Report from Baghdad — Opening the Gates of Hell

Rahul Mahajan Empire Notes
http://www.empirenotes.org/gatesofhell.html

Baghdad, Iraq — Before the Iraq war, at a meeting of
the Arab League, Secretary General Amr Moussa famously
said that a U.S. war on Iraq would "open the gates of
hell."

In Iraq, those gates are yawning wider than they ever
have before — at least for the United States.

"Sunni and Shi’a are now one hand, together against the
Americans," a man on the street in the mostly Shi’a
slum of Shuala on the west side of Baghdad told me, as
we conversed in the shadow of a burnt-out American tank
transporter. Those sentiments were echoed at the local
headquarters of Moqtada al-Sadr’s organization, which
had one day previously come under assault from U.S.
forces.

And, indeed, everyone in the area agreed that when
those forces were driven from Shuala, it was done by
Sunni and Shi’a fighting together — and by unorganized
local inhabitants, not al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Whether or not the resistance here grows to a scale
that the United States cannot control — and this is
more in the hands of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
than of Paul Bremer or George Bush — it is already
clear that the events of the last ten days mark a
critical turning point in the occupation of Iraq.

We’re being told a convenient and self-serving story
about those events. In that story, a few barbaric
"isolated extremists" from the "Saddamist stronghold"
of Falluja killed four contractors who were guarding
food convoys in an act of unprovoked lawlessness.
Moqtada al-Sadr is fighting the U.S. forces right now
because, in the words of George Bush, he decided that
"rather than allow democracy to flourish, he’s going to
exercise force."

The truth is rather different. Falluja, although
heavily Sunni Arab, was hardly in Saddam’s pocket. Its
imams got into trouble for refusing to obey his orders
to praise him personally during prayers. Many
inhabitants were Salafists (Wahhabism is a subset of
Salafism), a group singled out for political
persecution by Saddam.

In fact, during the war, Falluja was not a hotbed of
resistance. Its turn to resistance started on April 28,
when U.S. troops opened fire on a group of 100 to 200
peaceful protesters, killing 15. They claimed they were
returning gunfire, but Human Rights Watch investigated
and found that the bullet holes in the area were
inconsistent with that story — and, furthermore, every
Iraqi witness maintained that the crowd was unarmed.
Two days later, another three protesters were killed.

These incidents caused many people in the area to join
the resistance, forming their own groups (see an
interview with one in the San Francisco Chronicle here
— 
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
/c/a/2003/10/07/MN953.DTL). Violence back and forth and
frequent collective punishment measures levied on the
town quickly turned it into a place seething with anger
against the occupation — to an even greater degree
than other places.

The most recent incident, in which four mercenaries
from Blackwater Security, a company formed by ex-Navy
Seals (Blackwater people are performing many of the
same functions as soldiers in Iraq and do get involved
in combat), did not arise in a vacuum. In fact, just
the week before, U.S. Marines had mounted heavy raids
on Falluja, killing at least seven civilians, including
a cameraman. Residents spoke of this as the reason for
the attack on the Blackwater people and the gruesome
spectacle that followed.

With the recent fighting in Falluja, cordoning off the
city, in which 12 Marines, two other soldiers, and at
least 66 Iraqis were killed, there is no chance to get
off this track in the foreseeable future.

But, not satisfied with this massive problem with the
Sunni, the CPA chose the same time to pick a fight with
the Shi’a followers of Moqtada al-Sadr.

Whatever al-Sadr’s views about democracy may be, Bush’s
claim that he started this violence to derail democracy
is ridiculous. First of all, for all of al-Sadr’s
firebrand rhetoric, he and his followers had always
stopped short of overt violence against the occupying
forces. Second, the incident that precipitated this
whole round of violence was the closing of his
newspaper, al-Hawza, a blatantly undemocratic act. In
fact, the paper was not closed for directly advocating
violence, but simply for reporting one eyewitness claim
that a supposed car bombing that killed numerous
volunteers for the New Iraqi defense forces was
actually done by plane (and therefore by the United
States).

In general, there is no quicker way to get an Iraqi to
laugh than to talk about how the United States is
bringing freedom or democracy to the country. It’s
standard when talking about the latest problem the
Americans cause, to say derisively, "This is the
freedom." When I asked Rasool Gurawi, a spokesman at
the al-Sadr office in Thawra, the slum of two million
that is perhaps al-Sadr’s strongest base of support,
about Bush’s claims, he said, "This is democracy?
Attacking peaceful demonstrations? Killing people and
destroying buildings?"

As the occupation simultaneously loses control in
Basra, Najaf, Kerbala, Nasiriyah, Kufa, Kut, Diwaniyah,
and in Thawra, Shuala, and Kadhimiyah in Baghdad,
Bremer and Bush have backed off a little. Instead of
wanting al-Sadr for his political role, they now say he
is wanted in connection with the murder of Shi’a cleric
Abdul Majid al-Khoei last April. And, indeed, one of
the other precipitating factors in the recent violence
was the arrest of Mustafa Yacoubi, a top Sadr aide, for
the same killing. They even say it has nothing to do
with them — an Iraqi judge, acting independently,
issued the warrant.

This explanation isn’t getting very far with anyone
here. It’s already been revealed that the warrants were
written long ago and have been sitting unused until the
right time. In fact, claimed Gurawi, the Iraqi Minister
of Justice proclaimed publicly that he had no
information about Sadr’s or Yacoubi’s involvement with
al-Khoei and that they were not wanted by the Iraqi
government.

Whatever the case, the administration’s militaristic
response and hollow rhetoric cut no ice with any Iraqis
here, and are certain simply to exacerbate a situation
that has already spun out of control for the United
States.

Although the situation with Falluja seems to have been
mostly happenstance (of the kind that was inevitable
with the constant skirmishing), the signs seem to
indicate that the move against al-Sadr’s people was
deliberately timed. If so, it was presumably an attempt
to squeeze him out of the political sphere before the
token "transfer of sovereignty" on June 30.

It has backfired in the way that anyone who reads the
newspapers himself instead of having them explained to
him by aides could have predicted. When three U.S.
soldiers were killed in the Kadhimiyah district of
Baghdad yesterday, that was a clear sign. Although al-
Sadr supporters are probably a majority in Thawra and a
very sizeable minority in Shuala, his influence had
always been negligible in Kadhimiyah.

Even though the violence that has broken out is major
news right now, in a sense it’s not the real story. The
killing of over 100 people in the last ten days is a
tragedy, but so is everyday life under the occupation.

The people in the Shi’a slums of Baghdad who are now
furiously resisting the Americans hate Saddam with a
passion to this day. They suffered under his repression
and they also suffered from neglect, especially under
the sanctions — scarce resources and repairs went to
politically more favored areas. They expected great
improvements when the United States took over.

Shaykh Sadun al-Shemary, a former member of the Iraqi
army who participated in the 1991 uprising and now a
spokesman for the al-Sadr organization in Shuala, told
me, "Things are exactly the same as in Saddam’s time —
maybe worse."

That is all you need to know about the occupation of
Iraq.

Rahul Mahajan is the publisher of the weblog Empire
Notes (http://www.empirenotes.org) and is currently
writing and blogging from Baghdad. His latest book is
"Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and
Beyond." He can be reached at Rahul@empirenotes.org