- "Of course they don't like being occupied. I wouldn't
like being occupied either." - President George W Bush, April 13 White
House press conference
-
- Forget about George W Bush's scripted press conference,
where, according to CNN, the president was "quite forceful in rebutting
the attacks on his Iraq policy". Forget that Bush admitted to no mistakes
in his "war on terror" and complained to a reporter: "You
should have submitted that question in writing so I could have prepared."
Let's go back to the real world, in Iraq.
-
- "Occupying power needs full-spectrum-dominance Middle
East dictator. Must have excellent connections with neo-conservatives in
Washington and experience in quelling any kind of dissent by whatever means
necessary. Ability to work under pressure essential. Democratic credentials
will be provided by the employer. Send detailed CVs to L Paul Bremer, Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA), Green Zone, Baghdad. All correspondence will
be kept strictly confidential."
-
- This ad has not been posted - not yet. But it just about
sums it all up in terms of American isolation in Iraq, after the Pentagon
and the CPA's neo-con policies have managed to lead to the unthinkable:
Sunni and Shi'ite united against the occupation in a war of national resistance.
-
- All current mediation efforts in Sunni or Shi'ite areas
are being conducted by influential clerics or tribal chiefs - and not the
American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). Carrying no authority
or legitimacy, the IGC has been totally eclipsed: when any of its frightened
members says a word, it is to criticize the occupation. Furthermore, even
the Americans were forced to admit that the CPA-equipped Iraqi security
forces have either disappeared, declined to fight or migrated to the resistance.
By the implacable logic of nationalist resistance, any Iraqi now working
with any foreigner of any kind runs the risk of being targeted as a collaborator
- and subsequently kidnapped or killed. The great majority of foreign civilian
aid workers in Iraq are about to leave.
-
- All over the Arab and Muslim world, Sunni Fallujah ("The
city of the mosques") and holy Shi'ite Najaf have become the symbols
of an increasingly well-organized, broad-based resistance. Paradox is king:
the Marines can only "pacify" Fallujah by leveling it; and tough-talking
American generals may want to capture "outlaw" Muqtada al-Sadr
"dead or alive", while in fact they have been forced to the negotiating
table with him.
-
- What's happening in Fallujah and Najaf? Asia Times Online
has learned that Fallujah residents are describing what happened last week
as "the new Jenin" - a direct reference to the lethal April 2002
Israeli offensive unleashed against a Palestinian camp. Osama Saleh al-Tikrit,
a dentist at Baghdad Hospital, said that at least 600 civilians were killed
in Fallujah, and up to 1,500 injured. Dr Abed al-Illah, also a representative
of the Iraqi Islamic Party - which is part of the IGC - and a sworn enemy
of Saddam, said that "about 350 out of the 600 dead were women and
children. One was only eight months old. Many died from simple wounds and
could have been saved if they had medical attention." Illah adds that
"the Americans claim that all the wounded are fighters and will not
let us take them away. Families cannot escape because of their snipers.".
-
- Arab populations - but not their cowed governments -
have been busy comparing proconsul L Paul Bremer with Saddam, and talking
of a genocide in Fallujah: they all saw the non-stop flow of horrible images
on alJazeera (and that's why the Americans want alJazeera out of Fallujah).
Alarmingly, neo-cons in Washington are issuing calls to level Fallujah.
The neo-con rage centers on the fact that the occupation was caught sleeping
as the rebellion in Fallujah quickly moved east from the Euphrates towards
Baghdad itself: everybody living in the villages in between who was a former
member of the Iraqi army was armed and ready to deliver a blow to the Americans.
-
- The Marines are reopening the siege of Fallujah - with
the US running the risk of creating a war crime and provoking a humanitarian
disaster. Of the 300,000 people who live in Fallujah, up to 60,000 may
have become refugees. Another bloodbath will inevitably breed thousands
more Osama bin Ladens or whoever the terrorist-scarecrow-of-the-day is.
-
- Meanwhile in Najaf, feverish mediation between Bremer's
CPA and Muqtada's forces continued even after the holy day of Arba'in.
Everyone from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq party
to the al-Dawa Party to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's son, Ridha, is
involved. According to Adnan al-Asadi, the second-in-command of the Shi'ite
al-Dawa Party, the mediators are concentrating on a serious possibility:
Muqtada's Mahdi Army is not dissolved, but it returns its weapons to the
Americans. They have no problems melting back into the local population
- guerrilla-style: they may resurface later.
-
- In exchange for the Mahdi Army disarming, the prosecution
of Muqtada in connection with the murder of pro-Western Shi'ite cleric
Abdul Majid al-Khoei a year ago is turned over to the Iraqi judiciary,
but only after the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the US to Iraq.
Iraqi police retake control of security in Najaf (Muqtada loyalists control
the police in Najaf, anyway). And the Americans remain out of the holy
city.
-
- This solution clashes head-on with the rumble emanating
from the Green Zone. Bremer rejects everything. He says that Muqtada has
three options: he can surrender, he can be arrested, or he can be killed
while resisting arrest. There are already 2,500-plus American soldiers
around Najaf, backed by tanks and artillery, ready to capture Muqtada "dead
or alive".
