Are we heading for a “regional war” in oil-rich West Asia? For the world, in which modern economies are critically tied to the energy resources of that region, this is the question on everyone’s lips across the planet as Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen are now continuously bombed, invaded.
Why? Because, the global population is largely poor and fuel costs could mean starvation, stunting or, at the very least, pauperisation, including currently struggling Sri Lanka. But also because the decades-long, festering colonial-style human crisis in Palestine touches the hearts of entire nations worldwide with their own recent memories of colonial domination, exploitation and suffering.
In the Third World and the even larger ‘Global South’, this humanitarian vulnerability applies to both populations and their rulers. Economic crises could trigger given the dangers of massive socio-political unrest both horizontally in terms of resource rivalry among social groups as well as vertically in terms of popular dissatisfaction with their rulers, some of which are not democratically elected.
Sri Lankans
Our Foreign Affairs Ministry last week again issued a formal warning – its second in two weeks – to Sri Lankans regarding West Asia. After its earlier statement on the safety of Sri Lankans in war-torn Israel-Palestine, the Ministry’s latest statement last week focused on “the safety of Sri Lankans in Lebanon”.
It said: “The security situation in Lebanon is volatile and constantly evolving. The Sri Lanka Embassy in Beirut is maintaining constant contact with Sri Lankan Associations and individual Sri Lankans registered with the Embassy. Ambassador Kapila Jayaweera and officers of the Sri Lanka Embassy are providing assistance to Sri Lankans as required. Apart from a few Sri Lankans who have been stranded and for whom the Embassy has arranged shelter, no Sri Lankans have been seriously affected by the situation so far.”
Many thousands of Sri Lankans now worry about the safety of their kin and friends in Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. If the United States and Israel carry out more attacks across the region, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans now resident in the whole of West Asia may face danger and displacement. The world recalls the immense dislocation and toll of lives and livelihood just a decade ago with the Western power bloc’s repeated invasions of Iraq, instigations of civil wars in Syria and, in neighbouring Somalia and Libya.
Yemen
Last week, both the US and Israel simultaneously bombed several cities and ports in Yemen more than 2000 km distant from Israel. The US air force on Friday announced aerial bombing of no less than 15 cities in impoverished, already war battered Yemen. The United Kingdom’s government, however, denied allegations by the Yemeni Government of involvement in the air strikes.
The US has been repeatedly bombing Yemen since January in response to attacks by Yemeni Houthi forces on Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The subsequent massive militarisation of the Red Sea with dozens of Western warships including large American naval flotillas, has led to crippling of regular commercial sea traffic in what is, normally, one of the world’s busiest sea lanes.
The Houthi military said their strikes are intended to signal solidarity with Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza. In recent months Yemeni forces have also launched drone attacks against Israel itself.
Lebanon
Even more alarming is the ferocious nature of the Israeli Defence Forces’ operations against Lebanon both by air and, since last week’s ground offensive. Israeli air attacks have been daily and nightly all across Lebanon. Yesterday the IDF acknowledged massive bombing in East Lebanon that they claim “destroyed” the main highway from Beirut to Syria. IDF officials boasted that the “escape route” to Syria has now been blocked.
The Lebanese Government has now deployed its army units close to Israel’s border in southern Lebanon. The IDF has acknowledged that up to eight IDF troopers have been killed in the ongoing military offensive inside South Lebanon.
Analysts are pointing to the slow progress of the IDF invasion as a mark of the capacity of the Lebanese Hezbollah Movement’s militia to resist. Israeli analysts themselves have long acknowledged the lack of success of the many previous, much bigger, IDF invasions of Lebanon over decades.
They note that any success claimed by Israeli Governments have been merely the physical urban and rural destruction, the deaths of many Lebanese and displacement of millions. Never have any of the Arab resistance militia been ‘defeated’ in any military sense, as is demonstrated by the current successful resistance operations by the Hezbollah and also the small Palestinian refugee militia operating from their refugee camps in Lebanon.
Most international analysts also said that last week’s Iranian retaliatory missile strike against Israel was also a symbolic one, even smaller in scale than the first missile strike by Iran a few months ago.
That missile attack, comprising some 300 missiles and drones, had also been acknowledged as a largely token attack in retaliation to the direct bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Syria and the killing of four senior Iranian military official then on an advisory mission to Damascus.
For any serious military power, a few hundred missiles is no more than a tactical operation, especially when the missiles are not of a very destructive calibre.
Analysts acknowledge that the Likud Government in Occupied Jerusalem has been, for months, trying to provoke a serious military reaction from Tehran in order that Israel could broaden its war and push the West into more military support and endorsement of its aggressive and genocidal actions. However, many analysts agree that the continuing pattern of geopolitics of the West indicate a deliberate, sustained, coordination between Washington and Jerusalem rather than an Israeli aggression of its own design and intent.
Public
In the past several months there has been a significant rise in the direct Western military operations in West Asia. Also, the West has begun to be more public about previously secret military operations on the ground in different countries in the region especially in the thinly populated borderlands of Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Washington rarely admits to its few thousand troop presence in secret bases in that remote desert region which is rich in gas and oil deposits yet to be tapped. The US and Turkey are coordinating their military denial of Syrian Governmental access to eastern Syria where these mineral riches are located.
Last month Washington acknowledged “large scale” bombing operations in that remote area claiming that it was targeting radical Arab militia – whom they conveniently label as “Islamist terrorists”. Now, all these military actions simultaneously by Israel and the West are becoming more and more public.
Most alarming has been the public admission by Washington and Occupied Jerusalem that they are jointly plotting Israel’s intended counter-retaliation against Iran. Israeli is publicly pushing to be supported in directly bombing Iran to destroy parts of its military and economic capability. Washington has been publicly stating that it would not allow Israel to hit Iranian nuclear facilities.
The world must now watch this very deliberately public discussion of intended direct hostile aggression against not one but several countries – Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen. There is a clear attempt, through such public discourse, to actually legitimise this outright and large scale aggression.
We are no longer “heading” towards war in West Asia. It is possible to argue that, in all this, a ‘regional war’has already broken out. It is one that is currently between an extra-regional global power bloc – NATO/EU – that is intervening to dominate oil-rich West Asia by defeating and neutralising resistant local nations and regional powers which are only asserting their own role in their home region.
The US-NATO-EU are already at war in West Asia both directly and also through their proxy state, Israel ,and, are conducting offensive operations against local militia resistance groups, many of which are supported by regional powers (Iran) or are part of victim nations (Palestine, Yemen, Syria).
Global community
In shock and awe at this planetary-scale lawlessness, the global community must watch and seek to build its own alternative geopolitical strength via the United Nations, and other regional groupings. The world society is slowly being shaken awake to the mayhem wrought by the old imperial power bloc as the threat to all our lives looms nearer.
At the UN last week, the entirety of Arab countries presented a united stand in solidarity with Palestine and demanded Israel’s compliance with Security Council resolutions demand an immediate halt to its military operations. This rare united Arab front also demands that the Council use its enforcement powers in the even of Israeli intransigence.
Only a unified global community can prevail over the misbehaviour of a few wayward powers, however powerful those states may be.
