[Peace] Civil war in Iraq?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[This interview with the dean of British reporters in the
Middle East takes up a question that we discussed at last
Sunday's meeting: Who's promoting civil war in Iraq? --CGE]


  Robert Fisk shares his Middle East knowledge
  Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Well, Robert Fisk is one of the most experienced
observers of the Middle East and in his latest book, 'The
Great War for Civilisation - the Conquest of the Middle East',
he draws on almost 30 years of reporting from his base in
Lebanon to look at the forces which have shaped current events
and conflicts Robert Fisk, thanks for being there.

ROBERT FISK, WRITER & JOURNALIST: You're welcome.

TONY JONES: Now, unless you've changed your position in recent
days, the one thing that you and President Bush agree on is
there's not going to be a civil war in Iraq.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I listened to Bush. It made me doubt myself
when I heard him say that. I still go along and say what I
said before - Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal
society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry
each other. It's not a question of having a huge block of
people here called Shiites and a huge block of people called
Sunnis any more than you can do the same with the United
States, saying Blacks are here and Protestants are here and so
on. But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke
a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of
militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has
been a civil war in Iraq. The real question I ask myself is:
who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war?
Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni
insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads
work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of
Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior?
Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do,
the occupation authorities. I'd like to know what the
Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to
provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don't
hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow
themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque
getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being
arrested. Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad.
Something is going wrong with the Administration. Mr Bush
says, "Oh, yes, sure, I talk to the Shiites and I talk to the
Sunnis." He's talking to a small bunch of people living behind
American machine guns inside the so-called Green Zone, the
former Republican palace of Saddam Hussein, which is
surrounded by massive concrete walls like a crusader castle.
These people do not and cannot even leave this crusader
castle. If they want to leave to the airport, they're
helicoptered to the airport. They can't even travel on the
airport road. What we've got at the moment is a little nexus
of people all of whom live under American protection and talk
on the telephone to George W Bush who says, "I've been talking
to them and they have to choose between chaos and unity."
These people can't even control the roads 50 metres from the
Green Zone in which they work.

TONY JONES: OK.

ROBERT FISK: There's total chaos now in Iraq.

TONY JONES: Let's go back, if we can, to start answering that
question about who wants civil war. Back one week to the
bombing of the golden shrine in Samarra. Now, most people do
think the only people with reasons for doing that would be the
Al Qaeda in Iraq group led by al-Zarqawi. You don't agree?

ROBERT FISK: Well, I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive. You
know, al-Zarqawi did exist before the American Anglo-American
invasion. He was up in the Kurdish area, which was not
actually properly controlled by Saddam. But after that he
seems to have disappeared. We know there's an identity card
that pops up. We know the Americans say we think we've
recognised him on a videotape. Who recognises him on a
videotape? How many Americans have ever met al-Zarqawi?
Al-Zarqawi's mother died more than 12 months ago and he didn't
even send commiserations or say "I'm sorry to hear that". His
wife of whom he was very possessive is so poor she has to go
out and work in the family town of Zarqa. Hence the name
Zarqawi. I don't know if al-Zarqawi is alive or exists at the
moment. I don't know if he isn't a sort of creature invented
in order to fill in the narrative gaps, so to speak. What is
going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious. I go
to Iraq and I can't crack this story at the moment. Some of my
colleagues are still trying to, but can't do it. It's not as
simple as it looks. I don't believe we've got all these raving
lunatics wandering around blowing up mosques. There's much
more to this than meets the eye. All of these death squads
that move around are part of the security forces. In some
cases they are Shiite security forces or clearly Sunni
security forces. When the Iraqi army go into Sunni cities they
are Shiite soldiers going in. We are not making this clear.
Iraqi troops, we've got an extra battalion. The Iraqi army is
building up. The Iraqi army is split apart. Somebody is
operating these people. I don't know who they are. It's not as
simple as we're making it out to be. What is this thing when
Bush says we have to choose between chaos and unity? Who wants
to choose chaos? Is it really the case that all of these
Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the
Iranians, Shiites and Sunnis together in the long massive
murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis -
suddenly all want to kill each other? Why because that's
something wrong with Iraqis? I don't think so. They are
intelligent, educated people. Something is going seriously
wrong in Baghdad.

