Sowing
The Seeds Of Civil War In Iraq
By Sami Ramadani
03 July , 2004
The Guardian
They
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