Iraq after 5 Years
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Marxist-Humanist Tendency, 27-03-2008
Our Life and Times by Kevin Barry and Mitch Weerth
As the Iraq war entered its fifth year, with no end in sight, the World Health Organization estimated that about 150,000 civilians had been killed, in a study that covered only the first three years of the war. The true figure may therefore be twice as high. The total U.S. military deaths have just surpassed 4,000. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the overall cost of the war will reach $ trillion, nearly a quarter of the annual GDP of the United States.
Beneath the rhetoric of the U.S. Democratic contenders for the presidency, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it is clear that both are committed to retaining a large military presence in Iraq for years to come. The U.S. has been enlarging and modernizing half a dozen permanent bases in Iraq, capable of holding 100,000 troops.
The war has also produced deep divisions inside the U.S. military. Admiral William J. Fallon, the commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, was forced to resign after making public comments opposing an attack on Iran. A recent survey by the journal Foreign Policy showed disturbingly authoritarian attitudes among the officer corps. Only 53% avowed that torture is “never acceptable,” while 43% explicitly disagreed with such a statement. Moreover, 42% of the officer corps denied that simulated drowning (often referred to by the euphemism “waterboarding”) constitutes torture.
Violence has decreased since late 2007 inside Iraq, not so much because of the “surge” in U.S. troop numbers as because of other factors. First, the Shia fundamentalist Moqtada al-Sadr has continued his truce with the U.S. military, although he has not disbanded his militia, the Mahdi Army. Second, a number of Sunni warlords have accepted U.S. money and arms in order to fight against Al Qaeda insurgents, although they recognize neither the Shia-led central government nor its army. But it is an illusion to think that any kind of real stability can emerge in a situation where Iraq has no less than five armies, each of them supposedly cooperating with the political system established under U.S. occupation — the official army, the Sunni militias, the Mahdi Army, the Shia Badr Brigade, and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Still, the decline of violence, however temporary it may be, carries the hope for a revival of political life, especially in urban areas. It could create more space for labor unions, or for the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq; more generally, it might lessen some of the pressure on women, who have been living under constant threat from both fundamentalists and criminal gangs and who have been forced back under the veil in almost all public spaces over the past several years.
It is the Kurds who have suffered the biggest setback in recent weeks, however. After years of tacit autonomy in their northern region, the recent incursion by the Turkish military into Iraqi Kurdistan has shown their utter vulnerability. As Turkey pounded Iraqi Kurdistan, ostensibly only to attack the Turkish Kurds of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), hardly a murmur of complaint was heard from either the U.S. or the central government in Baghdad over this gross violation of Kurdish (and Iraqi) sovereignty.
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II
SB News 23-03-2008. Extract from “Iraq Five Years Later”, by Daniel Smith (New Haven Advocate, March 20, 2008):
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DISPLACEMENT
Over 2.4 million Iraqis have been internally displaced, according to the UN. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center places the number even higher. Another 2.2 million people have fled Iraq entirely, mostly to Jordan and Syria. One man I met told me his brother was kicked out of his house by a militia. After a military raid, at the height of the sectarian bloodletting, he found out they were using his home to torture and kill people.
HUMAN RIGHTS
It is difficult to measure human rights in a country where people are murdered for their religion and political affiliation every day, and local journalists are routinely threatened and killed. These aren’t institutional violations by the government, but are carried out by factions, many of which have power within the government. The government is culpable in that it isn’t sufficiently protecting its citizens against these violations.
Children’s rights are difficult to assess, as are figures on how many children attend school. Over 700 Iraqi schools were bombed in 2003, and almost none have been rebuilt. There are over 50,000 orphans in Baghdad alone. In a school I visited in a southern Baghdad district, the teacher asked which children had at least one parent killed in violence since 2003. Five out of 20 raised their hands. Two had lost both parents.
As for women’s rights, many of the country’s gender iniquities are institutional. Yanar Mohammed, founder and president of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, says things aren’t getting any better.
“In fact, in the south of the country, the rate of honor killings [the killing of women to preserve a family's honor] has risen sharply,” she says. “In Baghdad, women are singled out for violence and sexual slavery. Since 2003, many women in Baghdad are forced to not only cover their head for the first time in their lives, but must cover themselves in the specific dress of the militia that runs their neighborhood.”
Workers’ rights have suffered as well. Iraq actually has a rich history of labor unions, but according to Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, “It is more difficult to organize for workers’ rights now than under Saddam.” To cite one example, he introduces me to four employees at an electric plant in Mussayeb, a city south of Baghdad.
“U.S. military forces have control of the security of the plant,” says Alwan. “There are about 1,000 workers, and they do not allow photographs of the horrible and unsafe working conditions. Even mobile phones are prohibited inside, under the pretext of security. The workers make demands for better wages, safety and housing, but there is no response from the government officials. Armed guards are in and outside the premises, and are in complete control.”
