|
|
|
|
COMMENTARY
THE ROVING
EYE
Shocked and awed into
'freedom'
By Pepe Escobar
Two years after being shocked and awed
into "freedom", freedom on the ground is a
meaningless concept for large swathes of the Iraqi
population. Sunnis and Shi'ites alike tell Asia
Times Online of a brutalization of every-day life.
Highways in and out of Baghdad are
suicidal: the Americans can't control any of them.
Anyone is a potential kidnapping target, either
for the Sunni guerrilla or criminal gangs.
Officials at the Oil and Electricity Ministries
tell of at least one attack a day. Oil pipelines
are attacked and distribution interrupted
virtually every week. There's a prison camp
syndrome: almost 10,000 Iraqis incarcerated at any
one time, in three large jails, including the
infamous Abu Ghraib. There's also an Abu Ghraib
syndrome: all-round denunciation of torture,
electroshocks and beatings. The Americans and the
Iraqi police proceed with the same "round up the
usual suspects" tactic: but even if the "suspects"
are not part of the resistance, their families are
always well taken care of, so they inevitably join
the resistance actively when they leave jail.
The Sunni guerrillas register an average
of scores of attacks a day, all over the country.
Roadside and car bombs are still exploding in
leveled Fallujah. The Baghdad regional police
commander was assassinated on Saturday. The
resistance has infiltrated virtually all
government and police networks. American
counterinsurgency methods are going nowhere,
because as the Sunni guerrillas keep killing
masses of Iraqi security forces, these forces are
retaliating in kind - abuses detailed, among
others, by Human Rights Watch. The majority of the
Sunni population, complaining about official
brutality, has withdrawn support for the
American-trained Iraqi security forces. So the
culture of brutalization has merged with the
emergence of sectarianism.
In contrast,
life inside the Green Zone bubble is totally
virtual. There's no government yet - the elections
were on January 30 - so the Sunni guerrillas keep
up the pressure, while popular disillusionment
with the political process is on the rise.
Prime-minister-in-waiting Ibrahim Jaafari of the
Da'wa Party recently said he would favor direct
elections for prime minister and parliament - not
the American-imposed indirect method: it was not
good enough to placate popular impatience.
The Kurds for their part block any move
toward a new government as long as they don't get
written assurances establishing their control over
Kirkuk - their Jerusalem. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the
head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), is basically worried
about reimplementing de-Ba'athification: the SCIRI
in the next few days and weeks will virtually take
over the Interior Ministry.
And all of
this soaked in corruption
In its Global
Corruption Report 2005, Berlin-based Transparency
International (TI) blasted the widespread
corruption in Iraq, which has benefited US
contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. TI
stressed that the new Iraqi government, the
American occupying power and international donors,
such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, must urgently insist on
decentralizing governance, loans and aid projects;
otherwise "Iraq will become the biggest corruption
scandal in history".
Many businessmen in
Baghdad say that's already the case. According to
the TI report, the defunct L Paul
Bremer-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA), alongside the Pentagon, initially had only
80 people supervising the largest reconstruction
agenda in history; both eventually outsourced the
oversight to private companies, and corruption
spiraled out of control. No one knows what
happened to the US$ 8.8 billion of Iraqi money
which disappeared into a CPA-controlled black
void.
Meanwhile, there's no government
because of the Kirkuk tinderbox. The Kurds want it
all: total control over Kirkuk, its oil, and their
100,000-strong peshmerga (paramilitary)
fighters detached from the future Iraqi national
army, in addition to army funding by the Iraqi
national budget. This means that a Kurdistan
government, with Kirkuk as its capital, would be
able to block the Baghdad-controlled Iraqi armed
forces from entering Kurdistan. Kirkuk's Arabs and
Turkomen are predictably furious. Inevitable
consequence: sectarianism on the rise.
From a strategic Washington viewpoint,
these questions are all minor.
Iraq is a
crucial pawn in the US oil strategy - which
includes the former Yugoslavia (now with a
permanent US military base in Kosovo, right in the
pipeline route from Russia and the Caspian to
Europe); the Caspian and Venezuela (major oil
reserves); Afghanistan (now also with a permanent
US military base); Ukraine (a crucial pipeline
route to Europe); Moldova (oil reserves); Iran
(oil reserves); and Syria (on the route of a
pipeline through which Israel wants to get Iraq's
oil).
Bremer's CPA imposed myriad laws
over Iyad Allawi's transitional government.
Washington controls almost every excruciating
detail of Iraq's economy: that's how the "new"
Iraqi administration was conceived by the
neo-conservatives. The Ministry of Energy is in
effect American-controlled. American-paid
officials control all the key administrative
positions in each relevant Iraqi ministry. Their
mandate lasts for five years. Gung-ho
privatization has not even started in full - and
it will make a mockery of all the warnings
included in the TI report.
Hakim says that
the Iraqi population wants a full American troop
pullout, and no American "permanent military
bases". He may be right, but it won't happen. A
Sunni Baghdad businessman was savvy enough to
note, "We all know the Americans are building 14
military bases all over the country. And we all
know they won't leave them. Does that sound like
freedom to you?"
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Middle East Sex News
|
|
|
