Friday, May 30, 2003

Consequences of the Iraq War - "We Told You So"

The current geo-political situation in Iraq and around the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq by the American-led coalition forces were as predicted by anti-war groups, according to a report by Ted Rall.
( Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the under-reported Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project and the real motivations behind the war on terrorism.)

In his article published May 27, 2003, Rall said:

"As I predicted last July, the war has meant the end of a unified Iraq and the beginning of chaos throughout the Middle East..... Now the antiwar movement's doomsday scenarios have been fulfilled so completely that military history scarcely mentions a more thoroughly botched endeavor--and we'll be living with the fallout for years.

Here is an excerpt of Ted Rall's article:

The Bush Administration was warned that invading Iraq would destabilize the Middle East and spread radical anti-American Islamism. We told the American people that taking out Saddam Hussein without a viable government to replace him would open a vacuum for anarchy, civil war and a power grab by radical Iranian-backed Shiite clerics.

When we argued that Donald Rumsfeld's low-budget occupation of Iraq would turn out as disastrously as it had in Afghanistan , right-wing Republicans called us stupid and un-American. Now that we've been proven correct on every count.

The former northern "no-fly zone" is already openly referred to by Kurdish officials as the incipient Islamic Republic of Kurdistan. "It's etiquette, like a game," says Farhad Pirbal of Erbil University. "[Kurdish] politicians say what the Americans want to hear"--that they want to remain part of Iraq. But, he continues, "more than 80 percent of the people are for independence."

Since Turkish reticence prompted the Pentagon to invade Iraq from the south, only small numbers of American forces entered the Kurdish zone, which has since remained under control of peshmerga guerillas.

On May 23 U.S. and British occupation authorities formally endorsed the permanent partition of Iraq, setting the stage for Kurdish statehood. The U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer officially dissolved Iraq's armed forces, and allied commander Lt. Gen. David McKiernan announced that the peshmerga would be allowed to keep its automatic weapons and heavy artillery--becoming Kurdistan's de facto army.

A few days later, Kurdish leaders announced plans to continue expanding their territory. "Now we are back in Mosul," regional governor Nechirvan Barzani told The New York Times. "We control Senjar and Mosul provinces. We want to add the other parts of Kurdistan."

If Turkish Kurds, armed by their Iraqi counterparts, fight to attach southeastern Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan, bloody civil wars and ethnic cleansing could sweep across Turkey to Eastern Europe and the Caucasus--potentially claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.

Regrettably, free Kurdistan looks a lot like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan: women under wraps, blood feuds, medieval Islamism. "Kurdish political parties today are not that different from the tribes of the 18th century," notes David McDowall, author of "A Modern History of the Kurds." "You don't get democracy as an end product."

And what's left of Iraq looks even worse. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is angry that the U.S. has endorsed a Kurdish, but not a Shiite, army. "We will not accept that other militias will be allowed to stay there with their weapons while we will not be there with ours," says a spokesman for Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI who recently returned from exile in Iran.

SCIRI and other Shiite groups are already using their weapons and demographics-- 60 percent of Iraqis are Shia Muslims--to transform Saddam Hussein's modern secular dictatorship into a fundamentalist Islamic state melding Iranian Shiaism to Taliban-style Sharia law. Incredibly, American occupation forces are working with, and even financing, these anti-American zealots.

On May 2 influential Mullah Murtada Sadr, called for Sharia law in Iraq. "The banning of alcohol and the wearing of the veil should be spread to all and not only to Muslims," Sadr told followers in Kufa, near Najaf. "Alcohol and the display of a woman's body are forbidden for us Muslims, as they are for Christians, upon whom I call to give up these banned things."

In Baghdad Imam Mohammed al-Fartussi upped the ante on May 16, threatening those who show "indecent films" and "sinful women" who consort with foreigners, especially Americans. "If in a week from now they do not change their attitude, the murder of these women is sanctioned (by Islam)," Fartussi raged. "This warning also goes out to sellers of alcohol, radios and televisions. The torching of cinemas would be permitted."

Shiite militias that control Baghdad's vast Sadr City slum are already enforcing the mullahs' diktats. Sheik Kadhem al-Fartusi, who asserts that "Islam and all religions forbid alcohol," runs a local gang that beats liquor vendors and men who refuse to grow beards. "He's the primary shaker and mover here," U.S. Special Operations Maj. Arthur P. Vidal told The Times. Special ops troops pay Fartusi's religious police with "bricks of Iraqi dinars."