Iraq- The West Shakes Up The Middle East

by Patrick Cockburn

  BURNING HATRED OF FOREIGN OCCUPATION

  The image of an Iraqi journalist hurling his shoes at President George Bush at a press conference will be remembered long after the war in Iraq is over. It is right that this should be so because the shoe-throwing by the Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi dramatically underlines the detestation most Iraqis feel towards foreign occupation.

  This should be an obvious point, but is not. Most Iraqis were glad to see the end of Saddam Hussein, who had ruined their country. But the occupation was always unpopular outside Iraqi Kurdistan, which was never occupied. "The occupation was the mother of all mistakes," says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hishyar Zebari, usually seen as one of the most pro-American politicians in the country.

  It is hatred of the occupation, which shines through Mr Zaidi's intelligent and revealing speech made yesterday after his release from jail. It is the voice of outraged Iraqi nationalism. He said: "I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pains of the victims, and heard with my own ears the scream of the bereaved and the orphans."

  Not surprisingly Mr Zaidi's action and his cry - "this is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog" - turned him into an instant hero across the Muslim world and beyond. Mr Bush was so unpopular in the final weeks of his presidency that any act against him was likely to be applauded.

  Mr Zaidi's furious words yesterday demonstrate the extent to which the occupation of a country by foreign powers, be it Iraq or Afghanistan, itself provokes instability and violence. The occupiers will be blamed, usually rightly, for anything that goes wrong. Mr Zaidi still sees Iraq as being controlled by the US.

  The freed journalist spoke bitterly yesterday of having been tortured while in custody. He said he was beaten with cables and metal tubes in a room not far from the press conference where he mounted his assault on Mr Bush. He was also given electric shocks, he said.

  Unfortunately, his allegations are all too likely to be true, since torturing suspects is once again the norm in Baghdad.

  Monday, 26 October 2009

  SAFER, BUT BY NO MEANS SAFE

  The savage suicide bombings in the heart of Baghdad yesterday show how far the violence in Iraq is from being over. It is as if those who order these bombings know that they only have to repeat these atrocities every couple of months to destabilise the country.

  The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki makes itself even more vulnerable by boasting that it is improving security. Iraq is a safer place than it was three years ago, but it is still one of the more dangerous places in the world.

  There is no need to imagine that the slaughter in Haifa Street yesterday was because American troops withdrew from the cities of Iraq three months ago. With or without US troops, the bombers have been able to get through in Baghdad ever since they destroyed the UN headquarters in 2003.

  Suicide car bombings, even when the driver is not planning to detonate his deadly cargo personally, are extremely difficult to stop. Remember the success the Provisional IRA had in the 1990s in targeting much smaller areas in the city of London and Canary Wharf.

  After a bomb eviscerated the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on 19 August the Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said its passage must have been helped by collaborators at army and police checkpoints. This may be true. But it is impossible for Iraqi security to search every vehicle, especially as bombers will have made sure that their papers are in order. It will also have occurred to Iraqi soldiers and policemen that any awards for stopping a suicide bomber are likely to be posthumous.

  Enthusiasm for investigating suspicious vehicles is limited. The bombings do not by themselves prove that Iraq remains unstable. Unfortunately, there are other pointers such as the failure of 1.6 million internally displaced people to return to their homes. A study by the International Organisation on Migration explains why these internal Iraqi refugees are not going home. It says that security may have got better but refugees are still trying to survive "without work, their own home, schooling for children, access to water, electricity and health care".

  Who is behind the bombings? Almost certainly it is some cell of al-Qa'ida, possibly acting with the guidance or help of the Baath party or the security service of the old regime. Al-Qa'ida is not as strong as it was in 2007, but then it does not have to be to create mayhem.

