By Rohana R. Wasala
You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that
engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that
many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our
core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the
proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we
can adjust our policies.
- (Former) President Obama explaining
the ‘Obama Doctrine’ (of ‘engagement’, combined with meeting with core
strategic needs”), as quoted in Noam Chomsky’s ‘Who Rules the
World?’ (Penguin, 2017)
(Views expressed in this article are those of the author, who
offers them to the intelligent reader for what they are worth. Constructive
feedback, signifying praise or blame, will be appreciated. Trolls who
habitually make misleading comments out of malice or mischief without reading
the text with adequate attention, please keep off if you can.)
A communiqué issued by Sri Lanka’s foreign affairs ministry (‘Sri
Lanka condemns drone attacks in Saudi Arabia’/The Island of September 25, 2019)
has expressed disapproval of the recent drone attacks on two large oil processing
facilities in Saudi Arabia. The foreign ministry statement goes: As a country
that has suffered from terrorism for thirty years, Sri Lanka remains committed
to addressing this scourge in all its forms and manifestations. Stability in
West Asia is pivotal for the global economy and Sri Lanka hopes that the
parties concerned would soon resolve their issues through peaceful negotiations
and dialogue.”
The ostensibly routine diplomatic communication is, no doubt,
intended to look like a sincere expression of solidarity with Saudi Arabia
after the September 14 drone attacks on its two most important oil
installations. The document implicitly identifies the rich Saudi Arabia as the
victim and its poor southern neighbour and blood relative Yemen as the villain.
But to average Sri Lankan observers with at least a rudimentary knowledge
about the background to the Saudi-Yemen conflict that has raged since 2015, and
with enough familiarity with the deliberate unravelling under the Yahapalanaya
of the national security, social, and economic gains made during the 2009-2014
period in Sri Lanka, it could amount to no more than a diplomatically necessary
perfunctory gesture that could be a bit embarrassing for the government if it
is revealed that the September 14 attacks on the Saudi oil fields were actually
carried out by some other actors and from another direction than those
originally named. (As explained below, Peter Koenig of Global Research suggests
that the attacks were not launched from Yemen.) The awkward foreign
ministry gesture, for all its feigned diplomacy, might be viewed as a tactless
move in respect of a highly complicated and treacherous situation in that
region that, after all, hardly concerns the government or the people of Sri
Lanka. However, to any Sri Lankan who visits the news website of the Global
Research – Centre for Research on Globalization – it may appear that the same
mastermind is probably behind the Saudi-Yemeni incident and the Islamist terror
bombings in Sri Lanka on April 21. Both cases could be false flag operations
with twisted ends. The tragic, nay, fatal irony of the awkward message could be
lost on most members of the government, except the crooked and the cruel few at
the top (who must be chuckling to themselves), who are implicitly wearing, in
the public eye, a badge of shame over their betrayal of Sri Lanka’s war heroes
by timidly accepting guilt on their behalf, under ‘ínternational’ pressure from
what Noam Chomsky calls a ‘Leading Terrorist State’, at Geneva over war crimes
uncommitted.
A hint of background information is appropriate here. Ali Abdullah
Saleh, the first president of Yemen, known to be a friend of Iran, resigned in
February 2012 after almost twenty-two years (1990-2012) in office. This was
following the Yemeni Revolution of 2011, which was simultaneous with the
so-called ‘Arab Spring’ upheavals in other Arab countries such as Egypt
and Tunisia. The pro-Saudi Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, former Field Marshall turned
politician, who had been vice-president under Saleh from 1994 to 2012,
succeeded Saleh on his ouster. Hadi himself was toppled by the Houthi rebels
(led by the Houthi tribe, hence the name) on January 22, 2015. The Houthis are
Yemeni Shiites. Iranians are predominantly Shiite, and Saudi Arabia’s state
religion is Sunni Islam. In the current civil war in Yemen, the fighters of the
Houthi Movement, who are now in control of Sanaá the capital, are allied with
those loyal to the former president Saleh. Saleh loyalists have clashed with
forces supportive of Hadi who are based in Aden.
When Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi was overthrown by the Houthi
revolutionaries in January 2015 over political and economic issues, he fled to
Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia is America’s most important ally in the
region. The ‘ínternational community’ recognises the government of the fugitive
president. In 2015, Hadi appealed for military support against the
revolutionaries and Saudi Arabia responded by forming a coalition of nine
countries from the Middle East and Africa, and launched an invasion into Yemen.
