Yvonne Ridley's Speech at the 2006 Global Peace & Unity Conference, London. UK.

Yvonne Ridley's Speech at the 2006 Global Peace & Unity Conference, London. UK.

Written by Yvonne Ridley

Thursday, 30 November 2006

Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet, pbuh, but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honour and his memory. I originally dedicated my speech at the Global Peace and Unity conference to Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, a prominent Muslim scholar highly regarded in English speaking Islamic circles, who was arrested in Yemen two months ago. But I must also thank brother Fahad Ansari from the Islamic Human Rights Commission, author of God Save The Deen, whose written work inspired me to write this speech. Much credit of content is due to him. Islamically, I am very young, having reverted in 2003 – and while I have much to learn I can identify with the frustrations shared by Muslims today. I know 9/11 had a huge impact on the world, but it wasn’t really the start of something … it was the continuation of a legacy of US imperialism and its fear of Islam. Just over ten years ago, fit, young Muslims across the globe flooded into Bosnia to help their brothers and sisters fight for their survival against the Serbs who were carrying out a genocide sanctioned by the silence of a watching world. The jihad brought together Muslims from all nationalities, status and culture. All were united, even those who could not travel to fight helped in other ways such as fund-raising, public awareness events and demonstrations. The impact was to stop the genocide. Western intervention, when it happened, came only after it was obvious the Bosnian Muslims were heading for victory. The establishment of an Islamic state deep in the heart of Europe was simply too much to bear and so the West intervened. This is not my conclusion, but US President Bill Clinton admitted it in his autobiography. This fear of Islam has now evolved in the last 10 years to such an extent that the blood of our brothers and sisters is now flowing like rivers across Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and we saw recently what happened to Lebanon. I have walked through many of these killing fields and let me tell you the twisted, blown up limbs of our Muslim brothers and sisters look exactly like those pulled from the rubble of the Twin Towers. Yet the message of today is quite clear. Muslim blood is a cheap commodity. Meanwhile tens of thousands of innocent Muslims continue to be tortured in far away lands like Guantanamo Bay, Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia and ghost prisons throughout the world. Meanwhile, in the dungeons of Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria Egypt … brothers are being tortured at the behest and request of the United States. And don't think the British Government is not involved ... British intelligence officers will soon be named and shamed for their roles. Even now nine British residents remain in Guantanamo Bay - the Americans don't want them, but neither does this Government. Despite the weasel words of the Foreign Office all it will take is a phone call to have the brothers released. And don't think it is just brothers being incarcerated and tortured - Moazzam Begg can still hear a sister's screams down the corridors of the torture cells in Afghanistan where he was held by the Americans. See him at the Cage Prisoners stand today and ask him what you can do to help. Because we can help. Hardly a single detainee has been released due to legal action, but through political pressure ... that is when governments get involved. You here today, can make a difference. Don't just sit here and get angry - get even. Put pressure on your politicians and remind them you are their political masters. In Surah Al Asr – God promises that the whole of mankind, including Muslims is at loss. Except – those who BELIEVE, DO RIGHTEOUS DEEDS, and those who ENJOIN THE TRUTH, and PATIENCE. Only by fulfilling these four criteria, will we be able to meet Allah, however if we bury our heads in the sand, and pretend there is no oppression in the world, and that these brothers and sisters mean nothing to us, then maybe we will not get to meet Him. Even Ken McDonald, Britain’s chief prosecutor, is disgusted by this government's actions - he has launched a scathing attack on secret courts. These courts try terror suspects who are not allowed to see the evidence against them. It is an affront to justice. In an exclusive interview with Islam Channel News, he said: "We should be clear these principles are not negotiable. Whatever the political pressures, whatever the climate, these are the essence of fairness: trials routinely opened and reported before independent and impartial tribunals. " We don't want secret courts, we don't want vetted judges, we don't want secret justice. Equality of arms; fairness between the Prosecution and the Defence is not negotiable; the right to call and cross-examine witnesses under equal conditions is not negotiable; the right to full disclosure of the State's case against you is not negotiable. "Defendants are entitled to know what the case against them is, and they're entitled to have material in the possession of the Crown which either undermines the Crown's case or assists the Defence’s case. A protected right of appeal is not negotiable. "And the presumption of innocence, the criminal standard of proof - beyond a reasonable doubt - with the burden of proof resting squarely on the Crown's shoulders, none of that is negotiable." And of course he is right - but Tony Blair says Muslims have got to stop having a victim mentality. Well when the Director of Public prosecutions starts whingeing, then may be we have a point. Think about what sort of message that sends out to our young people? They read about the heroic exploits of Saladin Ayyoubi, Khalid bin Walid, Tariq bin Ziad and listen intently to stories of courage and bravery about our beloved Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him. Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet, pbuh, but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honour and his memory. Even in death he showed how strong he was by uniting the Ummah in protest at those vile cartoons from Denmark. Our modern day heroes include those two sixties martyrs Malcolm X and Sayyid Qutb, both whose writings have helped define me as a Muslim. These are the sort of role models and influences our youth need to follow, but instead they receive confused and mixed messages. If Blair gets his way he will try and ban this book Milestones - he is told this is a book Usama bin Ladin has read ... well he's also read Sheikh Zubair that's Shakespeare to you and me. Should we ban 12th Night, Hamlet and other great classics? One minute our youth are told the fear no one but Allah (swt) while the next minute they are told to dilute their Islam and keep their heads down. Since the events of 9-11, there has been an unrelenting campaign launched to change Islam into something more palatable to Western society. The vision is a secular and cultural Islam at peace with the world through her submission to her oppressors rather than to Allah; an Islam devoid of jihad, shari’ah and khilafah – the very things we are commanded by Allah to implement in order to establish Allah’s deen on this earth. And it is in evidence everywhere I look. Hijabs are being ripped off the heads of my sisters in Tunisia, France and Turkey. Sisters in Holland and Germany are also in the firing line. And in Britain, we have Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary who questioned the veil – he might not like the nikab, but I wish he would put it on with a great big gag. I am not having a white, middle-aged man telling me or my sisters how to dress. The nikab, like the veil, like the hijab has become a symbol of a rejection of those negative Western lifestyles like drug-taking, binge-drinking and promiscuity. It is a statement telling the West we don’t want to be like you. Muslims who choose to be more western than Westerners make me laugh – do they realize how silly they look to the rest of the world? They hide behind such descriptions as moderate – again what sort of message does that send to our young people? If we ask them to be moderate does that not suggest that there is something wrong with Islam that it needs to be toned down, diluted? What is a moderate and what is an extremist? I really don’t know. I am a simple Muslim. I follow no scholars or sects … I merely follow The Prophet (pbuh) and the Sunnah. Does that make me an extremist? I don't think Tony Blair knows himself - I wrote to him three months ago and am still waiting for a reply. Being a Muslim is a bit like being pregnant. You are or you are not. Whoever heard of anyone being moderately pregnant? Islam has been under attack for 1400 years and we should have learned by now to put our trust in no one but Allah. Yet there are those who continue to kiss the hand which slaps them. I am afraid that we can no longer put our trust in to someone just because they might wear Islamic dress. There are those Muslim leaders who claim to guide and protect us but not all of them have our interests at heart. Our young people are going to have to be very discerning since the events of 9/11, Bali, Madrid and the London Bombings, to name a few. There are individuals who for years rallied the masses to stand up for justice and support mujahideen groups around the world and now some have become embarrassingly silent while others condemn armed jihad, portraying mujahideen as terrorists and extremists who follow a distorted version of Islam. In some ways we are all to blame. Our greatest shame has been our silence while martyrdom operations in Palestine and other occupied lands have been condemned as acts of terror as witnessed in 9/11 and the July 7 bombings. Our young people have to be taught that what is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan is legitimate resistance against a brutal military occupation, while crimes like 9/11 and the London bombings are blatant terrorism. Equating the two only betrays our brothers and sisters who have no other option but to fight or face being wiped off the face of this planet. The new slaves of the West criticize Islamist parties and governance by shari’ah. I call them the Happy Clappies. They are being flown in by the Government from the US, Canada, Yemen and Mauritania to preach a diluted form of Islam. The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims condemn the actions of their brothers and sisters who courageously resist occupation and oppression with whatever they have. Even making dua for them now has become a crime – how long before we are told not to even pray for the mujahideen? One of the greatest military generals the world has known, Saladin Ayyubi, the liberator of al-Quds, was once asked why he didn’t smile. He answered back that how could he smile while knowing that Masjid al-Aqsa, remained under Crusader occupation. I wonder what he would make of the state of the world today? This is a world where Arab leaders belly-danced shamelessly in front of America while handing Iraq over on a plate. The same Arab leaders look the other way as our beautiful Palestine is continually raped and sodomized, and that other great daughter of the Arab world, Lebanon … where was the Arab world when she was so brutally assaulted. And the war drums are beating again. Not only is the whole world watching, but so are our children, our youth, our future. We must nuture them, and inspire them with tales of the Prophet and the Sahaba. As long as the Ummah continues to throw up figures like Khalid bin Walid, Saladin Ayyoubi, Sayyid Qutb and Malcolm X all is not lost. The more we are oppressed by the tyrants the more we will fight back. That is the nature of Islam. And this is the Islam our youth need to follow, be guided by and inspired. We need to replace those leaders who have castrated themselves in a pathetic attempt to become more Western than the Westerners. Many Muslim youth are now realising that no matter how hard they compromise their deen to blend in with the wider society, when things go sour, they will be treated with suspicion. The more we are told to forget shari’ah, khilafah and jihad, the more Muslims will pay the blood price to uphold these values. The jihad we are witnessing in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Chechnya is something noble, a just war against injustice and tyranny. The actions of the jihadists pose absolutely no threat to the West or Western lifestyles and their resistance is not only justified but embraced and encouraged by international law. The real religious extremists who pose the greatest threat to radicalizing our youth are the Christian Fundamentalists in the White House and Downing Street. Bush and Blair have become al-Qaida’s finest recruiting officers. More and more young Muslims are waking up with the realisation that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but Islam itself. It is up to the Ummah to lead and inspire our youth, just as The Prophet led and inspired millions and continues to do so. And the first lesson we must teach our youth is to fear none but Allah (swt).

