What the US has planned for Iraq

[Saki]

This article is for all those who take the "this war will be good for the Iraqi people" line. Newsflash: our governments are selfish. They don't want democracy in Iraq or to relieve the plight of the Iraqi people. It's from the Independent.


Kurdish leaders enraged by 'undemocratic' American plan to occupy Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn in Arbil, northern Iraq
17 February 2003


The US is abandoning plans to introduce democracy in Iraq after a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to Kurdish leaders who recently met American officials.

The Kurds say the decision resulted from pressure from US allies in the Middle East who fear a war will lead to radical political change in the region.

The Kurdish leaders are enraged by an American plan to occupy Iraq but largely retain the government in Baghdad. The only changes would be the replacement of President Saddam and his lieutenants with senior US military officers.

It undercuts the argument by George Bush and Tony Blair that war is justified by the evil nature of the regime in Baghdad.

"Conquerors always call themselves liberators," said Sami Abdul-Rahman, deputy prime minister of the Kurdish administration, in a reference to Mr Bush's speech last week in which he said US troops were going to liberate Iraq.

Mr Abdul-Rahman said the US had reneged on earlier promises to promote democratic change in Iraq. "It is very disappointing," he said. "In every Iraqi ministry they are just going to remove one or two officials and replace them with American military officers."

Kurdish officials strongly believe the new US policy is the result of pressure from regional powers, notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US appears to be quietly abandoning earlier declarations that it would make Iraq a model democracy in the Middle East. In Iraq, free elections would lead to revolutionary change because although the Shia Muslims and Kurds constitute three-quarters of the population, they are excluded from power in Baghdad by the Sunni Muslim establishment.

Kurdish leaders are deeply alarmed by US intentions, which only became clear at a meeting in Ankara earlier in the month and from recent public declarations by US officials. Hoshyar Zebari, a veteran Kurdish leader, said: "If the US wants to impose its own government, regardless of the ethnic and religious composition of Iraq, there is going to be a backlash."

Mr Abdul-Rahman accuses the US of planning cosmetic changes in Iraq. "This is to give the government on a platter to the second line of Ba'athists [the ruling party]," he said.

The US appears to be returning to the policy it pursued at the end of the Gulf War in 1991. It did seek to get rid of President Saddambut wanted to avoid a radical change in Iraq. The US did not support the uprisings of Shia Muslims and Kurdsbecause it feared a transformation in Iraqi politics that might have destabilised its allies in the Middle East or benefited Iran.

The two Kurdish parties ­ the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules western Kurdistan, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ­ are at the heart of the Iraqi opposition. Together they rule four million people in an area the size of Switzerland that has been outside President Saddam's control since 1991.

The change in American policy means marginalising the Iraqi opposition which has been seeking to unite. In response to the US decision, the Kurds and their allies have accelerated moves to hold a conference of opposition parties in Salahudin, the headquarters of the KDP, now scheduled for tomorrow. "We want to know if we are partners in regime change or not," Mr Zebari said.

He spoke scathingly of any attempt by America "to bring in an Iraqi from the United States who has not seen his country for years and impose him by armed force".

The destabilising impact of the impending war is already being felt in the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkey has demanded that its troops be allowed to take over a swath of territory along the border inside Iraq. The ostensible reason is to prevent a flood of Kurdish refugees trying to flee into Turkey, but the Kurdish parties say they are quite capable of doing this themselves. They say the Turkish demand, to which they suspect the US has agreed in return for the use of Turkish military facilities, is the first step in a Turkish plan to advance into Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Kurds fear that a US-led war against President Saddam might be the occasion for a Turkish effort to end the de facto independence enjoyed by Iraqi Kurds for more than a decade. One Kurdish leader said: "Turkey has made up its mind that it will intervene in northern Iraq in order to destroy us.

• Peace activists who want to be "human shields" arrived in Baghdad yesterday. The activists, who had 18 Britons among them, left London on 25 January in three double decker buses. They will deploy at likely bombing targets.

