Patriotism Is a Two-Edged Sword

By Paul Craig Roberts 

    

People stand for the national anthem during an NFL game (Dave Hogg/CC BY 2.0)

Critics of NFL players' decision not to participate in a ritual of the state religion are attacking a right guaranteed under the US Constitution.

Isometimes wonder if America’s greatest threat is the population’s hyper-patriotism. The bulk of the population is now at work shutting down the NFL players’ First Amendment rights, and none of the incensed censors are capable of understanding that it is they, and not the NFL players, who are attacking the U.S. Constitution. We have been through all this flag business before, and federal courts have ruled for the protesters who burnt flags, wore them on their clothes, whatever. Yet, here we go again.

Hardwick Clothes CEO pulls the company’s advertising from NFL games. Insofar as advertising helps Hardwick’s shareholders, CEO Allan Jones is hurting his own shareholders in order to protest the NFL players’ protests, a thought that probably never occurred to him.

According to this report, white people across the country are burning their NFL shirts and their expensive tickets for which they paid hundreds of dollars.

A Louisiana state representative has introduced legislation to ban state subsidies for the New Orleans Saints because of their “disgraceful protests.” It is OK with Rep. Kenny Havard for Louisiana taxpayers to give hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to the NFL team as long as the players stand for the anthem, but not if they don’t. It apparently never occurred to Havard to question whether relatively poor Louisiana taxpayers should be giving hundreds of millions of dollars to a billionaire team owner. There is no doubt that the average salary of the Saints exceeds the average salary of Louisiana taxpayers.

Former NFL quarterback John Elway declares: “I believe that this is the greatest country in the world,” and his personal belief takes care of the numerous protesters who clearly have a different view.

Bill O’Reilly makes a guest appearance on Fox News berating the NFL protesters for ignoring the effect on US soldiers in Afghanistan who “are putting their life on the line.” Apparently, after all these years it still has not occurred to O’Reilly that the soldiers’ lives — and those of Afghans — are being put on the line by the military/security complex’s drive for profits and the neoconservative drive for US and Israeli hegemony.

Trump sends out emails: “Do you stand with President Trump, our flag, and this great country” against the NFL protesters?

The childishness of it all is an American embarrassment.

The patriotic response is not only an attack on the First Amendment but also plays into the hands of Identity Politics, which has its own take on the matter. Julio Rosas writes in the HuffPost that standing for the national anthem is standing for white supremacy.

Before a few dimwits send me emails demanding explanation why I stand for anti-American minorities against “the greatest country in the world,” let us all first consider where this is going. The answer is: nowhere good. The hyper-patriotism that is being whipped up is so irrational that it is against the self-interests of the counter-protesters, who are hurting the visibility of their merchandising brand and costing the shareholders profits, burning their clothing and expensive football tickets, and denying themselves their favorite entertainment.

The military/security complex, the hegemonic neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby are sitting there, licking their chops. They know what to do with this display of ignorant patriotism. They will turn it against Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia. Their profits will flow even higher, neocon ambitions will be realized, and Israel will have the US eliminate another country — Iran — in the way of its expansion. Or so they think.

Russia cannot afford a vassal of Washington in Iran or the type of chaos in Iran that now engulfs Iraq and Libya. It is a short distance from Iran through Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan into Muslim areas of Russia and former Muslim provinces of the Soviet Union. If Iran falls, Russia is the next to be destabilized. Additionally, Iran in Washington’s hands extends to the East Washington’s surrounding of Russia. The Russian government would be confronted with US missile bases on its borders ranging from the Baltics through eastern and southern Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and Iran. Moreover, US missiles in Iran could reach China in a few minutes as can the US missile bases being constructed on China’s Pacific border under the guise of countering “the North Korean threat.”

China depends on Iran for 20 percent of its oil supply. China was forced out of its Libyan oil supply by Washington’s overthrow of Gaddafi. Losing Iran would be a blow. At some point these two powerful countries will have to realize that their national existence is at stake. China has been too busy making money to pay attention, and Russia has been in thrall to its centuries-old desire to be part of the West.

The Russian government’s policy of replying to Washington’s aggression with diplomacy has failed totally. This policy has been extremely expensive to Russia and today is a direct threat to Russia’s national survival. Whether Russia is too controlled by Washington and Israeli-installed billionaires to attend to its national interests remains to be seen.

