Iraq says No

Hana Al Bayaty


Thank you all for being here, for your commitment to struggle for a more human and humane world, for your dedication in our common struggle for peace, justice, democracy, progress and development. Thank you, progressives of this world, for having participated in the historic demonstrations of February 2003 in an attempt to avert yet another US war of imperial aggression. As you sensed correctly, this war was not directed against Iraq and its poor people alone, but against us all — against humanity.The US has tried and failed to impose on the world the idea that its own interests and will equal the law. The US has tried and failed to convince the world that capital has no home but is free. Free capital nowadays equals imperialism; its home is principally in the US. The US has also tried and failed totally to convince the world that it is a benevolent hegemonic power; the Iraqis and their extreme suffering testify otherwise. US genocidal policies since 2003 resulted in the killing of more than one and a half million Iraqis, the displacement of six million more within and outside their country, the decimation of Iraq’s educated middle class through systematic campaigns of assassination, the arbitrary detention of hundreds of thousands more, the destruction beyond recognition of Iraq and its infrastructure, and the scarification of its nation in its soul and flesh. But the US has failed to and cannot achieve its imperial goals. It is being rejected by all — everywhere.


Imperialism is not only against the oppressed people; it is against the peoples of the imperialist countries. While searching for maximum profits and hegemony, it prevents underdeveloped countries from developing and lowers the standards of living of developed countries. Invading Iraq, destroying its infrastructure and services, destroying it as a state and as a nation, is in order to put its oil in foreign hands by privatization. It has brought nothing to the American people but the death of its soldiers, thousands of billions in cost, and rendering all citizens of a state that practices genocide against other people. Only the big corporations and finance capital wins from wars. Whatever their result, they profit during war and from what might happen after war too. Globalization is destructive war posing as economics, and military wars are economic globalization by military means.



Many people do not understand the struggle of the Iraqi people and are influenced by omnipresent US and Western propaganda to demonize it. When Iraq fights the occupation it is fighting imperialism. First of all, why would the Iraqis accept a plan whose purpose is to deprive all of them for the benefit of a few backward and corrupted US-imposed warlords who serve as local puppets for the interests of foreign corporations? Neither the Iraqi middle class, that was mainly employed by the state, which has been dismantled, leaving them unemployed, nor the impoverished working class who lost all its social benefits, nor the youth who suffer from unemployment and the lack of civil liberties, born under sanctions and growing up in warfare, nor Iraqi women, who use to be considered the most advanced in the region and have been walled into their homes for the past five years in a lawless country governed by backward religious fascists; none have any interest in supporting this project. This project amounts to slavery, and thus can never be in the interests of the people.



One can speculate and elaborate on the many reasons that led the US to strike Iraq rather than elsewhere. But as we stand here in Venezuela and I have little time, we will look at the oil issue — the US attempt to control Iraq’s resources and thereby dominate the world and shape it according to its own will and interests. First, Iraq took the courageous and historic decision to nationalize its oil, starting its path towards unforgivable and intolerable development and independence. Second, Iraq proved it could exploit and manage its resources for the benefit of all by building a welfare state, and agreed to work with foreign corporations only on the basis of contracting. Third, in 2002, Iraq changed its oil reserve currency to euros, the highest crime of all.



US policy towards Iraq, since 1991, has been to destroy its political, military and economic capacities in an attempt to divide it into three or more entities in order to seize its natural resources. The ethnic cleansing currently taking place under the orchestration of the US occupation is intrinsically linked to the latter’s attempt to control Iraq’s resources by promoting and manipulating sectarian identities.



From the first day of the occupation the US supported sectarian forces, themselves sufficiently weak, illegitimate and conflicted that they are unable to create a functioning state, therefore requiring the never-ending help, presence, protection and direction of the US itself. The so-called “political process” in which these forces participate is only tolerated so long as it oversees and ensures the dismantlement of the unified and sovereign Iraqi state, its institutions and infrastructure; dismembers Iraqi society and its social fabric along sectarian and confessional lines; and helps the occupation in repressing the national popular resistance of the Iraqi people.



