Iraq's "Stability"

The assurance card has been played too many times and for far too long. It's just that whenever a politician speaks of "order", chaos ensues, as if chaos itself is an allergic reaction on part of the public to any false claim about such "order". The thing is, if you take a look at the headlines in the past few days, you'll still find the same old, lame old chaos looming around. People everywhere are under threat, even newspaper sellers (among them who sell government propaganda outlets to the public). According to Hussein Ali of the Institute of War and Peace, newspaper sellers were occasionally threatened at gun point my militia men and told not to sell newspapers, as they are usually printed by Shi'ite/governmental officials. But that's not what really damns the story. What really does is the last few lines of the report. It explicitly states that the militants have more control than the government, which still dispenses its "death squads" that go around and kill Sunnites, whether innocent or militant.

If that's not the only thing that is bothering the inhabitants of Iraq, there's much to be said. For example, there's also the threat faced against aid workers in Iraq, who are pressed against a wall like most innocent civilians are. IRIN tells us that things aren't going as well as planned: aid, while not plentiful, is also not being delivered properly. Aid workers are being threated for delivering supplies to a group of people of same religion, ethnicity, color, etc. It seems, then, that aid workers are being attacked by those who want sectarian strife. Perhaps they are the same ones attacking newspaper sellers?

Kirkuk is not left alone like other small-time Iraqi cities and towns, but is in fact feeling quite a lot of the impulses of civil war and strife. A report, also by IRIN, tells us that 190,000 people have been displaced as a result of what the report calls "increased violence over [Kirkuk] land claims". This isn't new: violence in Iraq is on the rise, and terrorism has taken its effect. What terrorism? Terrorism on part of ALL parties involved, even the Coalition. While the militants reign in control, the government just sits around and gets to talk about "order" in order to maintain their "image" and acquire a false sense of security and control... all the while maintaining servitude to the "higher powers" in the White House.

That was just a small sample of the mess that Iraq has been in the past few weeks. The media diversion to Lebanon has done quite much to cover the horrors and atrocities taking place in Iraq, which has beyond doubt tumbled into the abyss of chaos. Thankfully, the situation in Lebanon, while still volatile, has calmed down considerably in the past few days, but Iraq is not seeing a similar silver lining amongst the clouds of death that loom over the entire country. But what I'm focusing here is on the farce of the "stability" issue, or, as I've called it before, the "order" trump card, used by many politicians, not just in Iraq alone. Israeli politicians have used time and time again to justify the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (or, more accurately, all of Palestine). I'd like to turn your attention to an article by Counterpunch veteran Patrick Cockburn. He commented quite much, especially on the recent leaders of Iraq who are giving Americans and other inhabitants of this miserable planet such false pretenses of order, ever since Nuri Al Maliki, Iraqi PM, visited Congress and spoke out against "Godless terrorists" or somewhat. Bush was happy that his new pet was obedient. Cockburn writes,

Civil war is raging across central Iraq. Baghdad, a city whose population is almost the same as London, is splitting into hostile and heavily armed districts. Minorities, be they Sunni or Shia, are being killed or forced to flee. People dare not even take their furniture in case this might alert their neighbors to their departure and lead to their deaths. Sunni no longer let the mostly Shia police enter their districts. "If this isn't civil war," a senior Iraqi official said this weekend, "I don't know what is."

It is at this moment that the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, went on his travels to his sponsors in the West, denying that Iraq is sliding into civil war. He spoke confidently about disarming militias. "When our so-called leaders go to Washington they always produce a rosy picture of what is happening in Iraq for the Americans, though they know it is a lie," sighed one veteran Iraqi politician.

