[JNV Announce] Two Iraq Comments

[Milan Rai]

1) Iraq: Whose Side Are You On? (A 5 February talk by Milan Rai)
2) Whoever You Vote For, Washington wins: How Washington Plans To Dominate The New Iraqi National Assembly (An article for the next issue of Peace News)

Hi everyone

Here are two long pieces of writing from today. I hope you find them useful.

We've been having website problems, so I'm not sure when they will go up on the JNV site.

Best wishes

Milan Rai
JNV


1) Iraq: Whose Side Are You On?
Speech to the Labour Against The War conference by Milan Rai,
University of London Union, Malet Street, London, 5 February 2005
[edited version]


Commenting on the handling of terrorist suspects, the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons on Wednesday 2 February, ‘the one thing I will not do as Prime Minister is engage in anything that I think puts the security of our country at risk. That is paramount for me.’ (Hansard, <http://tinyurl.com/5bvjr>)

Why, then, did he ignore the advice of British intelligence, which warned him in February 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would ‘heighten’ not lessen the risk of terrorism against Britain?

The Intelligence and Security Committee report into Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, published in September 2003, found that the Joint Intelligence Committee gave this warning to Tony Blair on 10 February 2003:

‘The JIC assessed that al-Qaida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest threat to Western interests and that threat would be _heightened_ by military action against Iraq.’ (<http://tinyurl.com/3phe2> emphasis added)

Tony Blair invaded Iraq knowing that his action would put the security of this country at risk. The truth is that, as with previous prime ministers, there were other factors that were ‘paramount’. The security of the British people was not, and is not, a crucial issue.



What about the security of the Iraqi people? Mr Blair claims to have the interests of the Iraqi people at heart. He likes to frame the current conflict as one between ‘democracy’ and ‘the terrorists’.

He likes to place himself on the side of ‘democracy’, against ‘the terrorists’. Why then did he enthusiastically support the US in imposing on Iraq as interim Prime Minister a known former terrorist, Iyad Allawi?

(There are those who still deny that Allawi was imposed by the US. When we go back to his elevation, we find that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council put forward three names for the top job (and derailing the UN process for selecting the prime minister in the process). According to The Times, the US vetoed two of the candidates as ‘too Islamist’, leaving Allawi to take the job. (31 May 2004, p. 27) So George Bush is not lying when he says he did not select Allawi. He just vetoed every other possible candidate.)



Let us run briefly through Allawi’s terrorist background.

The last time car bombs went off in Baghdad (before the US/UK invasion) was in 1994-95. These bombings, which, if they were carried out today, would be denounced by Allawi as vile terrorism, were carried out by the Iraqi exile opposition group known as the Iraqi National Accord (INA), headed then (as now) by... Iyad Allawi.

Backed by the CIA and preparing for a 1996 coup attempt, the INA bombed a cinema, a mosque, and the street outside an official newspaper, killing a total of perhaps 100 civilians. The CIA role in these bombings was confirmed in the New York Times by 'former intelligence officials' who 'while confirming C.I.A. involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.' 'The bombing and sabotage campaign, the former senior intelligence official said, "was a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability." ' (NYT, 9 June 2004, p. A1 <http://tinyurl.com/4vgph>)

100 Iraqi civilians were blown up to demonstrate Iyad Allawi’s terrorist capabilities.

In October 1995, Allawi followed this up by ordering the bombing of the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group for Iraqi oppositionists-in-exile which his INA party technically belonged to. 28 anti-Saddam activists were blown up. Three men were arrested and, under interrogation by Kurdish police, confessed that they planted the bombs on the orders of the INA. The CIA carried out its own investigation, taking away fragments from the scene: the results were never released. (Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession/Out of The Ashes)

Allawi was never punished for these activities by the US, for the simple reason that he and his INA party was at the centre of US policy towards Iraq for over a decade. And the reason Allawi and the INA has been at the centre of US policy towards Iraq for over a decade is that Allawi is a former Ba’athist, and his party is a party of former Ba’athists.



