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Zondag, 8 Juni, 2008

Door Harry Cohen | De Britten in Basra zijn impopulair en meestal ondoeltreffend. Het laatste overzicht van Basra ingezetenen langs BBC Newsnight wees erop dat 86 percenten geloven de Britse troepen een negatief effect op de Iraakse provincie sinds 2003 hebben gehad. Vond half meer dan de troepenaanwezigheid eigenlijk het algemene niveau van militiegeweld in de loop van de afgelopen vier jaar had verhoogd. Twaalf percenten geloofden dat de Britse troepen geen verschil bij allen hadden gemaakt. Slechts twee percenten geloofden de Britse troepen een positief effect hadden gehad. En 83 percenten zeiden zij Britse troepen Irak wilden zonder uitstel verlaten. Een nauwelijks bellende goedkeuring van de Britse rol, die aan grote kosten, het omvatten wordt uitgevoerd van veel leven.

Spoedig na het worden Eerste Minister, beloofde Gordon Brown om Britse troepen in Irak van 4.500 tot 2.500 te verminderen. Voor 28 April, verliet de Secretaresse van de Defensie Des Browne dat belofte in het parlement.

De troepen waren ook verondersteld om niet meer in de verrichtingen van dag tot dag in de provincie worden geïmpliceerda en beperkten tot hun Basra luchthavenbasis. Die impliciete niet-overeenkomst is ondermijnd, aangezien de troepen steun aan de krachten van de Iraakse overheid in hun offensief tegen de krachten van Moqtadr al Sadr gaven.

Patrick niet-ingebed Cockburn, de goed-geëerbiedigder Onafhankelijke, journalist in Irak, wees erop dat de verkiezingen in ongeveer zes maanden tijd gepast zijn en de Sjiïten van de factie van Eerste Maliki van de Minister proberen om voordeel over de populaire Sjiïtische factie van al Sadr te bereiken. Zij gebruiken kracht om dit te doen en in de Britten in Basra te willen trekken.

De V.S. bederven ook voor een strijd. Zij zijn in het midden van hun schommeling `' in troepenaantallen. Zeer zinnig, berekende al Sadr hij hen kon uit wachten en cease-fire riep. Hij breidde het uit toen. De V.S. zouden aan goad van hem in een strijd houden en gebruiken de krachten Maliki om het te doen. De troepen van de V.S. hebben zich in het Basra gebied bewogen en goaded Britse krachten in ook het deelnemen gehad. De zwakke Britse overheid heeft in deze druk, maar uitgehold zelfs als voor kort terwijl zij één factie over een andere steunen, zij grotendeels ondoeltreffend zullen blijven.

Of course, the US has no respect for any of the Shias, or Sunnis either, and an understandable reading of their strategy since they replaced the secular government of Iraq with a religious-based Shia one, is to keep them at each others throats. The factions are well prepared to change alliances, at least temporarily according to circumstances. So the Sunnis too have quietened their opposition to the US.

Also perhaps it is unfair to call the British completely ineffective. In March, in Kuwait, the Basra Development Commission was launched. This is a ‘joint initiative’ of the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Barham Saleh, and British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. At the launch the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Wa’ili said ‘Basra welcomes private sector investors’. As Basra province holds 80 per cent of Iraq’s oil reserves and is home to the country’s only deep sea port and trade routes to the Gulf, the private sector is likely to be primarily US or US allies and not Iraqi. The British helped with the drafting of the new oil law, and with this commission are moving along the take over of Iraq’s assets and the long-term expropriation of massive profits from them. In this way we are doing our bit for our US allies.

Britain’s Labour government, in effect, has one last chance to get out with a modicum of reason. The United Nations mandate, which currently authorises the US and British presence in Iraq, runs out at the end of this year. That mandate does not really legitimise the occupation as the US and Britain were charged with ensuring the security of the Iraqi people and facilitating humanitarian aid and economic investment. The coalition has totally failed on both counts. The commitment to leave should be required of the Labour government at every opportunity, and not just by the end of the year. Our presence serves no national or international interest. We do not want to fight for one side in a civil war or to try to give advantage to one side in Iraqi elections. Those purposes are not worth the life or health of another British soldier.

However the US has no intention of leaving when their UN mandate runs out. They are already negotiating a bilateral contract with their puppet, dependent government in Baghdad, to ‘supply security’. The US will, in effect, turn itself into a mercenary army of occupation. They will be securing their pay out by robbing Iraq of its resources. No wonder Republican presidential candidate John McCain, in answering a question about whether US troops would be in Iraq for 50 years, replied ‘make it a hundred’.

Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, recently published his new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The true cost of the Iraq conflict. At a meeting in Parliament he described it as a ‘war totally financed on the credit card’. It has been a factor in the current global economic crisis, he said. The high price of oil also owes its genesis to the Iraq war and its aftermath. The US has created this crisis and is calculating it will, over time, be in a powerful position by grabbing control of Iraq’s oil. This, though, is not just illegal by any recognised standard, but a formula for never-ending conflict in Iraq as its people fight a nationalist war of liberation.

Iraqis are already victims. As well as the dead and maimed, there are approximately two million widows with very little economic means, according to one respected charity. The four million refugees are a scandal the west studiously ignores. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has just published its report Five Years Later: a Hidden Crisis. In their letter to MPs the IRC state ‘The US led invasion of Iraq five years ago and its violent aftermath have produced one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time, yet the “Coalition of the Willing” has been mostly unwilling to own up to it and provide aid for the innocent bystanders’. It is of fundamental importance to get this matter discussed in parliament.

See More:Iraq Money USA News 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 1:41 am and is filed under Business News, War & Terrorism News, General . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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