What Cockburn documented was simply what one could expect out of any slimy politician for that matter. Disorder is disorder, no matter how much you try to spin it. I've seen some apologists claim that "it's just a war" or it's some sort of syndrome. Even worse, others have resorted to racist excuses, blaming it on the Arabs because they "just love to kill each other". In real life, nothing happens without a reason. The sectarianism and distrust of the government couldn't be more evident. While predominantly Shi'te officials are increasing their stranglehold on Baghdad's Sunnite districts, other Sunnite pockets in the city are resisting all governmental forces from interfering. Cockburn continues to comment on the Iraqi government and why it has to date not served its people. He writes,

Iraqi leaders are not what they seem. They live in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified enclave guarded by US troops, in the heart of Baghdad. Many never leave it except for extensive foreign travel. Eighteen months ago an Iraqi magazine claimed to have discovered that at one point the entire cabinet was out of the country at the same time. The government remains reliant on the US. One former minister told me: "There is a culture of dependency. Part of the time the Americans treat us as a colony, part of the time as an independent country." Mr al-Maliki only became Prime Minister because the US and Britain were determined to get rid of his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr al-Maliki is inexperienced, personally isolated without his own kitchen cabinet, guarded by American guards and heavily reliant on shadowy US advisers.

While this may seem like an opinion, I pretty much share the same outlook. I mean, take a look at the situation: while he speaks of order and "disarming militants", people are dying by the hour. The only thing he controls is the Green Zone and an Iraq that comes from the figment of his wildest imaginations. This literally means that he may be the leader of a government, but has no independence and no hold over any part of Iraq. Militias are roaming the streets, and the situation goes as far to encourage their growth and presence. And all the while, violence still rages on, while Maliki can smile and dictate out tomorrow's "rosy" headlines. Ah, well, what do you expect from an American puppet? If this isn't enough, wait till you hear what Cockburn has to say about the security forces in Iraq:

For instance, its own intelligence organization should be essential to a government fighting for its life against a violent insurgency. At first sight, Iraq might appear to have one under Major-General Mohammed al-Shahwani, but it has no budget because it is funded directly by the CIA, to the tune of $200-300m (£110-160m) a year and, not surprisingly, it is to the CIA that it first reports. Not surprisingly, Iraqis will need a lot of convincing that Mr al-Maliki is not one more American pawn. In theory he should be in charge of a substantial army force. The number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police has grown from 169,000 in June 2005 to 264,000 this June. But the extra 105,000 armed men have not only made no difference to security in Iraq but that security has markedly deteriorated over the past year. The reason is that the armed forces put their allegiance to their own communities - Kurd, Sunni or Shia - well before their loyalty to the state. Shia do not believe they will be defended from a pogrom by a Sunni units and the Sunni feel the same way about Shia units.

This is why the militias are growing in strength. Everybody wants an armed militia from their own community to defend their neighborhoods. In any case the largest political parties making up the present Iraqi government - the Kurds and the two biggest Shia religious parties - all have their private armies which they are not going to see dissolved. Not only is Mr al-Maliki's suggestion that the militiamen might be stood down untrue but the trend is entirely the other way. The army and police are themselves becoming sectarian and ethnic militias. This makes absurd George Bush's and Tony Blair's claim that at some stage the American-trained Iraqi security forces will be strong enough to stand alone.

The thing is, there is so much distrust in Iraq that none of the people there are ever going to dissolve their real allegiances to their sects and groups, ever since Saddam's government was toppled. While I hate Saddam with all my heart, at least he treated Iraqis like Iraqis, and not like Kurds, Sunnites, Shiites, etc. What's being encouraged is a sort of tribal warfare environment: every group has militias defending it, and pockets of resistance are being met with ambivalent attitudes. While Shi'ites remain loyal to their militiamen, they are also met with the side the government represents. You can say that Iraq is now in a state of anarchy. Unity is non-existent, and each group/militia has control of a certain district or neighborhood, which is quite a small unit in such a large city.

Is this going to get worse? I mean, Bush already rejected pullout calls, and thus implicitly assures Iraqis that American colonial control is not going away that fast. With incidents like this stampede on the rise, things aren't looking up in Iraq. Is it beyond hopeless? I don't know. Iraqis all over should denounce this growing civil strife and distrust... this fitna... and work together to topple the government and instate a more democratic rule that represents all Iraqis as Iraqis, not as Sunnites or Kurds or Shi'ites or whatever else there may be in this war-torn country. I pray for the betterness of Iraq, not for it to get plunged into some conflict that will have the Coalition take advantage of Iraq and her resources. The antiwar committee, while gaining growing support, is also not doing much. There must not only be protests and petitions, but public speech battles and railings and sit-ins against those very neocons that are in power. They know they are wrong, and their time is coming. The clock is ticking for those criminals, crooks, and liars, because in the end, justice will be served.

Salaam, from
Saracen