looking around

the title of this blog is taken from the epitaph of the architect christopher wren at st paul's cathedral. si monumentum quaeris, circumspice - if you seek my monument, look around.

the aim of this page is to look around at the world we have made and encourage readers to do the same. we shall find, i don't doubt, that much of what we seearound us leaves us puzzled, dissatisfied, even angry. i certainly am. all three.

many of us live our everyday lives and accept things that we do not like. after a time, we no longer even realise where we have reached. we stop looking around and seeing the effects of our mental shrugs. things get steadily worse, and - often when it too late - we see that what is today intolerable could have been preempted, if only we hadn't kept quiet.

i am an Indian who has lived abroad for the greater part of my life. i feel very strongly about things that are going on in my country and around it. i have been trying to understand these matters, and have reached a stage where i feel i have something to say, and lots (lots!) more to learn.

i start today with the situation in iraq. why did the americans need to remove saddam from power? i do not think it was wmd ever - not really. for if it was, they would actually have treated the issue with much more respect. see how they are responding to north korea, or even iran.

nor was it oil. or not oil alone. for saddam would have done anything the americans asked in the last few months before the invasion in 2003. in order to survive, he would have raised or reduced oil production, whatever the americans wanted. and the americans could have easily seen to the lifting of the sanctions that prevented iraq from becoming a full player in the global oil market.

no, i believe it was a deeper strategy. ever since oil was found in significant quantities in the middle east in the first decade of the 20th century, the british decided that their favoured candidate to control that oil was the sunni arab.

between them, harold st john philby and t e lawrence, ensured that their admiration for the bedouin became a pillar of the british policy in the region. as a result, the territorial dispensation that they created in the aftermath of the first world war saw sunni arabs on the thrones of the states that emerged from the ottoman empire. in particular, the richest deposits which were in iraq and saudi arabia were placed under sunni arab rulers. this in spite of the reality that iraq was a shia majority area. in other oil-bearing areas of iraq, the kurds were the dominant part of the population. in saudi arabia, the oil-bearing gulf coast was likewise dominated by the shias. the british experience with the iranians (or persians as they were then called) who were shias made them wary of entrusting the oil wealth to them. there was no choice with regard to persia itself, but that was in any case not part of the ottoman empire and was not part of the mandated territory after the first world war.

thus arose the arabist tradition of the british foreign office. this was taken over by the state department following the second world war. and state has been equally true to the arabist commitment.

this arrangement reached its apogee in the fourth afghan war 1980-1989, when the americans worked closely with some of the most fanatical elements who fought the "jihad". some time in the 1990's, the arrangement began to turn sour. even though the americans supported the bosnians, the kosovars, the palestinians, the kashmiri militants, later the taliban and even the chechens (the last four more passively than the others) their relationship with the sunni muslim deteriorated.

the first world trade centre bombing in 1993 showed that the war was being brought ashore for the first time since the colonial wars. subsequent events are well-known and need not be repeated. however, 11 september tilted the balance in the internal debate in washington: the sunni arab was an implacable enemy, and had to be defeated. the arabist commitment had had its day, at least under president bush.

it is in this sense that the leaders of america say that the invasion of iraq was a part of the war on terror. and that is true and correct. the more technical point that the baathist regime was secular is true. however, the violent change in iraq is the beginning of a longer-term series of changes in the entire middle east, aimed at reducing arab sunni power. in that way, it is hoped, the terror machine will be crippled and eventually destroyed.

will the shias be easier to come to an accommodation? not if we go by what we have seen of the shia forces in lebanon and in iran. still, the shias of iraq are pointing to a willingness to make a historic new accord in the middle east. iran remains the key, and hence the mounting pressure on that country from america. this is all building up to a crescendo over the presidential elections in that country this summer.

it would be in order to expect a very tense election process - president bush's focus on freedom and democracy in his inaugural speech and state of the union speech point clearly in that direction.