THE REAL IRAQ By AMIR TAHERI -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email Archives Print Reprint July 17, 2003 -- Open up almost any American or European publication these days, and you'll be bombarded with grim news about "horrific" conditions in Iraq - and America's "poor handling" of the post-war reconstruction effort. All of which, it is claimed, is made all the more tragic - because President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maliciously exaggerated the threat from Iraq. They may have won the war, but they're losing they peace. Author and Middle East expert Amir Taheri spent several days on the ground in Iraq last week and found reality to be starkly different from what is so ubiquitously reported. Here is a first-hand account of an Iraq that is rapidly moving forward in nearly every aspect of life - political, economic and cultural. And a people that, while understandably skeptical after decades of tyranny, is nonetheless hopeful - and grateful for their liberation. - THE EDITORS BAGHDAD, IRAQ 'THE Iraqi Intifada!" This is the cover story offered by Al- Watan Al-Arabi, a pro- Saddam Hussein weekly published in Paris. It finds an echo in the latest issue of America's Time magazine, which paints a bleak prospect for the newly liberated country. The daily Al Quds, another pro-Saddam paper, quotes from The Washington Post in support of its claim that "a popular war of resistance" is growing in Iraq. Some newspapers in the United States, Britain and "old Europe" go further by claiming that Iraq has become a "quagmire" or "another Vietnam." The Parisian daily Le Monde prefers the term "engrenage," which is both more chic and French. This chorus wants us to believe that most Iraqis regret the ancien regime, and are ready to kill and die to expel their liberators. Sorry, guys, this is not the case. Neither the wishful thinking of part of the Arab media, long in the pay of Saddam, nor the visceral dislike of part of the Western media for George W. Bush and Tony Blair changes the facts on the ground in Iraq. ONE fact is that a visitor to Iraq these days never finds anyone who wants Saddam back. There are many complaints, mostly in Baghdad, about lack of security and power cuts. There is anxiety about the future at a time that middle-class unemployment is estimated at 40 percent. Iraqis also wonder why it is that the coalition does not communicate with them more effectively. That does not mean that there is popular support for violent action against the coalition. Another fact is that the violence we have witnessed, especially against American troops, in the past six weeks is limited to less than 1 percent of the Iraqi territory, in the so-called "Sunni Triangle," which includes parts of Baghdad. Elsewhere, the coalition presence is either accepted as a fact of life or welcomed. On the 4th of July some shops and private homes in various parts of Iraq, including the Kurdish areas and cities in the Shiite heartland, put up the star-spangled flag as a show of gratitude to the United States. "We see our liberation as the start of a friendship with the U.S. and the U.K. that should last a thousand years," says Khalid Kishtaini, one of Iraq's leading novelists. "The U.S. and the U.K. showed that a friend in need is a friend indeed. Nothing can change that." In the early days of the liberation, some mosque preachers tested the waters by speaking against "occupation." They soon realized that their congregations had a different idea. Today, the main theme in sermons at the mosques is about a partnership between the Iraqi people and the coalition to rebuild the war-shattered country and put it on the path of democracy. Even the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr now says that "some good" could come out of the coalition's presence in Iraq. "The coalition must help us stabilize the situation," he says. "The healing period that we need would not be possible if we are suddenly left alone." Yet another fact is that all 67 of Iraq's cities and 85 percent of the smaller towns now have fully functioning municipalities. Several ministries, including that of health and education, have also managed to get parts of their operations going again. The petroleum industry, too, is being revived with plans to produce up to 2.8 million barrels of crude oil a day before the year is out. To be sure, life in Iraq today is no bed of roses. But don't forget that this is an immediate post-war situation. There is no famine - in fact, the bazaars are more replenished with food than ever since the late 1970s - while food prices, having jumped in the first weeks after liberation, are now lower than they were in the last years of Saddam's rule. MOST hospitals are functioning again with essential medical supplies trickling