century Crusades, we must ask what we are doing. Are we there for oil? For democracy? For Israel? For fear of weapons of mass destruction? Or for fear of Islam?
We blithely connect Afghanistan to Iraq. If only Washington had not become distracted by Iraq, so the narrative now goes, the Taliban could not have re-established themselves. But al-Qa'ida and the nebulous Osama bin Laden were not distracted. Which is why they expanded their operations into Iraq and then used this experience to assault the West in Afghanistan with the hitherto – in Afghanistan – unheard of suicide bomber.
And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.
Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".
But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.
Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?
Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.
As the Americans came storming up Iraq in 2003, their cruise missiles hissing through the sandstorm towards a hundred Iraqi towns and cities, I would sit in my filthy room in the Baghdad Palestine Hotel, unable to sleep for the thunder of explosions, and root through the books I'd brought to fill the dark, dangerous hours. Tolstoy's War and Peace reminded me how conflict can be described with sensitivity and grace and horror – I recommend the Battle of Borodino – along with a file of newspaper clippings. In this little folder, there was a long rant by Pat Buchanan, written five months earlier; and still, today I feel its power and its prescience and its absolute historical honesty: "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.
"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."
How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year.
On our historical radars, not even Crassus appeared, the wealthiest Roman general of all, who demanded an emperorship after conquering Macedonia – "Mission Accomplished" – and vengefully set forth to destroy Mesopotamia. At a spot in the desert near the Euphrates river, the Parthians – ancestors of present day Iraqi insurgents – annihilated the legions, chopped off Crassus's head and sent it back to Rome filled with gold. Today, they would have videotaped his beheading.
To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate. And now we have the man who changed his mind on the legality of war – and did so on a single sheet of A4 paper – daring to suggest that we should test immigrants for British citizenship. Question 1, I contend, should be: Which blood-soaked British attorney general helped to send 176 British soldiers to their deaths for a lie? Question 2: How did he get away with it?
But in a sense, the facile, dumbo nature of Lord Goldsmith's proposal is a clue to the whole transitory, cardboard structure of our decision-making. The great issues that face us – be they Iraq or Afghanistan, the US economy or global warming, planned invasions or "terrorism" – are discussed not according to serious political timetables but around television schedules and press conferences.
Will the first air raids on Iraq hit prime-time television in the States? Mercifully, yes. Will the first US troops in Baghdad appear on the breakfast shows? Of course. Will Saddam's capture be announced by Bush and Blair simultaneously?.
But this is all part of the problem. True, Churchill and Roosevelt argued about the timing of the announcement that war in Europe had ended. And it was the Russians who pipped them to the post. But we told the truth. When the British were retreating to Dunkirk, Churchill announced that the Germans had "penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their tracks".
Why didn't Bush or Blair tell us this when the Iraqi insurgents began to assault the Western occupation forces? Well, they were too busy telling us that things were getting better, that the rebels were mere "dead-enders".
On 17 June 1940, Churchill told the people of Britain: "The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune." Why didn't Blair or Bush tell us that the news from Iraq was very bad and that they grieved – even just a few tears for a minute or so – for the Iraqis?
For these were the men who had the temerity, the sheer, unadulterated gall, to dress themselves up as Churchill, heroes who would stage a rerun of the Second World War, the BBC dutifully calling the invaders "the Allies" – they did, by the way – and painting Saddam's regime as the Third Reich.
Of course, when I was at school, our leaders – Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, or Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in the United States – had real experience of real war. Not a single Western leader today has any first-hand experience of conflict. When the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began, the most prominent European opponent of the war was Jacques Chirac, who fought in the Algerian conflict. But he has now gone. So has Colin Powell, a Vietnam veteran but himself duped by Rumsfeld and the CIA.
Yet one of the terrible ironies of our times is that the most bloodthirsty of American statesmen – Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz – have either never heard a shot fired in anger or have ensured they did not have to fight for their country when they had the chance to do so. No wonder Hollywood titles like "Shock and Awe" appeal to the White House. Movies are their only experience of human conflict; the same goes for Blair and Brown.
Churchill had to account for the loss of Singapore before a packed House. Brown won't even account for Iraq until the war is over.
It is a grotesque truism that today – after all the posturing of our political midgets five years ago – we might at last be permitted a valid seance with the ghosts of the Second World War. Statistics are the medium, and the room would have to be dark. But it is a fact that the total of US dead in Iraq (3,978) is well over the number of American casualties suffered in the initial D-Day landings at Normandy (3,384 killed and missing) on 6 June, 1944, or more than three times the total British casualties at Arnhem the same year (1,200).
They count for just over a third of the total fatalities (11,014) of the entire British Expeditionary Force from the German invasion of Belgium to the final evacuation at Dunkirk in June 1940. The number of British dead in Iraq – 176 – is almost equal to the total of UK forces lost at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45 (just over 200). The number of US wounded in Iraq – 29,395 – is more than nine times the number of Americans injured on 6 June (3,184) and more than a quarter of the tally for US wounded in the entire 1950-53 Korean war (103,284).
Iraqi casualties allow an even closer comparison to the Second World War. Even if we accept the lowest of fatality statistics for civilian dead – they range from 350,000 up to a million – these long ago dwarfed the number of British civilian dead in the flying-bomb blitz on London in 1944-45 (6,000) and now far outnumber the total figure for civilians killed in bombing raids across the United Kingdom – 60,595 dead, 86,182 seriously wounded – from 1940 to 1945.
Indeed, the Iraqi civilian death toll since our invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.
