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War on Iraq: "It's Going Wrong, Faster Than Anyone Could Have Imagined"

By ROBERT FISK

The Independent, Baghdad, Apr. 17, 2003



"It's going wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined. The army of 'liberation' has already turned into the army of occupation. The Shias are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of 'liberation.' "
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"The Americans have now issued a 'Message to the Citizens of Baghdad,' a document as colonial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone. 'Please avoid leaving your homes during the night hours after evening prayers and before the call to morning prayers,' it tells the people of the city. 'During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move through the area . . . please do not leave your homes during this time. During all hours, please approach Coalition military positions with extreme caution . . .' So now - with neither electricity nor running water - the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lockdown. It's a form of imprisonment. In their own country. Written by the command of the 1st U.S. Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name."
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" 'If I was an Iraqi and I read that,' an Arab woman shouted at me, 'I would become a suicide bomber.' And all across Baghdad you hear the same thing, from Shia Muslim clerics to Sunni businessmen, that the Americans have come only for oil, and that soon - very soon - a guerrilla resistance must start. No doubt the Americans will claim that these attacks are 'remnants' of Saddam's regime or 'criminal elements.' But that will not be the case. Marine officers in Baghdad were holding talks yesterday with a Shia militant cleric from Najaf to avert an outbreak of fighting around the holy city. I met the prelate before the negotiations began and he told me that 'history is being repeated.' He was talking of the British invasion of Iraq in 1917, which ended in disaster for the British. Everywhere are the signs of collapse. And everywhere the signs that America's promises of 'freedom' and 'democracy' are not to be honoured."
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"Why, Iraqis are asking, did the United States allow the entire Iraqi cabinet to escape? And they're right. Not just the Beast of Baghdad and his two sons, Qusay and Uday, but the Vice-President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, Saddam's personal adviser, Dr. A.K. Hashimi, the ministers of defence, health, the economy, trade, even Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Minister of Information who, long ago, in the days before journalists cosied up to him, was the official who read out the list of executed 'brothers' in the purge that followed Saddam's revolution - relatives of prisoners would dose themselves on valium before each Sahaf appearance."
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"President Bush promised that America was campaigning for human rights in Iraq, that the guilty, the war criminals, would be brought to trial. . . . But there is no evidence even that a single British or U.S. forensic officer has visited the sites to sift the wealth of documents lying there or talk to the ex-prisoners returning to their former places of torment. Is this idleness. Or is this wilful? . . . At the end of the Second World War, German-speaking British and U.S. intelligence officers hoovered up every document in the thousands of Gestapo and Abwehr bureaux across western Germany. The Russians did the same in their zone. In Iraq, however, the British and Americans have simply ignored the evidence."
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"The top security men in Saddam's regime were busy in the last hours, shredding millions of documents. I found a great pile of black plastic rubbish bags at the back of one villa, each stuffed with the shreds of thousands of papers. Shouldn't they be taken to Washington or London and reconstituted to learn their secrets? Even the unshredded files contain a wealth of information. But again, the Americans have not bothered - or do not want - to search through these papers. . . . Iraqis are right to ask why the Americans don't search for this information, just as they are right to demand to know why the entire Saddam cabinet - every man jack of them - got away. The capture by the Americans of Saddam's half-brother and the ageing Palestinian gunman Abu Abbas, whose last violent act was 18 years ago, is pathetic compensation for this."
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"President Bush promised that America was campaigning for human rights in Iraq, that the guilty, the war criminals, would be brought to trial. . . . But there is no evidence even that a single British or U.S. forensic officer has visited the sites to sift the wealth of documents lying there or talk to the ex-prisoners returning to their former places of torment. Is this idleness. Or is this wilful? . . . At the end of the Second World War, German-speaking British and U.S. intelligence officers hoovered up every document in the thousands of Gestapo and Abwehr bureaux across western Germany. The Russians did the same in their zone. In Iraq, however, the British and Americans have simply ignored the evidence."
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"[S]omething is terribly wrong when U.S. soldiers are ordered simply to watch vast ministries being burnt by mobs and do nothing about it. Because there is also something dangerous - and deeply disturbing - about the crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives. For they are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses. I followed one after its passengers had set the Ministry of Trade on fire and it sped out of town. The official U.S. line on all this is that the looting is revenge - an explanation that is growing very thin - and that the fires are started by 'remnants of Saddam's regime,' the same 'criminal elements,' no doubt, who feature in the marines' curfew orders. But people in Baghdad don't believe Saddam's former supporters are starting these fires. And neither do I."
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"The looters make money from their rampages but the arsonists have to be paid. The passengers in those buses are clearly being directed to their targets. If Saddam had pre-paid them, they wouldn't start the fires. The moment he disappeared, they would have pocketed the money and forgotten the whole project. So who are they, this army of arsonists? I recognised one the other day, a middle-aged, unshaven man in a red T-shirt, and the second time he saw me he pointed a Kalashnikov at me. What was he frightened of? Who was he working for? In whose interest is it to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of the state, with its cultural heritage? Why didn't the Americans stop this?"
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"As I said, something is going terribly wrong in Baghdad and something is going on which demands that serious questions be asked of the United States government. Why, for example, did Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defence, claim last week that there was no widespread looting or destruction in Baghdad? His statement was a lie. But why did he make it? The Americans say they don't have enough troops to control the fires. This is also untrue."
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"So the people of Baghdad are asking who is behind the destruction of their cultural heritage: the looting of the archaeological treasures from the national museum; the burning of the entire Ottoman, Royal and State archives; the Koranic library; and the vast infrastructure of the nation we claim we are going to create for them. Why, they ask, do they still have no electricity and no water? In whose interest is it for Iraq to be deconstructed, divided, burnt, de-historied, destroyed? Why are they issued with orders for a curfew by their so-called liberators? And it's not just the people of Baghdad, but the Shias of the city of Najaf and of Nasiriyah - where 20,000 protested at America's first attempt to put together a puppet government on Wednesday - who are asking these questions."
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"It's easy for a reporter to predict doom, especially after a brutal war that lacked all international legitimacy. But catastrophe usually waits for optimists in the Middle East, especially for false optimists who invade oil-rich nations with ideological excuses and high-flown moral claims and accusations, such as weapons of mass destruction, which are still unproved. So I'll make an awful prediction. That America's war of 'liberation' is over. Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin. In other words, the real and frightening story starts now."
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