On 20 March 2003, at 5.30am, the American army and its allies bombarded Baghdad. The war on Iraq had officially started. Blood and ink would flow in abundance. Five years later, with that war still ongoing, we, as writers, are sending a message to the people. We appeal to each and every one of you, to make you think. The bottom line The invasion of Iraq was a criminal act. The occupation of Iraq remains a criminal act. The British government under Blair and the United States administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize in literature 2005 Our duty: unity and solidarity The future of peace, justice, democracy, progress and human civilisation depends on the unity in struggle of the oppressed and aggressed in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, on the Arab and international solidarity with them, and on their victory. Their enemy is the same: Imperialism and Zionism and their local allies. Our duty is to incite them into unity. Our duty is to be in solidarity with all of them. The horrors of the five years of American occupation of Iraq remind us of this every day. Abdul Ilah Albayaty, French-Iraqi political analyst Their only prize Now we know the exact costs of war and occupation. It has cost the United States and its allies $3 trillion to kill 1.2 million Iraqis, wound a million more and drive 2.2 million Iraqis out of their country as refugees. The human cost of this war would, if some other country were doing it, be labelled genocide. The leaders who went to war would be tried as war criminals, but this is the war of "Western civilisation" against Islamo-Barbarians, Islamo-fascists and all the other names given to the new enemy. Abusing, defaming and killing Muslims is now calmly accepted in Euro-American culture. The people who do this have institutionalised the judeocide of World War II as the only universal crime. As long as you denounce that crime, you can commit your own crimes today. This is the world we live in. This is the world of double standards. Why the surprise when those under fire refuse to accept these standards. A modest proposal: perhaps the Nobel Prize Committee should institute a new award -- the Nobel Prize for War Crimes. Tariq Ali, historian, novelist and filmmaker My statement The United States hasn't won a war where anyone fights back since 1945. How long will it take for the rest of the world to prevail upon the consciousness of the US public to force their deranged leaders to withdraw from the bloodbath they have initiated? Saul Landau, Author, journalist, poet and activist In Sum In the middle of the 19th century, the murder of China deserved to be called The Opium War. Victoria, the drug trafficking queen, forced dope on the country in the name of the freedom to trade. At the beginning of the 21st century, the murder of Iraq deserved to be called The Oil War. George W Bush, more pipeline than president, crushed the country in the name of the freedom to lie. Eduardo Galeano,Uruguayan writer and historian First genocide of the 21st century The American ongoing crime of invading and occupying Iraq since 2003 is the most notorious and comprehensive political and military aggression in modern history, mocking all the moral codes of humanity and international law. While all the world, including the American administration itself, was completely aware that all the pretexts for invading Iraq (weapons of mass destruction, links to terrorism, or for liberation) were false, and in spite of the fact that the international community opposed that aggression and protested against it, the Bush administration ignored everything and everybody and invaded one of the oldest civilisations of the world. Iraq, 6000 years of history, the cradle of civilisations, where the first letter was written, the first law was set, the first university was built, the first money was created, the first irrigation system was established, the first poetry was written ... What the occupation authorities and their Iraqi agents did during the last five years of controlling Iraq, and what they are still doing now, is flagrantly criminal. Iraq has been subject to systematic destruction. The state was dismantled, institutions were abolished, the educational, health, economic, security and infrastructure systems were broken; even the cultural and social fabrics were torn apart. So far 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, more than 4.7 million are refugees outside Iraq or displaced inside (1.5 million of them are children), two million orphans and more widows made, and hundreds of thousands detained, exposed to the worst kinds of torture and humiliation (including 10,000 women) and without any kind of legal procedures... According to the UN, eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance. Seventy per cent of Iraqis are without access to safe supplies of drinking water. Electricity supply is beneath pre-invasion levels (in many areas electricity simply does not exist). Forty-three per cent of the population lives on less than half a dollar per day. Living standards in Iraq are getting worse despite contracts of over $20 billion being paid to companies to rebuild Iraq; they were swallowed by governmental corruption. Iraq is now third on the list of the most corrupted states in the world. Even the so-called Iraqi government admits that unemployment is between 60 and 70 per cent. Child malnutrition has increased from 19 per cent during the 1990s "economic sanctions period", before the invasion, to 28 per cent today. But worst than all these hardships is the dark future that is awaiting Iraq. The old colonial divide and rule strategy is fully responsible for all sectarian divisions. The longer the occupying armies remain, the greater the chances of the country breaking up. The occupation created official security bodies out of sectarian militias, giving them the authority to kill or to support and help those who kill, kidnap and displace on sectarian bases. On the other hand, there are 180,000 mercenaries (apart from 170,000 official American troops) who are committing different kinds of killings, assassinations and explosions in civilian areas in order to instigate and augment sectarian conflict. The American administration is working with its Iraqi agents in the so-called Iraqi government to sign a long-term treaty that will control Iraq politically, economically (including petroleum) and militarily for decades to come. This treaty is illegal as it is signed by two illegal parties: the occupying power, which by international humanitarian law has no right to sign any such agreement, and the so-called Iraqi government which was created under and by the occupation. The only way to stop all these crimes, to hold American and other criminals responsible, and