Yet in a sense, all this is a distraction from the awful truth in Buchanan's warning. We have dispatched our armies into the land of Islam. We have done so with the sole encouragement of Israel, whose own false intelligence over Iraq has been discreetly forgotten by our masters, while weeping crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.
America's massive military prestige has been irreparably diminished. And if there are, as I now calculate, 22 times as many Western troops in the Muslim world as there were at the time of the 11th and 12th century Crusades, we must ask what we are doing. Are we there for oil? For democracy? For Israel? For fear of weapons of mass destruction? Or for fear of Islam?
We blithely connect Afghanistan to Iraq. If only Washington had not become distracted by Iraq, so the narrative now goes, the Taliban could not have re-established themselves. But al-Qa'ida and the nebulous Osama bin Laden were not distracted. Which is why they expanded their operations into Iraq and then used this experience to assault the West in Afghanistan with the hitherto – in Afghanistan – unheard of suicide bomber.
And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Questions & Answers about I/P
1. There seems to be a massive upsurge in violence in Gaza these past few days; what is happening?
It is important to recognize that the violence is mostly one-sided. On the one side, Israel is conducting a major military operation into the Northern Gaza Strip that includes ground forces, air-strikes and missile-strikes in crowded residential neighborhoods. It has also fired upon ambulances and destroyed many civilian homes. On Saturday (March 1), Israeli operations killed over 60 Palestinians, some of them were reported to be armed fighters but at least half of them were civilians, including 10 children and three women. Since last Wednesday (February 27) the Israeli assault has killed over 100 Palestinians and injured over 200. Israel claims this is only the first phase of the operation; the next phase will involve more ground troops.
On the other side, Palestinian rocket fire on Israel from Gaza killed one Israeli last Wednesday (February 27) and Palestinian fighters killed two Israeli soldiers in this operation.
2. How did this start?
This latest round of violence started when Israel air-strikes assassinated five high-level Hamas militants in southern Gaza early on Wednesday (February 27) and Hamas responded with a rocket barrage on the Israeli town of Sderot, killing one man, the first Israeli victim of rocket fire in nine months, and then fired longer range rockets on the large Israeli town of Ashkelon. Israel then responded with air-strikes on Gaza, including destroying the Hamas government interior ministry building, and then launched this major new operation it is calling “Operation Warm Winter,” the largest inside Gaza in the past few years. Reports in the Israeli press suggest that Israel had been preparing for a major operation in Gaza over the past month.
3. Israel claims that its actions are defensive and necessary to end Palestinian rocket fire into Israel that kills Israeli civilians. Doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself?
Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza have killed 14 Israelis and wounded hundreds more since 2001. These rocket attacks contravene international law and should stop immediately.
However, there are many ways a country can defend itself and Israel’s current military operation is unjustified for two main reasons.
First, Israel’s actions themselves are war-crimes. Attacks on residential areas (Gaza is one of the most crowded areas in the world) and the targeting of civilians, including homes and medical teams, represent war crimes according to the provisions of international humanitarian law. The use of disproportionate and lethal force against a civilian population even in response to the unlawful rocket attacks carried out by Palestinian armed groups is a blatant violation of the laws of war, enshrined in customary international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Second, if Israel’s goal is to end rocket attacks from Gaza, the most logical step it could take would be to respond positively to Hamas’ repeated cease-fire proposals for a complete end to rocket fire on Israel, most recently on February 23rd, when Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Hamas will consider any initiative that will bring about a ceasefire. Hamas claims it has secured the agreement of all factions to halt rocket fire and promised to impose the cease-fire provided that Israel reciprocates. Israel’s Prime Miniser Ehud Olmert immediately rejected the cease-fire offer, even though a growing number of Israeli politicians and security officials are calling for Israel to accept a cease-fire. Israel’s current operations are clearly about much more than securing Israeli civilians lives. Israel could easily end the rocket fire by accepting a cease-fire.
4. What would a cease-fire include?
Hamas has proposed a cease-fire many times and has been clear that it would have to include a cessation of all hostilities: Hamas would cease and impose a halt to all rockets and mortar shells from Gaza provided Israel would end its “targeted liquidations,” military incursions and its siege of Gaza. The negotiations should be conducted by Egypt, particularly since it would have to open the border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai to end the siege of Gaza and give it back its freedom of communication with the world by land, sea and air.
5. But how can one reach a cease-fire settlement with a violent organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel?
Israel’s demand that it cannot negotiate a cease-fire because Hamas does not “recognize Israel’s right to exist” is nothing more than a pretext for avoiding an end to violence on anything other than Israel’s terms. Even though Hamas has been responsible for many reprehensible and violent attacks on Israel, it is the main power in Gaza and has a track record of living up to its agreements. The claim about recognition is faulty for the following reasons:
First, the lack of recognition has never stopped states from negotiating with its adversaries; history is replete with negotiations between sworn enemies.
Second, such recognition is traditionally reciprocal; in order for Israel to receive recognition it would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine and define its own borders, which it refuses to do.
Third, and most importantly, in practical terms, if one state or group makes an agreement with another state, then it has recognized that state. So if Hamas were to agree to a cease-fire with Israel, it is meaningless whether or not it has formally recognized Israel because in fact, it has.
6. What then are the political reasons why the Israeli government rejects a cease-fire and chooses massive military invasions and violence in Gaza as its preferred policy?
