Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation enjoys great popular support

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation enjoys great popular support

Sami Ramadani
Saturday September 27, 2003
The Guardian

(Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam's regime and is a senior
lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University)

It was my first and brutally abrupt realisation that Baghdad, the city of
my childhood, is now occupied territory. It was also my first encounter
with a potent symbol of Iraqi hostility to the occupation forces. Sitting
in the front seat of the taxi that brought us from Amman, I suddenly
realised that a heavy machine gun was pointing at us from only a few metres
away. It was an American soldier aboard an armoured vehicle in front of us,
stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts of Baghdad. He gestured
disapprovingly towards our driver for approaching with some speed, then
looked to his left and angrily stuck out a middle finger. I followed his
gaze and there was a child of no more than eight or nine sitting in a chair
in front of the open gates leading to the garden of his house. He was
shouting angrily, with a clenched fist of defiance, cutting the air with
swift and furious right hooks.
Two weeks later, and after talking to scores of people and touring much of
Baghdad, it dawned on me that that child's rebellious, free spirit was a
moving and powerful symbol of how most people in Baghdad felt towards the
occupation forces. It is precisely this indomitable spirit which survived
the decades of Saddam's brutal regime, the numerous wars and the murderous
13 years of sanctions. And it is precisely this spirit that Bush and Blair
did not take on board when they decided to invade and occupy Iraq. They
chose instead to listen to the echo of their own voices bouncing back at
them from some of the Iraqi opposition groups, nurtured, financed and
trained by the Pentagon and the CIA. Some of these Iraqi voices are now
members of the US-appointed Iraqi governing council.

A recent report in the Washington Post backs up the rumours I heard in
Baghdad that the Iraqi resistance to occupation is so strong that the
authorities are now actively recruiting some of the brutal officers of the
security and armed forces that Saddam himself used to suppress the people.
If true, the US administration, in the name of fighting the so-called
remnants of Saddam's regime, is now busy trying to rebuild the shattered
edifice of Saddam's tyrannical state - a tyranny which they had backed and
armed with WMD for many years. One of the popular sayings I repeatedly
heard in Baghdad, describing the relations between the US and Saddam's
regime, is "Rah el sani', ija el ussta" - "gone is the apprentice, in comes
the master."

The governing council is not so much hated as ridiculed, and attacked for
having its members chosen along sectarian lines. Most of the people I
talked to think that it is a powerless body: it has no army, no police, and
no national budget, but boasts nine rotating presidents. One of the jokes
circulating in Baghdad was that no sooner had you brought down Saddam's
picture than you were being asked to pin up nine new ones.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1050760,00.html


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


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