One Year Later: An Iraqi Speaks From Baghdad
As the bombs were falling on Baghdad a year ago, retired engineer Ghazwan
al-Mukhtar told us: "UK/USA means to me United to Kill Us All." On the first
anniversary of "Shock and Awe", Ghazwan joins us from Baghdad for a look
back at a year under US occupation. Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar, a retired Iraqi
engineer who finished his studies as a civil engineer in the USA, speaking
from Baghdad.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the situation in Iraq, one year after the
invasion began?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: Well, for twelve months I have been liberated from my
water supply, liberated from electricity, liberated from my telephone; maybe
soon I will be liberated from my life.
The invasion is nothing more than an extension of this sanctions - exempt
it's worse. The medical system has collapsed; so has the water supply and
the sewage system even deteriorated more. The security situation is
atrocious. You cannot drive outside your house safely at night. The bombing
is happening. Almost every day we hear a bomb. In fact, we hear more bombs
than it is reported on the news media. Now that the telephone system -- we
are without a telephone system for now a year. I still don't have a
telephone line. The land lines have been damaged totally. The health system
just collapsed. So, it is even worse than what it was a year ago. And there
is no prospect of improvement within the foreseeable month or next few
months or a year, even, because the attempt -- no attempt has been visible
on the reconstruction of all those facilities. So, I would say a year after
the invasion, life is miserable in Baghdad. It was much more -- it is a lot
worse than it was in 2003.
AMY GOODMAN: How's the attitude to U.S. soldiers?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: Well, the attitude to U.S. soldiers are becoming more
hostile because the U.S. soldiers are misbehaving and mishandling the
people. They are shooting more people. But yesterday they killed a
photographer and a journalist for Al-Arabiyah Newspaper according to the
eye-witness reports and I have seen on television. Unjustifiably, it is
actually a cold-blood murder of those two journalists. So, that's bound to
increase the resistance against the U.S. invasion. I was told today that the
other part of Baghdad, which used to be called Saddam City, a dominantly
Shiite area in Baghdad, there is a demonstration against the U.S. occupation
of Iraq.
So, things are not improving. They are deteriorating and deteriorating
rapidly. I was just traveling on the Amman to Baghdad road two nights ago
and we had to stop for two hours because it was dark and we were chased by a
pickup truck which the driver. It was some people trying to hijack the car
on the road. So, when we stopped about 60 kilometers or 70 kilometers from
the Iraqi border inside Iraq. We stopped. We couldn't travel because it was
too dangerous. We found more than 300 cars parked at a coffee shop and we
have to wait until about 5:30 in the morning so we can go on a convoy
together.
One can not talk about the situation in occupied Iraq without understanding
the situation that existed in Iraq over the last 13 years of sanctions. The
sanctions affected every aspect of life of every Iraqi. The occupation added
more problems to the already overburdened Iraqis. The occupation so far is
nothing more than a much more brutal extension of the sanctions.
In order to establish law and order, a strong "force" must take care to
implement the order. The Americans having dissolved the Iraqi Army and the
Iraqi police have created a power vacuum. Armies are an essential element in
every society. Their duty is to help restore order. They have the capability
to respond quickly in case of emergency. Look what happened in Los Angeles
when riots happend: they called the national guards. In Iran, they called
the Army to help with the earthquake. With no army and no effective police
force, the US made it impossible for the American Army to withdraw from
Iraq.
They will stay in Iraq after June or July this year because they made it
part of the agreement with the IGC that they will be invited to stay so as
not to make them an occupying power.
My understanding is that they have no intenstion to leave soon. They say
that they will stay as long as needed. They are the ones who decide that
they are needed.
We were probably afraid to talk about one person, Saddam. Now we are afraid
to talk about all the 25 people running the IGC as well as Bremer and the
Americans.
Some weeks a go I gave a radio interview to a radio station in San Francisco
over a telephone issued to my wife by UNDP. The American MCI disconnected
her telephone because of the interview. UNDP asked repeatedly to have the
line reconnected but failed.
AMY GOODMAN: You are an engineer. In terms of reconstruction, what has
happened?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: Visibly, nothing. They painted few schools and they
cleaned some of the rubble off of the buildings that have been bombed. Let
me give you an example, which uses a telephone exchange which serves my
area. In 1991, that building was totally demolished with all the equipment
destroyed. With the engineers of Iraq managed to clear the rubble, redesign
the building, building it and having it operational in three to four months.
