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THE ROVING EYE
No kharabba at the end of the tunnel
By
Pepe Escobar
ABU DHABI - Wolfowitz of Arabia,
the Pentagon's number two and the man who sold the war
on Iraq to George W Bush, stepped out of a C-17 cargo
plane after a 12-hour flight from Washington to Baghdad
to, in his own words, collect "first-hand evidence of
what it means for the Iraqi people to be liberated from
decades of brutal repression".
Had he taken a
proper tour of Baghdad he would have found evidence of a
"classic guerrilla-type campaign" - in the words of new
US Central Command chief General John Abizaid, who was
forced to face reality and change the official tack on
"uncoordinated attacks by remnants of the Ba'ath
regime".
Support for Abizaid's position came
from none other than the specter of Saddam Hussein -
still invisible but very vocal despite a "massive
manhunt" and a US$25 million bounty on his head. In a
new audio tape obtained by al-Arabiya TV in Baghdad and
broadcast hours before Paul Wolfowitz landed in Iraq,
the speaker purporting to be Saddam marks the 35th
anniversary of the Ba'ath Party's seizure of power by
saying that Iraq is under "an administration of
occupation and evil". And yes, there is a guerrilla war
going on, which Saddam wants to turn into a jihad.
Wolfowitz met with the American proconsul in
Iraq, Paul Bremer, and Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the
senior US commander of the roughly 145,000 American
troops on the ground. Wolfowitz had nothing new to say
because Bremer had already stated on the record the
Pentagon's judgement on Iraq: "The timing of how long
the coalition stays here is now in the hands of the
Iraqi people." Well, not really - as the US Army had
just announced that the 3rd Infantry Division would stay
indefinitely.
Had he been to Fallujah, Wolfowitz
would have heard cries of "There's no God but Allah, and
Bush is the enemy of God." In Fallujah there are now
between four and eight attacks every week on US patrols
and positions. In the Sunni belt, there have been
attacks against Iraqi engineers - deemed to be
"collaborators" - and against oil pipelines and liquid
natural gas plants. The guerrillas' master plan is to
prevent any possible normalization of the American
occupation.
Aggressive American raids to
pre-empt guerrilla attacks, arrest suspects and seize
arms, ammunition and cash have been met with tremendous
hostility by Iraqis. The anger has been compounded with
the announcement of the number of civilian victims of
the war: between 6,055 and 7,706, according to the
pacifist Anglo-American NGO Iraq Body Count , based on
reports by a dozen independent research projects spread
all over the country.
A group called the Iraqi
Liberation Army, in a statement addressed to UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said it will "resist any
military intervention and under any cover from the UN or
the Security Council, NATO, or Islamic and Arab
countries". Moreover, different sources in the Arab
world tell of widespread Iraqi discontent with the
recently-nominated 25-member "governing council" which
will theoretically rule for one year, but under strict
surveillance by Bremer.
UN sources confirmed to
Asia Times Online that according to a document subject
to bitter negotiations with Bremer, and which will not
be released in the near future, the governing council
has the power to appoint ministers and diplomatic
representatives, to vote on the budget and to form a
committee of 8 to 10 judges who will be charged of
writing the future Iraqi constitution. But Bremer still
maintains the right to veto.
Saddam's regime has
not been replaced with a smooth transition to democracy
- as Washington promised the world. Chaos is still the
norm. Even with Bremer's council up and running, the
whole mindset, from an American perspective, is still
high on military alertness and low on reconstruction
activity. Pragmatic businessmen in Abu Dhabi agree that
the much-vaunted battle for the hearts and minds of the
Iraqi people cannot be won.
Subject to daily
distress, most Iraqis are not allowed the luxury of even
bothering with the political process. Their real,
pressing problem is the absence of kharabba
- electricity. With temperatures reaching 50
degrees Celsius and non-stop power cuts, tempers couldn't
be hotter. Bremer said that before the war slightly
more than half of Iraq's electricity needs were assured.
It's not true: there was no substantial lack of power
in Saddam's Iraq. Nowadays production is around
3,100MW, which covers less than half of the country's
needs. It may be argued whether American bombing spared
Iraq's infrastructure this time, but the fact is that
high-tension lines south of Baghdad were hit by bombing.
At the end of April, the lucrative contract for
reconstruction and renovation of Iraq's electricity grid
was awarded to the Bush-connected Bechtel Corporation.
But nothing has happened so far.
Baghdad
South's power plant was conceived to generate 350MW.
Slightly before Saddam's fall it hardly generated 200. Today
it generates not more than 165MW. Some high-tension
lines have been attacked by the so-called Ali Baba - who
can be regarded as anything between authentic Iraqi
resistance or Kalashnikov-equipped bandits in search of
copper to be resold in the black market. The fact
remains that the Americans simply cannot patrol all of
Iraq's 17,000 kilometers of high-tension lines. US
estimates are that three years are necessary to restore
the electricity grid. Kharabba, not jihad, may be
the US's nemesis in Iraq.
Iraqis complain that
there's no distribution of food rations, no creation of
jobs, no reconstruction. Practically everybody is
convinced that the US cut off the power to "punish
Iraq". Iraqis are living under the impression of being
governed by a colonizing power that does not need to
consult them and does not need to inform them. For many,
the lack of kharabba is much more important than
corpses being recovered from Saddam's mass graves.
As the Americans retreat into siege mode, they
are cutting themselves entirely off from a populace that
was not hostile when they arrived as glorious invaders.
The US arguably lost this war in the first days after
the "fall" of Baghdad on April 9. Those days of
widespread looting in April are deeply ingrained in
Iraqi minds. There would be a lot more respect for a
victor able to preserve the riches of a conquered
country. And now the talk in the Iraqi street is still
of those days in June when there was no electricty but
oil exports had resumed.
The US military show in
Iraq costs almost $4 billion a month. The US military
show in Afghanistan costs almost $1 billion a month.
There's been an anti-American jihad going on in
Afghanistan for almost a year now. And there's been an
anti-American jihad going on in Iraq since even before
Saddam's self-proclaimed starting date of July 27. As
things stand, there seems to be no kharabba at
the end of the tunnel.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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