00:00 Gilbert Achcar: Thank you, Fred. Good evening to all. Well, Fred mentioned the fact — we all hinted at the fact — that we are living through, let's say, a moment of historical setback, if not a counter-revolutionary moment, in the regional dynamics that was inaugurated by the uprisings in
00:32 2011. And that's indeed the case, in the sense that the one particularity of the region, as I had more than once the occasion to emphasise, including I think in meetings organised by Socialist Resistance, is that
01:02 this is a region where you had one revolution but two counter-revolutions — in the sense that the counter-revolutionary front was itself composed of two competing and even opposed forces. On the one hand, the representatives of the old regimes, so the classical counter-revolution: with
01:33 any revolutionary situation the old regime represents the counterrevolution, usually. But here, in the case of the region, we've had, over several decades, the development of forces of opposition to the old regime, but from a reactionary standpoint, from a religious fundamentalist standpoint. And these forces were
02:04 various movements connected to the stronghold of regional reaction represented by the oil monarchies — the oil-producing [?] monarchies — with shifts in the alliances between one monarchy and the other, and with a kind of split among the monarchies eventually, in the face of the dynamics opened by 2011,
02:36 into a polarisation between the Saudi kingdom, who emerged as the main supporter of the old regime, and the Emirate of Qatar, who had been the main funder of the main force within the Islamic opposition to the old regimes as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. And beyond that you have the whole dynamics of
03:06 the evolution of the events, and, well, I mean, the failure of the progressive forces in the region to build an alternative to both these counter-revolutions have left the scene quite open to this clash between
03:37 these two counter-revolutionary poles, which is very much part of what I have been calling, since 9/11, the clash of barbarisms — which goes, I mean, beyond of course the regional forces, into the international dimension. And what we are witnessing in Syria and Iraq with
04:08 this rise of IS is very much an illustration of this dialectic between two forms of barbarism, equally reactionary ultimately. So, I mean, from the start one could see, in the comeback of the United States
04:40 massively to the region in 1990–91, the devastating war on Iraq and then the devastating embargo that was imposed on Iraq — you could see this already, this clash of barbarism at work. And the barbarisms of the way the United States destroyed
05:11 the Iraqi infrastructure and then imposed on that country [an embargo] of genocidal proportion[s] [?], which led to — the common estimate is that you have close to one million people who died as a result of the embargo imposed on Iraq after '91 and until the occupation of that country. And this fed into violent forms of resentment, of which al-Qaeda, which emerged
05:42 at that time and as a reaction to the US deployment in the region — al-Qaeda became the main illustration, or the main embodiment for a while, of this counter-barbarism, as illustrated in 9/11 and in the various actions that happened later on.
06:12 Now, with the invasion of Iraq, this was taken to much higher dimensions, and we have seen it very much at work in Iraq: the barbarism of the US, British, etc. occupation — Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Fallujah, and all that. And therefore this is a huge resentment, much even deeper than the one that had been created by the US
06:44 war on Iraq in '91. And on the other hand, the development of al-Qaeda in Iraq. As you know, this invasion of Iraq was conducted under the pretext of fighting al-Qaeda, and with the open lie about a connection between the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. This invasion of Iraq
07:15 is what created the historical opportunity for al-Qaeda to establish itself as a territorial force in the heart of the region, whereas before then it was in Afghanistan, it was a kind of terrorist underground network globally, but it didn't have the kind of territorial base that it managed to achieve after 2003, and thanks to
