- Many thousands of foreign fighters have indeed come
"flooding" into Iraq - not terrorists sent by Bin Laden but mercenaries
hired by the occupation authorities. . . . This is in addition to the Pentagon's
Israeli-trained special assassination squads. Iraqis now believe that some
of the recent assassinations of scientists and academics were perpetrated
by these hit-squads. . . . Despite the mythology, most Iraqis were strongly
against the invasion from the start, though it has taken 12 months for
the world's media to report that.
-
- First it was Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay,
who were leading a rump of diehard loyalists to regain power; then it was
Saddam's deputy, Izzat al-Douri, leading the same rump; then it was a leaderless
rump of diehards who had no place in the new free and democratic Iraq;
then it was foreign terrorists "flooding" into the country; then
it was a fiendish foreign al-Qaida terrorist named Zarqawi who killed Shia
mourners to start a Sunni-Shia civil war; then it got a bit confusing,
with a creeping number of insurgent operations in the Shia quadrangle;
then it got even more confusing with the Shias changing tactics and staging
increasingly militant protest marches; and today we have Moqtada al-Sadr
- an "unrepresentative" Shia radical cleric leading a tiny army
of extremists who happen to be active in most of Iraq's 18 governorates
and who want to destroy the new free and democratic Iraq.
-
- The 160,000 occupation forces, backed up by mass destruction
technology, are now deemed insufficient in the fight against the Sunni
diehards and the Shia unrepresentative extremists. Furthermore, many thousands
of foreign fighters have indeed come "flooding" into Iraq - not
terrorists sent by Bin Laden but mercenaries hired by the occupation authorities.
Their role is to carry out dangerous tasks, to help reduce US army casualties.
This is in addition to the Pentagon's Israeli-trained special assassination
squads. Iraqis now believe that some of the recent assassinations of scientists
and academics were perpetrated by these hit-squads. A similar campaign
of assassinations in Vietnam claimed the lives of 41,000 people between
1968 and 1971.
-
- The unleashing of F16 fighter bombers, Apache helicopter
gunships and "precisely" targeted bombs and tank fire on heavily
populated areas is making the streets of Baghdad, Falluja and the southern
cities resemble those of occupied Palestine. Sharon-style tactics and brutality
are now the favoured methods of the US-led occupation forces - including
the torture of prisoners, who now number well over 10,000.
-
- There is little doubt that the resistance will spread
to new areas of Baghdad and the south, with the intense anti-occupation
feelings of the people turning into more militant forms of protest. The
US-led invasion is daily being unmasked for what it is: a colonialist adventure
being met by a resistance that will eventually turn into a an unstoppable
war of liberation.
-
- What went so wrong that the US-led war to "liberate"
the Iraqi people turned into the daily slaughter of the victims of Saddam's
tyranny? The answer is simple: nothing has gone wrong. Despite the mythology,
most Iraqis were strongly against the invasion from the start, though it
has taken 12 months for the world's media to report that.
-
- What has changed is that many Iraqis have decided that
the peaceful road to evict the occupiers is not leading anywhere. They
didn't need Sadr to tell them this. They were told it loudly and brutally
a few days ago by a US Abraham tank, one of many facing unarmed and peaceful
demonstrators not far from the infamous Saddam statue that was toppled
a year ago. The tank crushed to death two peaceful demonstrators protesting
against the closure of a Sadr newspaper by Paul Bremer, the self-declared
champion of free speech in Iraq. The tragic irony wasn't lost on Iraqis.
-
- Nor did they fail to notice article 59 of the new US-engineered
constitution, which puts the new US-founded Iraqi armed forces under the
command of the occupation forces, which will, in turn, be "invited"
to stay in Iraq by the new sovereign government after the "handover
of power" in June. This occupation force will be backed up by 14 large
US military bases and the biggest US embassy in the world, tellingly based
at Saddam's republican palace in Baghdad.
-
- And lest anyone is still confused by the glib propaganda
that it is all the fault of Sadr, it is important to remember the greatest
mass demonstration in Iraq's history, only days after the fall of Baghdad,
when 4 million people converged on Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom
of Imam Hussain. Their rallying cries then were "No to America, no
to Saddam" and "No to the occupation" - a chant that has
been repeated at many mass rallies since. Opposing Saddam's tyranny was
never the same thing as welcoming invasion and the tyranny of occupation.
-
- It is ironic that, had Sadr's political and social programme
(towards the Kurdish people and women, for example), as distinct from his
very popular anti-occupation stance, been more enlightened, he would have
been much more popular. Indeed, he would probably have seen his Mahdi army
grow to millions before Bremer's resignation on June 30.
-
- · Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam's
regime and is a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University.
-
- sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1188857,00.html
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