Iraq 'will not be pawns' in U.S./UK game

[John M Cox <coxj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Iraqis will not be pawns in Bush and Blair's war game

An American attack on my country would bring disaster, not liberation
Kamil Mahdi

Thursday February 20, 2003
The Guardian

Having failed to convince the British people that war is justified, Tony
Blair is now invoking the suffering of the Iraqi people to justify bombing
them. He tells us there will be innocent civilian casualties, but that
more will die if he and Bush do not go to war. Which dossier is he reading
from?...

It is now the vogue to talk down Iraqi politics under Saddam
Hussain as
nothing but the whim of a dictator. The fact is that leaders cannot kill
politics in the minds of people, nor can they crush their aspirations. The
massacres of leftists when the Ba'athists first came to power in 1963 did
not prevent the emergence of a new mass movement in the mid-1960s. The
second Ba'ath regime attempted to buy time from the Kurdish movement in
1970 only to trigger a united mobilisation of Kurdish nationalism. Saddam
co-opted the Communist party in the early 1970s only to see that party's
organisation grow under a very narrow margin of legality before he moved
against it. In the 1970s, the regime tried to control private economic
activity by extending the state to every corner of the economy, only to
face an explosion of small business activity.

The regime's strict secularism produced a clerical opposition with a mass
following. When the regime pressurised Iraqis to join the Ba'ath party,
independent opinion emerged within that party and Saddam found it
necessary to crush it and destroy the party in the process. In the 1980s,
the army was beginning to emerge as a threat, and the 1991 uprising showed
the extent of discontent. In the 1990s, Saddam fostered the religious
leadership of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, only to see the latter
emerge as a focal point for opposition. Even within Saddam's family and
close circle, there has been opposition.

Of course Saddam Hussain crushed all these challenges, but in every case
the regional and international environment has supported the dictator
against the people of Iraq. It is cynical and deceitful of Tony Blair to
pretend that he understands Iraqi politics and has a meaningful programme
for the country. Iraq's history is one of popular struggle and also of
imperial greed, superpower rivalries and regional conflict. To reduce the
whole of Iraqi politics and social life to the whims of Saddam Hussain is
banal and insulting....

The Bush administration has enlisted a number of Iraqi exiles to provide
an excuse for invasion and a political cover for the control of Iraq.
People like Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya have little credibility among
Iraqis and they have a career interest in a US invasion. At the same time,
the main forces of Kurdish nationalism, by disengaging from Iraqi politics
and engaging in internecine conflict, have become highly dependent upon US
protection and are not in a position to object to a US military onslaught.
The US may enlist domestic and regional partners with varying degrees of
pressure.

This in no way bestows legitimacy on its objectives and methods, and its
policies are rejected by most Iraqis and others in the region. Indeed, the
main historical opposition to the Ba'ath regime - including various
strands of the left, the Arab nationalist parties, the Communist party,
the Islamic Da'wa party, the Islamic party (the Muslim Brotherhood) and
others - has rejected war and US patronage over Iraqi politics. The
prevalent Iraqi opinion is that a US attack on Iraq would be a disaster,
not a liberation, and Blair's belated concern for Iraqis is unwelcome.

Kamil Mahdi is an Iraqi political exile and lecturer in Middle East
economics at the University of Exeter
full:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,899082,00.html

John Cox
Chapel Hill, NC

This Week in History:
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