China’s lust for riches is a non-substitute for national survival.

Washington is counting on these singular weaknesses of the only two countries capable of serving as a check on Washington’s unilateralism.

However, there are countervailing powers in Russia and China. The Operation Command of the Russian High Command has publicly given its opinion that Washington is preparing a surprise nuclear attack on Russia. It would be derelict beyond comprehension for President Putin to ignore this conclusion. Inside China, historic pride is a rival influence to the lust for riches. The Chinese are determined never again to be a mere playground for foreign powers.

Sooner or later even the hubris-overstuffed Zionist Lobby will realize that the American war against Iran that Israel is demanding is a fuse for a Third World War and that the Jews will be destroyed along with everyone else. From the “Nile to the Euphrates” will be a wasteland.

In my previous column, I addressed what can be done from the Western side to reduce the tensions that are leading to nuclear armageddon. On the Russian and Chinese side what can be done is a tri-party mutual defense pact between Russia, Iran, and China that is made public. This would tell the psychopaths in Washington and Israel that an attack on Iran means World War III.

If this is not a deterrent, then Washington and Israel are lost to evil, and life on earth is ended.

The Revival of Ottomanism in Shaping Turkey’s Influence in the Muslim World

By Dilly Hussain

A screenshot from the show "Resurrection: Ertugrul" on Netflix

There is a wealth of lessons that Turkey can learn from their Ottoman predecessors in order to progress as an emerging superpower in the region.

Turkey’s Islamic identity is an indisputable fact. Since the dawn of Turkic dynasties that took control of former Abbasid territories at the end of the tenth century, the “Turks” became the main face of Muslim empires for the best part of 800 years. The decisive victory for the Seljuk Empire against the Byzantines in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 CE opened the doors for Turkic tribes to the region known as Anatolia, which stood at the gates of Christian Europe.

Fast forward two centuries from Manzikert, the birth of the Ottoman sultanate in 1299 CE eventually superseded the Mamluks, Seljuks, Ayyubids and Abbasids as the largest Sunni Muslim empire for six centuries, especially when it assumed the position of the Caliphate over the Islamic world in 1517 CE under Selim I.

The Ottoman Empire’s distinct Turkish identity shaped the way this Muslim superpower dealt with respective European polities. From the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 CE to the siege of Vienna in 1529 CE, right up to the Battle of Gallipoli during World War One, the “Turks” will forever be remembered by their European neighbours as the Muslim thorn at the heart of Europe.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. War and trade necessitated alliances, albeit short-lived, between the Ottoman Empire and mainly France and Britain, usually against the Habsburg and Russian empire. However, due to the Ottomans siding with a defeated Germany in WW1, the Sykes-Picot agreement led to the carving up of the Middle East into small nation-states which remain until today.

The Turkish Republic and Europe

After the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate on 3rd March 1924 and the declaration of a secular republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey looked towards Western Europe as a political model to emulate.

During its formative years, the new Turkish republic saw a period of forced assimilation to secularism, and the censorship of Turkey’s innate Islamic identity and culture. The Kemalist regime imposed several draconian policies which included the banning of the hijab, outlawing the public call to prayer, the closure of religious schools, and the abandonment of the Arabic language from the education curriculum.

The authoritarian crackdown on anything overtly Islamic lasted for nearly 70 years with numerous military coups taking place when the “security” and “unity” of the secular republic was threatened. And throughout this period, the historical remnants of the Ottoman Empire were generally erased from public life, as the higher echelons of Kemalist power perceived it as a regressive chapter of Turkey’s past.

For a Muslim majority country with a population of 80 million, one of the strongest standing armies in the world, and with social norms that are not entirely palatable to secular liberal Europe, Turkey’s desire to be accepted into the European Union was destined to be problematic. The accusations of human rights abuses and censorship of freedoms are frequently levied against Turkey by some EU members when opposing their bid to join the bloc. And whilst it may not be politically correct to say this, Turkey’s historical track record with Europe during the Ottoman era makes its Muslim identity an elephant in the room.

