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Recent
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May
3, 2003
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May
5, 2003
Bush Says the War is Over?
Tell It to the Shi'a and
the Badr Brigade
by ROBERT FISK
When Iraqi civilians look into the faces of American
troops, President Bush famously told the world on Thursday, "they
see strength and kindness and goodwill". Untrue, Mr Bush.
They see occupation
So, it's the end of the war in Iraq,
is it? If anyone thinks George Bush Jnr could pass that one off
aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last week - "major
combat operations have ended" was the expression he used
on Thursday night - they should take a closer look at Secretary
of Defence Rumsfeld's cosy, sinister little speech to US troops
in Baghdad a day earlier.
It was filled with all the usual myth-making:
the "many" Iraqis who flocked to welcome the Americans
on their "liberation" of Baghdad, the "fastest
march on a capital in modern military history" (which the
Israelis achieved in three days in 1982). But the key line was
slipped in at the end. The Americans, he said, still had "to
root out the terrorist networks operating in this country".
What? What terrorist networks? And who, one may ask, are behind
these mysterious terrorist networks "operating" in
Iraq? I have a pretty good idea. They may not actually exist
yet. But Donald Rumsfeld knows (and he has been told by US intelligence)
that a growing resistance movement to America's occupation is
gestating in Iraq. The Shia Muslim community, now supported by
thousands of Badr  Brigade Iraqis trained in Iran, believes
the US is in Iraq for its oil. It is furious at America's treatment
of Iraq's citizens; in three days last week at least 17 Sunni
demonstrators were killed, two of them less than 11 years old.
And it is not impressed by Washington's attempts to cobble together
an "interim" pro-American government.
Even during the war, you could hear the
same sentiments. Yes, the Shias would tell us, the Americans
can get rid of Saddam. No one doubted his viciousness. But, always,
this sentiment was followed by a desire to see the back of the
Americans. Most of the civilian victims of American and British
bombs were Shias, especially around Nasiriyah and Hillah. Which
is another reason why the Americans did not arrive in Baghdad
- where a US armoured vehicle pulled down the famous statue of
Saddam - to be greeted by flowers and music. When Iraqi civilians
look into the faces of American troops, President Bush famously
told the world on Thursday, "they see strength and kindness
and goodwill". Untrue, Mr Bush. They see occupation.
Already it is possible to identify some
familiar landmarks in the progress of occupation: a series of
brutal incidents for which the Americans are never, ever, to
blame. Just like the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza, the killing of civilians is never the fault of the occupiers.
The driver and the old man shot and killed by US forces near
a checkpoint in Baghdad, and the little girl and the young woman
badly wounded whose tragedy Channel 4 witnessed, received no
apology from the United States. A family is shot in its car in
southern Iraq; cameramen are killed in the Palestine Hotel; 15
Iraqis, including at least one child, are gunned down in Falujah.
For the Americans, it is always "self-defence". Though,
strangely, few if any Americans have been seriously wounded in
these incidents. Of course, there must be gunmen shooting at
the Americans. But the evidence suggests there aren't very many.
The evidence also suggests that very soon, there are going to
be a lot more. You have only to observe how deeply the Iraqi
Shias admire the Lebanese Hizbollah to understand how well they
comprehend the art of guerrilla resistance. Succoured by Iran
- or schooled in Saddam's torture chambers - they are not going
to take orders from ex-General Jay Garner, whose all-expenses-paid
trip to Israel to express his admiration for the Israeli army's
"restraint" in the Palestinian occupied territories
is well known in Iraq. And they realise full well that America's
big corporations are preparing to make millions from their broken
country.
Without waiting for any "interim"
government to take such decisions, the US Agency for International
Development has invited American multinationals to bid for everything
from road rebuilding to new text books. A US company, Stevedoring
Services of America, has already gobbled up the $4.8m (lbs3m)
management contract for the port at Um Qasr. US oil executives,
many of them chums of George Bush and his administration, are
expected to visit the Iraqi oil ministry (one of only two Iraqi
ministries that the Americans miraculously saved from arsonists)
within a week.
No, Iraq today resembles not some would-be
democracy but rather the tragedy that greeted the British when
the German occupation of Greece ended in 1944. Hitler, like Saddam,
had ensured there were plenty of abandoned weapons lying around
to fuel a guerrilla resistance against the new rulers. Churchill
supported the nationalist government of George Papandreou - the
Ahmed Chalabi of Greece - but the Elas Communist guerrillas wanted
power. They had fought the Nazis since Germany's 1941 invasion
and, like many of the Muslim Shia today, feared that they were
going to be excluded from power by a new pro-Allied regime.
So the "liberation" of Athens
quickly turned into a pitched battle between British troops (for
which read the Americans in Iraq) and the Communists, who had
received years of support from the Soviet Union. For Russia then,
read Iran now. Claiming that he stood for freedom, Churchill
remarked that "democracy is no harlot to be picked up in
the street by a man with a tommy-gun". But when martial
law was imposed by the British (something the Americans may have
to consider) Churchill less charitably told the British commander
in a secret message that he should "not hesitate to act
as if you were in a conquered city". In various battles,
there were attempts to find a mediator - not unlike the desperate
meetings in Falujah last week between Iraqis and Americans. In
the event, Churchill was able to restore order only because he
had secretly obtained Stalin's agreement that Greece should remain
in the Western sphere of Europe. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and
other eastern European countries paid the price. The parallels
are not exact, of course, and a critical difference today is
that the nation which might be able to help Washington, as the
Soviets helped London, is Iran. And Iran, far from being an uneasy
ally, is part of President Bush's "axis of evil", which
fears that it may be next on America's hit list. So here is a
little prediction.
Mr Bush says the war is over, or words
to that effect. Then Shia resistance begins to bite the Americans
in Iraq. Of course, Mr Rumsfeld will have warned of this: it
will be characterised as the famous "terrorist networks"
which still have to be fought in Iraq. And Iran - and no doubt
Syria - will be accused of supporting these "terrorists".
The French did much the same in their 1954-62 war against the
FLN in Algeria. Tunisia was to blame. Egypt was to blame. So
stand by for part two of the Iraq war, transmogrified into the
next stage of the "war on terror".
Yesterday's
Features
Saul Landau
The Cuba Conundrum
Neve
Gordon
US: No Right to Know About the Disappeared
John
Chuckman
Tom Friedman's Life as a Pet Hamster
Bradley
Burston
Betting on Abu-Mazen...To Lose
Harvey
Wasserman
Bush's Military Defeat
John
Troyer
Question Those Writing History
Caoimhe
Butterly
Crowd Control American-style
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/02
Website
of the Day
Moussaoui's
Quiz
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