Opinion Editorials, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
A costly US-UK occupation of Iraq that could have been avoided
By Michael Jansen
Jordan Times, Thursday, October 23, 2003
DEVELOPMENTS IN Iraq continue to confound the Bush administration. First and foremost, the occupation is increasingly seen by Iraqis, and others, as simply a colonial imposition rather than liberation from the brutal regime of President Saddam Hussein — as the US would like to portray it. US soldiers are attacked on a daily basis in Baghdad. Elsewhere in the country the resistance is mounting an increasing number of operations against the occupying forces. The 156,000 troops the US and its “allies” have deployed in Iraq cannot impose order and security and no other countries are prepared to send troops to join this inadequate force.
Although Ankara has agreed to dispatch soldiers, the rejection of Turkish troops by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and 90 per cent of Iraqis responding to a poll has compelled the Turks to think twice about contributing a 10,000-strong contingent. India and Pakistan, which the US had hoped would send several thousand soldiers, have also refused to become involved unless there is a UN mandate for a peacekeeping force and UN control over Iraq.
Second, the latest UN Security Council resolution has changed nothing.
Although the administration had hoped a new resolution would provide legitimacy for its occupation regime, the world retains its scepticism about US motives and policies in Iraq. Furthermore, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who warned against the war and called for the UN to be granted the major role in reconstruction and guiding Iraq towards democratic governance, has once again refused to send back to Iraq UN staff members withdrawn after attacks on the UN compound. He says he will not do so until their security can be guaranteed. This means many UN-run humanitarian projects have been stalled or abandoned for the time being, slowing Iraq's already problematical recovery.
Third, the combination of no security and rising attacks on US forces has increased the isolation of the US occupation regime headed by L. Paul Bremer III in the so-called “green zone” of the Republican Palace, now surrounded by hundreds of troops, tanks, cement blocks and barbed wire. The more isolated Bremer and his colleagues are from the Iraqis and the situation in the country, the more difficult it is for them to respond to the needs of the people and the demands of reconstruction.
Fourth, the US drive to rehabilitate Iraq's economic infrastructure has largely halted because of insecurity, incompetence amongst US administrators, and massive mismanagement and corruption. Multimillion dollar contracts are being awarded to US companies for projects, while Arab and Iraqi firms, which can afford to do the work more cheaply, are shunned. Huge sums are being wasted instead of being spent on useful, essential development schemes.
Finally, the political process involving the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of elections for a new government is going nowhere. By conditioning the handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi administration on the adoption of a constitution and elections, the Bush administration has indefinitely postponed the transfer of authority and power. The longer Bremer hangs on in Baghdad, the greater the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation will become.
Complicating the situation still further, neoconservative ideologues in the Pentagon, commanded by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and pragmatists in the National Security Council, headed by Condoleezza Rice, are squabbling over control of the reconstruction programme in Iraq. To make matters worse, the morale of US troops deployed in Iraq is plummeting because the administration cannot tell them when they will be going home. Washington has no exit strategy. The Bush administration's Iraq adventure has gone wrong from the very start because the dominant neoconservative ideologues were determined — and are still determined — to impose their utopian dream of democracy on Iraq. According to this dream, Iraqis would welcome US forces as liberators, accept US-style of one-man, one-vote democracy and install a federal government embracing Arabs and Kurds. The majority Shiite community would, happily, take over from the minority Sunnis who have run Iraq for centuries. The Sunnis would simply capitulate without a fuss, recognising that they could not resist the march towards democracy and federalism. The Kurds would be granted autonomy in the north. But none of these things happened as the neoconservatives predicted.
The neoconservatives were — and are — also committed to the transformation of Iraq's socialist-leaning command economy into a capitalist-free market system. But they have now run up against Iraqi resistance to the privatisation of both the oil sector and major public companies which provide both goods and employment for Iraqis.
Iraqi businessmen are also strongly opposed to the opening up of the country to foreign investors who would own 100 per cent of Iraqi firms they establish and could repatriate 100 per cent of their profits. Iraqis are wary of turning their country into a “banana republic” resembling the central American states which were taken over by US multinationals during the 20th century.
The neoconservative dream was never anything but an illusion. An illusion comparable to the belief held by the communists in Soviet Russia who insisted on the inevitability of the triumph of communism in the struggle with Western democracy and capitalism. This illusion was shattered when the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s. But the fall of communism did not necessarily mean that US-style democracy was — and is — the only alternative, the only option for countries with troubled, turbulent political systems.
Iraqis are teaching the US that democracy cannot come out of the barrel of a tank gun, but it must be rooted and nurtured in a society before it can flourish. Furthermore, most members of a given society must agree to play by the rules of democracy if the system is to work properly. Democracy has not taken root in Iraq and Iraqis are certainly not prepared to abide by its rules and constraints. Instead, there is an unprincipled and unregulated scramble for power by the Kurds, rival Shiite factions and the Sunni resistance.
To make matters worse for the US, Iraqis from all communities are beginning to blame Washington for all their woes. This is absolutely standard practice amongst peoples occupied by powerful colonial powers. By pinning blame for whatever happens in Iraq on the US, Iraqis are not only escaping responsibility but also strengthening the resolve of the resistance to fight the US occupation. This means that attacks on US forces are likely to rise and grow more deadly as the US settles in for an indefinite, all too costly occupation. An occupation that the administration could have avoided if it had listened to the advice of Washington's long-standing Arab friends, like His Majesty King Abdullah, who opposed Washington's “war of choice” in Iraq.
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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). |
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