Consequently, it is safe to say, for now, that Turkey under the leadership of the charismatic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) is now looking towards the Middle East and North Africa to gain political influence and economic prosperity.

Revival of Ottoman history

The popular likening of President Erdogan and the AKP to the Ottoman Empire is a fallacy. This “link” between “Sultan Erdogan” and the Ottoman Empire was born out of the reality that for decades Turkey was structurally suppressed from the public recognition of its Islamic heritage, something commonly attributed to the Ottomans and the Seljuks before them. Inevitably, when a seemingly unapologetic Muslim leader emerged from the gradual decline of Kemalism, a logical outcome was for some to liken Erdogan and the AKP to modern-day Ottomans.

While this comparison to the Ottomans has been parroted by Western journalists and Turkish secularists, comparing Erdogan and the AKP to the Ottomans can neither be substantiated from a political rhetoric point of view, let alone policies.

However, Ottoman nostalgia is certainly on the rise in Turkey. During my two visits to Istanbul since 2015, I noticed a consistent level of cross-spectrum positive sentiments of Ottoman history among the hotel staff, taxi drivers, restaurant waiters, shopkeepers and university students I interacted with—and some were ardent critics of Erdogan and the AKP.

As stated earlier, whilst it would be incorrect to even figuratively compare Erdogan to the Ottoman sultans of the past, there is no denying that the AKP has played a key role in normalising Ottoman nostalgia in Turkey. From commemorating historical battles like Gallipoli to welcoming world leaders with Ottoman-dressed guards, it is fair to say that much of Erdogan’s rhetoric and the AKP’s social policies would make Ataturk turn in his grave.

In addition to calling on Muslim youth in Turkey to wed young, urging married couples to have at least five children, rhetoric in support of the oppressed Palestinians, Syrians and the Rohingya, another indicator of Erdogan and the AKP’s role in reviving Ottoman history is their support for popular Ottoman TV shows.

Dirilis Ertugrul (Resurrection: Ertugrul)

Dirilis Ertugrul was launched in 2013, and the fourth season is rumoured to release later this year. The show’s conservative producer and director, Mehmet Bozdag, is a celebrated filmmaker in Turkey whose affiliation to the AKP is no secret. The show was an acclaimed hit with Turkish audiences when it aired on TRT—the national Turkish broadcaster—while being an even bigger hit with non-Turkish viewers who watched the show on Netflix.

The fantastically produced programme has even been dubbed by some as the “Turkish Game of Thrones”, but whilst I feel that is a bit of an exaggeration, the series was certainly very well acted with epic fight scenes and nail-biting plots.

“Ertugrul Gazi” was the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. Very little is known about the life of Ertugrul except that he was the son of Sulaiman Shah of the Kayi tribe who migrated from Central Asia and settled in Anatolia due to the Mongol raids. The character of Ertugrul is played by Turkish heartthrob Engin Altan Duzyatan, who executed the role to perfection.

The show follows Ertugrul’s struggle to find a permanent homeland for the Kayi tribe from Aleppo to Erzurum, whilst simultaneously fighting the Knights Templers, the Mongols, treacherous Seljuk governors and generals, and internal spies. As a loyal servant to Seljuk Sultan Alladeen Kaykubad, Ertugrul serves to protect and expand the Seljuk Empire with the long-term plan of establishing his own principality that will take over the bastion from the Seljuks.

Throughout the series, Ertugrul is guided by religious scholars, Sufi mystics, his mother Hayme, and his Seljuk wife Halime. The series consists of strong themes pertaining to the establishment of an expansionist state that will rule with justice, as well as the Islamic concepts of unity, jihad, martyrdom, patience and hope, which is coupled with an unadulterated hatred for the Crusaders and their spies from ‘within’ the tribe. I could not help but feel the Crusaders and their Turkic agents fitted perfectly with Erdogan’s official coup plot narrative—an act of treason that was orchestrated by the West and carried out by the treacherous Gulenists.                  

Payitaht Abdulhamid (The Last Emperor)

Payitaht Abdulhamid follows the concluding years of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s rule, which was marred with separatist rebellions, coup plots by the Young Turks, as well as external threats from European powers, which the show implies were being orchestrated by Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism. The character of Abdulhamid is played by Bulent Inal, who perfectly delivers the stern and uncompromising personality of the 34th Ottoman sultan.

