Author: Justin Podur

Of course it’s the News Insider who pointed this story out, as usual. In fact, readers, you should assume that any obscure story I come up with in this blog, if it is in the mainstream media and in English, it probably came from the News Insider (not the case for Spanish sources, or alternative media sources). Human Rights Watch is very concerned about the situation in the Sudan. I started looking into Sudan because of the similarities with Colombia: state-armed militias, massacres with the express purpose of displacing people from resource-rich zones, ‘development without people’, and so on. Sudan is an ‘official enemy’ of the US, on the terrorist list, but it won itself some wiggle room to attack its population by collaborating with the US after 9/11. Most, though not all, of the experts on the conflict have a relatively pro-US outlook on the world. I reviewed a worthwhile book by one of those experts recently — it might serve as context for what’s going on.

So, things continue in Iraq. We have a very good report from Andrea Schmidt in Baghdad. Please check it out. Rahul is blogging as usual, no less analytical for being right on the scene. Fisk has a new one that should be up on the ZNet site shortly. In that, you will find this:

“What good this will do “new” Iraq is anyone’s guess. Vast concrete walls have been lowered across the road and military vehicles have been used to chase away civilians trying to by-pass them. A prolonged series of Israeli-style house raids are now apparently planned for the people of Fallujah to seek out he gunmen who first attacked the four Americans – whose corpses were later stripped, mutilated and hanged.”

“The helicopter attacks in Shoula – by ghastly coincidence the very same Shoula suburb in which civilians were slaughtered by an American aircraft during last year’s invasion – looked like a copy-cat of every Israeli raid on the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, Iraqis are well aware that the US military asked for – and received – Israel’s “rules of engagement” from the Sharon government. America’s losses these past 24 hours – at least 12 dead and many soldiers wounded – have come nowhere near Iraq’s but their enemies may soon outnumber them.”

And there is more…

A story in the Washington Post, by Thomas E. Ricks, describes the kinds of atrocities that one ought to expect from an occupation — “an allegation that U.S. troops killed an Iraqi detainee when they forced him and another man to jump from a bridge into the Tigris River.” This is something the Vietnamese would remember. Or the Chileans, under Pinochet.

Fallujah has been sealed off. I haven’t been able to get figures for Iraqis killed, but everyone is sure they are high: US soldiers have been counted, and two more were killed today according to Reuters.

What is all this about? Again, both Fisk and Rahul have described these as ‘stupid’ on the part of the US. Indeed, Fisk has gone so far as to say they are playing into as-Sadr’s hands. Again, I can’t agree with him. It is too convenient to have the big, dumb, USA playing into the hands of clever, ruthless Arabs in the colonies. It might be an interesting way to reach people, but I don’t think it’s the case. It’s the empire that provokes the violence it needs to do what it does, not the reverse.

UTS, while disagreeing with me about what the motives of that provocation might be, agree that the US is provoking all this. They just think that Bush is counting on the media to cover up the chaos that will be happening underneath the surface, and are wrecking more in order to keep the contracting/rebuilding shell game going.

Fair enough. The electoral motive Naomi suggested wasn’t really the point I wanted to emphasize, though I think it’s as compelling as the two reasons suggested by Jessica via Brian — just that chaos is the intended outcome , in virtually every intervention the US has made since at least 1999 — maybe before — as opposed to some evolved authoritarian dictatorship.

More soon… but I there is other chaos to report on…

Reading Naomi Klein and Robert Fisk on what’s going on in Iraq, you get the same facts but two different interpretations. Both are on the ground right now. Fisk has a longer experience in the region. But I think it’s Naomi who’s right. About Paul Bremer’s decision to shut down as-Sadr’s paper, Fisk says:

“It now seems that his decision to shut down the paper (its circulation of 10,000 was hardly going to arouse Shias to attack Western troops) has incited violence on a far greater scale than Mr Bremer could have imagined.

“Yet he managed to say all the wrong things again yesterday. “This morning, a group of people in Najaf have crossed the line and they have moved to violence,” he announced. “This will not be tolerated. This will not be tolerated by the Iraqi people and this will not be tolerated by the Iraqi security forces.”‘…

Fisk also says:

“The Americans can scarcely contain the Sunni Muslim revolt to the north; they cannot fight another community, this one representing 60 per cent of Iraqis, even if British troops, who control the largely Shia city of Basra, become involved.”

But is this really the case? Or are the Americans doing just exactly what they want? Naomi believes the latter.

“On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Faluja attacks, why is Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shiite south into battle?

“Here’s one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and it is now creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the handover happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the U.S. appointed Governing Council.”

I think this is exactly what is going on, and it is a very important point, not yet widely understood, about the way the US has been operating lately. A few decades back, the preferred mode of operating in third world countries was to find an authoritarian ruler who would bring ‘stability’: open markets, freedom to invest and plunder the country for multinationals, accompanied by a police state and the liquidation of opposition. But I don’t think that’s the case any more. Today, it is a different model. Military bases in key areas give the option of direct control over resource-rich areas, and prevent anyone else from controlling those resources. As for the type of government, if a pliant authoritarian regime can be found, fine. If not, complete chaos is fully acceptable, so long as the bases and control are there.

That is what was done in the Balkans; it was the model for Haiti; it is the model for Venezuela; it is what is happening in Colombia; it is what is happening in Afghanistan; and it is what the US is preparing in Iraq.

And no, the title doesn’t mean I got to the Fallujah story too late. Instead, I’d like to call your attention to what I can only interpret as the reprisals for the killings of the mercenaries in Fallujah — again, these stories come via the News Insider, although I’m pretty sure there will be very good reports from our own people, many of whom are in Iraq now, including Rahul Mahajan, Dahr Jamail, Naomi Klein, and Andrea Schmidt. But now to the stories you *could* find in the mainstream, if you were following it as closely as the folks at the News Insider.

Riots — of Shia now, supporters of a leader (Muqtada al-Sadr) who Bremer has just declared an ‘outlaw’ — in Sadr City, Najaf, Kufa, and Nasiriyah, resulted in at least 22 Iraqis killed, 8 US soldiers, and one Salvadorean soldier, according to the Guardian — and hundreds injured, according to other sources. I’m reminded of the outbreak of the second intifada, when deaths of Palestinians at demonstrations were low, but injury statistics were massive. Not sure if that’s what’s going on here… injuries are always higher than deaths, it need not imply a systematic policy of shooting to injure.

In Baghdad, US tanks crushed two Iraqi protesters, also apparently supporters of as-Sadr.

Italian and Portuguese police were injured by a grenade in Nasiriyah(sorry about the passive voice — I’m quoting from the Dow Jones newsbrief that doesn’t identify who did it).

4 Iraqis were killed by a car bomb, this time in North Iraq.

British troops ‘clashed’ with protesters in Amara, though no reports on casualties yet.

Rahul Mahajan put it simply in his own blog: “All hell is breaking loose in Iraq”. More soon, but take a look at some material on how it all started, from the UTS blog.