| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 7:08 pm Post subject: Fisk: The Handover: Restoration of Sovereignty or Alice in.. |
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> The Handover: Restoration of Iraqi sovereignty - or Alice in Wonderland?
>
>
> By Robert Fisk
>
>
>
>
> 29 June 2004
>
>
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp
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>
> So in the end, America's enemies set the date. The handover of "full
> sovereignty" was secretly brought forward so that the ex-CIA
> intelligence officer who is now "Prime Minister" of Iraq could avoid
> another bloody offensive by America's enemies. What is supposed to be
> the most important date in Iraq's modern history was changed - like a
> birthday party - because it might rain on Wednesday.
>
>
>
> Pitiful is the word that comes to mind. Here we were, handing "full
> sovereignty" to the people of Iraq - "full", of course, providing we
> forget the 160,000 foreign soldiers whom the Prime Minister, Iyad
> Allawi, has apparently asked to stay in Iraq, "full" providing we forget
> the 3,000 US diplomats in Baghdad who will constitute the largest US
> embassy in the world - without even telling the Iraqi people that we had
> changed the date.
>
>
>
> Few, save of course for the Iraqis, understood the cruellest paradox of
> the event. For it was the new Iraqi Foreign Minister - should we not put
> his title, too, into quotation marks? - who chose to leak the "bringing
> forward" of sovereignty in Iraq at the Nato summit in Turkey. Thus was
> this new and unprecedented date in modern Iraqi history announced not in
> Baghdad but in the capital of the former Ottoman empire which once ruled
> Iraq. Alice in Wonderland could not have improved on this. The
> looking-glass reflects all the way from Baghdad to Washington. In its
> savage irony Ibsen might have done justice to the occasion. After all,
> what could have been more familiar than Allawi's appeal to Iraqis to
> fight "the enemies of the people".
>
>
>
> Power was ritually handed over in legal documents. The new government
> was sworn in on the Koran. The US proconsul, Paul Bremer, formally shook
> hands with Mr Allawi and boarded his C130 to fly home, guarded by
> special forces men in shades.
>
>
>
> It was difficult to remember that Mr Bremer was touted for his job more
> than a year ago because he was a "counter-terrorism" expert - this
> definitely should be in inverted commas - and that what he referred to
> as "dead-enders" [Baathist diehards] managed to turn almost an entire
> Iraqi population against the United States and Britain in just a few
> months.
>
>
>
> According to Mr Allawi yesterday, the "dead-enders" and the "remnants"
> belonged to Saddam Hussein. Those of them who had not committed crimes
> could even join the new authorities, he announced. But it had already
> been made clear that Mr Allawi was pondering martial law, the sine qua
> non of every Arab dictatorship - this time to be imposed on an Arab
> state, heaven spare us, by a Western army led by an avowedly Christian
> government. Who was the last man to impose martial law on Iraqis? Wasn't
> it Saddam Hussein?
>
>
>
> No, Mr Allawi and his chums - along with the convicted fraudster Ahmed
> Chalabi, now dug up from his political grave - are not little Saddams.
> Indeed, it is Mr Allawi's claim to fame that he was a Saddam loyalist
> until he upped sticks and fled to London. He almost got assassinated by
> Saddam before - this by his own admission - he took the King's shilling
> (MI6) and the CIA's dollar and (again by his own admission) that of 12
> other intelligence agencies.
>
>
>
> Yesterday, Mr Allawi was talking of a "historical day". As far as the
> new Prime Minister is concerned, Iraqis were about to enjoy "full
> sovereignty". Those of us who put quotation marks around "liberation" in
> 2003 should now put quotation marks around "sovereignty". Doing this has
> become part of the reporting of the Middle East.
>
>
>
> Perhaps most remarkable of all was Mr Allawi's demand that "mercenaries
> who come to Iraq from foreign countries" should leave Iraq. There are,
> of course, 80,000 Western "mercenaries" in Iraq, most of them wearing
> Western clothes. But of course, Mr Allawi was not speaking of these men.
> And herein lies a problem. There must come a time when we have to give
> up clichés, when we have to give up on the American nightmares.
> Al-Qa'ida does not have an original branch in Iraq. And the Iraqis
> didn't plan September 11, 2001.
>
>
>
> But not to worry. The new Iraqi Prime Minister will soon introduce
> martial law - journalists who think they can escape criticism should
> reflect again - and thus we can all wait for a request for more American
> troops "at the formal request of the provincial government". Wait, then,
> for the first expulsion of journalists. Democratic elections will be
> held in Iraq, "it is hoped", within five months. Well, we shall see.
>
>
>
> True, Mr Allawi promises a future Iraq with "a society of all Iraqis,
> irrespective of ethnicity, colour or religion." But the Iraqis who Mr
> Allawi promises to protect do not apparently include the 5,000 prisoners
> held in America's dubious camps across Iraq. At least 3,000 will remain
> captive, largely of the Americans.
>
>
>
> There were many promises yesterday of a trial for Saddam Hussein and his
> colleagues although, not surprisingly, Iraqi lawyers felt there were
> other, more pressing issues to pursue. Paul Bremer abolished the death
> penalty in Iraq but Mr Allawi seems to want to bring it back. Asked
> whether Saddam might be executed, he remarked that "this is again
> something which is being debated in the judicial system in Iraq". He
> said, however, that he was in favour of capital punishment.
>
>
>
> According to American sources, the United States has been putting
> pressure on Mr Allawi for at least two weeks in the hope that his
> ministries could - in theory, at least - function without US support.
> American advisers had already been withdrawn from many Iraqi
> institutions. Yet when he appeared yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke
> with words that might have come from George Bush. He warned "the forces
> of terror" that "we will not forget who stood with us and against us in
> this crisis". As the new "Cabinet" stepped forward to place their hands
> on the Koran, a large number of Iraqi flags lined the podium behind them
> - though not the strange blue and white banner which the former Interim
> Council had concocted two months ago.
>
>
>
> The real problem for Mr Allawi is that he has to be an independent
> leader while relying upon an alien, Western and Christian force to
> support his rule. He cannot produce security without the assistance of
> an alien force. But he has no control over that force. He cannot order
> the Americans to leave. But here is the real question.
>
>
>
> If Mr Allawi really intends to lead Iraq, the most powerful
> demonstration he could show would be to demand the immediate withdrawal
> of all foreign forces. Within hours, he would be a hero in Iraq. The
> Americans would be finished. But does Mr Allawi have the wit to realise
> that this ultimate step might save him? Who can tell, at this critical
> and bloody hour? America's satraps have been known to turn traitor
> before. Yet the whole painful equation in Baghdad now is that Mr Allawi
> is relying on the one army whose evacuation he needs to prove his own
> credibility.
>
>
>
> The Western occupying powers have left behind a raft of dubious
> legislation. Much of it allows Western companies to suck up the profits
> of reconstruction - an issue over which the Iraqis had no choice - and
> many people in the country have no interest in continuing Mr Bremer's
> occupation laws. No one, for example, is likely to spend a month in jail
> for driving without a licence. But why should US and other Western
> businesses have legal immunity from Iraqi law? When a British or
> American mercenary shoots dead an Iraqi, he cannot be taken to an Iraqi
> court.
>
>
>
> But Mr Allawi relies upon these same mercenaries. Which is why, sadly
> and inevitably, he and his government will fail. The insurgency now has
> a life of its own - and a plan. If it can continue to maintain an
> independence struggle for nationalists within the Sunni Muslim areas
> north and west of Baghdad, then the Sunnis may also claim that they have
> the right to form Iraq's first independent, post-American government. | |  | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