The immediate reason is that the current Israeli government is under severe domestic pressure to take major actions to stop Palestinian rocket attacks, and since it will not accept a cease-fire and knows it cannot completely reoccupy the Gaza strip without major casualties, it is choosing to unleash intense violence upon the area where rocket attacks come from and upon Palestinians–both fighters and civilians — in order to pressure Hamas to halt rocket attacks. This is a form of collective punishment; it has never worked in the past and contravenes international law.
The deeper reason Israel chooses violence over a cease-fire is that Israel wants to avoid negotiations with a united Palestinian government that holds firm to basic Palestinian rights to a full and sovereign Palestinian state in the lands occupied by Israel in 1967. It wants to impose an agreement upon a weakened and divided Palestinian people who could be pushed to accept a deal that allows for Palestinian rule in truncated territorial enclaves under complete Israeli control, with most of the Israeli settlements remaining on Palestinian land. Dividing Hamas-ruled Gaza from the West Bank and refusing to negotiate any deal with Hamas helps it do this.
7. But do all Israelis oppose a Cease-Fire?
No. According to a recent poll, a majority of the Israeli public (64%) support direct talks with Hamas to achieve a mutual ceasefire. Moreover, Knesset Member Yossi Beilin and other high level politicians have called for an agreed ceasefire with Hamas and the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, calls for Israel and the US to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas.
It is important to recognize that the violence is mostly one-sided. On the one side, Israel is conducting a major military operation into the Northern Gaza Strip that includes ground forces, air-strikes and missile-strikes in crowded residential neighborhoods. It has also fired upon ambulances and destroyed many civilian homes. On Saturday (March 1), Israeli operations killed over 60 Palestinians, some of them were reported to be armed fighters but at least half of them were civilians, including 10 children and three women. Since last Wednesday (February 27) the Israeli assault has killed over 100 Palestinians and injured over 200. Israel claims this is only the first phase of the operation; the next phase will involve more ground troops.
On the other side, Palestinian rocket fire on Israel from Gaza killed one Israeli last Wednesday (February 27) and Palestinian fighters killed two Israeli soldiers in this operation.
2. How did this start?
This latest round of violence started when Israel air-strikes assassinated five high-level Hamas militants in southern Gaza early on Wednesday (February 27) and Hamas responded with a rocket barrage on the Israeli town of Sderot, killing one man, the first Israeli victim of rocket fire in nine months, and then fired longer range rockets on the large Israeli town of Ashkelon. Israel then responded with air-strikes on Gaza, including destroying the Hamas government interior ministry building, and then launched this major new operation it is calling “Operation Warm Winter,” the largest inside Gaza in the past few years. Reports in the Israeli press suggest that Israel had been preparing for a major operation in Gaza over the past month.
3. Israel claims that its actions are defensive and necessary to end Palestinian rocket fire into Israel that kills Israeli civilians. Doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself?
Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza have killed 14 Israelis and wounded hundreds more since 2001. These rocket attacks contravene international law and should stop immediately.
However, there are many ways a country can defend itself and Israel’s current military operation is unjustified for two main reasons.
First, Israel’s actions themselves are war-crimes. Attacks on residential areas (Gaza is one of the most crowded areas in the world) and the targeting of civilians, including homes and medical teams, represent war crimes according to the provisions of international humanitarian law. The use of disproportionate and lethal force against a civilian population even in response to the unlawful rocket attacks carried out by Palestinian armed groups is a blatant violation of the laws of war, enshrined in customary international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Second, if Israel’s goal is to end rocket attacks from Gaza, the most logical step it could take would be to respond positively to Hamas’ repeated cease-fire proposals for a complete end to rocket fire on Israel, most recently on February 23rd, when Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Hamas will consider any initiative that will bring about a ceasefire. Hamas claims it has secured the agreement of all factions to halt rocket fire and promised to impose the cease-fire provided that Israel reciprocates. Israel’s Prime Miniser Ehud Olmert immediately rejected the cease-fire offer, even though a growing number of Israeli politicians and security officials are calling for Israel to accept a cease-fire. Israel’s current operations are clearly about much more than securing Israeli civilians lives. Israel could easily end the rocket fire by accepting a cease-fire.
4. What would a cease-fire include?
Hamas has proposed a cease-fire many times and has been clear that it would have to include a cessation of all hostilities: Hamas would cease and impose a halt to all rockets and mortar shells from Gaza provided Israel would end its “targeted liquidations,” military incursions and its siege of Gaza. The negotiations should be conducted by Egypt, particularly since it would have to open the border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai to end the siege of Gaza and give it back its freedom of communication with the world by land, sea and air.
5. But how can one reach a cease-fire settlement with a violent organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel?
Israel’s demand that it cannot negotiate a cease-fire because Hamas does not “recognize Israel’s right to exist” is nothing more than a pretext for avoiding an end to violence on anything other than Israel’s terms. Even though Hamas has been responsible for many reprehensible and violent attacks on Israel, it is the main power in Gaza and has a track record of living up to its agreements. The claim about recognition is faulty for the following reasons:
First, the lack of recognition has never stopped states from negotiating with its adversaries; history is replete with negotiations between sworn enemies.
Second, such recognition is traditionally reciprocal; in order for Israel to receive recognition it would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine and define its own borders, which it refuses to do.
Third, and most importantly, in practical terms, if one state or group makes an agreement with another state, then it has recognized that state. So if Hamas were to agree to a cease-fire with Israel, it is meaningless whether or not it has formally recognized Israel because in fact, it has.
6. What then are the political reasons why the Israeli government rejects a cease-fire and chooses massive military invasions and violence in Gaza as its preferred policy?
