Iraq’s decade of catastrophe

Ten years after the invasion, it is the Iraqi people who continue to suffer the consequences, argues Mike Phipps
The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003 had wide-ranging consequences. It provoked Britain’s largest ever demonstration, two million people on the streets in one day. More than any other event, it led to the downfall of Tony Blair and determined how history would see him: a discredited liar. It neither eliminated the threat of Al Qaeda nor made the streets of Britain safer. But it is in Iraq that the most profound consequences are still being felt.
The invasion was an unmitigated catastrophe. It left a million and a half dead, 800,000 missing and a million disabled.  It created five million refugees. “More than five million children in Iraq are deprived of "basic rights," the United Nations said in November.
 In 2004, the city of Fallujah was flattened, with around 5,000 civilians killed. The consequences of that bombardment are still being felt. Several studies reveal dramatic increases in rates of cancers, birth defects and infant mortality in the city. Dr Chris Busby, the co-author of two studies on the Fallujah heath crisis, called this "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied". The Independent reported, “There is ‘compelling evidence’ to link the increased numbers of defects and miscarriages to military assaults, says Mozhgan Savabieasfahani,” the author of one of the reports.
Not only were the ends of this war based on lies, the means were also tarnished. The full truth about the conduct of British troops is also still emerging. Lawyers representing nearly 200 Iraqis are, ten years on, fighting in the High Court to get a judicial inquiry into years of abuse by British forces.
The Evening Standard reported on 29th January, “The allegations involve killings and torture at British-controlled detention centres between March 2003 and December 2008. The court heard of an eight-year-old girl shot dead as she played in a street with her friends in daylight. A man was also shot dead as he queued for petrol, a teacher was hooded and abused in front of his son and his subsequent death was officially described as ‘natural causes’ and there were a number of drownings.” The Observer asked: “Is Britain guilty of systemic torture in Iraq?”
The puppet government the occupation gave Iraq is also a disaster.  The US-led occupation organised electoral lists on the basis of religious affiliation. Victory meant jobs, favours and kickbacks for the group in question. Sectarianism was institutionalised by the occupation, creating a framework for future conflict.
Today the al-Maliki government routinely tortures and executes its political opponents. Mothers and sisters are frequently detained if suspects cannot be found.  “Iraq’s leadership used draconian measures against opposition politicians, detainees, demonstrators, and journalists, effectively squeezing the space for independent civil society and political freedoms in Iraq,” Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2013.
Wholesale corruption riddles public life. Iraq got $100 billion in oil revenues last year but most Iraqis still get only six hours of electricity a day. The health and education sectors are barely recovering, joblessness is over 50% and clean water is scarce. Recent floods saw raw sewage running through the streets of Baghdad.
In recent weeks, Iraqi cities have been hit by huge demonstrations against the government. These are non-sectarian, united mobilisations, with one of the main demands being an end to torture and rape in Iraq’s jails. Protests began on 25th December 2012 when more than 200,000 people demonstrated. They expanded to cities all over the country, in which hundreds of thousands participated.
They have been met with repression. Police shot dead eight unarmed demonstrators in Fallujah, but this response is only strengthening people’s resolve. “The people in Iraq cannot bear any longer to be the victims of this government assigned by the Anglo-American occupation,” observed Iraqi academic Souad Al-Azzawi.
And the occupiers? The US continues to keep a significant military presence in Iraq. It still has 80,000 Iraqi artifacts and refuses to give them back to the Iraq Museum. Like the UK, it has never paid a penny in compensation for all the havoc it wrought.
Here, ten years on, we still await the Chilcot Report into Britain’s role. Like previous reports, it will make criticisms of the way the war was authorised and conducted. But there must be consequences. If the war was illegal, unjustified and wrong, what about holding those responsible to account? What about compensation for the millions whose lives were disrupted and ruined?
Scant chance. Rather than learn the lessons of this disaster, the government seems hell-bent on invading new countries. It’s up to us to ensure that the lessons of the Iraq debacle are not forgotten.