Since 1991, the US has been pursuing a policy in Iraq not of ‘regime change’, but of ‘regime stabilization, leadership change’. That’s why in March 1991 Richard Haass, a Middle East staffer on the US National Security Council told a fellow Bush administration official, ‘You don’t understand. Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime.’ (Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession/Out of The Ashes)

That’s why in October 2002, the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, when asked about the multi-billion-dollar cost of invading Iraq, replied that the cost of the invasion could be saved for the ‘cost of one bullet.’ Pressed on whether he was advocating the assassination of Saddam Hussein, Fleischer replied, ‘Regime change is welcome in whatever form it takes.’ <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021001-4.html#3>

One-bullet, one-man regime change. Leaving the Ba’athist military, intelligence services, judiciary, police, and civil service intact would have amounted to ‘regime change’, if only the supreme leader had been despatched. If we had had the Nazi state without Hitler. I’ve written about more about this in Regime Unchanged.



Allawi was at the heart of US policy towards Iraq because Allawi represented the best chance of organising a coup within Iraq, and leaving the Ba’athist system in place.

Allawi joined the Ba’ath Party early, and was an enthusiast. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who served in the Middle East, told the New Yorker, ‘Allawi helped Saddam get to power. He was a very effective operator and a true believer.’ For Gerecht, ‘Two facts stand out about Allawi. One, he likes to think of himself as a man of ideas; and, two, his strongest virtue is that he's a thug.’ <http://tinyurl.com/63p33>

Allawi moved to London in 1971, to run the European operations of the Ba’ath Party organization. He commanded the local activities of the party’s intelligence arm, the Mukhabarat, until 1975, according to US intelligence officials. ‘If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does,’ says Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA officer. A a ‘cabinet-level Middle East diplomat’ told Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker that Allawi was involved with a Mukhabarat ‘hit team’ that sought out and killed Ba'ath Party dissenters throughout Europe. (New Yorker, <http://tinyurl.com/63p33>)

Allawi’s involvement in terrorism did not start in 1994, then.



For years, the US tried and failed to organise a coup via Allawi and his INA. When the invasion finally took place, Saddam’s regime collapsed, much to the dismay of Washington. Allawi was brought in to provide what the Foreign Office used to call ‘an Arab façade’ for the occupation, and to aid the US programme of recruiting and restoring Ba’athists to power.

At first, the Shia mobilization forced the US to declare a ‘de-Ba’athification’ process – while quietly re-hiring Saddam’s spies. In the same month that US governor Paul Bremer announced ‘de-Ba’athification’, the US occupation forces re-hired for intelligence work Mohammed Abdullah, a colonel with ten years in the Mukhabarat and eight in military intelligence. The colonel told the Sunday Times in September 2003, ‘We are under strict instructions not to publicise our work with the Americans, but dozens of former Mukhabarat officers have already been recruited.’ (Mark Franchetti, ‘CIA recruits Iraq’s feared secret police,’ Sunday Times, 21 September. 2003, p. 26)

The Sunday Times reported, ‘US officials claim all recruits from the former Mukhabarat are vetted.’ Unfortunately, he notes, vetting is tricky: ‘The Americans often find themselves forced to rely on Mukhabarat agents already working for them when selecting new recruits.’ The Gestapo were vetting the Gestapo.



Once imposed as interim prime minister, Allawi accelerated the process of re-Ba’athification. He appointed ex-Baathists to key cabinet posts, including Falah al-Naqib, the son of a prominent Baath official who ultimately became Iraq's ambassador to Sweden, who became minister of the interior. He chose Hazem al-Shaalan, a former Baathist from al-Hillah, as Defence Minister. Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, an old-time Ba’ath officer, was made head of the Iraqi secret police.

According to Dr Juan Cole, an Iraq expert who calls this group ‘a network of ex-Baathists (or perhaps neo-Baathists)’ ‘Shahwani is alleged to be a long-time CIA asset who is being groomed as a replacement for caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi should the latter be assassinated.’ <http://tinyurl.com/666hq>



Allawi even re-hired former Special Forces soldiers from the old regime, to serve in a ‘police commando’ strike force. Maj. Gen Adnon Thabit, who now acts as a Iraqi Police Service adviser for the Ministry of the Interior says, ‘we have police who have previous experience fighting terrorism and also people who received special training under the former regime - people who used to be in the army.’

U.S. Army Col. James H. Coffman Jr., who works alongside the Major General, says, ‘They needed a strike force that reported to the Ministry of Interior… So they purposely went out and recruited against these former special forces and (former Directorate of General Security [Mukhabarat]) personnel that had a high degree of training existing already… to capitalize on the previous skill sets that they had.’

