Infinite Occupation
Toensing, Chris
Infinite Occupation By Chris Toensing Illustration by Christopher Serra Muwaffaq Tawfiq Hashim, his left leg mangled in the 1991 Gulf War, limps across the room to explain to us the markings on...
...The riskiest option, however, is the status quo...
...The breakup of Iraq would certainly not happen peacefully...
...But the path Bush has chosen- and that Kerry seems intent on following, should he win in November-is not a path of peace...
...We cannot look at the Iraqi Governing Council as anything other than an addition to the occupation," says Sheikh Jawad al-Khalisi, the affable and articulate head of the historic Khalisiyya school in the poor Shiite district of Kadhimiyya...
...Leslie Cagan, leader of United for Peace and Justice, doesn't buy this: "What is going on in the country now if it's not chaos...
...It would be very risky...
...But he and his co-workers, many of whom were also hobbled by war or torture, have no choice but to go door to door in the city's sprawling neighborhoods because no one else has collected the data...
...Al-Khalisi, who is reportedly close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is part of a nascent Sunni-Shiite "National Assembly" that aspires to be the alternative to the IGC...
...Ali, with an almost sheepish smile, tells us how he acquired his prosthetic arm...
...bases along the Baghdad-Amman highway for the purpose of building still another security barrier, and they know that they will wake up to military occupation on July 1. "If Americans are asking where's the exit strategy, few Iraqis are," says Anas Shallal, an Iraqi-American peace activist in Washington who speaks to his relatives in Baghdad regularly...
...One night, he was plucked off the street by henchmen of Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday who ordered Ali's arm fed to Uday's pet tiger in a drunken display of untouchable power, he says...
...Not only are Iraqi translators for CPA officials in constant mortal danger, but the structures that U.S...
...It is a daunting project...
...House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, once marketed to the Democratic rank and file as a fire-breathing liberal, wants to send more troops, as does Kerry...
...When we go to Iraqis in charge, we find they have no authority," Hashim concludes...
...to delineate the optimal procedure for the June 30 "handover of sovereignty," there is not a dime's worth of difference between his strategy and Kerry's...
...After the sanctions and the cave-in to Bush's occupation, the U.N...
...owes it to Iraqis to insist on another path that has a chance...
...stop the Pentagon from ordering another Fallujah-style operation over the objections of the "sovereign" but toothless Iraqi ministers...
...The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S...
...They knew all along that the U.S...
...A U.N...
...Its most controversial clause gives two thirds of the voters in any three Iraqi provinces the ability to overturn an otherwise successful referendum on a permanent constitution...
...U.N...
...Mindful of the unmistakable Arab hostility to federalism, the Kurdish parties are keeping their 50,000-strong militias under arms...
...Though Uday's depredations were notorious in Baghdad, some of Ali's own neighbors don't believe his story...
...Individual cases are easily waved away...
...Every conceivable option carries high risks...
...force might also be attacked by those elements of the Iraqi insurgency that have no discernible political program-and, notably, never identify themselves...
...Kurdish public opinion, particularly among the young, who have never known a Kurdistan policed by an Arab army, is more insistent on an expansive federalism than the party leaders...
...military, preferably helped by NATO, until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility...
...Rapporteur Lakhdar Brahimi's April 14 preview of his report on his mission to Iraq offered a few rays of hope...
...In the case of Ahmad Chalabi, the neoconservatives' favorite Iraqi exile who was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan, this is no great loss...
...was not leaving...
...For his part, presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry outlined his views on April 13 in The Washington Post...
...The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is set to pack its bags on June 30, not a moment too soon...
...Now that Bush has asked the U.N...
...The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and recreate a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people," he wrote...
...overseer L. Paul Bremer created as some semblance of Iraqi sovereignty have no legitimacy...
...But there are other members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), like the Dawa Party and the Communist Party, that once enjoyed great respect for their costly opposition to the old regime but now have seen their standing also erode...
...First, some transfer of something must occur on June 30...
...The U.S...
...troops would remain in Iraq after it becomes nominally sovereign...
...As long as the U.S...
...Chris Toensing is Editor of Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project...
...Infinite Occupation By Chris Toensing Illustration by Christopher Serra Muwaffaq Tawfiq Hashim, his left leg mangled in the 1991 Gulf War, limps across the room to explain to us the markings on the map of Baghdad hanging on the wall opposite his desk...
...Without statistics, his organization will be unable to convince authorities even to acknowledge the size of the disabled population, let alone to ameliorate their plight...
...Hashim estimates that there are 3,000 to 4,000 disabled people in Baghdad who got their injuries during the 2003 war alone...
