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Iraq awash in chaos and uncertainty
in overthrow aftermath
US troops kill Iraqi demonstrators
Compiled by Eamon Martin
Apr. 16 (AGR)— On Tuesday, Apr. 15, at a bleak and barren airbase
in southern Iraq, the US and British governments formally began the
process of forging a new government, while a chaotic humanitarian crisis
continued to escalate across the countryside in the aftermath of the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government.
The first day of talks with Iraqi opposition leaders was undermined
by schisms and fierce political and religious unrest sweeping across
the country. Skepticism ran deep among groups united by little more
than joy at Hussein’s fall and unease at getting too close to Washington
at the meeting in the desert held behind barbed wire checkpoints at
Talil airbase. Even Iraqi National Congress leader and Pentagon favorite
Ahmad Chalabi, eager not to be seen as a stooge of the Americans who
back him, opted to stay away and sent a representative instead.
At least two of the groups — the Iran-backed Supreme Council of
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, and the Islamic Daawa Group,
one of the most powerful Iraq-based organizations — boycotted the
meeting.
The boycott by SCIRI — Iraq’s biggest Iraqi Shiite opposition
group — alone meant the meeting accomplished little beyond agreeing
to meet again in 10 days. A senior leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, said: “We
will not attend the meeting in Nasiriyah because the Iraqi people won’t
accept preparations for an administration imposed by foreigners. It
is against Iraq’s independence.”
Hakim said his group would also not accept the interim administration.
“Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government. Anything other than this
tramples on the rights of the Iraqi people and will be a return to the
era of colonialization,” said Hakim. “We cannot be part of
a process which is under an American general.”
Shia Muslims compose a 65 percent majority of Iraqi citizens. Saddam
Hussein, a Sunni, ruthlessly discriminated against the Shias, who rose
up against him after the 1991 Gulf war and were brutally suppressed.
The poorest parts of Iraqi society are Shia Muslim.
Then there is Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani. The powerful cleric’s
multitude of followers in Najaf, one of the holiest Shia cities, will
not accept an Iraqi government run by anyone they see as a puppet of
the occupying Americans.
Last week, Iraqi exile Abdul Majid Al-Khoei attempted to meet al-Sistani
and was hacked to death by a mob carrying swords outside the Shrine
of Ali in Najaf, one of the most sacred mosques for Shias. He had fled
to London in 1991 after the repression of Shias following the first
Gulf War. He returned to Najaf on Apr. 3 and immediately began radio
broadcasts under US pressure to ask people to support the occupying
armies. Al-Khoei came back to Iraq bearing the weight of Washington’s
hopes that he would help lead Iraq’s Shias towards a pro-US government,
and away from the magnetic pull of neighboring Iran.
His US links may have cost him his life.
“He is so close to the Americans he might as well have driven in
on an American tank,” said Favel Mohammed Roda, a Najaf resident.
Back at the Talil airbase, Jay Garner, the retired US general and Patriot
missile salesman who has been put in charge of Iraq’s reconstruction,
declared: “A free Iraq and a democratic Iraq will begin today.”
While Garner made his declaration, United States troops opened fire
on a crowd hostile to a new pro-American governor in the northern Iraqi
city of Mosul, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100,
witnesses and doctors said. Iraq’s third largest city descended
into a riot involving several thousand people after self-styled governor
Mashaan al-Juburi attempted to make a pro-US speech. Angry citizens
overturned al-Juburi’s car and set it aflame.
Only 10 miles from the airbase, thousands of Iraqis took to the streets
to enjoy their newfound freedom and to demonstrate that the US-British
image of government is not necessarily theirs.
Between 5,000-20,000 Shia Muslims marched through Nassiriya, shouting:
“No to America! No to Saddam!” and called for rule by their
ayatollahs.
Washington now faces its nightmare scenario in the Middle East: an alliance
between a Shia-dominated Iraq and its co-religionists in Iran.
Sheikh Mahdi Salih, of the Shiite council, the Al Hawza in Najaf declared:
“We want Iraq to be pluralist and we want our view recognized.