  The main problem in Iraq is that there is no fundamental agreement between the three main communities: the Shia, the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. Each group is still looking for the weak points of the others. The Shia are three fifths of the population, benefited from the overthrow of the predominantly-Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein and were largely victorious in the sectarian battle for Baghdad in 2005-7. This does not mean that the Sunni, who make up a fifth of the population, do not retain the strength to destabilise the government unless they get the share of power that they want.

  Iraqis themselves tend to see the never-ending violence as a sign that their neighbours intend to prevent the re-emergence of a strong Iraq. Iran would like another Shia state in the Gulf, but it does not want a powerful government to resurrect itself in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia has long been aghast at seeing Iraq becoming the first Shia government in the Arab world since Saladin overthrew the Fatimids. Kuwait is still taking part of Iraq's desperately needed oil revenues in compensation for its losses in the first Gulf War.

  A further problem is Iraq's undermining the political and economic reconstruction. The country has had 30 years of war, rebellion and economic sanctions. Iraq truly is a broken society. The state is dysfunctional. There is some good news: the price of oil has risen to $80 a barrel. But even relatively peaceful cities like Basra are full of people who are not being paid. The government is failing to heal the deep wounds of the past. Yesterday's bombings - the deadliest in two years - shows how far Iraq is from solving its problems.

  Wednesday, 9 December 2009

  BOMBERS AIM FOR HEART OF GOVERNMENT

  Car bombers yesterday killed as many as 127 people in Baghdad in a series of attacks that left the city's streets strewn with the wreckage of burning vehicles and the charred bodies of the dead.

  The five bombs, including three that were detonated by suicide bombers, exploded in succession across the Iraqi capital over the course of an hour yesterday morning, targeting a mosque, a market, a government ministry, an educational college and a court. Some 425 people were wounded.

  The coordinated assault is likely to be the work of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has adopted the tactic of launching devastating bombing attacks about every six weeks to maximise political and psychological impact. One aim is to discredit the government's claim that it has greatly improved security in the last couple of years. Some 155 people were killed in the last big attack by bombers on 25 October and over 122 in an earlier assault in August. The Iraqi foreign, justice and trade ministries were all targeted.

  The sound of screams and police sirens followed the detonation of each bomb as a cloud of oily black smoke from burning vehicles rose over the capital. Among the buildings hit was the headquarters of the Rafidain Bank which was housing the Finance Ministry, whose building was damaged by a bomb in August.

  Although the government and its critics have both claimed that the security forces have been infiltrated, suicide bombings are very difficult to prevent and US troops were unable to stop far more numerous bombings when they were in control of Baghdad. One of the bombs yesterday was carried inside an ambulance, and several judges were killed when a suicide bomber drove into the compound of a court beside the zoo in west Baghdad. The streets of central Baghdad tend to be packed with pedestrians and vehicles so civilian casualties will always be high. Government ministries and departments have highly vulnerable queues of people outside waiting for permits or paperwork.

  At an emergency session of the Iraqi parliament, MPs expressed anger at the lack of security. "If security falls apart, then everything will collapse," said Abbas al-Bayati, head of the defence com
mittee. Another MP, Saadi al-Barazanji, said: "If I were the interior minister, I would resign."

  The bombings show that al-Qa'ida, while not the force it was, still has the ability to pool its resources and co-ordinate spectacular attacks such as the one yesterday. But al-Qa'ida depends on the Sunni community that was badly defeated by the far more numerous Shia in the sectarian civil war in 2006 to 2007. It is unlikely that the Sunni would want to fight another war.

  The attacks came as a date was finally announced for the next election, which will be staged on 6 March. It had been delayed because of Sunni and Kurdish objections to the way the polls were being staged. The outcome is likely to be the re-election of the Shia-Kurdish coalition that has dominated Iraqi politics since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

  The al-Qa'ida bombings are unlikely to change the course of the election campaign, though the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be criticised for failing to improve security to anything like the extent that he says he has. In a statement he read yesterday, Mr Maliki said: "The timing of the cowardly attacks, after parliament overcame the last obstacle ahead of the elections, confirm that the enemies of Iraq and its people aim to sow chaos in the country."