The immediate reason is that the current Israeli government is under severe domestic pressure to take major actions to stop Palestinian rocket attacks, and since it will not accept a cease-fire and knows it cannot completely reoccupy the Gaza strip without major casualties, it is choosing to unleash intense violence upon the area where rocket attacks come from and upon Palestinians–both fighters and civilians — in order to pressure Hamas to halt rocket attacks. This is a form of collective punishment; it has never worked in the past and contravenes international law.
The deeper reason Israel chooses violence over a cease-fire is that Israel wants to avoid negotiations with a united Palestinian government that holds firm to basic Palestinian rights to a full and sovereign Palestinian state in the lands occupied by Israel in 1967. It wants to impose an agreement upon a weakened and divided Palestinian people who could be pushed to accept a deal that allows for Palestinian rule in truncated territorial enclaves under complete Israeli control, with most of the Israeli settlements remaining on Palestinian land. Dividing Hamas-ruled Gaza from the West Bank and refusing to negotiate any deal with Hamas helps it do this.
7. But do all Israelis oppose a Cease-Fire?
No. According to a recent poll, a majority of the Israeli public (64%) support direct talks with Hamas to achieve a mutual ceasefire. Moreover, Knesset Member Yossi Beilin and other high level politicians have called for an agreed ceasefire with Hamas and the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, calls for Israel and the US to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Somebody to Love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you're doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can't get no relief,
Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
I work hard every day of my life
I work till I ache my bones
At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord - somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me - somebody to love?
Everyday - I try and I try and I try -
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I'm goin' crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah - yeah yeah yeah
Oh Lord
Somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I'm ok, I'm alright
Ain't gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I'm gonna be free, Lord!
Find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you're doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can't get no relief,
Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
I work hard every day of my life
I work till I ache my bones
At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord - somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me - somebody to love?
Everyday - I try and I try and I try -
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I'm goin' crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah - yeah yeah yeah
Oh Lord
Somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I'm ok, I'm alright
Ain't gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I'm gonna be free, Lord!
Find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Somebody to Love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you're doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can't get no relief,
Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
I work hard every day of my life
I work till I ache my bones
At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord - somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me - somebody to love?
Everyday - I try and I try and I try -
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I'm goin' crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah - yeah yeah yeah
Oh Lord
Somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I'm ok, I'm alright
Ain't gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I'm gonna be free, Lord!
Find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Each morning I get up I die a little
Can barely stand on my feet
Take a look in the mirror and cry
Lord what you're doing to me
I have spent all my years in believing you
But I just can't get no relief,
Lord!
Somebody, somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
I work hard every day of my life
I work till I ache my bones
At the end I take home my hard earned pay all on my own -
I get down on my knees
And I start to pray
Till the tears run down from my eyes
Lord - somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me - somebody to love?
Everyday - I try and I try and I try -
But everybody wants to put me down
They say I'm goin' crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
Got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe
Yeah - yeah yeah yeah
Oh Lord
Somebody - somebody
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I'm ok, I'm alright
Ain't gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
Someday I'm gonna be free, Lord!
Find me somebody to love
Can anybody find me somebody to love?
Friday, 18 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
Saturday, 24 November 2007
Yazdgerd III Reply
The following shows the reply from Yazdgerd III, one of Sassanian's kings to Omar's invitation for the Persian nation to submit to Isalm.
Sunday, 11 November 2007
Poems & Lyrics
There are no words, I can use
Because the meaning still leaves for you to choose
And I couldn't stand to let them be abused, by you.
Dreams I had just last night
Made me scared, white with fright
But I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
Fortunes come and fortunes go
But things get better babe, that's one thing I know
And I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
I have a friend that I have met
Who gives me love and a certain respect
Just a little respect, everybody needs just a little respect
That means you. . .you...
And in a little while our love will spread
To you
Ain't no matter who inside this world you know
There'll he someone who will love you just for who you are
Really are
Dreams I had just last night
Made me worried to face up to the light
But I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on over and find yourself
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on in and remind yourself
Oh darling, you see my face
But it's in my heart that's where it's taking place
And I couldn't stand to let it go to waste
Can you ...
Oh love, sweet blue love
No man can ever get enough
But maybe one day we'll all die in love
Will you . .. Oh love, sweet love, my... love
Oh babe, understand
Take my love that's all I have at hand
Please say you will ... Don't say you can't
Oh Will you Will you Will you
The moment you walked inside my door
I knew' that I need not look no more
I've seen many other girls before, ah but darling
Heaven must've programmed you
The moment you fell inside my dreams
I realised all I had not seen
I've seen many other girls before, ah hot darling
Heaven must've programmed you
You can live in the largest house
And eleven apartments too
Run your own private plane
And a boat in Malibu
But 'till you know' deep down what inside you really need
Well I love you baby, Ooh my dear
And I think about you sometimes
But when you're with me boy it chokes my mind
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on over and find yourself
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on in and remind yourself
Man must fight for freedom sure that's what most other people would say
Look for a body to lead them but there's too many to lead them away.
Why wait until it's your time to die before you learn what you were born to do'?
Come on now it's freedom calling but there's only one freedom for you.
Love, love boy...
And I can't wait to be with you tomorrow night.
Won't you give me your word that you won't laugh
Cos you've been a saving grace to me
And I'd hate to face a day without you around
My life would be without sound
Love, love, love, love must've made you on a Sunday
Cos you taste to me as good as God made honey taste babe
And the sky all glistens with gold
When you're talking to me
And the whirling wind turns to song
Why it sets my soul free
Love, love. love. love must've made you on a Sunday
There are no words. I can use
Because the meaning still leaves for you to choose
And I couldn't stand to let them be abused, by you
Cat Stevens
Because the meaning still leaves for you to choose
And I couldn't stand to let them be abused, by you.
