The British made sure Iraq was kept secular and ruled by the Sunni since l920. It made sure that its prime ministers were Sunni. That was rigorously followed by the leaders who followed. The Americans changed that, and pay the price. The Sunnis – who form a minority in this mosaic of religions – know now they will never get back into power, and destroy what the Americans have not. The oil piplelines are now blown apart. Today, the Americans are on the retreat, do not crow about their 'successes', and are ready to cut and run. It is a failure which has become normal to them: Philippines, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam. The freed slaves of America were sent to form the government in Liberia; their descendant rulers were machine gunned on the beach by a native revolt. Whether Saddam Hussein is found guilty or not does not matter.

It is not, of course. Iraq under Saddam Hussein kept the religious divide between the Sunnis and Shia out, and ran a secular state. The Americans dismantle that, gave the Shias power, and believed it could have a state in which the majority ruled. It has resulted in chaos, and the old enmity between Iran and the Middle East, part of this conflict, is that one is Shia and the other Sunni, both of the Muslim religion, one is Arab and the other not. The British is their long presence in the region understood this, and behaved accordingly. Iraq could only be ruled by the Sunni, it decided more than four decades ago, but it lost out in the end by ordering the Middle East in its image. The last British-controlled prime minister of Iraq was flayed alive when he has caught in the late 1950s, trying to escape in a woman's clothes, which included the chador. The king was overthrown and killed. But the group that took over was Sunni. As was all leaders until the Americans decided that should change. But it is against the Shia leadership now.

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CROWING two years ago that Iraq is a democracy, that it is a far better place that when Saddam Hussein, who is now facing trial for his life, was in charge. But US destroyed the framework, made enemies of the Baathist Party, opened the country to be run by Shia, made sure that the Sunnis would never have a place in the government. The civil war is fuelled by the Sunnis, Iraqi nationalists (both Sunni and Shia), the youngsters who see no future in an Iraq under American control. President Bush has had to eat every one of US optimistic statements. Sure, there are foreigners amongst these insurgents, but so has the Americans. The world hears only one side of the story, the insurgents are not allowed, but the appears on Arab television stations, even if they do not report the more horrendous American atrocities, is had enough. In less than two years, the Americans have made themselves unpopular not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Middle East and Iran. But they want a foothold in the Middle East at any cost. Would they get it?

The insurgency in Iraq is fuelled by the Sunnis, of whom Saddam Hussein remains a leader. The bulk of the insurgency is a Sunni reaction to the United States providing the legal mechanism to ensure the Shiias are in power in a land the British had ensured Sunni dominance more than 80 years ago. The last prime minister before the Baathists took over was a Sunni under British overlordship dressed himself in women's clothers when he was killed the crowd. Saddam was the fourth leader after that, and had remained in office from the early 1970s until his overthrow. The Americans were more interested in having Saddam under its control than seeing him dead. CNN is still showing pictures taken at the time of his arrest of soldiers peering into his mouth. US attempts to humiliate Saddam has fallen flat. Saddam, the street fighter, has taken over, and made mincemeat of his prosecution. There will always be a feeling that his trial in Baghdad was flawed.

THE UNITED STATES IS losing badly in Iraq. It does not release news of any kind from there. In the past, before the reality struck in, one could not escape from Iraq, which it saw as evidence it is winning, whatever that means, the war. The government there is bothered about bird flu, as if that is the most important thing amid the mayhem the US has caused, is causing, in that country since it invaded it in 2003. The citizens have become the insurgents, and more join them daily as they see their life more hopeless day by day. There is the occasional talk from Washington of cutting down troops, but the aim of the invasion, based on false reasons like Iraq's nuclear capabilities, was to set up a permanent base in the Middle Eat in Iraq. That alone will make sure the continued insurgency. The Sunnis, in power since 1920, accepts that it will never rule Iraq again, so it will destroy the country, probably more viciously, than the US armed forces have done.

