DAMASCUS - There are three overlapping
wars in Iraq: the Sunni Arab guerrilla struggle
against the US; strands of Sunni Arab guerrillas
against assorted Shi'ite militias/death squads;
and al-Qaeda in Iraq against the puppet, US-backed
Iraqi government in the Green Zone. Make it four
wars: the Sunni Arab guerrilla war against the
government inside the Green Zone. Better yet, make
it five wars: the Sadrists, from Sadr City to Kufa
and Najaf, against
the
Americans.
All strands of these five
overlapping wars will never allow the United
States - or Anglo-American Big Oil - to control
Iraq's oil wealth. Even if the new oil law is
ratified by Parliament before June, implementation
will be a certified nightmare, and security for
billions of dollars of necessary investment
non-existent.
Strands of these five
overlapping wars also will never accept the
long-term imposition of vast US military bases
under a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated with
dodgy politicians who spend more time in London
than in Baghdad.
Setting a precise date
for a total US withdrawal - the crystal-clear
demand insistently formulated by Muqtada al-Sadr -
would be the only way for the Bush administration
to salvage a modicum of not totally humiliating
defeat. Instead, the world had better be ready for
the imminent arrival of the Baghdad gulag.
Can I leave my condo, please?
US corporate media/think-tanks may think
they fool strands of US public opinion (or
themselves), but they don't fool Iraqis on the
(dangerous) ground. No realist in his right mind
could possibly ignore the 14-kilometer-long
throngs compacted all along the Kufa-Najaf road
this past Monday, on the fourth anniversary of the
fall of Baghdad.
There were hundreds of
thousands, perhaps more than a million Iraqi
nationalists, waving Iraqi flags - with no room
for a religious divide - responding to Muqtada's
call for "Occupation out!" The Shi'ite million-man
march proved once again Sadrists rule the Shi'ite
street - and are the most powerful political force
among Iraqi Shi'ites.
Yet for the
administration of US President George W Bush,
Muqtada al-Sadr - like every nationalist with
immense popular appeal - is nothing but an
evildoer who must be squashed by all
counterinsurgency means necessary.
Imperial and neo-colonial systems are
incapable of thinking laterally. The French failed
to do so in Algeria. The Americans failed in
Vietnam. The Israelis failed in Palestine. The
Americans will fail to do so again in Iraq. Call
it counterinsurgency run amok. Thirty of Baghdad's
89 districts will become gated communities from
hell - cellophane-wrapped compounds where only
Iraqis with a new, theoretically safe ID will be
allowed in and out of this "secure environment",
in Pentagon newspeak. Yes, it will be Orwellian.
Better yet, it will be a post-mod, Arab condo
version of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, where the
eye of the system is ubiquitous.
In the
last chapter of my book Globalistan -
titled "Condofornia vs Slumistan" - I argue that
the future now revolves around the tension between
gated communities and unruly slums, "secure
environments" and black waves of anger. Wherever
both meet - from Baghdad to Sao Paulo - we may see
endless replays of Black Hawk Down.
The
Baghdad gulag is a Pentagon-enforced Condofornia
imposed over an Arab Slumistan. Let no one be
fooled: it's being conducted as a technical
experiment, with live Iraqis as guinea pigs, and
is bound to be replicated in other areas of the
Pentagon-created "arc of instability" from the
Andes to the Horn of Africa to Arabia to Central
Asia.
Let no one be fooled (again):
guerrillas will IED the system from their
underground cells, and many a Black Hawk will go
down. But as everyone watches the
destined-to-failure experiment, really serious
matters - such as three new, crucial US mechanized
brigades deploying east of Baghdad on the way to
be strategically positioned at the Iraqi-Iranian
border - will be taking place under the cover of
night.
Pass the explosive coffee,
please The Sunni Arab muqawama
(resistance) has already celebrated the arrival of
the Baghdad gulag - by attacking the heart of the
system itself, the Green Zone. The bomb that
exploded on Thursday in the cafeteria of the
Baghdad Convention Center - which houses the Iraqi
Parliament, inside the Green Zone - was yet
another crystal-clear message: we can strike you
as we please, and where we please.
It has
been an open secret in Baghdad for months now that
strands of the muqawama boast they can
sweep over the Green Zone and decimate the
innocuous government of Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki whenever they choose to.
Then
what must have been al-Qaeda in Iraq complemented
the new Green Zone bombing with a kamikaze suicide
truck bombing of Al-Surafiya Bridge, one of the
oldest of the 10 bridges over the Tigris. This
bridge used to separate still predominantly Sunni
Adhamiya from still mixed Bab al-Muazzam, with
which it is literally at war. The logic here would
be to protect Adhamiya from Shi'ite
militia-conducted ethnic cleansing.
The
Green Zone bomb at the Parliament cafeteria is
metaphorical in more ways than one. This is
already a bombed-out Parliament. Sadrists, holding
32 seats, are threatening a boycott. Unlike
throngs of SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq), Da'wa Party and Kurdish
parlamentarians who prefer to watch Chelsea soccer
matches in London drinking vintage scotch,
Sadrists actually go to work every day in the
Green Zone. If the Sadrists and the Islamic Virtue
Party representatives actually decided to boycott
it, along with the hardcore Sunni members of the
Iraqi Accord Front, this Parliament would be no
more.
Crucially, this would mean no
passing of the Holy of Holies, the new Iraqi oil
law. It's also an open secret in Baghdad - as well
as among Iraqi refugees in Damascus - that the
Bush administration's now famous "June deadline"
to the Maliki government is only about oil. If the
oil law is not approved by then, "all options are
on the table", and that means a white coup with
the reinstallation of former Central Intelligence
Agency asset, former interim prime minister,
former "butcher of Fallujah" Iyad Allawi, whose
main task would be ... to get the oil law
approved.
A Sunni Arab refugee businessman
in "Little Fallujah" in Damascus, now running a
kebab joint and counting every Syrian pound,
summed it all up: "The bomb could have killed them
all, these politicians. We are not sorry. They are
just adding more misery to the Iraqi people.
Nothing will change if the Americans don't leave."
He is Sunni. And he agrees with Muqtada al-Sadr.
So much for sectarian civil war. For the
1.2 million-plus Iraqi refugees in Syria, Sunnis
in Little Fallujah or Shi'ites around Sayyida
Zaynab, the verdict is unanimous: with a
population descended to Fourth World status,
infant mortality doubling, 60% unemployment, a
refugee crisis and the ground zero of civil
society, there's only one answer: Americans out.
Muqtada knows it. Instead, soon on every screen,
ready for the summer blockbuster season, we will
have the latest Pentagon production: The Baghdad
Gulag.
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