Yet despite 15 years of continuous attempts to subjugate Iraq and its people, whether through economic sanctions, war of aggression or occupation, US policy failed. By 2006, the occupation opted to delegate to the various sectarian forces and militias it had promoted the task of forcibly uprooting the local resilient population, thereafter seizing their resources. The political process and the ethnic cleansing it perpetrates is but an instrumental power struggle among various sectarian factions competing for the political and/or economic rewards granted by the occupation for depriving the Iraqi people of their sovereignty by displacing them and achieving local control over areas and attendant resources.



Whole areas have been purged of resident minorities by one militia or another, effectively changing the demographic make-up of entire regions and neighborhoods, especially in Baghdad, while keeping one of the collaborating militia in control in any given locale, over the people and its resources. Though sectarianism starts with attacking minorities and the weak, it soon spreads to all components of society, as each can be, somewhere, a majority or a minority. The occupation itself changes its affiliations as it doesn’t need to consider itself permanently bound to the respective agendas of each faction and defends only its own interest. This criminal strategy ensures a never-ending cycle of violence that can only be stopped by the end of its root cause: the US occupation. By now, all Iraqis have been affected — all sections of Iraqi society have been forced to flee.



Iraqi refugees are living testimony of the inhuman policies imposed on the Iraqi people under occupation. These break all standards of human rights and international humanitarian laws and treaties. While Iraqi refugees cannot safely return home, they cannot wait until violence ends in Iraq for their needs to be met. Key hosting countries bearing the millions of displaced Iraqis are home already to large refugee populations and are developing economies. With their own citizens suffering unemployment, Iraqi refugees are denied work permits and permanent residency. In addition, these key hosting states are not signatories to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and therefore not bound by its principles — even in instances denying the customary international legal obligation of non-refoulement (prohibition on the expulsion of refugees to an area where they may face persecution). As a consequence, Iraqis are denied status, considered tourists with no recognized passport or residence, and left economically and socially vulnerable, if not desperate.



According to international humanitarian and human rights law, the international community, the occupying powers, and the government in Iraq are legally bound to support and protect Iraqi refugees. Neither the occupation with the governments it has installed nor individual states and the international community have met their legal and moral obligations towards displaced Iraqis or the countries hosting them. Iraqi refugees are temporarily displaced Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, the right to benefit from national resources, and the right to return to their homes. They are protected persons under The Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, as well as several instruments of international law that relate to refugees.



The IRAQI INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE ON REFUGEES issued a proposal to support, protect and defend refugees and their rights as Iraqi citizens by changing the financing system of responsible agencies and hosting countries. The proposal asks the UN Security Council to pass a resolution requiring that the Iraqi state allocate part of the revenue from Iraqi oil — in proportion with the number of Iraqi citizens temporarily displaced — for Iraqi refugees in hosting countries.



What the US occupation and its allies did to Iraq does not only constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity; it will always be remembered as the first genocide of the 21st century. That the world, due to the bias of international media, is currently unaware of this does not change the reality that all Iraqis and Arabs know it. In perpetrating civilisational genocide, the US has committed moral suicide. Without attempting this genocide, American plans could not succeed. While perpetrating genocide, the US announced its moral ruin, and its plans will not succeed.

In order to divide Iraq, an ancient society existing for thousands of years, into three or more weak and conflicting protectorates, the US has to destroy all that unites the Iraqis; in other words, to conduct a policy that amounts to tabula rasa. This intended destruction necessarily encompasses: the state, culture, history, material heritage, society, economic sustainability, institutions, army, education system, health system, judicial system, infrastructure, communication facilities, national identity, indeed the very essence of Iraq. It must disrupt and destroy the existence of the living people and its moral values. It must ruin them for generations, if not all of history. It even needs to destroy the physical forms of cities. The occupation has offered nothing to the Iraqi people but an organised project of extermination based on the insanity of "creative chaos".