They conducted it as a UN operation that is in compliance with Article 2 (4) of
the UN Charter. But some scholars dispute the claim that the said article of
the UN Charter allows it. Anyway, neutral observers suspect that Uncle Sam was
the real power behind the invasion, which began with air strikes at Houthi
positions in early 2015. In the actually unwarranted military conflict that
followed, tens of thousands of innocent Yemenis have died, including thousands
upon thousands of children, caught up in bombing raids or starved to death in
famine; diarrhoeal diseases including widespread cholera epidemics have claimed
many lives. Economist and geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, in a recent
article in globalresearch.ca (September
24), charges that this unjust war is …. carried out by Saudis as a proxy for
the Washington and Pentagon handlers.” Responsibility for the alleged drone
attacks on the Khurais oil field and the Abqaiq oil processing facility in
Saudi Arabia was promptly claimed by the Houthis, who said that they sent some
ten ‘suicide drones’ for the attack. However, Koenig casts doubt on this claim.
Quoting ‘Asia Times’ reports, Koenig suggests that the attacks
were probably launched from Southern Iraq, and not from Yemen or by the
Houthis. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had clearly said: There is no
evidence the attacks came from Yemen”. Koenig writes: If it all sounds
like a big fabricated confusion, it’s because it is a big fabricated confusion.
Iran is singled out; fingers pointing to Iran (except, miraculously those of
Saudi Arabia), like a sledgehammer hitting Iran, again and again. – The
mainstream media loves it. Today, a week after the attack, most nobody remembers
the Houthis claiming responsibility – it was Iran. Period. The media blitz
won”.
Immediately after the Houthis purported suicide drone” attacks,
it was claimed that they knocked out 50% of Saudi’s crude oil production (but
Koenig downplays the significance of this claim by pointing out that, in terms
of global production, it is a mere 5%, and that Saudi crude oil production was
returned to pre-attack levels in no time). In what must be a pretended
knee-jerk reaction to the Houthi claim, Mark Pompeo, without any evidence
whatsoever, blamed Iran for the drone strikes. Donald Trump, with the
characteristic promptness that he displays in such situations, imposed
additional economic sanctions on Iran, boasting that they were the most severe
ones imposed on a country! Most surprisingly, meanwhile, the ‘victim’ Saudi
Arabia, as if confused by the absurd claim (that Iranians were behind the oil
attacks), refrained from accusing Iran, though the latter is its sworn enemy, a
circumstance that would make such a claim (of supposed Iranian aggression)
highly plausible to Saudi Arabia and would have prompted it to immediately make
some noise against Iran.
A high official in the Iraqi government confirmed that the attack
was launched from Iraqi soil, though other officials vehemently denied that
they had anything to do with the attacks. What the Iraqi government official
said must be viewed against the fact that there is a heavy US military presence
with twelve bases in that country.
‘So, the tables are turning’, Koenig sardonically observes, ‘and
the Houthis are winning’. This, though, was at a heavy cost as suggested above
(incurred by unjust war inflicted on the hapless Yemenis through Saudi Arabia
as an agent of the US). Much of the debris of weapons lying on the ground in
Yemen carries the logo ‘Made in USA’, and would lead one to conclude that
America, not Saudi Arabia, is at war with Yemen. Koenig clarifies this
absurdity by inferring what must be passing through the masterminds in
Washington: ‘Yemen occupies a strategic geographic and geopolitical location
and must not be ruled by a people-friendly government, let alone by a socialist
leaning government, as the Houthis are. Besides, Yemen may have huge deep
off-shore oil reserves’. With this he explains his conclusion that the biggest
winner may be Washington: ‘They have a new devastating blame on Iran – more
sanctions, more justification to launch a direct confrontation against Iran –
possibly through Israel, or the NATO forces; the neutral” international
killing machine – an amalgam of spineless Europeans and Canada, who love to
dance to the tunes of Washington – hoping to get some crumbs of the loot at the
end of the day, before the empires falls.’
One can argue, as Koenig does, that it is quite logical that the
Houthis hit back in a decisive attempt to reach an end to the costly war and
its unspeakable excesses. (They probably did not do the hitting back in
the present case; it was not done for them by someone else.) Koenig takes a critical
look at the conduct of the mainstream Western media in this context: ‘Isn’t it
weird that the misery and tens of thousands of Yemeni deaths in an unjust and
purely criminal aggression instigated by the US, carried out by Riyadh and
lasting already for more than 4 years, that this monstrous aggression pales in
the mainstream media, as compared to two blazing Saudi oil fields?
Doesn’t that say a lot about our programed to the core western brains, our
sense of humanity, what’s left of it?’
