Opinion, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
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Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Should the Arabs resist American imperialism, Patrick Seale
Paris |
Predictably, the United States is meeting armed resistance in Iraq. U.S.
troops are facing an upsurge of violence, which bodes ill for the future
of America's imperial project.
Faluja, an essentially Sunni city some 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, has
been the flashpoint for repeated attacks. Two American soldiers were
killed there this week and nine wounded.
A day later on the outskirts of Baghdad another attack killed two
soldiers, wounded several more, and destroyed an armoured vehicle, which
then collided with a helicopter which had come to pick up the wounded. The
situation is extremely dangerous for American forces everywhere in the
country.
In southern Iraq, the Shiite population, resentful of the American
occupation, is rallying around religio-political movements such as the
Dawa and the Tehran-backed Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) headed by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Al Hakim, who recently
returned to a rapturous welcome from his long exile in Iran.
So concerned are the U.S. authorities at the possibility of Iranian
intervention that U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued a fresh
warning to the Islamic Republic this week to stay out of Iraqi affairs.
Any attempt, he said, to recreate Iraq in Iran's Islamic image would be
"aggressively" resisted and put down.
The regime the United States has now created in Iraq is one of direct
rule. An American diplomat, Paul Bremer, is the effective master of the
country and other Americans are running all key areas of life, including
the vital oil industry - the sole source of revenue for a shattered
country in need of total reconstruction.
Is resistance to the United States organised or is it the work of isolated
individuals driven by personal, nationalist or religious impulses?
"This question must deeply preoccupy the occupation powers. One of
Bremer's recent decisions was to shut down Iraq's Defence and Interior
ministries, as well as the headquarters of various security services, and
disband the armed services and all other aggressive instruments of the
former regime. This means that hundreds of thousands of men, most of them
either armed or knowing how to handle weapons, have been thrown out of
work and rendered redundant in a society where they were once powerful.
Some resistance must surely be expected from them. At the same time, the
Baath Party has been outlawed, robbing huge numbers of Iraqis of the
institutional framework of their lives.
In addition, most of Baghdad's ministries and public sector enterprises
were looted and trashed in the aftermath of the war with the result that
tens of thousands of state employees have lost their livelihood.
Iraqis may well want the U.S. to stay long enough to restore the basic
fabric of society - but not a moment longer. Quite a few will want to
hasten America's departure, and possibly by violent means.
No one knows how many Iraqi troops were killed or wounded in battle. Some
authoritative estimates put the figure at about 10,000 dead and 20,000 to
30,000 wounded. They and their surviving relatives, many impoverished and
devastated, will harbour life-long resentments against the Americans end
the British, and, some will, only naturally, want to hit back.
A group of Iraqi army officers took to the streets of Baghdad this week in
protest. "We demand the speedy establishment of a government, the
return of security, the rehabilitation of public institutions and the
payment of wages to all soldiers," former General Saheb Al Mussawi
declared in an address to about 100 officers. Other officers intervened.
"We are soldiers used to combat and we have volunteers for
martyrdom," Lieutenant Colonel Ziad Khalaf warned. "We will take
back by force what we have 1ost by force."
The fact that Iraqi troops were in several cases abandoned, and possibly
even betrayed, by their commanders has added to the sense of outrage end
alienation.
Even political movements allied to the United States are resentful at
America's decision to defer the formation of an interim Iraqi government.
Groups like Ahmad Chalabi's Iraq National Council, and the Kurdish leader
Jalal Talabani, have expressed frustration despite their preferential
treatment.
They want an immediate share of power. They fear that if America's
"direct rule" lasts a year or two, other forces and
personalities might emerge to rob them of what they see as their
"legitimate" inheritance. America's true objectives in Iraq are
still shrouded in mystery.