The programme received much praise from President Erdogan and conservative sections of Turkish society, as well as being warmly received by Shahzade (prince) Abdulhamid Kayıhan Osmanoğlu—Sultan Abdhulhamid’s great grandson who helped with the show’s production. However, Payitaht Abdulhamid caused uproar on social media among some members of the Jewish community who accused the show of peddling anti-Semitism. Lobbyists successfully prevented Netflix from airing the show, whilst staff members from the ‘Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ claimed that Payitaht Abdulhamid promoted an “antidemocratic, anti-Semitic and conspiratorial worldview”.

However, historically speaking, Abdul Hamid II was widely regarded by Muslim historiansas the great Ottoman Caliph who singlehandedly drove the empire to survive for another 40 years. Dubbed by his European critics as a regressive monarchist who prevented the modernization of the empire, when in actuality, Abdulhamid implemented major educational, military and economic reforms which resulted in the empire surpassing its expected “sell by date” by half a century until his removal in 1909.

The first season of Payitaht Abdulhamid aired on TRT earlier this year, and it is the latest pro-Ottoman programme on mainstream Turkish TV.

Muhtesem Yuzyil (Magnificent Century)

Magnificent Century is a soap drama that depicts the life of Sulaiman ‘The Magnificent’—one of the greatest Ottoman sultans who led the empire to its zenith in the sixteenth century. In stark contrast to Dirilis Ertugrul and Payitaht Abdulhamid, Magnificent Century mainly focuses on the sultan’s womenfolk—his jealous wives, competing concubines and controlling mother—all of whom were seeking to gain influence within the palace.

Magnificent Century, which was aired on TRT, was also a mega hit in Turkey; however, the Turkish broadcasting regulator RTUK stated that they received more than 70,000 complaints due to the show’s depiction of the sultan’s personal sex life, of him gambling, and the extravagance of the royal family. Erdogan also weighed in on the criticisms calling the soap “disrespectful” towards a revered historical figure. The show covers the meteoric rise of Hurrem—the former Orthodox Christian slave from Crimea—who went onto to become Sulaiman’s wife and one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history.

Whilst Magnificent Century is a far cry from Dirilis Ertugrul and Payitaht Abdulhamid, the show still managed to illustrate—in consistent snippets—the glory of the Ottoman Empire, and Sulaiman as the great Caliph of Islam who took Shariah law and jihad very seriously. Considering the directors and producers of Magnificent Century are widely regarded as secularists, their inclusion of Islamic concepts and the historical distrust of Christian Europe in a soap that has been described as the Turkish ‘Sex and The City’ was surprising, and very telling of the religious sensitivities in Turkey.

The future of Ottomanism in Turkey

Kudos and criticisms of political figures and parties should be proportionality based on policies and reality, as opposed to rhetoric alone. In the same way that Ataturk did everything in his means to eradicate Islam from Turkey’s public sphere, including Ottoman history, similarly Erdogan and the AKP cannot be exclusively praised for the recent revival of Ottoman history. Ataturk on numerous occasions criticised Islam and the influence of the “backward” Arabs on the Turkish nation, in the same way that Erdogan has clearly statedthat he has absolutely no intention to govern by Shariah law or to establish a Caliphate.

The Ottoman Empire makes up 625 years of Turkey’s history. Therefore, 70 years of Kemalist oppression or 20 years of AKP’s so-called “Islamification” can neither diminish nor revive such a vast legacy overnight. The truth of the matter is that it is physically impossible to erase Ottoman history because it dominates the very landscape that Turks see every day, along with the plethora of cultural norms among the indigenous people that date back to the Ottomans.

However, the exact details of Erdogan and the AKP’s influence aside, one must question where this “revival” of Ottomanism in Turkey will lead to? Surely, if the masses are being shown via mainstream TV a glorious Islamic empire that existed only 93 years ago, which ruled large swathes of the Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and assumed overall leadership over the Muslim world, it will naturally influence the psyche of Turkey’s population.

Turkey’s selective military involvement in Syria, its ongoing skirmishes with Kurdish separatists, the formation of military training camps in Somalia, Erdogan’s purging of coup plotters and Gulenists, the war against ISIS, and the AKP’s warm relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood are a mere spectacle compared to the militaristic, expansionist and religious narratives being disseminated in Dirilis Ertugrul, Payitaht Abdülhamid and Magnificent Century.

Whether the revival of Ottoman heritage is a passive AKP “Islamification” policy or a genuine celebration of Turkey’s history, if a government allows the masses to be constantly reminded of their historical glory and accomplishments, many will begin to yearn to see a repeat of those achievements. It happens in the Western world all the time. In the U.S., Britain and France, the masses are frequently reminded by the mainstream media about of how “great” their colonial forefathers were in shaping the modern world, which strengthens the population’s sense of global importance and interventionism.

With the consistent themes of military conquests, Islamic unity, Jewish conspiracies, and the concept of jihad as a mechanism to liberate occupied lands embedded in TV shows like Dirilis Ertugrul and Payitaht Abdulhamid, it can only lead to two things: the subconscious desire to return to such glory, and the conscious comparison between celebrated Ottoman sultans and Turkey’s contemporary leaders. And this may also manifest in the Turkish public being more receptive and supportive of military interventionism in the region, and even expansion of its borders.

Inevitably, if such a situation were to occur, there will always be domestic opposition to military interventionism and expansionism from anti-war activists and opposition parties, but it cannot be ruled out. In recent years, nation-state borders have been altered: the breaking of the border between Iraq and Syria by ISIS, the accession of Crimea to Russia, the breakaway of South Ossetia from Georgia, and the formation of a de-facto autonomous Kurdistan are a testimony that nation state borders can shift.

However, it is important to note that the cultural revival of Ottomanism isn’t necessarily an “Islamic” sentiment that could lead to the re-establishment of a Turkish-headed Caliphate or a neo-Ottoman Sultanate—for some it may be, but for many others, it really isn’t.

While there is a distinct link between the Ottoman Empire’s Islamic authoritative legitimacy and Turkey’s inescapable Muslim identity—neo-Ottomanism has recently been promoted by Turkish nationalists to justify pan-Turkism. The fact that the Ottomans were unapologetically Turkish and had ruled vast lands inhabited by Turkic people, the current Ottoman nostalgia could lead to widespread acceptance and support for Turkey to involve itself in the political and economic affairs of former Turkic Ottoman territories.

As an admirer of Ottoman history, I perceive the current resurgence in Ottoman heritage as a positive and refreshing change for Turkey since the dark days of Kemalist tyranny. It would be unfortunate if such a legacy was suppressed by Kemalists or manipulated by opportunistic “Islamists” when there is a wealth of lessons that Turkey can learn from their Ottoman predecessors in order to progress as an emerging superpower in the region.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dilly Hussain is the deputy editor of British Muslim news site 5Pillars. He is also a political blogger for the Huffington Post and a features writer for Al Jazeera English specializing in human rights. 

Saudi plan to ‘accept Israel as a brotherly state’

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is working to “westernise” the Kingdom and change people’s mindsets when it comes to Israel, Twitter user Mujtahidd has reported.

The account, which is believed to be reporting from inside the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, wrote: “Arrangement among the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is wider than our expectations. Israel and American bodies linked to Trump are involved.”

“The plan is complete. It is based on unifying the bases of security, media, culture and education, including religion, in Egypt and all the Gulf States except Oman.”

The plan, according to Mujtahid, was drawn in Egypt which is the “supplier of cadres who will deal with the issues of media, security, Islamic movements, education syllabuses and religious institutions.”

According to Mujtahidd, it aims to “distance any political, cultural, educational, financial, religious effect on the people of Egypt and the Gulf States in order to reach a state of full and eternal normalisation with Israel.”

It also said that the arrangement for this plan started in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Israel before US President Donald Trump was inaugurated, noting that former American President Barack Obama did not join the plan because he feared these states and the recklessness of Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman.

Trump, Mujtahidd tweeted, supported the plan and this encouraged Bin Salman and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed to kick start its implementation earlier than planned. The plan includes hiring hundreds of Egyptian officials and officers in the Gulf States to supervise security, armies, media, religion and education.

