April 4, 2006
In what is curiously described as a shift from "a socialist to a
free market economy", the Iraqi 'government' has decided to slash food rations for the poor. As part of the same move, the oil-for-food programme will be eliminated
by the end of 2006, because it is part of a "socialist" legacy. It's
such a bad state of affairs for some children that they are reduced to searching through piles of rubbish to find something to eat or wear. This is not the only way the occupiers have brought Palestine to Iraq.
The
infrastructure, destroyed by years of war and sanctions, perpetually
blitzed by the occupation, and barely rebuilt before the occupiers
turned off the funding tap (which was at any rate being delivered into
the pockets of embezzlers and Bush-friendly companies), is a ruin. The ongoing violence of the occupation, coupled with the sectarian violence that has been dramatically escalated since the bombing of the Samarrah shrine has led to tens of thousands of displaced, doctors fleeing the country. And,
according to the UN, "Iraq used to have one of the finest school
systems in the Middle East ... Today millions of children in Iraq are
attending schools that lack even basic water or sanitation facilities,
have crumbling walls, broken windows and leaking roofs. The system is
overwhelmed." It gets worse and worse.
Attending
the talk of civil war, there's a curious ideological reversal now
happening in some of the Western press. The Sunnis, once the official
bad guys, are now defending themselves against sectarian violence (whose origins in US policy we are supposed to forget). Meanwhile, following the US massacre at a Shi'ite mosque (designed to show Sadr who's boss), the latter are swiftly uniting against the occupiers, and so the US finds itself at odds
with the preferred leader of Shi'ite forces. The latter is certainly a
big shift since as recently as last year, Jafaari was doing everything
the coalition way, insisting that there would be no timetable for
withdrawal, negotiating extraordinary contracts with Western oil
companies and so on. Part of what is happening is a break-down of the
Shi'ite-Kurdish alliance. This is partially because of Jafaari's visit
to Turkey which was perceived as a signal that Kurdish independence is
unimportant to Jafaari. But it is also because Kurdish peshmerga have
been accused of targeting Sadrists, (whereas previously they just targeted Sunni civilians).
The Kurdish leaders are pissed off about Sadr's agitation against the
sectarian constitution, I suspect, and they have been forming an
alliance with Iyad Allawi. They appear to hope they can split the
Shi'ite bloc, some of whom are increasingly luke-warm about Jafaari.
Much of the criticism has been that he isn't tough enough with the
resistance - which appears to mean that they want a return to Allawi's
hard man tactics.
Still, if we can avoid once more dividing
Iraqis into 'good' and 'bad' ethnic groups, that would be helpful. The
civil war scenario hawked by many - both opponents and supporters of
the occupation - misses something important: the sectarian violence is
being directed by competing political elites under the rubric of
occupation. It is not a symptom of widespread sectarianism. The day
after the attack on the Samarra shrine, which seems to me to have been
carefully designed to cause sectarian rifts, there were unity
demonstrations across Iraq. Sunnis defended Shi'ite mosques, and
members of the Mahdi Army were ordered to defend Sunni mosques (albeit
there are stories, denied by the leadership, that Mahdi Army soldiers
participated in some of the sectarian outrages that ensued). Students
in Basra have recently been mounting a fight against sectarian violence. But because of the extraordinary amount of violence by Shi'ite and Kurdish sectarians, more and more Iraqis are carrying guns,
while neighbourhoods form militias in self-defence. Meanwhile, with the
bodies piling up, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has been instructed to stop reporting how many Iraqis are being killed and by whom, while the director of the Baghdad morgue who revealed the scale of killings by government backed death squads has had to flee.
This situation is so dangerous, and so bizarre. Take a look at this:
I
was trying to decide between a report on bird flu on one channel, a
montage of bits and pieces from various latmiyas on another channel and
an Egyptian soap opera on a third channel. I paused on the Sharqiya
channel which many Iraqis consider to be a reasonably toned channel
(and which during the elections showed its support for Allawi in
particular). I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the
bottom of the page. The usual- mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an
American soldier killed here, another one wounded there… 12 Iraqi
corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught
my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read
it correctly.
E. was sitting at the other end of the living
room, taking apart a radio he later wouldn’t be able to put back
together. I called him over with the words, "Come here and read this-
I’m sure I misunderstood…" He stood in front of the television and
watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and
when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and
pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was
feeling.
