Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

The outcome of regional strategic calculus and "lesser evil" mentality, especially when "the lesser evil" is "secular". Sections of the left are still in denial. How chemical weapons helped bring Assad close to victory

Documenting crimes The First Gulf War, the chemical attack on the Iraqi village of Halabja in 1988 and the role played by foreign companies in the build-up of chemical weapons in the region were the main topics at the most recent "Visions of Iran" film festival in Cologne.  Halabja – casting a long shadow

Syria The US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan when the war had already been won. The ‘rape of Germany’ by both allied and Soviet forces after the Second World War is indicative of this ‘victorious’ sense of impunity. The effective questioning of why a party would use disproportionate violence against another party betrays an implicit notion that the accused has an interest in not alienating the local population. Ironically, such arguments denying the ‘rape of Germany’ by supporters of the allies would have undoubtedly been repeated in the same terms: “why would our forces do this when we had already won?” Chemical attacks: why would the regime do it since it was "winning the war?"

1. This is a 7-year war with half of the population either displaced or made refugees, and with about 400,000 killed (93% of them killed by the regime). 2. This is a brutal regime which crushed an uprising and a revolutionary prospect, supported by one regional power, which was the main winner from the destruction of Iraq, a furure winner in Syria and "a threat" to Israel, and an authoritarian state, which is a  big global power, but not a super-power, and it is in a geopolitical power struggle with the big imperialist states for spheres of influence. It used to be a friend of the main imperialist powers when a drunkard man opened the gates to "free market" and sold half of the country to foreign capitalists and newly-born local  ones, some of them now live in London. It is a regime that waged a  brutal war on the Chetchens and his "democratic" friends of the time looked the other way. 3. On the other side, known imperialist states, agents of glob...

Imperialist hypocrisy Al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta, killing at 70 people.We should do something about it. Al-Asad regime and its allies have been responsible for 93% of the detahs in Syria.  Mr Al-Assad, you can carry on killing, but you shouldn't use chemical weapons. Use other weapons and we will continue looking the other way. After all, although we hate the Russians and the Iranians, we stil prefer you to the 'jihadists' and 'terrorists', you are 'secualr', and you and your wife are 'Western-educated liberals'. Otherwise, you know, that we are resposnible for saving people since time immemorial, and we will not stand by and watch. In fact, we don't want to attack you. Our real objective is Putin and the Russian state. You know, Ukraine, geo-politics, that poisoning thing in Salisbury, etc.

One should add the folowing: even if we don't talk about the responsibility of the Western imperialist states in laying the foundation/condition of what is happing now in parts of the Arab world, one should at least mention the responsibility of those very same states in selling instruments of death right now to states like Saudi Arabia and Israel.  One also should mention the complicity of the people in the US, Britain, France, Germany, etc for allowing the sale of arms.  Disavowal