to start the real rebuilding of Iraq is to support the Iraqi people in its resistance to the occupation, to mobilise the world community against the occupation, and to end the world's silence and indifference to the first genocide of the 21st century. Eman Khammas, Iraqi journalist, activist and now refugee Permanent planetary emergency After 9/11 the US invaded Afghanistan. But at the moment they could close in on Bin Laden, they withdrew. Why? Instead, they started an illegal invasion of Iraq, which was a catastrophe foretold. Why? The neo-con ideology still provides a key to the answer. The book Present Dangers spelled it out. After the Cold War, America needed a new, big enemy, for having no enemy is bad for both politics and the military industrial complex. As soon as it was established in 1996, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) -- with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as co-signatories -- asked the president in several letters for a war against Iraq. In 2000, the PNAC published its report Rebuilding America's Defences, in which it asked for a major increase in military spending to "fight and decisively win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars". They also said that the unresolved conflict with Saddam Hussein provided an alibi for a permanent military presence in the Gulf. They were well aware that the revolution in military affairs they wished for was unlikely without, "some catalysing catastrophic event, like a new Pearl Harbour" (it is still on their website). So 9/11 was a godsend. The Bush government took up this new neo-con vision and declared the "war on terror". With the strategy of allowing Osama and the Taliban in Afghanistan regain ground, and spreading Al-Qaeda to Iraq and angering the entire region and radicalising factions of Islam everywhere, they got what they needed: the ideal, big, if not monstrous, post-Cold War enemy. On the way they fulfilled the hidden agenda of Israel to get rid of Iraq, and by privatising warfare they gave a huge push to the development of a new military and paramilitary industry (what Naomi Klein has called the "disaster capitalism complex"). They destroyed the Iraqi state, seized its assets and its petroleum, got permanent bases and built the biggest embassy ever. So as far as I can see, the neo-con agenda was realised, almost all according to plan. That it cost more than 1.2 million Iraqi lives and 4.7 million refugees and an entire population maimed, under-fed or traumatised (which makes it the biggest manmade disaster on the planet at this moment): too bad. Of course, there are conflicting opinions and interests; public opinion has turned against the war and the situation on the ground is called "messy", but as long as permanent war is assured, all is well. All is well for the thinktanks that concocted the project for a new century of American dominance, or "pre-eminence" as they call it, by unleashing and then fighting "the present dangers": the ubiquitous terrorist as both enemy within and enemy without; the best enemy there is, for it gives you both the right to declare war and a state of emergency (from the Patriot Act to Guantanamo and beyond, up to antiterrorism laws in Europe). For that is what this war on terror is and remains: a consciously created planetary state of emergency. The war in Iraq is part of that plan for permanent war and permanent emergency. Lieven De Cauter, philosopher, initiator of the B Russell s Tribunal, Belgium On estimates More than four million refugees. At a rough estimation. Four million, rough. How rough, would you say? Hilde Keteleer, poet, translator, critic Let us support the people of Iraq The fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq is also an anniversary of resistance by a National Liberation Movement of indigenous Iraqis against a foreign and oppressive occupation and its collaborators. Brave Iraqis who are fighting with all necessary means to dislodge the United States, its allies and its collaborators from their occupation of Iraq are members of a National Liberation Movement. They may be referred to in English, although they have adopted no formal name, as the "Iraqi Liberation Movement", or ILM. The ILM consists of all Iraqis who are struggling by peaceful or violent means to remove the occupying powers from the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq. The ILM is entitled to use all necessary means to end the occupation. It is so entitled because it represents the legitimate authority and will of the people of Iraq. The recognition of national liberation movements is not new. National liberation movements are recognised as the consequence of the right of self-determination. This right is guaranteed in the very first common articles of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; two of the most widely ratified human rights instruments in the world. The UN Charter also refers to the right to self-determination in its first article. Article 73 of the charter then defines self- determination as "self-government" taking "due account of the political aspirations of the peoples" and assisting "them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of development." Although this was intended to apply primarily to peoples under colonialism, it must be read in conjunction with Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the charter, which protects people from the illegal use of force. The expression of self-determination in the context of colonialism was also expressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 -- the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples -- as well as Resolution 1541(XV) adopted a few days later. These resolutions recognised the right of self-determination as a right of peoples who are subject to colonial rule to decide on their own form of government. A slightly more general recognition can be found in the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. As this latter document indicates, it is also part of customary international law, something confirmed by the UN Resolution 2625 adopted by consensus on 24 October 1970. A National Liberation Movement is, renowned international jurist Ian Brownlie tells us, entitled to "conclude binding international agreements"; to the "rights and obligations set by the generally recognised principles of international humanitarian law"; and "to participate in the proceedings of the United Nations as observers". It is also entitled to the respect and support of every state and individual in the international community. By providing whatever support is within one's abilities, each one of us contribute to liberating the Iraqi people. We may suffer consequences for our support of the brave Iraqis fighting against the most