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

By Pepe Escobar

• Five ways to think about Iran under the gun

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The campaign's greatest hits are widely known: "The ayatollahs" are building a nuclear bomb; Iranian weapons are killing American soldiers in Iraq; Iranian gunboats are provoking U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf -- Iran, in short, is the new al-Qaeda, a terror state aimed at the heart of the United States. It's idle to expect the American mainstream media to offer any tools that might put this orchestrated blitzkrieg in context.

Here are just a few recent instances of the ongoing campaign: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons."

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" when it comes to Iran. In tandem with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Mullen denounces Iran's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq, although he claims to harbor "no expectations" of an attack on Iran "in the immediate future" and even admits he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved."

But keep in mind one thing the Great Saddam Take-out of 2003 proved: that a "smoking gun" is, in the end, irrelevant. And this month, the U.S. is ominously floating a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf.

But what of Iran itself under the blizzard of charges and threats? What to make of it? What does the world look like from Tehran? Here are five ways to think about Iran under the gun and to better decode the Iranian chessboard.

** Don't underestimate the power of Shias. Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf's population is Shia.

** Iran happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country's third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai.

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power.

To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe's "sole superpower," but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a "Look East" foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America.

To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental "axis of evil" air link already exists -- a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran's diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran's ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales "everything he wanted" to offset the influence of "American imperialism."

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans -- all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia.

As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road -- the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That's how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that's the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective -- and threatening -- fit.

** What is Ahmadinejad up to?: Ever since the days when former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami suggested a "dialogue of civilizations," Iranian diplomats have endlessly repeated the official position on Iran's nuclear program: It's peaceful; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof of the military development of nuclear power; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran -- unlike the U.S. -- has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past quarter millennium.

Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad is relentlessly depicted as an angry, totally irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying leader who wants to "wipe Israel off the map." That infamous quote, repeated ad nauseam but out of context, comes from an October 2005 speech at an obscure anti-Zionist student conference.

What Ahmadinejad really said, in a literal translation from Farsi, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." He was actually quoting the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said it first in the early 1980s. Khomeini hoped that a regime so unjust toward the Palestinians would be replaced by another more equitable one. He was not, however, threatening to nuke Israel.

In the 1980s, in the bitterest years of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini also made it very clear that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons is against Islam. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later issued a fatwa -- a religious injunction -- under the same terms. For the theocratic regime, however, the Iranian nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence vis-à-vis what is still widely considered by Iranians of all social classes and educational backgrounds as Anglo-Saxon colonialism.

