Iraq’s Sovereignty Revisited
By Ghali Hassan
26 November, 2007
Countercurrents.orgThe Iraqi people “just don't want to be occupied. Not even me, nobody, would want to be. That's why we're giving them their sovereignty. We are guaranteeing them complete sovereignty from June 30", announced President George W. Bush in June 2004. Of course, it was a lie. The Iraqi people continue to live under murderous Occupation covered-up by a façade of a U.S.-installed puppet government with fake sovereignty.
Let’s begin with the 2003 ‘International Supreme Crime’ of premeditated and unprovoked war of aggression. The entire world has watched with deafening silence as the State of Iraq – a founding member of the United Nations – was brutally attacked and destroyed, its people terrorised and murdered in violation of International Law and civilised norms. Illegal aggression has been redefined as peace, state terrorism as liberation, pillage as progress, lies as truth, torture as justice, and occupation as freedom.
Iraq’s sovereignty was tested on September 16, 2007 when Blackwater mercenaries murdered more than 17 Iraqi civilians and injured many more in a deliberate and unprovoked act of international terrorism. The puppet government barked, but it was ignored and told to apologise. As usual, the murderers were whisked out of the country by U.S. authorities. And although U.S. Federal agents (the F.B.I.) found the killing of Iraqi civilians was unjustified murderous act, Blackwater mercenaries continue to terrorise the Iraqi population.
If Iraq is sovereign, Blackwater criminals would not have walked out of Iraq free; they would have been on trial to answer for their crimes. A sovereign Iraqi government would have the power to arrest and charge all those who are committing crimes against the Iraqi people. That is what a democratic, sovereign government will do to protect its people.
The Anglo-American rhetoric about spreading ‘democracy’ throughout the Middle East was a pretext to justify U.S. imperialist ideology. In Iraq, the Occupation has prevented and continues to prevent any form of indigenous democracy to take place in Iraq. For example, early on, councils and municipal governments were to be run by Iraqis hand-picked by Paul Bremer, the U.S. Proconsul in Baghdad, instead of elected representatives. This was designed to divide Iraqis, spread corruption and remove democratic principles.
A recent report by Michael Knights and Ed Williams reveals that a British-imposed “kleptocracy” in southern Iraq where “well armed political-criminal Mafiosi have locked both the central government and the people out of power” [1]. Both, the U.S. and the British occupying forces have financed and armed militias and death squads, including the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades and the Da’awa militias, the Israeli-trained Kurdish separatists and the Iyad Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi death squads. At the outset of the Occupation, when the Iraqi national army which defended the Iraqi state and the unity and integrity of Iraq was disbanded by Paul Bremer, it was replaced by these militias and Kurdish separatists to act as the “Occupation dogs” to protect the Occupation and to terrorise the Iraqi population.
The invaders brought no democracy to Iraq. Democracy is incompatible with U.S. imperialist ideology. Democracy used as a last pretext to justify an illegal invasion and murderous Occupation when all other pretexts proved to be a pack of lies. What the Anglo-American invaders have brought with them is not only a culture of corruption, but all the paraphernalia of violence, communalisation and factionalisation of Iraqi society: dividing one community against the other and indeed one faction against the other. The aim is to deprive the Iraqi people of power and weaken their resolve to end the Occupation.
As we all know, the current puppet government was the production of U.S.-managed “demonstration” elections. The so-called “elections” were held under the guns of a murderous foreign Occupation. The elections were anything but free and fair elections. The results were rigged and the U.S. installed Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister. The purposes of these elections were to manipulate public opinion, justify war crimes and legitimise the ongoing Occupation.
If the Iraqi parliament – as an elected body by the Iraqi people –, “has the exclusive right to approve and ratify international treaties and agreements, including those signed with the United Nations Security Council”, then it should have the power to end the Occupation or at least demands a timetable for foreign troops’ withdrawal from Iraq. However, when a majority of Iraq’s 275 legislators demanded just that, the puppet government of Nouri al-Maliki bypassed parliamentary concerns and requested the Security Council approval of the ongoing Occupation. The Security Council, as a tool of U.S. imperialist policy, has no problem approving a request which is unconstitutional without the Iraqi parliament's approval. (See: Global Policy Forum, 05 November 2007). The Occupation of Iraq is an illegitimate murderous Occupation. The Security Council has no right to legitimise an occupation that is vehemently opposed by the overwhelming majority of Iraqi people.Instead of respecting the Iraqi people wish to end the Occupation, U.S. leaders and their collaborators continue building lasting military bases and military installations, including the largest U.S. (‘Embassy’) spying base in the world in the Centre of Baghdad, in contempt of Iraq’s constitution and against the wishes of the Iraqi people.
