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| Landön, kyla & rusk, sönd. 17/8. Foto: AN |
Viktigast är förstås det faktum att ryska, ukrainska, tyska och franska utrikesministrarna ska mötas för samtal och förhandlingar i Berlin under dagen.
10 personer har dött av granateld under de senaste 24 timmarna i Donetsk.
Från norra Irak kommer illavarslande telegram om nya massakrer på yazidier. Kurdiska styrkor strider mot ISIS och USA ger fortsatt understöd. The Telegraph skriver idag om hur David Cameron plötsligt, som väckt ur en ond dröm börjar trolla med truten:
“The West is embroiled in a generational struggle against a poisonous brand of Islamic extremism that will bring terror to the streets of Britain unless urgent action is taken to defeat it, David Cameron warns today.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says the world cannot turn a blind eye to the creation of an extremist caliphate in the heart of Iraq. Warning that Islamic State fighters already control thousands of square miles of territory, Mr Cameron says that if these “warped and barbaric” extremists are not dealt with now, they will create a “terrorist state” on the shores of the Mediterranean.”Cameron representerar ett land som med glatt humör förstörde Irak. Han är därmed en av de toppolitiker som måste ställas till svars för effekterna av ett tio år långt angreppskrig mot irakierna, deras vardag och liv. Om inte annat borde han ha ett seriöst samtal med Tony Blair om det som hänt. Det utropade kalifatet har ju sina representanter också i Camerons stad och nation! ISIS-flaggan har redan vajat svart i London. Och utan Londons och Washingtons beslut att invadera, ockupera och föra krig i Irak hade ISIS kanske inte ens existerat.
Är då ISIS en islamistisk terrorgrupp blott? Nej, svarar Patrick Cockburn i sin essä Isis consolidates (London Review of Books, 16/2014)
Det är i själva verket frågan om en ny statsbildning, säger Cockburn, en statsbildning som nu omfattar ett territorium stort som Danmark, Finland eller Irland, med en befolkning på sex miljoner:
As the attention of the world focused on Ukraine and Gaza, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) captured a third of Syria in addition to the quarter of Iraq it had seized in June. The frontiers of the new Caliphate declared by Isis on 29 June are expanding by the day and now cover an area larger than Great Britain and inhabited by at least six million people, a population larger than that of Denmark, Finland or Ireland. In a few weeks of fighting in Syria Isis has established itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition, routing the official al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor and executing its local commander as he tried to flee. In northern Syria some five thousand Isis fighters are using tanks and artillery captured from the Iraqi army in Mosul to besiege half a million Kurds in their enclave at Kobani on the Turkish border. In central Syria, near Palmyra, Isis fought the Syrian army as it overran the al-Shaer gasfield, one of the largest in the country, in a surprise assault that left an estimated three hundred soldiers and civilians dead. Repeated government counter-attacks finally retook the gasfield but Isis still controls most of Syria’s oil and gas production. The Caliphate may be poor and isolated but its oil wells and control of crucial roads provide a steady income in addition to the plunder of war.Det är ju denna statsbildning som ISIS namnger som kalifatet:
The birth of the new state is the most radical change to the political geography of the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement was implemented in the aftermath of the First World War. Yet this explosive transformation has created surprisingly little alarm internationally or even among those in Iraq and Syria not yet under the rule of Isis. Politicians and diplomats tend to treat Isis as if it is a Bedouin raiding party that appears dramatically from the desert, wins spectacular victories and then retreats to its strongholds leaving the status quo little changed. Such a scenario is conceivable but is getting less and less likely as Isis consolidates its hold on its new conquests in an area that may soon stretch from Iran to the Mediterranean.Cockburn tvekar inte, det här är inte fråga om en dagsslända som försvinner lika plötsligt som den uppkom. I slutet av sin essä förklarar han varför:
Many in Baghdad hope the excesses of Isis – for example, blowing up mosques it deems shrines, like that of Younis (Jonah) in Mosul – will alienate the Sunnis. In the long term they may do just that, but opposing Isis is very dangerous and, for all its brutality, it has brought victory to a defeated and persecuted Sunni community. Even those Sunnis in Mosul who don’t like it are fearful of the return of a vengeful Shia-dominated Iraqi government. So far Baghdad’s response to its defeat has been to bomb Mosul and Tikrit randomly, leaving local people in no doubt about its indifference to their welfare or survival. The fear will not change even if Maliki is replaced by a more conciliatory prime minister. A Sunni in Mosul, writing just after a missile fired by government forces had exploded in the city, told me: ‘Maliki’s forces have already demolished the University of Tikrit. It has become havoc and rubble like all the city. If Maliki reaches us in Mosul he will kill its people or turn them into refugees. Pray for us.’ Such views are common, and make it less likely that Sunnis will rise up in opposition to Isis and its Caliphate. A new and terrifying state has been born.Läs gärna sista orden en gång till:
A new and terrifying state has been born.