Ahmadinejad is mad for the Iranian nuclear program. It's his bread and butter in terms of domestic popularity. During the Iran-Iraq War, he was a member of a support team aiding anti-Saddam Hussein Kurdish forces. (That's when he became friends with "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, now the Kurdish president of Iraq.) Not many presidents have been trained in guerrilla warfare.

Speculation is rampant in Tehran that Ahmadinejad, the leadership of the Quds Force, an elite division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plus the hardcore volunteer militia, the Basij (informally known in Iran as "the army of twenty million") are betting on a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to strengthen the country's theocratic regime and their faction of it.

Reformists refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last October, when he was received by the Supreme Leader (a very rare honor). Putin offered a new plan to resolve the explosive Iranian nuclear dossier: Iran would halt nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil in return for peaceful nuclear cooperation and development in league with Russia, the Europeans, and the IAEA.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator of that moment, Ali Larijani, a confidant of Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as the Leader himself let it be known that the idea would be seriously considered. But Ahmadinejad immediately contradicted the Supreme Leader in public. Even more startling, yet evidently with the Leader's acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an ideological hardliner.

** A velvet revolution is not around the corner: Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret, high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his house, the Supreme Leader concluded that Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism, which then seemed very appealing to the downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough, Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")

But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated. Since they controlled all key levers of power -- the Supreme National Security Council, the Council of Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads (Islamic foundations that control vast sections of the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently branded a terrorist organization by the Bush administration), the media -- they assumed they would also control the self-described "street cleaner of the people." How wrong they have been.

For Khamenei himself, this was big business. After 18 years of non-stop internal struggle, he was finally in full control of executive power, as well as of the legislature, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and the key ayatollahs in Qom.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of "nefarious" Western influences, and filled his cabinet with revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq War days. These friends proved to be as faithful as administratively incompetent -- especially in terms of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence has not translated into street barricades and it probably will not; nor, contrary to neocon fantasyland scenarios, would an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a popular uprising. Every single political faction supports the nuclear program out of patriotic pride.

There is surely a glaring paradox here. The regime may be wildly unpopular -- because of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich land and the virtual absence of social mobility -- but for millions, especially in the countryside and the remote provinces, life is still bearable. In the large urban centers -- Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz -- most would be in favor of a move toward a more market-oriented economy combined with a progressive liberalization of mores (even as the regime insists on going the other way).

No velvet revolution, however, seems to be on the horizon.

At least four main factions are at play in the intricate Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian power politics -- and two others, the revolutionary left and the secular right, even though thoroughly marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.

The extreme right, very religiously conservative but economically socialist, has, from the beginning, been closely aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the star of this faction.

The clerics, from the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial religious figures, are pure conservatives, even more patriotic than the extreme right, yet generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy bonyads -- the Islamic foundations, active in all economic sectors -- badly want a reconciliation with the West. They know that, under the pressure of Western sanctions, the relentless flight of both capital and brains is working against the national interest.

Economists in Tehran project there may be as much as $600 billion in Iranian funds invested in the economies of Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest continue to flee the country. But the Islamic foundations also know that this state of affairs slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.

The extremely influential Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key component of government with vast economic interests, transits between these two factions. They privilege the fight against what they define as Zionism, are in favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states, and want to go all the way with the nuclear program.

The current reformists/progressives of the left were originally former partisans of Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism to some sort of religious democracy, their new icon became former President Khatami (of "dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after all, was an Islamic president who had captured the youth vote and the women's vote and had written about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as applied to civil society as well as the possibility of democratization in Iran. Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last long -- and is now long gone.

The key establishment faction is undoubtedly that of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term President, current chairman of the Expediency Council and a key member of the Council of Experts -- the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader from office. He is now supported by the intelligentsia and urban youth.

Colloquially known as "The Shark," Rafsanjani is the consummate Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key Washington players and has proven to be the ultimate survivor -- moving like a skilled juggler between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the country shifted.

Rafsanjani is, and will always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader. As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution, but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and reconcile the country with the West.

If the Bush administration had any real desire to let its aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and establish an entente cordiale with Tehran, Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.

** Heading down the New Silk Road: Reformist friends in Tehran keep telling me the country is now immersed in an atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification campaign in Cuba -- and nothing "velvet" or "orange" or "tulip" or any of the other color-coded Western-style movements that Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the horizon.

