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Will the real collaborators please stand
up?
By Herbert Docena
In the
aftermath of the bloodiest period of the Iraqi
occupation since the invasion, the US unveiled a new
political plan at the weekend that will end the role of
the US-handpicked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief Paul
Bremer suddenly flew back to Washington last week after
a CIA report finally acknowledged what had become too
obvious for the past weeks: the resistance is mounting.
He returned to Baghdad to announce the plan, which
involves selecting members of a new "transitional
assembly" by May 31. The assembly would assume "full
sovereign powers" by June 30, and both the Governing
Council and the US provisional authority would dissolve.
The sudden change is being projected as an indication of
the US's renewed commitment to restoring Iraqi
sovereignty.
But the initial official spin was
that the IGC members are too incompetent. "We're unhappy
with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or
governing body, and we need to get moving," the
Washington Post quoted a ranking US official as saying.
"They just don't make decisions when they need to."
According to the same official, the council members are
not attending meetings, have done "nothing of
substance", and are "inept" in securing greater
legitimacy from the Iraqis. Bremer had earlier convened
the council and told them they "can't go on like this".
If the IGC members are incompetent in one thing,
however, it's in their failure to understand why the IGC
as a body was set up and why they were selected in the
first place. This is the real incompetence that will
cost them their jobs. They can't go on biting the hand
that feeds them.
Iraqis out
front
Having proclaimed that they had liberated
the Iraqis from Saddam in order to grant them democracy,
the United States needed to parade a group of Iraqi
leaders that would be seen as representing Iraqi
interests. The US reserved for itself the prerogative
for choosing these leaders, however, and the Iraqi
people themselves had no say whatsoever.
Moreover, while the chosen ones were to take
care of mundane and administrative tasks, absolute power
still rested with the US administrator. Despite this
arrangement, the US projected the IGC memebers as the
faces of liberation and succeeded in getting recognition
for them as the Iraqis' representatives to the world. No
less than United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
urged the "international community" to confer legitimacy
on the body.
Representing Iraq, members of the
IGC attended meetings of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, the International Monetary Fund,
the World Bank, and even the Arab League. In Madrid a
few weeks ago, they accompanied Bremer in pleading with
international donors for money and in selling Iraq's
reconstruction opportunities to multinational
corporations.
The US needed the IGC to
rubber-stamp policies decided in Washington because they
needed to make it appear as though those decisions were
made in Baghdad by Iraqis and not in the White House by
Americans. This falls neatly under influential columnist
Thomas Friedman's suggested strategy of having "more
Americans out back and more Iraqis out front".
Classical collaborators
The council
members are, in plainer terms, classic colonial
collaborators and the Iraqis themselves viewed them as
such. According to a recently-released Gallup poll,
three out of four Iraqis understood that the IGC's
decisions were "mostly determined by the coalition's own
authorities". Only 16 percent perceived them as "fairly
independent". This in an occupied land where only 1
percent buy the line that they were invaded in order to
be granted "democracy".
Over the past few
months, however, it has appeared as though the
US-appointed IGC members didn't clearly understand the
terms of their appointment. Since the council's launch,
the frequency by which some IGC members have openly and
unexpectedly attacked US decisions must have become very
discomfiting.
There have been at least four
surprising public splits between individual IGC members
and the coalition authority so far. There could be more
but these are the only ones reported. The first was on
the neo-liberal economic plans to be imposed on Iraq.
The second had to do with the spending on
reconstruction. The third was on the sending of Turkish
troops to patrol Iraq. And the last has been on the
drafting of the Iraqi constitution.
Not
neo-liberal enough
Last September 21, the US
unveiled its economic blueprint for Iraq during the
annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Dubai.
Described by one wire agency as a plan that "reads like
a free-market manifesto devised by Washington" and
hailed by the Economist as a "capitalist dream" that
fulfills the "wish list of international investors", the
blueprint calls for the wholesale privatization of
Iraq's dozens of state-owned corporations and the
opening up of its domestic market to multinational
corporations. "Iraq was in effect put up for sale," The
Independent reported.
Less than a month later,
the IGC's interim Trade Minister Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi
publicly criticized what is perhaps the most important
post-war policy of the occupation forces, perhaps even
one of the main motivations for launching the war in the
first place. Long before the invasion, the State
Department had already prepared a confidential document
entitled "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to
Sustainable Growth", which contains detailed
instructions for the liberalization of virtually all
sectors of the economy.
