Insurgents and foreign occupiers are using violence in Iraq to further their own ends. The true victims are Iraqis, writes Ibrahim Nawwar* American and foreign troops are fighting a second war in Iraq. This war is against the Iraqi people, not against Saddam's regime. The fact that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has failed to establish law and order in Iraq, a year after the fall of the tyrant, is evidence enough to conclude that US policy in post-Saddam Iraq is a complete failure. I have been twice to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The first time I was less optimistic and less certain about the future of Iraq than I was when Saddam's statue was taken away from Firdous Square in central Baghdad. The second time I felt the remaining fragments of my optimism sinking deep behind the double concrete walls around hotels, hospitals, police stations and of course the CPA compound. If there is anyone to blame it is those military generals at the Pentagon who are the real masters of the CPA and all its created entities. Ultra conservatives and right-wing politicians who have decided the policies and are running the US operation in Iraq are responsible for the chaos and for the lives of Iraqis, Americans and other nationals who have been killed in Iraq since the fall of the old regime. The US administration that claimed that post-Saddam Iraq would be no longer autocratic is in fact pushing the country to become an American colony, neither independent nor democratic. The CPA is mostly under US military control. The Interim Governing Council (IGC), which was the brainchild of the late Sergio Vieira de Mello of the UN in Iraq, has been manipulated; now established on the wrong political principle -- "ethnic and religious quotas" not equal rights for citizens, free choice and non-discrimination. Instead of presenting Iraqis with a fair, transparent and democratic system, the US administration in Iraq has followed a similar path Saddam Hussein promoted in the last 10 years of his rule, pushing Iraqis back to their tribal origins in ethnicity and religion. The IGC has no power, almost no budget and no political framework. US advisors in ministries are the ones who hold the balance of power, as the ones who have the money. They are the real decision-makers. I have witnessed ministerial decisions reversed by US overseers, mostly army officers. I have also witnessed situations where these advisors ordered ministers to sign decrees they have never discussed and were not given even enough time to read in complete form. I have witnessed demands made by ministers laughed at and thrown into rubbish bins. Further, the CPA has betrayed all principles of helping Iraqis build a free and independent media. Army officers in Iraq see the media as their own propaganda machine; a simple PR tool and lie-producing factory. They established the so- called Iraqi Media Network (IMN) using people mostly loyal to the CPA. In effect, they presented Iraqi journalists and the Iraqi general public with a bad model and a rotten structure that every independent journalist in Iraq and in the rest of the Arab world is fighting against -- the model of media controlled by the state. This is a breach of one of the most fundamental and basic of liberal values. Not only did the CPA betray the value of independent media, but it also breached the principle of freedom of information. Access to information has always been restricted since US forces have occupied Iraq. Information has been channelled only to IMN outlets such as As-Sabah newspaper and Iraqi TV; both of which are examples of the failure of the CPA media policy. In spite of the vast resources that have been offered to the IMN, rumours are the main source of information on what's really happening in Iraq. On other counts the CPA has breached freedom of the press. Order No 14 includes restrictions on freedom of expression. Contracts granted in the media field under the CPA have been drawn up in the Pentagon not in Baghdad. The new law creating the Iraqi Public Broadcasting Services (Order No 66) has established the IMN as the Iraqi public media service, thus defying all principles of freedom, independence, transparency and accountability. The IMN should be dismantled altogether and Iraqis should be free, without any interference from military generals, to establish the framework and the physical structure of an independent and free media. On a more immediate note, journalists in Iraq are not safe. Dozens of them have been killed or seriously injured. Many were targeted by US soldiers on the ground. The safety of journalists must be a top priority, with occupiers and the CPA failing to fulfil their duties. The families of those who have died or those who have been injured have the right to question CPA procedures regarding security for journalists. They also have the right to ask for full investigations to be conducted into incidents where it was very clear that soldiers fired near deliberately to kill journalists. Many of those killed were shot in the head. My strong guess is that there are those who deliberately want to breed chaotic circumstances in Iraq in order to justify a long occupation. On both sides of the fence, there are those who benefit from the war and from the violence. The US administration in Iraq that destroyed the structure of the army, police and administration knew well in advance that such moves would create a vacuum of power in Iraqi cities and all around the country, including its borders. I can't think for a minute that planners and strategists in Washington didn't know that. When mobs and thieves were out looting everything in Baghdad days after the fall of Saddam, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, considered this a healthy sign of people expressing themselves after decades of tyranny. From day one of the occupation, security was lost in the streets of Baghdad and all over Iraq, and is still missing one year after it began. In reaction to stupid policies by the occupiers, not seen at all now as liberators, old Ba'athists, ultra Arab nationalists and hard-line Muslim extremists have found themselves all together in the frontline against US troops in the streets of Baghdad and many other cities. It is not the interests of the Iraqi people they are securing; it is the desire to take revenge against the US. These groups would like to see the occupation and the violence continue down to the last Iraqi. They don't care about the lives of the innocent people they kill every day. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in order to establish the case for Arab nationalism and Muslim extremism, now sponsored by the Syrian Ba'ath Party. It is no secret that Muqtada Al-Sadr in Iraq receives instructions from his teacher Sheikh Kadhim Al- Haery in Damascus. It is no secret that the leadership of the Syrian Ba'ath Party is playing a game in Iraq in order to avoid pressure for reform from within Syria. It is no secret either that the unholy alliance between Muslim extremists and ultra Arab nationalists that was sponsored by Saddam Hussein in the past is now playing into the hands of the Syrian Ba'ath Party and in practical terms US army generals who want the violence and chaos to continue in order to prolong their stay in Iraq. Having said that, the withdrawal of US and foreign forces from Iraq in the short term is impractical. Although it is still valid as a strategic aim, in practical terms Iraq cannot survive as one country without a military deterrent to protect its borders from intruders and to save the country from a civil war. The practical aim in the short term should be to put Iraq under UN administration for a provisional period during which the rebuilding of a modern, democratic and independent state should take place with the help of the whole international community. Law and order should be the top priority, and administration should be handed over to an Iraqi provisional government based on the right political principles. The Iraqi people themselves have to be at the forefront. It is they who are paying the price of the occupation and the terrorism. But in order to give them back a due role, and space of initiative, American forces should re-group gradually and according to plan outside Iraqi cities and populous areas. A real structure for a modern and democratic state should emerge through Iraqi initiative; not be imposed by the CPA or any foreign body. An Iraqi provisional government under the supervision of the UN should have power, a proper budget and policy framework to enable its departments to ensure the smoothness of daily life for ordinary Iraqi people. An Iraqi democratic and modern state cannot be based on political quota representation. An interim period should be planned for, in order to rebuild Iraqi institutions on principles of equal citizenship rights, the rule of law, respect for human rights and equality between citizens on the basis of religion, sect, ethnicity, ideology and gender. Modern and democratic Iraq is the hope of each Iraqi and the hope of every citizen in the Arab world. It is a hope that followed the fall of Saddam and has since been hijacked by notorious forces and political fanatics in the US and in Iraq and Arab countries. As every true citizen in the Arab world hopes for a democratic future in his own country, we all hope for a free, modern and democratic Iraq. * The writer is chief of the board of the London-based Arab Press Freedom Watch.
