Commentary
Iraq: A victim of international terrorism
By Ghali Hassan
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Mar 17, 2006, 12:46

‘Terrorism is the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear’ [1].

‘Terrorism is the use, or threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public and is for purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause,’ Britain Terrorism Act 2000.

‘All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,’ Article 2(4) UN Charter.

One of the common myths about the US war against the Iraqi people is that the US and its Western allies are on a “mission” to help the Iraqis in their aspiration for “democracy” and “freedom.” However, a brief analysis of the crimes committed against the Iraqi people in the last 15 years shows that the main aim of the US and its allies is the destruction of Iraq and Iraqi society.

Prior to 1990, Iraq was one of the more prosperous and economically advanced countries in the Arab world, boasting a sizeable middle class; technical capacity; and, compared to other Middle Eastern countries, relatively high standards of education and health care, as well as high numbers of women educated and contributing to the economy and the well-being of society.

As a result of the 1991 US war, Iraq’s industrial and agricultural capacity was completely destroyed by US bombings. Iraq’s, transportation and infrastructure systems were obliterated. “The world must learn that what we say goes,” said George Bush I to enthusiastic applause of “freedom-loving” Americans. The war was a one-sided massacre of innocent civilians masquerading as “liberation of Kuwait.”

Just after the heavy bombings ceased, in March 1991, a UN mission to Iraq led by the then Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari, described “near-apocalyptic results [wrought by the US War] upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.”

More than 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped on Iraq during the 1991 US war. A large number of these bombs were encased in ‘depleted’ (DU) uranium, a radioactive by-product of the enrichment process used to make nuclear fuel. The ‘dust’ which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years contaminates the air, land and water, and causes chromosomal radiation damage, especially to soft tissue, pregnant women and their foetuses. [2] Cancer researchers in Iraq and in the West have shown that due to DU residue, the ‘rate of cancer has increased nine-fold since the 1991 US war,’ particularly among pregnant women and their babies. According to the Pentagon's own report, the US-UK dropped 320 tonnes of DU on Iraq in 1991. Greenpeace puts the figure at an estimate of 800 tones. More that 100,000 DU shells dropped on the city of Basra and its surroundings. The destruction was deliberate and a long-lasting act of terrorism.

Eric Hoskins, a Canadian physician and coordinator of a Harvard study team, reported that the US War on Iraq “effectively terminated everything vital to human survival in Iraq -- electricity, water, sewage systems, agriculture, industry and health care.” [3] "All of Iraq’s 11 major electrical power plants as well as 119 substations were completely destroyed. Eight multi-purpose dams were repeatedly hit and destroyed -- this wrecked flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. The health and education systems weren’t spared. Twenty-eight civilian hospitals and 52 community health centres were hit." In addition, more than 676 schools were damaged, including 38 completely destroyed (Media Lens 01 July 2002). Was all this for the sake of returning a tin-pot dictator to Kuwait?

Research by Thomas Nagy, professor of Expert Systems at George Washington University, revealed that the US military knew the effects of their attacks on the civilian population and proceeded with them nonetheless. Nagy wrote: “The health effects of the destruction of the water treatment system were not merely foreseeable in principle but were actually foreseen“. (The Progressive, September 2001). As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post wrote at the time quoting a Pentagon source; “People say, 'You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage,’” said the planning officer. “Well, what were we trying to do with [United Nations-approved economic] sanctions -- help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions.” (Washington Post, 23 June 1991)

To ensure that Iraq would be unable to repair or replace of what had been destroyed, the US and Britain maintained the genocidal sanctions against the Iraqi people, enforced by a massive military presence and weekly bombing raids designed to terrorise the Iraqi population. The sanctions have greatly impaired Iraq’s ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers. The health care system has deteriorated, and the education system and standard of living were near collapse. In addition, the sanctions were designed to isolate Iraq from the rest of the world and destroy the fabric of Iraqi society.

A once prosperous nation is being systematically de-developed, de-skilled and reduced to penury. As the 1999 UNICEF report points out: “In marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-1991, the infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world, low infant birth weight affects at least 23 percent of all births, chronic malnutrition affects every fourth child under five years of age, only 41 percent of the population have regular access to clean water, 83 percent of all schools need substantial repairs. The ICRC [Red Cross] states that the Iraqi health-care system is today in a decrepit state. UNDP [UN Development Program] calculates that it would take 7 billion dollars to rehabilitate the power sector country-wide to its 1990 capacity.” [4]

Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday has repeatedly denounced what was happening as “a systematic program . . . of deliberate genocide.” His statements appeared in the New York Times and other mainstream media during 1998, so it can hardly be contended that the world, the American public in particular, was ”unaware” of them. He resigned from his post and refused to be part of this deliberate genocide.

