Iraq- The West Shakes Up The Middle East

by Patrick Cockburn

  The new element in Iraq is the development of the Awakening Council, or al-Sahwa, movement. Suddenly there is a Sunni militia, paid by the US, that has 80,000 men under arms. This re-empowers the Sunni community far more than any legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament. But it also deepens the divisions in Iraq because the leaders of the Awakening do not bother to hide their hatred and contempt for the Iraqi government.

  At the end of January, I visited Abu Marouf, one of the leaders of the Awakening, in his headquarters near Khan Dari, halfway between Abu Ghraib and Fallujah. Asked about his attitude to the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Abu Marouf, until recently a commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, said: "Maliki has got 13 divisions [in the army] most of whom are Shia, and half are from militias controlled by Iran."

  In his State of the Union address, President Bush spoke of the 80,000 Awakening Council members - also labelled "concerned local citizens", as if they were respectable householders who have taken up arms against "terrorists".

  The picture Bush evoked is similar to that often seen in Hollywood Westerns when outraged townsfolk and farmers, driven beyond endurance by the crimes of a corrupt sheriff or saloon owner and their bandit followers, rise in revolt. In reality, in Iraq the exact opposite has happened. The Awakening Council members of today are the "terrorists" of yesterday.

  Even the police chief of Fallujah, Colonel Feisal, the brother of Abu Marouf, cheerfully explained that until he was promoted to his present post in December 2006 he was "fighting the Americans". Abu Marouf is threatening to go back to war or let al-Qa'ida return unless his 13,000 men receive long-term jobs in the Iraqi security services. The Iraqi government has no intention of allowing this because to do so would be to allow the Sunni and partisans of Saddam Hussein's regime to once again hold real power in the state.

  Bizarrely, the US is still holding hundreds of men suspected of contacts with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan and elsewhere, while in Iraq many of the Awakening members are past and, in many cases, probably current members of al-Qa'ida being paid by the US Army.

  "I knew a young man, aged 17 or 18," says Kassim Ahmed Salman, "who was a friend of my brother and used to carry a PKC [a Russian light machine-gun] and fight for al-Qa'ida. I was astonished to see him a few days ago in al-Khadra where he is a lieutenant in al-Sahwa, standing together with Iraqi army officers."

  The present state of Iraq is highly unstable, but nobody quite wants to go to war again. It reminds me of lulls in the Lebanese civil war during the 1970s and 1980s, when everybody in Beirut rightly predicted that nothing was solved and the fighting would start again. In Iraq the fighting has never stopped, but the present equilibrium might go on for some time.

  All the Iraqi players are waiting to see at what rate the US will draw down its troop levels. The Mehdi Army is discussing ending its six-month ceasefire, but does not want to fight its Shia rivals if they are supported by American military power. Al-Qa'ida is wounded but by no means out of business. Four days after I had seen Abu Marouf, who was surrounded by bodyguards and maintains extreme secrecy about his movements, al-Qa'ida was able to detonate a bomb in a car close to his house and injure four of his guards.

  Protestations of amity between Shia security men and Awakening members should be treated with scepticism. My friend, the intrepid French television reporter Lucas Menget, filmed a Shia policeman showering praise on the Awakening movement. He introduced two of its members, declaring enthusiastically to the camera: "You see, together we will defeat al-Qa'ida." Back in his police car, the policeman, lighting up a Davidoff cigarette and shaking his head wearily, explained: "I don't have a choice. I was asked to work with these killers."

  Iraq remains a great sump of human degradation and poverty, unaffected by the "surge". It was not a government critic but the civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, Tahseen Sheikhly, who pointed out this week that the city is drowning in sewage because of blocked and broken pipes and drains. In one part of the city, the sewage has formed a lake so large that it can be seen "as a big black spot on Google Earth".

  In the coming weeks, we will see the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by American and British forces on 19 March, and the fall of Saddam Hussein on 9 April. There will be much rancorous debate in the Western media about the success or failure of the "surge" and the US war effort here.

  But for millions of Iraqis like Bassim, the war has robbed them of their homes, their jobs and often their lives. It has brought them nothing but misery and ended their hopes of happiness. It has destroyed Iraq.

  Monday, 3 March 2008

  THIS WAR CONTINUES WITH LIE AFTER LIE AFTER LIE

  It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.

  The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on US television to say that military action had started against Iraq.

