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15 May 2003
MASS GRAVES
How The US And Britain Are Betraying the Iraqi People
WAR PLAN IRAQ Update Number 22 |
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A NEW JUSTIFICATION FOR WAR? A NEW
LIE
No evidence has yet been discovered that Iraq possessed weapons
of mass destruction. The US and UK are therefore seeking new political
cover for their illegal, unnecessary and immoral war. Before the
war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, ‘The ending
of this [Iraqi] regime would be the cause of regret for no one
other than Saddam Hussein.. But our purpose is disarmament.’
(24 Sept. 2002, quoted in FT, 15 May 2003, p. 3) Now
Mr Blair says, ‘I hope that for those people who had some
doubt about the wisdom of removing Saddam Hussein, the reports
of mass graves are an indication of how brutal, tyrannical and
appalling that regime was, and what a blessing it is for the Iraqi
people and for humankind that he has gone from power.’ (Times,
15 May 2003, p. 19)
REGIME CHANGE WAS THE ANTI-WAR POSITION
Contrary to Mr Blair’s smears, the authentic anti-war movement
never had any ‘doubts’ about the wisdom of removing
Saddam Hussein and his brutal regime. In their statement of Sept.
2002, one hundred Iraqi anti-war exiles said, ‘We are told
a war on Iraq is needed to pre-empt a threat to the region and
to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussain’s tyranny.
We as Iraqis already free from that tyranny, living outside Iraq
and in the western democracies, say that both these claims are
false.’
The Iraqi exiles denounced the crimes of the regime, but said,
‘the remedy must not cause greater damage to the innocent
and to society at large’: ‘Real change can only be
brought about by the Iraqi people themselves within an environment
of peace and justice for all the peoples of the Middle East.’
(letter, Guardian, 5 Sept. 2002) They called for the
lifting of the economic sanctions which had had ‘catastrophic’
effects on millions of ordinary families in Iraq.
The anti-war movement had no illusions about the nature of the
Iraqi dictatorship. But the authentic anti-war movement recognised
that the United States and Britain had no real concern for the
Iraqi people, and that the “liberation” they were
promising was a cynical sham. At the heart of the anti-war movement
was the anti-sanctions movement—a movement which knew that
the most democratising force that could be let loose in Iraq was
the lifting of economic sanctions. Lifting economic sanctions,
as supported former UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq Denis
Halliday and Hans von Sponeck (who resigned from their posts in
protest against the sanctions) would have vastly improved public
health AND empowered the Iraqi people to enable them to seek social
change. We supported regime change through peaceful means.
LEADERSHIP CHANGE, REGIME STABILISATION
Washington and London are not interested in empowering the Iraqi
people. They are actually empowering the oppressors of the Iraqi
people. Hence these headlines: ‘Concerns grow as Ba’ath
old guard takes reins of power’ (Telegraph, 7 May,
p. 11), ‘British spark protests by reappointing Ba’athists’
(Telegraph, 18 Apr., p. 13) and ‘Shia clerics urge
faithful to attack returning Ba’athists’ (FT, 10 May,
p. 6).
The ‘After Saddam’ section of BBC News Online
has a corner entitled ‘BAATHIST COMEBACK’: ‘in
many cities former Baath Party officials are taking leading roles
in the administration the US and British forces are attempting
to establish. It is mainly the middle and lower ranks of officials
that are taking up where they left off under the old regime, but
there are reports that senior bureaucrats and ministers at the
oil and health ministries have been offered their jobs back by
the US military.’ (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/> search
‘After Saddam’)
SADDAM’S POLICE BACK ON THE
STREETS
Thousands of Ba’athist police officers have been re-hired
by the US and UK. Sergeant Euan Andrews of the 7th Parachute Regiment
of the Royal Horse Artillery summed up the brotherly atmosphere
by swinging his arm around an Iraqi by his side outside the freshly
painted Basra police station: ‘Ahmed, beaming in a baseball
cap emblazoned with the words “City of Basra police”
in Arabic, and holding a truncheon, punches his new friend in
playful cameraderie. “A month ago we were shooting at each
other,” says Euan, “now we are on the same side”.’
(Sunday Telegraph, 4 May, p. 17) Is this the side of
the Iraqi people?
Sgt Andrews was not with 40 Commando Royal Marines in Abu Al Khasib,
a suburb of Basra, when they entered the police station on 1 Apr.
to discover a row of torture cells: ‘In one, a meat hook
hung from the ceiling, in another a thick line of hose pipe sat
on the floor, with no water taps for it to attach to anywhere
in sight.’ It became abundantly clear that ‘the building
in this captured suburb of Basra was, in fact, a house of torture
used to inflict pain and suffering on possibly hundreds of civilians.’
The soldiers also found car tyres and a live electric lead in
another room, used for electrocution, and a pile of ID cards of
the ‘disappeared’.
Later an Iraqi told the troops that the secret police, the Mukhabarat,
also worked in the building. Corporal Dominic Conway remarked,
‘They weren’t policemen in there, not like we understand
the term. They weren’t even animals because animals aren’t
that cruel.’ (Mirror, 2 Apr., p. 8) A few weeks
later, Basra’s ‘policemen’ would be back on
the streets, on the British payroll, exchanging cigarettes and
friendly punches with British squaddies.
