[Peace-discuss] iny in Iraq

[C. G. Estabrook]

[At last night's meeting Susan Davis mentioned Naomi Klein's excellent
piece in the May 17 issue of The Nation. (Yes, The Nation.) Here it is.
--CGE]

	Mutiny in Iraq
	by Naomi Klein
 
Can we please stop calling it a quagmire? The United States isn't mired in
a bog or a marsh in Iraq (quagmire's literal meaning); it is free-falling
off a cliff. The only question now is: Who will follow the Bush clan off
this precipice, and who will refuse to jump?

More and more are, thankfully, choosing the second option. The last month
of inflammatory US aggression in Iraq has inspired what can only be
described as a mutiny: Waves of soldiers, workers and politicians under
the command of the US occupation authority are suddenly refusing to follow
orders and abandoning their posts. First Spain announced it would withdraw
its troops, then Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan.
South Korean and Bulgarian troops were pulled back to their bases, while
New Zealand is withdrawing its engineers. El Salvador, Norway, the
Netherlands and Thailand will likely be next.

And then there are the mutinous members of the US-controlled Iraqi army.
Since the latest wave of fighting began, they've been donating their
weapons to resistance fighters in the South and refusing to fight in
Falluja, saying that they didn't join the army to kill other Iraqis. By
late April, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored
Division, was reporting that "about 40 percent [of Iraqi security
officers] walked off the job because of intimidation. And about 10 percent
actually worked against us."

And it's not just Iraq's soldiers who have been deserting the occupation.
Four ministers of the Iraqi Governing Council have resigned their posts in
protest. Half the Iraqis with jobs in the secured "green zone"--as
translators, drivers, cleaners--are not showing up for work. And that's
better than a couple of weeks ago, when 75 percent of Iraqis employed by
the US occupation authority stayed home (that staggering figure comes from
Adm. David Nash, who oversees the awarding of reconstruction contracts).

Minor mutinous signs are emerging even within the ranks of the US
military: Privates Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey have applied for
refugee status in Canada as conscientious objectors and Staff Sgt. Camilo
Mejia is facing court martial after he refused to return to Iraq on the
grounds that he no longer knew what the war was about [see Christian
Parenti, "A Deserter Speaks," at www.thenation.com].

Rebelling against the US authority in Iraq is not treachery, nor is it
giving "false comfort to terrorists," as George W. Bush recently cautioned
Spain's new prime minister. It is an entirely rational and principled
response to policies that have put everyone living and working under US
command in grave and unacceptable danger. This is a view shared by
fifty-two former British diplomats, who recently sent a letter to Prime
Minister Tony Blair stating that although they endorsed his attempts to
influence US Middle East policy, "there is no case for supporting policies
which are doomed to failure."

And one year in, the US occupation of Iraq does appear doomed on all
fronts: political, economic and military. On the political front, the idea
that the United States could bring genuine democracy to Iraq is now
irredeemably discredited: Too many relatives of Iraqi Governing Council
members have landed plum jobs and rigged contracts, too many groups
demanding direct elections have been suppressed, too many newspapers have
been closed down and too many Arab journalists have been murdered while
trying to do their job. The most recent casualties were two employees of
Al Iraqiya television, shot dead by US soldiers while filming a checkpoint
in Samarra. Ironically, Al Iraqiya is the US-controlled propaganda network
that was supposed to weaken the power of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, both
of which have also lost reporters to US guns and rockets over the past
year.

White House plans to turn Iraq into a model free-market economy are in
equally rough shape, plagued by corruption scandals and the rage of Iraqis
who have seen few benefits--either in services or jobs--from the
reconstruction. Corporate trade shows have been canceled across Iraq,
investors are relocating to Amman and Iraq's housing minister estimates
that more than 1,500 foreign contractors have fled the country. Bechtel,
meanwhile, admits that it can no longer operate "in the hot spots" (there
are precious few cold ones), truck drivers are afraid to travel the roads
with valuable goods and General Electric has suspended work on key power
stations. The timing couldn't be worse: Summer heat is coming and demand
for electricity is about to soar.

