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<h1>Kill them all to rescue a dying colonialism</h1>
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<p><span style="color:#FF0000"><strong>Killing Sunnis, Shias,
Salafis, Sufis, Christians, Jews, etc.<br>
</strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.turkeyagenda.com/author/dr-hatem-bazian/"
style="color:#FF0000;">by Dr. HATEM BAZIAN</a></p>
<p><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.turkeyagenda.com/kill-them-all-to-rescue-a-dying-colonialism-1004.html">http://www.turkeyagenda.com/kill-them-all-to-rescue-a-dying-colonialism-1004.html</a></small></small></small></b><br>
August 12, 2014<br>
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<p><span style="font-size:14px">I wanted to write this article
sometime ago but events and developments kept intruding and
my attention taken away or stolen from the critical into the
tangential. As more events unfold and the death rates in the
Arab and Muslim world reach catastrophic levels and the
region all up in flames. My pen can no longer remain
occupied with brush fires while the interests and forces
shaping this calamity remain aloof and unencumbered by much
needed insights and analysis.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">We are witnessing massive
killing fields across the region from Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia,
Yemen, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Central African Republic, and
Burma. However, the critical question is not asked, why is
this taking place and what are the interests being served?
What are the key factors that are shaping this massive
transformation and causing this high level of instability
across regions and among societies that have lived in
relative peaceful and co-dependence existence for centuries.
Could it all be reduced to differing religions or even among
the same religious group to divergent interpretations!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Indeed, divide and conquer has
been the best and most effective instrument utilized by
colonial powers to first achieve control over societies and
then further the domination in successive periods up to the
present post-colonial period. How to dominate and conquer a
territory inhabited by large populations with diverse
languages, cultures, racial groupings, religious traditions
and political worldviews! The order of business was to
explore existing cleavages and work to foment divisions at
every turn while pushing forth a colonial project.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Arguments as to what came first
the company or the army are very rudimentary for the
question fails to take into account that the colonial
project was at once an economic, social, religious,
political, racial and military project. We can’t and should
not separate it into distinct parts for doing so will reduce
the ability to critique the totality of the epistemic
colonial structure and get the bigger picture lost in
possible contradictions at the smaller or local details.
Taking the colonial structure in parts will cause us to lose
sight of the forest and become entangled in tree types and
effects on each other. Colonialism always insisted on
looking at tree types and not the forest or more importantly
who owns it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">At the big picture, we have a
daily massive transfer of wealth taking place from the
colonized south to the colonial motherlands in the global
north. The global north provides the arms and military
hardware needed by the local despotic colonial guards, which
are financed by revenues coming from raw materials,
strategic minerals and oil. The colonized elites are
connected to the colonial global north and place their
resources in banks and corporations in the colonial
motherlands. This was built into the structure from
inception and not a mere smartness or cunning in the south.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Guns for raw materials, economic
access for domination and possible success for the few at
the expense of the overwhelming many in the global south is
what colonialism offered in the past and continues to do so
in this post-colonial period. The colonial project is
centered on creating the appropriate conditions to
constitute an elite ready to sacrifice the best interests of
its own society for a narrow benefit that is never lasting
or subject to control and manipulation by colonial powers.
Local conflicts are part of the colonial structure for they
provide the ability to extract sweeping economic and
political concessions from colonized societies. Conflicts,
fomenting divisions and exaggerating tensions are structural
aspects of colonization and not to be viewed as part of the
colonized inherent inferiority.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The same strategy worked during
the European Slave Trade in West Africa: Guns for slaves,
which accelerated and intensified local conflicts.
Certainly, the demand for more slaves required creating the
needed conditions to bring slave supplies into the coast to
be transferred across the Atlantic. The more conflicts in
West Africa the more slaves can be supplied and the more
slaves are available the more depressed the prices get thus
making the conflicting parties more violent toward one
another so they can get more slaves traded for guns to
protect themselves against another local competitor engaged
in the same system. For sure, the need for labor force in
the Americas’ plantations was the primary factor that shaped
the history, society and conflicts in West Africa for over
300 years and the region still living the impacts of this
catastrophic colonial project and strategy. This was not an
accident; rather it was structural and set in motion by
major powers involved in the colonization of the Americas
and Africa at the same time since it was a major global
economic, political, social, religious and racial project.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Studying history in a localized
way, while is important, in this case would fail to account
for this massive colonial project and its impact on Africa
and the Americas’ as a whole. I have very little respect for
works that spend so much time on looking at the local
conflicts in parts of Africa and never asking the critical
question about the forces and interests at play that
continue to push these conflicts forward because so much
exploitation of diamond mines, oil, uranium, gold, silver,
cooper etc. Too much money at stake to leave it for the
Africans to use! Thus, the present colonial mangers are sent
to set the process in motion and to keep things the way they
are by sending the wealth up to the global north. Africa is
not poor; rather is impoverished by cunning global
‘civilized’ design.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Now one might say that I strayed
away from the topic and the Arab and Muslim world with the
many conflicts witnessed and cited above but also racism and
discrimination toward Black Africa, abuse of foreign labor
force, sexism, and ill treatment of minorities. However,
this litany once again is taking the local context so as not
to confront the global and the colonial powers and their
continued robbing the southern hemisphere poor to enrich the
already 1% of the global north even more.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The core problems at hand are
rooted in divide and conquer whereby local differences are
instrumentalized for a present coloniality. In the past, the
colonial companies, like the British East Africa Company,
German East African Company, and Dutch East India Company,
all worked hand in hand with the military and state powers
to penetrate new territories and claim them as possessions
for the sponsoring state. One must be clear on this direct
connection between colonial commercial enterprises and
colonial states and their pursuit of territorial expansion.