No statistic can embody the destruction the United States brought to Iraq. It decimated the Iraqi state and an entire popular class the progressive middle class of Iraq that had proven its capacity to manage Iraqi resources independently and to the benefit of all, thereby saving Iraqis from poverty, disease, backwardness and ignorance; it pushed civil liberties, of men and women alike, back 50 years, destroying social guarantees; it killed more than a million while sending millions more into exile; it orchestrated death squads and looting and invented new horrors in torture and rape; in the name of bringing democracy, it brought material destruction on a mass scale to a people, aiming also to efface their psyche, culture, memory, social fabric, institutions and forms of administration, commerce, and everyday life; it even attacked Iraq's unborn generations with the 4.7 billion-year death of depleted uranium. The occupation resulted in the complete breakdown of public services, leaving unavailable even those as basic as water and electricity.

Your region and your popular movements have experienced the same methods that are currently being used in Iraq to suppress the Iraqi people’s resistance. Even some of the criminals who in the 1980’s were overseeing the implementation of what they call “counter-insurgency warfare”, like John Negroponte for example, have played the same role for the US in Iraq. The experimentation that took place in your region has been dubbed the “Salvador Option”. While it is difficult to document what exactly is being done in Iraq, US Defense Department reports themselves point to the allocation of $3 billion for special operations, or “black ops”. One has to remember that despite the terrific death toll that resulted from these atrocities, never has the puppet government carried out a single investigation. Just as a matter of logic, why would a resistance movement who can only sustain itself by the support of its own people alienate itself by targeting the very people it needs in order to operate, hide and survive?



The Iraqi resistance has systematically condemned attacks against civilians from the very first day of the resistance. As there are historic precedents stemming from your region and other countries where the US has been involved, many in Iraq suspect that the US military, and paramilitary and private contractors are behind these attacks, as much as they are behind the numerous death squads that operate with impunity and carry out campaigns of systematic assassinations of patriotic figures. The purpose of implementing such methods is to demonize the heroic struggle of the patriotic resistance, to create fear and suspicion and subsequently spread hatred among the occupied population, to facilitate its division and stand as the only potential protector against these unidentifiable and barbaric forces.



However, the US has failed in its plans, as proven by the spreading of the resistance from north to south, by the majority of the population refusing the partition of Iraq, refusing the privatization of Iraqi oil, refusing the military treaties that aim to make Iraq a US colony or protectorate, and by the US failure to build any working institution or service after more than five years of occupation. Even its “Green Zone”, which it used for propaganda, started to crack. From 2003, the Iraqi people, whenever it could express itself, used the slogan: “We Sunnis and Shias are Muslims. We don’t sell our country!” “No to America, no to Israel! Go out!” But a few weeks ago, 45,000 spectators present at a football match in Baghdad spontaneously chanted these very same slogans. This is the resistance of the Iraqi youth.



Iraq has been a socio-economic and geopolitical entity for more than 4000 years. Iraq is the area that used to be called Mesopotamia. All Iraqis are the daughters or sons of this history and are inheritors of all the successive civilizations that emerged in this land. Where the Sumerians invented writing, the Babylonians invented law; the Assyrians unified the region, followed by the Abbasid who introduced the advance of the “state of all its citizens” and of social solidarity in society, opening the path for the unifying Arab Muslim civilization that survives proudly to this day. Since then, being Iraqi is based not on ethnicity or religion or sect, but on being Iraqi. The Iraqi people are the expression of this heritage, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. Whenever Iraq could live in peace and have a stable state it proved it could participate in the enhancement of human culture and development and created great civilizations and regional orders. Baghdad is the cradle of the Arab Muslim civilization. Iraq’s destiny continues to be one of the markers that will decide Arab history. For Iraqis and Arabs in general, to destroy Baghdad is in fact an attempt to destroy their memory, identity and interests.


Resistance is a social movement; it cannot be suppressed except by the extermination of society itself. It takes different shapes, from civil to political to armed struggle. The Iraqis resist by all means, each according to their situation and realities and each in solidarity with the other and their respective capacities and choice in struggle. Not all should or can carry weapons and even if they do, not at all times. It is obvious that the backbone of the armed resistance is the former Iraqi army. Considering the difficulties that the biggest military empire is experiencing in order to control a poorly armed underground force, there must be strategy and planning underpinning this resistance. Like the Iraqi people, the Iraqi army, supported by the people, never capitulated or signed an armistice. It is still defending the sovereignty of Iraq and fighting to recover Iraq’s full independence.


