Rumsfelds
Mission To Baghdad
By Bill Van Auken
15 April 2005
World
Socialist Web
The
first high-level contact between Washington and the fledgling Iraqi
transitional government came Monday, with an emergency flight to Baghdad
by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Over the past few
weeks, Washingtons official pronouncements and reports in the
US media have been filled with rhetoric about the new Iraqi regime representing
an historic transition from dictatorship to democracy. There has, predictably,
been no attempt to square this official line with Rumsfelds mission
to Baghdad, whose purpose is to force the incoming Iraqi administration
to leave in place ex-military and police officers from the Saddam Hussein
dictatorship who have been recruited by the CIA and Pentagon for the
new US-organized Iraqi security forces.
Speaking to reporters
en route to his surprise meeting with the Iraqi officials, Rumsfeld
indirectly hinted at the nature of his visit, declaring, Its
important that the new government be attentive to the competence of
the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence.
He reportedly said
he intended to warn the Iraqis against corruption and cronyism.
These words must have evoked guffaws in many quarters, given Rumsfelds
oversight of multi-billion-dollar contracts to Halliburton and its subsidiary
KBR for a reconstruction effort that has provided a huge windfall for
the firm previously headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Reporting on the
talks between the Pentagon chief and newly installed Iraqi Prime Minister
Ibrahim Jaafari, Reuters news agency stated, Rumsfeld expressed
particular concern about any clear-out of Iraqs defense and interior
ministries, which are at the heart of efforts to put Iraqs security
forces in charge of battling the countrys Sunni Muslim-led insurgency.
The main impulse
for Rumsfelds trip was growing sentiment within the Shiite Islamist
parties, which were the primary victors in last Januarys election,
for a purge of former Baathist military and secret police officers enlisted
by Washington in its efforts to suppress resistance to the US occupation.
Our concerns
are to maintain momentum, and that there be no major tinkering with
security forces, a US official in Baghdad told the Financial Times
of London. If you get rid of anyone who ever carried a Baathist
card, then you get rid of everyone with experience and training, including
some that have proven themselves in the last nine months.
Rumsfelds
intervention reveals in a nutshell the utter hypocrisy of Washingtons
democratic pretensions. It points to the real aims and methods of the
US occupation of Iraq, and the real nature of the relationship between
the sovereign transitional government and its American overseers.
Rumsfelds
visit follows by only days the largest demonstrations in Iraqi history,
which brought hundreds of thousands of peoplepredominantly Shia,
but also Sunniinto the streets of Baghdad demanding an end to
the US occupation and equating George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein.
The demonstration,
part of a continuing political campaign mounted by the radical Shia
cleric Moqtada al Sadr, has placed significant political pressure on
Jaafari, whose Dawa Party seeks to appeal to the same Shia population.
At the same time, his key government partner, former Kurdish guerrilla
leader and incoming Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, has insisted he
does not want the US troops to leave.
For the civilian
chief of the US military to fly to Baghdad to issue orders to the new
government is a clear signal in itself. Washington views the new transitional
regime as little more than a public front for what is, in fact, a transition
to a new phase in the occupation. The Pentagon envisions a gradual reduction
in US troop levels until American forces are able to withdraw to fortified
bases and allow Iraqi puppet forces to carry out day-to-day repression.
Key to this strategy
is the use of the ex-members of Saddam Husseins repressive apparatus,
whose experience and training are precisely in the suppression
of the same Shia masses who have turned out in such great numbers to
demand an end to the US occupation.
In the early days
of the US occupation, the head of the American operation, L. Paul Bremer,
instituted a sweeping de-Baathification program and disbanded
the Iraqi armya move subsequently seen as a major blunder by many
in the US security establishment. Within months of the US invasion,
however, the CIA began quietly recruiting former officers of Saddam
Husseins hated Mukhabarat secret police.
In 1991, in the
wake of Iraqs defeat in the first Gulf war, it was the Mukhabarat
that organized the suppression of a Shia uprising in the south of Iraq.
The bloody crackdown was conducted with the tacit backing of Washington,
which allowed the Iraqi military to utilize its combat aircraft to attack
the rebels.
After the dissolution
of Bremers occupation authority and the installation of long-time
CIA asset Iyad Allawi as the prime minister in the provisional government,
the recruitment of former Hussein regime members was stepped up. Allawi
is himself an ex-Baathist, and built his US- and British-backed exile
group, the Iraqi National Accord, around disgruntled Baathist officers
and intelligence agents.
It is now reported
that up to 70 percent of the officers in the US-organized Iraqi security
forces are ex-Baathist officers. An entire commando force of 10,000
members, which is considered the most reliable Iraqi unit, is composed
almost entirely of ex-Iraqi military personnel.
Though Washingtons
favorite, Allawis party received less than 10 percent of the vote
in January. The United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition dominated by Shia
religious parties, won the election through a campaign that called for
an end to the US occupation and a purge of Baathists from the government.
Since being tapped
as prime minister, Jafaari has been forced to back off from the call
for a US withdrawal. Now, Rumsfeld has ordered him to shelve plans to
root out military and police officers who are associated with massacres,
assassinations and torture against the Shia population.
The Shia parties
have charged that many of those involved in such crimes are being brought
back to carry out similar atrocities. Hostility to the rehiring of Baathist
officers boiled over last month following reports that three members
of the Badr Corps, a Shia militia that is affiliated with the United
Iraqi Alliance, were tortured to death by members of the security forces.
Washington is determined
to utilize the ex-Baathists as the command structure for repressing
resistance to its occupation. It fears that if they are purged, the
new security force will disintegrate.
There is no prospect
for the transitional regime headed by Jafaari securing popular support
unless it can present itself as independent of a US occupation that
is overwhelmingly opposed by the Iraqi people. Nevertheless, the visit
by the US defense secretary has made it clear that Washington has no
intention of tolerating any real independence, especially when it comes
to the central question of its puppet Iraqi security forces.
In the final analysis,
the Rumsfeld trip only underscores the colonial character of the US
intervention in Iraq and the untenable nature of Washingtons efforts
to forge a viable puppet regime. At the same time, the spectacle of
the US strong-arming the new Iraqi government into accepting the return
of Saddam Husseins military and secret police provides a devastating
exposure of the propaganda about US bombs and troops spearheading a
wave of democratic change in the Arab world.