Saturday, 12 April 2003
.....
When German troops marched into Estonia during World War II, they were greeted as liberators. Not because the Germans were bringing democracy or even ambiguously defined "freedom," but because life under the Russians had been the worst thing to happen to the country up until that point. As it happened, being ruled by Nazis wasn't much better. Life under Stalin after the war was still worse (thousands were shipped off to Siberian labour camps and prisons or simply killed), but that was yet to come. From similar experiences, a massive underclass in the post-communist countries (and the Third World) has long realized that "liberators" seldom are.Iraqis in Iraq seem to understand fairly well that the sanctions strengthened Saddam Hussein, strangled their economy, and led to the horrors of the past ten years. For example, crucial supplies for sewage treatment and water purification plants have been held up by the sanctions, quite intentionally. Some of these facilities have been bombed intermittently. One Japanese engineer who visited in the '90s described people drinking water out of puddles, and recent Al-Jazeera footage shows residents of Basra gathering water from a river polluted with thousands of gallons of raw sewage every day.
Many also don't seem convinced that being invaded by the Americans is better than life as usual under Hussein. Indeed, many Iraqi refugees who landed in Jordan have re-entered Iraq to fight the Americans, along with thousands of volunteers from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
The US (or the UN) could have taken it upon itself to liberate Iraq at any point during the past ten years, through a combination of the following options: creation of autonomous zones in southern Iraq (like those that were successful in the north), adoption of sanctions that hurt Saddam instead of hurting his people, supporting dissident groups, and finding ways to ensure that people don't starve, and have access to clean drinking water. Each of these possibilities has been neglected, thanks to a combination of strategic objectives and banal evil.
It's important to understand what makes those options different from a military invasion. Foremost, it involves giving power over to the Iraqis (of whom Shi'ites and Kurds form a vast majority). The Shi'ites would likely make peace with Iran and form strong cultural and economic ties with that other member of the axis of evil, while the Kurds would leverage political power into the creation of a Kurdish state, or put a lot of pressure (maybe by funding and staging terrorist attacks, among more peaceful means) on Turkey, which has oppressed the Kurdish people for too long.
For these same reasons, real democracy in Iraq would directly contradict US interests. I'm guessing that's why the Bush administration never says "democracy" in relation to Iraq, but substitutes effectively meaningless phrases like "self-government" and "representative government." Many observers have, with undue charity, claimed that Bush will set up a democracy, though I know of no instance where Bush himself has actually made the claim.
The US isn't primarily interested in placating Turkey and Saudi Arabia while keeping Iran from growing in power, though. From what I can see, there are four intertwined objectives in the Middle East: the enrichment of US corporations and investors; a military presence and credible threat of "regime change" or retaliation throughout the region; influence over the price of oil, and an impotent OPEC; and control over the economic interests of other competing industrialized countries (France, Germany, Japan, China) in the Middle East.
Any significant Iraqi self-determinism runs counter to these objectives as well.
Luckily for the US, the self-determinism of a people who have been starved by sanctions and oppressed by a small elite for ten years isn't really an issue. If free markets and a well-trained "representative government" are in place, the current elites will be in an excellent position to funnel the wealth of the country into the bank accounts of US corporations (foreign multinationals have not been allowed to bid on "reconstruction" contracts).
The majority of the population lives in abject poverty, and are in no position to wield the kind of political power necessary to overturn a new constitution with conditions favourable to exploitation built in.
Or will they?
Surely there will be demand for a re-redistribution of wealth and a use of Iraqi resources for Iraqi interests. This is a country, after all, that had widespread university education, free health care, and a large middle class within living memory. Many successful political struggles took place while Hussein was in power, and many more could begin once people are no longer starving.
On the other hand, the control over media outlets and distribution of goods by an elite with a huge head start cannot be underestimated. Likely, post-war Iraq will be a poorer version of post-war Bosnia, or post-communism Russia: plenty of unrest and instability with nothing to show for it. Like the ex-KGB in the post-Soviet Eastern Bloc and Russia, the current elites in Iraq who are not killed in revenge by Iraqis will undoubtedly have no trouble making the transition to organized crime of one variety or another. Add a heavy dose of anti-American sentiment, and stir.
I'm assuming, of course, that it is impossible that Bush will actually try to build an Iraq for the Iraqis. There is simply no precedent for such an undertaking, except during the Cold War, when West Germany, Japan, and France had to be built up, lest they be susceptible to communism as Vietnam and Cuba were. In a world of American dominance, there is no such need.
From any perspective, the needs are much more immediate. As of this morning, over 600 civilians have been killed by US bombs, and thousands of others have been wounded. The majority of Iraqis are set to run out of food by the end of May, and half of the million people living in Basra have no access to drinking water. Thousands of children who were malnourished before the war began are likely to get sick. As one aid worker put it, "Everyone is concentrating on Baghdad and Basra, but we are forgetting that Iraq is a huge country where we know nothing about the rest." The UN estimates that it will need to provide close to the entire population of Iraq with food for months.
If the war takes "months," as some generals are now saying, thousands of Iraqis could experience a kind of liberation that no one bargained for.
This is Thoughts on Liberation <http://monkeyfist.com/articles/840>