Now with a year after the occupation -- by the way, we did that despite the
sanctions and we didn't have Bechtels or Halliburtons and all those
highly-paid advisers. We did it in three months. Now a year after the
invasion they haven't rebuilt the building. They just rerouted the cables,
put a container on the floor on the ground and they are trying to fix the
telephone system. I still don't have a telephone after three years. After a
year. I'm talking to you by a mobile phone that may or may not work. I have
a backup system and another!
system just in case things don't work out.
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: I'm a sixty year old man, but I am not going to let
anybody, any foreigner tell me what to do or running my own country. This is
a country I have spent all my life, trying to build something, to do
something about improving the lot of the Iraqi people. Iraq is a wealthy
country, Iraq has been, because of the sanctions, relegated to a third class
country. You remember in 1961, that's 42 years ago, the Iraqi government
then, and it wasn't the Ba'ath Party government, sent me to the States to
study. I was a high school student. They sent me. Iraq has invested a lot of
money in our education, a lot of time. The consecutive governments, all the
governments of Iraq, and we are trying to build a country and you have
ruined it. The US government is destroying everything. They destroyed it in
'91 and we rebuilt it and they are destroying whatever we have rebuilt--
AMY GOODMAN: The US government says it's Saddam Hussein ruined it.
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: Well, they're entitled to their view, but my view is
that Saddam Hussein, was in 1984 was the President when Donald Rumsfeld came
and shook his hand and said "he's a nice fellow, we can work with him."
Saddam Hussein is the same Saddam Hussein that you people gave commodity
credits to. So what changes is the perceptions of Donald Rumsfeld of what
Saddam Hussein is. Saddam Hussein is the same Saddam Hussein that I have
known in '79 when he took power. So anything that changes, it's the
perception of Donald Rumsfeld. Saddam Hussein is the same Saddam Hussein
that dealt with Ronald Reagan and the presidents before him. It's now Bush,
he doesn't like Saddam Hussein and they are ruining the country. Bush is
entitled to say whatever he wants. But that doesn't make him right.
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: If I was Paul Bremer, I would reinstate everybody that
they have kicked out of his job, barring only those people who are
criminals, who have committed a crime. In fact, those who are suspected of
committing a crime should be even kept in the government and investigated.
If they have committed a crime, they should be kicked out of the government.
You don't punish a person by denying him a job because you think he is-- he
might have done something wrong.
If I was Paul Bremer, I would return all those people to their previous jobs
because those are experienced people. Those are people that you cannot
replace. You get somebody from Bechtel, the best engineer from Bechtel, and
it takes him ages to understand what the problem is with the Iraqi oil, the
Iraqi factory or the Iraqi telecommunication system. Until now, after one
year, we still don't have a telephone system. I'm calling you from a mobile
system which has a U.S. number because the landline doesn't work. About 60%
of the telephone lines in Baghdad are not working. Totally not working.
Saddam Hussein repaired the telephone system in three months. While Bechtel,
and all the U.S. corporations and MCI and the rest-- so you have to rehire
those people. They know how to fix-- how to do the things the most expedient
and most efficient way. You don't get somebody from Brooklyn or somewhere in
San Francisco to fix the telephones in Baghdad. You don't know where the
cables go. Y!
ou cannot even communicate with these people. If I was Paul Bremer, I would
bring back those people, to be reemployed in the government of Iraq, and do
what they have to do. To fix the mess.
AMY GOODMAN: Would he then be reconstituting a pro-Saddam force?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: It doesn't have to be a pro-Saddam force. An engineer
who does his job is an engineer irrespective whether he is a pro or against
Saddam. Do you think right now that they are hiring only the pro-American
engineers working for the ministry of oil? Are you going to be-- kick
everybody who does not like the U.S., or does not like Chalabi? Engineers
and technicians and teachers are free to believe in whatever they want--
that's freedom. You cannot impose.
Now you have deposed the dictator, which, by the way you supported, the U.S.
supported. In '94-- in '84, '83 and '84, it was Donald Rumsfeld who came and
shook hands with Saddam Hussein, and he knew by then that Saddam Hussein was
a dictator and he-- all that. But he elected to ignore that. While I'm
talking to you now, I'm watching-- I have a picture in the office on my
house of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld to remind me that
there is no principle-- the U.S. does not have a principle to deal with,
they have interests. They are not after democracy. They are not after human
rights. They are after their economic interests.
