Posted on 04/30/2003 12:06:11 PM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Reuters, reporting on the results of the meeting of approximately 250 prominent Iraqis of various political and ethnic groupings, observed:"In a sign the transition to an interim government will be far from easy, delegates said splits emerged between returned Iraqi exiles and those who had lived through the Saddam years."
Based on reports from the anti-war commentators I had been reading, about how the Iraqis were demanding that the Americans "Go Home," I assumed, naturally, that the split occurred because the Iraqi exiles, many of whom have been living in America, wanted more US involvement. It turns out the opposite is true. Reuters reported:
"Most former exiles wanted a lesser U.S. role, arguing that only Iraqis should rule the country, while those who had remained at home said they wanted more U.S. supervision because they did not trust the exiles."
In other words, those who suffered through Saddam´s regime trust America more than their own returning countrymen! That is amazingly significant.
Considering the history of Iraq and the anti-American propaganda the Iraqis have been fed for decades, I expected a lot more distrust of America than is evident on the streets of Iraq. After all, the Iraqis were promised "liberation" by the West once before – after World War I when the British promised to liberate the Arabs from the Ottoman Turkish Empire and give the Kurds their own nation.
Only, it seems, Britain had a slightly different agenda. Under the League of Nations, the country became a British Mandate, due to the British interest in Iraqi oil fields and because they wanted to build a transcontinental railroad from Europe, across Turkey, and down through Iraq to Kuwait on the Persian Gulf to avoid having to go around Africa by ship to trade in the area to trade with India.
This led to the birth of Arab nationalism and an Iraqi uprising in 1920, which the British government tried to put down by force. The British then brought a member of the Hashemite family, Faisal ibn Hussain, the brother of the king they had installed in neighboring Jordan, to rule over Iraq. The British continued to rule the area under the League of Nations Mandate until 1932. Oil was discovered in Kirkuk in 1927 and the rights to that oil were awarded to the Iraqi Petroleum Company -a British dominated, multinational firm.
However, Arab nationalism continued to grow and the Baath Party was organized in Damascus, Syria as a secular, militaristic, socialist, anti-communist, anti-colonist, anti-Zionist, anti-Soviet movement on April 7,1947. In 1958 communist military officers, led by Abdul Kassem, assassinated the king and declared Iraq "part of the Arab nation." The Kirkuk area, where oil was first discovered, was at the time a Kurdish city, however, the Kurds never were allowed a share of the oil revenues. They asked Kassem for autonomy and a share of the oil proceeds, and he refused which led to a Kurdish revolt against the government.
Kassem was overthrown and executed by military and civilian members of the Ba'ath party in Feb, 1963 and Abdul Salam Arif became Iraq´s president, with Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr vice-president.. Arif used the military to oust the Ba´ath party members from the government, however, by in 1968 Al-Bakr overthrew Arif and took control of the government. The Baath party was reestablished. In 1972-73 Al-Bakr seized control of all foreign owned oil fields, including those of American companies, and opened new oil fields with aid from the U.S.S.R.
Throughout all those years, the "Arab" Iraq government had fairly continuous wars going on with its non-Arab Kurd population. The Kurds were defeated in 1975. However, after Saddam Hussein took control of the government in 1979, wars started again, beginning with the 8-year war with Iran between 1980-88. Near the end of that war, in 1988, Saddam Hussein destroyed a Kurdish town, killing thousands of people, with chemical weapons.
Today, Saddam Hussein is gone. However, most of the people of Iraq have never known a time when they were expected to work together peacefully with many others in the country who were of a different ethnic or religious background to form a government. All they have ever known has been one government after another imposed on them by force. It is not surprising that they distrust each other.
What IS surprising, in fact, amazing in my view, is that at the meeting over the week-end under the leadership of President George W. Bush and Jay Garner, who chaired the meeting, a politically, religiously and ethnically diverse group of Iraqis voted to trust the United States to supervise the procedure for choosing a new interim Iraqi government rather than any group of their own countrymen.
A further surprising development was the announcement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that with Saddam gone and Iraq no longer a threat to the region, America could now cut the size of its permanent military deployment in the region. This would indicate the decades of conflict in the area may be coming to an end, as a result of America´s decisive action to end the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.
This is a view in stark contrast with that of the so-called "Anti-War" and "Peace" groups who keep telling the world that Bush is "imperialistic." I received an e-mail from The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research group (TFF) on Monday which pronounced in a lengthy article that the USA had "failed" in the "three wars or struggles in the Iraq conflict." It defined the "3 wars" as:
- The war the media is waging for the hearts and minds of people.
- The military war and the promised removal of the Iraqi regime.
- The war to control and run post-war iraq and live up to the official motives of bringing freedom, democracy, welfare and prosperity to its 24 million citizens.
Perhaps the kindest thing I can say about that is to just quote what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in Qatar over the week-end:
"Never have so many been so wrong about so much."<!-- Mary Mostert
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In other words, those who suffered through Saddam´s regime trust America more than their own returning countrymen! That is amazingly significant.
It most certainly is! Thank-you for the ping!
You may also be interested in this related article;
When Doves Cry [re: anti-war]
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: May 01, 2003; Author: Ron Marr
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