deadly killing machine American lives and money can buy, but whatever domestic laws say, such supporters -- governments or individuals -- are acting in accordance with international law. Something that the occupiers of Iraq have failed to do and our suffering is much less than that of Iraqis who gallantly face an army too cowardly to respect basic international law. Let us remember with courage this fifth anniversary of this struggle to end the occupation of Iraq as the anniversary of the "first Iraqi Intifada" against the injustice brought upon Iraqis by foreign and oppressive occupiers and their collaborators. Let us support the people of Iraq. Curtis F J Doebbler, international human rights lawyer The US is weak The United States is the weakest entity on earth. It proves it in its violence. It is a system that produces cadavers and voluntary and involuntary executioners: 3.2 million Iraqis dead since 1990 and 300 million Americans rendered complicit -- directly or by way to the so-called development surrounding them -- with the international crime of genocide. It is a system that simply couldn't function were truth suddenly substituted for lies. How long will its façade continue when none among us is certain of escaping its prisons? Will it take a further $1 trillion to realise that Baghdad will never be subjugated? How long will the American people remain ignorant of the fact that in Iraq the United States faces the force of a social unity that has been a geopolitical reality for 5,000 years? To future historians, the United States will command none of the respect it likes to think it has. Co-existence practically does not exist in US dictionaries. And its war on terror is just a name for killing or repressing everyone who at a gut level rejects servitude. It even creates phantoms to keep the whole masquerade going. And in their name it kills it own people as well as others. In Iraq there is one reality: a defeated occupation and its collaborators, and the Iraqi people. We must support the Iraqi people in its resistance to occupation, for to do anything else leaves us siding with genocide. The latter we should prosecute. Ian Douglas, International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq Just get out! In January 2003, just weeks before our illegal invasion, Nelson Mandela made the following statement: "... All Bush wants is Iraqi oil. Why [is the US] not seeking to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from [its] ally Israel? ... What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Well, as the banner on the aircraft carrier read, Mission Accomplished ... for the holocaust of ethnic cleansing in Palestine has extended to Iraq, COMPLIMENTS of our illegal and brutal occupation. Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? NO! Were there ties between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda? NO! Did the Iraqi people ever pose a threat to us? NO! Have Sunnis and Shias been killing each other for thousands of years? NO! How do we know our "leaders" are lying to us? Their lips are moving. In Iraq, as in Latin America in the 1980s, the bloodshed began when American CIA-operations were set in motion. In reality, while there are over 2.2 million Iraqi refugees living mainly in Syria and Jordan, there is NO mass bloodshed and torture in these neighbouring countries. The genocide just happens to be occurring inside Iraq, where the American CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and the most powerful military in the world are running operations. It's simple: invasion and occupation are illegal, and there must be one consistent standard for justice and the law. No timetables -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL. No conditions -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL. No more stoplossing soldiers -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL. Iraq needs only one thing from America -- just IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL. Worldwide, we the peacemakers are the majority. Whatever obstacles we encounter in the struggle, they are nothing compared to what the Iraqi people are facing everyday. We are here. We have to push forward. And we cannot stop until our government's crimes do. Dahlia Wasfi, Global Exchange -- Iraq/USA Nine hundred and thirty five lies Nine hundred and thirty five lies. Two groups that keep track of the media counted them. The Bush gang lied 935 times between 11 September 2001 and 19 March 2003, to justify the invasion of Iraq. Bush lied 259 times. The biggest lie was that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction". A close second was that Saddam Hussein worked with Al-Qaeda. Why is the number of lies important? There were 935 opportunities to question the liars. The 935 lies are proof that the entire US ruling class is responsible for the conspiracy to wage war on Iraq. The millions who marched against the war knew these were lies. You did not have to be Einstein. Nor Lenin. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz led the war conspiracy. But the entire ruling class and its institutions colluded. The Pentagon went along willingly. The State Department presented the false statements to the United Nations. Congress voted the funds. No major corporate media questioned or challenged these lies. The influential New York Times and the Washington Post supported the war drive. Nor did the media allow war opponents to expose the lies. In January and February 2003, mass mobilisations tried to stop the war. No major ruling class politicians or business figures participated in these protests. Not Kennedy, not Brzezinski, not Soros. The vast majority of the super-rich ruling class wanted the profits and plunder from a quick US victory in Iraq. The military-industrial complex bid for contracts. The strategists wanted US control of the world's energy sources. If they saw any dangers, they kept quiet. But they made a big mistake. They were blinded by greed. Five years later, there is no "quick victory". There is much suffering by Iraqis, yes. But the occupation is a debacle for US imperialism. They made the same mistake Hitler made invading the Soviet Union in 1940, and that Washington made sending its army to Vietnam in 1967. The US rulers underestimated the Iraqis' willingness to sacrifice and fight rather than submit. Now the liars are exposed. We must thank the heroic Iraqi resistance for exposing them. And we must dedicate ourselves to fight. Fight to end the occupation of Iraq. Fight to depose the entire ruling class that made this war. John Catalinotto, International Action Centre These and other statements were gathered by the B Russell s Tribunal www.brusselstribunal.org in cooperation with the Passa Porta House of Literature, Belgium.