TONY JONES: Can we look at one thing that might possibly be
wrong, the Sunnis feel like they are being left out of the
political equation. The Shias could end up running the
majority of the government because they are indeed in the
majority in a democracy.

ROBERT FISK: They do run the Government now. The Shiites do
run the Government.

TONY JONES: Indeed. Couldn't that precisely be one of the
reasons for the violence?

ROBERT FISK: Because the Sunnis don't have power anymore? But
we've been saying this if the start. Don't you remember that
after 2003 the Anglo-American invasion, the resistance started
against the Americans and we were told they were Saddam
remnants, 'dead-enders', that was the phrase used. Not
anymore, because there are 40,000 insurgents, but that was the
phase used at the time. They were Sunnis. They didn't like the
fact they didn't have power. Then we captured Saddam and Paul
Bremer, the number two pro-Consul in Baghdad, says, "Oh,
we've got him," and everything was going to be OK. And then
the insurgency got worse still. The reason was because people
who wanted to join the insurgency feared that if they beat him
out he might come back. Well, the moment Saddam was captured,
they knew they could join the insurgency and Saddam wouldn't
come back. I mean, there is something wrong in the narrative
sequence that we've been given. You know, the idea that the
Sunni community is suddenly sacrificing themselves en mass,
strapping explosive belts to themselves and blowing themselves
up all over Iraq because they don't have power anymore is a
very odd reflection. I think what is going on among the Sunni
community is much simpler. The Sunnis are not fighting the
Americans because they don't have power and they're not
fighting the Americans just to get them out - and they will
get them out eventually. They are fighting the Americans so
that they will say, "We have a right to power because we
fought the occupying forces and you, the Shiites, did not,"
which is why it's very important to discover now that Moqtada
al-Sadr, who has an ever-increasing power base among the
Shiite community, is himself threatening to fight the British
and Americans. Now, if the Shiites and Sunnis come together,
as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the
British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that
Iraq actually will be united.

TONY JONES: But, Robert Fisk, what's is happening now, by all
accounts and, indeed, the accounts of these Washington Post
reporters who've been into the morgue and report hundreds of
bodies of Sunnis who evidently have been garroted or
suffocated or shot, are all saying that Moqtada al-Sadr's
thugs have actually taken these people away and murdered them.
That was in revenge for the Golden Shrine bombing.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, look, in August, I went into the same
mortuary and found out that 1,000 people had died in one month
in July. And most of those people who had died were split
50/50 between the Sunnis and the Shiites, but most of them,
including women who'd been blindfolded and hands tied behind
their backs - I saw the corpses - were both Sunnis and
Shiites. Now, I'm not complaining that the Washington Post got
it wrong - I'm sure there are massacres going on by Shiites -
but I think they are going on by militias on both sides. What
I'd like to know is who is running the Interior Ministry? Who
is paying the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the gunmen who
work for the Interior Ministry? I go into the Interior
Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men
wearing black leather. Who is paying these guys? Well, we are,
of course. The money isn't falling out of the sky. It's coming
from the occupation powers and Iraq's Government, which we
effectively run because, as we know, they can't even create a
constitution without the American and British ambassadors
being present. We need to look at this story in a different
light. That narrative that we're getting - that there are
death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each
other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass
suicide - is not possible, it's not logical. There is
something else going on in Iraq. Don't ask me to...

TONY JONES: Alright. But...

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, go on.

TONY JONES: No, it does seem to be impossible to explain, but,
of course, this is exactly what people were saying in Bosnia
before that war started up - that people were too
intermarried, that you couldn't separate the community.

