Americans
Knew What to Defend
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
14 April 2003
Iraq's scavengers have thieved
and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans
and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the US
intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's a short
but revealing scorecard. US troops have sat back and allowed mobs to
wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education,
the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry,
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry
of Information. They did nothing to prevent looters from destroying
priceless treasures of Iraq's history in the Baghdad Archaeological
Museum and in the museum in the northern city of Mosul, or from looting
three hospitals.
The Americans have, though,
put hundreds of troops inside two Iraqi ministries that remain untouched
and untouchable because tanks and armoured personnel carriers
and Humvees have been placed inside and outside both institutions. And
which ministries proved to be so important for the Americans? Why, the
Ministry of Interior, of course with its vast wealth of intelligence
information on Iraq and the Ministry of Oil. The archives and
files of Iraq's most valuable asset its oilfields and, even more
important, its massive reserves are safe and sound, sealed off
from the mobs and looters, and safe to be shared, as Washington almost
certainly intends, with American oil companies.
It casts an interesting reflection
on America's supposed war aims. Anxious to "liberate" Iraq,
it allows its people to destroy the infrastructure of government as
well as the private property of Saddam's henchmen. Americans insist
that the oil ministry is a vital part of Iraq's inheritance, that the
oilfields are to be held in trust "for the Iraqi people".
But is the Ministry of Trade relit yesterday by an enterprising
arsonist not vital to the future of Iraq? Are the Ministry of
Education and the Ministry of Irrigation still burning fiercely
not of critical importance to the next government? The Americans
could spare 2,000 soldiers to protect the Kirkuk oilfields but couldn't
even invest 200 to protect the Mosul museum from attack. US engineers
were confidently predicting that the Kirkuk oilfield will be capable
of pumping again "within weeks".
There was much talk of a
"new posture" from the Americans yesterday. Armoured and infantry
patrols suddenly appeared on the middle-class streets of the capital,
ordering young men hauling fridges, furniture and television sets to
deposit their loot on the pavement if they could not prove ownership.
It was pitiful. After billions of dollars of government buildings, computers
and archives have been destroyed, the Americans are stopping teens driving
mule-drawn carts loaded with second-hand chairs.