George Bush came under further pressure this week to start withdrawing American troops from Iraq. In spite of an extra 20,000 troops deployed as part of Bush's ‘Surge' strategy, US casualties are rising and the situation on the ground worsening day by day. The US Congress which already passed a resolution in February criticising Bush's decision to send extra troops to Iraq, is this week debating amendments to the annual military budget designed to put pressure on the White House and its military commitment in Iraq.
The Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said the president's troop ‘surge' strategy was not working.
Last week four senators from Bush's own Republican Party joined opposition calls for a pull-out.
The assumption behind the latest 'surge' in US troops into Iraq is that more occupation will solve the problems of Iraq and beyond. However, the hidden premise of this position is that British and American troops must by definition be a blessing to any nation they occupy. We are led to believe that Western soldiers are so competent that, wherever they go, only good can result. It is inconceivable that they could increase instability and violence or that their departure might alleviate it. This arrogant assumption runs through every argument about Iraq presented by the US and her allies. It is the last shred of imperialist illusion, held even by many who opposed the invasion. It is encapsulated in the incoherent proposition that in Iraq we must "finish what we started".
The Tradition of Occupation, Intervention and Regime Change
The occupation of Iraq cannot be considered to be an isolated action by the US and Britain to merely remove an "evil dictator." It must be seen within centuries old traditions of occupation, intervention and regime change by Britain and the USA.
Almost 90 years ago, the British commander Lieutenant General Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, whose city his forces had just occupied.
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men… The people of Baghdad shall flourish under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws," he said.
He went on to say, "…your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage."[1]
Within three years, over 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers, who gassed and bombed the insurgents. On the eve of 2003's invasion of Iraq, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins echoed Maude in a speech to British troops. "We go to liberate, not to conquer,"[2] he told them.
However, British and American rule over the Middle East has historically been shaped by conquest and characterised by a cruelty that is all too familiar to the people of Iraq. In 1919 Iraq faced the aerial spectre of mustard gas and today US and British warplanes continue where their ancestors left off, applying the ‘Bomber' Harris maxim of dropping "a bomb in every village that speaks out of turn."[3]
Winston Churchill encouraged the use of mustard gas and sanctioned British pilots mowing down Iraqi women and children as they fled from their homes for not having paid their taxes.[4] Churchill acknowledged the savage rapacity of Western colonialism in Iraq when he said, "there is no doubt that we are a very cruel people."[5]
The historian Mark Curtis has calculated that Britain "is complicit in the deaths of around 10 million people since 1945, in conflicts or covert operations where Britain has played a direct role or where it has strongly supported aggression by allies, especially the US."[6]
Declassified government files reveal a whole series of largely unreported British policies, for example British support for the 1963 killings in Iraq that brought Saddam's Ba'ath party to power and the British arming of the Baghdad regimes' brutal aggression against the Kurds throughout the 1960s.[7]
Syria, Iran, Oman and Egypt are among other governments targeted by America and Britain in the last half century. By invading Iraq, Bush and Blair were simply continuing the Western tradition of promoting regime change.
Real problem is occupation
In March 2003, Blair argued, "Of course, I understand that, if there is conflict, there will be civilian casualties. That, I am afraid, is in the nature of any conflict, but we will do our best to minimise them. However, I point out to my honourable friend that civilian casualties in Iraq are occurring every day as a result of the rule of Saddam Hussein. He will be responsible for many, many more deaths even in one year than we will be in any conflict."[8]
However, the true reality is that it is the occupation that has brought death and destruction to Iraq on a scale unimaginable even under Saddam's rule. Over 650,000 civilians are dead as a result of the decision to invade Iraq and as a direct result of the occupation.[9] Over 1.5 million Iraqis are estimated to have lost or fled their homes.[10] In 2006 alone the occupation generated 365,000 internally-displaced refugees.[11]
Tens of thousands of other Iraqis, "a third of Iraq's professional class,"[12] are now fleeing into exile in Jordan, Syria, Iran, the Gulf States, Turkey and Europe. Are we supposed to believe that the American military presence, which precipitated both the resistance and the civil war and pioneered new ways of torture at Abu Ghraib, is protecting, let alone respecting, Iraqi lives?
