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An Iraqi
policeman guards ballot boxes in Najaf (Reuters)
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It's
been over 600 days since the sovereign nation of Iraq was
invaded, and by all accounts (compiled from journalists, think
tanks, experts, Iraqi intellectuals, and political scientists)
Iraq is far, far from reaching the end of the so-called
democratic tunnel. Indeed, Iraq—in its disparaged, decimated
state—has no tunnel lying ahead of it.
In
the buildup to the March 2003 invasion, the world community was
forced to believe that Iraq, which had been reduced from a major
economic powerhouse to a third world consumer due to the
1980–1988 Iraq-Iran war and the subsequent 13-year punitive
sanctions for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was in possession of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Iraq
threatened US shores and US allies in the Middle East; and if
such scenarios weren't enough to shock you to wear a swastika
armband and pillage a few Arab stores, the world community was
forced to believe that secular Iraq was on the verge of handing
over its WMD to Islamic terrorists.
The
solution to this Iraqi anschluss? Invade the country, remove its
dictator who was the figurehead of evil (he's evil because we're
good, simple!), find and destroy the WMD stockpile (because we
insist they are there and we know exactly where they are), and
build a democracy to flourish and inspire other democratic seeds
in the Middle East.
This
was the plan made public. A plan built on numerous lies, mass
deception, the use of dubious intelligence sources, and a
self-styled Iraqi opposition who armed themselves with fancy
cars and Rolex watches, and frolicked about the halls of
Europe's finest hotels and eateries.
Reports
of mass graves, flying WMD labs, and the regurgitated Kurdish
plight were brought up every time a demonstration or some
Hollywood actor braved the media onslaught and spoke against the
rationale for going to war. It's unpatriotic—indeed,
un-American—to ask for the case for war to be proven without a
shadow of a doubt.
(Last
week, there was scant mention of the official US statement that
the search for Iraqi WMD was over with nothing to show. No
weapons existed at the time of the invasion, the official US
position read.)
But
the war went full-throttle, and the capitulation of Baghdad in
near-record time was highlighted as a paragon of US military
ingenuity. A few weeks later, the Iraq-wide resistance movement
took to the streets. US soldiers came home in body bags or
maimed beyond recognition, their Iraqi collaborators executed on
sight, usually in public display.
And
such has been the immediate history of Iraq.
However,
warfare is about deception.
The
non-public, covert plan for Iraq is far more destructive,
ominous, and manipulative than the layman could imagine. It is
directed towards the wholesale destruction of a society, from
the grassroots up. It is hinged on the decimation of the
political institution in a country that has long been a center
of Arab politics.
The
first sign of this covert plan to reduce the country to
fragments came within hours of US military entry into the center
of Baghdad: Banks, museums, schools, libraries, universities,
hospitals, and clinics were looted and then burned to the ground
while US soldiers looked on. A country and its representative
military that profess to be invading a country to protect its
people and their future must also commit themselves to protect
those said people's heritage and culture.
Iraq
was quickly stripped of its heritage, its history, its place in
the development of civilizations.
Why?
Simple—if you want to ensure that a country is fragmented at
its roots, you must seek out and destroy those roots themselves.
Historic
Baghdad, stretching from Karada, has all but been destroyed.
Once a center of literacy with tens of thousands of texts on
Arab and world literature, history, and science, Karada is now
festooned with burned buildings, the result of many pitched
battles between US forces and Iraqi resistance.
Second
stage in the covert scheme is to ensure that those founding
elements that through generations have added to the heritage and
culture of the country are no longer visible, viable
contributors.
During
the early days of the fall of Baghdad, stories emerged that
Iraqi intellectuals and scientists were assassinated, often with
their families in tow.
A
recent report in USA Today puts the number of members of
the Iraqi intelligentsia killed at more than 300 since the
invasion. That's almost one killed every two days. This campaign
has spared no one—scientists in all fields, prominent doctors,
internationally recognized university professors, historians,
and academics have been rooted out and murdered. Others escaped
to Syria, Jordan, and Turkey to await immigration elsewhere.
Effectively,
after the destruction of cultural icons comes a brain drain.
The
third stage is to hold an election under the guise of promoting
democracy, self-governance, self-security, and stability.
However,
the real intentions of the elections are rooted in the early
days of the formation of a quasi-governing body comprised of
so-called Iraqis. This came in July 2003 in the form of the
Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which was doubly flawed in
composition.
First,
it entreated itself to near-domination by the exiles who had
been out of Iraq for several dozen years—the same voices that
had participated in the wholesale marketing scheme to convince
the world community that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was
a moral and humanistic necessity.
Second,
the IGC was divided along sectarian lines, slowly removing Iraqi
nationalism and nationalistic aspirations from the fore and
pushing it to the kind of back-room, under-the-stairs
campaigning for sectarian interests.
Iraqi
intellectuals complained at the time that this was a formula for
later civil war. They were hushed, as mentioned above.
When
the IGC was dissolved after the farce of "handover of
sovereignty" in late June 2004, sectarianism also played a
major role in the formation of the interim Iraqi government.
As
the country comes to vote, Iraqis are aghast that there are no
nationalistic parties in the running. The elections are to be
decided along religious and sectarian lines: the Kurds have
their voting bloc, the Shia their various lists of unnamed
candidates, and the Sunnis—other than those like Pachachi who
have tried to bring together nationalistic parties—have
decided to entirely boycott the elections.
Perhaps
the only non-sectarian party is the communist party, which,
ironically, seems to be the only alternative to sectarian voting
trends.
The
mood in Iraq before the elections has been one of suspicion and
caution. Age-old sectarian rivalries are beginning to slowly
foment. Could the elections themselves be a platform for
eventual civil war and fragmentation?
If
the Kurds are to come to power, it is only logical to
extrapolate that they will find a way to pull off a national
referendum for secession with oil-rich Kirkuk as their new
capital. This move would likely be refused by both the Shia and
the Sunni political. Are we to believe that Kurdish
nationalistic aspirations will be discussed in an even-handed
manner in Baghdad? Hardly.
Furthermore,
if Shia parties win the election—and that is the likely
outcome—will they be able to forgive the Sunnis for 1,400
years of political repression? Will they be able to forgive some
3 million Baathists—many of them Shia, too—of supporting a
Sunni government for the past 35 years?
But
the above is mere child's play when one factors in the regional
aspirations of Turkey (with its Turkic minorities in Iraq and
its vehement opposition to Kurdish statehood), Iran (with its
age-old lust for southern Iraqi oil fields and the influence it
wields among its Iran-trained Iraqi clerics), Syria (which fears
it might witness a mini-US invasion, spurred on by Israeli
ambitions in the Levant), and Saudi Arabia (which has an
incredible distaste for the Shia and would like nothing more
than to see Iraqi Wahhabism take root).
* Firas
Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi
heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass
Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering
Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom
industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
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