Mujtahidd added that the plan includes arresting hundreds of religious scholars, stressing that Bin Salman was enthusiastic about the implementation of the plan due to Israel’s pledge to get Trump’s help to support his bid to become King of Saudi Arabia.

The Twitter user added the plan was implemented and included the “use of social media to turn the public opinion against Islam in general and specifically political Islam and accepting Israel as a brotherly state.”

Read: New Saudi crown prince is Israel’s ‘dream come true’ says US diplomat

The Genocide Of The Rohingya: Big Oil, Failed Democracy And False Prophets

by Dr Ramzy Baroud 

To a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi is a false prophet. Glorified by the west for many years, she was made a ‘democracy icon’ because she opposed the same forces in her country, Burma, at the time that the US-led western coalition isolated Rangoon for its alliance with China.

Aung San Suu Kyi played her role as expected, winning the approval of the Right and the admiration of the Left. And for that, she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; she joined the elevated group of ‘The Elders’ and was promoted by many in the media and various governments as a heroic figure, to be emulated.

Hillary Clinton once described her as “this extraordinary woman.” The ‘Lady’ of Burma’s journey from being a political pariah in her own country, where she was placed under house arrest for 15 years, finally ended in triumph when she became the leader of Burma following a multi-party election in 2015. Since then, she has toured many countries, dined with queens and presidents, given memorable speeches, received awards, while knowingly rebranding the very brutal military that she had opposed throughout the years. (Even today, the Burmese military has a near-veto power over all aspects of government.)

But the great ‘humanitarian’ seems to have run out of integrity as her government, military and police began conducting a widespread ethnic cleansing operation that targeted the ‘most oppressed people on earth’, the Rohingya. These defenseless people have been subjected to a brutal and systematic genocide, conducted through a joint effort by the Burmese military, police and majority Buddhist nationalists.

The so-called “Cleansing Operations” have killed hundreds of Rohingya in recent months, driving over 250,000 crying, frightened and hungry people to escape for their lives in any way possible. Hundreds more have perished at sea, or hunted down and killed in jungles.

Stories of murder and mayhem remind one of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people during the Nakba of 1948. It should come as no surprise that Israel is one of the biggest suppliers of weapons to the Burmese military. Despite an extended arms embargo on Burma by many countries, Israel’s Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insists that his country has no intentions of halting its weapons shipments to the despicable regime in Rangoon, which is actively using these weapons against its own minorities, not only Muslims in the western Rakhine state but also Christians in the north.

One of the Israeli shipments was announced in August 2016 by the Israeli company TAR Ideal Concepts. The company proudly featured that its Corner Shot rifles are already in ‘operational use’ by the Burmese military.

Israel’s history is rife with examples of backing brutal juntas and authoritarian regimes, but why are those who have positioned themselves as the guardians of democracy still silent about the bloodbath in Burma?

Nearly a quarter of the Rohingya population has already been driven out of their homes since October last year. The rest could follow in the near future, thus making the collective crime almost irreversible.

Aung San Suu Kyi did not even have the moral courage to say a few words of sympathy to the victims. Instead, she could only express an uncommitted statement: “we have to take care of everybody who is in our country”. Meanwhile, her spokesperson and other mouthpieces launched a campaign of vilification against Rohingya, accusing them of burning their own villages, fabricating their own rape stories, while referring to Rohingya who dare to resist as ‘Jihadists‘, hoping to link the ongoing genocide with the western-infested campaign aimed at vilifying Muslims everywhere.

But well-documented reports give us more than a glimpse of the harrowing reality experienced by the Rohingya. A recent UN report details the account of one woman, whose husband had been killed by soldiers in what the UN described as “widespread as well as systematic” attacks that “very likely commission of crimes against humanity.”

“Five of them took off my clothes and raped me,” said the bereaved woman. “My eight-month-old son was crying of hunger when they were in my house because he wanted to breastfeed, so to silence him they killed him with a knife.”

Fleeing refugees that made it to Bangladesh following a nightmarish journey spoke of the murder of children, the rape of women and the burning of villages. Some of these accounts have been verified through satellite images provided by Human Rights Watch, showing wiped out villages throughout the state.

Certainly, the horrible fate of the Rohingya is not entirely new. But what makes it particularity pressing is that the west is now fully on the side of the very government that is carrying out these atrocious acts.

