What Do Iraqis Want?

At the antiwar rally and march on September 15, Karen Henry delivered a speech examining what the Iraqis want from the United States when it comes to withdrawal. The views of Iraqis are almost always excluded from the “debate” in this country on Iraq–both in the “political” debate as well as occasionally in the antiwar movement. In light of this exclusion, Henry’s speech has been posted by Media Mouse:

Last month the non-profit group Just Foreign Policy claimed the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion stands at more than one million. A report released by Oxfam and the NGO Coordinating Committee in Iraq said that around 8 million Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, and more than 2 million people – mostly women and children – have been displaced within Iraq and have no reliable income, while another 2 million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees, mostly to neighboring Syria and Jordan.

Iraqi-American physician Dahlia Wasfi, noted that 68 percent of Iraqis are without clean water and 81 percent are without working sewers. One in eight children dies by age 5. She also said people were exposed to white phosphorus — a weapon that can cause burning of the flesh — reportedly used in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

- 75 per cent of doctors and pharmacists have left their jobs in the hospitals, clinics and universities because it is unsafe.

- two million people are no longer being fed because food cannot be distributed in dangerous areas

- unemployment is 68 per cent of the workforce

This is a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions that continues to worsen.

What do the Iraqis want? They want the US out of Iraq now!

The opinion poll commissioned by ABC news, the BBC and Japanese Television and published recently shows that 70 per cent of Iraqis say that their security has got worse during the last six months when the US increased the number of its troops in Baghdad and surrounding provinces.

The Iraqi Women’s Movement continues to advocate for the legal protection of their rights. In 2005, as the Iraqi constitution was being written under occupation, they petitioned for the inclusion of the personal status law and asked that the law include the provision honoring international treaties regarding human rights in general and women’s rights in particular. They wrote a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking for support but were ignored.

Some Americans recently visited a family in Iraq to see how the war was affecting them. They entered a gate next to a small shop and up some back stairs. At the top of the stairs was a small alcove that held a minuscule kitchen and bathroom. Down a hall was a single room, where the Americans were greeted enthusiastically and with great warmth by Moushe and Shatha and their seven children. The family lives, sleeps, eats, and plays in a space that measures 11 by 16 feet.

Further evidence of the cost of the war can be seen at the Orthotics/Prosthesis Workshop at Baghdad ‘s Center for Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy. Seven-year-old Hathem doesn’t remember the night US troops fired into his home, but he has the rest of his life to remember his father, who was killed, and learn to live with his amputated leg.

Raed’s cousins towered over him in a protective and gentle manner as he recounted a day in September. Raed was tending his field in the town of Balad when he stepped on an unexploded ordinance. His leg and most of his fingers were blown off. His other leg was mangled and is now infected and will probably be amputated. His doctor said, “What can we do for Raed? He is not a candidate for a prosthesis, because he lost his fingers in the explosion and is unable to use crutches. At best he will be immobile.”

Zeinab Yasseen, 3 years old, drifted off to sleep listening to the chatter of the 26 relatives who shared her house in Baghdad’s poor Al Shaab neighborhood. She awoke to her home collapsing on her. Somehow, everyone survived. But 17 months later, Zeinab still can’t move her legs. And the family is still recovering – emotionally, financially, and physically – from that instant of devastation. The family – all 27 of them – now lives in tiny rooms in municipal buildings since their home was destroyed.

What do the Iraqis want? They want the US out of Iraq now!

OIL AND THE OIL LAW

In June, the biggest and strongest of the Iraqi unions, the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, launched a limited strike to underline its call for keeping oil in public hands, and to force the government to live up to its economic promises. Workers on the pipelines carrying oil from the rigs in the south to Baghdad’s big refinery stopped work. It was a very limited job action, which still allowed the Iraqi economy to function. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki responded by calling out the army and surrounding the strikers at Sheiba, near Basra. Then he issued arrest warrants for the union’s leaders

Renegotiation of the oil law would turn the industry itself over to foreign corporations. Therefore US fighter jets have circled and buzzed over the strikers’ demonstrations. In Iraq, the hostile maneuvering of military aircraft is not an idle threat to the people below. This standoff reflects a long history of actions in Iraq, by both the Iraqi government and the US occupation administration, to suppress union activity.

The Iraqi people are opposed to the oil law. Iraqis are united in this view: there are no ethnic, sectarian or geographical groups that prefer foreign companies controlling their oil.

Arab labor leader Hacene Djemam said, “War makes privatization easy: First you destroy society; then you let the corporations rebuild it.” After Halliburton entered Iraq in 2003 and tried to control the wells and rigs by withholding reconstruction aid, the union went on strike for three days. Exports stopped and government revenue was cut off. Halliburton shut down its operations.

What do the Iraqis want? They want the US out of Iraq now!

WITHDRAWAL

A poll was conducted in Baghdad, Anbar, and Najaf on the invasion and its consequences. “About 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the US-led invasion than it is today,” United Press International reported on the survey, which was conducted in November 2006 by the Baghdad-based Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies.

A US State Department poll, which was ignored, found that two-thirds of Baghdadis want immediate withdrawal.

First of all, the Iraqis would have been better off had we never invaded. Secondly, the Iraqis want the US out of Iraq now!

Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose a permanent US presence in their country. A group of Iraqi nationalists, including Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, have formed a pan-Iraqi coalition to topple al-Maliki. They represent a vast majority of rank-and-file Iraqis outside of Parliament. Their primary basis of unity is opposition to the US occupation of Iraq; they also strongly oppose Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iranian influence in Iraq.

“All the problems come from the occupation,” Faleh Abood Umara, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions observed “… The occupation fosters the enormous corruption … As long as we have an occupation, we’ll have more sabotage and killing. But when people from the local tribes control the security, they have expelled the al-Qaeda forces and those others who are terrorizing people. This means we can protect ourselves and bring security to our nation, with no need of the US forces. To those who believe that if the US troops leave there will be chaos, I say, let them go, and if we fight each other afterwards, let us do that. We are being killed by the thousands already.” Iraqi unions want the occupation to end.

AN HONEST assessment would be that the war has been lost. No amount of surges or new “plans for victory” can alter the fact that the Iraqi people want the occupation to end–and that they will continue to resist it until all US and international troops have left. Iraq is in complete collapse and is a full-scale humanitarian disaster. The US is now in the weakest position it has been in–regionally and internationally–in years. The world is now a far more dangerous place, and the effects of the invasion and occupation of Iraq will adversely shape geopolitics for decades to come.

In effect, it’s a “blame and hold” strategy. Blame the Iraqis for all the problems we created. Hold onto whatever the US military can salvage in terms of military bases in Iraq–to have some influence over the future of Iraq’s massive oil reserves and some ability to continue military operations in Iraq, and to project power against other countries in the region, particularly Iran.

But the bottom line is the Iraqis know what they want: The Iraqis want the US totally out of Iraq now!

Related Posts:

1. 300,000 Iraqis Protest Occupation in Baghdad
2. Levin Blames the Iraqis for the Situation in Iraq (Again)
3. Reports: Iraqi Living Conditions “Tragic,” Most Iraqis Oppose Occupation
4. Levin Tells Iraqis to Pay for Reconstruction
5. Recent Statements by Michigan Senator Carl Levin on the Iraq War Assign Responsibility for Violence to the Iraqis

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