Simon Assaf | ukwatch.net

Iraq: image and reality

JamieSW — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:26:29 +0000

Has Iraq finally turned the corner? George Bush certainly wants us to think so. And at first sight, his arguments look convincing. Large sections of the country – including the capital city Baghdad and the restive Anbar province in the west – are being handed over to the Iraqi army.

The Shia insurgency led by Moqtada al-Sadr has been contained and demobilised, while Sunni resistance fighters have been rebranded as “awakening councils” and now cooperate with US occupation forces.

The US can point to a tenfold decline in attacks on its troops from a peak of 2,000 a month in summer 2006. There has also been a marked fall in the numbers of civilian casualties from its peak of 3,500 a month in early 2007.

The US is now confidently predicting that it will finally be able to start drawing down its troops. The “surge”, Bush’s gamble to stabilise the occupation, is being paraded as a success.

But in fact Iraq is poised to enter a new era of instability – and the US is finding itself trapped by a series of dirty deals that are coming back to haunt it.

Foremost among these is the deal the US hoped it could forge with the Shia‑dominated Iraqi government.

This deal, known as the “status of forces agreement”, would have granted the US the right to stage military operations inside Iraq without Iraqi government approval, and the right to launch wars on other countries from permanent bases on Iraqi soil.

But progress towards the agreement has been grindingly slow. Talks on Iraq’s oil resources, electoral reform and amnesties for members of Saddam Hussein’s regime have all stalled.

Meanwhile the Kurds are blocking constitutional reforms that will claw back the autonomy granted to them in the earlier phase of the occupation.

Trapped by allies

The main problem for the US is that it has found itself trapped in an alliance with an Iraqi government that wants to shake free from its control. Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has also declared that he is not bound by US promises to Sunnis and Kurds.

Maliki’s legitimacy rests on the authority of Shia religious institutions represented by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and on cooperation with the Iranian government to reign in Sadr’s Shia resistance forces.

In return both Sistani and Iran want Maliki to block key US demands in the status agreement, force the US to set a firm date for the withdrawal of combat troops, and prevent the US from using Iraq as a base for an attack on Iran.

For now it looks as if Maliki’s gamble is paying off. In April this year the Iraqi government launched an offensive on Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra and the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad.

After several days of fierce fighting, the Iraqi army fell apart, swapped sides or went home. But on the verge of a major military victory – and much to the dismay of his supporters – Sadr called a halt to the uprising under instructions from the Iranians.

Today Sadr is a virtual prisoner in Iran. He travelled there ostensibly on a pilgrimage to the religious city of Qom in order to study for key religious exams. It is now widely accepted that he is being kept under house arrest by the Iranian authorities. Under pressure from Iran, Sadr has ordered his armed supporters to disband.

Sadr has occupied a contradictory position inside Iraq. When his movement was part of a nationwide insurrection, his popularity and power grew across all sections of society.

But he lost control over many of his supporters when Shia areas came under fierce sectarian attacks from elements of the Sunni insurgency.

Some joined the sectarian conflict, driving Sunnis out of mixed neighbourhoods. Others defected to Maliki’s coalition, while a third section attempted to hold together the unity forged during the national uprising that exploded in April 2004.

Sadr was eventually able to demobilise the sectarian gangs within his organisation – but the damage had already been done. He was declared an enemy and an agent of Iran by the majority of Sunni resistance organisations. Isolated from the wider insurgency, Sadr’s fighters found themselves standing alone against the full might of US firepower.

Resistance

As a prisoner of Iran, Sadr’s hands are tied. But his supporters are not defeated. His last instructions ordered the Mahdi Army to change its name, and for his supporters to bury their weapons and avoid military confrontations for now.

Maliki and the US are relying on the goodwill of Iran to hold back the Shia resistance. But this could all unravel if the US presses ahead with its threat of war against Iran.

A second problem for the US rests with a deal it forged with Sunni resistance organisations.

In the summer of 2007 a large section of the Iraqi resistance inside Sunni areas called off its military campaign. It agreed to cooperate with the occupation to drive out fighters loyal to Al Qaida – who, despite their opposition to US imperialism, launched attacks on Shia Muslims that they considered to be “apostates”.

The Al Qaida elements were always a minority inside the resistance in Iraq, but their campaign of suicide bombings directed against US forces made them a potent enemy.