Appeal from Stockholm


WORLDWIDE APRIL 10 MUSEUM PROTEST
Help put accountability for the destruction of Iraq´s cultural heritage on the agenda during the 10th anniversary year of the US-led invasion! Join us in supporting an international effort to bring attention to the facts by arranging candlelight vigils and by leafleting visitors outside as many museums as possible on Wednesday April 10, 2013 for a few hours. This was an initiative started by Donny George, the now deceased former Museum Director and was on many occasions repeated by organization Saving Antiquities (SAFE).  It is a tradition worth maintaining, especially in this anniversy year.   __
Let 2013 be a campaign year “For Justice and Accountability for Iraq” in all areas. The world will not forget the criminal destruction of Iraqi culture.
Contact us if you can arrange a small vigil or protest on this date in your city.
The Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm                                info@iraksolidaritet.se


Example of leaflet text
            Dig for culture, not for oil!
_______________________
On April 10-12 2003 the national museum in Baghdad was looted as US troops stood by to protect the Ministry of Oil. Countless artifacts were stolen, most have never been returned. Valuable religious minority archives were seized and brought to the US where they remain. Numerous monuments of historical importance were desecrated and destroyed. The ancient ruins of Babylon were flattened in places to build landing pads for coalition helicopters! Much of this destruction could have been foreseen and avoided. Aghast at the destruction of one of the cradles of civilization, the French President described the situation as a “crime against humanity”. Today, a pipeline for transporting oil has been drawn under the ruins in Babylon, further threatening our world heritage. This must be stopped!
We demand:
That the UNESCO resolution adopted on protecting Iraq culture be fully implemented
That all trade in stolen artifacts be vigorously stopped and the criminal perpetrators be persecuted and
That the US, as the occupying power, be held responsible for the restoration of destroyed cultural sites and the return of stolen property.







Open letter to oil companies operating in Iraq

Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative writes (February 16^th): We strongly urge that all international oil companies operating in Iraq:

1 – Respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi people over their natural resources, and noting the lack of legitimacy of their contracts, to relinquish any claims to rights over Iraqi oil.

2 – With oil companies now having taken the place of foreign troops in compromising Iraqi sovereignty, set a timetable for their withdrawal, while transferring technology to Iraq’s national oil companies.

3 – Stop exacerbating tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Government of Iraq, by ceasing to exploit oil until a stable national accord has been achieved.

4 – Promote transparency in the oil sector in Iraq, by publishing details of all contracts.

5 – Support the passage of an Iraqi Labor Law that guarantees all Iraqi workers.

6 – Adopt clear policies to protect the Iraqi environment.

7 – Agree that the security and protection of personnel and equipment in all Iraqi oilfields should be exclusively under the authority of national Iraqi security forces.

http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=776#.USS4sKUtwut

Ten years after the Iraq invasion - hundreds gather at the Stop the War Coalition's conference on 9th February

Sectarianism, Corruption and Torture... It Is Not Worth IT

Haifa Zangana writes for Huffington Post

When Madeleine Albright asked in May 1996 about the death of half a million Iraqi children as a result of UN sanctions, she said: "we think the price is worth it." By "it" she meant US interests, propping US hegemony, and preparing for regional military action.

But in 2003 George Bush, Tony Blair and company labelled "it" Iraqis' human rights. Bush said: "Every woman in Iraq is better off because the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein are forever closed." Paul Bremer, head of occupation authorities, told the world Iraqis "do not have to worry about the secret police. Those days are over."

The reality is different.

The shock and awe that the US and UK subjected Iraqis to was not just the bombardment and destruction of their infrastructure but the abuses and torture. The occupiers paved the way for their continuity.

Human Rights Watch's 2012 report noted that the human rights of Iraqis "are violated with impunity". In 2013 HRW reported Iraq's security forces' continued use of "threats, violence, and arrests of protesters and journalists" and that units from three ministries, as well as from the prime minister's office, have "secret prisons" outside the law, and that there was a "record number of executions in 2012."

The regime is consumed by sectarian, ethnic division, but above all by corruption, squandering $600 billion of oil revenue, 10 times as much as what Iraq has gained from oil for the previous 70 years. Meanwhile, thousands of US "diplomats", Security contractors, CIA operatives and Special Operations units occupy the biggest embassy compound in the region, adjoining and effectively manipulating the government in central Baghdad.

Since 2003 over one million Iraqis died by airstrikes, checkpoint shootings, mercenaries, car bombs, and suicide bombers. Only 150,000 are acknowledged. Typical of the killers is the US soldier who said: "We'd open up on anything. They even didn't have to be armed. We were keeping scores." For him, Iraqis are "not even people, you know. Like, they're not humans."