ROBERT FISK: Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. Iraqi
is not Bosnia. Iraqi is not Bosnia. We discovered here in
Lebanon - and this city I'm talking to you from - that, during
the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and killed
150,000 people, that there were many outside powers involved
in promoting death squads and militias here, and paying
militias, not just Arab powers, but European powers were
involved in stirring the pot in Lebanon. I think we're being
very naive. Just because I can't give you the detail, like, of
who ordered this death squad, doesn't prevent us saying that
something is wrong with the narrative we're being given the
press, from the West, from the Americans, from the Iraqi
Government. There is something going wrong. Iraqis are not
suicidal people. They don't go around blowing up mosques every
day. It's not a natural thing for them to do. It's never
happened before. I can't say to you, "Well, OK, here is the
person who killed this person, or here's the person who left
this explosive truck." All I am saying to you is that it is
time we said, "Hang on a minute, this is not how it looks."

TONY JONES: What if you put Iran into this equation, because,
as we all know, Iran is under tremendous pressure from the
West and particularly from the United States at the moment. It
has links to these Shia militias and, possibly, links too, to
these people you are talking about in the Interior Ministry.

ROBERT FISK: No, no, no, that's wrong. The Iranians link is
with the Iraqi Government. The main parties in the government
of Iraq which have been elected, who are there now dealing
with the Americans, these are the representatives of Iran.
Moqtada al-Sadr is irrelevant to Iran. Iranians are already
effectively controlling Iraq because the two major power
blocks, the two major parties who were elected and who Bush
has just been talking to, these are effectively the
representatives of Tehran. That's the point. Iran doesn't need
to get involved in violence in Iraq.

TONY JONES: Unless the pressure from the United States
ratchets up on Iran to the point where there are military
threats against these nuclear facilities. Could it not
therefore create havoc in Iraq?

ROBERT FISK: Well, you could say the same about Syria, too,
couldn't you? And, of course the Americans are also accusing
Syria of supporting the insurgents or letting them cross the
border. But I think it it's much more complicated than that.
For example, my sources in this area, who are pretty good,
tell me that the Americans have already talked to the Syrians
and are trying to do a deal with them to try and get the
Syrians to help them over the insurgency and the price of
Syria's help, I'm told, is that the Americans will ease off on
the UN committee of inquiry into the murder of ex-prime
minister Rafiq Hariri, here in Beirut, only a few hundred
metres from here, on the 14th February last year. You know, if
the Americans are going to get out of Iraq - and they must get
out, they will - they need the help of Iran and Syria. And I
think you'll find that certain elements within the State
Department are already trying to work on that. Now, we hear
the rhetoric coming from Bush. I mean, he's got an absolute
black-hole chaos in Iraq, he's got Afghanistan - not an
inspiration to the world, it's been taken over effectively by
narco warlords, many who work for Karzai, the man who's just
been making jokes about the Afghan welcome for Bush - and Bush
wants another conflict with Iran? I don't think the Americans
are in any footing or any ability, military or otherwise, to
have another war or to have another crisis in that region.
They're in the deepest hole politically, militarily and
economically in Iraq. The fact that the White House and the
Pentagon and the State Department seem to be in a state of
denial doesn't change that. We had Condoleezza Rice here -
literally in that building behind me - a few days ago saying
that there are great changes taking place in the Middle East -
optimistically. Well, sure, there is a mosque war going on in
Iraq with the Americans up to their feet in the sand, there's
an Iranian crisis, or so we're told, the Saudis are frightened
the Iraq war will spill over into Saudi Arabia, the Egyptians
don't know how to reconcile Syria and Lebanon, there are
increasing sectarian tensions here in Lebanon. You would think
that someone is building what used to be called Potemkin
villages, you know, these extraordinary things that Catherine
the Great's court favourites use to build, facades of
villages, so that everything looked nice in Russia even though
things were barbarous behind the facades. I mean, this is a
barbarous world we're living in now in the Middle East. It's
never been so dangerous here, either for journalists or
soldiers but most of all for Arabs. Hence the thousands of
people in the mortuary.

TONY JONES: Robert Fisk, I am afraid we are out of time. We'll
have to leave it there and the rest of the discussion on Iran,
I suspect, we'll have to have when you're in Australia in the
near future. Good luck in Beirut.

ROBERT FISK: (Laughs) Good place to have it! You're welcome.

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