-
- But according to the Iranian newspaper Baztab, Sistani
has already warned the Americans in a letter that if they attack the holy
cities of Najaf and Karbala, the Hawza - the Shi'ite equivalent of the
Vatican - will fight: this essentially means that Sistani will say the
word and issue a fatwa for a jihad against the occupiers, which will be
followed to the letter by more than 60 percent of the Iraqi population.
-
- The mediators know better than anyone there's no possible
cowboy "dear or alive" military solution to deal with Muqtada
and his followers. Theirs is also a social movement, with deep roots in
the early 1990s. It would take a short trip from the Green Zone to Sadr
City in Baghdad - former Saddam City - for the tough-talking generals to
see for themselves how these people are desperately poor, very angry and
won't think twice about becoming martyrs by the millions. Kill Muqtada
and a thousand new Muqtadas will spring up. Muqtada is ready to die as
a martyr. And there's no easy solution either, because Muqtada will never
accept exile in Iran.
-
- Muqtada and the Pentagon's preemptive war The official
Pentagon-CPA version is that Muqtada's militias are a bunch of terrorists
and a threat to "Iraqi democracy". But the move against Muqtada
may be just part of a Pentagon strategy to position overwhelmingly unpopular,
Pentagon-backed Ahmad Chalabi as the new Saddam - performing the role of
the new Iraqi prime minister after June 30.
-
- A sign of things to come is what happened to Iyad Allawi
from the Iraqi National Accord, Chalabi's key rival for more than a decade.
Allawi resigned from the security commission of the IGC because his man
at the Ministry of Interior was dismissed by Bremer. Allawi was the Central
Intelligence Agency and State Department man in the last years of the Saddam
era - always trying to organize military coups. Chalabi, in exile, was
the Pentagon's golden boy.
-
- The CPA, as is widely known, is a neo-con nest. Allawi
may have been neutralized because the Pentagon wants Chalabi as the new
Saddam at all costs. Allawi is as much a rival to Chalabi as Muqtada. Chalabi
- like Muqtada - also directs a militia, but this one happens not to be
a "threat to democracy". No wonder: it was flown to Iraq by the
Pentagon itself.
-
- What do the neo-cons want? It is now established that
the Muqtada-led uprising has been a decisive answer to a series of alarming
Bremer moves - already detailed by Asia Times Online at the conclusion
of Iraq one year on: from liberation to jihad. The CPA moved first. Muqtada
counter-attacked successfully. Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology
at the State University of New York and an expert in popular protest and
insurgency, wrote one of the most succinct analyses of why that happened:
-
- "The fact that the militias accomplished the capture
of all or part of as many as five cities (mostly with populations of less
than 200,000, but cities nevertheless) with almost no casualties is testimony
to four underlying facts about the current situation in Iraq: that the
coalition forces had very little presence or legitimacy within the cities
- despite a year of unhindered opportunity; that the newly formed police
have neither the interest, nor the ability to resist the militias - and
that they therefore have little hope of becoming an adequate force for
law and order; that the people of these cities (tacitly or overtly) supported
the uprisings - however uncomfortable they may be with the Islamist ideas
and policies of [Muqtada] Sadr himself; and that the militants are very
well organized indeed - and will remain so even after this episode is over."
To fight against a broad-based war of national resistance, the Americans
can now count on only one ally: the Kurds. But the problem is the Kurds
are far away in their autonomous northern mountains, oblivious to a fight
carried by Arabs, and with only one thing in their minds: how to get ready
for a future, inevitable war against the Turks.
-
- Washington now faces the essence of total asymmetric
war. The more repressive, the more unpopular - and the more the Shi'ite
majority bolsters the ranks of the active, armed Iraqi resistance. If Muqtada
becomes a martyr, Iraq becomes a real Vietnam.
-
- This may be what the neo-cons want. In a logic of total
war, this is the next step leading to the inevitable attacks on Syria and
Iran in the event that Bush is reelected. The neo-cons may be creating
the conditions to smash their own calendar on purpose, making impossible
the so-called "handover of sovereignty" on June 30. More troops
will be called to Iraq to fight "terrorists" - be they in Fallujah,
east Baghdad or in the Shi'ite south. Total war is never-ending war.
-
- Iraqis may have a few cards up their sleeves. The IGC
may totally collapse, leaving the king - the occupation - naked. And an
Iraqi million-man-march may be assembled in Baghdad around the Green Zone,
demanding the occupiers to leave the country for good. On the other hand,
there are alarming, persistent noises of the American military perceiving
Iraqis - not to mention Arabs as a whole - as untermenschen, sub-humans.
With the neo-con-controlled CPA in total isolation after a total political
defeat, and a campaigning Bush posing as the super-vigilante foe of terrorist
evildoers, the only card left to play is "overwhelming" military
might. Iraq may be on the verge of becoming Stalingrad, Vietnam, Jenin
and Chechnya all rolled into one. And nobody may be able to prevent it,
least of all a new Saddam.
-
- Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
-
- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FD15Ak01.html
|