Over 44% of the regime's budget is spent on security: 800,000 army, police, Special Forces and private security contractors to protect high officials and members of the parliament. A bureaucracy that has doubled in size since 2003 swallows most of the rest: mostly a parasitic social base. Meantime households endure 18 hours without electricity, no clean water (70%) and no functioning sanitation (80%). In Baghdad, nearly two-thirds of the city's sewage still flows untreated to rivers and other waterways.

Oxfam reported in 2007 that 92% of Iraq's children have learning impediments. Kidnapping and assassination of professionals forced whoever canto flee. With hundreds of journalists killed hardly any independent foreign reporter is left inside Iraq.

As for women's rights; Mu'ta, and polygamy have taken us back a century. Mu'ta is a temporary marriage custom revived after 2003. A religious figure blesses a 'fixed term contract' for a few hours or years for a small dowry. A sanctioned form of prostitution for poor woman. Polygamy is presented as a solution to the huge number of widows.

Women are often detained to force their fleeing male relatives to surrender or admit crimes. Sexual abuses and the threats of rape are practised with impunity against both men and women. A detained Imam told a delegation of Iraqi MPs; "They forced us to talk by raping us'." Echoing US' Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, Amnesty International describes a wing of a Baghdad's prison where "interrogators sodomized detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards " and if not confess "threatened to rape the women and girls in their families". BBC Arabic reported the death of 34 detainees under torture in the last four months alone.

These systematic abuses are intended, but have failed to break people's will. For seven weeks now hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are demonstrating, in many cities calling for reforms and regime change.

While torture under Saddam was limited, mainly, to those who opposed the regime's unilateral rule, the occupation and subsequent Iraqi regime targeted a wide spectrum of the population. A crime designed to couple collective humiliation with intimidation and terror. We did not struggle for decades to exchange a tyranny with several fragmented tyrannies of a more barbaric nature to add to blatant theft of national wealth and lack of basic services. Those responsible for this tragedy must be held accountable.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/haifa-zangana/iraq-war-sectarianism-corruption-not-worth-it_b_2636949.html

High Court Hears of ‘Terrifying Acts of Brutality’ by British Troops in Iraq

Antiwar.com reports (January 29^th): British troops that fought the US-led war in Iraq were accused in a High Court inquiry of “terrifying acts of brutality” against Iraqi civilians in a potentially “systematic” wa Lawyers representing 192 Iraqis asking for a public inquiry into British detention practices in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 submitted an 82-age document detailing the numerous allegations of abuse, including extra-judicial killings and torture.

“The court heard of an eight-year-old girl shot dead as she played in a street with her friends in daylight,” reports the London Evening Standard. “A man was also shot dead as he queued for petrol, a teacher was hooded and abused in front of his son and his subsequent death was officially described as “natural causes” and there were a number of drownings.”

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/29/high-court-hears-of-terrifying-acts-of-brutality-by-british-troops-in-iraq/

Fallujah Revisited

by HAIFA ZANGANA

It took the British government five weeks to take note of the mass demonstrations in Iraq.  These started last week of 2012 and are comparable in size, energy, and peaceful nature to the protests that toppled other Arab regimes, albeit expanding mainly in the capitals of the four central Iraqi provinces.

Minister for Middle East, Alistair Burt, finally commented on 28 January 2013, about clashes between protesters and the Iraqi army. At least the Minister did separate the death of the unarmed protesters from the subsequent attack hours later on an army unit few miles away from the protest site.  The events centre on Fallujah, west of Baghdad, one of the main cities where mass protest is mounting by the day.

The first shooting, resulted in 5 death and about 40 injured is clearly video-recorded. The second ended with 2 soldiers killed and 3 abducted. In the chaos of claims by an ever changing official narrative and statements by a committee of investigators these two incidents are often deliberately handled together with potential for escalations. Now the withdrawal of army and federal police units from Fallujah, and the assigning of security to local police announced by the Defence  Ministry spokesman immediately after the shooting on Friday 25 January may well not be implemented as a result of the chaotic political and security breakdown  in the country maintain  the dominant the total mistrust amongst all the players taking part in the “ political process” on one hand and among them and the people on the other.

The Iraqi city of Falluja, which 9 years ago became a symbol of heroic Iraqi resistance against the brutalities of the US/UK occupation, is now at the forefront of another battle.

