While most people have reached a (false) conclusion that the U.S. has “failed” to shape Iraq according to its planned agenda, it is not hard to see that the U.S. is carrying out its original plan to destroy Iraq and colonise its people and national resources.
Observing Iraq since the 2003 illegal U.S. invasion leads to an inescapable conclusion: The situation in Iraq today was well-planned and executed agenda that favours the U.S. imperialist-Zionist interests. U.S. leaders and their shrinking lackeys are embarking on a campaign of deception by hoeing their language, their images of themselves and their political skills to fit the certainty of a direction that many people rightly considered no longer a reality. The aim is to deceive the masses and prosecute an imperialist agenda in Iraq.
Before the invasion, Iraq had the best health care and education system in the Arab world. It had the most liberal family law in the Arab world, and human rights for women were enshrined in the constitution. Over a Million Iraqis are displaced refugees, and most Iraqi professionals have left the country. The Occupation has only destroyed Iraq and perpetuates violence.
Since 2003, the Iraqi civilian death toll has risen dramatically each month totalling nearly 6000 in May and June. Bombings and shootings have increased by 50 per cent, resulted in mass displacement of people from their towns and suburbs. More than 14000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last six months, and the number is mounting. Based on previous estimate (conservative estimate), at least 500,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed by U.S. forces and mercenaries. Evidence shows that most of the victims were innocent Iraqis killed by U.S. aerial bombings and those aerial bombings were responsible for massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, acts considered war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.
There is also evidence that U.S. forces and their collaborators are targeting all Iraqi men. According to Associated Press (AP), U.S. soldiers were under order to kill all military age males”. During the fascist siege and destruction of Fallujah, the U.S. army prevented all men between the ages of 15 and 55 years old from leaving the city and U.S. soldiers have killed in cowardly fashion men in this age group regardless of whether the men were armed or not.
Furthermore, violence against Iraqi civilians was encouraged by the U.S. deliberate and criminal act of dissolving the Iraqi army and security forces and replacing them with ethnic and sectarian-based militias. The Occupation continues nurturing and encouraging death squads, criminal gangs and “security forces” in order to terrorise the civilian population and foment civilian strife. From the outset of the Occupation, the targets were anti-Occupation Iraqis, including Iraqi professionals and prominent intellectuals and politicians, particularly those who served in the Government of Saddam Hussein.
The Occupation-orchestrated “de-Baathification” is a campaign of mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians regardless of religious and ethnic affiliations. U.S.-trained, armed and financed death squads, including Israeli agents, and the pro-Occupation militias – led by Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord (INA), Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the U.S.-Iranian-backed Badr Brigades – were gathered and coordinated by U.S. Special Forces from the ‘Interior Ministry’ to track-down anti-Occupation Iraqis and Resistance fighters, and terrorise the Iraqi population in order to enforce the Occupation rules. They are often dressed in “Iraqi Police” uniforms to disguise their identities. The criminal campaign was perfected by no other than John Negroponte during a short stint as U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad. U.S. intelligence agents (CIA) are so involved that they are the source of all the current violence in Iraq. In addition, the Occupation resorts to attacking and murdering large number of civilians gathered in mosques, markets and work places. The aim is to instil fear in the population, mislead Iraqis and incite them against each other. (See Washington Post, 11 December 2003).
At the same time, the U.S. Occupation Authority in Iraq has introduced and strengthened sectarian laws and encouraged sectarianism and ethnic nationalism. The US-staged elections were to cement extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism. There were no candidates or political parties with political ideologies, just religious and ethnic slates. In addition, the U.S.-drafted Constitution was aimed at cementing and legitimising these various divisions.