"We suffered through the
economic theories of socialism, Marxism and then
cronyism," IGC member Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi said at the
exclusive World Economic Forum meeting in Singapore.
"Now we face the prospect of free-market
fundamentalism."
Perhaps unaware of just how
close the plan is to the hearts of the administration
officials, Allawi dismissed it as being guided by a
"flawed logic that ignores history". "These things are
not yet being thrust down our throat but I strongly
disagree with the call for fast and radical change," he
said.
Allawi probably did not read Donald
Rumsfeld's commentary in the Wall Street Journal last
May 27 in which he promised to install a regime composed
of people who "favor market systems" and who will
"encourage moves to privatize state-owned enterprises".
With Allawi's pronouncements, it was clear that he had
no room in Rumsfeld's regime.
No Turks
allowed
The next major clash had to do with the
Turkish troops. Getting desperate for more soldiers, the
US had been asking its allies to send more troops to
help pacify Iraq, often without much success. After
weeks of difficult negotiations, the Turkish parliament
defied strong domestic opposition to the deployment and
finally allowed as many as 10,000 troops to be deployed
to Iraq - only to be refused by the IGC. The Turkish
contingent would have been the third biggest after the
US and UK and would have been a significant relief to
the occupation forces.
But the IGC was
unyielding and even unanimous. "Sending these troops
would delay our regaining sovereignty," council member
Nasseer Chadirji said, using the dreaded s-word. "It is
the wrong thing to do. It does not add to security,"
another council member, Mahmud Othman, a Kurd, added.
"The Governing Council has made it very clear to
the administration and to Turkey that it does not favor
the involvement of any neighboring countries in this
situation because of the sensitivities involved,"
Hoshyar Zebari, the interim Foreign Minister, stressed.
All this was in stark contrast to the US's
enthusiasm toward the Turkish offer. "We welcome that
decision and we will be working with Turkish officials
on the details of their decision," White House spokesman
Scott McClellan said. The offer has since been
withdrawn.
Pointing fingers
Next, it
did not help that the IGC members have joined the
worldwide chorus accusing the US administration of war
profiteering. In October, as Bush officials were being
hounded on all sides by allegations of backroom deals
and spending excesses, IGC members unexpectedly
buttressed corruption allegations against the occupation
authorities.
They questioned the CPA's
inexplicable decision to issue a $20 million contract
for buying guns even as US troops were confiscating tens
of thousands of weapons from the former regimes'
arsenal. In what was described as a "testy exchange"
with Bremer, the council attacked the decision to spend
$1.2 billion for training Iraqi police officers when
such could be provided in Iraq at a significantly
cheaper price or even for free - if Germany and France's
offer were accepted.
"There is no transparency
and something has to be done about it," Othman said
without mincing words. "There is mismanagement right and
left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to
face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being
wasted, I think. We are victims and the American
taxpayers are victims," he added. "I hope Congress knows
what is going on, but if they don't know and we don't
know then God help everybody."
Another council
member, Chadirji, chimed in: "As the Governing Council,
we are in a very weak legal position. We don't have the
right to investigate these contracts. I don't have the
evidence, but I think there is corruption. This is a
common grievance that people tell me."
Chadirji
was scathing in his criticism of Bremer regarding the
plan to train the police force in Jordan. "If we had
voted, a majority would have rejected it," he said,
aware of course that they'll never be allowed to vote.
"[Bremer] told us what he did; he did not ask us,"
Chadirji added, apparently still believing that the US
installed him because they need someone to listen to.
These explicitly critical statements could not
have escaped Bremer's and the other patrons' notice.
It's likely that they did not particularly like their
wards' choice of words.
Geriatric
ambassadors
And yet, the IGC members response to
the threat of termination indicated that they had not
been cowed. Instead of apologizing and promising to do
better, Zebari lashed out at "geriatric ambassadors"
from the coalition and blamed "American infighting", not
the IGC's incompetence, for Iraq's problems. Pretty
strong and grating words from people expected to say
nothing but hallelujahs to the people who put them in
power.