  This was a veiled reference to an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein by dropping four 2,000lb bombs and firing 40 cruise missiles at a place called Al-Dura farm in south Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker. There was no bunker.

  The only casualties were one civilian killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.

  On 7 April, the US Air Force dropped four more massive bombs on a house where Saddam was said to have been sighted in Baghdad.

  "I think we did get Saddam Hussein," said Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President.

  "He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn't able to breathe." Saddam was unharmed, probably because he had never been there, but 18 Iraqi civilians were dead.

  One US military leader defended the attacks, claiming they showed "US resolve and capabilities".

  Mr Cheney was back in Baghdad this week, five years later almost to the day, to announce that there has been "phenomenal" improvements in Iraqi security.

  Within hours, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the Shia holy city of Kerbala, killing at least 40 and wounding 50 people.

  Often it is difficult to know where the self-deception ends and the deliberate mendacity begins.

  The most notorious lie was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

  But critics of the war may have focused too much on WMD and not enough on later distortions.

  The event which has done most to shape the present Iraqi political landscape was the savage civil war between the Sunni and Shia in Baghdad and central Iraq in 2006 and 2007 when 3,000 civilians a month were being butchered and which was won by the Shia.

  The White House and Downing Street blithely denied a civil war was happening - and forced Iraq politicians who said so to recant - to pretend the crisis was less serious than it was.

  More often, the lies have been small, designed to make a propaganda point for a day even if they are exposed as untrue a few weeks later. One example of this shows how propaganda distorts day-to-day reporting in Iraq, but if the propagandist knows his job, is very difficult to disprove.

  On 1 February this year, two suicide bombers, said to be female, blew themselves up in two pet markets in predominantly Shia areas of Baghdad, Ghazil and Jadida, and killed 99 people. Iraqi government officials immediately said the bombers had the chromosonal disorder Down's syndrome, which they could tell from looking at the severed heads of the bombers.

  Sadly, horrific bombings in Iraq are so common that they no longer generate much media interest abroad. It was the Down's syndrome angle which made the story front-page news. It showed al-Qa'ida in Iraq was even more inhumanly evil than one had supposed (if that were possible) and it meant, so Iraqi officials said, that al-Qa'ida was running out of volunteers.
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br />   The Times splashed on it under the headline, "Down's syndrome bombers kill 91".

  The story stated firmly that "explosives strapped to two women with Down's syndrome were detonated by remote control in crowded pet markets". Other papers, including The Independent, felt the story had a highly suspicious smell to it. How much could really be told about the mental condition of a woman from a human head shattered by a powerful bomb? Reliable eyewitnesses in suicide bombings are difficult to find because anybody standing close to the bomber is likely to be dead or in the hospital.

  The US military later supported the Iraqi claim that the bombers had Down's syndrome. On 10 February, they arrested Dr Sahi Aboub, the acting director of the al-Rashad psychiatric hospital in east Baghdad, alleging that he had provided mental patients for use by al-Qa'ida.

  The Iraqi Interior Ministry started rounding up beggars and mentally disturbed people on the grounds that they might be potential bombers. But on 21 February, an American military spokesman said there was no evidence the bombers had Down's.

  Adel Mohsin, a senior official at the Health Ministry in Baghdad, poured scorn on the idea that Dr Aboub could have done business with the Sunni fanatics of al-Qa'ida because he was a Shia and had only been in the job a few weeks.

  A second doctor, who did not want to give his name, pointed out that al-Rashad hospital was run by the fundamentalist Shia Mehdi Army and asked: "How would it be possible for al- Qa'ida to get in there?" Few people in Baghdad now care about the exact circumstances of the bird market bombings apart from Dr Aboub, who is still in jail, and the mentally disturbed beggars who were incarcerated. Unfortunately, it is all too clear that al- Qa'ida is not running out of suicide bombers. But it is pieces of propaganda such as this small example, often swallowed whole by the media and a thousand times repeated, which cumulatively mask the terrible reality of Iraq.

  Monday, 12 May 2008

  ‘GHOST CITY’ MOSUL BRACES FOR ASSAULT ON AL-QA’IDA

  Mosul looks like a city of the dead.

  American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa'ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country's northern capital into a ghost town.

  Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made "threatening movements".