As this predictable (and predicted) disaster unfolds, many are turning to
the United Nations for help: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on the
UN to support his demand for direct elections back in January. More
recently, he has called on the UN to refuse to ratify the despised interim
constitution, which most Iraqis see as a US attempt to continue to control
Iraq's future long after the June 30 "handover" by, among other measures,
giving sweeping veto powers to the Kurds--the only remaining US ally.
Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, before pulling out
his troops, asked the UN to take over the mission from the United States.
Even Muqtada al-Sadr, the "outlaw" Shiite cleric, is calling on the UN to
prevent a bloodbath in Najaf. On April 18, Sadr's spokesman, Qais
al-Khazaali, told Bulgarian television it is "in the interest of the whole
world to send peacekeeping forces under the UN flag."

And what has been the UN's response? Worse than silence, it has sided with
Washington on all of these critical questions, dashing hopes that it could
provide a genuine alternative to the lawlessness and brutality of the US
occupation. First it refused to back the call for direct elections, citing
security concerns. In retrospect, supporting the call back then might have
avoided much of the violence now engulfing the country. After all, the
UN's response weakened the more moderate Sistani and strengthened Muqtada
al-Sadr, whose supporters continued demanding direct elections and
launched a vocal campaign against the US transition plan and the interim
constitution. This is what prompted US chief envoy Paul Bremer to decide
to take Sadr out, the provocation that sparked the Shiite uprising.

The UN has proved equally deaf to calls to replace the US military
occupation with a peacekeeping operation. On the contrary, it has made it
clear that it will only re-enter Iraq if it is the United States that
guarantees the safety of its staff--seemingly oblivious to the fact that
being surrounded by American bodyguards is the best way to make sure that
the UN will be targeted. "We have an obligation since [the attack on UN
headquarters] last summer to insist on clarity and on what is being asked
of us," Edward Mortimer, a senior aide to Secretary General Kofi Annan,
told the New York Times. "What are the risks? What kind of guarantees can
you give us that we are not going to be blown up? And is the job important
enough to justify the risk?"

Even in light of that horrific bombing, this is a stunning series of
questions coming from a UN official. Do Iraqis have guarantees that they
won't be blown up when they go to the market in Sadr City, when their
children get on the school bus in Basra, when they send their injured to a
hospital in Falluja? Is there a more important job for the future of
global security than peacemaking in Iraq?

The UN's greatest betrayal of all comes in the way it is re-entering Iraq:
not as an independent broker but as a glorified US subcontractor, the
political arm of the continued US occupation. The post-June 30 caretaker
government being set up by UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will be subject to all
the restraints on Iraqi sovereignty that sparked the current uprising in
the first place. The United States will maintain full control over
"security" in Iraq, including over Iraq's army. It will keep control over
the reconstruction funds. And, worst of all, the caretaker government will
be subject to the laws laid out in the interim constitution, including the
clause that states that it must enforce the orders written by the US
occupiers. The UN should be defending Iraq against this illegal attempt to
undermine its independence. Instead it is disgracefully helping Washington
to convince the world that a country under continued military occupation
by a foreign power is actually sovereign.

Iraq badly needs the UN as a clear, independent voice in the region. The
people are calling out for it, begging the international body to live up
to its mandate as peacemaker and truth teller. And yet just when it is
needed most, the UN is at its most compromised and cowardly.

There is a way that the UN can redeem itself in Iraq. It could choose to
join the mutiny, further isolating the United States. This would help
force Washington to hand over real power--ultimately to Iraqis but first
to a multilateral coalition that did not participate in the invasion and
occupation and would have the credibility to oversee direct elections.
This could work, but only through a process that fiercely protects Iraq's
sovereignty. That means:

Ditch the Interim Constitution. The interim constitution is so widely
hated in Iraq that any governing body bound by its rules will immediately
be seen as illegitimate. Some argue that Iraq needs the interim
constitution to prevent open elections from delivering the country to
religious extremists. Yet according to a February 2004 poll by Oxford
Research International, Iraqis have no desire to see their country turned
into another Iran. Asked to rate their favored political system and
actors, 48.5 percent of Iraqis ranked a "democracy" as most important,
while an "Islamic state" received 20.5 percent support. Asked what type of
politician they favored, 55.3 percent chose "democrats," while only 13.7
percent chose religious politicians. If Iraqis are given the chance to
vote their will, there is every reason to expect that the results will
reflect a balance between their faith and their secular aspirations.

