Thursday, Apr 14, 2005
Iraq: hatred of the occupation rising by the day
Jonathan Steele
The key issue now, as it has been since 2003, is for the occupation to end quickly.
Saddam Hussein's effigy was pulled down again in Baghdad's Firdos Square at the weekend (April 9-10). But unlike the made-for-television event when American troops first entered the Iraqi capital, the toppling of Mr. Hussein's effigy on the occupation's second anniversary was different.
Instead of being done by American marines with a few dozen Iraqi bystanders, 300,000 Iraqis were on hand. They threw down effigies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair as well as the old dictator, at a rally that did not celebrate liberation but called for the immediate departure of foreign troops.
For most Iraqis, with the exception of the Kurds, Washington's "liberation" never was. Wounded national pride was greater than relief at Mr. Hussein's departure. Iraqis were soon angered by the failure to get power and water supplies repaired, the brutality of U.S. army tactics, and the disappearance of their country's precious oil revenues into inadequately supervised accounts, or handed to foreigners under contracts that produced no benefits for Iraqis.
>From last autumn's disastrous attack on Fallujah to the huge increase
in detention without trial, the casualties go on rising. After an amnesty
last summer, the numbers of "security detainees" have gone up again and
reached a record 17,000.
The weekend's vast protest shows that opposition is still growing, in spite of U.S. and British Government claims to have the Iraqis' best interests at heart. It was the biggest demonstration since foreign troops invaded.
Equally significantly, the marchers were mainly Shias, who poured in from the impoverished eastern suburb known as Sadr City. The Bush-Blair spin likes to suggest that protest is confined to Sunnis, with the nod and wink that these people are disgruntled former Saddam Hussein supporters or fundamentalists linked to the Al Qaeda, who therefore need not be treated as legitimate.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shia cleric who organised the latest march, recently joined forces with the National Foundation Congress, a group of Sunni and Shia nationalists, to affirm "the legitimate right of the Iraqi resistance to defend their country and its destiny" while "rejecting terrorism aimed at innocent Iraqis, institutions, public buildings and places of worship."
The key issue, now as it has been since 2003, is for the occupation to end quickly. Only this will reduce the resistance and give Iraqis a chance to live normally. In a new line of spin - which some commentators have taken to mean that the U.S. is preparing for a pullout - U.S. commanders claim the rate of insurgent attacks is down.
The figures are not independently monitored. Even if true, they may be temporary. Thirdly, they fly in the face of evidence that suggests the U.S. is failing. Most of western Iraq is out of U.S. control.
In any case, the U.S. is only talking of a possible reduction of a third of its troops next year. This will still leave 100,000. The U.S. argues that a complete withdrawal has to be "conditions-related, not calendar-related" or, as Mr. Blair puts it, there can be no "artificial timetable". By that, they mean Iraq's security forces have to be strong enough to replace the Americans and British, a totally elastic marker.
That is surely the message that the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is giving this week on his ninth trip to Baghdad since April 2003. Whenever there is an alleged transfer of power to Iraqis, this time to a "government" elected in a flawed poll, Mr. Rumsfeld comes with instructions. -
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Copyright © 2005, The Hindu.