The US led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its ongoing aftermath may be remembered as the worst tragedy of the early 21st century. It is estimated Iraq has witnessed over 1 million excess deaths, 4.2 million injured people and 4.5 million refugees since the invasion.
- How may we understand the current situation in Iraq?
- What were the reasons and interest behind the invasion?
- What is the role of oil and multinational corporations?
- What is the role of the Netherlands?
- May we speak of Western neo-imperialism?
Join us for a lecture and lively discussion with Ali Al-jaberi. Al-Jaberi is a political scientist and has worked as a lecturer of International Relations and journalist in Iraq.
Location: Institute of Social Studies (ISS) – The Hague
Room: Aula B
Date: Thursday, April 3 2014
Time: 19:00 (please be on time)
No registration required.
For questions: critical.collect@gmail.com
This event is brought to you in association with the International Relations Committee of ISS.
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This talk is a part of a tour and will also be held at: * University College Utrecht – Thursday March 27th – 8pm – Campusplein 1, Utrecht – Auditorium * Groningen University – Tuesday April 29th – details TBA
Also feel free to invite your friends through the Facebook event!
cannot contain the imperialist chaos that has given rise to it. On the contrary, the major and local powers can only deepen this instability further. What they don’t want is exactly what they have worked for and will continue to work for, because the whole capitalist system drives them blindly in this direction.
Capitalism has a history of creating its own monsters: Adolf Hitler was democratically put in place with the assistance of Britain and France in order to act as a force of terror against the working class in Germany primarily. Saddam and his killer regime were made in the west, particularly Whitehall. The same for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. The Islamic fundamentalist madrasas and Osama bin Laden were essentially products of the CIA, and of MI6 with the Pakistani secret service ISI, acting on their behalf in order to confront Russian imperialism in Afghanistan – a concoction which then gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The establishment of Hamas was initially encouraged by Israel as a means of weakening the PLO and jihadi forces have been armed, encouraged and supported by the west in Libya and the ex-Russian republics.
All the above have turned and bitten the hands that reared and fed them, showing that it’s not a question of evil individuals, but efficient capitalist psychopaths armed and encouraged by democracy. And now in the Middle East, more than ever, everything that the local and major imperialisms do to try to confront their rivals, play their cards or shape events ends not just in failure but contributes to the general deterioration of the situation, piling up more profound and widespread problems in the longer term.
Deel I
Iraq and Syria are no strangers to capitalist war and the very existence of these countries comes directly from the imperialist war of 1914-18. Iraq and Syria were created by imperialism along the Sykes-Picot border drawn up by Britain and France in 1916 to carve up the region from the lands of the Ottoman Empire. These two countries were born in and from a war that in some ways has continued ever since. Both were assets for the Allies in the Second World War against Germany and subsequently subject to coups and manipulations by the British and Americans in the Cold War against Russia from the 50s.
So, the peoples of Iraq are not unfamiliar with the embrace and kiss of imperialism, particularly the American, British and French kind.
IS only encapsulates the putrefying, regressive nature of capitalism and its flight into militarism, barbarity and irrationality: killing and dying for religion, the wholesale slaughter of civilians, the rape and slavery of women and children. The US and its ‘allies’ may be able to push back IS, but it ….
Zie deel II