SADDAM HUSSEIN IN THE dock challenges the United States and its plans to make Iraq in its image and get at the second largest oil reserves known, after Saudi Arabia. He is on trial for his life, orchestrated by the US. He is in their custody. It decides when or how the trial will be held. The US must censor the trial reports and photographs before it can be published. He has too many supporters in present day Iraq, and they should not ever know he is putting up a fight. But Saddam Hussein in the dock is so threatening that witnesses give their evidence behind a screen; the judges and the prosecution can see them but not the defence. The trial of Saddam Hussein and his men is holding to ranson the US invasion of Iraq. The trial was decided to be in Iraq. The US made his first mistake when it charged him with minor offences, when they should have charged him and his men for the offense they have kept to the last. It did not know what it was doing, allowed Saddam Hussein to take charge. CNN and other television reports that the people of Iraq are not convinced. The judges, who except for the chief judge are kept hidden, can pronounce only death, the sooner the better. If he is acquitted in his first trial, the US is more on the defensive. It cannot afford that. Saddam Hussein has said he would expect the death sentence, and prepared for that. An Arab ruler expects to be killed if he loses or is overthrown. But he is arrested by an invading army, which did not know what to do once it had Iraq. The Invasion was done for false reasons. There was a rush to claim credit for the invasion, and the officials in Washington and their proconsul in Iraq did not agree what to do next. The decision was taken to create a government from start, with lthe Sunnis, who have ruled since the 1920s, excluded. the Sunnis saw the writing on the wall, decided they would never rule again, went against the US, and the country is in chaos.

THE MESS IN IRAQ today would not have happened if the United States had planned before Iraq was invaded. Their plans were of quislings, who were not given positions in the Iraqi government unless they held Western citizenship. In Australia, its citizens could not be in politics if they held dual citizenships. In Iraq, that was a necessity. Iraq had a working government, but that was destroyed for no reason than no planning. No one could be in the new government who held a Baathist Party membership. That restriction threw the experienced Sunnis out of the new Iraq. It was a precipe for disaster. The United States and those who followed it depended on quislings who had an agenda of their own, and who told lies without batting an eyelid. The United States was sucked into a quagmire. The Sunnis created an insurgency, knowing it would not be ruling power, and had no interest in a new Iraq. It got fighters from the Middle East, those who could not go back to their countries after fighting for the United States in Afghanistan against Russia. Osama bin Laden. a wealthy Saudi Arabian who is not allowed back, was, after all, once a CIA agent. So was Saddam Hussein, whose trial makes him a great figure in the Middle East each time the trial fumbles. And it has fumbled more often than not. The United States wants to hang him for what he did as a head of state. All his arguments are waved aside. They created a law that did not exist when he ordered the killing as head of state. The United States had, after all, supported Augustino Pinochet as president of Chile, and turned a blind eye when he allegedly committed the offenses for which he is now found guilty. The killings were done with United States connivance, in Iraq and Chile. The new circumstance in Iraq meant he would have to be killed.

The officials are throttled to say nothing about the murders and mayhem, and they would keep quiet in their retirement unless they become activists themselves, as David Kay, the former chief of the WMD in Iraq has done. The television, the media, the government information services is Western inspired, so we get the public relations version of what happens in Iraq. There is little of what happens in the country. Al Jazeera does report what happens in the street, and the mayhem caused by American invasion. But every effort is made to silence Al Jazeera. He who has the information wins the war. But if both sides have the information, they energise their supporters and the divide is wider than ever. We are told after the Amman attacks that most of the 78 per cent Sunnis in Jordan spit at the perpetrators of the American hotels. But those who died are those who wanted to be there. That means well off Arabs, who live in a world of their own and are seen important if they deal with the West. The bulk of Jordan, to these people, are irrelevant. King Abdullah of Jordan is more popular in the West than in his country. So what he says is ignored. The poor people, in the majority, have supported the Baathist Party in Iraq and President Saddam Hussein. They did not change overnight because he is arrested, and his country invaded, by a foreign nation. The United States have gone into war with terror, and terror here means the Muslim world. But it does not understand what the term means, and finding itself in difficulties, gets into dividing the religious and racial factions. It is not between two Iraqi factions, but it is between Sunnis and Shias or between the Iraqi Sunni and the Turkomen, who is Sunni more often than not. But will we hear in memoirs written by those who are there? We might get a sanitized version of what happened there, but little else.