  There is no reason that the elections should be affected by these attacks, although they could be interpreted as a sign that the Sunni Arabs of Iraq will not allow themselves to be marginalised.

  As the election nears, the next few months will be perilous for Iraq.

  Endless Insurgency

  8 December 2009: Two powerful car bombs exploded outside the offices of the Justice Ministry and the Baghdad Provincial Council building, killing at least 155 people. One of the blasts also destroyed St George's Church, the only Anglican church in Iraq. More than 20 children on a bus on their way to a daycare centre next to the Justice Ministry were among the victims. Local politicians said the blasts were intended to destroy the credibility of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and faith in his ability to make Iraq safe after the departure of US forces.

  19 August 2009: "Bloody Wednesday": coordinated bomb and mortar attacks went off at 10.45am outside government buildings and elsewhere across the city, on the sixth anniversary of the bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad, which brought the UN's mission in Iraq to a sudden end. At least 101 people died.

  14 August 2007: Nearly 800 inhabitants of the village of Qahtaniya, in the far north of the country, died and 1,500 were injured in the deadliest attack of the Iraqi insurgency to date, blown up by four suicide truck bombs, one of them a fuel tanker. Tension had been growing between Sunni Muslims and the Yazidi, a Kurdish minority stigmatised as heretics by extremists, who were the victims of the attack.

  18 April 2007: In an attack on Shia areas of Baghdad which gave residents grim reminders of the bloodiest days of the insurgency, nearly 200 people died when five car bombs exploded across the city.

  23 November 2006: A series of car bombs and mortar attacks struck Sadr City, Baghdad's huge Shia slum, killing at least 215 people and injuring 257 more. The attacks were timed for the day when residents of the slum were commemorating the life of Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, the high Shia cleric killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

  GRIM STABILITY (2010)

  Tuesday, 26 January 2010

  ‘CHEMICAL ALI’ IS EXECUTED

  Iraq yesterday executed by hanging Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's chief enforcer and supervisor of mass killings, also known as "Chemical Ali" for using chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands of people.

  He was the cruellest and most violent of top Iraqi leaders under Saddam Hussein, his first cousin to whom he was wholly loyal. He had already been sentenced to death four times, most recently earlier this month for the killing by poison gas of 5,000 Kurdish civilians at Halabja in 1988.

  His execution was announced as suicide bombers driving vehicles packed with explosives blew themselves up close to three hotels in Baghdad killing at least 36 people and wounding 80. The attacks show that insurgents, most probably from the Iraqi branch of al-Qa'ida, have the capability to penetrate the centre of the capital despite many army and police checkpoints.

  Clouds of smoke rose over Baghdad as blasts echoed across the city in the space of 15 minutes in the afternoon. The first blast hit the car park of the Sheraton, used by businessmen and journalists that overlooks the Tigris River. The al-Hamra hotel, where many Western newspaper and television reporters are based, was also targeted, as was the Babylon, which is used more by Iraqis than foreigners.

  It is unlikely that the bombings were in retaliation for Mr Majid's execution which had only just been announced. They were in keeping with the strategy al-Qa'ida developed last year of carrying out occasional bombings against high profile targets chosen to generate the maximum publicity, cause the greatest alarm, show that the government has not restored security in Baghdad as fully as it claims and weaken Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

  The only surprise about the hanging of Saddam's former henchman is that it took so long to happen. Mr Majid was probably the most feared and hated member of the Baathist regime and was captured back in 2003. But the Iraqi government wanted to try him for more than one of his crimes, which rival those of the Nazis in Eastern Europe in the Second World War.

  His greatest atrocities were in 1988 when he directed the Anfal extermination campaign against Kurdish civilians when every human being in designated areas was slaughtered. The final death toll is put at 180,000, hundreds of thousands more were deported or imprisoned and 3,800 villages destroyed.

