MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The US in Iraq is no different than the Mongols in the 11th century

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 trial is held in Iraq because the United States wanted to tell Iraqis what a man Saddam Hussein was. But the United States even today runs it, although Iraqi judges judge him. Saddam Hussein, hated by most Middle Eastern citizen when in office, is now a hero. He is seen as being tried by the United States. He knows he will be hanged, have resigned to his death, but as a martyr. He makes statements in court as Iraqi head of state, and even though that is censored by the United States, gets a ready listener in the Middle East. They do not see his trial as free, and accept his thesis that the United States has set up an Iraqi court that can give only one judgement, death. The United States made the first mistake in having the trial during the Muslim fasting month, the second when it was resumed two weeks before Iraq's general election on 15 December 2005. The trial is disrupted, which the United States has said is the insurgents. It might be, but the United States knows the mess it is in over the trial and would like to see him dead. It does not want to put him on the witness stand, as he must, for fear he might report collusion with the United States. The Saddam Hussein trial is a headache it wants to be clear of. The trial is held within a burgeoning insurgency. Rules are made as it went along. Defence counsel is killed. Government security is rejected. The trial was planned as a means of Iraqis judging its former President, but it has become victor's justice. There is already talk of the trial transferred out of Iraq, or if condemned, the hanging will be elsewhere in the Middle East. The accused are in United States custody.

The mistake the West makes is that the defence has no case. It thought so in the Hague when President Milosevic is tried by the international Criminal Court. That trial has dragged on for months with evidence that the court calls irrelevancies. He has refused defence counsel. His mastery of the law and his position as President of Yugoslavia is commented upon now, but he has a case. Just as Saddam Hussein has. But his trial was based on him not having a case, narrowly for what he is charged for but broadly on what he has become in the Middle East. He expects to be hanged. Any ruler in the Middle East expects death when overthrown, and he has witten that into his calculations. But if he is found guilty by the court, he becomes a martyr. If he dies while on trial, by natural or unnatural means, the United States will be blamed. If he is acquitted of the charges now against him, he cannot be tried for other offenses, which is planned. The Iraqis would not allow that. Among those who have attempted to disrupt the trial is the United States. But it has lost, Saddam expects nothing short of an execution. Anything less would be a failure for the United States and a victory for Saddam Hussein. The fate of the United States in Iraq and the Middle East is linked, one way or another, with that of Saddam Hussein. What takes place now is United States' justifications for the trial, even if they are not called that.

The United States is winning the war, so the Western reporters report. But it does not allow contrary views to be broadcast. It has done all it can to destroy Al-Jazeera because the people in the Middle East believe it rather than CNN or BBC. But the war is going well as Al-Jazeera has reported, not as CNN or BBC. The Middle East does not believe the United States' intentions and would rather trust a local network. There are others than Al-Jazeera, of course, but these are closely linked to those in power in the Middle East, and therefore ignored. Some Middle Eastern governments, all either or at one time American supporters, have banned Al-Jazeera news in their countries. The United States does not like Al-Jazeera. The Middle Eastern governments do not like Al-Jazeera. But the people love it. Both Saddam Hussein, when he was in power, and the United States is angry with Al-Jazeera in Iraq, but the Iraqis get a sense of the destruction in their once prosperous country by watching Al-Jazeera. The United States' war in Iraq will not be decided by day-to-day coverage it specifies. For a start, can it survive the nearly 40 years the British ruled Iraq through Sunni proxies? It is unlikely, although the present news coverage can alter that perception.

The United States has invaded Iraq in 2003 as the Mongols had in the 11th century. The destruction is the same. The invaders behave the same. The Mongols destroyed Baghdad as the United States have done. The modern warfare of that the United States is its trump card. But the Mongols then had the latest method of warfare, that of fighting on horeseback. It was considered the most significant development of the period till 2000. Baghdad today would not be rebuilt, as the United States has promised, and Baghad was not rebuilt as the Mongols had promised. Meanwhile, both invading armies presided over the destruction of what made Baghdad unique. There is already pressure on the United States to withdraw before it has rebuilt Iraq. It is now engaged in rebuilding the new Iraqi army in its own image. The television and radio news from Iraq reports that it is not up to standard. Yet, the Iraqi army was hyped as the fourth largest in the world, and how difficult it would be for the US army to defeat it. Once the war started, it was described as a paper army. But the Iraqi military commanders under Saddam conducted the war which saved his fighting troops by rotating them around with the recruits. The 'recruits' who were saved were in fact trained troops, who now lead the insurgency. The United States did not want these troops. It created its own. But they are no good, says United States Army commanders. They United States hopes to leave them in charge of Iraq while they leave. But the former army has joined the insurgency. Iraq is in a mess as bad as the Mongols left it.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com