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NEWSLETTER 3
war in Iraq - war in Afghanistan - war in Palestine - war in ... |
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| March 2010 |
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FRANCAIS
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OCCUPATION YEAR 8 starts on march 20th 2010 |
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Democracy and security in Iraq
The BRussells
Tribunal
exposes the recent legislative elections in Iraq
under foreign occupation for what they are:
US-scripted drama. The cumulative results of
draconian sanctions (1990-2003) and invasion and
occupation (2003-2010) destroyed the Iraqi state
and replaced it with corruption, terror and
falsification. Nonetheless, the political
machinations of the occupation will fail,
because it is a failed project. |
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March 04 2010 Abdul Ilah Albayaty & Hana Al Bayaty |
THE DRAMA OF IRAQI
ELECTIONS By giving rein to its local feudal allies, the United States is pushing Iraq towards civil collapse and the potential of a regional war that could force its planned partition |
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The staged dramatisation of
the Iraqi elections, by considering them a
decisive moment for the future of Iraq, is an
American propaganda plan against the Iraqi
resistance and the anti-occupation forces who
don’t participate in presenting candidates in
these elections. The Obama administration, in
committing itself — for financial and military
reasons — to its plan of withdrawal and the
handing back of Iraq to its people, was faced by
the reality that the Iraqi people in the days
and months before the electoral process began
developed a mood of disbelief in the political
process, as shown by their weak voter
registration.
The political process
produced a tragic situation for Iraqis:
generalised corruption in which ministers,
deputies and governmental institutions
participated without sanction; tens of thousands
of prisoners tortured, raped, sentenced without
fair trials; five million refugees without any
rights or protection, or even being recognised
as refugees by the government; the generalised
abuse of human rights; the absence of elementary
services like water purification, electricity,
or a sewage system; unemployment reaching up to
50 per cent of the population coupled with the
absence of decent means of income; no access to
health or education; the loss of rights as
workers or civil servants in the state; the
continuous fear of dying, being arrested,
kidnapped or displaced, among other fears.
Throughout the four years of this government and
parliament no law was written or decision taken
to assure the people of Iraq that the future of
the political process would be any different.
If the Obama administration
needs to save what it can of the legitimacy of
the political process before the eyes of the
American people by staging elections, its own
local allies saw them as a danger, as they would
lose power. The proof is the fact that none of
the forces allied to the US wanted to allow the
refugees — which they forcefully displaced — to
be allowed to participate in the elections.
Among other proofs is their decision to delay
the electoral law, regulating the elections,
until the last minute in order to dramatise the
elections. It is the US who pressured its allies
in the current parliament to allow the refugees
to participate in the vote while at the same
time ensuring this vote, by different means, is
unworkable.
During seven years of
occupation the US repeatedly used this pattern
of politics, consisting of pushing for or
remaining silent in front of attacks conducted
by its allies against the Iraqi resistance, its
supporters or alleged supporters, while at the
same time criticising by words — but not deeds —
these same attacks in order to win the hearts of
their victims, trying to make them believe that
the US will protect them against its allies. The
US is again using this pattern during these
elections. While the US has done nothing against
the relentless sequence of mass arrests,
deportations, executions, assassinations,
accusations, intimidations, falsifications, and
general illegal acts carried out by its allies,
it declares from time to time that the elections
should be transparent.
These elections are
falsified in advance. The falsification of
elections does not necessarily happen on the day
of the elections itself. When there are no
reliable records of voters, whether inside or
outside Iraq, when there is terror against
opponents and minorities, when there are no just
procedures and rules concerning political
entities, their financial mechanisms, their
electoral campaigns and regulating the equal
rights of rival candidates, when the government
can use the whole state apparatus and
institutions against its own rivals, it is
evident that the elections will be fake and will
not reflect the real will of the Iraqi people.
