Iraq’s
Destiny
By Ghali Hassan
01 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
While
most people have reached a (false) conclusion that the U.S. has “failed”
to shape Iraq according to its planned agenda, it is not hard to see
that the U.S. is carrying out its original plan to destroy Iraq and
colonise its people and national resources.
Observing Iraq since the
2003 illegal U.S. invasion leads to an inescapable conclusion: The situation
in Iraq today was well-planned and executed agenda that favours the
U.S. imperialist-Zionist interests. U.S. leaders and their shrinking
lackeys are embarking on a campaign of deception by hoeing their language,
their images of themselves and their political skills to fit the certainty
of a direction that many people rightly considered no longer a reality.
The aim is to deceive the masses and prosecute an imperialist agenda
in Iraq.
Before the invasion, Iraq
had the best health care and education system in the Arab world. It
had the most liberal family law in the Arab world, and human rights
for women were enshrined in the constitution. Over a Million Iraqis
are displaced refugees, and most Iraqi professionals have left the country.
The Occupation has only destroyed Iraq and perpetuates violence.
Since 2003, the Iraqi civilian
death toll has risen dramatically each month totalling nearly 6000 in
May and June. Bombings and shootings have increased by 50 per cent,
resulted in mass displacement of people from their towns and suburbs.
More than 14000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last six months,
and the number is mounting. Based on previous estimate (conservative
estimate), at least 500,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and
children, have been killed by U.S. forces and mercenaries. Evidence
shows that most of the victims were innocent Iraqis killed by U.S. aerial
bombings and those aerial bombings were responsible for massive destruction
of civilian infrastructure, acts considered war crimes under the Geneva
Conventions.
There is also evidence that
U.S. forces and their collaborators are targeting all Iraqi men. According
to Associated Press (AP), U.S. soldiers were under order to kill all
military age males”. During the fascist siege and destruction
of Fallujah, the U.S. army prevented all men between the ages of 15
and 55 years old from leaving the city and U.S. soldiers have killed
in cowardly fashion men in this age group regardless of whether the
men were armed or not.
Furthermore, violence against
Iraqi civilians was encouraged by the U.S. deliberate and criminal act
of dissolving the Iraqi army and security forces and replacing them
with ethnic and sectarian-based militias. The Occupation continues nurturing
and encouraging death squads, criminal gangs and “security forces”
in order to terrorise the civilian population and foment civilian strife.
From the outset of the Occupation, the targets were anti-Occupation
Iraqis, including Iraqi professionals and prominent intellectuals and
politicians, particularly those who served in the Government of Saddam
Hussein.
The Occupation-orchestrated
“de-Baathification” is a campaign of mass murder of innocent
Iraqi civilians regardless of religious and ethnic affiliations. U.S.-trained,
armed and financed death squads, including Israeli agents, and the pro-Occupation
militias – led by Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord (INA),
Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the U.S.-Iranian-backed
Badr Brigades – were gathered and coordinated by U.S. Special
Forces from the ‘Interior Ministry’ to track-down anti-Occupation
Iraqis and Resistance fighters, and terrorise the Iraqi population in
order to enforce the Occupation rules. They are often dressed in “Iraqi
Police” uniforms to disguise their identities. The criminal campaign
was perfected by no other than John Negroponte during a short stint
as U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad. U.S. intelligence agents (CIA) are so
involved that they are the source of all the current violence in Iraq.
In addition, the Occupation resorts to attacking and murdering large
number of civilians gathered in mosques, markets and work places. The
aim is to instil fear in the population, mislead Iraqis and incite them
against each other. (See Washington Post, 11 December 2003).
At the same time, the U.S.
Occupation Authority in Iraq has introduced and strengthened sectarian
laws and encouraged sectarianism and ethnic nationalism. The US-staged
elections were to cement extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism.
There were no candidates or political parties with political ideologies,
just religious and ethnic slates. In addition, the U.S.-drafted Constitution
was aimed at cementing and legitimising these various divisions.
