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Jafari's Government: The House of Cards

by Raed In The Middle (reposted)
Wednesday, April 27, 2005 story from "Raed In The Middle"
Houseofcards.jpg"

When the elections happened nearly three months ago, I had a pessimistic vision about what would happen, and I considered the elections as “early” and as a “sham”. I said that those early elections would “open the doors of hell”, while most of the other media resources and bloggers were dancing in the streets and crying out of joy because of the big victory and the finger crap.

I didn’t see elections by themselves as a victory. I wondered what would be happening after the elections.

Some days later, I mentioned that some of the 8 million Iraqis who went to vote were even pushed against their will, some by direct religious and political pressure, and others by rumored threats that their monthly food rations would be cut.

I didn’t see that it’s worth it to threaten people just to have them go vote. Voting by itself is not a victory.

Elections, as a mechanism of public participation, are most needed in our countries, the Middle Eastern developing countries. We need to do our best to encourage public participation and to engage our populations in building our growing nation. I’m not against elections per-se, I was and still against the timing and outline of the past elections.

Elections?
Cool. I (heart) elections.

The Iraqi elections in particular are one of the most important elections that should be held at some time, because of the governance void that happened after the illegal invasion of Iraq a couple of years ago. The illegal war against Iraq destroyed the remnants of governmental infrastructure, human resources, and systems that had survived the long embargo. The war didn’t just target the political leaderships and infrastructure; it destroyed the civil-government (i.e. ministries and public sector companies).

As a pragmatic person, I believe that holding elections in Iraq would be one of the “magical” solutions for restarting the Iraqi development process, and ending the cycle of violence.

Yet, this magic should be used wisely. We can’t use it time and again because it’ll lose the spark. We can’t hold elections repeatedly and wait for months with no results.

And, more importantly, being pragmatic doesn’t always mean we shouldn’t have principles and values; we don’t have to necessarily adopt the bush version of pragmatism.

This war was against the principles and values of many people. This war happened despite the opposition of millions of people in Iraq and worldwide, and taking a part of the occupied-Iraq-project would be a betrayal to our honor, unless this project can be changed to contain our needs and requests.

The Iraq-Project as it has been going on for the last two years is illegal and very far off from meeting its supposed goals. Now I don’t want to start a long side discussion about the right of Iraq, or Iran now, to have WMD to protect themselves against Israel, the aggressive super-power neighbor with the strongest army in the region supported by the US government and army. Nor do I want to get into a really really long discussion about the abuses of “International Law”, may god have mercy on its soul. Let’s just say that the announced reason behind this war was proved to be wrong.

Yes, it’s official now. There were no WMD in Iraq.

Iraq and Iraqis should request a different stand from the occupation governments before taking a part of the political life of Iraq. I need a stand from the occupation forces and governments to convince me to take a part of the political process in the destroyed country. This doesn’t mean in any way that people who are not convinced of directly participating in state politics are supporting violence. Such people, in the middle, are neither supporting the resistance attacks against the mercenary and occupation forces, nor opposing it. I was expecting all of this unrest to happen in occupied Iraq way before this war broke out, and that was one of the reasons why I opposed the invasion in the first place. Anyone who had even a minimum of information about Iraq and Iraqis would have known that Iraqis would have strong resistance to the occupation. Iraqis, with their heterogeneous demography and culture, have decades of experience in fighting and enough weapons to go through long wars; they were not expected to stand still under the illegal foreign occupation. In addition, what made things even worse and more violent than expected is the corrupt, irresponsible and culturally-insensitive plans the US army and administration used with Iraqis.

The destruction that happened to the Iraqi social structures and infrastructure during the last two years doesn’t allow productive elections to happen. The huge and accumulative political mistakes in Iraq and the excluding of all the voices of opposition don’t give the political life a big chance to flourish or even survive.

So, as I said: Elections are cool.

But…

Elections under occupation, with entire demographic groups excluded?
Not cool.

The Iraqi resistance is the very direct reaction to the invasion and occupation. It’s simply an indigenous response to an illegal war. All the attempts of the US administration to accuse non-Iraqi-Arabs-and-Muslims of administrating the emergent resistance in Iraq didn’t and won’t work.

But who’s fighting against the occupation in Iraq?

I mentioned many times the three groups I believe are fighting against the occupation. The first group is the remains of the Iraqi government, intelligence, and army; people who were sent back home to die slowly. The second group is the Islamists who consider fighting against the “crusaders” as their national and religious “duty”, our version of the neo-cons. The third group contains many small groups of angry and humiliated individuals without clear political agendas; I call them the Abu-Ghreib ex-detainees.

The first and third groups are 100% Iraqis. I’m sure that no one can argue about that. The second group may contain a minority of non-Iraqi-Arabs-and-Muslims. When the big attack against Falluja happened last November, the US forces captured more than a thousand Iraqis, and some dozens of non-Iraqis. In Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey has said foreigners account for just 1 percent or so of guerrillas. Dempsey said his 1st Armored Division detained just 50 to 75 foreign fighter suspects in Baghdad over the past year, among a population of captured guerrillas that reached 2,000 . I think this is more than the real ratio. The total ratio of non-Iraqis to Iraqis nationwide is much less than 1% in my opinion and observations. Even the fighters in the legendary Zarqawi group are Iraqis. I never heard a non-Iraqi Arabic accent in all the videos released by Qaeda – Iraqi Branch.