But the areas liberated from US control by the Sunni resistance found themselves transformed into bases from which Al Qaida launched a murderous campaign against Shias. The results were disastrous – thousands of innocent people were killed in mass sectarian slaughters.

Areas that had been models of Shia-Sunni unity saw each turning against the other. Haifa Street in central Baghdad was transformed from a front line between the resistance and occupation into one pitting Shia forces against Sunni ones.

The tactics and aims of Al Qaida alienated vast numbers of Iraq’s Sunni Muslims, many of whom had close ties with Shias. Soon sections of the Sunni resistance began to turn on them.

The US, faced with a withering guerrilla campaign, resolved to make peace with Sunni insurgents. Secret talks were held in Jordan where the US pledged to halt its attacks on Sunni areas in return for resistance helping to expel fighters allied to Al Qaida.

As news of the talks leaked out Al Qaida declared an all-out war on other Sunni resistance organisations. At the peak of the insurgency they demanded that all Sunni organisations accept their leadership. Key resistance leaders were assassinated, among them the head of the influential 1920 Revolution Brigades.

Meanwhile the US recognised the formation of the “awakening councils” and turned the former insurgents into their new allies. Over 100,000 of these former resistance fighters were paid $300 a month to attack Al Qaida rather than US troops.

Within a few months Al Qaida forces found themselves isolated and in full flight. Thus the US was able to buy peace in key Sunni regions.

But problems for the US are stacking up rapidly. The former Sunni fighters were given promises that they would be incorporated into Iraqi security forces. Maliki has now declared those promises worthless.

And last week the US announced that it would halt the $300 payments from 1 October. Meanwhile the Iraqi government has declared the “awakening councils” to be an illegal militia and ordered their arrest.

Sunni leaders have been dismayed by these developments. They boycotted the recent ceremony marking the US’s official withdrawal from Anbar – and they are refusing to cooperate with the Iraqi government. The US is taking a dangerous gamble by cutting its new allies loose in this manner.

Ethnic conflicts

Finally, Iraq faces the prospect of open‑ended ethnic confrontations between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds in the north of the country. At stake is Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city that is one of the biggest material prizes in Iraq – beneath it lies a huge oil reserve.

Kurdish parties swept to power in northern Iraq on the back of the US invasion, backed by their Peshmerga guerrilla army, originally built to fight Saddam’s regime. These parties hoped their alliance with the US would allow them to fulfil a long-cherished desire for independence.

The regional Kurdish authorities have signed separate oil deals, imposed distinct laws, and operate their own judiciary, police and army.

But the Kurdish region is hopelessly surrounded by hostile forces. To the north lies Turkey, a key US ally that fears Kurdish independence could trigger secessionist moves by its large Kurdish minority.

To its east lies Iran, which fears the Kurdish region will become a staging post for the US to foster a rebellion among its own Kurdish minority. And to the south lies the Iraqi government, which wants to re-establish control over the oil-rich regions of the north.

Now the Kurds are finding out that the US considers them expendable. As part of the concessions made by the US to both Shia and Sunni groups, the tentative moves towards Kurdish autonomy will be reversed.

The looming struggle over Kirkuk could trigger a protracted ethnic struggle in a region that has until now escaped the full horrors of the Iraq war. Dozens of Kurdish demonstrators were killed last month when they stormed the offices of a Turkmen party.

This protest followed a suicide bomb attack on Kurds. And the Iraqi government is refusing to organise a referendum on the status of Kirkuk that had been promised by the US.

So behind the veneer of success lie deep and dangerous problems for the US occupation of Iraq. It has created precarious alliances with Shia, Sunni and Kurdish forces, playing them off against each other to foment sectarian divisions and head off a unified national resistance movement

But now it finds itself hostage to events that it had lost control over long ago. Iraq remains a quagmire for the US – and its occupation remains in a permanent state of crisis.

Notting Hill Carnival crackdown targets young black men

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:36:28 +0000

London’s Notting Hill Carnival is rightly hailed as a celebration of multi-ethnic Britain.

But it turned into a nightmare for hundreds of young black men as heavily armed police swooped on buses carrying them to the street party.

In a pre-planned operation, police boarded buses in the Oval area of south London to take off those who fitted their profile.

The first of dozens of partygoers were corralled into a side street next to the famous cricket ground from around 2pm onwards.

Hundreds of police, some carrying machine guns, sealed off the surrounding area and fingerprinted and searched the mainly teenagers inside the cordon.

