- Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United
States isn't mired in a bog or a marsh in Iraq (quagmire's literal
meaning);
it is free-falling off a cliff. The only question now is: Who will follow
the Bush clan off this precipice, and who will refuse to jump?
-
- More and more are, thankfully, choosing the second
option.
The last month of inflammatory US aggression in Iraq has inspired what
can only be described as a mutiny: Waves of soldiers, workers and
politicians
under the command of the US occupation authority are suddenly refusing
to follow orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced it would
withdraw its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and
Kazakhstan.
South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while
New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the
Netherlands
and Thailand will likely be next.
-
- And then there are the mutinous members of the
US-controlled
Iraqi army. Since the latest wave of fighting began, they've been donating
their weapons to resistance fighters in the South and refusing to fight
in Falluja, saying that they didn't join the army to kill other Iraqis.
By late April, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored
Division,
was reporting that "about 40 percent [of Iraqi security officers]
walked off the job because of intimidation. And about 10 percent actually
worked against us."
-
- And it's not just Iraq's soldiers who have been deserting
the occupation. Four ministers of the Iraqi Governing Council have resigned
their posts in protest. Half the Iraqis with jobs in the secured
"green
zone"--as translators, drivers, cleaners--are not showing up for work.
And that's better than a couple of weeks ago, when 75 percent of Iraqis
employed by the US occupation authority stayed home (that staggering figure
comes from Adm. David Nash, who oversees the awarding of reconstruction
contracts).
-
- Minor mutinous signs are emerging even within the ranks
of the US military: Privates Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey have applied
for refugee status in Canada as conscientious objectors and Staff Sgt.
Camilo Mejia is facing court martial after he refused to return to Iraq
on the grounds that he no longer knew what the war was about [see Christian
Parenti, "A Deserter Speaks," at www.thenation.com].
-
- Rebelling against the US authority in Iraq is not
treachery,
nor is it giving "false comfort to terrorists," as George W.
Bush recently cautioned Spain's new prime minister. It is an entirely
rational
and principled response to policies that have put everyone living and
working
under US command in grave and unacceptable danger. This is a view shared
by fifty-two former British diplomats, who recently sent a letter to Prime
Minister Tony Blair stating that although they endorsed his attempts to
influence US Middle East policy, "there is no case for supporting
policies which are doomed to failure."
-
- And one year in, the US occupation of Iraq does appear
doomed on all fronts: political, economic and military. On the political
front, the idea that the United States could bring genuine democracy to
Iraq is now irredeemably discredited: Too many relatives of Iraqi Governing
Council members have landed plum jobs and rigged contracts, too many groups
demanding direct elections have been suppressed, too many newspapers have
been closed down and too many Arab journalists have been murdered while
trying to do their job. The most recent casualties were two employees of
Al Iraqiya television, shot dead by US soldiers while filming a checkpoint
in Samarra. Ironically, Al Iraqiya is the US-controlled propaganda network
that was supposed to weaken the power of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, both
of which have also lost reporters to US guns and rockets over the past
year.
-
- White House plans to turn Iraq into a model free-market
economy are in equally rough shape, plagued by corruption scandals and
the rage of Iraqis who have seen few benefits--either in services or
jobs--from
the reconstruction. Corporate trade shows have been canceled across Iraq,
investors are relocating to Amman and Iraq's housing minister estimates
that more than 1,500 foreign contractors have fled the country. Bechtel,
meanwhile, admits that it can no longer operate "in the hot
spots"
(there are precious few cold ones), truck drivers are afraid to travel
the roads with valuable goods and General Electric has suspended work on
key power stations. The timing couldn't be worse: Summer heat is coming
and demand for electricity is about to soar.
-
- As this predictable (and predicted) disaster unfolds,
many are turning to the United Nations for help: Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani
called on the UN to support his demand for direct elections back in
January.
More recently, he has called on the UN to refuse to ratify the despised
interim constitution, which most Iraqis see as a US attempt to continue
to control Iraq's future long after the June 30 "handover" by,
among other measures, giving sweeping veto powers to the Kurds--the only
remaining US ally. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis
Rodríguez
Zapatero, before pulling out his troops, asked the UN to take over the
mission from the United States. Even Muqtada al-Sadr, the
"outlaw"
Shiite cleric, is calling on the UN to prevent a bloodbath in Najaf. On
April 18, Sadr's spokesman, Qais al-Khazaali, told Bulgarian television
it is "in the interest of the whole world to send peacekeeping forces
under the UN flag."
