Walls As Enforcer Of Occupation
By Ghali Hassan
24 May, 2007
Countercurrents.orgPretexts are convenient tools to justify something else. The pretext of weapons of mass destruction used to justify the illegal aggression against Iraq. If American leaders are interested in the “security” and “protection” of Iraqi civilians, there is no better solution than ending the, which is demanded by overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. Building walls around Iraqi towns and suburbs looks like a pretext for something else.
Together with the illegal and violent invasion of Iraq, the Americans have brought with them a collection of Western-oriented criminals and Iranian extremists, and an old bag full of terrorism, bloodshed, a culture of sadistic torture and a catalogue of violations of international laws. They have also brought with them imperialism tools of communalisation and fragmentation of society: dividing one Iraqi community against the other and one faction against the other.
In order to colonise the Middle East, subjugate the people and destroy any sort of pan-Arab nationalism, U.S.-Zionist policy has always been in favour of dividing the region into smaller, ethnic and sectarian mini-states, fearful of Israel and fully dependent on U.S. protection. In Iraq, as rightly pointed-out by Galal Nassar in Al-Ahram Weekly; “The ‘no fly’ latitude lines the Clinton administration put in place several years ago would determine the borders of those mini-states. Kurdistan is already behaving as a semi-independent state … This is why the latter are determined to divide Iraq prior to withdrawal, the aim being to have two out of three mini-states under US control”.
Furthermore, one needs to look at the situation in Palestine and in Lebanon. In Palestine, the U.S., Israel and the EU are undermining the democratically elected Palestinian government, starving the population and encouraging the violence between Palestinian communities. In Lebanon, the U.S. and its allies are fomenting violence and divisions by backing one community against the other in what Condoleezza Rice defended as spreading “creative chaos” in the region.
To divert public attention from Iraq at home and keep the public in a state of war, the occupying forces flare the violence to widen the divisions between Iraqis and hence justifying the ongoing Occupation, as a necessary enforcer of “peace”. The violence is not only encouraged but it is constantly increased, because it provides a perfect cover for the criminal Occupation and looting of Iraq’s wealth, a point I will come back to later. The occupying forces then presented the violence as “Iraqis killing Iraqis”, and building concrete walls around Iraqi communities on the pretext that theses walls are necessary measures to enhance “security” and “protect” Iraqi civilians. Of course, it is a falsehood.The U.S.-built walls, including the current wall around Baghdad’s district of al-Adhamiyah – which has drawn mass protests from all Iraqis –, and around the towns of Fallujah, Tikrit, al-Qaim, Tal Afar, Samarra are aimed at protecting the Occupation, isolating Iraqi communities from each other and enforcing a system of colonial control. The Americans are turning Iraqi towns into large concentration camps. The town of Samarra is the current case in point. “The humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible. Many [people] have already run out of food and hospitals have closed because of an absence in power and medicine”, an Iraqi Red Crescent worker in the town of Tikrit told Reuters Newsdesk. “[Ten] people, including seven infants, had already died because of lack of fuel to power generators and operate life-saving machinery … On one day, four new-born babies died because there was no energy to power incubators”, added Reuters. Four babies had died in their incubators because the hospital has no power. There is no sectarian violence in Iraq, but rather a U.S.-sponsored terror. “Are we in the West Bank”, an Iraqi pharmacist asked the LA Times, referring to Israel’s Apartheid Wall.
In fact, the U.S.-built walls in Iraq are the mirror image of Israel’s-built wall surrounding Gaza and the illegal Apartheid Wall encircling and fractionating Palestinian communities and taking Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank. Indeed, the two measures of collective punishment in Iraq and Palestine tend to have the same aims to protect the occupations and weaken peoples’ unity.
Moreover, U.S. leaders seem to be undisturbed by the mass atrocity they are perpetuating. Business is as usual. The Americans have just drafted the so-called “Hydrocarbon Law” or oil “law” despite unanimous opposition by the Iraqi people. Vice-president Dick Cheney just sneaked into Iraq to press the puppet government to sign the oil law. The law gives U.S. oil Corporation full control of Iraqi oil, including control exploration, production, refining, labour, marketing and sales (market), and unhindered looting of Iraq’s wealth. According to (unashamed) U.S. officials, the law will “stop the violence”. To the contrary, the “law” is designed to encourage divisions and violence by removing the state-control over natural resources. ‘Quite a lot of it is not good, to be honest’, a Western energy expert to the LA Times recently. ‘A lot of the difficult questions were fudged, like revenue sharing and who controls the oil fields. These obviously are vitally important, but [the Americans] wanted a benchmark passed, so it was pushed’, added the expert. The law will keep Iraq’s wealth forever in the hands of Western companies at the expense of the Iraqi people. (See my The Endless Looting of Iraq).