"I think this debate about the ruling
council - that it is not doing its work, that it is not
taking decisions - this is unfair," Zebari said
defiantly. "The problem with the coalition is that they
have some experts, so-called, who still live in the
1950s, in the 1940s - some geriatric ambassadors who
have a certain interpretation of how Iraq works. It has
gone, it has changed," Zebari added, lecturing on the
real power-holders.
The new plan for an interim
government has also now brought out into the open a feud
between the IGC and the CPA. The occupation authority
supposedly initially wanted to fast-track drafting the
constitution by December 15 so that something could be
presented to the American people in time for the
November 2004 elections.
But the IGC members
replied that the US had an "unrealistic idea" and that
its plans were "not possible". What was needed, they
said, was a more legitimate government to fight the
anti-occupation guerrillas. "Iraqis are willing to die
for an Iraqi government, not for foreigners", a senior
Iraqi cabinet official was quoted as saying.
The rules of collaboration
All these
harsh rebukes and condemnation indicate either that the
IGC members had become increasingly reluctant to play
the part or they simply did not understand what they had
signed up for. They were either consciously defying the
rules of collaboration or they just don't know what they
are. Foremost among these principles is that they can't
go against the positions of their patrons. Puppets are
supposed to follow the script.
Either the
council members were too incompetent to understand these
simple guidelines or the contradictions inherent in
their positions - of having to reconcile irreconcilable
Iraqi interests with coalition interests - became too
much to handle. On the one hand, they were expected to
secure legitimacy for themselves and more consent for
the occupation. But on the other hand, their position
afforded them no choice but to promote US interests over
the those of the people whose support they were
courting.
If it were just a matter of the IGC
members not being able to attend meetings, as the
official line went, they would have been forgiven as
long as they remained pliant - especially on issues that
really matter. In fact, as long as they just nodded
their heads on cue, the US would have preferred
figurehead Iraqi leaders who did nothing but sit at
their desks all day, rather than busy critics coming out
with harsh pronouncements; incompetent support rather
than competent criticism.
'Do we seriously
desire democracy?'
After coming back from
Washington, Bremer convened the IGC and made it appear
once again that the plans that were resolved in the
White House were hatched by the council members
themselves. The US is now bent on forming an interim
government that will be chosen in town meetings across
the country. But the local representatives to those
meetings will be selected by the occupation authorities
themselves.
The US did not fight and is not
fighting this difficult and expensive war so that an
independent Iraqi government that will truly represent
the interest of the Iraqis can take over. Now, with an
interim government in the offing, the US will not allow
Iraq to be given to the Iraqis. As Brent Scowcroft,
former National Security Adviser to the elder Bush
candidly said, "What's going to happen the first time we
hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals
win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them
take over. "
This attitude is consistent with US
foreign policy towards "democracy" in the Middle East
and in the rest of the world. The rule is simple enough
to follow: undermine those governments which threaten US
interests, prop up those which advance them.
In
Saudi Arabia, where Saddam's despotism could pass for
benevolence, for example, Scowcroft's words on Iraq
seemed to have been lifted from former CIA chief James
Schlesinger: "Do we seriously desire democracy? Do we
seriously want to change institutions in Saudi Arabia?
Over the years, we have sought to preserve those
institutions sometimes in preference to more democratic
forces coursing throughout the region."
Back in
Iraq, if ending Saddam Hussein's regime was really the
reason for the war, then the US could have achieved this
objective as early as in 1991. Instead of supporting the
rebellions that it encouraged against the regime at that
time, the US suddenly turned its back on them because,
as the New York Times correspondent explained back then,
"whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the
West and the region a better hope for his country's
stability than did those who have suffered his
repression."
Heroes and
villains
Having supported the war and
legitimized the occupation in exchange for power and
perks, the IGC members' recent persistent defiance of
the US does not make them instant heroes of the
resistance. But their less than docile stance on many
issues is more than what the CPA can handle at the
moment.
Faced with an intensifying resistance
outside the headquarters, the US does not intend to
tolerate criticism from within. Fending off criticism
from all sides, the US will not take kindly to internal
dissent. And the US needs scapegoats. So they're kicking
the IGC members out sooner rather than later. With the
new plan for a US-installed interim government in place,
the search is on for another batch of collaborators.
Herbert Docena is with Focus on the
Global South and the Iraq International Occupation Watch
Center. He can be reached at herbert@focusweb.org.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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