Antiwar.com Blog

Chris Albritton has written a compelling account of his first three weeks back in Iraq, and the disturbing differences in the atmosphere of the place and the attitudes of the Iraqis he has encountered. Also striking is his experience with some American soldiers who ended up screaming at him as they pointed their weapons at him.

After describing the chaos of the day the CPA orchestrated the announcement of the New Puppets, Chris says:

No one knew who was in charge. The Iraqis, inexperienced at managing the logistics of the day, were overwhelmed. The CPA people just wanted to get the hell out of there. There were attacks throughout the day. The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps troops were merely window dressing, with the real security provided by beefy South Africans private contractors. U.S. troops hung around getting in everyone’s way.

It was an almost perfect metaphor for the New Iraq.

I write this not as a plea for pity or understanding. I don’t understand this country myself, so that may be impossible. And I know I have written things that will anger people: I am ashamed of many of the emotions I feel these days. But I care about the truth as best as I can see and tell it. I once believed that telling the truth — or a small part of it — could help the world. It could help people understand things better and thus make the world better. But this war defies comprehension. It’s so stupid and there seems to be no point to anything that happens here. People die on a daily basis in random, terrifying attacks. And for what? Freedom? Stability? Peace? There is none of that here and it’s likely there won’t be after the Americans leave. Iraq has spiraled into a dark place, much worse than where it was a year ago during the war. There is no freedom from the fear that is stoked by mutual hatred, cynicism and an apprehension about the future. So what if one side has superior firepower? Every bullet fired helps kill souls on both sides of this war, whether it hits flesh or lands harmlessly.

We — Iraqis and the Americans here — are caged by fear, and we are all conquered people now.

Earlier in his post, Chris concludes that the Americans should just pull out, but he also says that the Iraqis aren’t “ready to run their own country.” I disagree because I think Chris is just buying the general American line that a new “government” must rule Iraq and that such an institution can be created and imposed. The Americans really need to believe that they can both fix and improve what they’ve destroyed, but that is impossible. Clearly, the neocons who planned to “decapitate Saddam’s regime” and replace it with a shiny new western-style democracy would have been wise to heed the words of Hayek:

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson in humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

The sooner the Americans get out of their way, the sooner the Iraqi people can organize their own Iraqi solution to the predicament in which the Americans have placed them.

This is a current poll being done by Army Times asking:

“Do you think violence against U.S. forces will diminish after June 30, when Iraqis are scheduled to take control of their government again?”

I am making an assumption (yes, I know, usually a bad thing to do) that most of the readers of Army Times are connected with the military, more specifically with the United States Army, and therefore are the most likely respondants to the poll up to this point. The poll started last Tuesday and should be ending today.

Here is what they think will happen: poll results

Stuart Hughes has the news about the Saudi shooting of his two colleagues in Riyadh. Stuart is presently in London in the BBC newsroom. Here’s Frank Gardner’s last report from Saudi Arabia before being gunned down on a Riyadh street. Simon Cumbers was killed and Frank is in critical condition, but was described as “stabilized” today, though he is in a coma.

UPDATE: I wasn’t going to post this, but Stuart did, so I will. This is a screen grab from Saudi TV of Frank Gardner just after he was shot.

Patrick Cockburn, in an article titled “The Baghdad Bombings – The Pattern of Attacks is Changing” mentions near the end that “On Saturday gunmen attacked civilian security in two four-wheel-drive vehicles and killed four–two Americans and two Poles–on the airport road. The US also no longer controls the road from Baghdad to Fallujah, the city that Marines besieged in April but did not capture. The city is still under the control of the resistance.”

Undoubtedly Washington Post reporter Daniel Williams would be willing to vouch for the veracity of that statement. Read about his harrowing trip to Fallujah, which ends with an attack on the highway from Fallujah to Baghdad in which armed Iraqis fired on their vehicle from an orange and white taxi:

On Friday, an armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud thump on the vehicle’s metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver nor the reporter was injured.

But, never fear! It’s only a matter of time before the New Iraqi Puppets restore order to Iraq and disband all the militias.