Dreams I had just last night
Made me scared, white with fright
But I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
Fortunes come and fortunes go
But things get better babe, that's one thing I know
And I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
I have a friend that I have met
Who gives me love and a certain respect
Just a little respect, everybody needs just a little respect
That means you. . .you...
And in a little while our love will spread
To you
Ain't no matter who inside this world you know
There'll he someone who will love you just for who you are
Really are
Dreams I had just last night
Made me worried to face up to the light
But I'm over to that Sunnyside Road
Over to that Sunnyside Road
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on over and find yourself
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on in and remind yourself
Oh darling, you see my face
But it's in my heart that's where it's taking place
And I couldn't stand to let it go to waste
Can you ...
Oh love, sweet blue love
No man can ever get enough
But maybe one day we'll all die in love
Will you . .. Oh love, sweet love, my... love
Oh babe, understand
Take my love that's all I have at hand
Please say you will ... Don't say you can't
Oh Will you Will you Will you
The moment you walked inside my door
I knew' that I need not look no more
I've seen many other girls before, ah but darling
Heaven must've programmed you
The moment you fell inside my dreams
I realised all I had not seen
I've seen many other girls before, ah hot darling
Heaven must've programmed you
You can live in the largest house
And eleven apartments too
Run your own private plane
And a boat in Malibu
But 'till you know' deep down what inside you really need
Well I love you baby, Ooh my dear
And I think about you sometimes
But when you're with me boy it chokes my mind
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on over and find yourself
Come on now it's freedom calling
Come on in and remind yourself
Man must fight for freedom sure that's what most other people would say
Look for a body to lead them but there's too many to lead them away.
Why wait until it's your time to die before you learn what you were born to do'?
Come on now it's freedom calling but there's only one freedom for you.
Love, love boy...
And I can't wait to be with you tomorrow night.
Won't you give me your word that you won't laugh
Cos you've been a saving grace to me
And I'd hate to face a day without you around
My life would be without sound
Love, love, love, love must've made you on a Sunday
Cos you taste to me as good as God made honey taste babe
And the sky all glistens with gold
When you're talking to me
And the whirling wind turns to song
Why it sets my soul free
Love, love. love. love must've made you on a Sunday
There are no words. I can use
Because the meaning still leaves for you to choose
And I couldn't stand to let them be abused, by you
Cat Stevens
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Wednesday, 7 November 2007
Thursday, 11 October 2007
19 August 1953
August 19, 1953 was the worst day in Iranian modern history. On that horrible day, Iran lost independence, freedom, democracy and constitution.
Iran was deprived of a democratic, secular and nationalist regime.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, under the direction of CIA and MI6, and with the help of high-ranking Shia clerics, anti-democratic military officers, and paid mercenary toppled the democratic government and replaced it with a brutal tyranny.
Ayatollah Kashani and his son played major roles during the coup as well as during the activities prior to the coup. Kashani publicly attacked Mossadegh and was supporting the Shah since late 1952. When the Shah announced that he was leaving Iran on February 28, 1953, Ayatollah Kashani made the following statement:
"People be warned! Treacherous decisions have resulted in the decision of our beloved and democratic shah to leave the country... You should realize that if the shah goes, whatever we have will go with him. Rise up and stop him, and make him change his mind. Because, today, our existence and independence depend on the very person of His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and no one else.
Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA chief of operations in Tehran, gave $10,000 to Ayatollah Kashani on August 18, a day before the coup. Two weeks after the August 19 coup, Ayatollah Kashani said in an interview that " Mossadegh was guilty of high treason and had to be punished by death."
According to Dr. Mark J. Gasiorowski, American Political Scientist and one of the foremost scholars of the coup:
Several days after the coup, the British received a report from the Iraqi ambassador in Tehran that the Shah and Zahedi together had visited Kashani, kissed his hands, and thanked him for his help in restoring the monarchy.
One CIA officer said, Kashani's son visited him several times after the coup to remind him of the role played by his father.
AND THIS IS HOW HE HAS BEEN PORTRAYED AFTER 1979:
Ayatollah Kashani was born in Tehran, (1264 solar year). He was called Abol-Qasem. His father (Ayatollah Hajj Seyyed Mostafa Kashani) was a great
clergyman of Shiism in his period. Abou Al-Qasem was trained in a holy and virtuous family under the attention of his religious parents. He began the learning of Quran recitation after he got the knowledge of reading and writing.
Seyyed Abou Al-Qasem went to Seminary and learned literature, Arabic language, logic, semantics and speech, jurisprudence and principles when he was 16. He went to Iraq in order to learn more about Quran, and "Hadiths". He continued his
education in Holy Najaf Seminary and got Jurisprudence degree when he was 25 years old. He had liberal thoughts from younghood and hated
oppression, despotism and colonization and opposed with them. He was younger and fresher than other religious leaders, so he was on the first line of fight. AllIslamic scientists have a simple life out of gathering money. Ayatollah Kashani’s life was like this, too.
He died in 1340 (solar year). Finally he cut foreigners’
hand from Iran by nationalization of oil industry!!!!
Iran was deprived of a democratic, secular and nationalist regime.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, under the direction of CIA and MI6, and with the help of high-ranking Shia clerics, anti-democratic military officers, and paid mercenary toppled the democratic government and replaced it with a brutal tyranny.