  A head of the Northern Bureau of the Baath Party, Mr Majid directed these massacres and his orders are explicit in tape recordings of his telephone calls.

  Kurds yesterday welcomed his death. "I'm very happy with the execution. This is one of the few happy days for the Kurdish people," Jeno Abdullah, a postgraduate student in Sulaimaniya told Reuters, although he was sceptical about the timing of the hanging, just six weeks before the Iraqi polls.

  Born in 1941 in the Sunni Arab province of Tikrit north of Baghdad, Mr Majid owed his power entirely to his family relationship to Saddam Hussein. Poorly educated, Mr Majid was at one time an army driver and motor cycle dispatch rider, but after the Baath party seized power in a coup in 1968 Saddam sought to give his relatives complete control of the security apparatus.

  Mr Majid was, at different times, the head of intelligence, defence minister and interior minister. He reinforced his reputation for mindless brutality as governor of Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion in 1990. He was in the forefront of suppressing the Shia rebellion in the wake of the Gulf War in 1991 when up to 150,000 people may have been killed. He also helped suppress the smaller uprising in the wake of the assassination of the Shia religious leader Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr in 1999. He received separate death sentences for these killings. Unlike Saddam's execution in December 2006 when insults were heaped on him at the gallows, Mr Majid was not subjected to any abuse, according to a government spokesman. "Everyone abided by the government's instructions and the convicted was not subjected to any breach, chanting, abuse words, or insults," the spokesman said.

  Sunday, 28 March 2010

  VIOLENT, DIVIDED, BUT HOPEFUL

  As people in Sunni areas of Baghdad heard the full results of the election, they ran through the streets firing their rifles into the air in celebration and triumphantly chanting the name of Iyad Allawi, the leader of the political bloc winning most seats in parliament.

  Mr Allawi had been expected to do well but the extent of his success is still surprising. His al-Iraqiya coalition won 91 seats in the 325-seat parliament, against 89 seats for the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law bloc.

  As interim prime minister in 2004-2005 Mr Allawi ran an administration chiefly notable for its incompetence and corruption, so his political rebirth is astonishing. It has happened because, whatever his failings then, the bloodbath that followed his rule was even worse, particularly for the Sunni community which had been ousted
from power with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

  This is Mr Allawi's strength, and his weakness. His success was the result of a massive turn-out of Sunni voters, enabling him to sweep away the opposition in the Sunni-majority provinces north and west of Baghdad.

  He also did well in the capital, now very much Shia dominated, which means that many Shia were attracted by his nationalist and nonsectarian platform.

  But the political landscape of Iraq remains determined by sectarian and ethnic differences between Shia and Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. The strength of Mr Allawi is the backing of the Sunni, but they make up only 15 to 20 per cent of the population while at least 60 per cent are Shia and a further 15 to 20 per cent are Kurdish. For many Shia and Kurds the resurgence of the Sunni is threatening, and they will try to limit it by preventing Mr Allawi from forming a government with the top jobs going to his Sunni allies.

  Surprising as Mr Allawi's triumph may be, it is also something of a mirage because the Shia vote was split between Mr Maliki's State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) which won 70 seats. The INA is made up of two Shia religious parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the followers of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The revival of the latter, who represent the Shia poor, has been the second upset of the election.

  The two big Shia blocs - State of Law and the INA - are now in talks about a merger which would give them almost half the seats in parliament.

  A new government would only need the addition of the 43 seats of the main Kurdish party to give them a majority. The Kurds and the INA will probably ask for a new prime minister, replacing Mr Maliki with whom both have quarrelled. The Kurds would have difficulty doing a deal with Mr Allawi because over a third of his seats are in provinces disputed between Sunni Arab and Kurd. Iraqi politics are highly complex because there are so many players at home and abroad, none of whom trust each other. One of the reasons why negotiations to form a new government will be so long is that each side will try to lure members of opposing coalitions into their own camp by offering jobs in the government.