Report from Baghdad -- Opening the Gates
of Hell
By Rahul Mahajan
Before the Iraq war, at a meeting of the
Arab League, Secretary General
Amr Moussa famously said that a U.S. war
on Iraq would "open the gates
of hell."
In Iraq, those gates are yawning wider
than they ever have before -- at
least for the United States.
"Sunni and Shi'a are now one hand,
together against the Americans," a
man on the street in the mostly Shi'a
slum of Shuala on the west side of
Baghdad told me, as we conversed in the
shadow of a burnt-out American
tank transporter. Those sentiments were
echoed at the local headquarters
of Moqtada al-Sadr's organization, which
had one day previously come
under assault from U.S. forces.
And, indeed, everyone in the area agreed
that when those forces were
driven from Shuala, it was done by Sunni
and Shi'a fighting together --
and by unorganized local inhabitants,
not al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Whether or not the resistance here grows
to a scale that the United
States cannot control -- and this is
more in the hands of Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani than of Paul
Bremer or George Bush -- it is
already clear that the events of the
last ten days mark a critical
turning point in the occupation of Iraq.
We're being told a convenient and
self-serving story about those events.
In that story, a few barbaric "isolated
extremists" from the "Saddamist
stronghold" of Falluja killed four
contractors who were guarding food
convoys in an act of unprovoked
lawlessness. Moqtada al-Sadr is fighting
the U.S. forces right now because, in
the words of George Bush, he
decided that "rather than allow
democracy to flourish, he's going to
exercise force."
The truth is rather different. Falluja,
although heavily Sunni Arab, was
hardly in Saddam's pocket. Its imams got
into trouble for refusing to
obey his orders to praise him personally
during prayers. Many
inhabitants were Salafists (Wahhabism is
a subset of Salafism), a group
singled out for political persecution by
Saddam.
In fact, during the war, Falluja was not
a hotbed of resistance. Its
turn to resistance started on April 28,
when U.S. troops opened fire on
a group of 100 to 200 peaceful
protesters, killing 15. They claimed they
were returning gunfire, but Human Rights
Watch investigated and found
that the bullet holes in the area were
inconsistent with that story --
and, furthermore, every Iraqi witness
maintained that the crowd was
unarmed. Two days later, another three
protesters were killed.
These incidents caused many people in
the area to join the resistance,
forming their own groups (see an
interview with one in the San Francisco
Chronicle here --
sfgate.com
e=printable
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/07/MN953.DTL&ty
pe=printable> ).
Violence back and forth and frequent
collective punishment measures
levied on the twon quickly turned it
into a place seething with anger
against the occupation -- to an even
greater degree than other places.
The most recent incident, in which four
mercenaries from Blackwater
Security, a company formed by ex-Navy
Seals (Blackwater people are
performing many of the same functions as
soldiers in Iraq and do get
involved in combat), did not arise in a
vacuum. In fact, just the week
before, U.S. Marines had mounted heavy
raids on Fallujah, killing at
least seven civilians, including a
cameraman. Residents spoke of this as
the reason for the attack on the
Blackwater people and the gruesome
spectacle that followed.
With the recent fighting in Falluja,
cordoning off the city, in which 12
Marines, two other soldiers, and at
least 66 Iraqis were killed, there
is no chance to get off this track in
the foreseeable future.
But, not satisfied with this massive
problem with the Sunni, the CPA
chose the same time to pick a fight with
the Shi'a followers of Moqtada
al-Sadr.
Whatever al-Sadr's views about democracy
may be, Bush's claim that he
started this violence to derail
democracy is ridiculous. First of all,
for all of al-Sadr's firebrand rhetoric,
he and his followers had always
stopped short of overt violence against
the occupying forces. Second,
the incident that precipitated this
whole round of violence was the
closing of his newspaper, al-Hawza, a
blatantly undemocratic act. In
fact, the paper was not closed for
directly advocating violence, but
simply for reporting one eyewitness
claim that a supposed car bombing
that killed numerous volunteers for the
New Iraqi defense forces was
actually done by plane (and therefore by
the United States).
In general, there is no quicker way to
get an Iraqi to laugh than to
talk about how the United States is
bringing freedom or democracy to the
country. It's standard when talking
about the latest problem the
Americans cause, to say derisively,
"This is the freedom." When I asked
Rasool Gurawi, a spokesman at the
al-Sadr office in Thawra, the slum of
two million that is perhaps al-Sadr's
strongest base of support, about
Bush's claims, he said, "This is
democracy? Attacking peaceful
demonstrations?
Killing people and destroying buildings?"
As the occupation simultaneously loses
control in Basra, Najaf, Kerbala,
Nasiriyah, Kufa, Kut, Diwaniyah, and in
Thawra, Shuala, and Kadhimiyah
in Baghdad, Bremer and Bush have backed
off a little. Instead of wanting
al-Sadr for his political role, they now
say he is wanted in connection
with the murder of Shi'a cleric Abdul
Majid al-Khoei last April. And,
indeed, one of the other precipitating
factors in the recent violence
was the arrest of Mustafa Yacoubi, a top
Sadr aide, for the same
killing. They even say it has nothing to
do with them -- an Iraqi judge,
acting independently, issued the warrant.
This explanation isn't getting very far
with anyone here. It's already
been revealed that the warrants were
written long ago and have been
sitting unused until the right time. In
fact, claimed Gurawi, the Iraqi
Minister of Justice proclaimed publicly
that he had no information about
Sadr's or Yacoubi's involvement with
al-Khoei and that they were not
wanted by the Iraqi government.
Whatever the case, the administration's
militaristic response and hollow
rhetoric cut no ice with any Iraqis
here, and are certain simply to
exacerbate a situation that has already
spun out of control for the
United States.
Although the situation with Fallujah
seems to have been mostly
happenstance (of the kind that was
inevitable with the constant
skirmishing), the signs seem to indicate
that the move against al-Sadr's
people was deliberately timed. If so, it
was presumably an attempt to
squeeze him out of the political sphere
before the token "transfer of
sovereignty" on June 30.
It has backfired in the way that anyone
who reads the newspapers himself
instead of having them explained to him
by aides could have predicted.
When three U.S. soldiers were killed in
the Kadhimiyah district of
Baghdad yesterday, that was a clear
sign. Although al-Sadr supporters
are probably a majority in Thawra and a
very sizeable minority in
Shuala, his influence had always been
negligible in Kadhimiyah.
Even though the violence that has broken
out is major news right now, in
a sense it's not the real story. The
killing of over 100 people in the
last ten days is a tragedy, but so is
everyday life under the
occupation.
The people in the Shi'a slums of Baghdad
who are now furiously resisting
the Americans hate Saddam with a passion
to this day. They suffered
under his repression and they also
suffered from neglect, especially
under the sanctions -- scarce resources
and repairs went to politically
more favored areas. They expected great
improvements when the United
States took over.
Shaykh Sadun al-Shemary, a former member
of the Iraqi army who
participated in the 1991 uprising and
now a spokesman for the al-Sadr
organization in Shuala, told me, "Things
are exactly the same as in
Saddam's time -- maybe worse."
That is all you need to know about the
occupation of Iraq.
Rahul Mahajan is the publisher of the
weblog Empire Notes
(http://www.empirenotes.org
<http://www.empirenotes.org/>; ) and is
currently writing and blogging from
Baghdad. His latest book is "Full
Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq
and Beyond." He can be reached at
Rahul@empirenotes.org |