Another Global Research scholar, investigative historian Eric
Zuesse (The Sickness of American Foreign Policy’’/September 30, 2019),
comments on the behaviour of the American mainstream media: ‘America’s media
were merely passive megaphones for the regime’s lies’ (Here he is referring to
George Bush Jr’s and his coterie of officials’ lies in 2003 about Sadam
Hussein’s Iraq possessing WMD.) Zuesse claims that, between 2003 and now, the
US has invaded ‘Libya and Syria and Yemen, on the basis of lies that in some
respects were even more blatant’ (than the Iraqi WMD lies). Let me quote Zuesse
at some length:
‘The same groups of billionaires
control the US ‘news’ media today as controlled the media in 2003; and they
continue, in their ‘news’-media, the same stenographic ‘reporting’ — propaganda
by their Government, regarding which nations are the latest targets, for the
masses to hate and fear, as being our nation’s ‘enemies’.
‘These are the lands suitable for US weapons and bombs to destroy.
These ‘news’-media simply ‘justify’ what are, in fact, international
war-crimes: US-and-allied invasions, of nations that never had invaded the US.
‘There’s always the Big Lie that the hate-target is only ‘the
tyrant’, and not the nation. But it is the targeted nation that gets
strangulated by America and its allies imposing ‘sanctions’ that are really
economic blockades (such as against Venezuela and Iran today, but formerly
against Iraq before we invaded it and destroyed it); and, then, if that doesn’t
bring down the targeted Government, a coup is attempted; and then (if no coup
results), paying and arming ‘rebels’ (such as Al Qaeda in Syria) to overthrow
the targeted nation’s Government; and, then, missiles and bombers are used, in
order to destroy the infrastructure.’
In many respects Sri Lanka is poles apart from any of the
countries that American intervention has messed up including Libya, Syria, and
Yemen, but it may be safely included among Zuesse’s ‘targeted nations’.
The above descriptions might echo, in the minds of those of us who are informed
enough, aspects of Sri Lanka’s current predicament. Its strategic geographic
location (enhanced by the recent discovery of substantial offshore mineral
resources in the north, northwest, and northeast territorial waters) is its
misfortune. The country will remain vulnerable to potential
‘strangulation’ through superpower involvement in its affairs to an intolerable
degree unless Sri Lankans are allowed by the powers that be to enjoy in peace
all the basic human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR) of the UN of which Sri Lanka is a member.
Intervention
by friends when two persons or groups or countries are at loggerheads with each
other concerning some issue is not a bad thing, as we all know, is not a bad
thing, when it is done in a fair and friendly spirit. Willful interference in a
country’s internal affairs with ulterior motives is not the same as altruistic
intervention. An independent sovereign nation with a sense of national dignity
like Sri Lanka cannot docilely accept interference from another country however
powerful that country may be. The above descriptions are likely to strike a chord with all
average Sri Lankans who are cognizant of the disastrous consequences of brazen
superpower interference particularly over the past five years that operates
through local agents who are programmed to do their foreign sponsors’ bidding.
A recent wisecrack among common people was: rusiyawa palanaya karanne putin –
lankawa palanaya karanne pitin” lit. Russia is ruled by Putin – Sri Lanka is
ruled from outside”. Russian president Vladimir Putin has made a great
impression on the currently leaderless Sri Lankans. It is hoped that Sri
Lankans will be allowed to elect a proper leader of their choice without let or
hindrance on November 16.
The drone or missile attacks on the Saudi oil fields must have left
ordinary Sri Lankans cold because they would hardly think of the rich and
powerful Saudi Arabia (source of violent Islamic extremism) as a victim of
Yemeni terrorism. However, considering the the death and destruction that Saudi
Arabia inflicted on Yemen over the past four years, Sri Lankans would have
stood with the latter rather than the former in their Saudi caused misery. On
the other hand, the people of Sri Lanka are aware and intelligent enough to
understand when false flag operations are carried out to deceive them.
Both Koenig and Zuesse criticise the biased media that support the despicable
agendas of the powerful rulers. Sri Lankans are required to beware of media
firewalls that try to leave them in the dark while they are being robbed of
their freedom and sovereignty.
Former US president Barak Obama’s definition of the so-called
Obama Doctrine which forms the epigraph to this essay reflects the nature of
America’s foreign policy stand. Whichever party (Obama’s Democratic or Trump’s
Republican Party) is in power, America’s broad national interest is not
sacrificed out of concern for other nations. No doubt, geopolitically, Sri
Lanka is of much greater importance for America than its tiny neighbour Cuba in
terms of its ‘core security interests’. However, let us hope that
America, in the name of humanity, decide to adjust its policies in meeting
those strategic needs without inflicting too much pain on other countries
including tiny little Sri Lanka.
