[Marxism] "Why does Washington keep threatening Iraq with civil war?"January 12, 2005

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

January 12, 2005

The City Where Even Police Hide Behind Masks
Fear Stalks Baghdad
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent

Journalism yields a world of clichés but here, for once, the first
cliché that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful
Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful
journalists.

That day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, 30
January, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday.
The latest Zarqawi video shows the killing of six Iraqi policemen. Each
is shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then
a gunman walks up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets.
These images haunt everyone. 

At the al-Hurriya intersection yesterday morning, four truckloads of
Iraqi national guardsmen--the future saviours of Iraq, according to
George Bush--are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills,
pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army
pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing
masks--black hoods or ski-masks or keffiyahs that leave only slits for
frightened eyes. Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the
insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of
Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital.

At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees
approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers
to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each vehicle
says: "Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 metres away from
it."

The drivers behind obey; they know the meaning of the "deadly force"
which the Americans have written on to their checkpoint signs. But the
two Humvees drive into a massive traffic jam, the gunners now screaming
at us to move back.

When a taxi which does not notice that US troops block their path, the
American in the lead vehicle hurls a plastic bottle full of water on to
its roof and the driver mounts the grass traffic circle. A truck
receives the same treatment from the lead Humvee. "Go back," shouts the
rear gunner, staring at us through shades. We try desperately to turn
into the jam.

Yes, the Russians would probably have chucked hand grenades in Kabul.
But here were the terrified "liberators" of Baghdad throwing bottles of
water at the Iraqis who are supposed to enjoy an American-imposed
democracy on 30 January.

The rear Humvee has "Specialist Carrol" written on the windscreen.
Specialist Carrol, I am sure, regards every damn one of us as a
potential suicide bomber--and I can't blame him. One such bomber had
just driven up to the police station in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and
destroyed himself and the lives of at least six policemen.

Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are
fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers
refusing to queue any longer for the one thing which Iraq possesses in
Croesus-like amounts--petrol.

I drop by the Ramaya restaurant for lunch. Closed. They are building a
20-floor security wall around the premises. So I drive to the Rif for a
pizza, occasionally tinkling the restaurant's piano while I watch the
entrance for people I don't want to see. The waiters are nervous. They
are happy to bring my pizza in 10 minutes. There is no one else in the
restaurant, you see, and they watch the road outside like friendly
rabbits. They are waiting for The Car.

I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine
during Saddam's reign. "They want me to vote, but they can't protect
me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling
station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand-grenade in my
home three days' later? The Americans will say they did their best;
Allawi's people will say I am a 'martyr for democracy'. So, do you think
I'm going to vote?"

At Mustansiriya University--one of Iraq's best--students of English
literature are to face their end-of-term exam. January marks the end of
the Iraqi semester. But one of the students tells me that his fellow
students had told their teacher that--so fraught are the times--they
were not yet prepared for the examination. Rather than giving them all
zeros, the teacher meekly postpones the exam.

I drive back through the al-Hurriya intersection beside the "Green Zone"
and suddenly there is a big black 4x4, filled with ski-masked gunmen.
"Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut across the
median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4x4 whacks open. A
ski-masked Westerner--blond hair, blue eyes--is pointing a Kalashnikov
at my car. "Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly Arabic. Then he clears the
median, followed by three armoured pick-ups, windows blacked, tyres
skidding on the road surface, carrying the sacred Westerners inside to
the dubious safety of the "Green Zone", the hermetically-sealed compound
from which Iraq is supposedly governed. I glance at the Iraqi press.
Colin Powell is warning of "civil war" in Iraq. Why do we Westerners
keep threatening civil war in a country whose society is tribal rather
than sectarian? Of all papers, it is the Kurdish Al Takhri, loyal to
Mustafa Barzani, which asks the same question. "There has never been a
civil war in Iraq," the editorial thunders. And it is right.

So, "full ahead both" for the dreaded 30 January elections and
democracy. The American generals--with a unique mixture of mendacity and
hope amid the insurgency--are now saying that only four of Iraq's 18
provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections.

Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and
realise--as the generals all know--that those four provinces contain
more than half of the population of Iraq. 

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. 


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