Iraq's
New Terrorist Prime Minister
By Mike Whitney
20 July, 2004
Counterpunch.org
"In Iraq we
meant to render futile both the theory and the practice of terrorism;
what we have done instead is to endow it with diplomatic credentials,
making credible the policies of blind assassination." Lewis H.
Lapham; Harper's
In
a long line of American puppets, the name Ayad Allawi figures to loom
large. In just a matter of weeks the new Prime Minister of Iraq has
accommodated his US paymasters with a zeal that must leave the dapper
Hamid Karzai wondering if his job is safe.
In his first days
after taking office, Allawi was called on to endorse the bombing of
an alleged "safe house" in Falluja; an incident that took
the lives of 26 Iraqis including women and children. None of the dead
were identified as "foreign fighters", although every major
newspaper in America reiterated the Pentagon's view that the occupants
were colleagues of Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
The bombing of Falluja
occurred just three days after the UN was cajoled into signing the Iraqi
Sovereignty Resolution. During negotiations at the UN, the Bush Administration
made it look as though they were taking a more "reasoned approach"
to security issues.
That was not the
case.
The military simply
suspended its major operations to make it appear as though a fundamental
shift in policy had taken place. This eschewed the very real possibility
that the members of the Security Council would have rejected the resolution
outright.
Instead, the Security
Council approved the resolution, establishing the US as the "UN
Multinational Force", and the bombing of Falluja resumed three
days later.
It was a deception
that the "more seasoned" members of the Council should have
anticipated.
The ex-CIA operative
Allawi expressed his enthusiasm for the bombing, saying that he supported
the action as a means of quashing the "terrorist" operatives
in post-war Iraq.
We will "annihilate
the terrorist groups," boasted Allawi.
There have been
six more bombings in Falluja producing equally dubious results. To date,
no "foreign fighters" have been positively identified in Falluja.
The rule of thumb
seems to be, that wherever an errant bomb drops on innocent Iraqis (be
it a wedding party or a Mosque) it immediately becomes a "legitimate
target" in the war on terror.
Just yesterday (Sunday,
July 18) US forces bombed another "alleged" safe house in
Falluja killing an estimated 14 Iraqis including women and children.
Only the present
occupants of the White House and the American media can be expected
to defend such slaughter as justifiable.
The increasing death
toll of Iraqis attests to the fact that neither the US Military nor
the Bush Administration is particularly bothered the prospect of more
dead Muslims.
Nor does it seem
to weigh on the conscience of Iraq's "hand picked" P.M., Allawi.
Perhaps Allawi's tenure in Saddam's Gestapo (the Mukabarat) hardened
him to the pangs of remorse that we usually associate with the killing
innocent people. Or maybe it was his involvement in a 1990s terrorist
bombing campaign in Baghdad (trying to destabilize the Saddam regime)
that deadened him to the loss life. (In one incident he was directly
connected to the bombing of school bus.)
Whatever it was,
he has quickly established his bone fides for ruthlessness with a passion
that has impressed his employers in Washington.
Allawi has become
the cat's paw of US policy in Iraq; the continued aggression of the
military is being fashioned to appear as though Allawi is "calling
the shots".
Iraqis are not taken
in by this ruse. They are well aware of the regions' colonial history
and the subsequent establishing of an "Arab facade"; the puppet
governments that provide a mask to disguise the workings of the imperial
machine.
The Allawi experiment
is no different.
For example, consider
the recent detention of 500 criminal suspects who were arrested at Allawi's
behest. The action was taken for one of two reasons; either Allawi has
taken a sudden interest in crime in Baghdad or Rumsfeld wants to continue
rounding up insurgent suspects without drawing further attention to
his real motives. (Following the Abu Ghraib scandal, the military must
be as discreet as possible in their random dragnets. Never the less,
they will persist in detaining large numbers of innocent Iraqis until
the resistance is crushed.) The justification of "fighting crime"
provides a useful screen for the real aims of the Defense Dept. chieftans.
Similarly, Allawi's
announcement of an "Order for Safeguarding National Security",
the equivalent of Martial law, is part of a broader US strategy to apply
maximum force whenever it chooses.
Even the name of
the new law (Safeguarding National Security) smacks of the euphemisms
that are churned out of American neoliberal "think tanks"
on a regular basis. It is just more of the same old Bush "doublespeak",
invoked to conceal the complete suspension of civil liberties.
(The law provides
for "random searches, seizures, closures, eavesdropping, curfews--all
tools of the modern police state--are now in the hands of the small
and unelected Baghdad leadership; and in the fine print, the establishment
of a half-dozen new security agencies, each with a name, acronym and
marching orders reminiscent of the decidedly undemocratic Mideast norm."
Mitch Potter)
The law enshrines
the principle that in "liberated" Iraq, citizens have been
effectively stripped of their personal freedom.
George Orwell could
not have imagined a more dismal state of affairs.
Incredibly, in the
same week that Allawi announced his intention to enact Martial law,
he also unveiled his plan to develop a "state security apparatus"
to deal with the insurgency.
No one in Iraq has
any misgivings about what this really means.
Allawi started his
political career as a Ba'ath Party enforcer and gradually worked his
way up to become a senior official in the Iraqi secret police (the Mukabarat.)
Eventually, he was bound to try to reconstitute the feared secret police
that kept the Iraqi people under Saddam's iron grip for decades.
Not surprisingly,
this was already being done by the CIA and Dept of Defense prior to
Allawi's rise to power. (Z Magazine has reported that US intelligence
was reenlisting members of Saddam's Mukabarat to respond to the growing
insurgency.)
The Bush Administration
has no qualms about resurrecting the "primary instrument of Iraqi
state terror", as long as it is employed in the greater interests
of continued American domination.
Again, Allawi provides
nothing more than a convenient Iraqi face to a scheme that was well
developed before he was ever appointed as Prime Minister.
This is the real
meaning of Iraqi sovereignty; a curtain that hides the machinations
of the American Imperium.
So far, Allawi has
followed each of Washington's edicts with unmitigated enthusiasm. His
passion for his new position hasn't been dimmed by the carnage he has
authorized or by the constant threats to his life.
Apart from his utter
loyalty to the Bush clan, Allawi has demonstrated his aptitude for the
job in ways that are intangible. In an article in the Sydney Morning
Herald, Paul McGeough tells of Allawi's involvement in the murder of
six alleged insurgents' just days before he was handed over control
of the interim government.
"The prisoners--handcuffed
and blindfolded--were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent
to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah
security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs."
"Informants
told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about
a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's
personal security team watched in stunned silence."
Was this the final
indication that Allawi was worthy of a place at the Bush table?
Is there a more
appropriate "initiation" into the world of gangland terror
and political bloodletting than that described in McGeough's article?
The occupants of
the Oval Office must have felt heartened to know that they had enlisted
another reliable member to their circle of murders and torturers.
Mike Whitney can
be reached at: [email protected]