I want America to leave Iraq and leave the Gulf region. I don’t
feel liberated. I want democracy.”
Shia students bellowed through a loudspeaker their demands for representation
in any government. “It is unreasonable to ignore a majority of
more than three quarters of Iraq,” they said.
Iraqis seethe and despair at US
Across Iraq, any alleged Iraqi sentiment of enthusiasm for the US invasion
of their country is evaporating as quickly as Saddam Hussein’s
government melted away.
Forty-eight hours after Baghdad was liberated -- as Bush would call
it -- by American forces, the city was in the throes of chaos. Men with
Kalashnikovs dragged drivers from their cars at gunpoint, babies were
killed by cluster bombs, and hospitals that had carried on right through
the bombing were transformed into visions of hell.
Hospital floors were coated with stale blood, and wards stank of gangrene.
The wounded lay on soiled sheets in hospital lobbies, screaming with
pain, or begging for tranquillizers. Orderlies in blue surgical gowns
shouldered Kalashnikovs to guard against marauders. Ambulance drivers
staged counter-raids on looters to reclaim captured medicines and surgical
supplies.
Iraqis, by and large, are now blaming America for toppling the Hussein
regime before it was prepared to deliver order to Baghdad.
While US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sneered at the press for
claiming that chaos had broken out in Baghdad, four of the capital’s
six general hospitals had closed, plumes of black smoke rose across
the city, and looters wheeled their gains throughout the streets with
apparent impunity.
Baghdad’s five million people still have no electricity or reliable
water supplies. Food is becoming scarce. Cars piled high with furniture,
typewriters, and air conditioning units are still common sights. With
virtually every government ministry in flames, Baghdad is now operating
essentially without a government.
Offices, shops, banks, and universities have been systematically gutted.
Hospitals and laboratories have been ransacked, with thieves often seizing
vital equipment -- heart monitors, incubators, and microscopes.
On Tuesday, looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq’s National
Library, leaving a smoldering shell of precious books turned to ash
and a nation’s intellectual legacy gone up in smoke.
Armored vehicles were positioned on the nearby street, manned by US
Marines. They did nothing to stop them.
Last week, thousands of thieves swept through the National Museum and
stole or smashed treasures that chronicled this region’s role as
the “cradle of civilization.” The museum recorded a history
of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia
more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad
in sufficient force to topple the government this week, it took only
48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts
carried away by looters. The 28 galleries of the museum had been completely
ransacked. It is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural
disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.
The destruction has drawn condemnation worldwide, with many criticizing
US-led coalition forces for failing to prevent or stop it.
Baghdad was bursting with anti-American feeling Saturday as residents
saw their city being stripped by its own citizens while US forces stood
by, rarely intervening and in some cases even motioning treasure-laden
men through checkpoints.
“The coalition forces are responsible. Where is the law?”
said Safa Hussein Qasim, 44, a jeweler. “This is the promise of
the United States to Iraq? This is democracy in Baghdad?”
“Saddam Hussein’s greatest crime is that he brought the American
army to Iraq,” said Gailan Ramiz, 62.
At a market, dozens of men set fire to a statue of Saddam Hussein. But
in doing so, they made sure one important point was known — just
because they revel in Hussein’s ouster doesn’t mean they’re
waving American flags.
“The army of America is like Genghis Khan,” Fouad Abdullah
Ahmed, 49, snapped as US tanks rumbled by. “America is not good
and Saddam is not good. My people refused Saddam Hussein, and they will
refuse the Americans.”
“If this continues in Baghdad, we’ll kill any American or
British soldier,” said Rahad Bahman Qasim, 30.
Vigilante groups have sprung up across much of the country, suggesting
that the US military controls less of Iraq than it claims.
United Nations and international aid officials have criticized US and
British troops for failing to curb the looting, saying it threatened
to deepen the country’s humanitarian crisis.
“This inaction by the occupying powers is in violation of the Geneva
Conventions,” said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the United
Nations Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.
