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"Avoiding
regime change" For those on the Left who recognise that the current Iraqi government is one of the most repressive in the world today, casting aspersions on Iraqi opposition movements must often seem to be a rancorous, possibly even perfidious, activity. Many within these movements have suffered directly, often tragically, at the hands of a regime that has committed violations of human rights on a scale that is - in the words of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in 1993 - "so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have passed since the Second World War". Their programmes for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, some requiring the support of the US military, often arise from unimpeachable motives to advance democracy, freedom and peace in a country that has sunk further from those aspirations over the past 34 years of rule by the Baath party. Nevertheless, the various Arab opposition groups promoted by the US as potential collaborators in the plans for an invasion of Iraq, and as replacements for the current regime, do not provide models for what a democratic, responsible Iraq would look like after Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the Bush administration has favoured individuals who have a history of engaging in severe repression within Iraq. The plans that have been circulated by the Bush administration for an invasion of Iraq all rely on the prospect of extensive defections from the Iraqi army, with units turning against the regime to ally themselves with the comparatively tiny opposition guerrilla forces inside Iraq. For this purpose, the US has aggressively courted Iraqis who have risen through the ranks of the Iraqi military, and thus retain personal knowledge of, and are able to command some respect from, serving Iraqi officers. The US has also been recruiting former senior members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, so as to gain a better understanding of the attempts that the party will make to mobilise the citizenry. The pay-back may well be that these individuals will be placed in positions of political power if the current regime is overthrown. One military clique would be replaced with another that has to act in as brutal a way as its predecessor in order to fulfil Washington's ambitions for Iraq. The slogan may be "regime change", but "leadership change" may be a more appropriate description. The Iraqi National Accord (INA), the group that has become the protégé of the CIA, is a prime example of this: it is made up of Baathists and former military officers who have turned against Saddam Hussein. Before it launched a failed coup in 1996 in league with the CIA, it made its name by planting bombs, including in a Baghdad cinema in 1995 that killed a number of civilians. Rather than arresting the INA's leaders on suspicion of terrorism, Washington has openly funded the INA from 1999, and invited its head to meet Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld at their 9 August forum of select opposition leaders. Similar entities include the Iraqi National Movement, a grouping of some 40 former Sunni Muslim military officers which has received financial support from the US State Department since February 2002; and the Iraqi National Coalition, an umbrella group of former officers led by former Brigadier Tawfiq al-Yasiri. It also includes former General Saad Ubeidi, the former head of psychological operations in the Iraqi army. It hosted a conference in London in July, and established a "military council". Although the Coalition disavows a future role as a ruling junta, it already stridently publicises its views on global and economic issues, leading one to believe that it has an agenda beyond the liberation of Iraq. Other recent graduates from the Iraqi military who have held meetings with US officials include Brigadier-General Najib al-Salihi, heading the Free Officers' Movement, who commanded an armoured division of the Republican Guard in the invasion of Kuwait; General Fawzi Shamari, heading the "Iraqi Officers Movement", who now admits to having ordered the use of chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980-88 war; and Wafiq Sammara'i, now heading the "National Salvation Council" and a one-time chief of military intelligence. The most high-ranking defector is General Nizar al-Khazraji, who was until 1991 Saddam's chief of staff. A number of Kurdish and human rights groups in his current base of Denmark have collected testimonies with a view to prosecution that allege that he planned the devastating chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, which killed 5000 people. A prominent critic of the Iraqi regime has also testified that he witnessed Khazraji kicking a Kurdish child to death in 1988. In contrast to these military groupings, the umbrella Iraqi National Congress (INC) was given priority at the Washington meeting of 9 August. The INC is led mostly by two bankers, Ahmad al-Chalabi and Sharif Ali bin al-Husayn, the cousin of King Faysal II who was assassinated in 1958. Neither Chalabi nor Sharif Ali have been to Baghdad since the 1950s. Part of their attraction for Washington may be that they can take the role of the figurehead leaders of a post-Saddam Iraq: weakened due to their lack of political experience in the country, the actual power would remain with the military officers that the US installs behind their throne. The US has a more difficult relationship with the explicitly sectarian groupings within Iraq. The two major Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Shi'a revivalist and Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have all voiced doubts about the prospects for a US invasion. Much more forthright still have been the two major non-Baathist parties that were founded inside Iraq. The Iraqi Communist Party, founded in 1934 and at its height bringing out demonstrations of half a million activists, has joined together with their historic enemies in the Islamic Daawa party, which commanded in 1977 the largest ever demonstrations against the Baathist regime. Together, as the Coalition of Iraqi National Forces, they have declared themselves not only against the regime of Saddam Hussein, but also against foreign interference and economic sanctions. Unlike the non-Kurdish groupings mentioned so far, they have legitimacy inside Iraq as popular, anti-regime movements. Those who want to know what the Iraqi people think of US warmongering should take note. |
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Author: Glen Rangwala Back to the Index of Writings |
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