The
State Of Iraq As It Enters 2008
By
James Cogan
02 January,
2008
WSWS.org
Media
reports about New Year parties in parts of Baghdad cannot disguise the
fact that Iraqis have little to look forward to in 2008, and even less
to celebrate about 2007. Last year was yet another of death, destruction
and suffering. Even the incomplete data complied by the Associated Press—which
only include reported deaths and exclude so-called insurgents who were
killed in combat with US and Iraqi government forces—show that
at least 18,610 civilians died as a result of violence. Tens of thousands
more deaths were caused by the effects of malnutrition, unsafe drinking
water, depleted uranium contamination and a dysfunctional health system.
2007 will
be remembered as the year in which the British-based polling agency
ORB estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis had been killed under the US occupation,
substantiating the death toll previously calculated by scientists working
with Johns Hopkins University. It will also go down as the year when
more than one million Iraqis were forced to flee their homes to escape
the sectarian violence fomented and encouraged by the policies of US
imperialism. The “surge” of 30,000 additional US troops
to the country between March and June was accompanied by arguably the
worst ethnic-communal cleansing in Iraq’s modern history.
UNICEF published
statistics on December 21 revealing the level of social destruction:
just 28 percent of Iraqi 17-year-olds sat for their final school exams
in 2007 while the violence prevented close to one million children from
attending primary school.
Such figures
underscore the charge leveled by the WSWS on May 24, 2007 that the architects
of the Iraq invasion had committed sociocide—“the deliberate
and systematic murder of an entire society”—in order to
seize the country’s territory and oil resources for the benefit
of the American corporate establishment. For these war crimes, the perpetrators
in the Bush administration and allied governments must be brought to
account.
Thousands
of American and British military families have paid a bitter price.
More occupation troops were killed in Iraq in 2007 than any other year
since the March 2003 invasion. A total of 901 American, 47 British and
nine soldiers from other occupying countries lost their lives. Cumulative
US casualties in the illegal war now stand at 3,904 dead and 28,661
wounded—many of whom have suffered brain damage, lost limbs or
suffered other permanent injuries. A further 30,185 soldiers have had
to be medically evacuated for “non-hostile” wounds, such
as disease and psychological disorders. At least 132 American troops
have committed suicide in the war-torn country.
2008 will
see the killing and maiming continue. In his final press conference
for the year on December 29, the American commander in Iraq, General
David Petraeus poured cold water on declarations that the US troop “surge”
had brought the country under US control. While noting the decline in
US casualties over the previous three months—fatalities were the
lowest since early 2004—he warned that “inevitably there
will be tough fighting, more tough days and more tough weeks, but fewer
of them, god willing”.
Petraeus’s
warning stemmed from the clearly temporary nature of the modest lessening
of risks for American troops. The ebb in attacks on occupation forces
stems not from any change in the overwhelming Iraqi opposition to the
US presence, or from any improvement in the catastrophic living conditions
facing the majority of Iraqis. Rather, it flows from a series of desperate
deals, orchestrated by Petraeus, to buy off a number of largely Sunni
Arab-based insurgent groups and secure a ceasefire with the main Shiite
fundamentalist opposition to the occupation, the Mahdi Army of cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr.
These deals
are beginning to unravel. There are at least 77,000 Sunni militiamen
being paid by the US military in western Iraq and in Sunni enclaves
inside and around Baghdad. Their leaders, many of whom have links to
the previous Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, are seeking a greater
political role through a sordid sectarian power-sharing arrangement
with the Shiite fundamentalist and Kurdish nationalist parties that
dominate the US puppet government in Baghdad. In the process, all factions
are setting themselves in direct opposition to the hopes and aspirations
of ordinary Iraqi working people of all sects and ethnic groups.
Already,
some two million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan are being told they
cannot necessarily return home. Whether they can or not will depend
on whether they belong to the same sect as the one whose militia now
controls their home suburb. Thousands of Shiites are being prevented
from entering areas under Sunni militia authority and which are, in
many cases, sealed off by US-erected 12-foot concrete walls. At the
same time, tens of thousands of Sunnis and Christians driven out by
Shiite militias face losing everything. The Mahdi Army, as part of Sadr’s
deal with Petraeus, has taken over large swathes of Baghdad and rules
it as a sectarian fiefdom on behalf of the cleric.
Anger at
the US-negotiated carve-up of the city and the elevation of militias
is amplified by the inability of the occupation to provide jobs or basic
services. Combined unemployment and underemployment in areas such as
Sadr City stands at up to 70 percent, and new outbreaks of resistance
are inevitable.
Across the
Shiite-populated south of Iraq, the situation is equally volatile. Sadr’s
arrangement with the occupation has meant, in practical terms, abandoning
his predominantly working class supporters to the US military and the
Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC)—the largest pro-occupation
Shiite party and the representative of the most powerful Shiite business
and clerical elites. As a result, hundreds of Sadrist militiamen have
been branded “rogue elements”, hunted down and detained
or killed.
Observers
of Iraqi politics are noting the growth of disaffection within the Sadrist
base over the consequences of Sadr’s horse-trading and collaboration
with the US forces. Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group
told McClatchy Newspapers last month: “I don’t know how
sustainable this can be. They [Sadr’s supporters] appear extremely
frustrated, willing to comply with Moqtada’s decision [the ceasefire],
but not for very long.”
According
to an article in the December 26 Washington Post, large numbers have
been rounded up in Najaf, Karbala, Hilla and Diwaniya. There are indications
that the US military, along with Iraqi government forces loyal to SIIC,
are preparing a crackdown against Sadrist and Sadrist-linked parties,
militias and unions in the oil-rich city of Basra. The operation has
the potential to be the first major blood-letting of the New Year and
to unleash anti-occupation rebellions across southern Iraq.
As the killing
continues, various quarters of the US ruling elite are exploiting the
very carnage they have produced to argue that American forces must remain
in Iraq to establish the conditions for “democracy”. Such
propaganda is nothing more than a shameless apology for the first great
and ongoing war crime of the twenty-first century. The occupation is
ruling through the promotion of sectarian divisions and the daily repression
of opposition to its presence. The precondition for Iraq’s recovery
from the social and political catastrophe created by the US-led war
is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all American and foreign
troops.
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