Over the course of the afternoon the police raided bus after bus. By 7pm around 200 men, overwhelmingly black and some appearing to be as young as 13, were being held.

Teenagers walking on nearby streets weren’t safe either. One young man, who had been with a group of friends returning from a birthday party, told Socialist Worker that police had put him and his friends into the cordon.

He explained how they had been on the way to the park to play football when a police van screeched to a halt and officers piled out.

Outside the cordon Socialist Worker spoke to many people who had just been released and were now waiting, hoping their friends would emerge soon.

Handcuffed

While some were resigned, saying that this kind of policing had become the norm, others were incensed. “This is some Rodney King shit going on here,” said one, referring to the beating of a black man by police that led to the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

“The Feds [the police] had us up against the wall and some of us on the floor being handcuffed until they searched us. Then they just let us go because they know we hadn’t done anything wrong.”

By early evening parents were joining the crowds outside the cordon, arguing with police about why their children were being held, and angry that a trip to carnival should be the pretext for such a clampdown.

The police commandeered buses to take more than 100 young people to police stations – though only seven were charged with any offence.

For some who made it to carnival, things were only a little better. Outside Notting Hill tube station, among the diverse mix of tens of thousands of revellers, gangs of police swooped almost exclusively on young black males.

It was the first of many hurdles that they would face. In the 200 metres between the station and the road where carnival floats were parading there were five separate police lines.

Socialist Worker stood behind one line of police that formed a “control point”. There was no sign of the much publicised “knife arches” that were supposed to keep carnival safe – instead there was old fashioned stop and search.

We witnessed dozens of black males being searched. The only white men we saw being held were part of racially mixed groups.

One young black teenager told Socialist Worker that this was the fifth time the police had searched him this year. “I have even been stopped twice in one day,” he said.

Those who have responded to the tragedy of knife crime by calling for police crackdowns ought to take note. The criminalisation of a generation of black youth will undoubtedly lead to explosions of anger in the future, just as it did a generation ago with the riots that swept Britain’s inner cities.

Roma - Blaming the Victims in Slough

Alex Doherty — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:59:41 +0000

“A flood of Romanian gypsy children has left a British town facing financial crisis,” screamed the Daily Mail last week. “Roma children flood into Slough,” said the BBC.

Even New York’s Post Chronicle and Qatar’s Gulf Times picked up the scare about the “town hit by a gypsy invasion”.

The “invaders” were in fact 88 child refugees from Romania who turned up unaccompanied in Slough. The Tory led council then complained that it did not have sufficient funds to look after them – triggering the press storm.

Slough, in Berkshire, is a town built on immigration. It was the site of the world’s first industrial estate in the 1920s. Workers from across the country and abroad moved there. Today it has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Britain.

Growth in the local economy has attracted new economic migrants to the town in recent years. The majority work in low paid jobs earning an average of £5.50 an hour.

But the largest group of people moving in to Slough – some 30 percent – are from elsewhere in England. These are followed by workers from Poland and the Netherlands, according to council figures.

Nevertheless, the government insists that Slough’s population is falling and that it does not need to build any new houses until 2016.

This housing freeze has led to overcrowding and pressure on rents and house prices.

Taxes

The new migrant workers pay taxes – but some 95 percent of this revenue goes straight to the treasury. The council says it is £15 million out of pocket and needs a bigger share of the money to expand local services.

Slough’s council leader Richard Stokes has directed his fire against central government’s population figures rather than the immigrants themselves.

“The migrants that come to Slough are hard working and bring great benefit to the local economy, but the council remains severely under funded because of these poor statistics,” he said.

But on a national level both the Tories and New Labour are desperate for the votes they think they can grab by appearing “tough on immigrants”. This encourages a climate of hysteria over immigration that leads to a vicious cycle.

This creates crises on the ground – which in turn feed more tabloid scare stories about Britain being “flooded”. The political spectrum ratchets steadily to the right – and it is all working people, migrant or otherwise, who lose out.

Fleeing oppression

Behind the image of “scrounging gypsies” lies a wave of murderous racism directed against Roma communities across Europe.

According to reports in the Romanian press, the children who appeared in Slough come from the town of Tandarei in the south of the country.

Tandarei came to notoriety in 1997 when a racist mob and local police launched a pogrom against local Roma, burning homes, schools and a church.

