Tariq and I have known each other for more than 40 years. We were students together in the ’60s. We were active in the opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam. And we’ve continued to cross paths in the British Left context.
About 20 years ago I said to Tariq that God, Allah, called the two of us to His presence and said to us, “One of you is to go the left, and one of you is to go to the right.” The problem is, He didn’t tell us which was which, and maybe He didn’t know Himself. And Tariq laughed. He understood exactly what I was saying, and he didn’t dispute it.
Despite the divergence, though, Ali shares a sense of pessimism about future developments:
In my opinion, the Kurdish areas in the north will separate and come under Israeli/American protection. A major part of the south will become an Iranian protectorate, while the middle will be dominated by the Saudis or by Syria. The times of an independent Iraq with its own territorial sovereignty are over. Like Afghanistan, the country is a veritable time bomb.
The whole interview, in French, is here.