The U.S. seems to want to weaken Iraq permanently, by "remaking"
it as a decentralised, federal and largely disarmed state, never again
able to challenge Israeli or American interests and security; secondly, to
control Iraqi oil, and no doubt oversee its lucrative privatisation; and
thirdly to intimidate Iraq's neighbours so as to dissuade them from
developing weapons of mass destruction or acquiring any other form of
deterred capability.
If this is in fact Washington's agenda, it is not likely to win the
support of a largely patriotic Iraqi population anxious, after decades of
wars, crippling sanctions and U.S. and British bombardment, to restore
their country to its rightful place as a leading Arab state.
Therefore there are plenty of reasons to suppose that the Americans will
face resistance from Iraqis - either from individuals or from small
underground groups. Is such resistance legitimate?
Article 51 of the UN Charter recognises the right of self-defence against
foreign aggression, Article 1 (4) of the Additional Protocol to the Fourth
Geneva Convention includes the right to struggle "against domination
and alien occupation ... in the exercise of the right of
self-determination".
It is now widely recognised that the war against Iraq was a fraud. It was
an unprovoked, illegitimate act in violation of the UN Charter. No weapons
of mass destruction have been found. No Iraqi link with Al Qaida has been
established.
Iraq posed no threat to its neighbours and none at all to the United
States or Britain. Meeting in London this week, a panel of eminent
international lawyers condemned the war as illegal.
But, under the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, the United States has
given itself the right to intervene militarily in countries it does not
like - or in countries that dare defy it or its Israeli ally. No stable
international order can possibly be built on such arbitrary and bullying
foundations.
The immediate result is that American interests and American citizens -
and regrettably, as a result of Tony Blair's foolhardy policy, British
interests and British citizens as well - are now at risk in large parts of
the Arab and Muslim world. Their embassies have been turned into
fortresses.
In Cairo, where I was this week, all streets leading to the American end
British embassies have been blocked off, to the inconvenience of ordinary
Egyptians who already greatly dislike the U.S. and Britain for their
policies,
The approaches to the two embassies are guarded by large numbers of
heavily armed riot police.
The Arab world is living under a double shock. The first was, of course,
the invasion and conquest of a major Arab country by the world's only
superpower.
The second was the swift collapse of Iraqi resistance, especially in
Baghdad, where most Arabs had expected the U.S. to get bogged down in
urban guerrilla warfare. Inevitably conspiracy theories flourish on the
theme of whether Baghdad was "handed over" to the invaders by
traitors with whom the Americans did deals in return for the army's
surrender.
Even before the attack on Iraq, the entire region was in the grip of an
epidemic of anti-American sentiment, largely fed by American tolerance of
Israel's brutal repression of the Palestinians. The Iraqi war has given a
new depth and dimension to this hostility,
Arab-wide resistance is likely to take two forms. One form will no doubt
be sporadic armed attacks against western targets, including suicide
bombings, such as have recently occurred in Riyadh and Casablanca, carried
out by small groups of fanatics, either linked to Al Qaida or inspired by
it. Quite apart from the criminal nature of such actions, they are also
not effective.
The targets are ill-chosen, the victims innocent civilians, many of them
local Arabs and Muslims. The result of such terrorism is to swing public
opinion against the bombers and to force Arab regimes in exercising still
greater control and repression, especially of legitimate opposition
groups, most of which are Islamist in nature, and to slow down the
liberalisation and reform of the political arena.
Hostility to the United States (and to their own governments) may also
take the form of passive resistance - in fact the only option for the
great mass of the population.
It produces inertia, a lack of initiative, the minimum effort at work, and
often a retreat into religious piety.
Seldom in living memory has Arab morale been so low. But America should
beware, resistance there will be.
The whole notion of forcibly restructuring and reforming the Arab world in
order to ensure American and Israeli security is a dangerous fallacy.
Recognising the right to real independence of both Palestinians and Iraqis
would be a far more effective policy, and the only one that would
guarantee the United States security.
The writer is an eminent commentator and the author of several books on
Middle East affairs. He can be contacted at: pseale@gulfnews.com
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |