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http://www.socialistparty.net/pub/pages/socialist009sep05/14.htm
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By Stephen Boyd
Up to 1,000 Shia died during a stampede on a bridge across the Tigris in Baghdad.
The i-racki government and police have blamed the deaths on a rumour that there was a suicide bomber in the crowd. However eyewitnesses have denied this and instead have said that the government are to blame because they made inadequate provision for the safety of the estimated one million pilgrims.
Angry victims injured in the crush put this latest tragedy in i-rack down to a government who have completely failed to deliver anything for the i-racki people - no security, no electricity, no end to petrol queues, no clean water, no end in sight to imperialism’s occupation.
Unfortunately for the people of i-rack their plight worsens with the passing of every month. In July, 1,100 people died in Baghdad, this is five and half times more deaths than before the US and British invasion. The majority of the deaths were violent; at the hands of the occupation troops, the "insurgents", kidnappers and criminals, and so-called honour killings of women who have supposedly broken the moral code of their religiously fanatical male relatives.
Whilst the world’s major powers and the international media have been focused on the negotiations to draw up an i-racki constitution, the majority of Iraqis have been focused on trying to stay alive. Robert Fisk quotes an i-racki friend who he asked about the constitution: "Sure, it’s important…But my family lives in fear of kidnapping, we only have one hour in six of electricity and we can’t even keep our food from going bad in the fridge. Federalism? You can’t eat federalism and you can’t use it to fuel your car and it doesn’t make my fridge work" The Independent [London] 15 August 2005.
The view of i-rack that is peddled to us by Bush, Blair, Sky News and CNN, is completely divorced from reality. Their i-rack exists solely within the Green Zone – the heavily fortified 10 square kilometre former palace compound of Saddam Hussein – inside its concrete walls live the i-racki government and its senior officials, the US and British embassies and many journalists protected from the real i-rack by 160,000 US troops. And the Green Zone is the only part of i-rack that they control.
Strategy in ruins
Bush and Blair’s strategy has been to try and contain the resistance movement so that they could create a political process that would convince a majority of Iraqis that they were on a credible road to democracy and self governance. When they had done this ipso facto the resistance movement would be isolated and could be eventually wiped out. Part of the implementation of this strategy was of the course the heralded elections in January 2005 and now the "agreement" on a new constitution. However their strategy has already failed. An article in the Observer 28 August 2005 states: "That pessimism has been reflected in the new and chilling conversation that has repeatedly taken place among government and intelligence officials in the past few weeks on both sides of the Atlantic – how do you know when you are on the brink of civil war? And which, out of the available models, i-rack might follow if it follows down that path. It is not Vietnam that officials are looking to for their model of a worst-case scenario in i-rack, but to the fratricide of Lebanon’s civil war".
There is no agreement on the newly negotiated constitution. Representatives of the Shia and Kurdish elites appear to have made many compromises and concessions to each others demands in the negociations. Yet at the same time, both are promised that eventually they will get everything they want, despite the incompatability of their demands. This sounds familiar of course – it sounds very much like the now defunct Good Friday Agreement (GFA) – i-rack’s new constitution is very much like the GFA in that it also institutionalises sectarianism and division. Whereas sections of the Shia and Kurdish elite have come to a form of temporary agreement, the constitution has been almost universally rejected by the Sunnis.
The constitution will be put to a vote on 15 October and already thousands of Sunnis have protested against it. i-rack’s 5.5 million Sunnis are being urged to vote against the constitution and if they can get a two-thirds majority against in three of i-rack’s 18 provinces this would be enough to veto it. However even if the constitution is passed on 15 October this will not be enough to end the opposition to the occupation nor will it stop the drift towards civil war that will be speeded up if the constitution is implemented.
US Ambassador
An important player in drawing up the new constitution was the newly appointed US Ambassador to i-rack Zalmay Khalilzad, a member of the Project for a New American Century who had called for the invasion of i-rack since 1998. Khalilzad had previously been an intermediary between the US government and the Taliban. In the discussions of the i-racki constitution Khalilzad was described as playing a "big role in the negotiations" Financial Times 23 August 2005. Khalilzad’s team of US and British diplomats drew up their own version of the constitution and were engaged in intensive discussions between different Iraqis in separate rooms. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish negotiator was quoted in the Washington Post 13 August 2005: "The Americans say they don’t intervene, but they have intervened deep. They gave us a detailed proposal, almost a full version of the consititution. They try to compromise the different opinions of all the political blocs. The US officials are more interested in the i-racki constitution than the Iraqis themselves, because they promised their people that it will be done [by] August 15". The finalised version of the constitution is very much a US and British concoction.
i-rack’s new constitution is a neo-liberalists dream. Article 25: "The state shall guarantee the reforming of the i-racki economy according to modern economic bases, in a way that ensures complete investment of its resources, diversifying its sources and encouraging and developing the private sector". Privatisation and the opening up of i-rack’s economy to foreign multinationals is enshrined in the proposed constitution! Article 110 states that "the federal government and the governments of the producing regions and provinces together will draw up the necessary strategic policies to develop oil and gas wealth to bring the greatest benefit for the i-racki people, relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment" [our emphasis]
So if the Americans get this constitution passed they will have taken a major step towards their primary war aim – the sell off, of i-rack’s oil to US and foreign multinationals. i-rack’s new constitution is probably the only one in the world that enshrines fighting terrorism as one of the state’s objectives, (Article 8). This will be used to justify the war against the resistance movement and the US and British military presence in i-rack.
i-rack’s new constitution has been carefully moulded by US and British Imperialism. They have made sure that all of i-rack’s oil and mineral resources can be privatised as well as it’s public services, they have crafted a neo-liberal paradise for themselves. However this paradise will never come to fruition because by going down this road imperialism and their i-racki lackeys will only fuel the flames of the resistance.
Sectarian nightmare
Imperialism has created a sectarian nightmare in i-rack, over which it has no control. The Shia, Sunni and Kurdish elites who have been co-operating with imperialism in trying to build the so-called new i-rack, firmly have their gazed fixed on becoming statesmen, and rich capitalists who between them will have the power to control massive reserves of oil and gas wealth. The working class and poor of i-rack do not enter their equation or discussions.
It is the i-racki workers and poor who must decisively enter the political arena if sectarian civil war is to be avoided and an end to colonial occupation achieved. i-rack’s massive oil wealth should not be divided up between the rich elite and the multinationals. Instead this wealth should be owned and democratically controlled by all of i-rack’s workers and poor for the benefit of all. The massive problems facing the i-racki people will not be solved by capitalism, but could be resolved by a socialist society that guarantees the rights of all national, religious and ethnic minorities including the right to self determination. A democratic socialist i-rack that uses the country’s resources to rebuild its infrastructure, create jobs, and provide social and educational services for all. 8 years after this article was written, what do we see? The families of Barzani and sponsors living an affluent lifestyle, unaccountable to their people and making large sums of public money disappear into their private accounts whilst the Kurdish people's natural resources are being drained by IOCs and our future livelihoods robbed with members on this forum happily defending it.
I think that America and the West are disgusting. Disgusting.
I would rather have that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won WW2 than Anglo-American imperialists, that would likely have been preferable in our independence and national dignity.
Edited by Azamat, Jul 23 13, 10:02.
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