[Peace-discuss] News notes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I'm pleased and appalled this morning to find what I was trying to say in
the news notes at last night's meeting, said better and from the scene by
the redoubtable Naomi Klein.  The only thing I'd add is that the
Americans seem to have involved the Spaniards -- apparently cynically and
manipulatively -- in the arrest of the Sadr aide, and several died.  Take
that, Mr. Zapatero.  --CGE]

	Published on Monday, April 5, 2004 by the Globe and Mail / Canada
	The U.S. is Sabotaging Stability in Iraq
	by Naomi Klein
 
BAGHDAD -- I heard the sound of freedom yesterday in Baghdad's Firdos
Square, the famous plaza where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled
one year ago. It sounds like machine-gun fire.

On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers, trained and controlled by coalition forces,
opened fire on demonstrators here, forcing the emergency evacuation of the
nearby Sheraton and Palestine hotels. As demonstrators returned to their
homes in the poor neighborhood of Sadr City, the U.S. army followed with
tanks and helicopters. As night fell, there were unconfirmed reports of
dozens of casualties. In Najaf, the day was equally bloody: 19
demonstrators dead, more than 150 injured.

But make no mistake: This is not the "civil war" that Washington has been
predicting will break out between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Rather, it is
a war provoked by the U.S. occupation authority and waged by its forces
against the growing number of Shiites who support Muqtada al-Sadr.

Mr. al-Sadr is the younger, more radical rival of the Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, portrayed by his adoring supporters as a kind of cross between
Ayatollah Khomaini and Che Guevara. He blames the U.S. for attacks on
civilians, compares U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer to Saddam Hussein,
aligns himself with Hamas and Hezbollah and has called for a jihad against
the controversial interim constitution. His Iraq might look a lot like
Iran.

And it's a message with a market. With Ayatollah al-Sistani concentrating
on lobbying the United Nations rather than on confronting the U.S.-led
occupation in the streets, many Shiites are growing restless, and are
turning to the more militant tactics preached by Mr. al-Sadr. Some have
joined the Mahdi, Muqtada's black-clad army, which claims hundreds of
thousands of members.

At first, Mr. Bremer responded to Mr. al-Sadr's growing strength by
ignoring him; now he is attempting to provoke him into all-out battle.

The trouble began when Mr. Bremer closed down Mr. al-Sadr's newspaper last
week, sparking a wave of peaceful demonstrations. On Saturday, Mr. Bremer
raised the stakes further by sending coalition forces to surround Mr.
al-Sadr's house near Najaf and arrest his communications officer.

Predictably, the arrest sparked immediate demonstrations in Baghdad, which
the Iraqi army responded to by opening fire and allegedly killing three
people. It was these deaths that provoked yesterday's bloody
demonstrations.

At the end of the day on Sunday, Mr. al-Sadr issued a statement calling on
his supporters to stop staging demonstrations "because your enemy prefers
terrorism and detests that way of expressing opinion" and instead urged
them to employ unnamed "other ways" to resist the occupation, a statement
many interpret as a call to arms.

On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called
Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Fallujah attacks, why is Mr.
Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle? Here's one
possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power
to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is now creating the chaos
it needs to declare the handover impossible.

A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign
trail, but not as bad as if the handover happens and the country erupts,
an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the
legitimacy of the interim constitution and the U.S.-appointed government.

It's a plan that might make sense in meetings in Washington, but here in
Baghdad it looks like pure madness. By sending the new Iraqi army to fire
on the people it is supposed to be protecting, Mr. Bremer has destroyed
what slim hope it had of gaining credibility with an already highly
mistrustful population. On Sunday, before storming the unarmed
demonstrators, the soldiers could be seen pulling on ski masks, so they
wouldn't be recognized when they returned to their neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Mr. al-Sadr is having his hero status amplified by the hour.

Yesterday afternoon, thousands of demonstrators filled Firdos Square. On
one side of the plaza, a couple of kids climbed to the top of a building
and took a knife to a billboard advertising Iraq's new army. On the other
side, U.S. forces pointed tanks at the crowd while a loudspeaker told them
that "demonstrations are an important part of democracy, but blocking
traffic will not be permitted."

At the front of the square was the new statue that the Americans put in
place of the toppled one of Mr. Hussein. The faceless figures of the new
statue are supposed to represent the liberation of the Iraqi people. Today
they are plastered with photographs of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Naomi Klein is the author of 'No Logo' and 'Fences and Windows'.

© Copyright 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc

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