------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 12, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
IRAQ'S OCCUPATION REGIME CRUMBLING
By John Catalinotto
The corporate media here portray the Iyad Alawi regime in Iraq as growing in strength and more stable every day. This is in stark contrast to the reality of regular deadly bombings and clashes between resistance fighters and U.S. troops or Iraqi police.
Resistance forces and dissident reporters paint a more accurate picture. Occupation troops, Iraqi collaborators of all types, foreign workers and technicians are all regular targets of the resistance. Foreign countries remove their troops and companies close down operations in Iraq. Major cities remain outside both government and U.S. control.
Oil pipelines are bombed daily. Electricity is on only four hours a day in Baghdad.
Authorities had to postpone a national conference set to begin July 31 until mid-August. This was to bring together 1,000 delegates from across Iraq to appoint a body to oversee the elections planned for early 2005. It was the second postponement. United Nations representatives had earlier raised concerns that the elections themselves might have to be postponed.
On Aug. 3, Cahit Soysal, the chairperson of the Istanbul-based International Truckers Association, announced that Turkish trucks would no longer bring food, drinking water, special aircraft fuel and other supplies across the Turkish border to U.S. forces in Iraq. This will stop about 200 of the 2,000 Turkish trucks delivering goods in Iraq.
Earlier a resistance unit had executed a captured Turkish truck driver. Two more drivers are being held.
Foreign companies--particularly transport firms--say kidnappings have driven up the cost of doing business. Adel Abou Hawili, shipping manager for a Kuwaiti company, said kidnappings have forced transport costs up "50 to 65 percent" and made it harder to find drivers to work in Iraq. (Associated Press, July 26)
The July 29 India Times put it even more directly: "The ongoing hostage crisis in Iraq has hit India-Iraq trade. Feeder ships on the Iraq-Middle East sector, which used to carry a lot of Indian cargo, have almost stopped their services."
'IRAQ ABOUT TO IMPLODE'
Robert Fisk, known for his incisive and non-Pentagon-approved reporting from Iraq, wrote in the Aug. 1 Independent:
"Doesn't [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair realise that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed 'government' controls only parts of Baghdad--and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the 'Prime Minister,' is little more than mayor of Baghdad."
He added: "I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned."
While not sharing Fisk's overall view, the Labor-dominated Foreign Affairs Committee in the British House of Commons also found Iraq's deteriorating security to be a looming disaster. The committee's report suggested the problem was "insufficient troops."
Unable to win control back of most of the country, the United States instead intervened by arresting Dr. Muthana Harith Al-Dhari, editor of the Iraqi newspaper Al-Basaer, on Aug. 2. Al-Dhari had just given a live television interview.
Sabah Ahmad, a manager at Al-Basaer, said he would ask media unions inside and outside Iraq to call on the United States to free Al-Dhari. "It appears that he was arrested for saying something in a broadcast interview that the U.S. occupation authorities did not like," Ahmad told Al-Jazeera.
The last time the U.S. forces took this sort of action, closing down Moktada Al-Sadr's newspaper and arresting its editor, in late March, Al- Sadr's Mahdi army rose up in a half-dozen majority-Shiite cities in Iraq's South.
NATO TO JOIN THE OCCUPATION
The only news that pleased official Washington was that NATO decided July 30 that it would send an advance team to Iraq to prepare to send units to train Iraqi security forces.
The decision came after a dispute over who would command the training units. Washington wanted its forces in control. The French representative disagreed. They postponed a decision to September.
The dispute showed the continuing contradictions within the imperialist NATO alliance. Neither U.S. imperialism nor its European allies want the Iraqi resistance forces to win.
On the other hand, Washington is still refusing to give up control of the political, economic and military command in Iraq.
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