Under such conditions, what if there were an American air attack on Iran? The Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked, he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world.

From American supply lines and bases in southern Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests -- and certainly to drive the price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war" would clearly be a disaster for everyone.

The Iranian theocratic leadership, however, seems to doubt that the Bush administration and the U.S. military, exhausted by their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack. They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the "Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy prices, is bearing fruit.

Ahmadinejad has just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the despair of American neocons, the Asian Energy Security Grid is quickly becoming a reality.

Two years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I was told Iran is betting on the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-economic politics." This year Iran finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country. The framework for the $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South Asian U.S. allies are ignoring Bush administration desires and rapidly bolstering their economic, political, cultural, and -- crucially -- geostrategic connections with Iran.

An attack on Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack against Asia.

What a disaster in the making, and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb.

-- Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

Copyright 2008 Pepe Escobar

TomDispatch

Source: Middle East Online

British sailors held in Iran

British sailors held in Iran

Written by Yvonne Ridley

Tuesday, 03 April 2007

I must confess that the events of the last few days involving British woman Faye Turney and her Royal Navy shipmates have filled me with mixed emotions. Faye is a captive of the Iranian Government and I can't help drawing parallels with my days as a prisoner of the Taliban way back in September 2001. Like Faye, I was simply doing my job and just like her I ended up being plastered across the world's newspapers portrayed as a victim of an evil, brutal regime. Funnily enough, I went tresspassing too. Although to be fair to Faye she might not have realised she was entering Iranian waters whereas I was caught banged to rights for my illegal trip into Afghanistan without a passport and visa. And, just like Faye, once my captors realised I was a nicotine addict, they kept me topped up in cigarettes for the duration of my ordeal. Mercifully, the Taliban did not parade me with fag in gob for the media, that would have been too cruel ... my mother would never have forgiven me! She despised my cigarette habit and would certainly not have approved of me puffing away in public, stressed or otherwise. I do hope Faye's ordeal does come to a rapid end. It is not much fun being anyone's prisoner but she should count her blessings that she's in the hands of the Iranians. Imagine if she had been caught by the Americans? By now she would have been shaved, shackled and sodomised at the very least in her first week of capitivity. She would almost certainly be wearing an orange jumpsuit after being thrown into a rat-infested cage via a rendition flight to Guantanamo. I just thank God that she was, like me, captured by an evil, brutal regime instead of the US military! George Bush and Tony Blair's indignation over her arrest, and the Western tabloid outpourings regarding Faye's black headscarf has certainly been something to behold. Although, with regard to the head covering, to a certain extent, I can see their point - by contrast the Taleban issued me with a rather fetching little hijab, a sort of autumnal blend of colours. Black can be too drab without the right accessories. Muslims don't have any such fashion dilemmas when they find themselves in the hands of the British or the Americans because there's nothing like a good old fashioned hood over the head to hide your blushes, and some sticky tape across your mouth will certainly curtail such anti-social and potentially life-threatening habits like smoking. We only know this because those nice folk from the US and British military were thoughtful enough to take lots of pictures and videos of their treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Basra, Guantanamo and elsewhere. How thoughtful, as I say, to hide their identities and prevent them from being publicly paraded in the same way as Faye and her naval colleagues. And of course a hood over the head would have stopped them from talking publicly infront of the cameras about how they strayed into Iranian waters under the orders of the UK military. Mind you, the Brits appear to have become regular little chatterboxes haven't they? According to declassified US documents Khalid Sheikh Mohamed had to be coaxed with CIA watersports before he overcame his shyness. I wonder if like the Australian David Hicks, the British naval crew will be allowed to enjoy five years in solitary confinement before being charged with anything? Given the choice, what do you think Faye and her mates would prefer - Western justice Bush and Blair-style or Islamic justice? Just in case you are struggling with an answer, here are some clues to help you supplied by my man in Virginia who has outlined below some of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. All have been tried and tested on Muslim detainees at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. * The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach designed to cause pain, but not internal injury. * Long Time Standing: Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. * The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. * Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt. CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaida suspect Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won their admiration when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess. According to Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism: "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets." Ah, ha. So now we know. Those devious Iranians are trying to build up a relationship of trust with their captives by acting in a civilised manner.