Some in the West continue to justify the negation of popular sovereignty under the rubric of the “war on terror”, criminalizing not only resistance, but also humanitarian assistance to a besieged people. Under international law the Iraqi resistance constitutes a national liberation movement. Recognition of the Iraqi resistance is consequently a right, not an option based on political or intellectual choice or speculation. The international community has the right to withdraw recognition from the US-imposed government in Iraq and recognize the Iraqi resistance. When recognition is a right, it is a right to be recognized.


The geopolitical characteristics of Iraq have been, and will always be, a great influence on Iraq's history. It is of no surprise that the US chose to occupy Iraq in order to try to ensure its regional and world domination. By occupying Iraq, the US thought it could control the entire region and by extension maintain its unipolar hegemony. First, Iraq is a country rich in natural resources, whether in oil, gas or water. Second, it enjoys a median geographical position in the region. This position has always made it the centre of outside ambitions. No regional power could be considered as such without attempting either to control or weaken Iraq. Indeed, Iraq is a crossroads. Its land provides the necessary route and influence for Iran to access Syria, Jordan and the Mediterranean, and for Syria and Jordan as they look towards Iran and the Arabian Gulf basin. It is also the natural path from Turkey to the Gulf, and vice versa. Consequently, while being the centre of foreign ambitions, the security, stability and unity of Iraq are also a necessity for all these countries. Indeed, the slightest deterioration in relations between Iraq and any of its neighbors is automatically a setback for cooperation throughout the whole region while, on the other hand, any hegemony of one neighbor over Iraq is a setback for Iraq and all its neighbors.


It is evident that Iraq cannot recover lasting stability, unity and territorial integrity until its sovereignty is guaranteed. It is also evident that the US occupation cannot avoid accountability by trying to switch responsibility to Iraq’s neighbors. A pact of non-aggression, development and cooperation between a liberated Iraq and its immediate neighbors is the obvious means by which to achieve this stability. In its median geopolitical position, and given its natural resources, a liberated, peaceful and democratic Iraq is central to the welfare and development of its neighbors. All of Iraq’s neighbors should recognize that stability in Iraq serves their own interests and commit to not interfering in its internal affairs.


The 2003 invasion was and remains illegal, and all that derived from the occupation is illegal and illegitimate and cannot gain any legitimacy. If the international community and the United States are interested in peace, stability and democracy in Iraq they should accept that only the Iraqi resistance — armed, civil and political — can achieve these by securing the interests of the Iraqi people. The first demand of the Iraqi resistance is the unconditional withdrawal of all foreign forces illegally occupying Iraq — including private contractors — and disbanding all armed forces established by the occupation.


All laws, contracts, treaties and agreements signed under occupation are unequivocally null and void. According to international law and the will of the Iraqi people, total sovereignty of Iraqi oil and all natural, cultural and material resources rests in the hands of the Iraqi people, in all its generations, past, present and future. Across the spectrum of the Iraqi anti-occupation movement all agree that Iraq should sell its oil on the international market to all states not at war with Iraq, and in line with Iraq’s obligations as a member of OPEC.


The law of state responsibility demands that states refuse to recognize the consequences of illegal state acts. State responsibility also includes a duty to restore. Compensation should be paid by all state and non-state actors that profited from the destruction and plundering of Iraq.


The Iraqi people are longing for long-term peace. While social movements are rising everywhere from Latin America to the Arab world and Asia, the antiwar/anti-occupation movement has weakened or become distracted. I want to salute the Venezuelan people in their struggle against imperialism. Iraq remains at the forefront of the battle against imperialism. The victory of Iraq in its struggle against occupation is the victory of all. The Iraqis need in their suffering and their heroic resistance the solidarity of all. Beyond duty, it is a moral, ethical and political imperative.


The writer is coordinator of the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees (http://www.3iii.org), is a member of the BRussells Tribunal (http://www.brusselstribunal.org), and is signatory to the “Le Feyt Declaration” of the International Anti-Occupation Network (http://www.anti-occupation.org), September 2008.