Only one newspaper seems to have reported that Zuhair al-Nuaimi,
who was appointed interim head of the Baghdad police, and who
then resigned, was ‘a former army general and interior ministry
official’ under Saddam. (FT, 5 May, p. 1)
The courts re-opened in Baghdad on 8 May. Clint Williamson, US
adviser to justice ministry said all Iraqi laws would apply except
certain laws from the Ba’ath era. Saddam’s judges
have been re-appointed. (Guardian, 9 May, p. 14)
INTERIM BA’ATHIST RULE
‘British forces struggling to assemble an interim authority
in Iraq’s second city, Basra, are facing criticism for re-appointing
officials from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. At an
inaugural city council meeting, half of the dozen members on show
were said to have held prominent places in the fallen regime.
One of them, Ghalib Cubba, a rich businessman known in Basra as
“Saddam’s banker”, once held soirees at which
the leader known as Chemical Ali was a regular guest. Others included
the imam of Saddam’s mosque and a university lecturer who
had a reputation for converting students to the Ba’ath cause.’
Brigadier Graham Binns, head of 7th Armoured Brigade, said he
had spent time with each council member, adding: ‘I feel
confident they are acting as a force for good. Anyone with influence
was a member of the Ba’ath Party.’ (Telegraph,
18 Apr., p. 13) Just as influential people had to join the Party
in Germany in 1945.
The make-up of the Basra interim advisory council was ‘carefully
withheld from the public’ in mid-April. When told by a reporter,
Mohammed al-Shatti, a Basra language teacher said, ‘There
will be great anger among the people when they find out who these
men are.’ (Telegraph, 18 Apr., p. 13)
SADDAM’S OFFICIALS RESTORED
‘Dr Ali Shenan [Janabi], the new man in charge [of the Ministry
of Health] is not likely to change much... He admits that he is
a former Ba’ath party member... “I did believe in
the party, but that did not affect my work.” ’ (Telegraph,
7 May, p. 11) When Dr Janabi, ‘the former number three in
Saddam’s famously corrupt [Health] Ministry was presented
to an all-day conference of doctors’, ‘His appointment
[by the US to the position of interim Health Minister] was greeted
with disbelief and charges of corruption from many doctors.’
(Observer, 11 May, p. 2)
Haider Mnather is a playwright who was carted off to jail and
intimidated for turning out plays considered disrespectful of
Saddam. ‘Imagine then his horror on discovering that the
Americans were offering the job of cultural overlord in the new
Iraqi administration to the man who had held it before, a figure
despised by Baghdad’s artists’: Louai Haki, ‘who
harnessed artistic output for the glorification of the dictator...
[was] known as Saddam’s favourite poet, [he] said the Americans
had been very “polite” in asking him to resume work
as director-general of Iraqi cinema and theatre.’ (Sunday
Times, 4 May, p. 25)
‘The American-led reconstruction body for Iraq has named
a senior Iraqi technocrat to run the country’s vital oil
industry amid growing unease at the number of former officials
of the Baathist regime securing key posts in the post-war administration.’
(Independent, 5 May, p. 10)
Senior US sources at Jay Garner’s Office of Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance have ‘proclaimed their success
in developing agreements with leading officials just below ministerial
rank in several pre-existing government departments.’ The
regime is being rebuilt. (Independent, 5 May, p. 10)
OUR SOLIDARITY IS NEEDED
Hussein Rabia was shot and dumped in a mass grave outside Najaf
in March 1991, as Saddam’s military forces killed Shias
indiscriminately—under the gaze of US forces. He survived.
‘Although this area is nominally under the control of US
Marines, there was still fear on his face. He said that there
were many Baathists still walking freely in Iraq, who had to be
stopped from ever returning to power. Above all, he wanted those
responsible for the mass killings to be brought to court.’
(Times, 6 May, p. 15)
Mr Blair invokes the mass graves to justify his bloody war, but
the men who were part of the mass grave machine, who staffed the
torture shops, who persecuted dissident playwrights, who kept
the fascist ministries running, are being restored to power by
Mr Blair and Mr Bush. This is not liberation. This is
regime restoration. ARROW has always warned that the
US wanted ‘leadership change, regime stabilisation’,
‘Saddamism without Saddam’, not real change.
The Iraqi people need our active solidarity to help stop this
obscenity. They are already having some successes: former Iraqi
brigadier Sheikh Muzahim Mustafa Kana al-Tamimi, appointed head
of the interim Basra administration, was ‘quietly dropped
from the line-up’ because of popular protests. (Telegraph,
18 Apr., p. 13) Doctors in Basra have ‘successfully revolted
against attempts to restore local medical administrators from
the former regime to their previous jobs.’ (Independent,
5 May, p. 10) We owe Hussein Rabia and the relatives of
those killed in the mass graves our solidarity. Stop the Bush/Blair
re-nazification of Iraq.
BOOK
War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Why We Shouldn't Launch Another War
Against Iraq
by Milan Rai
Published by Verson, 2002
'An excellent weapon for all those opposed to Bush's war'. Tariq
Ali
'Excellent'. Alice Mahon MP
'Required reading for anyone concerned about the risk of war'.
Professor Paul Rogers, Bradford School of Peace Studies
'Timely and important'. Hilary Wainwright
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