-
- And what has been the UN's response? Worse than silence,
it has sided with Washington on all of these critical questions, dashing
hopes that it could provide a genuine alternative to the lawlessness and
brutality of the US occupation. First it refused to back the call for
direct
elections, citing security concerns. In retrospect, supporting the call
back then might have avoided much of the violence now engulfing the
country.
After all, the UN's response weakened the more moderate Sistani and
strengthened
Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters continued demanding direct elections
and launched a vocal campaign against the US transition plan and the
interim
constitution. This is what prompted US chief envoy Paul Bremer to decide
to take Sadr out, the provocation that sparked the Shiite uprising.
-
- The UN has proved equally deaf to calls to replace the
US military occupation with a peacekeeping operation. On the contrary,
it has made it clear that it will only re-enter Iraq if it is the United
States that guarantees the safety of its staff--seemingly oblivious to
the fact that being surrounded by American bodyguards is the best way to
make sure that the UN will be targeted. "We have an obligation since
[the attack on UN headquarters] last summer to insist on clarity and on
what is being asked of us," Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to
Secretary
General Kofi Annan, told the New York Times. "What are the risks?
What kind of guarantees can you give us that we are not going to be blown
up? And is the job important enough to justify the risk?"
-
- Even in light of that horrific bombing, this is a
stunning
series of questions coming from a UN official. Do Iraqis have guarantees
that they won't be blown up when they go to the market in Sadr City, when
their children get on the school bus in Basra, when they send their injured
to a hospital in Falluja? Is there a more important job for the future
of global security than peacemaking in Iraq?
-
- The UN's greatest betrayal of all comes in the way it
is re-entering Iraq: not as an independent broker but as a glorified US
subcontractor, the political arm of the continued US occupation. The
post-June
30 caretaker government being set up by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will be
subject to all the restraints on Iraqi sovereignty that sparked the current
uprising in the first place. The United States will maintain full control
over "security" in Iraq, including over Iraq's army. It will
keep control over the reconstruction funds. And, worst of all, the
caretaker
government will be subject to the laws laid out in the interim
constitution,
including the clause that states that it must enforce the orders written
by the US occupiers. The UN should be defending Iraq against this illegal
attempt to undermine its independence. Instead it is disgracefully helping
Washington to convince the world that a country under continued military
occupation by a foreign power is actually sovereign.
-
- Iraq badly needs the UN as a clear, independent voice
in the region. The people are calling out for it, begging the international
body to live up to its mandate as peacemaker and truth teller. And yet
just when it is needed most, the UN is at its most compromised and
cowardly.
-
- There is a way that the UN can redeem itself in Iraq.
It could choose to join the mutiny, further isolating the United States.
This would help force Washington to hand over real power--ultimately to
Iraqis but first to a multilateral coalition that did not participate in
the invasion and occupation and would have the credibility to oversee
direct
elections. This could work, but only through a process that fiercely
protects
Iraq's sovereignty. That means:
-
- Ditch the Interim Constitution. The interim constitution
is so widely hated in Iraq that any governing body bound by its rules will
immediately be seen as illegitimate. Some argue that Iraq needs the interim
constitution to prevent open elections from delivering the country to
religious
extremists. Yet according to a February 2004 poll by Oxford Research
International,
Iraqis have no desire to see their country turned into another Iran. Asked
to rate their favored political system and actors, 48.5 percent of Iraqis
ranked a "democracy" as most important, while an "Islamic
state" received 20.5 percent support. Asked what type of politician
they favored, 55.3 percent chose "democrats," while only 13.7
percent chose religious politicians. If Iraqis are given the chance to
vote their will, there is every reason to expect that the results will
reflect a balance between their faith and their secular aspirations.
-
- There are also ways to protect women and minority rights
without forcing Iraq to accept a sweeping constitution written under
foreign
occupation. The simplest solution would be to revive passages in Iraq's
1970 Provisional Constitution, which, according to Human Rights Watch,
"formally guaranteed equal rights to women and...specifically ensured
their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own
property."