There are also ways to protect women and minority rights without forcing
Iraq to accept a sweeping constitution written under foreign occupation.
The simplest solution would be to revive passages in Iraq's 1970
Provisional Constitution, which, according to Human Rights Watch,
"formally guaranteed equal rights to women and...specifically ensured
their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own
property." Elsewhere, the constitution enshrined religious freedom, civil
liberties and the right to form unions. These clauses can easily be
salvaged, while striking the parts of the document designed to entrench
Baathist rule.

Put the Money in Trust. A crucial plank of managing Iraq's transition to
sovereignty is safeguarding its national assets: its oil revenue and the
remaining oil-for-food program money (currently administered by the United
States with no oversight), as well as what's left of the $18.4 billion in
reconstruction funds. Right now the United States is planning to keep
control of this money long after June 30; the UN should insist that it be
put in trust, to be spent by an elected Iraqi government.

De-Chalabify Iraq. The United States has so far been unable to install
Ahmad Chalabi as the next leader of Iraq--his history of corruption and
lack of a political base have seen to that. Yet members of the Chalabi
family have quietly been given control in every area of political,
economic and judicial life. It was a two-stage process. First, as head of
the De-Baathification Commission, Chalabi purged his rivals from power.
Then, as director of the Governing Council's Economic and Finance
Committee, he installed his friends and allies in the key posts of Oil
Minister, Finance Minister, Trade Minister, Governor of the Central Bank
and so on. Now Chalabi's nephew, Salem Chalabi, has been appointed by the
United States to head the court trying Saddam Hussein. And a company with
close ties to Chalabi landed the contract to guard Iraq's oil
infrastructure--essentially a license to build a private army.

It's not enough to keep Chalabi out of the interim government. The UN must
dismantle Chalabi's shadow state by launching a de-Chalabification process
on a par with the now abandoned de-Baathification process.

Demand the Withdrawal of US Troops. In asking the United States to serve
as its bodyguard as a condition of re-entering Iraq, the UN has it exactly
backwards: It should only go in if the United States pulls out. Troops who
participated in the invasion and occupation should be replaced with
peacekeepers--preferably from neighboring Arab states--working under the
extremely limited mandate of securing the country for general elections.
With the United States out, there is a solid chance that countries that
opposed the war would step forward for the job.

On April 25 the New York Times editorial board called for the opposite
approach, arguing that only a major infusion of American troops and "a
real long-term increase in the force in Iraq" could bring security. But
these troops, if they arrive, will provide security to no one--not to the
Iraqis, not to their fellow soldiers, not to the UN. American soldiers
have become a direct provocation to more violence, not only because of the
brutality of the occupation in Iraq but also because of US support for
Israel's deadly occupation of Palestinian territory. In the minds of many
Iraqis, the two occupations have blended into a single anti-Arab outrage,
with Israeli and US soldiers viewed as interchangeable and Iraqis openly
identifying with Palestinians.

Without US troops, the major incitement to violence would be removed,
allowing the country to be stabilized with far fewer soldiers and far less
force. Iraq would still face security challenges--there would still be
extremists willing to die to impose Islamic law as well as attempts by
Saddam loyalists to regain power. On the other hand, with Sunnis and
Shiites now so united against the occupation, it's the best possible
moment for an honest broker to negotiate an equitable power-sharing
agreement.

Some will argue that the United States is too strong to be forced out of
Iraq. But from the start Bush needed multilateral cover for this
war--that's why he formed the "coalition of the willing," and it's why he
is going to the UN now. Imagine what could happen if countries keep
pulling out of the coalition, if France and Germany refuse to recognize an
occupied Iraq as a sovereign nation. Imagine if the UN decided not to ride
to Washington's rescue. It would become an occupation of one.

The invasion of Iraq began with a call to mutiny--a call made by the
United States. In the weeks leading up to last year's invasion, US Central
Command bombarded Iraqi military and political officials with phone calls
and e-mails urging them to defect from Saddam's ranks. Fighter planes
dropped 8 million leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers to abandon their posts
and assuring that no harm would come to them.

Of course, these soldiers were promptly fired when Paul Bremer took over
and are now being frantically rehired as part of the reversal of the
de-Baathification policy. It's just one more example of lethal
incompetence that should lead all remaining supporters of US policy in
Iraq to one inescapable conclusion: It's time for a mutiny.

Naomi Klein is the author of 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'
(Picador) and, most recently,' Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the
Front Lines of the Globalization Debate'

Copyright © 2004 The Nation

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