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June 10, 2003 
Time for press censorship in Iraq
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
Paul Bremer has ordered his legal department in Baghdad to draw up
rules for press censorship. A joke, I concluded, when one of the newly-styled
Coalition Provisional Authority officials tipped me off last week.
But no, it really is true.
Two months after 'liberating' Iraq, the Anglo-American authorities and
their boss Paul Bremer - whose habit of wearing combat boots with a black
suit continues to amaze his colleagues - have decided to control the new
and free Iraqi press. Newspapers which publish 'wild stories', material
deemed provocative or capable of inciting ethnic violence will be
threatened or shut down.
It's for the good of the Iraqi people, you understand. A controlled
press is a responsible press - which is exactly what Saddam Hussein used to
say about the trashy newspapers his regime produced. It must seem all too
familiar to the people of Baghdad.
Now let's be fair. Many stories in the emerging newspapers of Baghdad
are untrue. There is no tradition of checking reports, of giving opponents
the opportunity to be heard. There are constant articles about the
behaviour of American troops. One paper has claimed that US soldiers
distributed postcards of naked women to schoolgirls - they even published
the pictures, with Japanese script on the cards. Even the most cynical
westerner can see how this kind of lie can stir up sentiment against Iraq's
new foreign occupiers.
'The people of Iraq have fallen,' Waleed Rabia, a 19-year old
student, wrote in the new paper 'Al-Mujaha'. 'Invaders are in our country.
The wild animals of this jungle called a world are trying to rip us apart.
We've been through hard times under the old regime, but we were better
then than we are now...Look at those girls who are having sex with the
Americans in their tanks, or in the bathrooms of the Palestine Hotel...What
about those Muslim girls marrying Christian foreigners? No one can accept
this as a true Muslim or true Iraqi...'
It isn't difficult to understand the fury that this kind of article might
arouse - and the idea that the Anglo-American presence is as awful as
Saddam's torturers betrays a truly eccentric mind -- though it would help
if certain Iraqi police officers were not admitting that they were
arranging 'dates' for US troops.
What the Iraqis need, of course, is journalistic help rather than
censorship, courses in reporting - by experienced journalists from real
democracies (rather than the version Mr Bremer seems set on creating) -
rather than a colonial-style suppression of free speech, which is what
censorship will become. But we're now hearing that Imams in the mosques
may be censored if they provoke unrest - this would obviously include the
imam of the Rashid Street mosque in Baghdad outside of which I heard him
preaching last week.
The Americans must leave, he said. Immediately. Subversive stuff.
Definitely likely to provoke violence. So goodbye in due course, I suppose
to the Rashid Street imam. And of course, we all know how the first
pro-American Iraqi government of 'New Iraq' will treat the laws. They will
enthusiastically adopt the western censorship law, just as former colonies
almost always take over the repressive legislation of their former imperial
masters.
I can obviously see the kind of stories that must be, at the least,
discouraged. Take last week's extraordinary UN announcement - mercifully
ignored in most of the western press - that Afghanistan is once more the
world's Number One producer of opium. The hateful Taliban banned all poppy
production under their vicious rule, cutting off the Northern Alliance
warlords from their narcotics production. But since America's 'success' in
routing the Taliban, the drug barons -- the very same Northern Alliance
lads who were US allies in the 'war on terror' -- have gone back into
business. Not one American official dares to comment on this shameful fact.
Quite a memorial to the thousands who died in the international crimes
against humanity of September 11th, 2001.
As for the Iraqis, what lessons are they to draw? If the Americans can
let the narco-terrorists rule again in Afghanistan, why should they be any
more moral in Baghdad where drugs are reappearing for sale on the streets,
courtesy - you guessed it - of the Afghan drugs trade. So censor the
story.
Then we have German UN arms inspector, Peter Franck, telling 'Der
Spiegel' magazine that Colin Powell's evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction which he presented to the UN Security Council in February was
merely 'a big bluff'. Former UN inspector Scott Ritter - who all along
told audiences before the war that Saddam had no WMDs - appears to have
been telling the truth. Saddam, he says, 'couldn't have destroyed weapons
of mass destruction without leaving traces.' So much for Donald Rumsfeld's
cheerful suggestion that the Iraqi dictator had got rid of his nasties just
before the Americans and British staged their illegal invasion. 'Britain
and the United States should admit they lied,' Ritter now suggests. Censor
the story.
Out at Baghdad airport, the Americans are now holding 3,000 prisoners
without any intention of putting them on trial or charging them with
offences. Where is Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister? The
Americans say they have him. But we don't know where. What's he being
asked? About Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Or - my own guess -
how much he knows about America's close relations with Saddam after 1978?
In fact, Aziz knows far too much about that shameful alliance; after all,
he met Donald Rumsfeld several times. One thing's for sure. They'll be no
trial for Tariq Aziz. Keeping him silent will be the first priority. But
that's not something the Iraqis should learn about. Censor the story.
While we're still on the subject of Baghdad Airport, it's important to
note that American forces at the facility are now coming under attack every
night - I repeat, every night - from small arms fire. So are American
military planes flying into the airbase. The pilots have seen the gunfire
directed at them - some US aircrews have now adopted the old Vietnam tactic
of corkscrewing tightly down onto the runways instead of risking sniper
fire during a conventional final approach. The source is impeccable (it's
within the Third Infantry Division, if the int. boys want to know). But
what will that tell the Iraqis? That the Americans cannot keep order?
That a resistance movement is well under way? Censor the story.
Then we have Paul Wolfowitz - or 'Wolfie, as George Bush likes to call
him - blowing the whistle on America's motives for the invasion of Iraq.
Asked at a Singapore conference why the (real) threat of North Korean
nuclear weapons was being treated differently from Iraq's (less real)
threat, Wolfie was reported in 'Die Welt' to have given a truly revealing
reply. 'Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between
North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq.
The country swims on a sea of oil.' This, by the way, comes from the same
man who told Vanity Fair that 'for reasons that have a lot to do with the
US Government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could
agree on: weapons of mass destruction.'
For Iraqis, this is incendiary material. The one suspicion held in common
by both Saddam's former Baathists and Saddam's bitterest opponents in Iraq
is that Britain and America invaded their country, not because of chemical
or biological or nuclear weapons, not because of human rights abuses, but
for oil. Clearly, Wolfie's words are highly provocative, could give
valuable propaganda to Saddam's 'remnants' - who are becoming as lethal as
the now famous Taliban 'remnants' - and stir up disorder among the vast
majority of peace-loving Iraqis who trust the Americans. Censor the story.
And what to print? Well, there's the charnel house of mass graves
being discovered every day, the visits to the Saddamite torture rooms, the
continued and uproarious memoirs of the man who claims to have been
Saddam's double - anything, in fact, which will remind the people of how
aweful Saddam truly was and take their mind off what is really being done
to their country. Bremer is trying to quick-fix his new 'consultative'
council of wise Iraqis prior to the famous democratic election which has
been briefly postponed. And meanwhile he's fired a quarter of a million
Iraqi soldiers from their jobs - ready, no doubt, to join the nascent
resistance movement. Yes, it truly is time for press censorship in Iraq.
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent
of London. This story is published by arrangement with
the Independent syndicate.
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