Britain and America want to evade responsibility for the situation that has evolved in Iraq over the past four years. The plain fact is that they invaded Iraq in March 2003 and took great pleasure in unleashing "shock and awe" on Iraq. The carnage and bloodshed in Iraq since then has flowed from this action and the political leaders who initiated this action cannot evade responsibility for it. Had they not invaded and occupied Iraq, the carnage would not have happened. Zalmay Khalilzad, the present US Ambassador to Baghdad, said recently that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime had "opened a Pandora's Box of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions."[13] It is Britain and America who opened the Pandora's Box and they are responsible for the afflictions that have come out of it.
Even senior military figures have admitted that it is the occupation that is exacerbating the situation on the ground. In late 2006, the head of the British Army, Sir Richard Dannatt, said that the presence of UK armed forces in Iraq "exacerbates the security problems" and they should "get out some time soon."[14] He added that the British army should "get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems." He went on to say, "We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear…As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited into a country, but we weren't invited, certainly by those in Iraq at the time. Let's face it the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in."
Democratic Congressman John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran with a long career in the US Marine Corps and a supporter of the military in Congress since he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1974, has bluntly said that the "insurgency" is a consequence of the US military presence.
He said, "Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against US forces and we have become a catalyst for violence…A poll recently conducted shows that over 80 % of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45 % of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis."[15]
Murtha quotes the then US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, and his boss, the then head of CENTCOM, General John Abizaid, expressing similar sentiments to Congress in September 2005. According to Murtha, Casey said on this occasion: "…the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency."[16] Abizaid said: "Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy."[17]
Bush argues that the majority of the violence is not targeted against the occupying forces but against Iraqis themselves. However, previous studies have suggested that as much as 90 per cent of bombs were targeted at the American occupation forces.[18] A Pentagon report to the US Congress revealed that more than 60 per cent of attacks of all kinds on US and foreign troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure were directed against US and Iraqi government targets.[19] Civilians were the targets of just 15 per cent of attacks, although they did constitute the majority of the victims of the violence.
A senior US Defense Department official, speaking anonymously, was quoted as saying: "The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels. The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time."[20]
The New York Times also reported that "An analysis of the 1,666 bombs that exploded in July [2006] shows that 70 per cent were directed against the American-led military force, according to a spokesman for the military command in Baghdad. Twenty percent struck Iraqi security forces, up from 9 per cent in 2005. And 10 percent of the blasts struck civilians, twice the rate from last year."[21]
Who are the troops protecting?
Bush argues that the failure to stem the violence in Iraq is a consequence of inadequate numbers of troops, but he cites no evidence to prove this claim. Indeed, foreign troops have been a magnet for violence. When American commanders in Iraq have shifted thousands of soldiers from outlying provinces to Baghdad to allegedly combat increased violence in the Iraqi capital, the net effect has only been further violence.
Will a "surge" in troops do anything, given that the majority of foreign troops spend their time and effort protecting themselves?
There is a strong case for the view that the USA is not actually "occupying" Iraq in the usual sense of the word. US soldiers are not moving around Iraq at will and in reality the occupation cut and ran from Iraq in the course of 2004. This was when the Americans and their allies abandoned the policing of towns and cities and retreated bruised to more than 100 fortified bases. Movement between these bases can only be by air or heavily armoured convoy. It appears that the role of the occupiers is confined to roadblocks, occasional patrols and defending the Green Zone and airports.
Some commentators have observed that ninety per cent of its time and effort goes on its own protection and logistics. American counter-insurgency takes the form of wrecking villages from the air, as with Fallujah twice since 2003. In Basra, Britain's contribution to law and order included flattening the chief police station. It appears that the only way in which more American troops might assert any control is "denying ground to the enemy" by laying waste to it.