Contrary to Iraqis’ views towards the ongoing violence in Iraq, Western media, and the so-called “anti-war” activists (the “Left”) have all united behind the Occupation and began to deliberately distort the facts by labelling the violence as “sectarian violence”. They singled-out those Iraqis who oppose the Occupation in particular, the Mehdi Army (the anti-Occupation group associated with Sayyed Muqtada Al-Sadr) and accused them of perpetuating violence against their follow Iraqis. This is consistent with the U.S. own propaganda campaign of removing the Occupation as generator of violence and links the violence to Iran. The main aims of the U.S.-generated violence in Iraq are:
- To frame the Occupation-generated violence as “Iraqis killing Iraqis” or “Sunni” vs. “Shiite” warfare;
- To divert attention from the Occupation and avoid holding the occupying forces and their leaders responsible for the crimes that are committed in Iraq today;
- To reduce Resistance attacks against the occupying forces;
- To terrorise the Iraqi population and force them to see the Occupation as their only saviour; and
- Foment civil war and encourage the division of Iraq.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary of the political and resistance movement of Hizbullah in Lebanon, who knows a lot about sectarianism and imperialism-promoted divisions told AL-jazeera recently; “The U.S. has driven the situation in Iraq to a state where they offer themselves to Shiites as a guarantee against Sunnis, and offer themselves to Sunnis as a guarantee against Shiites. “They present themselves to Arabs as a guarantee against Kurds, and present themselves to Kurds as a guarantee against Arabs. “Their plot is doing just fine. Look at the situation in Iraq nowadays: What could possibly happen that is more appropriate for separatists to say that they have to split from Iraq to protect their community?” The criminal agenda is also encouraged by some Arab regimes, such as Kuwait and Israel.
The current Western propaganda of “Shiite crescent”, which alleged to have its source in Iran, and goes through Iraq, to Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon is simply an imperialist-Zionist propaganda campaign designed to promote sectarianism. The so-called “threat” is a phantom like many others. The US-Israel main aims are to protect the unelected pro-Western dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt, and justify a region-wide war against people that are resisting an imperialist-Zionist ideology masquerading as “New Middle East”. It is not difficult to see that the U.S. and Israel are applying the criminal destruction of Iraq in Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East
When a dozen of bricklayers and labourers were murdered, the media and the occupying forces blame the massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians on “sectarian violence”, but there was no evidence of “sectarian violence”. These are deliberate crimes aimed at fomenting civil strife by spreading terror and violence.
Jonathan Steele of the Guardian wrote: “Witnesses said gunmen; some masked, set up roadblocks and stopped motorists in the mainly Sunni suburb of Jihad, near Baghdad airport, demanding to see identity cards. Those with Sunni names were shot dead; Shias were released”. Steele doesn’t say how can one identify people’s religious affiliation from their identity cards? No one can identify Iraqis according to their ethnicity and religious affiliation from their identity card. It is just impossible. It is like on trying to identify Catholics from Protestants by looking at their drivers licences.
As it happens, this is something I know a lot about, and my own experience is enough to prove what Steele and the bulk of Western journalists and pundits write is a total fabrication. I lived and worked in Baghdad and around Iraq for many years, and I have yet to known or heard of a town or a suburb that is exclusively “Sunni” or “Shiite”. These imperialist labels are three years old.
For example, the population of Baghdad are so entwined, it is just impossible to accept the new imperialist propaganda that Baghdad can be divided according to the U.S.-Zionist labels of “Sunni” and “Shiite” to stop “sectarian violence”. What the U.S. and its collaborators are doing is dividing and weakens every community in Iraq in order to make these communities dependent on the Occupation. There has never been a “civil war” in Iraq, and Iraqis have coexisted as one community throughout history. The heterogeneous of the Iraqi Resistance is a case in point. Iraqis have stood up in solidarity to each other and denounce the Occupation during every major U.S. attack against civilians, whether in Fallujah or in Baghdad.
Further, it is impossible to tell Iraqis apart from their identity cards and names, or from the way they look and dressed. This is simply a Western construct designed to imprint the Iraqi society as a dived community in the public mind. These labels are also used to justify Westerners attacks not only against Iraqis in particular but also against Muslims in general.
