Life and Thoughts of The One Ocean

Reshaping the Region

By Firas Al-Atraqchi; Freelance Columnist
March 20, 2005

Oil pipelines and installations are attacked at least a dozen times a day.
On the eve of the invasion of Iraq more than 730 days ago, US President George Bush told the American people that he was ordering US forces to move into the oil-rich country to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, to rid Iraq of its already existing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, and to ensure that Iraq would no longer cooperate with terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda by handing over weapons of mass destruction technologies to their operatives.
The war in Iraq was to ensure that another 9/11 would not occur on American shores. The connection between Iraq and 9/11 was not stated but implied.
In the two years since, and after the death of more than 100,000 Iraqis and 1521 US soldiers, and the wounding of dozens of thousands on both sides, US investigators have concluded that all of Bush’s stated reasons for going to war were unfounded.
Iraq had destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction in 1991, 14 years prior to the war.
As the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction began to wind down, the Bush administration switched gears and started to say that the war succeeded in removing a brutal dictator. Although this was not part of the media blitz used to sell the idea of invading Iraq to the American people, it was true. However, dictators abound in the Middle East, most of whom are America’s staunchest allies.
No wars were fought to dislodge them.
When the euphoria of catching Iraqi President Saddam Hussein died down and appeared to have zero effect on a mushrooming resistance movement in Iraq, the Bush administration switched gears yet again and said the war was to ensure the birth of the Middle East’s first democracy.
This democracy would then spread like wildfire throughout the Middle East razing the houses of tyranny, which oppressed their own people.
The idea, although not novel, sounded wonderful on paper.
When Iraqis finally went to vote on January 30, US media immediately declared the election process a success. The papers screamed that 70 percent of the country defied the “terrorists” and voted.
The 70 percent figure hit the streets within 12 hours of the closing of ballots—an impossible figure to mathematically concur. Nevertheless, it was not disputed but actually heralded by every media pundit as Iraq’s success story.
Two weeks later, when an independent Iraqi commission said only 58 percent of the country voted, the inconsistency had already been cleared as the truth. The 12 percent difference is not to be taken lightly—it accounts for 1.8 million votes, a large number for a country of 28 million people.
What the media failed to report was that areas such as Najaf and Karbala—99 percent Shiite population—saw only 73 percent of the electorate vote. What the media also failed to report was that the list of 14 million likely voters was drawn up from food rationing cards passed out by the former Baathist government. Food rationing is still prevalent throughout Iraq.
Many Iraqis told Arab media that when they would show up to receive their food rations of rice, tea, and so on, they were quietly told to vote or lose their rationing privileges.
Furthermore, the media also failed to report that Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in the world who is currently residing in Iraq, issued a fatwa—or theological decree—that those who did not vote would burn in hell.
This is hardly a shining beacon of democracy. A vote is the individual’s right to exercise their social and political power to express their voice and opinion on an issue. Voting because someone told you to choose a particular candidate is not an exercise in democracy. Democracy is the epitome of free will.
The media also failed to report that armed US patrols went into neighborhoods with megaphones ordering residents to come out and vote, that several polling stations in Baghdad and Mosul were closed, that international media only had access to five polling stations throughout the country, and that the Kurds had introduced a de facto referendum on secession and independence from the rest of Iraq into the national poll.
One astonishing tidbit to emerge from the elections was the number of ballots received with Saddam’s name written on them—some 30,000. And nearly 25 percent only of absentee voters actually voted. Not to forget that most of the Sunni community boycotted the elections.
Despite what the media called a success story and Bush recently calling a bright moment, violence prevails in Iraq. Since the January 30 elections, more than 400 Iraqis have been killed. In that time, 80 US soldiers have been killed and another 450 wounded.