AL QAEDA has said it is responsible for the bomb attacks on three American-owned hotels in Jordon. The Americans call this group Al Qaeda in Iraq. If you listen or read what they have to say or write, they do not tell you the most important fact: that as the war on terror on Muslims is worldwide, the response is too. They ignore this, and suggest the Jordanian Arabs were the ones most affected. But 100,000 Iraqis have died in American bombing. There is no word of that now except that they deserved it. The US Senate has passed a resolution that the American legal system should not be available to those sent to Guantanamo prison from countries in the Third World. The Americans have latched on to Al Qaeda's statement that they are responsible. They are playing an information game as the Americans are. They have found a new organisation called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and its leaders responsible and therefore gulty. The war on terror against Muslims requires less standards of proof of guilt than murder, for instance. But this is a fight unto death, with both sides having access to the same methods. If the Americans can attack a defenceless country headed by a CIA agent, after months of telling the world a pack of lies, the reaction is equally swift. When it justifies the invasion of Iraq also as a war on terror, and alientate the Sunnis, in power since the British put them in power more than 80 years ago, the reaction was swift. Iraq is in a civil war. It would never be a country again, with handouts from the United States to keep it going, and unsafe for any who supports it. The Sunnis have waged a civil war since they were removed in a fit of anger. They don't want to return. Their aim is to destroy. Four or five Iraqi Sunni organisations supporting the elections next month is neither here nor there. But the Americans and their cohorts in Iraq and elsewhere look upon every Sunni move in their favour as evidence of grasping any floating in the sea. The bombing of the three hotels in Jordan is a direct response to the invasion of Iraq. The hotels would not be bombed if Iraq was not invaded.

The information war is to paint the enemy as Al-Qaeda, with bombings like the three Jordanian hotels and the killing of the Arabs highlighted. Two questions must be asked here. Whether the Americans and its allies have the right to kill Arabs to capture a country for economic reasons? The people have a right to prevent it, and bring in foreigners to fight the invader as the invader has asked for foreign assistance. The insurgency in Iraq has the destruction of the oil facilities as its main aim. This was clear after the ruling Sunnis were not allowed in the new government. The Sunnis now know they have lost Iraq, perhaps for ever, so it will do anything possible to prevent others from ruling. The invader realises it had taken a wrong decision to root them out. So all effort is made to bring the Sunni in, and lay great stress on a few Sunni organisations joining it. But the invader has made the mistake, and given the country to Muslims other than Sunnis and a racial minority, the Kurds who traditionally even the Shias hate. There is a civil war taking place in Iraq. Nothing can hide that. The more it is cornered, the more gung-ho the invader is, and more reports are released often by embedded reporters that the invader and its allies are doing well. But one mistake is enough to negate their presence. And it has made several enemies, among Sunnis, Shias, racial minorities like Kurds, Turkomen.

BRUTAL DICTATORS IN IRAQ are not new. The British was one in iraq. So were the Sunni leaders that followed. Iraq had no free elections since the 1920s. And it showed during the recent referendum. The Americans, and its sidekick, the United Nations, are happy that all went well. As Saddam Hussein would have crowed in his day. The Iraqi know which way the bread is buttered, and voted accordingly. So it is not surprising that the Americans recorded, so they said, more than 90 per cent of the votes in many Shia and Kurd provinces. The Sunnis, having lost power, were expected to vote against. But the Americans added difficulties at the last minute. One would have required two thirds of a province to vote "no". The people did not know the details of the constitution they were voting for. The ministers did not go to the ground in a country which CNN had a think tanker in Washington say is better than during Saddam Hussein and and security improving day by day. But the Americans are caught in a Catch-22 situation: The Sunni and the Iraqi nationalist, who include Shias, Kurds, Turkomen and others, have vowed to make it difficult for the latest dictator in Iraq to succeed. The Sunnis know they will never rule Iraq again, and they will make it difficult for others to rule. Their task is made easier by the invader dismantling what existed in government and not putting its own in force. Now it is too late. Iraq is in the throes of a civil war. The invading force, the United States, will have its troops in Iraq for decades for it will be worse after they leave. Iraq is now a fourth world state, with anarcy and no government. You would not hear it in the newspapers.