The Red Cross, aid charities, and Iraqi citizens pleaded with the US
to honor its obligations under the Geneva Convention and protect the
civilian population.
Meanwhile, a reported 2,000 US troops were deployed to secure the northern
oilfields, bringing all of Iraq’s oil reserves, the second largest
in the world, under American and British protection. US commanders in
the field said they did not have the manpower, or the orders from above,
to control the scenes on the streets of Baghdad and other cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that Baghdad’s
medical system had “virtually collapsed” from a combination
of combat damage, looting and fear.
Doctors in Iraq’s second largest city, Basra, warned this week
of an epidemic as a majority of the 1.3 million residents were still
without safe drinking water three weeks after the war began.
Attempts to restore the supply have failed, despite hopes expressed
in the first week that it would take a matter of days.
One Basra resident said: “Bush bad. Blair bad. They destroyed our
water and electricity.”
Sources: Associated Press, BBC, Daily Telegraph
(UK), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, New York
Times, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, Sydney Morning Herald, United
Press International
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US sending mixed signals on Syria as
‘next’ target
Compiled by Seán Marquis
Apr. 16 (AGR)— In an apparent turnaround from recent blustering,
the White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the United
States should go to war against Syria following its military success
in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in
the Pentagon, London’s Guardian newspaper reported.
In the past few weeks, the US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered
contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall
of Baghdad.
However, President George W. Bush, who faces re-election next year with
two perilous nation-building projects on his hands -- in Afghanistan
and Iraq, is said to have cut off discussion among his advisers about
the possibility of taking his terror war to Syria.
“The talk about Syria didn’t go anywhere. Basically, the White
House shut down the discussion,” an intelligence source in Washington
told the Guardian.
Over the weekend Rumsfeld repeated accusations that Syria had tested
chemical weapons in the last 12 to 15 months. However, Syria is not
a signatory to the chemical weapons convention and would not be breaking
international law if it did possess them, nor is it suspected of selling
chemical weapons to others.
The Bush administration is nevertheless determined to use its military
ascendancy in the region to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on
Syria and resolve what Washington sees as longstanding problems, including
the threat to Israel posed by Damascus-backed Islamic extremists, Hizbullah,
Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Specifically,Washington has promised Israel that it will take “all
effective action’” to cut off Syria’s support for Hizbollah
-- implying a military strike if necessary.
Hizbollah is a Shia Muslim organization based in Lebanon, whose fighters
have attacked northern Israeli settlements and harassed occupying Israeli
troops to the point of forcing an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon
three years ago.
“If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship
of Hizbollah, both geographically and politically,” said Ivo Daalder
of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
“The United States will make it very clear, quietly and publicly,
that Baathist Syria may come to an end if it does not stop its support
of Hizbollah.”
Syrian defiance
On Friday, US forces were bombing the area of Iraq near the Syrian border.
US Central Command said it was to stop the movement of fleeing senior
Iraqis into Syria and the crossing of “Arab volunteers” the
other way into Iraq.
Over the last couple of weeks, Damascus has become a hub for fighters
who cross into Iraq to fight the US and British “coalition”
forces. Hundreds, if not thousands, have already done so. Reports from
Iraq indicate that much of the fighting that is still going on in Iraq
is against such volunteers.
On Saturday, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa accused the United
States of waging war to destroy Iraq - not oust President Saddam Hussein.
Al-Sharaa said Syria, the only Arab member of the United Nations Security
Council and a staunch war opponent, was worried about “Iraq’s
dismantling at the hands of those who came to free it,” and that
US-led forces will occupy Iraq indefinitely.
Syria has also said that it would consider any post-war administration
run by the United States military in Baghdad as an “occupation
government.”
“There is a difference between a transitional government and a
military government. If it is going to be a military one, then it will
be an occupation government. There are international laws that call
for recognizing the government that the people choose,” said Buthaina
Shaaban, head of the press department at the Syrian Foreign Ministry.
Laying the groundwork, just like Iraq
Hawks in and close to the Bush White House have prepared the ground
for an attack on Syria, raising the spectre of Hizbollah, of alleged
Syrian plans to welcome refugees from Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime,
and of what the administration insists is Syrian support for Iraq during
the war.
Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - regarded as the real architect
of the Iraqi war and its aftermath - said on Apr. 10 that “the
Syrians have been shipping killers into Iraq to try and kill Americans”,
adding: “We need to think about what our policy is towards a country
that harbors terrorists or harbors war criminals.
“There will have to be change in Syria, plainly,” said Wolfowitz.
Many of the same people who led the campaign for war against Iraq signed
a report released three years ago that called for using military force
to disarm Syria of weapons of mass destruction and to end its military
presence in Lebanon.
Among the signers are several senior members of the Bush administration,
including the chief Middle East aide on the National Security Council
Elliott Abrams, Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith,
Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, and Michael
Rubin and David Wurmser, senior consultants to both the State Department
and the Pentagon on Iraq policy.
Also signing were Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman of the
Defence Policy Board (DPB); former United Nations ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick;
Frank Gaffney, a former Perle aide who heads the Center for Defence
Policy; Michael Ledeen, another close Perle collaborator at the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI); and David Steinmann, chairman of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
The study, “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The US Role,”
was co-authored by Daniel Pipes, who has just been nominated by Bush
to a post at the US Institute of Peace (USIP), and Ziad Abdelnour, who
heads a group founded by him called the United States Committee for
a Free Lebanon (USCFL). The study was released by Pipes’ group,
the Middle East Forum.
The USCFL, whose 67 “Golden Circle” members include virtually
all of the 31 signatories of the report, has been a major force behind
the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act that
was just reintroduced in the House of Representatives last Friday by
Reps. Eliot Engel, a USCFL member, and Ileana Ros Lehtinen.
The legislation, which had 150 co-sponsors in the House last year, would
impose far-reaching economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria
until the president certified that that it had stopped all support to
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and other groups that Washington considers
“terrorist,’’ and the government withdraws its estimated
20,000 troops from Lebanon, and takes other measures long demanded by
Washington.
“Now that Saddam Hussein’s regime [in Iraq] is defeated,’’
Engel said Friday, “it is time for America to get serious about
Syria. The United States must not tolerate [its] continued support of
the most deadly terrorist organizations in the world, its development
of weapons of mass destruction, and its occupation of Lebanon.’’
Sources: Asia Times, Associated Press,
Guardian (UK), Oserver (UK), Inter Press Service
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Anti-globalization protest in DC focuses
on
Latin America, Iraq war
By Shawn Gaynor
Washington, DC, Apr. 14 (AGR)—Thousands of activists gathered
this past Sunday, in Washington DC’s Malcolm X park, to raise awareness
about the economic injustices of corporate globalization, and concerns
about the war on Iraq.
The rally and march were called to coincide with the annual spring meetings
of the IMF/World Bank.
Speaker after speaker from thoughout the hemisphere lambasted the Bush
administration and called attention to economic troubles in their own
countries -- problems they say were caused by the large neo-liberal
financial institutions driving globalization.
“Our demands to their institutions, which are funded by taxpayers
around the world, is cancel the debt. Through the Structural Adjustment
Programs of the International Monetary Fund those institutions have
engaged in corporate welfare and transfer huge wealth into private hands,”
said a spokesperson for Fifty Years is Enough. “It’s time
for them to serve the public good and not corporate profits. They continue
to use debt as a tool of subjugation and control. Latin America can
not continue to send its children to work in stead of school because
of their debts.”
Two non-profit organizations, the Latin American Solidarity Coalition
and the Mobilization for Global Justice, organized the protest, which
drew a notably diverse crowd ranging from Black Bloc anarchists to illegal
immigrants.
Ricardo Munhey spoke on behalf of the Health Care Union of El Salvador,
which has been on strike for the past seven months in opposition to
plans to privatize health care in El Salvador.
“In a small country the size of Massachusetts, with only six million
people, we are showing the world we can resist neo-liberal policies,”
he said. “They want to implement a system that would take away
health care for a majority of El Salvadorians, and condemn us to death,
so we are resisting.”