The military protected the companies and in return the
commercial enterprises managed and organized the colonies
according to colonial state interests. Centrally to this
organizing and management was a divide and conquer strategy
as well as a conniving alignment with local elites and
religious authorities, who opted to protect their narrow
self-interest at the expense of resistance. At a certain
level, the local elites and religious authorities were
completely ignorant of the new global developments and acted
from pre-modern understandings that were incongruent with
rapid developments underway (this is separate article for
the future).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">When we examine the present
colonial we confront similar alignment with military
industrial complex companies selling guns to all parties,
while petro-chemical companies move raw materials like oil
to industrial economies to act as the engine for producing
finished products for the captive colonized or if we may say
open-market privatize neoliberal economies. On the other
end, we find a set of global corporations coming with
‘development’ projects for the shakedown and clean up job
for whatever is left in the pockets of elites who got paid
for oil, raw materials and the robbing of local economies.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Guns for oil to further foment
conflicts instrumentalized over a 200 years period and
colonial development projects intended to shift resources
from the local to the global while facilitating an
administration of the local colonial structures. The
existing elites are all acting to protect their assigned
self-interest in the form of luxurious trade mark products
and local dealerships, software deals, processing plants,
tobacco concessions, percentage cuts on various deals etc.
The local elite role is to facilitate the present colonial
and in return they are given the guns to protect themselves
from domestic opposition at the plantation level and
external neighbors that are organized on the same principles
but often belong to another colonially selected tribe,
religious group or sect, and ethnic or linguistic groupings.
In each case the borders and assignment of roles were set in
motion in an epistemic colonial structure and not as often
presented as a result of historical animosities or
revelries.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The best Sunni, Shia, Sufi,
Salafi, Ikhwani, Christian, Jew, Hindu and Buddist in the
present colonial is a dead one if they are not ready to play
and be part of this insidious dehumanizing structure. We all
are caught with the news cycle but don’t stop to think of
how the news became news in the first place! How did the
Sunni-Shia conflict become the focal point! How did ISIS
emerge, why and how politics framed around sectarian
discourses came to the fore! How did Muslim-Jewish and
Arab-Jewish conflicts become the frame by which relations
are developed and constructed since the inception of a
colonial Zionist project! Why is it that we look at one
another through an otherization colonized lens and accept it
to define who we are and what we should do on a daily basis!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">Differences among human groups
are foundational and present throughout recorded history.
Some, however, maintain that the human state of nature is
founded upon the survival of the fittest and as such
powerful groups must work to overcome and take over weaker
types. However, this particular thesis is founded upon a
capitalist, colonial and racist reading of history that
takes developments occurring as a result of particular human
behavior and project it back unto all human groups and
societies then articulate a forward looking policy and
action plans based on it. This thesis views conflict between
human groupings as the norm and an outcome of a
pre-determined imprint on the human state of nature. Thus,
colonialism and its economic underpinnings are rationalized
as part of a norm rather than a particular distorted mode
resulting in genocide and constant visitation of death and
destruction on the vast majority of humanity to maintain the
engines of greed and materialism humming.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px">The challenge for all is how to
break away from this cycle and bring the colonial
otherization project to an end. I do believe it begins by
affirming the human collective differences and diversity as
a source of enrichment and an endowed uniqueness that can
contribute to building a better future for all. We all are
better when we preserve, protect and cause each other to
flourish in our unique and distinctive ways. Seeking to
dominate and eliminate the other is a sign of weakness, not
strength. For the Arab and Muslim world to flourish it must
dispense with the colonial framing and reconstitute itself
within a de-colonizing epistemology rooted in the strength
within diversity whereby religious, ethnic, linguistic,
cultural and regional differences are opportunities to learn
and develop in ways that otherwise would not have been
possible. Colonialism instrumentalized diversity and
difference to propel a dehumanizing project. For me a
de-colonization project in the Arab and Muslim world must be
rooted in reconstituting our collective humanness with
diversity and difference being the bedrock for the society.
Today is the time for all to work toward hastening the dying
colonialism!</span></p>
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