Many governments,
international institutions and associations
declared that they want that the elections be
free, fair and transparent. These good
intentions if not followed by acts on the ground
will be considered a silent endorsement of the
falsified results. We remember that UN Security
Council Resolution 1483 stipulated the
obligations of the occupying forces, but the UN
remained silent thereafter in front of the
occupation’s violations of these same
obligations, thereby giving the US the liberty
to do whatever it wants in Iraq as if it was
legal. In this context, it is evident that the
next parliament will again be a US product
composed of US allies with different faces, and
not real Iraqi representatives.
The Iraqi resistance and the
anti-occupation forces, the first political
force in Iraq, are aware of the use of this
repeated pattern of US policy. Therefore they
cannot and will not consider these elections as
legitimate or democratic. The antithesis between
the occupation and the resistance and
anti-occupation forces will be immediately
revived after the elections, as the primary
conflict in Iraqi politics. The resistance and
anti-occupation forces are opposed to the SOFA,
to the oil contracts, to the division of Iraq
and the destruction of this Arab and Muslim
identity, and the fascist religious regime that
Iran — ally of the US in Iraq — wants to
establish, and stand against all the results of
the occupation and its illegal political
process. They have the support of the Iraqi
people, which will not be represented and
reflected in these elections.
These forces know that the
tactics employed in the elections are used by
the occupation to divide them on the question of
whether or not they will participate in the
elections. For this reason, as is understood
from their literature and position, they will
not try to prevent their supporters from casting
their votes in support of this or that candidate
that they consider less awful than another, or
if he or she defends their immediate and local
preoccupations, as will happen in many
provinces, especially in Kirkuk, Mosul and
Baghdad. Thereby, they let the people realise by
their own experience that these elections will
change nothing in their lives. Assuring the
liberty to vote for their supporters will
prevent the occupation from using these
elections as a way to isolate the Iraqi
resistance from the Iraqi people. On the
contrary, the falsification of the elections and
the hypocritical pattern used by the US will
push some forces that believed in the political
process to quit it and join the anti-occupation
movement.
These tactics, which became
a repeated pattern used by the US, remind us of
those used — “the surge” — during the sectarian
killings of 2006-2007. These sectarian killings
were practiced under the eyes of, amid the
silence of, and some say with the active
participation of, the occupation. Only when the
killings produced their desired effects —
hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of
refugees — did the US pretend to protect the
victims by imprisoning the regions they inhabit
by walls in order to control them. They punished
no one for the killings; neither did they do
anything to facilitate the return of the
refugees. The same is happening in the context
of these elections. While the US pretends it
wants transparent elections, the arrests, the
displacement, the generalised abuse of human
rights of individuals and communities, the
falsifications, the executions, the banning of
candidates, goes on unabated on the ground, with
no real acts to stop them.
This time the US is playing
with fire. Its tactics heighten the divisions
amongst local US allies, whose victims are the
Iraqi people. They potentially lead, in the
aftermath of the elections, not only to internal
civil strife but also to a regional war. The
political process has failed and no one wants to
repeat it for another four bloody years. The
essence of the US and its allies’ project during
seven terror-filled years is the partition of
Iraq. Its continuation in whatever form will
lead to a civil war.
Is the US using the elections and the
heightening of conflicts as an opportunity to
impose Biden’s project of partition as a fait
accompli? If the US, through the elections,
negotiates the future of Iraq and the extent of
this partition only with Iran and the Kurdish
leaders, its principal allies, other Iraqi
political forces will not bear that the Iraqi
people be victims of these machinations and will
reinforce their military, political and civil
resistance.
One of the dangers of
heightening existing conflicts during the
elections is that the US’s allies, the
pro-Iranian and the Kurdish leaders, did not and
will not accept transparent elections to realise
their project. They use and will use again force
— with or without US aid — to impose their plan
on the Iraqi people. Their plan is not only a
danger for Iraq and its people but also for
Iraq’s neighbouring countries. Any renewed civil
strife would involve a regional war. Is the US,
in spite of all its propaganda effort,
attempting to revive its failed project of the
New Middle East through a regional war? It is
time to realise that the only way to have peace,
stability and democracy in Iraq is an
unconditional withdrawal of all US forces, the
establishment of a transitional government
supported by the resistance, and to organise a
free, fair, transparent and democratic election
to hand Iraq back to its people. Without a
rupture with the political process and its
groups, Iraq will sink more and more into
tragedy.