Patrick Cockburn is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and the co-author of 'Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession'.
17 February 2003 14:35

[Little she-bear]

I knew it. 'Saddam Lite'.

[Hmm]

Don't you just love it when over the top anti-war people try to force their opinion on you. It's great.

And human shields? Some anti-war protestors are just plain dumb.

The thing about newspapers is that they can also articles in such a way as to put their opinion across. The Sun for example is very much pro-war. Coincidently, it's also the most popular paper in the country. It may be that you're thought to be of lower intelligence if this is the paper you choose to read but the majority of people in the UK do. Other papers may do the opposite, however they have less readers. Just a point to remember for those quoting ridiculous percentages for those who are anti-war.

[Oddball]

Personnally I shall wait for more information on the US intentions after the war before I get grumpy about this article.

[Little she-bear]

[s]Unregisted User Hmm wrote on 14:56, 17th Feb 2003:
Don't you just love it when over the top anti-war people try to force their opinion on you. It's great.

Over the top? In what way was this article over the top? It was merely reporting the opinions of some of the Kurds, who are the very people that the American administration claim they are going to liberate. It's drawing attention to a possible hypocrisy and irony in the pro-war camp.

Some anti-war protestors are just plain dumb.

Some pro-war posters on this board are just plain insulting. The fact that you have to resort to ad hominem attacks doesn't bode well for the quality of your argument.

The Sun for example is very much pro-war. Coincidently, it's also the most popular paper in the country.

If you admit it's a coincidence then it would have no bearing on this discussion, would it? That's a completely pointless statment that hasn't helped your case one bit.

I really fail to see what your point is. It is possible to read the Sun and be anti war. Like you said yourself, it could just be a coincidence. Lots of people reading the Sun is not conclusive evidence for the majority of people in the country being pro-war. It's an incredibly vague yardstick. I prefer to go by opinion polls run by respected pollsters like MORI,who ask specific questions across a large sample group, rather than coming to hazy conclusions based on how many people read a certain paper.

[immunodiffusion]

[s]Unregisted User Hmm wrote on 14:56, 17th Feb 2003:
The Sun for example is very much pro-war ... Other papers may do the opposite, however they have less readers.

For that matter, The Daily Mirror is very strongly anti-war and has the second highest readership of any daily newspaper. And the Daily Mail, Guardian and Independent are all fairly much anti-war too - if you add up the circulation of these newspapers it comes to higher than the circulation of The Sun.

And besides, people don't necessarily follow everything they read in the paper
anyway. People may be anti-war, but buy a pro-war paper for some other reason.

More accurate figures on the proportion of people who are for or against the proposed war are from opinion polls rather than newspaper circulation figures, and all the opinion polls have shown a vast majority of people who are against the war under the present conditions.

[Guest]

Ah yes, opinion polls. Because they've always been so reliable in the past.

And many people are against war but believe that in this case it is the right thing to do. Where do they fit into opinion polls?

[immunodiffusion]

[s]Unregisted User wrote on 18:30, 17th Feb 2003:
many people are against war but believe that in this case it is the right thing to do.

If people think that war is the right thing to do in this case, they are not against all war. They might be people who think that war can only be justified in specific circumstances, but in that case they are still pro-war people. Even people who are almost always pro-war still think there should be at least some justification for having a war.

There is a rather larger section of society who think that the war in this case is a bad idea, but do think that war is justified in certain other circumstances. However, these people have been counted separately in most of the opinion polls I have heard about - that's why most of the opinion poll data is suffixed with "without a 2nd UN mandate" - because the numbers of people who oppose a war without a 2nd UN mandate is much higher than those who don't think we should go to war at all.

[Saki]

[s]Unregisted User Hmm wrote on 14:56, 17th Feb 2003:
Don't you just love it when over the top anti-war people try to force their opinion on you. It's great.



I'd not realised that it was over the top to provide information. My apologies. My only wish was to point out that those who claim that we will leave the Iraqi people better off are mistaken.

[Cola Cube]

Lets all believe the Kurds for they would never lie or bend the truth. Therefore what they say must be true.

Or not.