This medieval republic is suffering more now than it did under Saddam
AL ALARABI, For the Herald-Journal
Published April 8, 2007
It has been four years since the first shots were fired in the "shock and awe" war against Iraq. But the shocking truth is that Iraq is far worse off today than it was under Saddam Hussein in terms of economic development, stability, security and quality of life.
The recently published Brookings Institution Iraqi war index (www.brookings.edu/fp/
saban/iraq/index.pdf) catalogs the progress in Iraq in terms of security, U.S. troop involvement and quality of life. Category after category shows that Iraq is not only lagging behind its pre-war levels but that the slide is continuing downward.
Perhaps one would find so many moral arguments in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and rightly so, however, according to a recently published U.N. report on the war in Iraq, more than 750,000 Iraqis were killed as a direct result of war, ethnic and religious violence. Moreover, there are more than 2 million Iraqi refugees in neighboring Syria
and Jordan in addition to 2 million more displaced inside Iraq, while 82 percent of Iraqis strongly oppose the presence of coalition troops, and 67 percent of Iraqis feel less secure because of U.S. occupation.
The United States has already spent more than $500 billion on this war, and this massive amount of money did not bring the level of security, quality of life, economic prosperity, education, health care and civil infrastructure to the pre-war level. What's even more shocking is that the "pre-war level" term refers to when Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was languishing under brutal and suffocating sanctions.
Take, for example, some of the figures mentioned in the Brookings index: Of 34,000 doctors Iraq had before the war, 12,000 left the country, and 2,000 were murdered. And Baghdad residents get an average of only 5.7 hours of daily electricity compared to 16-24 hours of daily electricity before the war. Twenty-five percent of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition, and 40 percent of the professionals have left Iraq since the war began.
Sad to say, Iraq has become a medieval, intolerant republic of hatred and horror, ruled by anachronistic and cultist ayatollahs, and it has become a proving ground for terrorists of all kinds. Al-Qaida terrorists operate a daily horror show by killing innocent civilians, both Shias and Sunni. Shia death squads and terrorist groups such as the Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades rape Muslim women and destroy Muslim mosques.
Iraqi government troops and security forces also rape women and engage in kidnapping and murder of innocent civilians. The reason for the proliferation of terrorism in Iraq is that the United States supported a sectarian Shia rule instead of maintaining an Iraqi national identity that is not based on religious and ethnic background.
After the fog of war had subsided and Saddam's regime had collapsed, the Shia organizations descended upon Iraq (from Iran) like vandals looting the booty. And being Iranian financed, they sooner or later will turn their guns against the U.S. troops, if the United States engages Iran in some kind of military operation.
Reconciliation and rebuilding a democratic Iraq were nowhere on the minds of those organizations and their private terrorist militias when they took over the country. Judging by their performance in the past three years, revenge and blood was their mantra. The sending of more American soldiers into harm's way will support an Iraqi government that sees itself as strictly a cultist Shia government beholden only to Iran next door.
On Dec. 12, 1983, terrorists bombed the U.S. and French embassies, along with other facilities, in Kuwait City. Seventeen people were arrested, and as it turned out, they were from an Iraqi Shia terrorist group called Al-Dawa that bombed the U.S. embassy on behalf of Iran, which was at war with Iraq, a U.S. ally at the time. The Al-Dawa Shia party is the current Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki's ruling party in power in Iraq today.
Recent U.S. news reports uncovered that one of those terrorists convicted in that bombing is a current member of the Iraqi parliament.
It doesn't stop there. Other Shia groups, such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), headed by Abdel Aziz-Al Hakim, were financed by Iran and their militias trained and equipped by Iran.
Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army is another Shia terrorist group that has killed Arabs, Muslims and Christians and bombed mosques. These actions serve the narrow sectarian Shia interests and eventually the interests of their paymasters in Tehran.
Millions of other Iraqis can barely make ends meet, while their leaders loot the riches of their country. What needs to be done in Iraq today is for the U.S. government to stop the ongoing process of transforming Iraq into Iran's banana republic, or the "Iranification of Iraq," and thus force the Iraqi Shia leadership to dissolve its own militias and terrorists groups and rebuild Iraq for all Iraqis -- Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians.
Ali Alarabi writes frequently on Middle East issues and can be reached at alialarabi@charter.net
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2 comments:
Excellent piece, sir.
While you come across as a Sunni Muslim, very dissatisfied with the majority Shia rule in Iraq and "grinding that axe," as it were, you nonetheless make all very valid points with which I greatly agree (a few of which I was unaware, such as the Al-Dawa terror connection).
I must say that your name was a tad confusing in the byline, and it wasn't until the end of the article that I realized it was from an individual, and not an editorial contributed by the Al Arabia news network, although the two don't look that much alike once I type them both out.
I can't believe the MESS our government has created in Iraq. I don't know if there IS a solution at this point... for America, for Iraq, or for its neighbors -- not short of a complete, benevolent cooperative effort of ALL Iraq's neighbors, which is the sort of thing most of them aren't prone to do for their own people, much less for another country.
Iraq's a "made-up" country, anyway, created by the former imperial rulers in the 1920s. I don't really know much of the history behind that, so I'm not going to try to speak to it. Some say the "best" solution is to break it into three countries... one for Shi-ites, one for Sunnis and Kurdistan, but that would likely start a war with Turkey, as there are more Kurds living there than in Iraq, and it's well known they'd want to include part of Turkey in Kurdistan... And the rest of the country isn't evenly divided between Shias and Sunnis. Nor are the resources. And these two sects have been fighting each other to some degree, as Bill Maher likes to say, "since 632," so drawing lines and saying "This is Sunniland" and "This is Shialand" will put millions of people out of their homes no matter where you draw the lines...
Not to mention the fact that the few Christians are and always have been "second-class citizens," and under such an arrangement would probably get even WORSE treatment, except in Kurdistan, I imagine.
However, unless some HIGHLY UNLIKELY international force from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and any other border states working in TOTAL COOPERATION (like Iran would EVER cooperate with the others named -- except, maybe, Syria) were put in place to keep the peace after our troops pull out, as soon as we DO pull out, the blood baths we're seeing now will be NOTHING by comparison... Shias were a majority subjugated, tortured and murdered for 20-odd years under the Sunni-minority Bathe party of Saddam Hussein, and the minute the might and muscle of US military leaves (as much as I think we should), the massacres by Shias not yet satisfied they've gotten revenge will get worse (and there are PLENTY of Sunni terrorists running rampant, as well).
So what do we do, besides pray?
Jeff Hayes
The growing resentment from the Arab populations in the Middle East is inversely proportional to the ineptitude of the Arab league. Why do we have the league ? It's useless and only reminds the Arab populations of how pathetic, corrupt the selfish state representatives are.
I see Iran as the only hope for the Arabs in many ways. The pro western Arab states feel the tug of its American master’s lead in supporting a Shia vs Sunni war. Islam is Islam peace no matter what sect you're from however divide and rule approach. This is the same method now being used by the Arab leaders to prevent Iran's right to nuclear power and economic development.
I feel the real aim of the American foreign policy is to establish bases within the Middle East to control the emerging economies in the region (Iran/China). It sees these as a direct threat to its position in the world economically and militarily. So the drums of war being to beat behind a veil of propaganda, unfortunately the writing is on the wall (search space command U.S control of space 2050 http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/Final%2006%20SMP--Signed!v1.pdf adobe acrobat file.
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