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Souad Al Azzawi ![]() |
Violations of Iraqi Children Rights
Under the American
Occupation
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Dr. Souad Naji Al-Azzawi
is a former Vice-President of
Mamoun University of Scientific Affaires; former
professor of environmental engineering at
Baghdad Univ., recipient of the 2003
Nuclear-Free Future Award for her work on
environmental contamination after the Gulf War
in Iraq.
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A message to the Americans
Nihal Fahad,
IT Engineer, Baghdad, Iraq
Your silence is louder than your bombsٍ
It
fills the void left by heartlessness
It
expands and falls thickly on indignant masses
And
smothers angst, outrage, and sorrow
Your silence is louder than your bombs-
It
dictates an unholy cowardice,
It
thrives on decay and lifelessness,
Ugly, sad, and sallow…
Your silence is more deadly than your guns
Insinuating your carelessness
Gray, cold, and hollow.
Your silence is thicker than the blood
That spills and colors holy ground
As
we watch- we listen- for the sound
Of
indignation that will never come
Your silence deafens, chills, and numbs
Louder than battle cries, and war drums…
It
resounds with the impotence of the dumb,
Death and destruction will surely follow…
So
call them home- call home your men-
Neither saviors, nor heroes, nor allies, nor
friends
The
mercenaries of a means to an end,
Let
us heal, let us live... leave tomorrow.
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FIRST INTERNATIONAL AND UNITED MEETING OF THE
ANTI-OCCUPATION FIELD
International Conference of the Iraqi Political Resistance: Gijón (Spain), June 18-20, 2010 |
Spanish Campaign against the Occupation and for
the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI) |
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The Spanish Campaign against the Occupation and
for the Sovereignty of Iraq (CEOSI) will hold
its first international, public and united
meeting of the main currents in the Iraqi
resistance, those who to their project for the
full recovery of Iraq’s sovereignty add an
integrated, democratic and non-sectarian
reconstruction of its institutions.
This meeting, which aims to encourage the
convergence process of the anti-occupation field
and promote their
openness to the international community, will
take place in Gijón, Asturias, Spain, June
18-20, 2010, under the title:
International
Conference of the Iraqi Political Resistance.
This initiative will coincide with the beginning
of the eight year of the occupation of Iraq and
will be held while Spain holds the presidency of
the EU.
The forgotten news from Iraq does not mean that
the situation has improved, or that the end of
the occupation is near. The Iraqi people are at
a critical moment as they face their immediate
future. On March 7, 2010, new legislative
elections will be held, whose objective is to
conclude the consolidation process for internal
control in Iraq, with a view to a complete
withdrawal of the United States in 2011. As in
previous instances, the anti-occupation field
will not participate in elections it considers
illegal, though it will not interfere with
popular participation in those elections.
Iraq’s occupants have submitted the country to
the old colonial logic of social fragmentation.
The occupation, instead of bringing democratic
policies to Iraq, as its invaders claimed in
2003, has brought formal power to certain people
and sectarian organizations linked with the
occupiers themselves or with countries in the
region, without any legitimacy whatsoever. Their
game is not that of representing and defending
one or another of the Iraqi communities, but to
serve their foreign masters while enriching
themselves without impunity. The upcoming
elections in March 7 will only exacerbate this
failed dynamic and instead of enabling the
democratic expression of the Iraqi people, they
reflect the fight between US and Iran, for the
control of Iraq. For this reason, extremely
bitter conflicts are developing within the
collaborationist camp itself: according to
general opinion in the streets of Iraq, the
latest massive attacks in Baghdad and other
cities are the result (either through the direct
involvement or passivity of the security
services) of a ruthless struggle between
sectarian groups, who are resolving their
political differences at the cost of the lives
of hundreds of innocent Iraqis
The country’s subjection to occupation has cost
up to a million lives, according to the
estimates of prestigious international
institutions. According to the UN, during 2005
and 2006, up to a hundred Iraqis were killed
every day by death squads linked to the new
Iraqi authorities, and therefore, either
directly or indirectly, to the occupation
forces. Officially, 40,000 Iraqis are being held
by the US or the new Iraqi authorities.