And there is a reason for that: Oil.

Reporting from Ramree Island, Hereward Holland wrote on the ‘hunting for Myanmar’s (Burma) hidden treasure.’

Massive deposits of oil that have remained untapped due to decades of western boycott of the junta government are now available to the highest bidder. It is a big oil bonanza, and all are invited. Shell, ENI, Total, Chevron and many others are investing large sums to exploit the country’s natural resources, while the Chinese – who dominated Burma’s economy for many years – are being slowly pushed out.

Indeed, the rivalry over Burma’s unexploited wealth is at its peak in decades. It is this wealth – and the need to undermine China’s superpower status in Asia – that has brought the west back, installed Aung San Suu Kyi as a leader in a country that has never fundamentally changed, but only rebranded itself to pave the road for the return of ‘Big Oil’.

However, the Rohingya are paying the price.

Do not let Burmese official propaganda mislead you. The Rohingya are not foreigners, intruders or immigrants in Burma.

Their kingdom of Arakan dates back to the 8th Century. In the centuries that followed, the inhabitants of that kingdom learned about Islam from Arab traders and, with time, it became a Muslim-majority region. Arakan is Burma’s modern-day Rakhine state, where most of the country’s estimated 1.2 million Rohingya still live.

The false notion that the Rohingya are outsiders started in 1784 when the Burmese King conquered Arakan and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Many of those who were forced out of their homes to Bengal, eventually returned.

Attacks on Rohingya, and constant attempts at driving them out of Rakhine, have been renewed over several periods of history, for example: following the Japanese defeat of British forces stationed in Burma in 1942; in 1948; following the takeover of Burma by the Army in 1962; as a result of so-called ‘Operation Dragon King’ in 1977, where the military junta forcefully drove over 200,000 Rohingya out of their homes to Bangladesh, and so on.

In 1982, the military government passed the Citizenship Law that stripped most Rohingya of their citizenship, declaring them illegal in their own country.

The war on the Rohingya began again in 2012. Every single episode, since then, has followed a typical narrative: ‘communal clashes’ between Buddhist nationals and Rohingya, often leading to tens of thousands of the latter group being chased out to the Bay of Bengal, to the jungles and, those who survive, to refugee camps.

Amid international silence, only few respected figures like Pope Francis spoke out in support of the Rohingya in a deeply moving prayer last February.

The Rohingya are ‘good people’, the Pope said. “They are peaceful people, and they are our brothers and sisters.” His call for justice was never heeded.

Arab and Muslim countries remained largely silent, despite public outcry to do something to end the genocide.

Reporting from Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, veteran British journalist, Peter Oborne, described what he has seen in an article published by the Daily Mail on September 4:

“Just five years ago, an estimated 50,000 of the city’s population of around 180,000 were members of the local Rohingya Muslim ethnic group. Today, there are fewer than 3,000 left. And they are not free to walk the streets. They are crammed into a tiny ghetto surrounded by barbed wire. Armed guards prevent visitors from entering — and will not allow the Rohingya Muslims to leave.”

With access to that reality through their many emissaries on the ground, western government knew too well of the indisputable facts, but ignored them, anyway.

When US, European and Japanese corporations lined up to exploit the treasures of Burma, all they needed was the nod of approval from the US government. The Barack Obama Administration hailed Burma’s ‘opening’ even before the 2015 elections brought Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to power. After that date, Burma has become another American ‘success story’, oblivious, of course, to the facts that a genocide has been under way in that country for years.

The violence in Burma is likely to escalate and reach other ASEAN countries, simply because the two main ethnic and religious groups in these countries are dominated and almost evenly split between Buddhists and Muslims.

The triumphant return of the US-west to exploit Burma’s wealth and the US-Chinese rivalries is likely to complicate the situation even further, if ASEAN does not end its appalling silence and move with a determined strategy to pressure Burma to end its genocide of the Rohingya.

People around the world must take a stand. Religious communities should speak out. Human rights groups should do more to document the crimes of the Burmese government and hold to account those who supply them with weapons.

Respected South African Bishop Desmond Tutu had strongly admonished Aung San Suu Kyi for turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide.

It is the least we expect from the man who stood up to Apartheid in his own country, and penned the famous words: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California.