�See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things
over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult
the propaganda." --George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio) [Italics added]
Why does Israel want to partition Iraq? Does Israel possess
the material means to do it? And, where does Zarqawi fit in this plan? For all
practical reasons, Israel (via decision makers loyal to it and to Zionism
inside the American regimes since George H. W. Bush) had, de facto, partitioned
Iraq with the so-called No-Fly Zones (NFZs) on Iraq�s national airspace after
the end of the Gulf War Slaughter in 1991.
Overview: without authorization from the United Nations that
previously authorized the war, the U.S. and its lackeys, Britain and France,
imposed two NFZs: the first over areas with predominate Kurdish populations,
and the second over areas with predominate Arab Shiite Muslims. While the U.S.
rationalized the imposition as a measure to protect Kurds and Shiites from
�Saddam�s wrath� after a failed rebellion promoted by Bush senior against the
central government, the division of Iraq into three zones carried with it a
blueprint for an eventual partition of the country regardless of its historical
or modern realities.
Once the U.N. declared the U.S. and Britain as the occupying
powers of Iraq in 2003, the project to partition Iraq returned to the forefront
with geographical delimitations that mirrored the projections of the NFZs.
Without debating the illegality of the NFZs, it is important to underline the central
obsession of Israel: separate the Kurdish region, even if the rest of Iraq would
remain unified. That would constitute the precedent to partition the Arabic and
Islamic worlds.
What was the scheme to separate the Kurdish areas from Iraq
in 1991?
When the U.S. imposed the Northern NFZ (Kurdish areas), it
also coupled it with a political diktat that the Iraqi central government end
its presence in those areas. By force of this fact alone, Iraq, as a political
state, ceased to exist inside a portion of its own national territory.
After the invasion, Israel, now in total control of the
United States, revived the scheme to partition Iraq, as a part of its global
policy to fracture, thus controlling, the Arab states. Remember, the Arab world
is not entirely Arab, and tens of ethnic and religious groups live in this rich
mosaic called the Arab civilization. If Israel would succeed in scrambling the
mosaic, then we would have tens of micro units with such names as Shiite-stan,
Copto-stan, Arabistan, Kurdistan, Berberistan, Kabili-stan, Christian-stan,
Maronite-stan, Lebano-stan, Sunni-stan, Druze-stan, and so on.
In breaking Iraq�s historical continuity and national
mosaics, the American occupation and the strategy to conquer it had only
brought to fruition a long effort by Israel to destroy Iraq. Still, while it
was easy to separate the Kurdish areas from Iraq, it was still
difficult to partition Arab Iraq with the same logic, because we are dealing with one homogenous
ethnic group (Iraqi Arabs) that is also religiously homogenous except for
conflict in interpretation of religious dogmas.
Again, since the Kurdish region is technically out of Iraq�s
control, severing it ethnically from Iraq sets the pace to partition the rest
of the country, but this time on a confessional basis. But how can the
American-Israeli axis partition Arab Iraq on a confessional basis regardless of
common ethnic heritage of Iraqi Muslim Arabs? The Zionist planners of the
American Empire came up with one single strategy: a war between Sunni and
Shiites.
If that was the strategy, what was the tactic? Answer:
create a situation of incompatibility problems strong enough to justify a
split. But Iraqi Arabs, be they Shiites or Sunnis have never battled each
other. Socially, Arab Shiites and Arab Sunnis are identical ethnical twins in
all forms of societal transaction, cultural origins, religions, etc. That means
they are not somatically distinguished groups as African-Americans vs.
Caucasians. In other words, unless because of specific religious rituals, no
one could ever differentiate between a Shiite or Sunni; the only distinguishing
mark between them is the attire of their respective clergy. In Iraq�s secular
society, there is no telling who is Sunni or Shiite.
Under these conditions of total, innate similarity (except
the Shiite�s exaggeration over their veneration for Imam Ali -- Mohammad�s
cousin -- and his son Hussein) creating a war between Iraqi Arabs was an
insurmountable barrier that the United States seeks to overcome -- but only to
a certain degree -- with a two-pronged catalyst that includes fuel and igniter.
The fuel
As fuel, the U.S. drummed up the notion that Saddam Hussein
persecuted the Shiites -- Iraq�s relative confessional majority. Of course,
that charge is fictitious and its sole purpose was to create a psychological
condition predisposed to arouse confessional passions. The reality is different
though. In fact, although the Shiites did not occupy the very highest posts in
the Saddam government (these were reserved to his hometown mates), they were, nonetheless,
the backbone of Saddam�s rule.
Second, Hussein only persecuted only those who opposed his
political system regardless of their origins. Briefly, taking advantage of
rivalry between Shiism and Sunnism, the U.S., in collaboration with Sistani, Hakim,
Chalabi, Allawi, Rubeiee, Jaffari, and Makia created the myth that the time had
come for the Shiites to rule Iraq -- keep in mind, the U.S. strategic target is
to rule Iraq alone but with the help of the Shiites as inconsequential
bureaucrats and facilitators.