Col. Coffman, who has a Special Forces background himself, adds, ‘This is a very disciplined unit. These are disciplined soldiers who are doing a very good job, and they're very impressive because of it.’ (American Forces Press Service, 20 October 2004 < http://tinyurl.com/6ss2t>)

The Washington Post observes, ‘Supporters of Allawi's actions - including, implicitly and quietly, _the United States_ - believe that the Baathist military and intelligence officers, trained in the ways of control, are Iraq's best hope of successfully combating the violent insurgency. (3 February 2005, p. A21 <http://tinyurl.com/5q9j2>, emphasis added)



Allawi tried to force the doors open wider for the old gang. Last October he tried to abolish the Supreme Commission for De-Ba’athification, but was found by a court to be acting unlawfully. He wanted to bring in a new rule that any official of any rank could be brought back into government service if they had not actually been found guilty of a crime in a court of law.

This policy is supported by Washington, and they would like the new government to institute something like this. Unfortunately the Shia coalition which has won the most votes in the election is dead against re-Ba’athification, for obvious reasons.



To make the issue concrete, consider the case of Rasheed Flayeh, appointed last summer by Allawi’s Interior Ministry to the post of director-general of the secret police force. The De-Ba’athification Commission objected that, as head of security in the southern city of Nasiriya, he had taken part in the brutal suppression of the 1991Shia uprising. So what. He was appointed anyway. (New York Times, 13 October 2004 <http://tinyurl.com/52bnk>)

Re-Ba’athification is US policy. It is at the centre of US policy, and has been for over a decade. Re-Ba’athification cannot truly be reversed until the occupation is reversed. That is the reality of Iraq.

Real security for the Iraqi people means de-Ba’athification and freedom from occupation. Real security for the people of Britain means ending Tony Blair’s foreign adventures.

Here in Britain, we have a choice. We can be on the side of Rasheed Flayeh, of the men and women with blood on their hands. We can be on the side of Iyad Allawi and his neo-Ba’athist network, the terrorists and thugs of yesterday and today. We can be on the side of Washington, which promotes the re-nazification of Iraq. We can be on the side of Tony Blair and his democratic terrorism. Or we can be on the side of all those struggling for real regime change in Iraq, and for an end to the US-UK occupation.



2) Whoever You Vote For, Washington wins: How Washington Plans To Dominate The New Iraqi National Assembly
JNV Briefing 76: 14 February 2005
An article for Peace News


The elections in Iraq have been an unprecedented opportunity for ordinary people to influence the destiny of their country, but the National Assembly they have elected is so hedged in with US-imposed restrictions that the cabinet it produces will be more like a chain-gang of prisoners than an independent government.

A prominent Iraqi politician in the Shia coalition told the New Yorker in January that the US had quietly told the parties before the election that there were three conditions for the new government: it should not be under the influence of Iran; it should not ask for the withdrawal of US troops; and it should not install an Islamic state.
<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact1>

One important but neglected issue is the steady re-Ba’athification of the security forces under US direction. This re-Ba’athification is hotly rejected by the majority Shia coalition, and is therefore a key issue for the new government.



The British mass media, as elsewhere, has concentrated on the division of power between the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities, and on how power may be shared between the different elements of the ‘winning’ Shia coalition. What has not been examined is the framework within which the newly-elected National Assembly, and the soon to be appointed ‘Iraqi Transitional Government’, must operate.

What has been off the agenda, due to a colossal act of media self-censorship, is the division of power between the elected Iraqi National Assembly and the unelected US-led occupation. There are several levers of power that the US has created to retain control.



One US device is the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), an interim constitution written in Washington and imposed on Iraq in March 2004. <http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/TAL.html>

Jawad al-Maliki, member of Daawa, one of the two main Shia parties, has pointed out correctly that ‘the body which we have elected has more legitimacy than this document’. (FT, 14 February 2005, p. 9 <http://news.ft.com/cms/s/292d2fcc-7dff-11d9-ac22-00000e2511c8,dwp_uuid=c1a5b968-e1ed-11d7-81c6-0820abe49a01.html>) Unfortunately, the TAL is self-defined as the default constitution of Iraq until a permanent constitution has been adopted in a referendum.

In a clause bitterly rejected by the Shia majority parties, the TAL states that the permanent constitution must obtain the approval of at least one-third of the voters in sixteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. This was put in to give Kurdish provinces a veto over the final text (it also gives Sunni-dominated provinces the same veto). (Nathan J. Brown, ‘Post-Election Iraq: Facing the Constitutional Challenge’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Democracy and Rule of Law Project, February 2005, <http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/PO10.brown.final.pdf>)

If this veto is used by the Kurds, the TAL continues to be the constitution. (And, according to Article 59 of the TAL, the Iraqi military will continue to function under US command.) (Nathan J. Brown, ‘Post-Election Iraq: Facing the Constitutional Challenge’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Democracy and Rule of Law Project, February 2005, <http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/PO10.brown.final.pdf>)

The effect of these provisions of the Transitional Administrative Law is to give Washington’s most loyal clients in Iraq – the Kurds – a powerful veto over political progress.



