- Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United
States isn't mired in a bog in Iraq, or a marsh; it is free-falling off
a cliff. The only question now is: who will follow the Bush clan off this
precipice, and who will refuse to jump?
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- More and more are, thankfully, choosing the second option.
The last month of US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be described
as a mutiny: waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under the command
of the US occupation authority suddenly refusing to follow orders and abandoning
their posts. First Spain announced that it would withdraw its troops, then
Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan. South Korean and
Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while New Zealand is
withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the Netherlands and Thailand
will likely be next.
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- And then there's the US-controlled Iraqi army. Since
the latest wave of fighting, its soldiers have been donating their weapons
to resistance fighters in the south and refusing to fight in Falluja. By
late April, Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured
Division, was reporting that "about 40% walked off the job because
of intimidation. And about 10% actually worked against us".
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- And it's not just Iraq's soldiers who have been deserting
the occupation. Four ministers of the Iraqi governing council have resigned
in protest; and half the Iraqis with jobs in the secured "green zone"
- as translators, drivers, cleaners - are not showing up for work. Minor
mutinous signs are emerging even within the ranks of the US military: privates
Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey have applied for refugee status in Canada
as conscientious objectors, and Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia is facing court
martial after he refused to return to Iraq on the grounds that he no longer
knew what the war was about.
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- Rebelling against the US authority in Iraq is not treachery,
nor is it giving "false comfort to terrorists", as George Bush
recently cautioned Spain's new prime minister. It is an entirely rational
and principled response to policies that have put everyone living and working
under US command in grave and unacceptable danger. This view is shared
by the 52 former British diplomats who, in their letter to Tony Blair,
stated that although they endorsed his attempts to influence US policy
on the Middle East, "there is no case for supporting policies which
are doomed to failure".
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- And one year in, the US occupation does appear doomed
on all fronts: political, economic and military. On the political front,
the idea that the US could bring genuine democracy to Iraq is now irredeemably
discredited: too many relatives of Iraqi governing council members have
landed plum jobs and rigged contracts, too many groups demanding direct
elections have been suppressed, too many newspapers have been closed down
and too many Arab journalists have been killed. The most recent casualties
were two employees of al-Iraqiya television, shot dead by American soldiers
while filming a checkpoint in Samarra. Al-Iraqiya is the US-controlled
propaganda network that was supposed to weaken al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya,
both of which have also lost reporters to US guns and rockets over the
past year.
- White House plans to turn Iraq into a model free-market
economy are in equally rough shape, plagued by corruption scandals and
the rage of Iraqis who have seen few benefits - either in services or jobs
- from the reconstruction. Corporate trade shows have been cancelled across
Iraq, investors are relocating to Amman and Iraq's housing minister estimates
that more than 1,500 foreign contractors have fled the country. Bechtel,
meanwhile, admits that it can no longer operate "in the hot spots"
(there are precious few cold ones), truck drivers are afraid to travel
the roads with valuable goods and General Electric has suspended work on
key power stations. The timing couldn't be worse: summer heat is coming
and demand for electricity is about to soar.
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- As this predictable (and predicted) disaster unfolds,
many are turning to the United Nations for help. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
called on the UN to support his demand for direct elections back in January.
More recently, he called on the UN to refuse to ratify the despised interim
constitution, which most Iraqis see as a US attempt to continue to control
Iraq's future long after the June 30 "handover" by, among other
measures, giving sweeping veto powers to the Kurds - the only remaining
US ally. Before pulling out his troops, José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, asked the UN to take over the mission
from the United States. Even Moqtada al-Sadr, the "outlaw" Shia
cleric, is calling on the UN to prevent a bloodbath in Najaf.
- And what has been the UN's response? Worse than silence,
it has sided with Washington on all these critical questions, dashing hopes
that it could provide a genuine alternative to the lawlessness and brutality
of the American occupation. First, it refused to back the call for direct
elections, citing security concerns - a response that weakened the more
moderate Sistani and strengthened al-Sadr, whose supporters continued to
demand direct elections. This is what prompted Paul Bremer's decision to
take out al-Sadr, which in turn led to the provocation that sparked the
Shia uprising.
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- The UN has proven equally deaf to calls to replace the
US military occupation with a peacekeeping operation. On the contrary,
it has made it clear that it will only re-enter Iraq if it is the United
States that guarantees the safety of its staff - seemingly oblivious to
the fact that being surrounded by American bodyguards is the best way to
make sure that the UN will be targeted.
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- The UN's greatest betrayal of all comes in the way it
is re-entering Iraq: not as an independent broker but as a glorified US
subcontractor, the political arm of the continued US occupation. The post-June
30 caretaker government being set up by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will be
subject to all the restraints on Iraqi sovereignty that sparked the current
uprising. The US will maintain full control over "security".
It will keep control of the reconstruction funds.
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- And, worst of all, the caretaker government will be subject
to the laws laid out in the interim constitution, including the clause
that states that it must enforce the orders written by the US occupiers.