The same people who forced Saddam Hussein in 2003, that is to say Donald
Rumsfeld and his group, and it is the same people who shook hands with
Saddam Hussein in '83, and we established diplomatic relations with the
dictator. And they are the same people who supported Saddam Hussein
throughout the war with Iran. And it was, by the way, Bechtel, that was
given a huge contract in the 80's to develop the petrochemical industry, so
that the-- in return for the U.S. support in Iraq and on the Iraq/Iran, and
it was Bechtel also to suppress the fact that Iraq used chemical weapons
against the Iranians. George Schultz was the secretary. We-- somehow we
convinced him through Bechtel contract to forget about the thing. And it was
the Americans who supported Saddam Hussein with the anthrax spores. It was
the West who supported Saddam Hussein with the factories to develop the
mass-- weapons of mass destruction.
You are penalizing us, the poor, powerless subjects of dictator for crimes
they have committed. We haven't committed a crime. We, as individuals,
haven't committed a crime against anybody. We are victims of ten years of--
13 years of sanctions, and six months right now, ten months of occupation,
and we are going to be punished and punished, again and again, again so that
Halliburton and Bechtel and MCI and whoever can make profits. The U.S. has
no intention of leaving Iraq. They're talking about how much it's going to
cost them until the year 2013. That's ten years of occupation. He talks
about democracy. What democracy is he talking about? Where the TV stations
are subjected to harassment, where journalists are imprisoned, where people
are detained for absolutely no reason? For up to 40 days, 50 days with no
one knows about them. Read-- the American people should read not our-- what
we say, they should read what the human rights-- Human Rights Watch was
saying in that repor!
t published in-- last month. They should read what Amnesty International is
writing about the human rights situation-- human rights abuses.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the reaction in the streets to what took place
in Fallujah?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: This incident happened in Fallujah where two days before
that, the American army shot many many people, women and children, on the
streets, and --- in a bizarre shooting incident that was unjustified,
killing many people. Fallujah has been a place where the US Army has
actually used brutal force to suppress the people there, including using the
F-15s, and F-16s to attack villages and place where they think the
resistances are, which is unjustified to use high explosives against
individuals. This resulted in many, many casualties in the province. Added
to it, they have detained, for 50 or 60 days, hundreds of people on and off,
which alienated the people against the American forces and the American
contractors or the American security contractors, which are really a private
army, uncontrollable by the US. This is part of the privatization of the
war. Two days ago, three days ago, there was a similar incident in Mosul,
where two contractors were killed, und!
er electricity. They were going to the electricity generating plant. The
important -- the thing that I know is in the media says that the contractors
were involved in protecting the food supply. This is the food supply for the
US Army, not to be confused with providing help to the local population or
anything. It's just a routine US convoy that may have food and may have on
other occasions, armaments or anything. So, the resentments of the people of
Fallujah are justified. What happens to them is -- it's a sad thing, but you
know, brutality breeds brutality, and violence breeds violence, and he who
started first should take the responsibility, and I think the US army has
used an unjustified force against the people of Fallujah, and they have
brutalized the people of Fallujah to the point where they had to respond
with the same brutality.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, some of the commercial media here in the United States
are claiming that Fallujah is a hotbed of resistance, that up to 70% of the
people are supporting attacks or have voiced in opinion polls support for
attacks on the US forces. Is there a continuing large presence of US
military within -- within the city itself, or have they largely pulled out
to the outskirts of Fallujah?
GHAZWAN AL-MUKHTAR: They pulled out to the outskirts, but they keep
intruding into the city. Ten days ago, I was passing through Fallujah, and
in the middle of the city, they brought the main highway, and we saw inside
the city a convoy of US military vehicles. So, they keep coming in and out.
If they keep out, I don't think they would have that many attacks on them,
but don't forget, those are an occupying force, and the people believe they
have the right to resist an occupying force - a foreign occupying force.
We -- the closest we come to you is eight hours difference. That's 8,000,
9,000 miles. That's between us. You people have - you came to the east 8,000
miles to run a country you have no business in occupying. After we
discovered that there was no justification for the US occupation whatsoever,
because there is no weapons of mass destruction. It's a weapon of mass
deception that's been propagated by the US administration.
The final thing, the final thing, I think, it's the blind leading the blind.
You are blind, I mean the US government is blind, and it's led by another
blind people who were the Iraqi opposition who are telling you that we would
welcome the American soldiers. And you see what's happening in Basra, Najaf
and Nassiriya. Those are the Shi'ite places where you think they should have
welcomed the revolt against the government. But they did not. So it's about
time, you people open up your eyes and see what's happening and understand
the message and forget about the rhetoric.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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