...calls the shots, with 130,000 troops in command of Iraq's security and $18.4 billion for the country's reconstruction in the hands of a super-embassy the institutions and countries that share its burdens will also share the antipathy of too many Iraqis...
...He told us that, after the new group's first meeting, Abd al-Aziz Hakim of the U.S.-allied Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq called to say that he would have attended if invited...
...George W Bush seems incapable of comprehending that millions of Iraqis are not comforted by his oath that "we will not waver...
...Who in Baghdad-or, for that matter, in Washington-will believe that the U.N...
...multinational peacekeeping force, given a political mandate to accompany its responsibility for security...
...Yet Brahimi also said he expected that U.S...
...Such an option, needless to say, would not ipso facto resolve the looming internal conflicts over federalism, the place of Islam in the constitution, and oil revenue distribution, among other issues...
...Will Brahimi assist the caretaker government in negotiating the status of forces agreement-the Iraqi "invitation to stay"-that the IGC declined to give to Washington...
...When we go to the Americans, they give us something right away but very little...
...Unlike the Society for the Handicapped, they don't have any means of tackling their quotidian problems by themselves...
...The National Assembly of Sheikh al-Khalisi has two slogans: "No to Occupation, No to Division...
...The bipartisan consensus in Washington holds that U.S...
...Thick black lines divide the Iraqi capital into several districts, and each district is assigned to one of the veteran soldier's colleagues...
...soldiers and their U.S.-commanded allies...
...So far, only Senator Robert Byrd and a few progressive Representatives have heeded the call of anti-war groups like United for Peace and Justice to stand up against an occupation of indefinite duration...
...One year after the end of the suffocating rule of Saddam Hussein's regime, they are tired of being told to wait for improvements...
...Besides the risk of civil war, partition could lead to traumatic population transfers like those following World War I. The largest Kurdish city in Iraq is Baghdad...
...Sunni and Shiite Arabs alike view this article as paving the way for the partition of Iraq, a prospect they greatly fear...
...Hashim knows that counting is a political act...
...Bremer and Bush, however, still seem to be vesting much of their hope in the Transitional Administrative Law...
...This clause was inserted at the Kurds' behest as their insurance policy against an Arab-dominated assembly's rejection of their demands for substantial autonomy...
...He denounced the deadly siege of Fallujah and cautioned against applying military solutions to political problems...
...The last statement directly contradicts a provision of the U.S.-sponsored Transitional Administrative Law (which the American media persistently misidentifies as a "draft constitution") signed with great, if belated, fanfare on March 8. This document may soon go the way of Bremer's previous attempts at political engineering...
...This mandate should be to protect the convening of a broadly based national conference to elect a provisional parliament, as already recommended by Brahimi, preparatory to permanent elections at the earliest possible date...
...will trump the collective will of 130,000 U.S...
...has become radioactive," warns Shallal...
...He spoke of a "large national conference" that could be convened after the handover to elect a consultative assembly to draft a constitution...
...Baghdad is still a city of mysterious bomb blasts, ubiquitous gunfire, and terrifying kidnappings for ransom...
...Though the date was chosen by Karl Rove, and though the transfer may be cosmetic, it has accrued tremendous symbolic significance in Iraq...
...Worse, the occupation has tainted, maybe irrevocably, any and all Iraqis who cooperate with it...
...Will the U.N...
...The strength of the bipartisan consensus on Iraq is that most observers believe Iraq would erupt in chaos and civil strife if the occupation abruptly ended...
...To make their voices count, the Iraqis who are disabled will have to count themselves...
...The recently founded Iraqi Society for the Handicapped, which Hashim directs, has received a small grant from a British agency to count and classify the people severely wounded or disabled in one of Iraq's three punishing wars since 1980, or during the occasional U.S.-British bombing in the thirteen years between the second and third wars, or in the hellish prisons of the deposed regime...
...Second, the U.S.-led occupation must end as soon as possible...
...Brahimi made it clear that the post-June 30 caretaker government-because it will not be elected-should enact no legislation...
...superpower status forbids any thought of "cutting and running" from Iraq...
...Slowly but viscerally their suspicion is growing that, in the era of the U.S.-led occupation, Iraqi needs and aspirations do not count...
...But Iraqis watch the dump trucks delivering loads of cement and gravel to the U.S...
...Yet most Iraqis face problems that are considerably more mundane-unemployment, intermittent electricity, impure drinking water, glacial traffic, choking pollution, and a dilapidated telephone network...
...At the Iraqi Society for the Handicapped, Muwaffaq Tawfiq Hashim already has enough counting to do...
...You can't be here and there at the same time," Khalisi reproached him...
...The third way between occupation and cutting and running is a U.N...
Vol. 68 • June 2004 • No. 6