Ayatollah Kashani and his son played major roles during the coup as well as during the activities prior to the coup. Kashani publicly attacked Mossadegh and was supporting the Shah since late 1952. When the Shah announced that he was leaving Iran on February 28, 1953, Ayatollah Kashani made the following statement:
"People be warned! Treacherous decisions have resulted in the decision of our beloved and democratic shah to leave the country... You should realize that if the shah goes, whatever we have will go with him. Rise up and stop him, and make him change his mind. Because, today, our existence and independence depend on the very person of His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, and no one else.
Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA chief of operations in Tehran, gave $10,000 to Ayatollah Kashani on August 18, a day before the coup. Two weeks after the August 19 coup, Ayatollah Kashani said in an interview that " Mossadegh was guilty of high treason and had to be punished by death."
According to Dr. Mark J. Gasiorowski, American Political Scientist and one of the foremost scholars of the coup:
Several days after the coup, the British received a report from the Iraqi ambassador in Tehran that the Shah and Zahedi together had visited Kashani, kissed his hands, and thanked him for his help in restoring the monarchy.
One CIA officer said, Kashani's son visited him several times after the coup to remind him of the role played by his father.
AND THIS IS HOW HE HAS BEEN PORTRAYED AFTER 1979:
Ayatollah Kashani was born in Tehran, (1264 solar year). He was called Abol-Qasem. His father (Ayatollah Hajj Seyyed Mostafa Kashani) was a great
clergyman of Shiism in his period. Abou Al-Qasem was trained in a holy and virtuous family under the attention of his religious parents. He began the learning of Quran recitation after he got the knowledge of reading and writing.
Seyyed Abou Al-Qasem went to Seminary and learned literature, Arabic language, logic, semantics and speech, jurisprudence and principles when he was 16. He went to Iraq in order to learn more about Quran, and "Hadiths". He continued his
education in Holy Najaf Seminary and got Jurisprudence degree when he was 25 years old. He had liberal thoughts from younghood and hated
oppression, despotism and colonization and opposed with them. He was younger and fresher than other religious leaders, so he was on the first line of fight. AllIslamic scientists have a simple life out of gathering money. Ayatollah Kashani’s life was like this, too.
He died in 1340 (solar year). Finally he cut foreigners’
hand from Iran by nationalization of oil industry!!!!
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Islamic Conquest of Iran by Arabs
The beduin Arabs who toppled the Sassanid Empire were propelled not only by a desire for conquest but also by a new religion, Islam. The Prophet Mohammad, a member of the Hashimite clan of the powerful tribe of Quraysh, proclaimed his prophetic mission in Arabia in 612 and eventually won over the city of his birth, Mecca, to the new faith. Within one year of Muhammad's death in 632, Arabia itself was secure enough to allow his secular successor, Abu Bakr, the first caliph, to begin the campaign against the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires.
Abu Bakr defeated the Byzantine army at Damascus in 635 and then began his conquest of Iran. In 637 the Arab forces occupied the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon (which they renamed Madain), and in 641-42 they defeated the Sassanid army at Nahavand. After that, Iran lay open to the invaders. The Islamic conquest was aided by the material and social bankruptcy of the Sassanids; the native populations had little to lose by cooperating with the conquering power. Moreover, the Muslims offered relative religious tolerance and fair treatment to populations that accepted Islamic rule without resistance. It was not until around 650, however, that resistance in Iran was quelled. Conversion to Islam, which offered certain advantages, was fairly rapid among the urban population but slower among the peasantry and the dihqans [farmers]. The majority of Iranians did not become Muslim until the ninth century.
Although the conquerors, especially the Umayyads (the Muslim rulers who succeeded Mohammad from 661-750), tended to stress the primacy of Arabs among Muslims, the Iranians were gradually integrated into the new community. The Muslim conquerors adopted the Sassanid coinage system and many Sassanid administrative practices, including the office of vizier, or minister, and the divan, a bureau or register for controlling state revenue and expenditure that became a characteristic of administration throughout Muslim lands. Later caliphs adopted Iranian court ceremonial practices and the trappings of Sassanid monarchy. Men of Iranian origin served as administrators after the conquest, and Iranians contributed significantly to all branches of Islamic learning, including philology, literature, history, geography, jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences.
The Arabs were in control, however. The new state religion, Islam, imposed its own system of beliefs, laws, and social mores. In regions that submitted peacefully to Muslim rule, landowners kept their land. But crown land, land abandoned by fleeing owners, and land taken by conquest passed into the hands of the new state. This included the rich lands of the Sawad, a rich, alluvial plain in central and southern Iraq. Arabic became the official language of the court in 696, although Persian continued to be widely used as the spoken language. The shuubiyya literary controversy of the ninth through the eleventh centuries, in which Arabs and Iranians each lauded their own and denigrated the other's cultural traits, suggests the survival of a certain sense of distinct Iranian identity. In the ninth century, the emergence of more purely Iranian ruling dynasties witnessed the revival of the Persian language, enriched by Arabic loanwords and using the Arabic script, and of Persian literature.
Another legacy of the Arab conquest was Shia Islam, which, although it has come to be identified closely with Iran, was not initially an Iranian religious movement. It originated with the Arab Muslims. In the great schism of Islam, one group among the community of believers maintained that leadership of the community following the death of prophet Mohammad rightfully belonged to Mohammad's son-in-law, Ali, and to his descendants. This group came to be known as the Shiat Ali, the partisans of Ali, or the Shias. Another group, supporters of Muawiya (a rival contender for the caliphate following the murder of Uthman), challenged Ali's election to the caliphate in 656. After Ali was assassinated while praying in a mosque at Kufa in 661, Muawiya was declared caliph by the majority of the Islamic community. He became the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, which had its capital at Damascus.
