2019-11-02_The_Week_Magazine

16 NEWS Best columns: International

IRAQ

RUSSIA

Whenever violence breaks out in Iraq, interna-

tional experts are quick to claim that the nation

is on the verge of religious civil war, said Moritz

Baumstieger. And civil war is indeed what erupted

following the U.S. invasion of 2003, when the

majority Shiite population took revenge on the mi-

nority Sunnis who’d dominated the country under

dictator Saddam Hussein. Another conflagration

soon followed, with oppressed Sunnis allying with

ISIS and slaughtering Shiites. And after last week’s

brutal crackdown on mass protests in Baghdad

and southern cities by security forces—which

killed more than 100 people and wounded some

6,000 others—outside voices are again calling Iraq

“a religious powder keg.” But things are different

this time. The slaughtered protesters were young

Shiites demonstrating against a Shiite-led govern-

ment. They are rightly furious that a country with

daily oil revenues of $300 million “is unable to

provide all citizens with running water and elec-

tricity” and has a youth unemployment rate of

20 percent. Not so long ago, the authorities could

use ethnic conflicts and terrorism “as an excuse to

mask” their utter corruption and incompetence.

But the battle against ISIS is largely over, and car

bombs no longer explode daily. It is time for the

Iraqi government to address the problems of its

citizens, not simply shoot them dead in the street.

Six months ago, self-proclaimed shaman Alexander

Gabyshev had a mystical revelation—that Rus-

sian President Vladimir Putin was in fact a demon

in disguise, said Pavel Aptekar. Deciding that he

needed to personally exorcise the Kremlin, Gaby-

shev set out on foot for Moscow from his home in

far-eastern Siberia. Russians followed his odyssey

with amusement, but the authorities failed to see

the joke. Armed police smashed into his camp last

month and seized Gabyshev, who had completed

less than half of his 5,000-mile journey. The sha-

man was charged with extremism and shipped

back to his hometown. Why the heavy-handed

approach? Because authorities know that Russians

are a deeply superstitious bunch, and so “occult

rituals are taken as a genuine threat to the state.”

Even today, paranormal beliefs are widely held in

Russia—and they were rife during the Cold War,

when the Soviet regime ran an active psychic war-

fare campaign. One still hears talk of “psychotron-

ics” or mind control from senior officials. In 2006,

a general claimed that special services had “tapped

into the subconscious” of Madeleine Albright and

discovered that the former U.S. secretary of state

had a “pathological hatred of Slavs” and dreamed

of controlling Russia. “One can only guess what

threats the current security bodies have been able

to scan in the shaman’s subconscious.” AP

The violence

is different

this time

Moritz Baumstieger

Süddeutsche Zeitung

(Germany)

Why the

Kremlin fears

the occult

Pavel Aptekar

Vedomosti

Blame America’s “criminally incom-

petent” president for the horror now

unfolding in northern Syria, said The

Observer (U.K.) in an editorial. The

Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces

(SDF) served as the U.S.’s ground troops

in the five-year war against ISIS, and

some 11,000 of their number were killed

in the fight. Turkish President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan has long wanted to get

rid of the SDF, which he regards as an

extension of the PKK—a Kurdish guer-

rilla group based in Turkey. Only the

presence of U.S. troops in northern Syria

stopped Turkey from attacking. But in a phone call with Erdogan

last week, U.S. President Donald Trump “saw a chance to both

bring the troops home and distract attention from his Ukraine

shenanigans.” He gave Erdogan the green light to invade and

ordered U.S. forces to abandon their Kurdish comrades in arms.

Soon after, Kurdish towns were being smashed by “terrifyingly

indiscriminate Turkish artillery barrages and air strikes.” At least

100,000 people have fled the war zone, and family members of

ISIS fighters have used the chaos to escape Kurdish prison camps.

The Kurds don’t seem “too worried” about those escaped prison-

ers, said Kirill Krivosheev in Kommersant (Russia). “You can’t

expect us to take care of your terrorist citizens while you calmly

watch our children being killed,” SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali

told Western governments. Betrayal begets betrayal, and now all

of America’s alliances in the area seem to be crumbling. After

Turkish artillery shells exploded near

American positions in northern Syria,

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper

said he didn’t know whether Turkey—

his country’s NATO ally—was de-

liberately aiming at U.S. troops. The

Kurds, meanwhile, have struck a new

alliance with Syrian President Bashar

al-Assad—an enemy of the U.S.—and

allowed Syrian regime forces into their

territory. They’d rather be subjects of

Assad than slaughtered by Erdogan.

America forced Turkey’s hand, said

Hakki Ocal in Daily Sabah (Turkey). Instead of allying with

Turkey to crush ISIS, the U.S. “elected to form armies out of PKK

terrorists.” America then declared these Marxist extremists “the

Kurdish people” and gifted them a homeland in Syria. The Kurds

will be much better off when these terrorists are removed by our

Operation Peace Spring—an operation that will also allow 2 mil-

lion refugees in Turkey to return home to northern Syria.

Which ally will Trump betray next? asked Shimrit Meir in Yedioth

Ahronoth (Israel). The U.S. joined with the Kurds against ISIS

only because Erdogan—an “anti-American, anti-Israeli, Islamist

leader”—refused to fight the jihadists. Yet it took Erdogan only

one call to persuade Trump to abandon the Kurds. Israelis, for

whom the U.S. is the indispensable ally, “were surprised by the

move and shocked by its implications.” Israel and the rest of the

world now know: “The U.S. can no longer be relied on.”

How they see us: Betraying the Kurds

A Turkish-backed militia fires at Kurdish positions.