U.S. occupation behind Iraq’s turmoil

As the March 7 national election approaches in Iraq, the number of U.S. troops occupying the country has slipped below 100,000 for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion seven years ago. The Pentagon plans to change the name of its Iraq effort on Sept. 1, from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn” when 50,000 troops remain.

The play with words and numbers hasn’t changed the basic reality in Iraq. There are still 98,000 U.S. troops there. They still have the leverage on power. A sovereign election can’t be held in an occupied country.

If and when the last U.S. troops are ushered out, the best name for that effort would be “Operation End the Nightmare.” Seven years of invasion and occupation have brought neither freedom nor the promise of a fresh start, but have brought Iraq to the brink of destruction as a country.

A report from the BRussells Tribunal, resulting from an attempt last October to raise a legal case against U.S./U.K. aggression and occupation, gives a bleak picture of where life is at today in Iraq:

“From the start of the implementation of a U.S.-instigated and dominantly administered sanctions regime [August 1990] up to the present day, an approximate total of 2.7 million Iraqis have died as a direct result of sanctions followed by the U.S.-U.K. led war of aggression on, and occupation of, Iraq beginning in 2003. Among those killed during the sanctions period were 560,000 children.

“From 2003 onwards, having weakened Iraq’s civil and military infrastructure to the degree that its people were rendered near totally defenseless, Iraq was subject to a level of aggression of near unprecedented scale and nature in international history.”

This took place along with “funding of sectarian groups and militias that would play a key role in fragmenting the country under occupation, ... the collapse of all public services and state protection for the Iraqi people, the further destruction of the health and education systems of Iraq, and the creation of waves of internal and external displacement totaling nearly 5 million Iraqis;” overall there are “5 million orphans” and “3 million widows.” (brusselstribunal.org)

Those are the numbers that should be kept in mind when the Pentagon and war criminals like former Vice President Dick Cheney and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair boast of the achievements of the Iraq occupation. What the U.S. and Britain have achieved is fomenting an internecine battle among different groupings inside Iraq. This has prevented the Iraqis from waging a united struggle to liberate their country from the occupation.

The imperialists have left Iraq in shambles. And they have not yet left Iraq.

An electoral sham

The March 7 election — should it take place as scheduled — will be as much a farce as the one held in Afghanistan last summer. A complete client state, which was only able to take power with the force of the occupation behind it, is organizing the elections. It is organizing them in order to consolidate power for the groupings that support Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

These are parties that opposed the Ba’athist government led by Saddam Hussein. Al-Maliki signed the papers hurrying the execution of the Iraqi leader on Dec. 30, 2006. At that time Saddam Hussein was a symbol of struggle for a significant section of the Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

During the electoral campaign, al-Maliki’s government outlawed the candidacy of 454 people who were running for national office, claiming that these individuals were too close to the Ba’ath Party. Some 171 of these candidates appealed the decision disqualifying them. In February a panel of judges appointed for the purpose rejected the appeals of all but 26 candidates.

Following this decision barring the most secular of the candidates, the Iraqi National Movement coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced it would temporarily suspend its campaign and demanded that the bans be reversed. On Feb 21, one of the parties in this coalition, the mostly Sunni National Dialog Front, announced that it would boycott the election.

There is still a chance the election will fall apart. Even if the vote takes place, as in Afghanistan, it will be a fraud having nothing to do with democracy. U.S. troops — even if they are not engaged in daily battles in Iraq — still remain the final arbiters of Iraqi politics.

Washington may prefer a stable puppet regime in Iraq so it can move most of its troops to Afghanistan. But the U.S. forces will continue to try to play off one sector of Iraqi society against another — whatever the consequences for the Iraqis — if the U.S. dominates the region.

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