The igniter
In order for the
U.S. to push the myth of Shiite rule in Iraq and induce the Shiites to
separate from Iraq, the U.S. had to create a Sunni figure and endow it with an
extreme hatred for Shiism. To hit two birds with one stone, the U.S. invented
an anti-Shiite adversarial personality that combined two qualities: 1) it must
be a �Qaedaist,� so the U.S. could say that is was battling al-Qaeda in Iraq,
and 2) it must be an Shiite hater in the tradition of Saudi Wahabism. . . . Ladies
and gentlemen, here enters Zarqawi.
Keep mind that even the ruse of extremist Saudi Wahabism
does not work as it relates to the Zarqawi hoax. For instance, there are over 5
million Arab Shiite Saudi citizens living in Saudi Arabia, yet, no one has ever
lost a finger because of assumed Wahabi loathing of Shiism.
In historical equivalency, though, and as far as it concerns
Israel, the Zarqawi hoax (which in the meanwhile developed into a full-fledged
affair) is the inverse repetition of the Zionist Lavon Affair in Egypt (1950) and
Operation Babylon in Iraq (1950) to force the relocation of Arabs of Jewish
faith from those two countries. While in these operations, Israel�s aim was
revolving around solidifying the Jewish presence in Palestine by massive
emigration to it; in Iraq, it is revolving around two objectives: 1) break
Iraq�s millennial geographical continuity through partitions executed by the
United States, and 2) cause massive emigration from Iraq by implanting terror
and insecurity.
Having related the Zarqawi hoax to the Israeli and American
objectives, I must note that the calculated formula to carry out the hoax was
elementary. First step: American mercenaries and private army commit acts of
terrorism against all Iraqis without distinction. Second step: attribute those
acts to the Iraqi resistance (Sunni or Shiite), or to fictional forces such as
�extremist Islamists,� �Qaedaists,� and so on. Thus, when the U.S. kills
Shiites, it announces that �Zarqawi� did it; but when it kills Sunnis, it
announces that Shiite militias did it.
Yet, in studying the news coming from Iraq, it is binding to
make a categorical statement: at killing both Sunni or Shiites is no other than
the United States -- it is (with Israel) the only beneficiary of the killing,
i.e., it has a motive: conquer Iraq by any means necessary. For instance, if
Zarqawi were an anti-Shiite then who killed over 500 top Iraqi scientists from
both confessions (Sunni and Shiite)? If Zarqawi were a Sunni lover, why did he
not spare the Sunni scientists? In addition, who killed over 1,200 Iraqi
physicians (Sunni and Shiite), and why?
That does not mean, however, that Arab sympathizers of
Islamic fundamentalism could have come to aid the occupied Iraqis. This is
primarily due to 1) Arab solidarity, and 2) Islamic solidarity. This should not
be strange; the Arabs consider themselves one people. (It is ironic that the
Muslims transliterated the word, �fundamentalism� from the English to the Arabic
and used it in the meaning designated by Tel Aviv and Washington. Thus, fundamentalism
as it applies to crusading Christian mentality became in Arabic: al-Oosuliya
al-Islamiya, although Muslims believe that Oosuliya (fundamentalism)
in religion means only the strict observance of the teachings of Mohammad.)
One thing to debate here is the American deceptive practice
that identifies Islamic fundamentalism with terrorism. If this concept implies
that fundamentalism in religions equates with terrorism, then we are dealing
with a paradigm.
But for a paradigm to be universally accepted, it must be
applicable to all situations where religions are involved. Accordingly, if one
believes that Islamic fundamentalism promotes terrorism, then he or she has to
agree that Christian and Jewish fundamentalisms promote terrorism, as well. Any
objection to this dialectical outcome would 1) nullify the paradigm and its
premises, and 2) deny its applicability to any religion. In the end, while a
religion cannot be fundamentalist in the American invented sense, its adepts
could become dogmatic, or, if one insists, even fundamentalist (or extremist),
which is a Western concept with calculated ideological overtones. But this is
another subject.
Further, a few observations can reinforce the statement that
�terrorism,� often identified with al-Qaeda and its offshoots, never existed, nor
exists today, in Iraq. Aside from recent revelation by the U.S. government that
denied relations between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government, I can reinforce
this statement by noting the following. 1) Because the U.S. occupies both
Afghanistan and Iraq, 2) considering the size of forces that occupy Iraq is 10
times the size of those that occupy Afghanistan, and 3) because al-Qaeda had its
principal presence in Afghanistan, why is it we never hear about any al-Qaeda
operations in Afghanistan? Why is that we only hear the phrase: the resurgent
Taliban?