The US military said there were some 300 attacks on the day of elections. They said the current average sits at 80 attacks a day. Oil pipelines and installations are attacked at least a dozen times a day.
Electricity is a much-needed and hardly available commodity in Iraq, for the second year, much of the country remains without it. Drinkable water is also a problem.
Reconstruction is almost a non-starter issue. Of $18 billion earmarked for reconstruction projects, an independent US auditing report found that less than one billion of these funds had actually been used in the past two years.
Unemployment is rampant and childhood diseases have been rising. The infant mortality rate has soared since the invasion, according to the United Nations.
A success story?
If this is the democracy other countries in the region are expecting, it is likely they will opt for the devil they already know.
However, desperate to show some success for its string of colossal failures in the Middle East, the Bush administration has labeled recent events as “democracy on the march” as a result of the invasion of Iraq and ouster of Saddam. They point to the elections in occupied Palestine, the demonstrations in Lebanon, and the pro-democracy movement in Egypt.
However, on closer inspection, all these prove to be falsehoods, fabrications of the Bush administration.
The New York Times put it bluntly:
Many of the most promising signs of change, however, have little to do with Iraq. The peace initiatives in Israel were made possible when Yasser Arafat died and was replaced by a braver, more flexible leader. The new determination of the Lebanese people to throw out their Syrian oppressors was sparked by the assassination of the Lebanese nationalist Rafik Hariri, not the downfall of Saddam. And in Iraq itself, the voting largely excluded the Sunni minority, without whose cooperation Iraq will never be anything more than a civil war battleground or a staging platform for a new dictatorship.
In Lebanon, prominent US news magazines declared a “people power” of democracy when demonstrators took to the streets and demanded Syrian troops and influence out of the country.
Ironically, the magazine hit the stands as a counter-demonstration numbering 1.5 million people organized by the Lebanese Shiite resistance movement Hizbullah called for Syria to stay.
And in Egypt, the trials ad tribulations of formerly jailed opposition leader Ayman Nur have become the butt of many political jokes. Yesterday, a prominent Egyptian daily showed Nur’s face superimposed on the body of one of the superheroes from the cartoon hit The Incredibles.
Nur, who spent six weeks in jail on charges of forging his party’s registration documents, was released 10 days ago, and he immediately declared his candidacy for president. Nur aims to contest Egyptian President Husni Mubarak for the top job, especially after the latter declared an amendment to the constitution to allow for multi-party candidates.
The media are calling the government’s bluff and have labeled Nur a made-up hero, a man who was thrown into jail to gain notoriety and publicity and then stand in the elections as a local hero, who will inevitably lose to Mubarak’s wiser and more experienced track record.
In the end, Egypt can announce it is fully democratic.
Yet, the amendments to the constitution come to naught because Article 77 says that all candidates must be approved by parliament. And parliament is itself comprised mainly of Mubarak’s party members.
Freedom on the march? Take Kuwait, who Bush announced was the single-most important ally outside NATO. In 1991, when US forces liberated Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders, it was expected that a more mature Kuwaiti emir would allow for greater freedoms in his country.
Fourteen years later, women are forbidden the right to vote. Try as they may to pass an amendment to the law, and try as the government may to support their efforts, they are turned down. Women in Kuwait, according to various female bloggers from the country, have no political existence.
And then there is Bahrain, where free speech has taken a few steps back, not forward. The government recently arrested and released three bloggers who spoke freely about the need for reform in the Kingdom. Human rights activists are routinely arrested.
And in Saudi Arabia, where recent elections were held, surprise, surprise, no women were present or even allowed to stand as candidates. Men convicted of a myriad of crimes and in incarceration were allowed to vote, but not women.
Nevertheless, there are those like George Will, Charles Krauthammer and the infantile Thomas Friedman who are asking “was Bush right” in his vision of the Middle East after the invasion of Iraq.
If this article is not enough, one need only revisit the pictures of the torture committed by liberating US troops at Abu Ghraib prison and the misconduct of UK troops in military camps in southern Iraq to answer that question.
Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.