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April
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April 14,
2003
The US has a
Lot to Answer For
Mounting
Ethnic Violence and Misery
by
PATRICK COCKBURN
Northern, Iraq.
A machine-gun chattered just outside the gate
of the biggest hospital in Mosul just as Dr Ayad Ramadani, the
hospital director, was saying he blamed the Kurds for the orgy
of looting and violence which had engulfed Iraq's northern capital.
"The Kurdish militias were looting the city," he explained.
"Today the main protection is from civilians organised by
the mosques." This is not quite fair on the Kurds, since
Arabs were also doing their fair share of looting in Mosul over
the past few days, ransacking everything from the Central Bank
to the university. But there is no doubt that the Arabs, who
make up three-quarters of Mosul's population, are blaming the
Kurds for devastating their city. The downfall of Saddam Hussein
has exacerbated, to a degree never seen before, the ethnic and
 religious tensions between Kurds, Sunni
Arabs and Shia Arabs, the three great communities to which almost
all Iraqis belong. But, deep though differences were between
them in the past, there is little history of communal violence
in the country on the scale of Protestants and Roman Catholics
in Belfast or Muslims and Christians in Beirut.
This may now be changing. Much of the
looting in Baghdad has been by impoverished Shias from great
slums like Saddam City attacking the homes of wealthier Sunnis,
who have traditionally made up the establishment.
The United States has a lot to answer
for in allowing the violence to continue for so long. In Baghdad,
American troops were notoriously inactive while shops and homes
were being looted. In northern Iraq, mobs of looters were able
to take over Mosul because almost no American soldiers were present.
The reason for their absence was that the US had rushed 2,000
men, most of its slender forces in the north, to take over the
Kirkuk oilfields. Only a few hundred soldiers were available
for Mosul. The chants of anti-war protesters about how the conflict
is all about control of Iraqi oil do not seem as over-stated
today as they did a month ago.
The failure of the US Army to stop the
looting is only the latest manifestation of a theme evident in
American policy before and during the war. Although the conflict
was being justified as a fight to liberate the Iraqi people,
their involvement was discouraged and their existence ignored.
According to one Iraqi who met George Bush just before the war,
the President was intrigued to learn, apparently for the first
time, that Iraq was inhabited by two sorts Muslims, Sunnis and
Shias, with deep differences between them.
Some of the ethnic and religious conflicts
emerging should not come as a surprise. Soon after the British
captured Baghdad in 1917, the civil commissioner, Captain Arnold
Wilson, wrote a plaintive note to London, arguing that the new
state being created out of three former Turkish provinces could
only be "the antithesis of democratic government".
This was because the Shia majority rejected domination by the
Sunni minority, but "no form of government has been envisaged
which does not involve Sunni domination". The Kurds in the
north, Wilson prophetically pointed out, "will never accept
Arab rule".
It is important not to project these
arguments too far into the future. Iraqi nationalism did develop
after British occupation. Iraqi Shias, the majority in the Iraqi
army, did fight against Shia Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Kurdish
leaders today do recognise that, surrounded by hostile powers,
full independence for Kurdistan is not feasible. Real autonomy
within Iraq, and a share of power in Baghdad, is the better option.
Iraqi liberals often argue that the extent
of communal differences in Iraq has been exaggerated and violence
experienced by Shia, Sunni and Kurd has come from the government
in Baghdad. They point out that neither the Sunni nor the Shia
communities are monolithic and, in any case, Saddam Hussein stoked
communal differences to his advantage.
Some truth is evident in this, but even
Iraqi opposition politicians who have argued this optimistic
view to me soon start talking about Shia, Sunni and Kurd as if
they were immutable categories. Saddam Hussein's state was always
deeply sectarian. On the day Kirkuk fell I talked to 10 Iraqi
army deserters, all private soldiers, who had been defending
a large village. Nine of them were Shias from the south of Iraq
and one was a Turkoman. Although they came from different units,
not one of the soldiers had met a Sunni Muslim who was a private
soldier or a Shia who was an officer.
The history of the past 30 years has
exacerbated ethnic differences. For instance, Kurds in the northern
three provinces, which have had de facto independence for 12
years, seldom now speak Arabic. Six weeks ago I was speaking
to about 100 peshmerga, as Kurdish soldiers are known. (This
started off as a private interview with their commanders, but
in true democratic spirit their men gathered round to shout agreement
or disagreement). When I asked how many spoke Arabic as well
as Kurdish only three put up their hands.
In 1991 the Shias and Kurds rose against
President Saddam but the Sunni heartland did not. In the following
years, Shia religious leaders within Iraq were systematically
assassinated and their followers persecuted. I used to think
that Sunni or Christian friends in Baghdad were exaggerating
when they expressed terror at what would happen if the Shias
of Saddam City in east Baghdad or in the south ever revolted,
but it turns out that they were right.
What has given such a terrible edge to
these differences is the economic misery of most of the Iraqi
population. Many of the looters in Kirkuk and Mosul were triumphantly
bearing home almost valueless stolen goods like broken pieces
of corrugated iron or shabby old chairs. In Kurdistan, often
presented as doing better than the rest of Iraq, 60 per cent
of the population would be destitute without the food rations
provided by the United Nations' Food-for-Oil Programme.
With so many Iraqis living on the edge
of starvation, it is hardly surprising that they took the one
chance they had over the past week to loot anything they could
get their hands on. Over the past 12 years in Baghdad you would
see men standing all day in open-air markets trying to sell a
few cracked earthenware plates or some old clothes. They were
the true victims of UN sanctions while Saddam Hussein could pay
for gold fittings to the bathroom in his presidential palace.
Economic sanctions really did devastate
Iraqi society. In one village, called Penjwin, in 1996 I found
that villagers were surviving by defusing a particularly lethal
Italian landmine, called the Valmara, in order to sell the scrap
of aluminium in which the explosives were wrapped. The number
of unemployed and semi-employed people and criminals in Iraq
soared during the 1990s. Looking forward to the transition period
after Saddam Hussein, the Brussels-based International Crisis
Group noted three weeks ago that "this amorphous social
group could become an important source of violence and disorder
during the transition, expanding the ranks of any destructive
mobs."
For all the crimes of Saddam Hussein,
the greatest reality in the lives of most Iraqis for over a decade
has been this economic devastation. It is their terrible poverty
which has given such an edge to the fury of the mobs of looters
which have raged through Iraqi cities in recent weeks. It is
exacerbating religious and ethnic tensions which otherwise might
lie dormant. Unless the Iraqi poor feel their lives are improving,
the US and Britain - now responsible for Iraq - may soon find
that they too have become a target for their rage.
Patrick Cockburn
is the co-author, with Andrew Cockburn, of Out
of the Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.
Yesterday's
Features
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
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