07:47 the US invasion and to the US occupation and the ways and forms of this occupation. So you have this dialectic, if you want. And of course al-Qaeda is an extremely reactionary product, and that's why — that's why, for instance, all those blank support[s], or unconditional support[s], of the Iraqi resistance without making any distinction —
08:19 instead of supporting actions against the US, [the] US–British occupation, but making a distinction between them and other actions often waged by the same forces; I'm speaking here of sectarian killings and sectarian massacres that developed in Iraq — was a real, a real problem. Now, al-Qaeda in Iraq
08:49 emerged powerfully, especially after the massacre of Fallujah and the rest, after 2004. It peaked in 2006, 2007, but was later defeated when the United States changed its strategy in Iraq and resorted to the very classical colonial recipe of buying the tribes, the Sunni tribes,
09:22 in this context, in order to remove the kind of popular framework within which al-Qaeda was developing. So ultimately the United States managed, through this tactic, through co-opting the Arab Sunni tribes — and therefore changing even the character, from that
09:52 regard, of the occupation with regard to the sectarian balance in Iraq — it managed to really [?] marginalise al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now, what happened is that the war in Syria, the civil war that developed in Syria after the initial phase of the uprising in that country, recreated, if you want, the kind of conditions in which
10:25 phenomena like al-Qaeda can develop. And here we have another illustration of the clash of barbarisms, if you want — a local one, with the huge barbarism of the Syrian regime, this absolutely terrible massacre that the regime has been conducting, the destruction of the country. I mean, something unprecedented; I mean, there's nothing in modern history one can think of, of a government
10:57 destroying its own country in this way, in a way very much resembling the mutual destruction of [opposed] countries in the inter-state wars [?] like the Second World War and all the rest. This is the kind of scenery that you see from Syria. So this extreme brutality and barbarism of the regime fed again, or created again, the kind of resentment — a very sharp resentment — which, in the absence of course of revolutionary, radical, progressive forces
11:28 and the rest (I'm speaking here of the Arab populations, not the Kurdish population), in the absence of such forces you could have such extremely violent, fanatic and fundamentalist forces such as [al-]Qaeda seizing the opportunity. And ISIS is nothing but al-Qaeda in Iraq — I mean, the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq moving to Syria,
12:00 seizing the opportunity created by the conditions there. And that's why what used to be called the Islamic State in Iraq changed its name into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the famous ISIS that you know, before re-changing the name when it went back into Iraq and re-established itself in both countries at this time.
12:31 So, and again, the reasons why it managed to move back to Iraq is related to the sectarian attitude of the Tehran-backed Maliki government in Iraq, which alienated totally the Arab Sunni population that the United States had managed to
13:02 turn against al-Qaeda before leaving the country. And this is what created again this possibility for ISIS to get back in Iraq, with the development[s] that we have seen. Now, as a background also to all that we should add the fact that,
13:33 I mean, we can see here how the lack of support to the Syrian mainstream opposition also was absolutely crucial in the development[s] that we are seeing now. And this is something that even, you know, Hillary Clinton for instance acknowledges. [I'm] reading from here, an interview she gave last August:
> "the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled. They were often armed in an indiscriminate way by other forces, and we had — we, the United States — no skin in the game that really enabled us to prevent this indiscriminate arming."
14:36 Well, what she's saying here is true. This is true. This is the result of the policies of the Obama administration in refusing even to give the Syrian opposition even defensive — I mean, the defensive weapons that the Syrian opposition was requesting. That is, you have a government that is destroying its country, massacring its people, and the main weapon in this endeavour is the aviation.