What Westerners seem to ignore is that after more than three years of brutal Occupation, U.S. and its Iraqi puppet government were unable to maintain law and order and provide Iraqis with security. It is important to remember that despite the weakness of the Saddam Hussein’s Government and its lack of a powerful army like the U.S. army, Iraq was a safe nation for Iraqis and none-Iraqis. If we compare today’s Iraq with Iraq under the Hussein’s Government, Iraq was a Switzerland model. Saddam did not have the luxury of 200,000 heavily-armed U.S. soldiers and mercenaries stationed in Baghdad and around Bagdad.
Even the U.S.-imposed puppet government has acknowledged the complicity of the US in perpetuating violence. Indeed, some in the puppet government have now openly likening the invasion and its consequences to “the work of butchers”, and demanding that the U.S. forces leave Iraq. It is possible that once the violence moved into full-scale “civil war” which was the aim of the Occupation, the U.S. will use this to save face and withdraw its troops and mercenaries from Iraq. Consistent with the wishes of the majority of Iraqis – more than 92% – who opposed to the Occupation and have called for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country.
The puppet government has no power to prevent violence and provide security, and is completely dependent on the Occupation for survival. In its latest bid to reduce violence, the puppet government saw its 28-point “Reconciliation Plan”, which included a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, modified and watered-down by the U.S. “If the government took the initiative and dissolved the militias and set a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and insisting on punishing those who are responsible for crimes against Iraqis, then it would be guaranteed that the resistance would call for a truce because the excuse to carry arms will cease to exist”, Essam al-Rawi of the Muslim Scholars Association (MSA) in Baghdad told the Egyptian Weekly, Al-Ahram.
Sources close to the Iraqi Resistance said; “The resistance has a strict stance to resist the occupation and all squads of resistance have rejected the initiative [“Reconciliation Plan”] because this initiative didn’t talk about the occupation. We have never heard of those names of resistance groups that are said to have agreed on the plan”. The Iraqi Resistance have rejected the Plan, because it is fraudulent, and called the U.S.-imposed “Prime Minister”, Nouri Al-Maliki a despicable collaborator, like all the criminals who entered Iraq on the backs of U.S. tanks.
Recently, Al-Maliki was rewarded to visit Washington to thank U.S. leaders for their crimes in Iraq in a speech written to him by his U.S. minders. His visit was condemned across Iraq as betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to the Iraqi people at the hands of U.S.-Zionist aggressors.
The ongoing massacres of innocent civilians, sadistic torture, rape, and destruction of Iraqi cities and towns by U.S. forces, have forced the civilian population to seek security by belonging to a sectarian or ethnic group. People start moving from their original localities into new localities and in the process creating (sectarian or ethnic) ghettoes. Yugoslavia was an example of extreme nationalism encouraged and used by the West to destroy the country. The one difference is that the nationalist Iraqi Resistance have neutralised the U.S. military machine and prevented the U.S. from pacifying the Iraqi people.
Finally, it is becoming clear that the U.S. agenda was a well-planned imperialist-Zionist agenda. The U.S. is perpetuating the current violence as a pretext for ongoing Occupation and colonisation of Iraq. Indeed, the Bush Administration continues to link troops’ withdrawal to “security”. The pretext is no longer “democracy building”, but a U.S.-generated violence to sponsor a colonial dictatorship – dressed up in seasonal and U.S.-style fraudulent elections – ruled by a façade of expatriate stooges and paramilitary militias dependent on the presence of U.S. forces.
However, Iraq’s strong identity and history of resistance to Western imperialism provide evidence that the U.S. will fail to impose its imperialist-Zionist agenda on the Iraqi people. Iraq’s destiny will remain with the Iraqi people.
Iraq’s destiny and Iraqi lives are not saved by violence, but by an immediate end to the Occupation and full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. For this goal to success, mass resistance is the only way left against the rise of this anti-human ideology and injustice.
Global Research contributing editor Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia.