  Mosul, on the Tigris river, is inhabited by 1.4 million people, but has been sealed off from the outside world by hundreds of police and army checkpoints since the Iraqi government offensive against al-Qa'ida began at 4am on Saturday. The operation is a critical part of an attempt to reassert military control over Iraq which has led to heavy fighting in Baghdad and Basra.

  The besieged city is now difficult to reach; we began the journey from the Kurdish capital Arbil in a convoy of white pickup trucks, each with a heavy machine gun in the back manned by alert-looking soldiers, some wearing black face masks, that were escorting Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, to his office in the city.

  Soon after crossing the long bridge over the Zaab river and leaving territory officially controlled by the Kurds, we saw lines of trucks and cars being stopped by police. Their drivers presumably had not heard of the curfew.

  At the Christian village of Bartilla we exchanged our pick-ups for more heavily armoured vehicles with windows a few inches across of bulletproof glass.

  I had been to Mosul down this road half a dozen times since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and on each occasion the military escort necessary to reach the city safely has grown bigger.

  Squinting through the small glass portholes it was clear that local people were taking the curfew seriously. Even the miserable cafes used by the truck drivers, and which I had imagined never closed their doors, had pulled down their metal shutters.

  In eastern Mosul the streets are usually bustling and stalls spill onto the road near the tomb of the prophet Jonah, who died here sometime after his alarming experience with the whale.

  Most of the people living in this part of the city are Kurds, who support the central government against al-Qa'ida. Yet, here too every shop was shut and there were police and soldiers at checkpoints every 50 yards. An extra brigade had been sent from Baghdad for the offensive along with special security troops to reinforce the 2nd and 3rd divisions.

  Outside the police headquarters, the black vehicles of the Interior Ministry, each with a heavy machine gun and a yellow head of a tiger as an insignia on the doors, were drawn up in rows.

  American helicopters flew high overhead as well as drones for reconnaissance. There was the occasional burst of firing and bomb blast in the distance. The governor of Mosul, Dunaid Kashmoula, says the city "has come to be dominated by the leaders of al-Qa'ida as a result of the delay in the military operation" originally scheduled for earlier this year.

  Nevertheless, the insurgents in Mosul have never held whole quarters of the city and there was no street fighting.

  The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki promised this offensive on Mosul as the last battle against al-Qa'ida. He promised revenge for the assassination of the previous police commander for the city who had been assassinated by an al-Qa'ida suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform.

  These are critical days for Mr Maliki's government. Since 25 March he has launched military offensives in Basra and Baghdad. He is receiving support from the Americans and the Kurds.

  But it is not clear if the Iraqi army will fight without the backing of US firepower in the air or on the ground. On Saturday a ceasefire was agreed with the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City giving the government greater control. But, as in Mosul, it is not clear how far the government's opponents have simply retreated to fight another day.

  There is no doubt that security in Mosul has been deteriorating over the last six months.

  Mr Goran, who in effect runs the city, said that 90 people were killed in Mosul last September compared to 213 dead this March, including 58 soldiers and policemen. The number of roadside bombs had risen from 175 to 269 over the same period.

  The official theory for this is that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has only a limited connection with Osama bin Laden and is largely home grown, has been driven out of its bastions in Anbar and Diyala provinces and Sunni districts of Baghdad. It has retreated to Mosul, the largest Sunni Arab city and the third largest in Iraq.

  This is probably over-simple.

  Attacks on US troops in Anbar province have restarted and in Sunni districts of west Baghdad al-Qa'ida appears to be lying low rather than being eliminated. In many cases in Baghdad al-Sahwa, the supposedly anti-al-Qa'ida awakening councils paid by the Americans, in practice have cosy arrangements with al-Qa'ida.

  I had decided to go to Mosul - arriving in the first hours of the government offensive - because of what proved to be a false report that the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, had been captured in the city.

  Later Iraqi security officers said they captured many "Emirs", al- Qa'ida cell leaders, and targeted hundreds of suspected houses.

  I was in Mosul on the day it was surrendered by Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003. Scenes of joy were succeeded within the space of a few hours by looting and gun battles between Arabs and Kurds. Five years later Mosul, one of the great cities of the world, looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls. The fact that the government has to empty the streets of Mosul of its people to establish peace for a few days shows how far the city is from genuine peace.

  Thursday, 5 June 2008

  SECRET DEAL FOR PERMANENT US OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

  A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

  The te
rms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

  But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.

  But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

  The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq - a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

  America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 - 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq.

  American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

  The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.