Another interesting revelation from Williams:

Under an agreement made last month with U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by former officers from Saddam Hussein’s demobilized army, was to safeguard the city. The unruly gunmen — many of them insurgents who battled the Marines through most of April — were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil defense units.

Instead, the brigade stays outside of town in tents, the police cower in their patrol cars and the civil defense force nominally occupies checkpoints on the city’s fringes but exerts no influence over the masked insurgents who operate only a few yards away.

Chris at Explananda catches a blatant example of hypocrisy on the part of (surprise!) the Bush Administration. Apparently they’re going to use the upcoming G-8 summit to issue a “sweeping declaration favoring democratic changes in the Middle East. Indeed, they said the declaration had been improved in recent weeks because of the suggestions of several Arab countries,” according to the New York Times. The Bushies even added in a promise to actually do something about the Israel/Palestine conflict, in an effort to pander to angry Arab leaders. Many Arab governments ( Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan)declined to attend anyway.

One Arab country wasn’t invited – Qatar. The reason? The Americans are punishing them for failing to censor Al Jazeera as they asked. So, we have the absurd spectacle of the US Government urging “democratic reforms” on the Arab world while excluding one Arab country for the crime of tolerating a free press.

Link to explananda via Abu Aardvark.

New Puppet Prime Minister Allawi has announced that nine Iraqi militias have agreed to disband and that the ones not agreeing are “outlawed.” This agreement allegedly includes the Kurdish pershmerga of the KDP and the PUK, which seems odd. Consider the stand-off that currently exists between the position of the Kurds and Sistani:

But while there appeared to be progress in New York, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani warned Iraq’s unity could be at risk if the U.N. resolution did not endorse autonomy granted to Kurds under the present interim constitution.

“We are not bluffing here, we are serious — it’s the right of our people,” Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, told Reuters in an interview.

The latest draft does not mention the interim constitution, which includes a clause that would allow Kurds to veto any attempt to encroach on their autonomy in the north.

But the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, objects to any Kurdish veto and says he will not back a U.N. resolution endorsing the constitution.

I find it difficult to believe that the Kurds will dissolve their peshmerga before this conflict is resolved. Reportedly, the peshmerga all have police and security positions anyway, so they have likely assumed a low profile for the time being. As for SCIRI’s Badr Brigades, which Allawi claims is party to the agreement, SCIRI spokemen claimed negotiations have not yet begun. Considering that Allawi is saying that under the agreement most of the militias are to be “phased out” by 2005, it seems likely that this is simply a ploy to brand as “outlaw” Sadr’s militia, while the other militias who are not participating in the current uprising anyway, simply stay home and bide their time. Possibly Allawi has made a deal with the US military that he will reconstitute the Ba’athist army of Saddam and deal with the “illegal” militias, which would relieve the Americans.

This is actually a pretty depressing statement from Allawi and Co., since it sounds like something Paul Bremer would announce in both substance and tone and in its sleight-of-hand duplicity. Not that I’m surprised, but it would have been nice if the New Puppets would have come up with some actually constructive move to do something decent for the Iraqis. Wouldn’t it be a smarter move to have the New Puppets fix up the horrible children’s hospitals or something?

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UPDATE: Clearly, this is a Bremer deal, as I thought. AP reports:

Under the agreement, most of the militias are to be phased out by 2005, in a countrywide program worth about $200 million.

The militias who signed up would be treated as army veterans – eligible for government benefits, including pensions and job placement programs, depending on their service, according to coalition officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Participating militias would hand in their weapons to the Ministry of Interior and join the program as individuals, not as units or groups, coalition officials said.

All the rest, including al-Sadr’s militia, will be declared “illegal armed forces” that could be arrested when the Coalition Provisional Authority order is signed later Monday, the officials said.

Watch Abu Ghraib fill up with “illegal militias” now. The Iraqis opposed to the occupation, which is most of them, will see Allawi as a tool, confirming what they probably expected anyway. Anyone taking up arms against the occupation forces will be labeled an “illegal militia member” and jailed.