15:08 And, I mean, had the Syrian opposition been equipped, or given, anti-aircraft and also anti-tank weapons, it could have certainly limited to a large extent the degree of killing and devastation perpetrated by the regime. And the fact that the United States did not give this opposition
15:39 these weapons was because the United States has never wished the downfall of the Assad regime. And actually the main concern of the United States was that the Syrian state should not collapse, it should be kept as a state, and there should be some kind of compromise with Assad. Sometimes they would put pressure for him to
16:10 step down; other times they would even mute this kind of condition, as we are seeing now. Now, the result of all that has been of course this breakthrough of IS. And ultimately, when IS moved back from Syria into Iraq, into — closer to the oil fields, if you want — then the United States could no longer contemplate
16:42 the massacre without doing anything. It intervened — but then intervene[d] directly. This is what they are prepared to do. They did [so] in Libya, where they refused to arm the uprising in Libya; they never accepted any of the many requests of the Libyan uprising in 2011 to get weapons, but they wanted to do the job themselves, in order to control the situation, in order to be able to steer the uprising into an
17:14 outcome that suits US interest[s]. And that's the situation which we ended having. Here we are: we are against direct intervention, I mean generally, by imperialist forces, and it is for this very reason that we are for [the] supply of weapons to the oppositions — because the alternative becomes what you get now. And of course the kind of
17:46 intervention of this coalition of reactionary forces led by the United States, and the fact that the main figure of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party thanks NATO warmly, [and] the United States, for their intervention, is something that is saddening — although one understands perfectly
18:17 the situation in which they have found themselves, with the imminent threat represented on Kobanê by the Islamic State. And again, this is this kind of situation that we had when Benghazi was under imminent threat from the Libyan, [the] Gaddafi regime forces, and one could not just, at that moment, because of the city, about the city — one
18:48 could not reasonably blame the local population for asking for protection, and cheering when they got this protection. But the problem is, it starts with a protection of a city and then it carries on, as we can see now, into a full-fledged project of controlling the whole situation. And what the United States is now actively busy
19:20 preparing is this compromise with the Assad regime, without even any longer the request of Assad stepping down. This is what is being cooked, and this will be a terrible blow for the Syrian people, the Syrian uprising. And actually this will play into the hands of IS [?], as we can see. And now we have this conjunction between the coalition strikes and the Assad
19:51 regime strikes. Today, just before coming here, [I] read the news of the Syrian regime bombing Raqqa, which is one of the cities under IS control, and killing between 70 and 90 people. You can be sure that certainly not all of them were IS fighters. So this creates a huge resentment, and this is the problem. The problem is that with such tactics and strategy, imperialism is creating a disaster situation
20:23 in the region which really represents a very huge threat and danger for the future.
## Corrections
- "the whole regime represents **the controversial** usually" and "these two **controversial halls**" → "the old regime represents **the counterrevolution**" and "these two **counter-revolutionary poles**". The captions cannot render "counterrevolution" at all, and in the second case turn the central image of the talk into nonsense. - "the devastating war on **iran**" (1990–91) and "at work in **iran**" (the occupation) and "when IS moved back from syria into **iran**" → "**Iraq**" in all three places. The captions substitute Iran for Iraq wherever the word is stressed. - "**abu ray** fallujah" → "**Abu Ghraib**, Fallujah". - "in the **virus** actions that happened later on" → "in the **various** actions". - "the main **founder** of the main force within the islamic opposition" → "the main **funder**" — Qatar's role, and the point of the sentence. - "hillary clinton for instance **a knowledge**" → "**acknowledges**". - "prevent this indiscriminate **army**" → "this indiscriminate **arming**", in the Clinton quotation he reads out. - "anti-aircraft and also **empty tank** weapons" → "also **anti-tank** weapons". - "some kind of compromise with **assets**" and "compromise with the **asset** regime" → "with **Assad**" / "the **Assad** regime". - "we are for supply of weapons to **the positions**" → "to the **oppositions**". - "the kurdish democratic union party **thank thanks nato warmly from** the united states" → "the Kurdish Democratic Union Party **thanks** NATO warmly, **and** the United States". - "this will be a terrible **vlog**" → "a terrible **blow**". - "the imminent threat represented on **kobane**" → **Kobanê**; "**raqqa**" and "**maliki**" are correct in the captions and capitalised here. - Marked and uncertain: "the oil monarchies — the **oil-producing [?]** monarchies" (captions: "they are avoiding monarchies"); "imposed on that country **[an embargo]** of genocidal proportion[s] **[?]**"; "it managed to **really [?]** marginalise al-Qaeda"; "the mutual destruction of [opposed] countries in the **inter-state wars [?]**" (captions: "post countries in the international worlds"); "this will play into the **hands [?]** of IS" (captions: "the end of is"). - "the **aviation**" is kept as spoken: a Francophone usage for the regime's air force, not a caption error.