Contrary to Iraqis’
views towards the ongoing violence in Iraq, Western media, and the so-called
“anti-war” activists (the “Left”) have all united
behind the Occupation and began to deliberately distort the facts by
labelling the violence as “sectarian violence”. They singled-out
those Iraqis who oppose the Occupation in particular, the Mehdi Army
(the anti-Occupation group associated with Sayyed Muqtada Al-Sadr) and
accused them of perpetuating violence against their follow Iraqis. This
is consistent with the U.S. own propaganda campaign of removing the
Occupation as generator of violence and links the violence to Iran.
The main aims of the U.S.-generated violence in Iraq are:
1- To frame the Occupation-generated
violence as “Iraqis killing Iraqis” or “Sunni”
vs. “Shiite” warfare;
2- To divert attention from
the Occupation and avoid holding the occupying forces and their leaders
responsible for the crimes that are committed in Iraq today;
3- To reduce Resistance attacks
against the occupying forces;
4- To terrorise the Iraqi
population and force them to see the Occupation as their only saviour;
and
5- Foment civil war and encourage
the division of Iraq.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,
the Secretary of the political and resistance movement of Hizbullah
in Lebanon, who knows a lot about sectarianism and imperialism-promoted
divisions told AL-jazeera recently; “The U.S. has driven the situation
in Iraq to a state where they offer themselves to Shiites as a guarantee
against Sunnis, and offer themselves to Sunnis as a guarantee against
Shiites. “They present themselves to Arabs as a guarantee against
Kurds, and present themselves to Kurds as a guarantee against Arabs.
“Their plot is doing just fine. Look at the situation in Iraq
nowadays: What could possibly happen that is more appropriate for separatists
to say that they have to split from Iraq to protect their community?”
The criminal agenda is also encouraged by some Arab regimes, such as
Kuwait and Israel.
The current Western propaganda
of “Shiite crescent”, which alleged to have its source in
Iran, and goes through Iraq, to Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon is
simply an imperialist-Zionist propaganda campaign designed to promote
sectarianism. The so-called “threat” is a phantom like many
others. The US-Israel main aims are to protect the unelected pro-Western
dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt, and justify
a region-wide war against people that are resisting an imperialist-Zionist
ideology masquerading as “New Middle East”. It is not difficult
to see that the U.S. and Israel are applying the criminal destruction
of Iraq in Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East
When a dozen of bricklayers
and labourers were murdered, the media and the occupying forces blame
the massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians on “sectarian violence”,
but there was no evidence of “sectarian violence”. These
are deliberate crimes aimed at fomenting civil strife by spreading terror
and violence.
Jonathan Steele of the Guardian
wrote: “Witnesses said gunmen; some masked, set up roadblocks
and stopped motorists in the mainly Sunni suburb of Jihad, near Baghdad
airport, demanding to see identity cards. Those with Sunni names were
shot dead; Shias were released”. Steele doesn’t say how
can one identify people’s religious affiliation from their identity
cards? No one can identify Iraqis according to their ethnicity and religious
affiliation from their identity card. It is just impossible. It is like
on trying to identify Catholics from Protestants by looking at their
drivers licences.
As it happens, this is something
I know a lot about, and my own experience is enough to prove what Steele
and the bulk of Western journalists and pundits write is a total fabrication.
I lived and worked in Baghdad and around Iraq for many years, and I
have yet to known or heard of a town or a suburb that is exclusively
“Sunni” or “Shiite”. These imperialist labels
are three years old.
For example, the population
of Baghdad are so entwined, it is just impossible to accept the new
imperialist propaganda that Baghdad can be divided according to the
U.S.-Zionist labels of “Sunni” and “Shiite”
to stop “sectarian violence”. What the U.S. and its collaborators
are doing is dividing and weakens every community in Iraq in order to
make these communities dependent on the Occupation. There has never
been a “civil war” in Iraq, and Iraqis have coexisted as
one community throughout history. The heterogeneous of the Iraqi Resistance
is a case in point. Iraqis have stood up in solidarity to each other
and denounce the Occupation during every major U.S. attack against civilians,
whether in Fallujah or in Baghdad.
Further, it is impossible
to tell Iraqis apart from their identity cards and names, or from the
way they look and dressed. This is simply a Western construct designed
to imprint the Iraqi society as a dived community in the public mind.
These labels are also used to justify Westerners attacks not only against
Iraqis in particular but also against Muslims in general.