The only solution for Iraq is Khilafah
There is an assumption that the values of the West are universal and the US and Britain wrongly assume that if Western governments just engage a bit better then they are destined to win "hearts and minds" in the Muslim world. This is despite a wealth of evidence suggesting that the battle for "hearts and minds" has been lost and that there is strong support in the Muslim world for Islam, not Western secularism. Recent election results in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and the Gulf indicate the strong support for Islamic based parties. The latest opinion poll published in April 2007 shows massive support for the Khilafah in the Muslim world.[22] The poll conducted by the University of Maryland in four majority Muslim countries confirms previous research by the Centre for Strategic Studies in Jordan that Muslims overwhelming want the return of a Khilafah.[23]
The political philosophy of the people of Iraq, their historical experience and current aspirations cannot be disregarded. Iraq will sadly remain in turmoil, like her neighbours, until its people are allowed to truly take their destiny in their own hands – and Islam is the natural ideology to define this destiny because Islam and its ruling system the Khilafah is the root political philosophy of the people of Iraq and has been so for thirteen centuries.
The Khilafah is associated in the minds of the world's one billion Muslims with positive things. It laid the model principles for governance under the Prophet (saw) and his first four successors. It is associated with justice, a flourishing culture and civilisation, technological advancement and societal harmony. It is the hope and aspiration of the majority and the political mission of Islamic organisations in the decades since its demise – the overwhelming majority of which were political and non-violent in the methodology.
The only solution for Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world is to remove the shackles of imperialism and occupation and return to the only acceptable system to Allah (swt) – The Khilafah.
References
1 Stanley Maude, The Proclamation of Baghdad, March 19th 1917, http://www.harpers.org/ProclamationBaghdad.html
2 BBC Online, "UK troops told: Be just and strong" March 20th 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2866581.stm
3 Martin Woollacott, "Getting the Dosage Right" The Guardian, January 19th 1993
4 David Omissi, "Baghdad and British Bombers" The Guardian, January 19th 1991
5 Mark Curtis, "The Great Deception Anglo-American Power & World Order" p136 Pluto Press London, 1998
6 Mark Curtis, "Declassified: Rogue State Britain", January 10th 2007,
http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/01/10/declassified-rogue-state-britain/
7 Ibid.
8 Hansard (Commons), March 19th 2003, column 934
9 Burnham G et al., "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey" The Lancet, October 11th 2006
10 UNHCR, UNHCR Update on the Iraq situation, November 2006, http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2006/unhcr-irq-30nov.pdf
11 Simon Jenkins, "America Has Finally Taken On The Grim Reality of Iraq" The Guardian, October 18th 2006
12 Ibid.
13 Borzou Daragahi, US Envoy says "We opened Pandora's box in Iraq" Los Angeles Times, March 7th 2006
14 Sarah Sands, "Sir Richard Dannatt: A very honest General" The Daily Mail, October 12th 2006
15 John Murtha, War in Iraq, http://www.house.gov/list/press/pa12_murtha/pr051117iraq.html
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 David Edwards, The invisible war – the media and the insurgency, September 20th 2006,
http://medialens.org/alerts/06/060920_the_invisible_war.php
19 Department of Defense, Measuring stability and security in Iraq, August 29th 2006,
http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/wdc/documents/Iraq/Security-Stabilty-ReportAug29r1.pdf
20 Michael Gordon, Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, "Bombs Aimed at G.I.'s in Iraq are Increasing" New York Times, August 16th 2006
21 Ibid.
22 http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/apr07/START_Apr07_rpt.pdf
23 Centre for Strategic Studies University of Jordan, Revisiting the Arab Street Research from Within, February 2005. http://www.css-jordan.org/new/REVISITINGTTHEARABSTREETReport.pdf