(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Åsne Seierstad polled at the Literature House in Oslo a couple of experts on IS (Islamic State) last week – who is IS, and what will they achieve by terrorizing the world? One, JM Berger, has written ISIS. The State of Terror. The other, Charles Lister, is behind The Islamic State. A Brief Introduction. IS's ideological and fanatical struggle is hard to fight – what do you do when a terrorist group blasts 18 bombs around you – each the size of an Oklahoma bomb – in one hour? One runs – and IS wins territory. The group may have quadrupled its size in one year, and now consists of up to 100 000 fighters. Berger tells how young men are forced to give up support to other groups and submit to IS. Extreme Sunni Muslims, fighting Shiites and others – with the goal of introducing the Caliphate all the way from Libya to Syria and Iraq. An Islamic State throughout the Levant. Charles Lister eagerly points to the map at the back of the stage. And Seierstad tells me later that she's working on a book about the foreign warriors joining IS.
In this issue of New Time (pages 1 and 8-9), Francesca Borri – the tireless war correspondent in the Middle East – writes about how the Iraqis in Baghdad themselves experience the situation. She is one of the few journalists left in the areas. From the outside, the media talks about Sunnis against Shiites, Saudis against Iranians, Assad against rebels, and about brutal IS. But from the inside, she suggests, this categorization is perceived as too stereotypical, and the pressure on those involved from the outside. Seven young Iraqis report frustratedly about what they are exposed to – what "civil war" they have been subjected to. Iraq is a patchwork of minorities, as Borri describes it – people with all kinds of backgrounds. They cannot be easily classified according to ethnicity, religion or a collective identity. Ahmad, 31, explains how crazy he thinks some Iraqi religious people are: They crawl for miles "like giant frogs" to demonstrate their faith. Every day a martyr or a miracle is to be celebrated. Zee (23) tells of an old woman who, because she lost her husband, her sons and grandsons, cried for so long that she eventually went blind. Ammar (21) has grown up in the slums, where life's meaning is to become a warrior – alternatives did not exist. Hisham (32) mentions a meaningless fatherland rhetoric: that someone asks him to die for his country. Ahmed (24) nuances Baghdad as "a hotbed of imagination", a very diverse – complex, and "incessantly faced with moral and intellectual challenges". And Murtada (23) describes how she is suspected by foreigners of being an Islamist and a terrorist.
We hear about an Iraq seen from some of Baghdad's inhabitants as thinking soul, which stays away from dogmatic labels, masonry and the eternal spiral of enemy images. As Mahmoud says, security is created by community. He mentions opposite Americans in the green zone that isolates themselves, they generally know only the way to the airport.
Iraq's Shiite-based government trains its forces with US aid – and also the Norwegian military – to fight against Sunni IS. The New York Times also hints that President Obama will establish a new network of US bases in Iraq to support the Shiite-dominated military.
How about a so-called third group – the Kurds. These were first mentioned afterwards in the question round during the meeting at the Literature House. If you read about Iraq, you can learn that the Kurds, through controlled air strikes by the Western coalition and attacks backed by US drone information, have managed to drive IS back from several territories. They have now regained control of about 90 percent of their area. The further plan is now just to defend this, even though they can see IS camps in the immediate vicinity. The Kurds probably now want to go from autonomy to real independence. The regional Kurdish government's disagreements with the Iraqi government in Baghdad have made them isolated. At least the Kurds are now cleaning up the territory where IS has left thousands of road bombs – it wasn't just car bombs that exploded around three times a day in this area last year. The Kurds also have a 100-mile border on the IS-controlled area in the north, but do not have enough resources to maintain it. They have no professional army, they lack coordination among themselves, soldiers wait for months for salaries, and they split between different political groups. In this enemy area, they use the help of the Western coalition. As an example: When three large trucks full of explosives recently approached the Kurdish-controlled oil-rich city of Kirkuk, they were bombarded with a coordinated air strike before getting too close.
Three enemies? Are Iraq's 35 million inhabitants divided into three, in a Shia Muslim south, a Sunni Muslim center, and a Kurdish north? Really? Unfortunately, IS's propaganda videos of barbaric executions create enemy images that maintain such lines of conflict. As Lars Gule said from the hall at the Literature House – and for that matter Nils Christie wrote about spectacular 9/11 (see previous leader) – the story is full of far more barbaric battles. What is new is the propaganda, a warfare that gets the Iraqi government soldiers and others almost to escape from the post when IS is on its way. The horror is felt in the throat, the fear of long knives cutting off their heads, as they have seen it on video.
When the military-industrialized West thinks they can resolve the conflicts in the Middle East by sending in 95 percent gun support and 5 percent humanitarian aid, one might not understand what the word "support" means. As was also said at the Literature House, it is rather a civil-functioning society most in demand from those in charge – with schools, hospitals, work and electricity. Warrior culture and violence only aggravate and prolong the conflict situation. And the media willingly helps to create and maintain hostile stereotypes, rather than highlighting the diversity that exists. Ethnic territorial fragmentation is a sick mentality. As Ahmad asks, “Do you think it's normal for everyone to run around asking each other if they are Sunnis or Shias? And who are the Yazidis, who the Shabakas are, and whether they worship the Virgin Mary, a tree or a stone? ”
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