Ali's youngest son, Hossain, refused to pay the homage commanded by Muawiya's son and successor Yazid I and fled to Mecca, where he was asked to lead the Shias--mostly those living in present-day Iraq--in a revolt. At Karbala, in Iraq, Hossain's band of 200 men and women followers, unwilling to surrender, were finally cut down by about 4,000 Umayyad troops. The Umayyad leader received Hossain's head, and Hossain's death in 680 on the tenth of Moharram continues to be observed as a day of mourning for all Shias.
The largest concentration of Shias in the first century of Islam was in southern Iraq. It was not until the sixteenth century, under the Safavids, that a majority of Iranians became Shias. Shia Islam became then, as it is now, the state religion.
The Abbasids, who overthrew the Umayyads in 750, while sympathetic to the Iranian Shias, were clearly an Arab dynasty. They revolted in the name of descendants of Mohammad's uncle, Abbas, and the House of Hashim. Hashim was an ancestor of both the Shia and the Abbas, or Sunni, line, and the Abbasid movement enjoyed the support of both Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Abbasid army consisted primarily of Khorasanians [Khorasan, a region in the north east of Iran] and was led by an Iranian general, Abu Moslim Khorasani. It contained both Iranian and Arab elements, and the Abbasids enjoyed both Iranian and Arab support.
Nevertheless, the Abbasids, although sympathetic to the Shias, whose support they wished to retain, did not encourage the more extremist Shia aspirations. The Abbasids established their capital at Baghdad. Al Mamon, who seized power from his brother, Amin, and proclaimed himself caliph in 811, had an Iranian mother and thus had a base of support in Khorasan. The Abbasids continued the centralizing policies of their predecessors. Under their rule, the Islamic world experienced a cultural efflorescence and the expansion of trade and economic prosperity. These were developments in which Iran shared.
Iran's next ruling dynasties descended from nomadic, Turkic-speaking warriors who had been moving out of Central Asia into Transoxiana for more than a millennium. The Abbasid caliphs began enlisting these people as slave warriors as early as the ninth century. Shortly thereafter the real power of the Abbasid caliphs began to wane; eventually they became religious figureheads while the warrior slaves ruled. As the power of the Abbasid caliphs diminished, a series of independent and indigenous dynasties rose in various parts of Iran, some with considerable influence and power. Among the most important of these overlapping dynasties were the Tahirids in Khorasan (820-72); the Saffarids in Sistan (867-903); and the Samanids (875-1005), originally at Bokhara . The Samanids eventually ruled an area from central Iran to India. In 962 a Turkish slave governor of the Samanids, Alptigin, conquered Ghazna (in present-day Afghanistan) and established the Ghaznavid Dynasty that lasted to 1186.
Several Samanid cities had been lost to another Turkish group, the Seljoks, a clan of the Oghoz (or Ghozz) Turks, who lived north of the Oxus River (present-day Amu Darya). Their leader, Toghril Beg, turned his warriors against the Ghaznavids in Khorasan. He moved south and then west, conquering but not wasting the cities in his path. In 1055 the caliph in Baghdad gave Toghril Beg robes, gifts, and the title King of the East. Under Toghril Beg's successor, Malik Shah (1072-92), Iran enjoyed a cultural and scientific renaissance, largely attributed to his brilliant Iranian vizier, Nezam al Molk. These leaders established the observatory where Omar Khayyam did much of his experimentation for a new calendar, and they built religious schools in all the major towns. They brought Abu Hamid Ghazali, one of the greatest Islamic theologians, and other eminent scholars to the Seljok capital at Baghdad and encouraged and supported their work.
A serious internal threat to the Seljoks, however, came from the Ismailis, a secret sect with headquarters at Alamot between Rasht and Tehran. They controlled the immediate area for more than 150 years and sporadically sent out adherents to strengthen their rule by murdering important officials. They were called assassins and hashishiyya as people believed that they smoked hashish before their missions.
Abu Bakr defeated the Byzantine army at Damascus in 635 and then began his conquest of Iran. In 637 the Arab forces occupied the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon (which they renamed Madain), and in 641-42 they defeated the Sassanid army at Nahavand. After that, Iran lay open to the invaders. The Islamic conquest was aided by the material and social bankruptcy of the Sassanids; the native populations had little to lose by cooperating with the conquering power. Moreover, the Muslims offered relative religious tolerance and fair treatment to populations that accepted Islamic rule without resistance. It was not until around 650, however, that resistance in Iran was quelled. Conversion to Islam, which offered certain advantages, was fairly rapid among the urban population but slower among the peasantry and the dihqans [farmers]. The majority of Iranians did not become Muslim until the ninth century.
Although the conquerors, especially the Umayyads (the Muslim rulers who succeeded Mohammad from 661-750), tended to stress the primacy of Arabs among Muslims, the Iranians were gradually integrated into the new community. The Muslim conquerors adopted the Sassanid coinage system and many Sassanid administrative practices, including the office of vizier, or minister, and the divan, a bureau or register for controlling state revenue and expenditure that became a characteristic of administration throughout Muslim lands. Later caliphs adopted Iranian court ceremonial practices and the trappings of Sassanid monarchy. Men of Iranian origin served as administrators after the conquest, and Iranians contributed significantly to all branches of Islamic learning, including philology, literature, history, geography, jurisprudence, philosophy, medicine, and the sciences.
