So Iraq’s new government, no matter what its intentions, is not really sovereign; and though nominally represented at last, Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites, like the rest of the population, still lack any meaningful control over the government.

As for the rule of law, successive scandals have cast an intermittent spotlight over events in Iraq’s prisons—the thousands who have been detained indefinitely without charge or trial, the torture, and impunity for the vast majority of those responsible. We now know that General Ricardo Sanchez, for all his official denials, in fact signed his approval of at least three of the common torture techniques, including use of dogs to intimidate prisoners.

Again, corporations were implicated, employees of private contractors being blamed for some of the worst crimes in Abu Ghraib. Because they were not military personnel, they were not subject to military law. Because there was no effective local legal system, they were not made subject to civilian law either.

In recent days the United Nations has finally empowered the International Criminal Court to begin investigating and prosecuting crimes. The spur was criticism over the organization’s inaction in Darfur, Sudan. What held the process up was the United States’ opposition to the court and its demands for exemption for its own citizens.

That means there is one group of people in Iraq, armed and powerful, which is exempt from the rule of law, and another group, the Iraqi population, which lacks any effective legal rights whatsoever. It is fundamental in a democracy that no person should be punished without trial. That trial should be fair and public. A person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I do not think that those basic principles can be made subject to “culture” or to restrictions based on a political desire to frighten the population (as in the UK and US).

Take, for example, Fallujah. This time last year I stayed in my apartment in Baghdad. All my Iraqi friends had begged me to have a few quiet days around the April 9 anniversary, to stay indoors and safe. Four mercenaries had just been killed in Fallujah, because several civilians had been shot dead by US forces a few days earlier.

Instead of exerting political pressure on local authorities in Fallujah to identify the individuals responsible for the killings of the mercenaries (let alone identifying those responsible for killing the Fallujans beforehand), US forces besieged the town, cut off electricity and, with it, the water supply, closed down the main hospital, and largely prevented access of medical supplies.

An Iraqi doctor friend, wounded by US bullets while driving an ambulance in Fallujah, thought that, as foreigners, we might be able to get medical supplies into the town. What we found there were civilians trapped in their homes in US-held areas of the town because marine snipers were firing at anyone who came outdoors, even children. People were trapped without food or water. The only hospital left open was cut off because the access road was controlled by US snipers and it was almost out of supplies.

US forces were firing at ambulances. We were able to move about during daylight by holding up our passports and being visibly foreign but, come dusk, our ambulance also came under fire from marine snipers while we were trying to reach a woman giving birth prematurely without electricity or medical help.

People fled to Baghdad to stay with family members or strangers, in mosques, abandoned buildings or building sites, empty bomb shelters, or the Red Crescent tent camp on a dusty football pitch. The second attack, in November last year, was apparently even worse. It appears there were many more civilians killed, homes destroyed, and people driven out of the town. A huge proportion of the population is still unable to go home, either because home is rubble or because they haven’t been allowed back in.

There were thousands of acts committed by US forces which amount to war crimes; and command-level war crimes were perpetrated throughout the US military hierarchy, but the only individual prosecuted for actions in Fallujah was the one caught on television shooting dead an unarmed man in a mosque.

So there is no rule of law. Iraqis are not able to exercise legal rights, even the basic right to a fair trial, while the occupying forces, unless foolish enough to be caught on film or photograph, have complete impunity. Non-military employees, apparently, are safe even when they are caught on camera.

But what about freedom? Where once it was impossible to publicly criticize Saddam, and risky even privately, even implicitly, now there is freedom to call him all the bad things under the sun. Various media outlets discovered, though, that it was not advisable to criticize interim prime-minister Allawi or his government. Reports were to be favorable to the government’s point of view. Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, and an unknown number of smaller outlets fell foul and were closed down or expelled.

Two years ago on April 9, US soldiers wrapped a US flag around the head of the Saddam statue and were then told to remove it because it sent out the wrong message. The right message was that Iraq was liberated, not conquered.

It seems the same is still going on. Iraq’s economy—and with it, its politics—is all wrapped up by the US, the International Monetary Fund, and the favored corporations. But the right message is liberation from debt and liberation of the market. Freedom, you see: freedom of the market, freedom for foreign corporations, but still no democracy for the Iraqi people.