A BAD PEACE IS EVEN WORSE THAN WAR, said Tacitus, about the Roman conquest of Britain. He also quoted the British chieftain Calgacus tell his troops about Rome's insatiable desire for conquest and plunder and to 'savage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; they make a devastation, and call it peace." He wrote this 2,000 years ago but it refers to the United States as well, now. Mr Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and one of those who hurtled into the war in Iraq without an exit plan, said the United States was more powerful than Rome. The United States behaved now as the Romans then. And like the Romans, the United States are left wondering where they went wrong. It is perhaps trite to suggest now that you do not go to war with an adjective, but that is what the war on terror is all about. The United States did not want to sound racist, so the war against Muslims quickly became the war on terror. It invaded Iraq because of oil. It is a Muslim nation, so the adjective made sense in Washington. Its reasons at invading Iraq has proven false. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq had no nuclear plan. That it had both was why it officially invaded the country. It displaced the Sunnis and Baath party members from power, and put Saddam Hussein on trial. It had no plans other than ensure that the Sunnis and the Baathist Party did not rule. But in deciding that, it made sure that Iraq was not a oil producing state anymore, but a fourth world state which was like Vietnam in the 1960s. It war on terror made sure that all Sunnis world wide were targetted. In the Middle East, the Sunni sect of Islam dominated, and the Arab street was with the Iraqi, who did not like his country to be ruled by an invader, which the United States is. The coalition it has cobbled is a smokescreen, to make other countries join it in this war on terror. It went on an information war to regard those supported the Iraqis as foreign insurgents, as if they are not foreigners. The referendum on the American-drafted constitution may yet pass, but the insurgency would not end.

But he had made his peace with the rest of the Middle East. He expects to be hanged, for he will die a martyr. He knows, as many Arab leader knows, his fate is death if he is overthrown. If he is sentenced to death, the president of Iraq must agree to it, or commute it. But he has already said he is opposed to the death penalty, and would leave it to his vice-president to do the legal work required. Already the legality of the special court is challenged: it was set up by the provisional coalition authority before it formed the temporary government. It is a mixture of Iraqi and British law. The judges, who are Shia and Kurd and graduated as recently as 1996, were given special tuition in Britain to conduct the case. But it cannot pass any sentence except death. Anything less is a victory for Saddam and the opponents of the occupation. Saddam has several charges before him, each with the death penalty, but he is charged first with only one. But can the court try him several times until he is found guilty? The Western press has found him guilty, and CNN and BBC, on the worldwide channels, let the world know he is. But these actions do not win the Iraq Sunnis on their side. Nor the Iraqi Shia and Kurd, who believed in him or Iraq as an entity.

THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ vote in a referendum tomorrow (October 15), not knowing what they are voting for. The United States and Britain has given their blessings. But the president and cabinet ministers, secure (so they think) in the Green Zone and not daring to go out, even to the airport, for fear of assassination or ambush, discuss the constituition as if it is the US or Italian or Malaysian. The people do not know what it is about for no politician has discussed it with him. Not even in Baghdad. The referendum tomorrow has no relevance for the future of Iraq. It is surreal, the referendum is conducted to American home requirements, and will produce nothing. The moral will still remains with the Iraqi, who is fed up with seeing his own country invaded by foreigners. The Americans made the biggest mistake of all in refusing the Sunni any role. The constituiton was drawn up by the Shias and the Kurds. Iraq did not have a written constitution. But so does Great Britain. The Sunnis boycotted the election. Sundry Sunni groups are co-opted to write the constituiton, but these groups represent only themselves, if at all. The US is now trying to get Sunni groups not to boycott it. There is no or little coverage of the referendum the past two weeks. Even the invaders know that if the referendum is lost, they cannot withdraw their troops on their own timetable. If the referendum is won, then it is a hard slog to the next target, which is the elections early next year. The Sunnis, who are excluded from drafting the constition, are not likely to take part in it. The invading force, which is what the Americans and all its allies are, is stuck in a quagmire, much like in Vietnam forty years ago but worse. The Sunni Muslim is the dominant religion in the Arab lands. Saddam Hussein, once the CIA's great asset, has now become the Arab's, Iraqi Sunnis and Iraq's hero. He is on trial next week, but here again the invading force made a mistake. He is put on trial during the Ramadan fasting month, again to the American schedule. He has won the victory, whether he is hanged or not. Every miscalculation on him and the Sunnis are to the advantage of both Sunnis and Iraqis.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI HAS left the "security" of the Green Zone for the "security" of London. He wanted to tell the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of his government's plan for the referendum on October 15. But neither he nor members of his government has visited the people of Iraq of what the referendum brings. It is too unsafe. He and his ministers have not ventured out of the Green Zone for fear of being killed by the people. In President Talabani's terms, those people who are against the referendum and those who create mayhem in Iraq are terrorists, and should be eradicated, preferably by the United States or Britain or by the other countries who are part of the US-established multi-lateral force. But the insurgency would not last if locals do not support it, as President Talabani should know by now. First the country is invaded, then the election is set so that the elected are kept isolated in the Green Zone, and those elected ask those who put them in power to remain. President Talabani was "thankful" in London for the multinational effort in Iraq. He blamed Iraqis for protesting against the US-led invasion, as "Saddam Hussein as a bad man". But the United States dealt with the "bad man" for nearly 30 years, had made him a prime CIA source, like Osama bin Laden, and then turned against him, because he did not agree with Washington's plans for the region. President Talabani now faces Saddam Hussein in this attempt to turn Iraq into a US colony. The British tried it earlier, turning the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia provinces of the Ottoman Empre, and called it Iraq after the first world war. They knew their Middle Eastern history, and made sure the Sunnis, who formed 20 per cent of Iraq, as the rulers. They formed Iraq to defeat the French colonial power, who took Syria earlier, and established a Shia president there although he was from a minority Shia sect, the Aluwaites. Nearly 80 per cent of Syrians are Sunnis. The Prime Minister of Iraq, dressed in a woman's dress and flayed alive in Baghdad in 1958 was a Sunni Muslim. The governments that followed is Sunni, of which the latest is Saddam Hussein, which the Americans, like a bull in a China shop, erased, and brought about the present civil war.

