"Of course they don't like being
occupied. I wouldn't like being occupied
either." President George W Bush, April 13 White
House press conference
Forget about George W Bush's
scripted press conference, where, according to CNN,
the president was "quite forceful in rebutting the attacks
on his Iraq policy". Forget that Bush admitted to
no mistakes in his "war on terror" and complained to a
reporter: "You should have submitted that question in
writing so I could have prepared." Let's go back to the
real world, in Iraq.
"Occupying power needs
full-spectrum-dominance Middle East dictator. Must have
excellent connections with neo-conservatives in
Washington and experience in quelling any kind of
dissent by whatever means necessary. Ability to work
under pressure essential. Democratic credentials will be
provided by the employer. Send detailed CVs to L Paul
Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Green
Zone, Baghdad. All correspondence will be kept strictly
confidential."
This ad has not been posted - not
yet. But it just about sums it all up in terms of
American isolation in Iraq, after the Pentagon and the
CPA's neo-con policies have managed to lead to the
unthinkable: Sunni and Shi'ite united against the
occupation in a war of national resistance.
All
current mediation efforts in Sunni or Shi'ite areas are
being conducted by influential clerics or tribal chiefs
- and not the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
(IGC). Carrying no authority or legitimacy, the IGC has
been totally eclipsed: when any of its frightened
members says a word, it is to criticize the occupation.
Furthermore, even the Americans were forced to admit
that the CPA-equipped Iraqi security forces have either
disappeared, declined to fight or migrated to the
resistance. By the implacable logic of nationalist
resistance, any Iraqi now working with any foreigner of
any kind runs the risk of being targeted as a
collaborator - and subsequently kidnapped or killed. The
great majority of foreign civilian aid workers in Iraq
are about to leave.
All over the Arab and Muslim
world, Sunni Fallujah ("The city of the mosques") and
holy Shi'ite Najaf have become the symbols of an
increasingly well-organized, broad-based resistance.
Paradox is king: the Marines can only "pacify" Fallujah
by leveling it; and tough-talking American generals may
want to capture "outlaw" Muqtada al-Sadr "dead or
alive", while in fact they have been forced to the
negotiating table with him.
What's happening
in Fallujah and Najaf? Asia Times Online has
learned that Fallujah residents are describing what
happened last week as "the new Jenin" - a direct
reference to the lethal April 2002 Israeli offensive
unleashed against a Palestinian camp. Osama Saleh
al-Tikrit, a dentist at Baghdad Hospital, said that at
least 600 civilians were killed in Fallujah, and up to
1,500 injured. Dr Abed al-Illah, also a representative
of the Iraqi Islamic Party - which is part of the IGC -
and a sworn enemy of Saddam, said that "about 350 out of
the 600 dead were women and children. One was only eight
months old. Many died from simple wounds and could have
been saved if they had medical attention." Illah adds
that "the Americans claim that all the wounded are
fighters and will not let us take them away. Families
cannot escape because of their snipers.".
Arab
populations - but not their cowed governments - have
been busy comparing proconsul L Paul Bremer with Saddam,
and talking of a genocide in Fallujah: they all saw the
non-stop flow of horrible images on alJazeera (and
that's why the Americans want alJazeera out of
Fallujah). Alarmingly, neo-cons in Washington are
issuing calls to level Fallujah. The neo-con rage
centers on the fact that the occupation was caught
sleeping as the rebellion in Fallujah quickly moved east
from the Euphrates towards Baghdad itself: everybody
living in the villages in between who was a former
member of the Iraqi army was armed and ready to deliver
a blow to the Americans.
The Marines are
reopening the siege of Fallujah - with the US running
the risk of creating a war crime and provoking a
humanitarian disaster. Of the 300,000 people who live in
Fallujah, up to 60,000 may have become refugees. Another
bloodbath will inevitably breed thousands more Osama bin
Ladens or whoever the terrorist-scarecrow-of-the-day is.
Meanwhile in Najaf, feverish mediation between
Bremer's CPA and Muqtada's forces continued even after
the holy day of Arba'in. Everyone from the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq party to the
al-Dawa Party to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's son,
Ridha, is involved. According to Adnan al-Asadi, the
second-in-command of the Shi'ite al-Dawa Party, the
mediators are concentrating on a serious possibility:
Muqtada's Mahdi Army is not dissolved, but it returns
its weapons to the Americans. They have no problems
melting back into the local population -
guerrilla-style: they may resurface later.
In
exchange for the Mahdi Army disarming, the prosecution
of Muqtada in connection with the murder of pro-Western
Shi'ite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei a year ago is turned
over to the Iraqi judiciary, but only after the June 30
handover of sovereignty from the US to Iraq. Iraqi
police retake control of security in Najaf (Muqtada
loyalists control the police in Najaf, anyway). And the
Americans remain out of the holy city.
This
solution clashes head-on with the rumble emanating from
the Green Zone. Bremer rejects everything. He says that
Muqtada has three options: he can surrender, he can be
arrested, or he can be killed while resisting arrest.