Iraq’s oil wealth has been used – although not adequately – to improve the lives and well-beings of all Iraqis. Within a decade of oil Nationalisation in 1972, Iraq was the most advanced nation in the region. It posted the best health and social services, the best education system (with 92 percent literacy) and the best vital infrastructure in the region. In addition, women enjoyed unhindered opportunities and rights. When theses social programs, compared to conditions in other (oil exporting) countries that are under U.S. military and economic dictatorship, one will find only a tiny minority of the population (the ruling elites) has benefited from the national oil and gas wealth generated by natural resources, including oil and gas.
Since the U.S. genocidal attacks on Iraq began in 1991, Iraqi livings conditions have deteriorated with 70-75 per cent of Iraqis are living under the poverty line. According to a new report by the charity Save the Children, Iraq's infant mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. The Report reveals that, “one in eight Iraqi children now die of disease or violence before the age of five”. It adds that, “in 2005 alone, 122,000 Iraqi children died before reaching their fifth birthday … Iraq's child-survival ranking is now the lowest in the world”, a deliberate war crime the world is ignoring. An appeal by the UN Children’s Funds (Unicef) to assist Iraqi children falls on deaf ears in the West.
According to the UN Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some 4 million Iraqis (15 percent of the population) half of them children are displaced and live in squalid camps in Iraq and in neighbouring countries. The U.S. and its European allies have refused to help and protect these refugees. The forced exodus of Iraqi refugees is an enormous Nakba (disaster), reminiscent of the 1948 Palestinians Nakba – which continues today at a pace – when Jewish terrorist gangs terrorised and ethnically cleansed some 800,000 Palestinians and destroyed their towns and villages to establish the sate of Israel, which continues to this day to terrorise the Palestinian people. No one is held accountable, and unlike Nazi’s war criminals that were found guilty of crimes against humanity and hanged, George Bush and his subservient accomplices are walking free
It is naïve to suggest that the Occupation will end because of the so-called “anti-war” and “peace” movements in the U.S. The Occupation imposed by foreign military force and will be forced to end by the Iraqi people. “They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous to talk about any other way of getting back what belongs to us", Ali Asis, a 32-year-old Iraqi told IPS.
It is important to note that Americans are not against war per se, and Westerners in general (with the exception of honourable few) are unconscious of the pains of others. Most Americans were conscious of the crimes committed against the Iraqi people, but they did little to oppose their government’s crimes. Indeed, a majority of Americans supported the illegal and unprovoked aggression against Iraq. Americans are against war if they know they are loosing, which is the case in Iraq today.
The so-called Western “progressive” elites, who have always pretended to support the struggle of national liberation movements of oppressed people against western imperialist forces, remain silent on Iraq. They are attacking the Resistance using the terms “Islamist” and “Jihadists” in derogative sense not because the Iraqi cause is not noble, but because the Iraqi Resistance is a Muslim-Arab Resistance movement. Associating Muslim-Arab Resistance movements with terrorism allows the progressives to get closer to power. The Iraqi people have demonstrated their ability to resist the most advanced war machine and most bloodthirsty power out-administering and delegitimise the Occupation, two important key factors to defeat a foreign occupying power.
Indeed, the progressive elites are contributing to U.S. wars by attacking the Iraqi Resistance. They have invented a myth that the Occupation failed because of the “incompetence” of the U.S. and “misguided” policies. To the contrary, the dismissal by U.S. leaders of repeated warnings against the invasion suggests the current situation in Iraq is a deliberate policy. It was planned in advance to serve U.S. interests, not Iraqis’ interests. Indeed, John Bolton, former U.S. aggressive maul at the UN revealed recently that the U.S. imperialist agenda is “an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension”. In other words, perpetuating violence and instability to serve U.S. imperialist agenda.
It should be acknowledged that, the Iraqi people have demonstrated their ability to resist the most advanced war machine and most bloodthirsty power. In short, the Iraqi Resistance is able – and continues – to out-administer and delegitimise the Occupation, two key factors to defeat a foreign occupying power.
Finally, the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq not because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but exactly because Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was a defence less nation. Weapon of mass destruction was a naked pretext known to every one. The motives behind the invasion and the Occupation of Iraq are clear today: (1) the destruction of Iraq as a state; (2) the removal of Iraq as a deterrent to Israel’s terror and domination in the region; and (3) to use Iraq’s oil wealth and strategic importance to further U.S. world domination.
The ongoing Occupation is not to “stop the violence”; the Occupation is the violence. The aim of the occupiers is to create pretexts to justify the Occupation. The U.S.-built walls around Iraqi towns and suburbs, including the recent wall around Baghdad’s district of al-Adhamiyah, are evidence of a U.S.-backed strategy of “divide and rule”. It is the last of many desperate measures to protect the Occupation and it’s headquarter, the “Green Zone”, from a determined national Resistance.
If American leaders are serious about protecting the lives of Iraqi civilians, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and their mercenaries from Iraq is the only rational solution. Walls do not protect Iraqis from violence; they protect the Occupation.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
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