The Arabs were in control, however. The new state religion, Islam, imposed its own system of beliefs, laws, and social mores. In regions that submitted peacefully to Muslim rule, landowners kept their land. But crown land, land abandoned by fleeing owners, and land taken by conquest passed into the hands of the new state. This included the rich lands of the Sawad, a rich, alluvial plain in central and southern Iraq. Arabic became the official language of the court in 696, although Persian continued to be widely used as the spoken language. The shuubiyya literary controversy of the ninth through the eleventh centuries, in which Arabs and Iranians each lauded their own and denigrated the other's cultural traits, suggests the survival of a certain sense of distinct Iranian identity. In the ninth century, the emergence of more purely Iranian ruling dynasties witnessed the revival of the Persian language, enriched by Arabic loanwords and using the Arabic script, and of Persian literature.
Another legacy of the Arab conquest was Shia Islam, which, although it has come to be identified closely with Iran, was not initially an Iranian religious movement. It originated with the Arab Muslims. In the great schism of Islam, one group among the community of believers maintained that leadership of the community following the death of prophet Mohammad rightfully belonged to Mohammad's son-in-law, Ali, and to his descendants. This group came to be known as the Shiat Ali, the partisans of Ali, or the Shias. Another group, supporters of Muawiya (a rival contender for the caliphate following the murder of Uthman), challenged Ali's election to the caliphate in 656. After Ali was assassinated while praying in a mosque at Kufa in 661, Muawiya was declared caliph by the majority of the Islamic community. He became the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, which had its capital at Damascus.
Ali's youngest son, Hossain, refused to pay the homage commanded by Muawiya's son and successor Yazid I and fled to Mecca, where he was asked to lead the Shias--mostly those living in present-day Iraq--in a revolt. At Karbala, in Iraq, Hossain's band of 200 men and women followers, unwilling to surrender, were finally cut down by about 4,000 Umayyad troops. The Umayyad leader received Hossain's head, and Hossain's death in 680 on the tenth of Moharram continues to be observed as a day of mourning for all Shias.
The largest concentration of Shias in the first century of Islam was in southern Iraq. It was not until the sixteenth century, under the Safavids, that a majority of Iranians became Shias. Shia Islam became then, as it is now, the state religion.
The Abbasids, who overthrew the Umayyads in 750, while sympathetic to the Iranian Shias, were clearly an Arab dynasty. They revolted in the name of descendants of Mohammad's uncle, Abbas, and the House of Hashim. Hashim was an ancestor of both the Shia and the Abbas, or Sunni, line, and the Abbasid movement enjoyed the support of both Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Abbasid army consisted primarily of Khorasanians [Khorasan, a region in the north east of Iran] and was led by an Iranian general, Abu Moslim Khorasani. It contained both Iranian and Arab elements, and the Abbasids enjoyed both Iranian and Arab support.
Nevertheless, the Abbasids, although sympathetic to the Shias, whose support they wished to retain, did not encourage the more extremist Shia aspirations. The Abbasids established their capital at Baghdad. Al Mamon, who seized power from his brother, Amin, and proclaimed himself caliph in 811, had an Iranian mother and thus had a base of support in Khorasan. The Abbasids continued the centralizing policies of their predecessors. Under their rule, the Islamic world experienced a cultural efflorescence and the expansion of trade and economic prosperity. These were developments in which Iran shared.
Iran's next ruling dynasties descended from nomadic, Turkic-speaking warriors who had been moving out of Central Asia into Transoxiana for more than a millennium. The Abbasid caliphs began enlisting these people as slave warriors as early as the ninth century. Shortly thereafter the real power of the Abbasid caliphs began to wane; eventually they became religious figureheads while the warrior slaves ruled. As the power of the Abbasid caliphs diminished, a series of independent and indigenous dynasties rose in various parts of Iran, some with considerable influence and power. Among the most important of these overlapping dynasties were the Tahirids in Khorasan (820-72); the Saffarids in Sistan (867-903); and the Samanids (875-1005), originally at Bokhara . The Samanids eventually ruled an area from central Iran to India. In 962 a Turkish slave governor of the Samanids, Alptigin, conquered Ghazna (in present-day Afghanistan) and established the Ghaznavid Dynasty that lasted to 1186.
Several Samanid cities had been lost to another Turkish group, the Seljoks, a clan of the Oghoz (or Ghozz) Turks, who lived north of the Oxus River (present-day Amu Darya). Their leader, Toghril Beg, turned his warriors against the Ghaznavids in Khorasan. He moved south and then west, conquering but not wasting the cities in his path. In 1055 the caliph in Baghdad gave Toghril Beg robes, gifts, and the title King of the East. Under Toghril Beg's successor, Malik Shah (1072-92), Iran enjoyed a cultural and scientific renaissance, largely attributed to his brilliant Iranian vizier, Nezam al Molk. These leaders established the observatory where Omar Khayyam did much of his experimentation for a new calendar, and they built religious schools in all the major towns. They brought Abu Hamid Ghazali, one of the greatest Islamic theologians, and other eminent scholars to the Seljok capital at Baghdad and encouraged and supported their work.
A serious internal threat to the Seljoks, however, came from the Ismailis, a secret sect with headquarters at Alamot between Rasht and Tehran. They controlled the immediate area for more than 150 years and sporadically sent out adherents to strengthen their rule by murdering important officials. They were called assassins and hashishiyya as people believed that they smoked hashish before their missions.
Saturday, 6 October 2007
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
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