But even if the ratio was bigger, let’s say that the number of non-Iraqi-Muslims-and-Arabs helping Iraqis to fight against the illegal foreign occupation is higher, isn’t this just a symptom of the problem? Isn’t this just a reaction to the big foreign interference? Who is more “foreign”, those who came from overseas to destroy and occupy Iraq? Why are these people fighting in Iraq? Are they against “the Iraqi people” as the US mainstream media repeats endlessly about the non-iraqi-Muslims-and-Arabs? Why didn’t we see them fighting in Iraq before the fall of Baghdad? If the evil non-Iraqi Sunni Arabs were so bent on killing Iraqis, especially Iraqi shia, why weren’t they doing so when they would have been protected by the pan-Arabist government in Iraq? Wouldn’t that have made more sense for them? Why would they go kill Iraqis when the biggest and strongest army in the world is occupying the country?

What’s happening in Iraq was predictable and is very easy to analyze: a national, cultural and religious defense against a national, cultural, and religious offense.

When non-extremists, like myself, decided not to take a part of the state politics and just stay outside and watch what’s happening, it’s not because we’re enjoying the scene, and it’s not that we support violence. It is only because we are marginalized by the US occupying administration and its extremist ideologies.

The only people with authority at this stage are extremists: Bush and corps, Qaeda and corps, Hakim and Corps. Even the “moderate” and “secular” characters in the imported and corrupt government fled the political scene quietly. Did anyone hear about Adnan Pachachi leaving Iraq? The man didn’t just leave the political scene, he ran away to UAE. Pachachi was the symbol of secularism and the head of the only national and secular list in the elections. His list won ONE seats in the parliament.

The Jafari government will be announced today or tomorrow, but as the Iraqi proverb says: We fasted for three months then broke our fast with an onion.

Even the US poodle in Iraq, Allow(ie), isn’t taking a part of this coming Jafari government. Allawi’s list, which also presented themselves as “seculars”, won around 13% of the votes (i.e. 40 seats in the parliament). Yet, they were excluded. The Sunni Iraqi Arabs are filtered out from the government, even the small groups of Sunni Arabs that ran on Shia lists are pulling out gradually like what happened on Tuesday when Three key Sunni Arab lawmakers resigned from the dominant United Iraqi Alliance. The three, Fawaz al-Jarba, Mudhar Shawkat and Abd al-Rahman al-Niaimi, announced their resignation from the UIA which is led by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim. They said they were resigning in protest against the attempt to marginalise Sunni Arabs.

The upcoming Jafari Government has 33 ministers: 17 Shia Arabs, 8 kurds, 6 Sunni Arabs, 1 Christian and 1 Turkmen.

It looks like a nationally representative administration, doesn’t it?

But what would these numbers mean in real-life politics, what would their effect be on the Iraqi political and military situation? Is this new administration capable of starting a national political debate instead of nation-wide violence and fighting?

Isn’t it true that most of the groups causing the current unrest are not taking a part of this administration in the first place? Isn’t it true that the current Iraqi ministries are falling apart because of the absence of their employees?

Most of the bogus governmental structures built in Iraq by the US administration are falling apart. They were born deformed and weak in the first place, they didn’t do their work efficiently in the first place, but now they are falling apart.

A short report in Ad-Dustour, a Jordanian Newspaper, had interesting news about the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. The report said that more than 250 top officials and other thousands of low-level officers and clerks are not showing up to their jobs in the “anti-terrorism” departments. The Ministry of Interior in Baghdad is losing contact with other offices of the ministry around the country.

On another note, the Iraqi army and police members are joining the forces because of the very high rates of unemployment that reaches to 70%. The salaries of police men were raised from around $65 to around $400 in the last couple of years, but when a battle happens, they simply run away, like what happened in Qaim in April the 11th, when Fierce fighting erupted at 7am. More than 70 'Iraqi policemen' deserted their positions.

Why did they run away?
Because they don’t believe in what they are doing.

Is the Jafari government going to convince young Iraqi men to take a part of the Iraqi armed forces for the sake of building their nation, or for the sake of money?

When are the US administration and the Iraqi imported politicians going to admit the failure of their policies? When are they going to take the chance of changing their strategies when they still can do it? General Richard Myers, the most senior US soldier, said last night that Iraqi insurgents were now launching attacks at the same rate of 50-60 a day rate as they were in 2004.


I said this three years ago, and I said it three months ago, and I’m saying it again today: The US army is going to burn in Iraq. We are still way off peak.

It’s not that I wish that or something; it’s just that I can see it coming.

The US administration, and other governments that took or are taking a part of the collapsing coalition, should adopt a three-point roadmap to stop the Iraqi crisis.

1- Issue a public apology and hold responsibility for the destruction of Iraq.
2- Announce a schedule for a complete pullout from Iraq.
3- Start paying compensation to Iraq as a country and to Iraqis as individuals

Isn’t it easy? Wallahi it is really easy. Just three points, then Iraqis will take a part in solving the crisis and they'll hold a big good-bye-party and give all US soldiers plastic flowers.

Isn’t this a better scenario than another Somalia-Style-kick-out when some dozens of US soldiers got killed and dragged through the streets?
Isn’t this a better scenario than another Lebanese-Style-kick-out when hundreds of US soldiers were killed?
Isn’t this a better scenario than another Vietnam-Style-kick-out when tens of thousands of US soldiers were killed?

Isn’t this better for the US international image, for the US reputation?
Admitting mistakes is better than going on and on to keep a false self-pride, right?

We still have time to solve this in a “peaceful way”, kind of. Why wait until bigger disasters happen and other tens of thousands get killed for no reason?

Three simple steps: Sorry >>> Bye-Bye >>> then lots of Compen$ation.
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