It is ironic that, George Bush and his allies are accusing Iran of training and arming the ‘anti-Occupation forces’ in order to justify unwelcome U.S. presence. We all know that Iran does not support the Resistance to the Occupation. The truth is all those militias (Iranian immigrants deported from Iraq in 1980s, and some pro-Iran expatriates), were recruited in Iran by the U.S. and Britain and brought into Iraq on the back of U.S. and British tanks.
Iran is one of the most important ‘Coalition of the Willings’ and plays a vital role helping to enforce the U.S. Occupation of Iraq, thanks to George Bush and the despicable passive role played by many Arab leaders. The rest is a warmongering Zionist propaganda designed to manipulate the public and divert attention away from the mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians.
More than 1.3 million innocent Iraqi civilians have been murdered by U.S. forces and their collaborators since the invasion of 2003. The majority of those murdered were women and children, mostly from one particular Iraqi community. Writing in the Vermont’s Rutland Herald, Matt Howard, a U.S. Marine, reflects on his participation in the deliberate and unprovoked war crimes against the Iraqi people: “We did not go to war with the country of Iraq; we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.”
Furthermore, as a direct result of the Occupation, there are 8 Million Iraqis in need of emergency aid. Some 43 per cent of Iraqis suffer from absolute poverty. Iraq’s child malnutrition has increased from 19 per cent in 2003 to 28 per cent in 2007. At least 92 percent of Iraqi children suffer from learning problems and psychological trauma. Today, there are 5 million Iraqi refugees. At least half of this number is internally displaced people (IDPs) who want to return to their homes. A report released by UNAMI reveals that from 1st April to 30th June 2007, 70 percent of IDPs are women; 47 per cent of IDPs are not receiving their food rations (the brainchild of Saddam regime). This is in contrast to a distribution rate of 96 per cent before the 2003 invasion. Further, at least 40 per cent of professionals (the educated and experienced Iraqis) have left the country.
We know why thousands of Westerners are drawing attention to the plight of humpback whales while pretending not to know about the plight of the Iraqi people. What is being inflicted on the Iraqi people must be seen as part and parcel of an elitists Anglo-American “shared values”, deliberately imposed (by force) on defenceless nations to destroy their national independence and sovereignty.
It is now clear that the U.S. aim was the deliberate destruction of the Iraqi state in order to protect Israel’s Zionist expansionism and establish a military presence in the region. The so-called “War for Oil” is nothing more than a Zionist propaganda designed to shield Israel and deflects the public’s attention from the Zion-fascists (the so-called ‘Neocons’) who orchestrated the aggression against Iraq at the expense of Iraqi and American blood. Indeed, according to John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University, the pro-Israel powerful Jewish organisations and media (‘the Lobby’) in the U.S. played an important role in orchestrating the U.S. war against the Iraqi people.
If the clearly expressed view of the majority of Iraqis does not persuade the U.S. and its collaborators to end the murderous Occupation of Iraq and restore Iraq’s sovereignty, Resistance will, “as the only solution for people who fight to free themselves”, wrote Ernesto Che Guevara to his mother.
Only the end of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq will guarantee a sovereign and independent Iraq. An independent Iraq would try to restore its control over its natural resources and its position in the region as a leading power in the Arab world. The end of the Occupation will also remove the primary cause of violence and allows Iraqis to reconcile their differences.
In sum, there is no sovereignty under colonial Occupation. The current state of Iraq is a U.S.-installed colonial dictatorship. The puppet government is a façade legitimising the Occupation and covering-up its murderous crimes against the Iraqi people. There is no sovereignty when 175,000 U.S. troops and some 180,000 foreign mercenaries rampaging through the streets of Iraqi towns and cities and killing Iraqis with impunity. So, what “sovereignty” Mr. Bush was talking about?Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
Endnote:[1] Knights, M. & Williams, E. (2007, February). The Calm before the Storm: the British Experience in Southern Iraq. Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. PDF.
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=267
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