|
Having illegally invaded Iraq in Mar 2003 - killing thousands
of civilians in the process - the US-led foreign military forces
currently occupying Iraq clearly have no right to remain there.
The international community rightly took a zero tolerance approach
to Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, yet the invasion and occupation
of Iraq has lasted far longer and killed far more people.
Nonetheless, while the UK anti-war movement continues to call
for the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq, it also needs
to get beyond the level of slogans and actively make the case
for withdrawal - while at the same time addressing some of the
main pro-occupation arguments. In what follows below we examine
some of these points in greater detail.
A. THREE PRO-OCCUPATION ARGUMENTS
1.
Britain and the US are fighting to establish democracy in Iraq.
In reality the US and Britain have pursued a policy of attempting
to ‘control Iraq’s political transition while making
it appear that it [wa]s driven by Iraqis’ (FT
Middle East editor Roula Khalaf notes, FT, 17 Jan 04).
Indeed, those steps towards democratic governance that have
taken place – such as the deeply flawed election in January
– have had to be forced upon the occupying powers by Iraqis
(see Voices #s 35, 38, 39 and 40).
Thus, while the election ‘was portrayed [in the US/UK]
as if Washington and London had finally been able to reach their
goal of delivering democracy to Iraqis. In fact the US [had
originally] postponed elections to a distant future after the
invasion of 2003 … th[inking] it could rule Iraq directly
with little Iraqi involvement’ (Independent,
31 Jan).
Washington was only forced into holding elections because, ‘facing
an increasingly intensive war against the five million Sunni
[it] dared not provoke revolt by the 15 to 16 million Shia’
who were demanding the vote. It has since emerged that the US
intervened covertly in the election to try and boost its favoured
slate – the Iraqi List led by former Ba’athist thug
and CIA asset Ayad Allawi (New Yorker, 25 Jul).
Further undermining this argument the democratic will of the
Iraqi people is actually for US-UK withdrawal (see B.2 below).
2.
If occupation forces pull out, Iraq will collapse into civil
war.
In fact, ‘a low-level civil war is [already] being fought
between Sunni and Shia Arabs, with daily tit-for-tat killings’
(Independent, 11 Jul), in large part because of policies
pursued by the occupying forces, who have been using Shia and
Kurdish forces to fight a predominantly Sunni insurgency. Even
US military analysts have acknowledged that ‘by pitting
Iraqis from different religious sects, ethnic groups and tribes
against each other’ they are ‘aggravating the underlying
fault lines of Iraqi society [and] heightening the prospect
of civil strife’ (Washington Post, 7 May).
The
results of using Kurdish forces to fight the insurgency were
in evidence in Fallujah as far back as April 2004: “When
the fighting is over … I will sell everything I have,
even my home,” a resistance fighter told the Washington
Post, ‘we[eping] as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter,
who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago.
“I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and
I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians.
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it
will be the one to be blamed”’ (18 April 04).
Expecting the occupying forces to help avert civil war in Iraq
is a like expecting an arsonist to help put out a fire, even
as they continue to pour petrol on the flames.
The fact that civil war might follow a withdrawal is an argument
for a genuinely neutral international peacekeeping presence
– with no participation by troops from those countries
who have taken part in the invasion and occupation - to replace
the current military occupation, not the continuation of the
latter.
However, even if such a force were created withdrawal might
still ‘lead to violence on a scale beyond that experienced
so far, with no guarantee of a resolution of the conflict’
(Guardian leader, 29 Jun). However, as the same leader
noted: ‘staying the course could be as bloody, or bloodier.’
3.
Iraq is ‘the latest battlefield’ in the “war
on terror.” We must ‘defeat [the terrorists] abroad
before they attack us at home’ (George W. Bush, speech
delivered 28 Jun, AP).
In reality ‘the insurgency remains overwhelmingly domestic,
Sunni and nationalist’ (FT, 29 Jan) and ‘the much-resented
presence of US troops … has helped to fuel the insurgency
and tainted Iraqi governments as puppets of the US’ (Patrick
Cockburn, Independent, 20 Jul). Indeed, as one senior
US official recently explained to the Telegraph, “[m]ost
of the insurgency comes from Iraqis” with foreign volunteers
“mak[ing] up 10 per cent of the insurgents – probably
less than that” (30 June). Most foreign volunteers are
travelling to Iraq because of the occupation (see B.3 below)
– another good reason for withdrawal. Furthermore, as
Naomi Klein has observed, ‘the greatest liability for
Iraqis [in] gain[ing] control over their own country security-wise,
is the fact that the security forces … are seen as an
extension of the hated and loathed occupation’ (DemocracyNow.org,
20 Apr).
B. ARGUMENTS FOR WITHDRAWAL
1. Military activity by the “coalition forces”
is almost certainly the number-one cause of violent death in
Iraq since the Mar 2003 invasion. Withdrawing these forces would
eliminate one of the main sources of violent death in Iraq today.
Drawing on a range of sources the US-based Project on Defence
Alternatives has estimated that, as of May 2005, approx. 30,000
Iraqis had died due to military activity by all sides in the
course of the war and occupation, that roughly half of these
were killed during the conventional combat phase of the war
(ie. before 1 May 03), and that ‘probably three-quarters
of the total were killed by coalition troops’ (http://tinyurl.com/7cwtc).