in for the first time since 1999. Also, some 85 percent of primary and secondary schools and all but two of the nation's universities have reopened with a full turnout of pupils and teachers. The difference is that there no longer are any mukahebrat (secret police) agents roaming the campuses and sitting at the back of classrooms to make sure lecturers and students do not discuss forbidden topics. Nor are the students required to start every day with a solemn oath of allegiance to the dictator. There has been no mass exodus anywhere in Iraq. On the contrary, many Iraqis, driven out of their homes by Saddam, are returning to their towns and villages. Their return has given the building industry, moribund in the last years of Saddam, a boost. Iraqi exiles and refugees abroad are also coming home, many from Iran and Turkey. Last month alone the Iranian Red Crescent recorded the repatriation of more than 10,000 Iraqis, mostly Kurds and Shiites. In Iraq today there are no "displaced persons," no uprooted communities and no long lines of war victims in search of a safe haven. FOR the first time in almost 50 years there are also no political prisoners, no executions, no torture and no limit on freedom of expression. Iraq today is the only Muslim country where all shades of opinion - from the extremist Islamists of the Hezbollah to Stalinists, and passing by liberals, socialists, Arab nationalists and moderate Islamists - have full freedom to compete in an open market of ideas. Better still, all are now represented in the newly created Governing Assembly (Majlis al-Hukum). Iraq is also the only Muslim country where more than 100 newspapers and weeklies, representing all shades of opinion, appear without a police permit and are subjected to no censorship. Much is made of power cuts, especially in Baghdad. But this is partly due to a 30 percent seasonal increase in demand because of air-conditioning use in temperatures that reach 115 degrees. In other cities - for example, Basra - the country's second-most populous urban center, more electricity is used than at any time under Saddam Hussein. A stroll in the open-air book markets of the Rashid Street reveals that thousands of books, blacklisted and banned under Saddam Hussein, are now available for sale. Among the banned authors were almost all of Iraq's best writers and poets, whom many young Iraqis discover for the first time. Stalls, offering video and audiotapes for sale, are appearing in Baghdad and other major cities, again giving Iraqis access to a forbidden cultural universe. The flower stalls along the Tigris are also making a comeback. "Business is good," says Hashem Yassin, one florist. "In the past, we sold a lot of flowers for funerals and placement on tombs. Now we sell for weddings, birthday parties and gifts of friendship." The free-market economy is making its first inroads into Iraq's socialistic system in a number of small ways. Hundreds of hawkers are offering a variety of imported goods and making brisk business by selling soft drinks, often bottled in Iran, and biscuits and chewing gums from Turkey. Some teahouses, in competition to attract clients, offer satellite television as an additional attraction. Every evening people pack the teahouses to watch, and zap and discuss, what they have seen in an atmosphere of freedom unknown under Saddam. It may be hard for Westerners to understand the Iraqis' exhilaration at being able to watch television of their choice. But this is a country where, under Saddam, people could be condemned as spies and hanged for owning a satellite dish. Another symbol of newly won freedom is the multiplication of cellular and satellite phones. Most belong to returning exiles. But their appearance is reassuring to many Iraqis. Under Saddam, their illegal possession could carry the death penalty. The portrayal of Baghdad as an oriental version of the Far West in Hollywood Westerns misses the point. It ignores the fact that life is creeping back to normal, that weddings, always popular in summer, are being celebrated again, often with traditional tribal ostentation. The first rock concert since the war, offered by a boys' band, has already taken place, and Iraq's National Football (soccer) Squad has resumed training under a German coach. THERE are two Iraqs today: One as portrayed by those in America and Europe who wish to use it as a means of damaging Bush and Blair, and the other as it really exists, home to 24 million people with many hopes and aspirations and, naturally, some anxiety about the future. "After we have aired our grievances we remember the essential point: Saddam is gone," says Mohsen Saleh, a geologist in Baghdad. "A man who is cured of cancer does not complain about a common cold. ________________________________________ Viet Nam?
