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NEWS & LETTERS, JUNE 2003
Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryIraq: U.S. occupation and Ba'athist legacyAs the U.S.-British occupation entered its second month, the indifference of the new rulers to the Iraqi people was seen in how they continued to stand by as looters attacked hospitals, universities, museums, and most ominously of all, nuclear sites. During the same period, the occupiers maintained complete military control of Iraq's oil facilities, where not a single instance of looting was reported. The U.S. government and media have refused to estimate the total deaths from the war, but given the many Iraqi units that met sudden death from the skies without being able to get off a single shot, that toll is surely in the tens of thousands. In mid-May, after weeks of claims that they would install an interim government made up of Iraqi citizens, the U.S. and the British announced that they would rule directly. This outraged even groups that had supported the new occupiers, like the Kurdish parties and the Iraqi National Congress. Neither the demoralizing chaos on the streets nor the maneuvers of the occupiers has succeeded in snuffing out efforts toward liberation among the Iraqi people, however. In Amara, a city of 300,000 in the southern Marsh Region, a local council has taken power, led by anti-Ba'athist guerrilla fighters who took power without outside help. In Baghdad, hospital workers as well as university students and professors have demonstrated against the continued presence of Ba'athist administrators. The once-massive Communist Party (CP) has also reappeared in public, alongside a host of other parties and movements. All of these parties survived years of underground existence or exile. "Iraq has always had political parties, even during Saddam's time, but they had to meet in secret," a worker who was visiting the CP's office told the international press. Many of these opposition parties survived the 1990s in the Kurdish-ruled northern enclave. While Kurds have been prominent in Iraq's new political ferment, women have been relegated to the sidelines, not only by the emergent Islamist parties, but also by the secular ones. As one woman said: "We do not want to become like the Iranian women. In this country, the man always wants to oppress the woman" (LE MONDE, April 30, 2003). Several Islamist factions have tried to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the Ba'athist regime. They surely represent a danger, but it should not be exaggerated. While the Western press made much of the one million Shi'ite Muslims who turned out for the Muharram celebrations in April, fewer noted that only 3,000 joined the Islamist-led political demonstrations during those same days. Many are desperately seeking answers concerning
relatives arrested by the old regime. Crowds have dug up unmarked graves at Al
Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where Ba'athists continued to execute political
prisoners up through the last hours of their rule. The U.S. and the British have
given such groups virtually no assistance, and much evidence is therefore being
lost. The International League for Human Rights estimates that the Ba'athist regime massacred hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over three decades. In the 1980s, it killed over 100,000 Kurds, during a period when Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally. Then in the 1990s, after the first Gulf War, it crushed a resistance movement among the 500,000 largely Shi'ite Marsh Arabs. In an ecological as well as genocidal crime, it drained the marshes, killed 100,000 people, and deported another 200,000. Out of a total population of 23 million, three to four million Iraqis were also driven into exile during Ba'athist rule. Many of them are now returning, with the hope of rebuilding their country politically, economically and morally. |
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