Many of the speakers spoke out against the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA), which would extend NAFTA into Central American countries.
Many fear that the deal will make economic conditions harder for agricultural
workers in Central America by forcing them into direct competition with
major US agribusiness. Agricultural employees represent a third of Central
America’s labor force.
According to Inter Press Service, the groups also worry that a contentious
provision in the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the draft
texts of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), and the US-Chile
trade agreement that gives foreign investors the right to sue governments
over public-interest laws that might undermine their profits, will be
included in CAFTA.
This condition has been used, for example, against a Mexican community’s
ban on a toxic-waste dump, against a California law banning a carcinogenic
gasoline additive, and against Canadian government subsidies to its
postal system.
Other speakers drew attention to the FTAA, which if passed would create
a hemisphere-wide free trade zone. Many Latin American leaders have
signed on to the accord in principal, with negotiations of the details
still ongoing. This is despite a vast majority of the populations of
South and Central America standing in opposition to the ratification
of the treaty.
Speakers called for a massive demonstration this fall in Miami to protest
a negotiation session regarding the treaty, saying it will drive the
people of Latin America into further poverty and despair.
“It is not just a war that kills people, but is economic colonialism
by the US. For the last 50 years we have been attacked by the IMF, but
we are not beat yet; we are struggling,” said Grociela Monteagudo
of the Argentina Autonomist Project, who addressed the crowd. “This
is low-intensity warfare; hundreds of children are dying of hunger in
the streets of Buenos Aires today.”
Esteemed Native rights activist and cofounder of the American Indian
Movement, Vernon Bellecourt, gave a fiery speech condemning the Bush
administration for its war on Iraq.
“At the conclusion of the Third Reich the Nuremberg trials held
accountable those responsible for war crimes. George Bush, and the administration
that he represents, is the emergence of the Fourth Reich. In the US
now we are faced with crimes against humanity in Iraq; now we should
hold them (the Bush administration) to the same standards as Nuremberg.”
“The US has always used weapons of mass destruction,” he continued.
“They killed 16 million [native] people in this land and this is
where globalization began. I don’t want any speakers today to refer
to American weapons as Blackhawk, Comanche, Apache, Tomahawk. Call them
what they are... Bush, Reagan, Cheney. Black Hawk was a man of peace
who once said, ‘Why is it you Americans always insist on taking
with the gun what you could have with love.’”
After the rally a loud but peaceful march left Malcolm X park and made
its way to the headquarters of the IMF/World Bank. Along the route the
procession, which included large colorful puppets and a huge Black Bloc
walking behind a ‘Viva EZLN’ banner, stopped periodically
to draw attention to corporations and institutions that are anti-worker.
People banged on makeshift drums, as the crowd chanted, “What’s
the solution? A peoples’ revolution. What’s the reaction?
Direct action!”
At the first stop, a Taco Bell in DC’s northwest quarter, members
of the Coalition of Immokalee workers held a boycott banner and urged
people to boycott Taco Bell over the paltry and shrinking wages for
tomato pickers. “[The farmers] are not paying anything... they
[the farm laborers] are sick and dying because of the pesticides,”
said a representative of the group.
The crowd chanted, “We don’t need sweatshop tacos,” and
“We won’t eat Taco Bell, they don’t treat their workers
well.”
The protest also stopped in front of the Coca-Cola company. The company
is loathed by activists for their harsh repression of union organizers
in Columbia. Coke is accused of using the Columbian paramilitary to
kill union leaders.
When the march passed the White House the level of militancy rose. Protest
chants changed tone and chants of “Bush you liar, we’ll set
your house on fire,” and “No bombs, no tanks, we’ll burn
your fuckin’ banks,” echoed through the streets and across
a closed Lafayette Park to the White House lawn.
The march concluded in front of the IMF/World Bank headquarters.
No arrests or confrontations where reported for the day, and police,
in contrast to the previous day’s anti-war protest, seemed uninterested
in stirring up the notably larger radical contingent of the protest.
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