|
May 4, 2003 
SO HE THINKS IT'S ALL OVER...
By Robert Fisk
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 ((pounds
sterling)3m) 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".
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent of London. This
story is published by arrangement with the Independent syndicate.
|
|