The UN should be defending Iraq against this illegal attempt to undermine
its independence. Instead, it is disgracefully helping Washington to convince
the world that a country under continued military occupation by a foreign
power is actually sovereign.
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- There is a way that the UN can redeem itself in Iraq:
it could choose to join the mutiny, further isolating the United States.
This would help to force Washington to hand over real power - ultimately
to Iraqis, but first to a multilateral coalition that did not participate
in the invasion and occupation and would have the credibility to oversee
direct elections. This could work, but only through a process that fiercely
protects Iraq's sovereignty. That means:
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- · Ditch the interim constitution
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- It is so widely hated that any governing body bound by
its rules will be seen as illegitimate. Some argue that Iraq needs the
interim constitution to prevent open elections from delivering the country
to religious extremists. Yet according to a recent poll by Oxford Research
International, Iraqis have no desire to see their country turned into another
Iran.
- There are also ways to protect women and minority rights
without forcing Iraq to accept a sweeping constitution written under foreign
occupation. The simplest solution would be to revive passages in Iraq's
1970 provisional constitution, which, according to Human Rights Watch,
"formally guaranteed equal rights to women and specifically ensured
their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property".
Elsewhere, the constitution enshrined religious freedom, civil liberties
and the right to form unions. These clauses can easily be salvaged, and
those parts of the document designed to entrench Ba'athist rule struck
out.
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- · Put the money in trust
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- A crucial plank of managing Iraq's transition to sovereignty
is safeguarding its assets: its oil revenues, the remaining oil-for-food
programme money and what's left of the $18.4bn in reconstruction funds.
Right now the US is planning to keep control of this money long after June
30; the UN should insist that it be put in trust, to be spent by an elected
Iraqi government.
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- · De-Chalabify Iraq
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- The United States has so far been unable to install Ahmed
Chalabi as the next leader of Iraq - his history of corruption and lack
of a political base have seen to that. Yet members of the Chalabi family
have quietly been given control in every area of political, economic and
judicial life.
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- It was a two-stage process. First, as head of the de-Ba'athification
commission, Chalabi purged his rivals. Then, as director of the governing
council's economic and finance committee, he installed his friends and
allies in the key posts of oil minister, finance minister, trade minister,
governor of the central bank and so on. Now Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi,
has been appointed by the US to head the court trying Saddam Hussein. And
a company with close ties to Chalabi landed the contract to guard Iraq's
oil infrastructure - essentially a licence to build a private army. It's
not enough to keep Chalabi out of the interim government. The UN must dismantle
Chalabi's shadow state by launching a de-Chalabification process on a par
with the now abandoned de-Ba'athification process.
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- · Demand the withdrawal of US troops
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- In asking the US to serve as its bodyguard as a condition
of re-entering Iraq, the UN has it exactly backwards - it should go in
only if the US pulls out. Troops who participated in the invasion and occupation
should be replaced with peacekeepers from neighbouring Arab states charged
with making the country secure for general elections.
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- On April 25, the New York Times editorial board called
for the opposite approach, arguing that only a major infusion of American
troops and "a real long-term increase in the force in Iraq" could
bring security. But these troops, if they arrive, will provide security
to no one - not to the Iraqis, not to their fellow soldiers, not to the
UN. American soldiers have become a direct provocation of violence, not
only because of the brutality of the occupation in Iraq but also because
of US support for Israel's deadly occupation of Palestinian territory.
In the minds of many Iraqis, the two occupations have blended into a single
anti-Arab outrage.
- Without US troops, the major incitement to violence would
be removed, allowing the country to be stabilised with far fewer soldiers
and far less force. Iraq would still face security challenges - there would
still be extremists willing to die to impose Islamic law, and attempts
by Saddam loyalists to regain power. On the other hand, with Sunnis and
Shias now so united against the occupation, it's the best possible moment
for an honest broker to negotiate an equitable power-sharing agreement.
- Some will argue that the US is too strong to be forced
out of Iraq. But from the start Bush needed multilateral cover for this
war - that's why he formed the "coalition of the willing", and
it's why he is going to the UN now. Imagine what could happen if countries
keep pulling out of the coalition, if France and Germany refuse to recognise
an occupied Iraq as a sovereign nation. Imagine if the UN decided not to
ride to Washington's rescue. It would become a coalition of one.
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- The invasion of Iraq began with a call to mutiny - a
call made by the US. In the weeks leading up to last year's invasion, US
Central Command bombarded Iraqi military and political officials with phone
calls and emails, urging them to defect from Saddam's ranks. Planes dropped
8m leaflets, urging Iraqi soldiers to abandon their posts and promising
that no harm would come to them.
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- Of course, these soldiers were promptly fired when Paul
Bremer took over, only now they are being frantically rehired as part of
the reversal of the de-Ba'athification policy. It's just one more example
of lethal incompetence that should lead all remaining supporters of US
policy in Iraq to one inescapable conclusion: it's time for a mutiny.
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- A version of this article first appeared in the Nation
www.nologo.org
- Copyright: The Guardian. UK.
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