The line said:
وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى
عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات
التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة The translation:
"The Ministry
of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the
army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by
coalition forces working in that area."
That’s how messed up the country is at this point.
We
switched to another channel, the "Baghdad" channel (allied with Muhsin
Abdul Hameed and his group) and they had the same news item, but
instead of the general "coalition forces" they had "American coalition
forces". We checked two other channels. Iraqiya (pro-Da’awa) didn’t
mention it and Forat (pro-SCIRI) also didn’t have it on their news
ticker.
We discussed it today as it was repeated on another channel.
"So what does it mean?" My cousin’s wife asked as we sat gathered at lunch.
"It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don’t have to let them in." I answered.
"They’re
not exactly asking your permission," E. pointed out. "They break the
door down and take people away- or have you forgotten?"
"Well
according to the Ministry of Defense, we can shoot at them, right? It’s
trespassing-they can be considered burglars or abductors…" I replied.
The
cousin shook his head, "If your family is inside the house- you’re not
going to shoot at them. They come in groups, remember? They come armed
and in large groups- shooting at them or resisting them would endanger
people inside of the house."
"Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they DON’T have Americans with them?" E. asked.
We
sat drinking tea, mulling over the possibilities. It confirmed what has
been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning- the Iraqi security forces
are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.
But
it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad
on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of
protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of
Defense can’t even trust its own personnel, unless they are
"accompanied by American coalition forces".
It really is
difficult to understand what is happening lately. We hear about talks
between Americans and Iran over security in Iraq, and then American
ambassador in Iraq accuses Iran of funding militias inside of the
country. Today there are claims that Americans killed between 20 to 30
men from Sadr’s militia in an attack on a husseiniya yesterday. The
Americans are claiming that responsibility for the attack should be
placed on Iraqi security forces (the same security forces they are
constantly commending).
All of this directly contradicts claims
by Bush and other American politicians that Iraqi troops and security
forces are in control of the situation. Or maybe they are in control-
just not in a good way.
They’ve been finding corpses all over
Baghdad for weeks now- and it’s always the same: holes drilled in the
head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hung.
Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their
homes by security forces- police or special army brigades… Some of them
were rounded up from mosques.
The emergent
client-state in Iraq is pathetically weak and divided, both hopelessly
dependent on the US, and brutally reliant on sectarian militias. And
surely this is what the US intends.
The latest revelations
about US plans for permanent bases in Iraq has compounded the already
very obvious fact that the US doesn't intend on ending its occupation
either as the result of a timetable, or Iraqi political pressure or US
domestic pressure. They intend to draw down forces and leave tens of
thousands of troops stationed in permanent bases, thereby providing
them with crucial leverage both in Iraq and in the Middle East as a
whole. This would, so the US government hopes, provide a base for a
potential attack on Iran or Syria. It would also keep the US-vetted
Iraqi political class under thumb. Not only was this entirely
predictable, but it was predicted,
repeatedly. The US has been depositing bases across the planet like a
so many cowpats for decades, and this escalated sharply in the
post-Cold War era. Why would it be different with Iraq?
What is
happening in Iraq is not 'civil war' (yet), or simply some
incomprehensible kind of randomly violent chaos. What is happening is
occupation: the US has brutally played off one ethnic group against
another, made use of sectarian death squads, built a state apparatus
that was imbricated from the start with Badr Corps and peshmerga - and
have no doubt engaged in various psyops that we won't hear about for
another thirty years. In this situation, various groups are struggling
for power and patronage, others are struggling for equity, and some are
struggling for their very existence. It is the occupation which has to
be overcome in the immediate term, and fighting the occupation also
means fighting the germinal indigenous ruling class which is allied to
it. Resisting sectarianism means resisting the splitting tactics of the
new political elites, particularly those most allied with the
occupation.
By the way - John Reid, the Defence Secretary, has called for a "review" of the Geneva Conventions,
because the new breed of Evil Doer is unlike any previously
experienced: "The legal constraints upon us have to be set against an
enemy that adheres no constraints whatsoever, but an enemy so swift to
insist that we do in every particular, and that makes life very
difficult for the forces of democracy". You heard the man - human
rights law "makes life very difficult". I bet it does.
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