How long did it take for life in the United States to get back to 'normal' after winning the Revolutionary War? How long was it after Lee surrendered to Grant for hostilities in the South to end? Reconstruction? The Klan? What about Germany after WW I? WW II? How long did it take to get Japan going with a democratic government after the war? I guess it was too long, and we should'a just let 'em rot! And you guys think that three months after the 'war' in Iraq we are bogged down in a quagmire, losing a guerilla war just because there are some hot spots! Saddam's strategy is to test our resolve by hopefully keeping the stream of dead bodies steady. However he will lose. The Bushies know this and are prepared for it. The real proble is 24hour news coverage. We have become used to lightning-fast campaigns and get bored when the action slows down. Don't you remember how everyone was wringing their hands about how the war had bogged down with the "operational pause" after two or three days! I just wish someone would hold the television commentators accountable for what they say. Bring out the tape a few weeks later and make them listen to their stupid remarks. Of course no one will, because they all are in the same business. The networks need dramatic, bloody stories to pull in viewers. The simple fact is that this war is being conducted with an unimaginably low number of casualties, incredible speed and amazing success. Cheer, kp
OP-ED COLUMNIST Saddam's Guerrillas By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON Saddam Hussein is waging "a classical guerrilla-type campaign," says Gen. John Abizaid, the new head of the U.S. Central Command, which is "getting more organized" every day. What can the deposed dictator hope to accomplish? How can he, with a ragtag force of Baathist criminals and imported killers with nothing to lose, possibly defeat 170,000 occupying troops? Saddam outfoxed one President Bush and intends to outfox and outlast another. Facing the likelihood that his army would disintegrate under direct assault, he probably decided that the mother of all battles against a democracy is a war of attrition. We may assume his current strategy to be based on some of these assumptions: 1. Troop losses drove Clinton out of Somalia, Eisenhower out of Lebanon, Johnson and Nixon out of Vietnam. In occupied Iraq, only one death a day â sustained for months with pictures of bereaved families on television â would, in Saddam's thinking, not only demoralize the occupiers but also increase political pressure in the U.S. and Britain to bring the troops home. 2. European and Muslim opinion, incensed at being ignored by a superpower, will continue to deny cooperation to the victors. Saddam assumes this would force Bush to turn over control of Iraq to the U.N., in which Kofi Annan has just said "democracy should not be imposed from the outside," and the blue helmets would run at the first Sunni uprising. 3. Patience is not an American virtue. Saddam anticipates that the antiwar minority â furious at the unexpected ease of the U.S. victory and shrugging off findings of mass graves of Saddam's victims â would turn a steady accretion of casualties among occupiers into dread visions of "quagmire." 4. Saddamist guerrillas, aided by terrorist allies in Syria and Iran, would hold out the fearsome possibility of the return to power of Saddam or his sons. A series of murders of "collaborators" would continue to intimidate Iraqi scientists and officers who know about W.M.D. and links to Al Qaeda and its related Ansar al-Islam. 5. He presumes that British and American journalists, after the obligatory mention that the world is better off with Saddam gone, would â by their investigative and oppositionist nature â sustain the credibility firestorm. By insisting that Bush deliberately lied about his reasons for pre-emption, and gave no thought to the cost of occupation, critics would erode his poll support and encourage political opponents â eager to portray victory as defeat âto put forward a leave-Iraq-to-the-Iraqis candidate. 6. Inside Iraq, with the Americans on the way out, the Shiite majority would split, and when the Sunni minority seizes power in Baghdad the troublesome Kurds would separate, thereby triggering a Turkish invasion of the north. In the ensuing anarchy, the strongman would emerge out of internal exile to exterminate the disloyal and lead the Arab world. That's his comeback strategy. Is it a homicidal maniac's dream? If the taped voice is Saddam's, as we believe, it means he has worked out a means of secret production and clandestine transmission to cooperative broadcasters just as cunning as the concealment of damning documents or recent traffic across borders of money and terrorist helpers. How best to deny Saddam's putative return from his Elba, and to put this summer of discontent behind us? Drop the premature conclusion that if we can't yet find proof of the destructive weapons, they never existed. That's like saying because we haven't found Osama or Saddam, those killers never existed. Put sacrifice in perspective. The loss of one soldier's life is individual tragedy, but the loss of thousands of civilian lives caused or abetted by a vengeful dictator would be national tragedy. The purpose of our armed forces is to protect us and that's the costly mission our volunteers carry out every day. Remember which nations had the courage to do right in timely fashion. Dissenters are free to argue about judgments of hard-to-read intelligence, but few will deny that the world is indisputably safer with the overthrow of a proven mass murderer and financier of suicide bombers. This above all: to end guerrilla war in Iraq, find Saddam Hussein and his ghostly crew. Those he terrorized must be assured the tyrant will never come back. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/opinion/21SAFI.html