Furthermore, the terror and repression have led
to the greatest exodus in recent history.
According to the UN, since the beginning of the
occupation, nearly five million Iraqis have
become internally displaced or forced to find
refuge outside the country: Iraq has more people
who have had to abandon their homes than any
other country in the world: 16% of its
population. For these Iraqis, return to their
homes is not feasible.
Inside the country, elections have not stirred
any hope of an improvement in the daily
situation which has not ceased to deteriorate
from day to day since 2003. Iraq, one of the
richest countries on the planet, formerly with a
large professional middle class, today
demonstrates paltry indicators in the areas of
education, health, electricity and potable water
supplies, as well as in respect to human and
social rights. Iraq is the fourth most corrupt
country in the world: in the strategic oil
sector that is gradually being privatized,
no-one knows where the revenues from oil sales
will end up. It is the political class imposed
by the occupiers that makes up a new oligarchy
which legitimizes the theft and dismantling of
public institutions through regressive
legislation, and which nullifies the concept of
citizenship and subjects the lives of Iraq’s
women and men to arbitrariness and helplessness.
Against this background, the project for the
recovery of Iraq’s sovereignty is inexorably
linked to the democratic and integrated
reconstruction of its institutions. The military
occupation must not give way to a puppet regime
or to the fracturing of the country into areas
influenced by neighboring governments that could
facilitate the unhindered plunder of its wealth
in the future. The Iraqi people want to fully
recover their sovereignty and the greatest
inheritance of their past, one that was embodied
in an integrated and dynamic society, despite
the adversity of its recent history. This is the
project that the Iraqi resistance embodies and
wishes to materialize, and that the meeting at
Gijón aims to further, in an atmosphere of trust
and freedom.
The democratic anti-occupation currents are
converging slowly, but inexorably. Since 2007
four Fronts have been created around which the
majority of the militant groups are coalescing.
The coordination among them has moved forward,
without materializing into full military
unification. More importantly, after the end of
the first phase of military confrontation with
the occupiers, the political and civilian
representatives of the
resistance continue their dialogue on a
program and common strategy, and on the need to
offer a united dialogue inside Iraq as much as
outside. It is an essential objective for Iraq’s
future, in order to achieve a democratic and
integrated solution to the crisis the occupation
has created.
This is the spirit of the meeting at Gijón, a
date to which the highest representatives of the
main anti-occupation Iraqi political and
civilian groups have already committed: the
Nationalist and Islamic Patriotic Front
(political organization of the Jihad and
Liberation Front), the Association of Muslim
Scholars (whose Secretary General, Sheikh Harez
Al-Dari, has been designated as political
representative by the military factions of the
Jihad and Change Front), the Political Council
of the Iraqi Resistance (political organization
of the Jihad and Reformation) and the Iraqi
National Foundation Congress (made up of more
than 20 civic associations and community
representatives), men as well as women who will
remember the essential role of this collective
in Iraq’s contemporary history:
Judeir
Al-Murshidi, Secretary General of the
Nationalist and Islamic Patriotic Front of Iraq;
Sheikh Bashar Mohamed Al-Faidi,
spokesperson and Executive Committee member of
the Association of Muslim Scholars; Sheikh
Ali al-Jubouri, Secretary General of the Political Council of the
Iraqi Resistance; Ayatollah
Yawad Al-Jalesi,
Secretary General of the Iraqi National
Foundation Congress; Sheikh
Ahmed Al-Ganim,
President of the Southern Tribal Council of
Iraq;
Arshad Zibari, Secretary General of the
Kurdish Justice Party;
Yusef Hamdan, member of the People’s Union (communist);
Asma
Al-Haidari, Human Rights activist;
Haifa
Zangana, writer; and
Isam Al-Chalabi,
former Iraqi Oil Minister (1987-1990)
and oil expert.
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