Hi Louis, I was wondering if you could post these comments below to the
list? Keep up the good work, you are providing an invaluable service.
A.
===
Dear all,
I wanted to make some observations on the war from the vantage point of
Ramallah. A few days before the bombardment began my satellite broke so
I have been blessed with not having CNN. Instead, I've followed events
almost exclusively from the Arab satellite channels Al Jazeera and Abu
Dhabi which the local Palestinian stations broadcast almost around the
clock.
I've been struck by the VAST difference in how the US and its media
report the progress of the war and what the Arab channels report from
inside Iraq (as you know CNN left Baghdad early on - there is some
dispute over whether they were expelled or they decided to leave on
their own accord). The Arab channels have also had a range of excellent
analysis, both military and political, which is reflected in the level
of discussion on the street here.
I won't go through in detail all of the lies that the US administration
has been peddling: they had captured Um Al Qasr (supposedly on the first
day but until now they are suffering losses there. This is a city of
around 15000 people and only 500 Iraqi soldiers), Al Basra (A classic
moment was the Abu Dhabi journalist who was reporting from inside Al
Basra the other day and said there was not a single US soldier in the
city and the kids were playing football next to him, two days after the
US said they had conquered the city. Then the US changed their story to
say they had decided not to enter the cities but move straight on to
Baghdad), this pattern is repeated all over the country. Then there was
the claim that the 51st division had surrendered, yesterday Al Jazeera
carried an interview with the commander of this division who the US had
made a bid deal about his surrender to US troops. Then the denial that
US planes had been shot down over Baghdad, Al Jazeera carried an amazing
scene yesterday of thousands of Iraqis gathered around a river where the
plane had crashed and handing over the pilot to Iraqi soldiers. The list
goes on..
Basically, the difference between the US government's fabrications and
reality on the ground indicates how false is the US central assumption -
that the Iraqi people would welcome the opportunity to be "liberated"
from Saddam and the rottenness of the regime would see the army and all
resistance collapse. Instead, what we are seeing is the exact opposite.
The Iraqi people understand only too well what are the motivations
behind this war and what the US intends to do to the country, they will
resist tooth and nail and the costs to the US will be enormous. It is
still an open question whether these costs will eventually force the US
to halt their actions.
The reality is that Saddam has basically armed the people. The
estimation is around 500,000 troops (both regular or irregular) but on
top of that is the fact that nearly every Iraqi household has a gun.
This is not the action of a regime that is worried about its own
population rising up to overthrow it. They have confidence in themselves
and their ability to resist. There are other indications of this: the
fact that Saddam has divided the country into four regions and given
total control to commanders in each region, the remarkable lack of
refugees on the Jordanian border (Al Jazeera carried interviews with
Jordanian taxi drivers who drive the route who said there was not a
single refugee in sight). This is an indication that the Iraqi people
are not interested in fleeing their homes, perhaps they understand the
experience of other refugees in the area (e.g. 1948) but perhaps this is
also an indication that they want to stand and defend their country. The
attitude of the Shi'ite population in the south is also instructive,
there was an interview carried with one of the Shi'ite leaders yesterday
who stated that they were firmly in defence of Iraq. The resistance in
one of the southern cities (I forget the name) is illustrative of this,
this city was one of the first to move against Saddam in 1991, today
they are fighting US soldiers.
There is a significant difference between Afghanistan and Iraq in that
this time around the US is forced to fight its own war. It cannot send
other people to do the killing and then come in behind them. The
wild-card here is the northern front, perhaps the US will be able to
recruit a Kurdish force in the north which would probably number around
100,000, but I am not convinced this will be possible especially if Iraq
continues to inflict significant casualties.
The other wild card is the Arab street. There is enormous anger on the
streets of the Arab world which is politically quite sharp - the Arab
people understand completely that their "leaders" could easily halt this
war. The planes that bomb Iraq fly over Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They see
the double-standards and hypocrisy. They have lived two and a half years
of the Intifada, they know the role of the US in this and the complete
failure of the Arab regimes to do anything constructive. Again, this is
a significant difference from 1991 when some people may have been
equivocal because of Iraq's initial invasion of Kuwait. The role that AL
Jazeera, Abu Dhabi and the other Arab channels play in this cannot be
overstated. The images seen day after day of Iraqi civilian casualties
and the utter hypocrisy of the US has produced undescribable anger. I
was struck yesterday by a very common response to Rumsfeld's comments
about the IV Geneva Convention, essentially: he was being hypocritical
and what about the prisoners in Guantanamo - a few months ago there was
an excellent documentary on Al Jazeera about the US treatment of
prisoners there which was widely seen around the Arab world.
The problem in most of these countries is that there is no real
alternative capable of challenging the regime on a political level. Here
the failure of the Arab left is palpable. I wouldn't be suprised however
that if this continues much longer we will see coups or assassination
attempts against some of these leaders.
All of this is not to say that the Iraqi regime is in any way
progressive or that the US won't eventually win this war. However, I do
believe there is a very clear understanding amongst the Iraqi people
that the enemy is the US and that the population will defend Iraq
against invasion. I think some of the comments on this list over the
role of war have been somewhat misplaced - there is a dialectical
relation between the resistance of the Iraqi people and the mass
movement against the war. The longer Iraq can resist and the greater the
cost to the US (militarily and economic) the stronger the political
movement against the war. The more the lies and double-standards are
exposed the greater the potential for advances in political
consciousness. And of course an escalating political cost to Bush et al
in their own countries will strengthen the resistance on the ground. The
demonstrations are widely covered over here, people in the streets will
tell you how many people demonstrated in London, Sydney, Washington etc
off the top of their heads. This solidarity is critical, the US could
easily bomb Baghdad to dust or strangle the city by cutting off water
and electricity (which seems to be the tactic they are adopting in Al
Basra). Iraq cannot stop this from happening militarily, only the people
in the streets around the world can do this.
best A.
--
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