Saudi Arabia wants to create havoc in Middle East: Fereydun Hilmi

Press TV has conducted an interview with Fereydun Hilmi, former Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government member, about the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Our first question from our guest in London Mr. Hilmi, the question of who is behind the attacks? When that question is asked a lot of the media mention two groups, they refer to what they call Sunni insurgents including al-Qaeda and then Shia militias. How accurate is that?

Hilmi: Well I think that the tools of the conspiracy which is going on at the moment are the secretion groups that you are talking about but I think the conspiracy which is hatched by the western imperialist states and their baby Israel are to create conditions of terrorism everywhere in the Arab and Islamic world and I think that to say that the Saudis are sectarian or the Qatari people are sectarian, I think that is not true.

I think the fact is that these guys ruling those very rich emirates and kingdoms have absolutely no respect for religion or any cultural values. They are busy on a 24 hour basis pumping absolute trash from Turkish soaps to all kinds of anti-Islam, anti-religious propaganda and trash to actually propagate and promote Western life-style.

They are not sectarian by any means and they are not even Muslims as such. So I think that there is a conspiracy to cull the population of Iraq, Syria, and the other Arab countries as well as the Islamic countries.

It has nothing to do with democracy, it has nothing to do with religion or sectarianism or even ideology. These people have no values, no principles, no ideology and they just do the bidding for the imperialists.

Press TV: Mr. Hilmi, a lot of people are saying that right now this violence is being caused by an alliance between al-Qaeda and Ba’ath members, members of the former Ba’ath regime. Would you agree with that?

Hilmi: Well let me just say that I agree with the previous speaker that the Saudis and the Qataris are very much involved. I did not say that they are not. I said in fact the tools of this conspiracy are the groups that are actually doing the fighting.

But the Saudi money and the Qatari money and [Persian] Gulf money is actually pouring into these areas to pay for the kind of new al-Qaeda which is now an Israeli version of the previous Qaeda, is actually causing havoc in the region. And this new al-Qaeda is far more vicious and has absolutely no qualms about murdering people, of raping, slaughtering and doing anything they want.

The previous version of the al-Qaeda which was American made, they concentrated more on the enemies of what they called the enemies of Islam but as this version is concentrating on killing people, mostly children, women and the weak and these people are far more dangerous than the previous al-Qaeda.

As for the Ba’ath Party, nobody knows if they are still in existence as a force. They are probably in existence as individuals and shattered groups but as a force I have no evidence, I have seen nothing that points to their power or any ability on their part to cause any problems.
I think the terror acts happening in Iraq are very similar to those happening in Pakistan, very similar to those happening in Syria as well as other places. They have the same hallmark and I believe that this is a conspiracy to reduce the population and stop the growth of the population of the region.

Press TV: Do you think that the current tension now between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurds if this tension is eased, is going to have a positive effect on the situation?

Hilmi: Well Mr. Qanbar [the other guest of the program] has just described the root causes of what is happening in Iraq. He calls it a democracy and I do not agree with that. I do not believe that there is democracy anywhere in the world. In fact democracy as it started in this country was a means of allowing the king to tax the people as much as he wanted to wage war.

That is how the British parliament actually found its roots. To this day there is no such thing as democracy because democracy means the rule of the people which means the right of the people to decide. What we have in Iraq is the worst form of representative democracy based on blocs that do not represent anybody but themselves and a small group of people with them and all these so-called elections are false because nobody in the world can represent more than himself.

You cannot have an MP that says I represent thousands of people, in some cases a hundred thousand people as well as his family, his friends and everybody else. He just cannot do it.

Press TV: So do you think the way that the Kurds have been implementing for instance activities, they have been signing contracts for instance with Turkey, there has been border tension, there has been even military forces involved that this has not been helping?

Hilmi: Yes. What I was saying is that this is the root cause of the problem. The Kurds will now say that they represent all of the Kurds and what they do is sacrosanct and the Shias and al-Maliki says no, he has the power.

What they did was they came to a silly looking constitution which gave people different powers and left them all vague where nobody knows exactly how to interpret those.

So everyone is trying to take advantage of this silly constitution and the Kurds will do whatever they want. I mean when I say the Kurds, I mean the Kurdish leadership because the Kurds as a people have absolutely no say in what the leadership does just as the Iraqi people have no say in what al-Maliki does because these people do not represent anybody but themselves.

Press TV: Mr. Hilmi, one observer I was reading an article was saying that few people would claim that Iraq’s Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki is perfect but the indiscriminate terrorism that writer was saying that we are saying now in Iraq is way out of proportion to any political grievance for instance that the Sunni population must have.

We are hearing a lot of the mainstream media saying that Nouri al-Maliki is playing the sectarian code and he is actually to blame but would you say that right now it wouldn’t be wise for Nouri al-Maliki to step aside or for people to put all the blame on him?

Hilmi: It does not matter who rules in Iraq, he will be a man who will take power and abuse it. This is the case in every country where they call themselves democratic. There is no such thing as democracy as I said earlier and politics is the scourge of the people.

Your guest in Lebanon says that the people will do this and the people will do that. All that the people can do every four to five years is to put a cross on a piece of paper. That is the extent of their democracy. Beyond that, they have absolutely no say in running the state or running the country.

So this is not a democracy, let’s not fool ourselves. It does not matter when Saddam was power it was the same, when Nouri al-Said was in power it was the same, when Jaafari and so on. It does not matter who you bring to power, he is not going to be able to speak for the entire nation.

And at the moment we have different blocs that are contradictory and in conflict in Iraq and you have a false election system which nobody knows how it works.

Press TV: So what kind of a system do you think then Iraq needs if it wants democracy?

Hilmi: Well not just Iraq but the whole world will need a system that is of direct democracy. Today we have, many people are trying to change the system in the West to direct democracy because you have got the internet and you can vote directly for issues. You do not need mealy-mouthed corrupt politicians to represent you and to increase tension whether it is sectarian, ideological or religious.

The politicians play on these things and their existence of parties is divisive because it divides the people into different sections and it says this section has more right than the other and you have this all the time. The problem is not with the person, the problem is with the system.

Press TV: And quickly Mr. Hilmi before we run out of time, we know that the al-Qaeda in Iraq had said that it’s founded the al-Nusra Front in Syria. So do you think that these are the same people now and they are being backed by those who want to make Iraq into another Syria?

Hilmi: Yes indeed. I think they are the same people, the same groups. They may not know each other but in fact they are created by the same people.
And as I said if you look around the world, especially in the Islamic and Arab world, you will find that people are getting killed by thousands every day and that is a process of culling. It has nothing to do with politics. You do not kill children and women because you want to get rid of al-Maliki. You cannot get rid of him that way, you cannot get rid of anybody that way. All they are doing is killing innocent people.

So there is no politics in what is going on at the moment. These terrorists are there to kill and they do not have