It is estimated that the sanctions killed more than 1.6 million Iraqis. The UN's own report revealed that 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 were dying each month due to its own policy of implementing the sanctions. Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, openly confirmed Denis Holliday’s assessment. When Albright was asked in an interview on 60 Minutes on 12 May 1996, whether she had considered the resulting death of 500,000 Iraqi children, she calmly announced that, “We think the price is worth it” to see that US objectives were achieved. Democrats or Republicans; they all participated in the crimes against the Iraqi people and in the destruction of Iraq.

According to John and Karl Mueller (Sanctions of Mass Destruction, Foreign Affairs May/June 1999), the sanctions ”have taken the lives of more people in Iraq than have been killed by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.” Therefore Iraq's genocide “arguably was the greatest genocide of the post World War II era.” Despite a worldwide outcry against the sanctions, the US and Britain -- with tacit approval from other Western states -- continued to enforce the sanctions violently.

The 13-year long sanctions on Iraq were the UN's biggest and most profitable mass murder in the history of the UN. While Iraqis children were malnourished and starved to death, obesity and corruption among UN member states and bureaucrats increased to levels unknown in the organization’s history. The pretext for this deliberate mass murder was Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was well known that Iraq neither had WMD, nor posed a threat to the American people.

Iraq’s Resistance to this form of international terrorism proved to be successful. In 2002, despite the Anglo-American orchestrated terror against the Iraqi people, Iraq showed all signs of moving forward, and leaving the genocidal sanctions behind.

However, a campaign of anti-Iraq propaganda and lies perpetuated by Western governments, mainstream media and pundits collectively demonised the Iraqi people and played on the non-existent WMD as a given. Western public opinion, American in particular, was manipulated to the extent that if Iraq did indeed possess WMD, an unprovoked act of aggression against a sovereign nation would be justifiable.

Having failed to defeat the Iraqi people through genocidal sanctions, the Anglo-American armies unashamedly attacked Iraq again. In March 2003, Iraq was massively attacked in a preemptive and unprovoked act of aggression. The attack was a blatant and gross violation of international law and the UN Charter.

In the end, every pretext for the war (WMD and Iraq’s alleged connection to “terrorism”) has proved to be a lie. The UN declared the an “illegal” act of aggression. The motives for the US war were obvious: the removal of an independent government, enforcing the US-Israel Zionist domination of the region and control over Iraq’s oil resources.

According to Michael Mandel, professor of Law at York University in Canada; “If we judge [the war] by the standards laid down by the Nuremberg Tribunal that judged the Nazis after World War II, it is the supreme international crime.” [5] The Nazis who committed war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity were indicted and sentenced to death by hanging. So, in a just world, the perpetrators and promoters of the war on Iraq must be held accountable and stand trial on war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

During the three-week massive attacks on a defenceless people, Western leaders proudly announced to their nations that the one-sided mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians was “morally” justified to spread “freedom” and “democracy.” Once again, Iraq was completely destroyed in barbaric fashion. Iraq’s cultural heritage was deliberately burned or looted. The Iraqi state, including the Iraqi Army and police were disbanded and replaced by occupying forces and imported criminals. The Pentagon and the UN estimate that the US and Britain “used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of bombs made of DU during attacks on Iraq in March and April 2003 -- far more than the 320-800 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on 04 August 2004. Today, the US continues its war crimes against the Iraqi people with indiscriminate bombing air raids on Iraqi towns and cities, killing innocent women and children and destroying properties in a barbaric and cowardly fashion.

After three years of violent occupation, the living conditions in Iraq have worsened since the invasion. There is no clean water and there is no adequate supply of electricity. Iraq remains a destroyed nation. The health care system is beyond repair and the education system has collapsed. A study conducted by the Norway-based Institute of Applied International Studies, or Fafo, in cooperation with Iraq's Central Office for Statistics and Information Technology, Iraq's Health Ministry, and the UNDP, reveals that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children between the ages of six months and 5 years has increased from 4 percent before the invasion to 7.7 per cent since the US invasion. In other words, despite the 13-year long genocidal sanctions, Iraqi children were living much better (by 3.7 percent) under the regime of Saddam Hussein than under the tyranny of George W. Bush. The study shows that about 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from 'wasting' and 'emaciation' -- conditions of chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children have been needlessly killed by US and British forces. The true number of Iraqis killed may never be known. In October 2004, the respected and peer-reviewed British medical journal, The Lancet -- the only serious study so far –, published a ‘conservative’ estimate of 100,000 Iraqis killed, mostly women and children, by US forces. The US violence and destruction have since increased and the number of Iraqis killed could be more than half a million. (See The Lancet, 29 October 2004).

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are living in refugee camps and are unable to return to their destroyed towns and homes. Human rights, women's rights in particular, have disappeared. Instead of protecting the civilian population, as required by the Geneva Conventions, the Occupation is increasing the violence and crimes against the Iraqi people. According to the UN's recent assessment of the situation, “The ordinary Iraqi has absolutely no protection whatsoever from the state or from the authorities [and] the prevalence of torture is quite clearly established, [that] the degree of violence has increased exponentially since the invasion [and that] the country has been blown apart in terms of its social structures and social fabric.”