Elsewhere, the constitution enshrined religious freedom, civil liberties
and the right to form unions. These clauses can easily be salvaged, while
striking the parts of the document designed to entrench Baathist
rule.
-
- Put the Money in Trust. A crucial plank of managing
Iraq's
transition to sovereignty is safeguarding its national assets: its oil
revenue and the remaining oil-for-food program money (currently
administered
by the United States with no oversight), as well as what's left of the
$18.4 billion in reconstruction funds. Right now the United States is
planning
to keep control of this money long after June 30; the UN should insist
that it be put in trust, to be spent by an elected Iraqi government.
-
- De-Chalabify Iraq. The United States has so far been
unable to install Ahmad Chalabi as the next leader of Iraq--his history
of corruption and lack of a political base have seen to that. Yet members
of the Chalabi family have quietly been given control in every area of
political, economic and judicial life. It was a two-stage process. First,
as head of the De-Baathification Commission, Chalabi purged his rivals
from power. Then, as director of the Governing Council's Economic and
Finance
Committee, he installed his friends and allies in the key posts of Oil
Minister, Finance Minister, Trade Minister, Governor of the Central Bank
and so on. Now Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, has been appointed by the
United States to head the court trying Saddam Hussein. And a company with
close ties to Chalabi landed the contract to guard Iraq's oil
infrastructure--essentially
a license to build a private army.
-
- It's not enough to keep Chalabi out of the interim
government.
The UN must dismantle Chalabi's shadow state by launching a
de-Chalabification
process on a par with the now abandoned de-Baathification process.
-
- Demand the Withdrawal of US Troops. In asking the United
States to serve as its bodyguard as a condition of re-entering Iraq, the
UN has it exactly backwards: It should only go in if the United States
pulls out. Troops who participated in the invasion and occupation should
be replaced with peacekeepers--preferably from neighboring Arab
states--working
under the extremely limited mandate of securing the country for general
elections. With the United States out, there is a solid chance that
countries
that opposed the war would step forward for the job.
-
- On April 25 the New York Times editorial board called
for the opposite approach, arguing that only a major infusion of American
troops and "a real long-term increase in the force in Iraq" could
bring security. But these troops, if they arrive, will provide security
to no one--not to the Iraqis, not to their fellow soldiers, not to the
UN. American soldiers have become a direct provocation to more violence,
not only because of the brutality of the occupation in Iraq but also
because
of US support for Israel's deadly occupation of Palestinian territory.
In the minds of many Iraqis, the two occupations have blended into a single
anti-Arab outrage, with Israeli and US soldiers viewed as interchangeable
and Iraqis openly identifying with Palestinians.
-
- Without US troops, the major incitement to violence would
be removed, allowing the country to be stabilized with far fewer soldiers
and far less force. Iraq would still face security challenges--there would
still be extremists willing to die to impose Islamic law as well as
attempts
by Saddam loyalists to regain power. On the other hand, with Sunnis and
Shiites now so united against the occupation, it's the best possible moment
for an honest broker to negotiate an equitable power-sharing
agreement.
-
- Some will argue that the United States is too strong
to be forced out of Iraq. But from the start Bush needed multilateral cover
for this war--that's why he formed the "coalition of the
willing,"
and it's why he is going to the UN now. Imagine what could happen if
countries
keep pulling out of the coalition, if France and Germany refuse to
recognize
an occupied Iraq as a sovereign nation. Imagine if the UN decided not to
ride to Washington's rescue. It would become an occupation of one.
-
- The invasion of Iraq began with a call to mutiny--a call
made by the United States. In the weeks leading up to last year's invasion,
US Central Command bombarded Iraqi military and political officials with
phone calls and e-mails urging them to defect from Saddam's ranks. Fighter
planes dropped 8 million leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers to abandon their
posts and assuring that no harm would come to them.
-
- Of course, these soldiers were promptly fired when Paul
Bremer took over and are now being frantically rehired as part of the
reversal
of the de-Baathification policy. It's just one more example of lethal
incompetence
that should lead all remaining supporters of US policy in Iraq to one
inescapable
conclusion: It's time for a mutiny.
-
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