Security Council Gears Up for Iraq Report Tuesday July 22, 2003 3:09 PM By DAFNA LINZER Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Kofi Annan is hoping the United Nations will throw its support behind a U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council as a first step toward ending the U.S. occupation and handing control of the country over to the Iraqi people. Four months after diplomacy fell apart inside the Security Council over war in Iraq, Annan, his special envoy and members of the newly formed Iraqi group will address the council on Tuesday and discuss both the high and low points of postwar life for Iraqis. The backdrop of the gathering is a toughly-worded report Annan delivered to the Security Council Monday in which he warned the United States that ``democracy cannot be imposed from the outside.'' ``It is important that Iraqis are able to see a clear timetable leading to the full restoration of sovereignty,'' Annan wrote. Annan also noted concerns about the U.S. treatment of Iraqi detainees and the failure to improve security in Baghdad. The critical tone of the report was unlikely to help U.S. efforts to win support for an international peacekeeping force that could relieve overburdened American troops in Iraq. U.S. diplomats offered a cautious initial assessment. ``We certainly agree that Iraqis should be in charge of their own country and we are working hard to do that and that's why the Governing Council is a good first step,'' said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Annan was softer on the Americans when he spoke with reporters Monday, ahead of a meeting with U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. ``I think, given the circumstances, and the fact that you couldn't possibly organize elections in Iraq today, it was a good method of putting together a council and I hope the Security Council will see it that way and grant the group its support,'' Annan said. His report came a day ahead of the Security Council meeting to be attended by the U.N. chief, his special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and three members of the Iraqi council. The delegation will include Ahmed Chalabi - once favored by the Pentagon to be Iraq's next president - Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister, and Akila Hashami of the Iraqi foreign ministry. Before the meeting, the trio plan a ``changing of the guard'' ceremony at the Iraqi mission to the United Nations meant to cement their group as the sole representative of Iraq at the United Nations. The move, though symbolic, could satisfy potential peacekeeping donors such as France and India who are reluctant to send forces while the United States and Britain remain solely in charge. The Iraqi Governing Council will be able to pick ministers for a new administration and hold other powers, but U.S. administrators will have ultimate say. The report offers U.N. help to Iraqis in defining the priorities and policies that will shape the future of the country. But throughout the report, Annan emphasizes the importance of Iraqi sovereignty. ``There is an overwhelming demand for self-rule and democracy cannot be imposed from the outside.'' Much of the report is based on Vieira de Mello's observations and discussions with U.S. officials in Baghdad, including L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. occupation governor for Iraq. Viera de Mello complained to Bremer last week, Annan wrote, about the ``treatment of detainees and the conditions under which they were held in detention.'' The report also expresses concerns about the living conditions and ``precarious security situation'' in the capital. Annan also offered the United States assistance in a host of areas including demining and police training. But Annan ruled out the possibility of a U.N. police force working side-by-side with U.S. troops. ``Such an action would create a parallel system of law enforcement which would not be effective in promoting law and order.''
AAA, you can't compare Vietnam with WWII. And again the Nazis would not have risen to power if not for the humiliating conditions imposed upon Germany in Versailles. So WWII was an offspring of WWI and the Russian revolution. WWI was caused by the stupidity of nationalism, the Russian revolution by the ignominous exploitation of the Russian people by land owners. All wars are stupid and/or caused by exploitation of people , if you think of it, if in the third world nobody needed to go to war because of hunger, and if here(the civilized world) nobody wanted to play Rambo with a nice M16, there would not be any war. I bet most of you proponent of the wars waged by the US are living room cowboys, if you or your kids went there and got shot or maimed, you would march to a different drum. As for Jane Fonda, she will be an American icon forever and btw Ted Turner is a hero.
If you review the previous two posts and then relate the subjects and compare the differences and similarities to the fall of the Communist Rule in Russia some interesting things emerge. 1. There was a peaceful collapse in Russia but the ruling Communists were still there and still are. Where did they go? Capitalism on a personal scale is having a very hard time getting started in the outlying area, such as Siberia. The biggest deterent are the banks which I believe are controlled by the Russian mafia made up of the former ruling class. In this way and with their friends in the regulatory departments they can still be the ruling class. 2. Contrast to Iraq where the transition was through war but the ruling class will be replaced with new people and private enterprize, capitalism, and democracy have a chance. I would bet that the Iraqis are better off right now than the Siberians are after years of "freedom".
'SADDAM'S SONS SEIZED' Saddam Hussein's two sons may have been captured or killed in a shoot-out in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, reports say. There was a "pretty decent chance" Uday and Qusay were inside a villa raided by US troops, an official said ________________________________________ Must be a sad day for msfe and others.