Iraq has been turned from a functioning state into a cluster of prisons where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi prisoners are tortured, abused and murdered by US and British forces and their collaborators. Any Iraqi, regardless of age and gender is prone to daily random raids and mass arrests by US forces and their collaborators. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been detained by US and British military forces at some time during the Occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are still languishing in countless US and British-run prisons across Iraq. The majority of these prisoners are innocent civilians. Many Iraqi towns and villages have been walled in with sand and razor wire barriers, and turned into “concentration camps.”

Furthermore, to strip Iraq off its national independence and self-determination, the US and its secret agents (CIA and Israeli Mossad) instituted a terror program of systematic assassination and murder of thousands of Iraqis, including scientists, academics, prominent politicians and anti-Occupation voices. The “De-Baathification” program is modeled on the “Salvador Option” -- the program which was responsible for the murder of thousands of Latin Americans peace activists and intellectuals in El Salvador and other nations of Latin America. It is misleading to blame these premeditated murders of innocent people on Iraqis. For more on the US dirty role in Iraq see Nicolas Davies’ Online Journal article, 15 March 2006.

Despite the well-orchestrated terror, the Iraqi people -- by a large majority -- continue to demand an end to the violence and the occupation of their country, and refuse to submit to US dictate. The US and Britain, having destroyed Iraq, are now embarked on a long-term colonial occupation of the country by openly using an old imperialist tool: ‘divide and rule.’ This deliberate policy of terrorising the Iraqi population and destroying Iraq’s unity has been the aim of US imperialists and Israeli Zionists from the outset of the war. From the beginning, “the Americans made it clear that the Iraqis would have a hard time ever freeing themselves from the American military occupation,” wrote Michael Mandel. The show trial of President Saddam Hussein provides a perfect smokescreen to divert the public from the West’s deliberate genocide in Iraq, allowing it to intimidate and bully other defenceless nations.

While the pretexts for the Occupation have expired, the refusal by the Bush administration to end the Occupation and its continuing interference in Iraq's affairs left the country in stalemate without a legitimate government. The creation, financing and arming of ethnic militia groups was designed to fulfill the Occupation aim of cultivating violence, instilling fear among the population and controlling Iraq through criminal elements accountable to the occupying forces. Orchestrated and promoted by the occupying forces and the mass media as “civil war,” the violence and fratricidal killings are the only remaining pretext for the ongoing Occupation. Indeed, Iraqi community leaders and prominent anti-Occupation voices “hold the US responsible” for the violence, which they alleged is perpetuated “under US air cover” in order to “destabilise” the region. All Iraqis rejected the violence because they rightly believe that only the occupying forces and Israel stand to benefit from it.

In a recent promotion of civil war in Iraq, one of the Bush administration's closest advisors, Daniel Pipes, a cross-breed between a hardcore fascist and a hardcore Zionist, and a well-known Islamophobic ideologue wrote; “Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one . . . Civil war will terminate the dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This would have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago.” This is what Israeli and US Zionists have been advocating for years, especially during the ‘Iran-Iraq’ war. “Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria . . . In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible,” wrote Oded Yinon of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. [6]. The Zionists dream is an all out war in and bloodshed in Middle East for the benefit of Israel’s Zionist ideology.

It is not in Americans’ interest that for more than 15 years the Iraqi people have endured the longest and most violent international terrorism in history. The Iraqi people are demanding the immediate end to the Occupation and its associated violence. The longer the US remains in Iraq; it will only increase the destruction and bloodshed.

Yet the line persists among Westerners, Americans in particular, that the US and its allies are on a “mission” to “teach” Iraqis “democracy” and “freedom.” Most people are aware that this falsehood is a masked Western extremism. It is the enemy of democracy and freedom. Western extremism is not only destroying Iraq for no reason whatsoever, but also perpetuating violence around the world. It is time to demand the immediate end to international terrorism against the Iraqi people and pay reparations for the crimes committed against the nation of Iraq.

Notes:

[1] US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984).

[2] Laka Foundation (1999). Depleted Uranium: A Post-War Disaster for Environment and Health. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Laka Foundation.

[3] Hoskins, Eric (1992). The Truth behind Economic Sanctions, in Ramsey Clark et al. (Eds.), War Crimes: A Report on United States War Crimes against Iraq (Washington, D.C: Maisonneuve Press, 1992).

[4] CAFOD (2001). A People Sacrificed: Sanctions Against Iraq. London: Caritas Europe.

[5] Mandel, Michael (2004). How America Gets Away with Murder. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.

[6] Shahak, Israel, (Ed.). (1982). The Zionist Plan for the Middle East. Belmont, MA: A.A.U.G. Inc. (p. 8-11).