Dato' Azim is a Khairy crony. But he is certain to clash, if he is appointed, with another Khairy crony and his likely political secretary as second finance minister. The infighting amongst the Khairy cronies is real, and is often worse, metaphorically, than between the Sunnis and the Shias. Each wants to strike while the iron is hot, and in the current political climate, he must kill before he is cast aside. And each knows his future is linked to Mr Khairy's political longevity. Would he have the same clout under a different prime minister? Fear of the future now is not now an option; it is a constant companion in the quest for greed and power. It is the movers and shakers of TNB's movers and shakers who live a charmed life at the expense of Malaysia and its citzens. And no one in the government cares a hoot.

It went into the war with inadequate troops with no plan to fend for the peace or to leave, and sinks inexorably into an Arabian quagmire. It exploited religious and racial tensions amongst the Sunnis, the Shias, the Kurds, the Turkomans and all it got them is a recipe for a civil war. Even the plans for elections is as half-baked as the plans for invasion.

This is where the difficulty begins. What is Islam Hadhari? Is it a religion? It is not. Muslims believe Islam is the most perfect of the Abrahamaic religions, and cannot be bettered. Is it a new Muslim school of jurisprudence? No. Islam has two major branches, Sunni and Shia. The Sunni recognises four schools of jurisprudence - Maliki, Hambali, Hanafi, Shafie, named after their progenitors. The Shia has its different schools, but it does not concern us here. In Malaysia, only the Shafie school is recognised, the others tolerated so long as they do not make a show of their faith. The Shia is all but banned, but Malaysian Sunnis converting to Shia have sometimes found themselves detained under the Internal Security Act. If a man converts to Islam here it is into the Shafie school. Islam Hadhari is not an Islamic school of jurisprudence.

But it could not be sustained. The political and demographic realities ensured that this democratic government would not want the United States to hang on to Iraq as its linchpin to the control of the Middle East. It was yet another blow. The United States and Britain went to war in the confident expectation that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass distraction. It did not matter if he did not. They needed an excuse to invade, and this was it. There was none. Then one by one it shifted away from its stated ideals as its own raison d'etre bit the dust. They hoped the Shias would welcome them with flowers; today, the Shia is more determined than the Sunnis to drive the United States out. The Sunnis deprived of power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein did not take that kindly.

The Malaysian minister in charge of Islamic affairs, Dato' Abdul Hamid Othman, is a very worried man. In this Sunni land, he worries that renegade Shia followers have combined to make the prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed's life difficult. They gang up with reformasi supporters to cause demonstrations against the government. So, he has told the police he would help identify the Shias. He is not worried about the Sunnis who form the bulk of the demonstrators. But the Shias! They should be rooted out. It is not a political issue, of course, he reassures us. He says it was unfortunate that Shias are involved. Good. But is he now saying it was fortunate that the Sunnis are involved? If Shias join the demonstration, he says, "this cannot be seen as a political issue or an individual matter anymore as it could turn into a religious dispute." Is the minister saying it is Pusat Islam's view that Sunnis may demonstrate against the government, but not the Shias?

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