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THE ROVING
EYE
It's celebration
time
Commentary
by Pepe Escobar
"Elections are the best way to expel
the occupier from Iraq."
- Banners in Shi'ite
mosques in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and
Samarra
"I anticipate a grand
moment in Iraqi history."
- US President George
W Bush, January 26
Iraqi
Shi'ites, the Pentagon, the Sunni Iraqi
resistance, the rest of the world, even Henry
Kissinger: everybody is celebrating the 
Bush-anticipated "grand moment in
Iraqi history" following elections on Sunday.
Here's how.
The Shi'ite celebration
In a crucial development,
the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-endorsed Shi'ite list,
which will certainly win the popular vote, has
dropped its No 1 electoral promise - an explicit
timetable demanding that the Americans leave Iraq.
According to Sheikh Homam Hamoodi, a top official
from the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution, the main Iran-connected party
represented in the UIA, this is because newly
trained Iraqi troops will probably take "years" to
assure the country's security: "The item on the
first platform called for a set
time for US forces to leave Iraq,
without taking into consideration the urgent
circumstances."
For the majority of Iraqi
voters of any persuasion, the key appeal of the
Shi'ite list has always been its promise to kick
the Americans out, much more than the fact that it
has been "blessed" by Sistani. This radical shift,
Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad say, only
confirms widespread Sunni fears of collusion
between Shi'ite politicians and the Americans, not
to mention fears that the election has already
been stolen. It's extremely unlikely a
UIA-dominated elected government will succeed in
convincing Iraqis that American troops must stay
"for years" - the avowed Pentagon desire. Shi'ite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who deftly blends Shi'ite
faith and Iraqi nationalism, will call the UIA's
bluff right away, powered by the rage of his
millions of downtrodden Sadrist supporters.
The Pentagon
celebration
American soldiers celebrated by
attacking the al-Rasul mosque in Sadr City and
arresting 25 supporters of Muqtada. According to
Sheikh Abd al-Hadi al-Darraji, a top Sadrist
official, speaking to al-Jazeera, "They are
targeting us because we boycotted the elections
and said it should not be held under occupation."
Al-Darraji said one of the American soldiers
urinated over the Koran, while another official,
Naim al-Qaabi, said many Korans were ripped apart.
American attacks against the Sadrists have
been going on for months. Muqtada's official
position is that free and fair elections are
impossible under occupation - and will result in
Iraq being dismembered along ethnic lines.
According to Muqtada's now famous words delivered
in a sermon in Sadr City, "They allege that the
elections advance security, and security advances
the elections. This is false and wrong." In early
January, Sadrists organized demonstrations in
several cities, enraged by the chaos created by
months of no electricity and immense lines to buy
petrol - the proud, joint legacy of the Americans
and the interim Iyad Allawi regime.
The
Sunni resistance celebration
At dawn on
Wednesday, the general command of the Iraqi
Islamic Resistance issued a communique broadcast
to mosques in Samarra, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit,
Kirkuk, Hit and Baquba, and distributed as a
leaflet in mosques in Baghdad, Azamiyah,
Latifiyah, Basra and many other cities across the
country. It called for a new offensive: the
"Operations of the Children of Mohammed the
Messenger of God to Break the Back of God's
Enemies", portrayed as "the beginning of the end
of the occupation and its ultimate collapse".
On the same day, the resistance fired a
Sam 7 rocket at a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter
over the city of Rutba, 460 kilometers west of
Baghdad in the western desert - which is
controlled by the resistance. Free Arab Voice
reports that "shepherds and motorists who
witnessed the attack saw the Americans gathering
the remains of 31 American bodies ... and American
vehicles hauling away the wreckage of the
helicopter that had been scattered over an
approximately two kilometer area". The Pentagon
said the crash was due to bad weather. Sources
close to the resistance in Baghdad say it was a
Sam 7 rocket.
The world celebration
A huge demonstration to the sound of samba
drums and political slogans ("Bush, terrorist
number one"; "Bomb democracy is not a model")
celebrated the opening of the Fifth World Social
Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, whose main themes
this year are the fight against poverty and
erasing the debts of poor countries.
The
truly global mix of Brazilians, Latin Americans,
Europeans, Africans and Asians in the forum
constitutes what a Mexican anthropologist defines
as "planetary refugees": landless peasants, small
West African cotton producers, neo-Zapatistas,
indigenous peoples from Chiapas, Equator and
Bolivia, defenders of sexual diversity, homeless
intergalactics from Paris, London and Quebec,
American unionists, environmental non-government
organizations, public intellectuals, jurists
concerned with the reduction of civil liberties,
apostles of free software, proponents of
non-violent direct action, independent media.
Global unease against Bush's
fundamentalism is so acute that even the
organizers were not expecting the spontaneous
demonstration to concentrate on denouncing the
man-made Iraqi disaster. Compare the World Social
Forum with the World Economic Forum in the Swiss
alpine resort of Davos - where global elites
gather to assess the state of the world. The 12
main themes this year in Davos are: China, climate
change, equitable globalization, Europe, the
global economy, global governance, Islam, the
Middle East, poverty, US leadership, weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) and world trade. In Porto
Alegre, the motto is "another world is possible",
which implies a world "without pre-emptive wars
based on lies", according to a Canadian
environmental activist.
Kissinger's
celebration
Former secretary of state
Henry Kissinger is not the only member of the
American establishment losing sleep over a new
specter, a "Shi'ite crescent" formed by the new
Iraq, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So
Kissinger, along with another former secretary of
state, George Schultz, is already campaigning to
smash this "crescent". This entails two crucial
developments: stealing the result of the Iraqi
elections; and accelerating the country's
partition. It's as if Muqtada has been reading
Kissinger's mind.
The US invaded Iraq
under the - false - pretext of WMD. "Democracy"
was only evoked when the WMD farce reached its
conclusion. The elections are only taking place
because Sistani played the occupiers like a
master. Washington was never interested in Iraqi
"democracy" because this would necessarily imply a
Shi'ite-dominated, maybe even theocratic
government.
As a member of the Iraqi
resistance, a former Iraqi army soldier told Asia
Times Online sources in Baghdad: "If you vote, you
vote for Bush, not for an Iraqi government. You
are legitimizing the occupiers. This is what they
wanted all along. So the winner will be who the
Americans choose, not a real choice by the Iraqi
people." There's a desperate feeling in Baghdad
that Bush and the neo-conservatives are
intentionally steering Iraq toward civil war. The
latest estimate is that only 25% of the population
will vote. Of Iraq's 18 provinces, only three -
the Kurdish - are safe. From Washington's point of
view, the elections are meant to justify post-fact
the American conquest of Iraq. Now American
conservatives (Kissinger), not to mention the
neo-conservatives (the shady manipulation in
Baghdad to keep Allawi in power) want to steal
them. So much for Bush's America exporting
"freedom" to the world.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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