Another device for US control is the debt relief plan put together in November 2004, under which some of Iraq’s creditor nations will forgive some of Iraq’s debt (in stages), conditional upon the Iraqi government following an IMF ‘liberalization’ programme. This programme will prioritize foreign investors, privatization, and ‘tax reform’, but not unemployment or poverty in Iraq. <http://www.merip.org/mero/mero120704.html>

The new Iraqi government will have to choose between defying the rulers of the international economic and financial order, or following the IMF. Following the IMF will also mean pursuing the economic re-structuring and privatization set in motion by US administrator Paul Bremer during his time as ruler of Iraq.



The main tool of US control is, of course, military. As the FT pointed out recently, ‘US leverage rests upon awareness among the Shia that their government is unlikely to survive a civil war without continued US support’. (13 January 2005) The Shia coalition that won the greatest number of votes in the election had to announce its list of candidates in the Convention Centre in the US-controlled ‘Green Zone’ in Baghdad, ‘protected by US soldiers’. (Independent on Sunday, 19 December 2004)

In November 2003, when the US unveiled an earlier version of the ‘handover’ process, a senior US official told the New York Times, ‘It’s a gamble, a huge gamble. But it’s easy to overestimate the degree of control over events we have now and to underestimate how much we will retain.’ Another senior official said that even after the establishment of the interim Iraqi government, ‘We’ll have more levers than you think, and maybe more than the Iraqis think.’ Among the levers the US expected to be able to use: the US military presence itself; the $20bn US reconstruction budget for Iraq; and the requirements of US investors. (‘America’s Gamble: A Quick Exit Plan for Iraq’, New York Times, 16 November 2003)



Another device for maintaining control was Paul Bremer’s appointment of key officials for five year terms just before leaving office. In June 2004, the US governor ordered that the national security adviser and the national intelligence chief chosen by the US-imposed interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, be given five-year terms, imposing Allawi's choices on the elected government. Bremer also installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry, and formed and filled commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and securities markets. (Washington Post, 27 June 2004, p. A01 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8665-2004Jun26?language=printer>)

It is in the area of national security that Allawi’s choices are most significant. A former Ba’athist himself (see JNV Briefing 67 <http://www.j-n-v.org/AW_briefings/JNV_briefing067.htm>), Allawi restored former servants of the Saddam regime to important posts, and has filled the security forces with former Ba’athists. Saddam’s Special Forces soldiers and former intelligence officials are even being rehired as a police commando strike force. Last summer Allawi’s government appointed Rasheed Flayeh to the post of director-general of the secret police force, despite objections from the Supreme Commission for De-Ba’athification that as head of security in the city of Nasiriyah, Flayeh had taken part in the brutal suppression of the 1991 Shia uprising.
<http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041013/ZNYT03/410130453>

Last October, Allawi tried and failed to disband the De-Ba’athification Commission (headed by his old rival Ahmed Chalabi). Allawi wanted to be able to openly readmit former senior Ba’athists to power unless they have been found guilty of serious crimes in court, a policy supported by Washington. The Shia coalition that has ‘won’ the elections has vowed to reverse re-Ba’athification, and it is likely that Allawi’s enthusiasm for this policy will bar him from being a compromise prime minister in the new government.
< http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041013/ZNYT03/410130453>



Since 1991, the US government has pursued a policy of ‘regime stabilization, leadership change’ in Iraq. The collapse of the regime in 2003 was a shock from which Washington has not yet recovered. The Bush Administration has been forced into a zigzag path of retreats and assaults which has landed us, today, with a major defeat for the (heavily-US-funded) Bush candidate Iyad Allawi, a plurality of votes for the most Iran-friendly group of parties in Iraq, and a strong voice in the National Assembly for the de-Ba’athification brigade, who are determined to reverse the US-directed re-nazification of Iraq.

Washington is going to need every lever of power that it’s got.

ENDS


-- 
Milan Rai
Justice Not Vengeance
landline 0845 458 9571 (UK) +44 1424 428 792 (int)
mobile phone (0)7980 748 555
www.j-n-v.org