Did al-Qaeda evaporate and then reemerge as Taliban? Did the
U.S. exterminate all al-Qaeda members, and then make a census that they no
longer exist in Afghanistan? What yardstick did the U.S. use to identify the
Qaedaists in the first place? Did these marks include robes, turbans, and
beards? Or did the U.S. follow computerized brainwave models identifying them?
Pointedly, how did the U.S. know who was Qaedaist and who was not, so it could claim
that al-Qaeda had become history in Afghanistan but a newly mushroomed reality
in Iraq? Why is it that we never hear about beheadings in Afghanistan but only
in Iraq?
To give you a comprehensive answer: al-Qaeda never
existed nor exists in Iraq today. If it exists, then it does so in the
archives of the CIA, the NSA, and the White House. Al-Qaeda is an organization
created and trained by the United States to fight the Soviet invaders of
Afghanistan. In an article permeated with Western clich�s about Islamic
terrorism, Robin Cook, (a British imperialist who died recently and a former
foreign secretary, and a war criminal for his role in the sanctions and war of
attrition against Iraq in the 1990s) told how the U.S.
created al-Qaeda and gave its name.
Despite the U.S. propaganda about the cosmic capabilities of
al-Qaeda, it is certain that Osama bin Laden and his followers could not have
been more than a band of anti-Soviet War veterans, who then defied the U.S.
order to stand down and surrender to the new American order after the Gulf War
Slaughter (1991) and the subsequent collapse of the USSR. Forcefully, the
ensuing war between bin Laden and the United States stems from one fact only:
the American occupation of Saudi Arabia. That hardly qualifies a bin Laden-U.S.
war as a one for Islamic or Christian fundamentalist values.
In a recent article, Patrick J. Buchanan,
a sharp and articulate analyst (despite his basic indoctrination in
conservative and xenophobic ideological agendas) confirmed what I just said.
Said Buchanan, �Al-Qaeda appears to exist for one purpose: plot and
perpetrate mass murder to terrorize Americans and Europeans into getting out of
the Islamic world.� The flip of the coin is that Buchanan approached the
equation between the West and al-Qaeda by mingling facts and fiction.
On the side of fact, it is correct that bin Laden
wanted the United States to evacuate its forces from Muslim land, since he
fought with the United States to evacuate the Soviets from the same lands.
Unless Buchanan advocates empire and imperialism, is there any problem with bin
Laden�s position? Would Buchanan accept that Russia, China, Syria, or Saudi
Arabia station military forces in New York and Virginia against the will of the
American people?
Nevertheless, this fact has a ramification:
Buchanan ignored a much bigger fact whereby the United States has been
exercising massive state terrorism when it attacked Iraq because of the
invasion of Kuwait, and then remained in the Middle East, and even transferred
its world strategic command to it (in Bahrain). Buchanan, therefore, failed to
mention an important epistemological truth: U.S. terrorism generates Arab
counter-terrorism.
On the side of fiction, Buchanan involved the
Europeans collectively. He stated, without providing evidence, that a-Qaeda
also wants to terrorize the Europeans. Of course, he was alluding to terrorist
acts in Bali, London, and Madrid. But these acts happened after the invasion of
Iraq and most likely, they are the product of American and Israeli intelligence
services to implicate al-Qaeda, thus justifying the wars of hyper-imperialism.
Having examined how a prominent insider of the American
�Republic� confronts the issue of al-Qaeda, I have to restate that the claim
depicting the U.S. as fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is baseless from the
sub-foundation all the way up. Can we prove that by extrapolation of facts?
Consider the following points. First, the nuclear-like
bombardment of Afghanistan most certainly destroyed all primitive training
camps of that ragtag organization which the U.S. elevated to a mythological
status to magnify its implied danger. Second, consequent to that bombardment
and from the viewpoint of military logistics, it is impossible for al-Qaeda to
re-organize and transfer personnel, hardware, etc., to Iraq, a country occupied
by the same superpower that just destroyed it in Afghanistan.
To conclude, propaganda is the lifeline of the American
intervention in Iraq. After it claimed in the pre-war period that Iraq had
connections to al-Qaeda, and after seeing the fierce Iraqi resistance to its
occupation, the only course of action that remained was to create a material
focus for its �war on terrorism.� In other words, to conquer Iraq, U.S.
strategists had to come up with an idea that keeps that bogus war running: a
string of hoaxes such al-Qaeda, Zarqawi, terrorists, etc., must occupy the
headlines.
Explanation: to translate the strategy from theory to
practice the U.S. and Israel executed first a series of attacks against
selected targets in Iraq, and then spread the speculation as who stood behind
them. Effectively, the time had become ripe to name a villain, then elevate his
name to a cosmic symbol of an �evil force.�
In chronological succession, three important preludes
predated the creation of the Zarqawi hoax and they all happened in August 2003.
Officially, however, the United States (as you will read soon) gave birth to
the hoax at the end of October 2003. What were these three preludes to the
debut of the Zarqawi show, and, most importantly, was there a premonitory
prelude before all preludes?
B.
J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com.