There are already 2,500-plus American soldiers around
Najaf, backed by tanks and artillery, ready to capture
Muqtada "dead or alive".
But according to the
Iranian newspaper Baztab, Sistani has already warned the
Americans in a letter that if they attack the holy
cities of Najaf and Karbala, the Hawza - the Shi'ite
equivalent of the Vatican - will fight: this essentially
means that Sistani will say the word and issue a fatwa
for a jihad against the occupiers, which will be
followed to the letter by more than 60 percent of the
Iraqi population.
The mediators know better than
anyone there's no possible cowboy "dear or alive"
military solution to deal with Muqtada and his
followers. Theirs is also a social movement, with deep
roots in the early 1990s. It would take a short trip
from the Green Zone to Sadr City in Baghdad - former
Saddam City - for the tough-talking generals to see for
themselves how these people are desperately poor, very
angry and won't think twice about becoming martyrs by
the millions. Kill Muqtada and a thousand new Muqtadas
will spring up. Muqtada is ready to die as a martyr. And
there's no easy solution either, because Muqtada will
never accept exile in Iran.
Muqtada and the
Pentagon's preemptive war The official
Pentagon-CPA version is that Muqtada's militias are a
bunch of terrorists and a threat to "Iraqi democracy".
But the move against Muqtada may be just part of a
Pentagon strategy to position overwhelmingly unpopular,
Pentagon-backed Ahmad Chalabi as the new Saddam -
performing the role of the new Iraqi prime minister
after June 30.
A sign of things to come is what
happened to Iyad Allawi from the Iraqi National Accord,
Chalabi's key rival for more than a decade. Allawi
resigned from the security commission of the IGC because
his man at the Ministry of Interior was dismissed by
Bremer. Allawi was the Central Intelligence Agency and
State Department man in the last years of the Saddam era
- always trying to organize military coups. Chalabi, in
exile, was the Pentagon's golden boy.
The CPA,
as is widely known, is a neo-con nest. Allawi may have
been neutralized because the Pentagon wants Chalabi as
the new Saddam at all costs. Allawi is as much a rival
to Chalabi as Muqtada. Chalabi - like Muqtada - also
directs a militia, but this one happens not to be a
"threat to democracy". No wonder: it was flown to Iraq
by the Pentagon itself.
What do the neo-cons
want? It is now established that the Muqtada-led
uprising has been a decisive answer to a series of
alarming Bremer moves - already detailed by Asia Times
Online at the conclusion of Iraq one year on: from liberation to
jihad. The CPA moved first. Muqtada
counter-attacked successfully. Michael Schwartz,
professor of sociology at the State University of New
York and an expert in popular protest and insurgency,
wrote one of the most succinct analyses of why that
happened:
"The fact that the militias accomplished
the capture of all or part of as many as five cities
(mostly with populations of less than 200,000, but
cities nevertheless) with almost no casualties is
testimony to four underlying facts about the current
situation in Iraq: that the coalition forces had very
little presence or legitimacy within the cities -
despite a year of unhindered opportunity; that the
newly formed police have neither the interest, nor the
ability to resist the militias - and that they
therefore have little hope of becoming an adequate
force for law and order; that the people of these
cities (tacitly or overtly) supported the uprisings -
however uncomfortable they may be with the Islamist
ideas and policies of [Muqtada] Sadr himself; and that
the militants are very well organized indeed - and
will remain so even after this episode is over."
To fight against a broad-based war of
national resistance, the Americans can now count on only
one ally: the Kurds. But the problem is the Kurds are
far away in their autonomous northern mountains,
oblivious to a fight carried by Arabs, and with only one
thing in their minds: how to get ready for a future,
inevitable war against the Turks.
Washington now
faces the essence of total asymmetric war. The more
repressive, the more unpopular - and the more the
Shi'ite majority bolsters the ranks of the active, armed
Iraqi resistance. If Muqtada becomes a martyr, Iraq
becomes a real Vietnam.
This may be what the
neo-cons want. In a logic of total war, this is the next
step leading to the inevitable attacks on Syria and Iran
in the event that Bush is reelected. The neo-cons may be
creating the conditions to smash their own calendar on
purpose, making impossible the so-called "handover of
sovereignty" on June 30. More troops will be called to
Iraq to fight "terrorists" - be they in Fallujah, east
Baghdad or in the Shi'ite south. Total war is
never-ending war.
Iraqis may have a few cards up
their sleeves. The IGC may totally collapse, leaving the
king - the occupation - naked. And an Iraqi
million-man-march may be assembled in Baghdad around the
Green Zone, demanding the occupiers to leave the country
for good. On the other hand, there are alarming,
persistent noises of the American military perceiving
Iraqis - not to mention Arabs as a whole - as
untermenschen, sub-humans. With the
neo-con-controlled CPA in total isolation after a total
political defeat, and a campaigning Bush posing as the
super-vigilante foe of terrorist evildoers, the only
card left to play is "overwhelming" military might. Iraq
may be on the verge of becoming Stalingrad, Vietnam,
Jenin and Chechnya all rolled into one. And nobody may
be able to prevent it, least of all a new Saddam.
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