What Westerners seem to ignore
is that after more than three years of brutal Occupation, U.S. and its
Iraqi puppet government were unable to maintain law and order and provide
Iraqis with security. It is important to remember that despite the weakness
of the Saddam Hussein’s Government and its lack of a powerful
army like the U.S. army, Iraq was a safe nation for Iraqis and none-Iraqis.
If we compare today’s Iraq with Iraq under the Hussein’s
Government, Iraq was a Switzerland model. Saddam did not have the luxury
of 200,000 heavily-armed U.S. soldiers and mercenaries stationed in
Baghdad and around Bagdad.
Even the U.S.-imposed puppet
government has acknowledged the complicity of the US in perpetuating
violence. Indeed, some in the puppet government have now openly likening
the invasion and its consequences to “the work of butchers”,
and demanding that the U.S. forces leave Iraq. It is possible that once
the violence moved into full-scale “civil war” which was
the aim of the Occupation, the U.S. will use this to save face and withdraw
its troops and mercenaries from Iraq. Consistent with the wishes of
the majority of Iraqis – more than 92% – who opposed to
the Occupation and have called for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops
from their country.
The puppet government has
no power to prevent violence and provide security, and is completely
dependent on the Occupation for survival. In its latest bid to reduce
violence, the puppet government saw its 28-point “Reconciliation
Plan”, which included a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops,
modified and watered-down by the U.S. “If the government took
the initiative and dissolved the militias and set a timetable for the
withdrawal of foreign troops and insisting on punishing those who are
responsible for crimes against Iraqis, then it would be guaranteed that
the resistance would call for a truce because the excuse to carry arms
will cease to exist”, Essam al-Rawi of the Muslim Scholars Association
(MSA) in Baghdad told the Egyptian Weekly, Al-Ahram.
Sources close to the Iraqi
Resistance said; “The resistance has a strict stance to resist
the occupation and all squads of resistance have rejected the initiative
[“Reconciliation Plan”] because this initiative didn't talk
about the occupation. We have never heard of those names of resistance
groups that are said to have agreed on the plan”. The Iraqi Resistance
have rejected the Plan, because it is fraudulent, and called the U.S.-imposed
“Prime Minister”, Nouri Al-Maliki a despicable collaborator,
like all the criminals who entered Iraq on the backs of U.S. tanks.
Recently, Al-Maliki was rewarded
to visit Washington to thank U.S. leaders for their crimes in Iraq in
a speech written to him by his U.S. minders. His visit was condemned
across Iraq as betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to the Iraqi people
at the hands of U.S.-Zionist aggressors.
The ongoing massacres of
innocent civilians, sadistic torture, rape, and destruction of Iraqi
cities and towns by U.S. forces, have forced the civilian population
to seek security by belonging to a sectarian or ethnic group. People
start moving from their original localities into new localities and
in the process creating (sectarian or ethnic) ghettoes. Yugoslavia was
an example of extreme nationalism encouraged and used by the West to
destroy the country. The one difference is that the nationalist Iraqi
Resistance have neutralised the U.S. military machine and prevented
the U.S. from pacifying the Iraqi people.
Finally, it is becoming clear
that the U.S. agenda was well-planned imperialist-Zionist agenda. The
U.S. is perpetuating the current violence as a pretext for ongoing Occupation
and colonisation of Iraq. Indeed, the Bush Administration continues
to link troops' withdrawal to “security”. The pretext is
no longer “democracy building”, but a U.S.-generated violence
to sponsor a colonial dictatorship - dressed up in seasonal and U.S.-style
fraudulent elections - ruled by a façade of expatriate stooges
and paramilitary militias dependent on the presence of U.S. forces.
However, Iraq’s strong
identity and history of resistance to Western imperialism provide evidence
that the U.S. will fail to impose its imperialist-Zionist agenda on
the Iraqi people. Iraq’s destiny will remain with the Iraqi people.
Iraq’s destiny and
Iraqi lives are not saved by violence, but by an immediate end to the
Occupation and full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. For this goal
to success, mass resistance is the only way left against the rise of
this anti-human ideology and injustice.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth,
Western Australia.