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THE ROVING
EYE
Hot off the press
By
Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD - Abdo Satar al-Chaalan,
chairman of the weekly newspaper al-Mustaki (The
Independent) - the self-described "spokesman of the
Iraqi resistance" - proudly recalls the five times that
he was arrested by Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1970s,
as a member of an opposition party. He has already been
arrested once by the Americans, and another arrest may
be just around the corner.
"After the invasion,"
says Chaalan, "I decided to set up a newspaper," along
with lawyer and chief editor Abdel Hamid Dhari.
"Al-Mustakil" is totally self-financed. "It's the first
Iraqi paper which is not sponsored. That's why many
people are against us," says Chaalan. The first edition
was printed on May 15, now 5,000 copies go out into the
Baghdad area every week. Including writers, editors and
volunteers - nobody gets a salary - there's a staff of
around 50. After a few editions, al-Mustakil became the
talk of the town. It had some daring photos on the front
page of mujahideen veiled by their keffieh
(scarves) pleading resistance against the occupation.
Both Chalaan and Dhari are from Falluja - the heart of
Iraqi resistance. But the paper stopped short of calling
for armed struggle.
US proconsul L Paul Bremer
obviously didn't like it: any media in the new Iraq
critical of the occupation is accused by Bremer of
"incitement to violence". So on July 21 the Americans
came in full force to the white house off Saadoun St.
"Sixty armed soldiers, two Humvees, two Iraqi police
cars," recalls Chaalan. "I was arrested. They took
computers, disks, printers, everything. They took me to
the police college, with my hands tied. I spent two
weeks in a jail cell, with another 150 prisoners, mostly
looters."
Chaalan was never interrogated, not
even once, in those two weeks. Finally, he says that an
Iraqi judge came to see him. Chaalan was inevitably
accused of being a Ba'ath Party member. The judge found
nothing, and Chalaan was released. As a result,
al-Mustakil was closed for two months. Now it's back
with a vengeance. The latest edition of September 20
carries five photos on the front page and a full account
on page 4 of the Americans smashing into their office.
Chaalan and Dhari are crucial characters in the
sense that they are intimately close to the eyes and the
ears of the Iraqi popular resistance. "Any Iraqi who is
loyal to the country does not agree with the occupation,
under whatever name. UN forces will work under orders of
the Americans, so we are against them all." Chaalan says
that Iraqis would agree with UN forces, blue helmets,
but not under American command. Their solution to the
quagmire: "The American military leave Iraq, the UN
comes with a multinational force." Al-Mustakil is
positioned remarkably like the slain Swedish foreign
minister, Anna Lindh, who just days before being
murdered in a Stockholm department store this month was
saying that "you cannot have a situation where the US
remains in control over what happens in Iraq and at the
same time others have to move in and take care of
security and reconstruction".
Chaalan draws the
inevitable parallel with Palestine. "Palestine is
occupied. Iraq as well. It's the same kind of
resistance. Only five months after the war, the
Americans started suffering, and asked the UN for help.
We will resist, even if it is for a hundred years."
Chaalan and Dhari simply can't believe the
existence of Executive Order 13315, signed by US
President George W Bush on August 28, which in fact
places Iraq's state assets under the total control of
the US Treasury: by all means the institutionalization
of the looting of Iraq, under the banner of "Iraqi
reconstruction". "It's not legal," says Dhari, "because
nobody in Iraqi was consulted. When the Americans are
gone, this paper means nothing." With this order in the
bag, the Bush administration shouldn't lose much in case
it is forced to hand over just a little control of Iraq
to the UN.
Al-Mustakil expresses a widely-held
view in Iraq: Saddam remains an American agent. He was
secretly negotiating with the Americans, even during the
war. And he remains under American protection. "[Defense
Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld stayed in Tikrit for 24 hours
in his recent visit. Why?" Dhari lists oil as only one
of the main reasons for war. The other major reason is
redrawing the Middle East map. He mentions [Israeli
Premier] Ariel Sharon's visit to India. "There will be a
new security triangle [Israel, Iraq and India]. And Iraq
will be the sponsor of this triangle with its oil."
Al-Mustakil is very much aware that for the Bush
administration the main thing in Iraq is to privatize
Iraq's oil, privatize Iraq's economy and to get the big
US corporations in. There's no concern as to how the
country will be run. Al-Mustakil considers the recent
Iraq privatization announcement in Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates by Iraq's "unknown" finance minister a
sham: "Iraq was sold." This means that most, if not all,
of the 25 members of the American-appointed Governing
Council are not honest: "Most of them don't even have
Iraqi nationality. They are privatizing everything
except the oil, because the oil already belongs to
America."
Al-Mustakil rejects the notion that
the bombings of the Jordanian embassy, the UN
headquarters in Baghdad and the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf
were conducted by Iraqis: the paper blames America, and
especially Israel - a widely popular view. Says Dhari,
"We have to see who benefits. First of all Israel. They
want Iraq dismembered. Turkey also benefits - they want
to take over Kirkuk. Turkey and Iran also want the same
thing - dismember Iraq. Kuwait also benefits - it still
remembers the Gulf War [of 1991]."
Al-Mustakil
believes that the resistance will keep growing -
spreading to the whole country. "Iran is saying to the
Americans that if you press us with nuclear issues, we
are going to tell the Shi'ites in Iraq to start
resisting. Iran is saying 'leave us alone'. One word
from al-Hawza [the powerful Shi'ite clergy, seated in
Najaf] would be enough to launch a jihad. If the
situation continues like this, al-Hawza will say the
word. And the Americans know it."
Al-Mustakil
considers an American failure irreversible. Says
Chaalan, "When the Americans came from Kuwait, we said
we wanted a national, honest government, and respect of
basic freedoms. Before that, there must be a provisional
government, elected by the Iraqi people. Their mission
would be to write a constitution and to call independent
elections - and then we would have a national
government. And we wanted the re-starting of major
services. From April to now, none of these demands were
satisfied." Dhari is exasperated, "It's all a big lie,
from 1968 to now, produced by the CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency]."
Al-Mustakil holds that
for the Iraqi resistance, "Saddam's cassettes are
nothing but excuses for the Americans to stay longer:
They can say there's danger coming from Saddam." Chaalan
and Dhari are not preaching armed struggle: "We will
resist, but with our paper." Most of all, al-Mustakil is
forceful on the really crucial point: "The Iraqi
resistance just wants to serve the Iraqi nation. It's a
national resistance, with no relation to Saddam Hussein.
And in addition to a nationalist sense, there's
resistance that comes from the bad behavior of the
American soldiers. They don't respect local customs,
traditions, the privacy of women. They have nothing to
give the Iraqi people."
Bremer and his masters
of war in Washington may not be aware of it, "but it was
the Americans themselves who created the Iraqi
resistance".
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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