The 1.8 million Roma Gypsies in Romania face systematic discrimination, police violence and racism. Many workers conceal their ethnicity as they fear for their jobs. A recent opinion poll found that a third of Romanians want laws to ban Roma from public buildings.

Roma children are often dumped in special needs schools despite their academic achievements. They are routinely denied social services.

The Roma have faced centuries of persecution. During the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Roma from the region around Tandarei were killed by the Nazis.

Following the Communist takeover in 1945 they faced a campaign of forced assimilation and the destruction of their culture. The Roma, who were once prized for their skills as craftspeople, were driven into poverty and destitution.

The Communist regime collapsed in 1989 – but the persecution intensified. In January this year there was a violent campaign to drive Roma out of mixed areas and close down their camps.

This was just the latest in a series of pogroms across Romania. In May 2001 the mayor of Targu Mures recruited locals in his campaign to “clean the town of Roma”.

Up to 100 men were arrested and held in a castle. Three days later local authorities evicted Roma families from the mixed neighbourhoods in the city.

Later that year the mayor of Piatra Neamt in northeast Romania rounded up all the Roma and dumped them in an abandoned factory farm outside the town. The camp is surrounded by barbed wire fences and guarded by police patrols and dogs.

In May last year police raided the Roma community of Gepiu in the east of the country. They shackled their victims together and paraded them through the town, beating and humiliating them.

Last December police descended on families in Timisoara, setting fire to their homes and ordering them out of the city. They were left destitute after their belongings were dumped into a rubbish truck and taken away.

This discrimination is not limited to Romania. A recent legal case before the European court has brought to light years of forced sterilisation of Roma women in the Czech Republic.

Pogroms and ethnic cleansing have been reported in Slovakia, Serbia and Kosovo. A recent study found that 70 percent of Roma in Slovakia and 85 percent in the Czech Republic are unemployed.

It is these years of systematic discrimination that have driven many Roma to abandon their homes to find asylum elsewhere. But instead of welcoming these victims, they are blamed for driving towns like Slough into “financial ruin”.

Rage In Basra

jo — Wed, 10 May 2006 12:58:00 +0000

Anger at Britains occupation of southern Iraq is growing, with Iraqis demanding that British troops halt all low level flights over neighbourhoods and withdraw all troops from the cities.

The demands have come in the wake of a helicopter crash in a Basra neighbourhood and the gunning down of five Iraqis by British troops.

The helicopter was shot down as it flew over the southern Iraqi city killing all five crew on board. About 300 locals pelted troops with stones and petrol bombs when soldiers tried to recover the bodies of the dead aircrew.

British troops reacted to the protests by opening fire on demonstrators. They killed five and wounded 28. Two children were among the dead.

Many statements were distributed in Basra on Sunday calling for the withdrawal of British troops.

One leaflet, signed by the Sons of Resistance in Basra, and circulated widely after the demonstration, stated, We ask you [Britain] and your troops to withdraw to the outskirts of our city.

Tyrants

The leaflet called on British forces to halt all low level flights over our city. It concluded, If you do not stop such actions, the response will be harder than before, and we say to youdo not start a war against the people, as the rage of the people is more powerful than that of tyrants. We have warned you.

Basra, Iraqs southern oil city, had been held up as a model of successful occupation by British authorities. But many of the promises made in the wake of the 2003 invasion never materialised.

Life for ordinary people continues to deteriorate with sporadic electricity, rising prices and high unemployment.

Deaths

British troops have been forced to use helicopters to travel between bases as they have become increasingly isolated from the local population.

Sundays confrontation was the latest in a series of bloody encounters with the British army. Last September local police arrested two SAS men disguised as members of the Mehdi Army, the organisation belonging to radial Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The soldiers were caught with a car load of weapons, including explosives. The Shias are fearful of bombs that have plagued their neighbourhoods, and demanded an explanation from British authorities.

The men were freed by British troops, and the Iraqi police station where they were held was bulldozed to the ground.

In response local authorities have cut all contact with the British army.

The deaths of the British soldiers last Saturday has brought the number of service personnel killed since the invasion in March 2003 to 109.

A statement from the Stop the War Coalition said, How many more Iraqi, British and US deaths are to follow before the occupation of Iraq is brought to an end?

The ministry of defence admit that they have no control in Basra and the surrounding region, that they are confined to barracks with only the occasional foray in helicopters since the roads are too dangerous.

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