Young Omar Ali Al Ani, a father of a three-year-old girl, was one of the five people killed on Friday 25^th January and his picture was the first placed on the web sites.  The names of  the victims were listed on the banners during the mass funerals on Saturday 26^th.

The victims were on their way to join the vigil in Sahet al Karama “ Dignity  square “ and to take part in a communal Friday prayer carried on in many Iraqi cities since 25^th Dec 2012. The communal prayer of both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims is a practice Iraqis often resort to at times of crisis and colonial threats, most famously during the 1920 revolution against British occupation, practiced widely in the first year of the US/UK occupation in 2003,   and once more It has been embraced recently in cities in the provinces of Baghdad Nineveh, Salahuddin, Diyala, Kirkuk and Anbar to assert the unity of Iraqis in defiance of the party-sectarian policy of Nouri Al Maliki’s regime.

The demonstrations began with a few hundred people in both Anbar, west of Iraq, and Nineveh in the North, arising in anger at the news of rape of women detainees at the hands of the Iraqi security forces under Maliki’s command as Commander in Chief. Maliki’s rivals and partners in government and in the parliamentary ‘political process’ established by the US occupation and despised by the public, tried to use this issue to avoid being steadily marginalised by him through imprisonment of their body guards accused with charges of terrorism, and with an eye on municipal elections in a few months time.   Within few days the protests morphed into a genuine mass movement and a vigil, not unlike what happened in the Arab spring.   In fact the Anbar demonstrators adopted a resolution to disallow any minister or Member of the parliament from mounting the podium.

The demand for the release of women detainees gained a wide support, igniting a gradual escalation.  Some of the women have been tortured, raped or threatened with rape according to reports by the committee of human rights in the parliament . The regime’s various spokesmen gave out contradictory responses: from denying the existence of women detainees arrested as hostages to force the surrender of their male relatives, admitting that some “terrorist” women were arrested, promising swift release, denying rape, to finally setting up a panel of religious personalities and officials to investigate.  Other demands focused on release of prisoners and the repeal of section 4 in the Terrorism Act which allows the arrest of anyone without a warrant and without submitting him/ her to courts: The Iraqi version of Guantanamo.  In different provinces lists of a dozen demands were approved by mass acclamation in the protest squires, with very similar wordings. Coordination grew within and between the provinces but no central body emerged.

Most observers and politicians, including people till recently allies to Maliki,  could only regard these demands rather basic in essence, calling for government reforms, respect human rights, implement justice according to international laws and end the endemic sectarianism and corruption.  There have been several Iraqi parliamentarian and international reports on such human rights abuses calling for an end to the systematic torture practised in various detention facilities. Commonly reported methods of torture are “suspension by the limbs for long periods, beatings with cables and hosepipes, electric shocks, breaking of limbs, partial asphyxiation with plastic bags, and rape or threats of rape. Torture was used to extract information from detainees and “confessions” that could be used as evidence against them in courts.”

Another demand is to abolish or suspend the Justice and Accountability Law which have been used to target political dissidents labelling them Ba’athist, i.e. belonging to the Saddam Hussein regime before the occupation in 2003. Protesters say this law is used for sectarian purposes since many high levels Baathist who have switched alliance to the ruling Shii political groups are in prominent positions now while even low-level state employees whose jobs under that regime depended on some form of affiliation to the ruling party, are targeted and deprived of liberty or work or pension, mainly because they do not support Maliki.

Al Maliki’s initial response to the demands was no less than late Qadafi’s response. He described the demonstrators as “bubbles” whose demands are “stinking sectarian”, threatening them that they have to “end their protests or they would witness their own end”.

When Adnan Pachachi , former foreign minister and a member of  Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) which was installed by US occupation, was asked by  Sky News Arabia ( 10 January, 2013) about the possibility of erupting violence at  demonstrations, he said : “if that’s happen,  the source of it will be the government itself, because it is the party that has the capacity”.

Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi novelist, artist and activist. Her recent books are “Dreaming of Baghdad” and “City of Widows: An Iraqi woman’s account of war and resistance” and co authored “ The Torturer in the Mirror” with Ramsey Clark and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer. Haifa is co-founder of Tadhamun: Iraqi Women Solidarity, founding member of the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies (IACIS) and advisor for UNDP on “Towards the Rise of women in the Arab world”. Currently she is a consultant at ESCWA.