Whilst ‘insurgent attacks claim the overwhelming majority
of Iraqi lives now …[d]eaths at the hands of Americans
are … [still] far from uncommon’ (New York Times,
14 Jul). Large numbers of Iraqis continue to die each month
in checkpoint killings, US-led military operations and at the
hands of US proxy forces such as the Special Police Commandos
(see Voices #s 41 and 42), whilst over 10,000 remain in US-detention
– many held indefinitely and without trial (see Voices
#42).
Furthermore, the occupation has been punctuated with episodes
of mass killing by the "coalition" eg. in Najaf, Sadr
City and elsewhere – the most extreme example being last
November's assault on Fallujah, which created over 200,000 refugees,
killed hundreds of civilians and devastated the entire city
(see Voices #s 38, 39 and 41 for more info). So long as the
occupation continues the repetition of such atrocities seems
inevitable.
2. According to the available polls many Iraqis –
including parts of Iraq's population most heavily repressed
under Saddam – want the immediate withdrawal of the occupying
forces. A large majority of Iraq's Arab population – both
Shia and Sunni - want an end to occupation either now or soon.
A June 04 poll by IIACS/CPA found 41% of Iraqis sampled favouring
"immediate withdrawal" and a further 45% favouring
withdrawal “after a permanent government is elected”
ie. Dec. 2005 (see archive of Iraqi public opinion polls at
iraqanalysis.org). A Jan 05 Zogby International poll
found that 82% of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and 69% of its Shiites
(who together make up 80-85% of Iraq’s population) favour
US withdrawal "either immediately or after an elected government
is in place" (ZI press release, 28 Jan).
Likewise, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) – the Shiite
coalition that won the greatest share of the vote in the 30
Jan election – listed "setting a schedule for the
multinational forces to withdraw from Iraq" as a key point
of their political platform before the election, only backtracking
on this after the vote at the behest of the US (see Voices #40).
Since then over 103 members of the 275-member Iraqi National
Assembly have urged the Iraqi Government to put “a clear
plan for army building and a timetable for the withdrawal of
occupation troops” from Iraq (Al-Hayat, 4 Jul;
translation by Gilbert Achcar posted on juancole.com,
7 Jul) and Moqtadr Sadr – whose followers in the Shia
underclass were amongst those most brutally repressed by Saddam
– has recently launched a petition, to be submitted to
the Iraqi government and the UN, that reads: "I hereby
declare my rejection of the forces of occupation and demand
their withdrawal" (AFP, 11 Jul). Over 400,000
Iraqis – most probably Shia - signed the petition on its
first day.
3. In addition to its own military activities - and
those of its proxy forces - the occupation is also making Iraq
more dangerous by : (1) acting as a magnet for ‘foreign
volunteers’ who travel to Iraq to take part in suicide
bombings; and (2) radicalising Iraqis into joining – or
creating their own - al-Qaeda-style organisations inside Iraq.
According to the Washington Post ‘[a]bout 400
suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the US invasion in 2003’,
compared to 315 such attacks around the world from 1980 through
2003 (17 Jul). Ninety such attacks took place in May alone.
Though neither the US nor the insurgents have been willing or
able to release detailed information on suicide bombers, ‘US
and Iraqi authorities say they are certain that the vast majority
of suicide bombers come from outside Iraq.’ A recent study
commissioned by the Saudi Government has helped to clarify the
motives of “foreign fighters” travelling to Iraq.
It’s US-trained investigator was given access to Saudi
officials and intelligence and ‘painstakingly analysed
the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering
Iraq to fight the United States’, finding that ‘the
vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists
[but] became radicalised by the war itself’ and that ‘most
were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive the
infidels out of Arab land’ (Boston Globe, 17
Jul). Thus the best way to terminate the flow of such fighters
to Iraq is to end the occupation.
4. As well as making the lives of ordinary Iraqis less
safe, the occupation is also, indirectly, making the lives of
people in the UK and elsewhere around the world less safe as
well.
Indeed, according to a recent report by the Royal Institute
for International Affairs the UK is at 'particular risk' from
al Qaeda today because, among other things 'it is the closest
ally of the United States [and] has deployed armed forces in
the military campaigns to topple the Taleban regime in Afghanistan
and in Iraq' (Security, Terrorism and the UK, 18 July). Furthermore,
according to a recent classified CIA assessment, leaked to the
New York Times, 'Iraq may prove to be an even more effective
training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was
in al-Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world
laboratory for urban combat' with the war 'likely to produce
a dangerous legacy by dispersing to other countries Iraqi and
foreign combatants more adept and better organised than they
were before the conflict' (22 Jun).
Conclusion
The US-led forces currently occupying Iraq have no legal or
moral right to be there. They have been one of the main causes
of violent death in Iraq since the invasion and are currently
pursuing a policy - alongside their proxy forces in the Iraqi
Army – in which ‘[m]ass detentions and indiscriminate
torture appear to be the main tools’ (FT, 29
Jun).
Furthermore the occupation is making an Iraqi civil war more
not less likely even as it acts as a magnet for foreign suicide
bombers and a major recruiting agent for al-Qaeda and related
groups, endangering both Iraqis and people here in the UK
For both their sakes Britain’s participation in and support
for the occupation must be terminated.
|
