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Comment
America has sown the seeds of civil war in Iraq
It's not religious rivalry but the puppet regime that threatens
stabilitySami Ramadani
Saturday July 3, 2004
The GuardianThey get their dead in neat caskets draped with a flag; we have
to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American
shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification." So
wrote the author of the weblog Baghdad Burning, as she tried to draw
attention to the tragic reality of life in occupied Baghdad.
It is this bereavement and anger among Iraqis - some of it expressed in
mortars and homemade bombs - that has forced Bush and Blair to abandon any
fanfare and hand over "sovereignty" in a secret bunker guarded by tanks. Not
one signal of popular joy greeted the historic event.
In a parallel but equally deceptive move, the US handed over Saddam's legal
file but the tyrant is still in US custody. Saddam's defiance in court
largely stems from the fact that many of his accusers - including Prime
Minister Allawi, a former cadre of Saddam's Ba'ath party, and some of the
non-Ba'athist forces represented in the transitional government - were
allies of his regime. Many Iraqis feel that the US-appointed transitional
government has no moral authority over the man in the dock, both because of
their past association with his regime and because they came, in the words
of a now common Iraqi saying, "on the backs of American tanks". As one Iraqi
observed: "If they give Saddam a fair trial, they will all end up with him
in the dock - Kissinger, Reagan, Thatcher, Blair, the two Bushes and
Allawi."
The trial might succeed in serving short-term propaganda purposes in the
west, but it will not hide the fact that in installing a protege government,
the US has taken the most dangerous step on the road to civil war in Iraq.
The seeds of the Vietnam war were sown by the US installing a client regime
in Saigon. And unless Bush and Blair are stopped by the American and British
peoples, a similar catastrophe is in the making in Iraq and the wider Middle
East. But it will not be a war of Arabs against Kurds, Sunnis against Shia
or Muslims against Christians, but an equally devastating war between a
US-backed minority (of all religions, sects and nationalities) against a
similarly composed overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. The killing
fields of this war could eventually stretch from Afghanistan to Palestine.
Just like Iraq today, South Vietnam was seen by Washington as the line that
must be held at all costs. But as the Vietnamese people's rejection of the
client regime grew stronger, the US bunkered behind its creation in Saigon,
and one million Vietnamese troops backed by half a million US soldiers.
Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested and tortured; the total
Vietnamese death toll topped 3 million, and 55,000 US soldiers were killed
in action.
The US terror tactics in Vietnam (and more recently in Nicaragua and
Honduras) are being gradually introduced into Iraq. US assassination squads
and Mossad, for example, must be already active in Iraq, following the
training of special US forces teams of "hitmen", with the help of Israeli
experts, at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Israel several months ago - as
reported by the distinguished American journalist Seymour Hirsh, a story
which the Pentagon did not deny.
Thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the "end" of the war, adding to
the uncounted thousands killed as collateral damage during it. And the
occupation has blocked the democratic gains that Iraqis might have enjoyed
after the collapse of Saddam's regime. For the US has long realised that the
Iraqi people, if given the choice, would elect forces hostile to US
policies.
Elections for deans in Iraq's universities were won by anti-occupation
candidates, prompting the US to scrap elections for city mayors and oppose
calls for early nationwide elections. The Union of the Unemployed quickly
emerged as an effective campaigning force and the Federation of Iraqi Trade
Unions resurfaced. In response, the US proconsul, Paul Bremer, resurrected
the 1984 Saddam law banning all strikes in the public sector and ordered the
arrest of the union's leaders. Meanwhile, the "democratic" institutions that
Bremer tried to establish have all failed to strike a chord with the people.
With the exception of limited free speech, which excludes "incitement"
against occupation, there is nothing to show for so much death and
destruction.
It has become fashionable to criticise the US for "having no plans" for Iraq
after the fall of Saddam. The truth is that tens of policy committees
drafted numerous plans. I know many Iraqi exiles who were well-paid to join
these committees, which worked in the US before the invasion. All these
plans crashed after colliding with the rock of the Iraqi people's
opposition. Had most of the people been even mildly supportive of the
invasion, these plans would have been implemented, and Bush and Blair might
now be holding regular press conferences in downtown Baghdad. The Iraqi
people's resistance has, for a period at least, thwarted US plans to attack
Iran, Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and North Korea.
Though varied in political and social outlook, the opposition to the US-led
presence, and the armed resistance (as distinct from terrorism), have been
supported by most Iraqis and by the mosques.
Short of banning prayer itself, the mosque was one institution that Saddam
couldn't crush, which explains their central role in opposing both Saddam's
tyranny and the occupation. But the role of religion in Iraq is politically
and socially contradictory. While the anti-occupation secular forces are
concerned about the influence of Iraq's religious leaders, the latter are
not all cut from the same cloth. Many are supportive of working with secular
forces, holding democratic elections and protecting women's rights and those
of the Kurdish people.
Some Shia and Sunni religious leaders formed an anti-sectarian front, the
Muslim Scholars Committee. The MSC has organised demonstrations in Baghdad
and other cities encouraging Muslims to unite and pray at each others'
mosques, where secularpeople are also welcome. The committee invited over 30
secular and Christian organisations to attend the First Founding Iraqi
Conference Against the US Occupation. This significant development attracted
little media coverage, as it contradicts the notion that Iraqis are
incapable of working collectively.
The western media predicted that civil war was imminent after explosions at
Shia mosques killed hundreds of people in March. But instead, these
explosions generated a massive show of unity across Iraq. People blamed the
US (and Israel) for planning the atrocities or turning a blind eye to the
perpetrators.
Bush and Blair continue to peddle the myth, beloved of old colonialists,
that Iraqis will start a civil war if the "benevolent" presence of the
occupation forces is removed. But there is nothing benevolent about their
troops or their stooges. Allawi is not only a former Saddam operative and
CIA "asset", but also the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, an
organisation composed of former Saddamist officers. His appointment, and the
torture at Abu Ghraib, are part of a systematic US policy of building new
Saddamist-style state structures.
It is the US-led presence itself which is dividing Iraqis now. The US is
deepening a split between a minority for and an overwhelming majority
against the US-led forces. The immediate withdrawal of the US-led forces
from Iraq is the only way to stop the impending "civil" war, in which the US
will back a "sovereign" Iraqi government to crush the people and their
aspirations for liberation and democracy.
� Sami Ramadani is a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan
University and was a political exile from Saddam's regime
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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