EMPLOYMENT & ECONOMY
Even with over two million people having left the country, unemployment is still estimated at 60-70 percent. Forty-three percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty, according to the British relief organization Oxfam International. Prices are high, wages low. Even here in the land of oil, gas prices soar.
Transparency International ranked Iraq the third most corrupt nation in 2007, out of 180 surveyed. Everyone in Baghdad talks about corruption. On a plane flying into Baghdad, I met Salama Al-Mahdi, an official at Iraq’s Ministry of Finance, and asked what she thought was the biggest problem with the economy.
“There is worse corruption than ever before,” she says. “Government workers with not a high salary buy big houses. It is not just Iraqis, also foreigners. Millions of dollars for [the] budget are stolen.”
The 2003 invasion broke the back of Iraqi industry, and it is still broken. Passage of the oft-lauded oil bill was just postponed, despite years of pressure from America and England. This is often perceived as Iraqis not being able to agree on anything, but almost all Iraqis are unified against the bill. If passed, it would give foreign oil companies (American and English oil companies) drilling rights and a majority of the oil profits (Iraq’s only real source of revenue) for decades to come.
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III
Letter to the Anti-War and -Occupation Forces of the World
On the Fifth Anniversary of US Administration and its Allies’ Barbarism
The memory of March 19th puts out terror in the world. On this day the human race realizes that its destiny is in the hands of a bunch of criminals and blood-suckers in the US Administration. March 19th is a message to the world that freedom, civil rights and human dignity have no value to the corporate mafia interests of the US and its allies in the world.
After five years, the lies that were broadcasted by the Bush/Cheney administration in waging its war and occupation of Iraq about WMD are exposed. Saddam Hussein was not as dangerous to his neighbors as Iraq is today, where threats to the region and the world are imminent. Today, Iraq has become the largest base of exporting terrorism to the world and a battleground for terrorist groups to settle their issues. What is even worse is that the Iraqi model of sectarian conflict and the division of people based on non-humane values has become a model for the regional countries. In other words, Iraq is the draft model of the Greater Middle East that is preached by Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Moreover, the flames of sectarian conflict have begun to engulf Iraq’s neighbors, where groups with backward mentalities are taking advantage of the situation.
Approximately one million lives have been taken, more than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced inside and abroad, unemployment rates are more than 60%, extreme poverty has overwhelmed millions of children, women and men. Moreover, the looting of billions of dollars of Iraqi wealth is to be put in the pockets of Cheney’s corporate friends and sectarian militias….
The experience of five years of war, that is still raging, tells us that the millions of people who took to the streets on the eve of war in London, Rome, Paris, Madrid, Tokyo, New York, Toronto and Sydney… failed to stop the bloodthirsty US administration from carrying out its brutal agenda.
The weak point of our movement is that we demonstrate our power only in reviving this painful anniversary once or twice a year at best, while the US Administration displays its military machinery to kill people in Iraq every day… It dictates new laws and concepts in the region and the world. It supports sectarian groups (Shi’ite and Sunni political Islamists) to preserve their interests… The US Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad grants $5 million to a sectarian militias that kill people on the basis of identity and kill women to force them to stay home every day.
Our anti-war movements, however, only raise the slogan “No to War” and believe that this is sufficient. However, there is a developing movement in Iraq that daily confronts the occupation, political Islam, terrorist groups; and raises the slogans “No Shiite… No Sunni… Ours is a Human Identity” and “No to the occupation; No to sectarian gangs.” This movement is part of the world anti-war movement that struggles every day to expel the occupation and sweep out terrorist groups from Iraqi society. This movement needs the support of the libertarian forces who lead the world anti-war movement. The anti-war movement in Japan, with MDS [Movement for Democratic Socialism] and ZENKO [National Assembly for Peace & Democracy] at its forefront, has provided unlimited support to the libertarian movement in Iraq, and has brought about a qualitative change in its position. This model is capable to change the political equation in Iraq and the region.
Without a libertarian and secular alternative in Iraq, the occupation will not end. The defeat of the occupation by the progressive and libertarian forces such as the Iraq Freedom Congress is the first step to change the political map of the region and the world. The defeat of the occupation by political Islam, whether bin Laden or the mullahs in Iran, would only mean dumping the world into the largest vortex of chaos and terrorism.
If the world anti-war movement wishes to end state terrorism, it has only one choice—which is doing just as the US Administration, Western governments and Islamic groups are doing: supporting and funding their allies in Iraq. In other words, supporting the libertarian movement in Iraq is the only way for the peace movement to prevail, and the Iraq Freedom Congress is at its forefront.
Our choice of founding Iraq Freedom Congress on March 19th [2005] was a clear message to the world that we are determined to expel the occupation and terrorist groups from Iraq, and work to form a secular state and government that defines human beings on the basis of human identity.
Samir Adil
President of Iraq Freedom Congress
March 18, 2008
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