On the American side of the base the soldiers mock the Iraqis when they speak about them; a kind of apartheid prevails. On the US side, a sign on a shower door reads: "Iraqis are prohibited from using showers designated for Americans." A young officer tells me: "We keep talking about partnership and we want them to fight with us, but we can't share showers with them."
Rumsfeld's goal of handing over Iraq to the Iraqis is, of course, just pretense. The Neo-Cons have no intention of leaving Iraq, as long as they are connected to the reins of power. In fact, if you ever wondered WHY they disbanded the Iraq army, shortly after occupying Iraq, it was precisely because they wanted to sow chaos, in order to justify a lengthened stay for the "Coalition".
So - what games are the Neo-Cons up to, in order to ensure that they get to stay, permanent bases and all?
(The following is based upon various reports - links are supplied)
Sistani yesterday warned of the threat of genocidal war in Iraq. The battle lines are being drawn, for what would be "the mother of all Civil Wars" given the fallout for the rest of the world.
You'd hope the Neo-Con plan was more subtle, but "Divide & Conquer" seems to do just fine. Iraq is a sectarian country, there are enduring hostilities between tribes, regions and peoples - a mix of antagonism and strife that bubbles a frothy mix in the Neo-Con cauldron.
In the period following the election, these groups began partitioning the country among themselves for real. They had already done a good job of securing various ministries and sectors for themselves, but the job got serious once the tally was in. That's why it took so long to decide on the number of ministers from various factions, and on which ministries they would get. You know you're in trouble when it's the choice ministries (Oil, Finance, Defence) that go last, and Health and Human Services goes first.
The Iraq Defense Ministry is in the hands of the Kurds. That creates some difficulty - since the Kurds would like to get their hands on solid weaponry, they have the Turks breathing down their necks - but they don't want the Arab tribes to be all geared up.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry has squandered more than $300 million buying faulty and outdated military equipment in what appears to be a massive web of corruption that flourished under American-appointed supervisors for a year or longer, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said this week.
Iraqi funds lost
That story just scratches at the surface of the reasons behind the corruption. As stated above, the Kurds don't want their Arab Iraqis to come at them with state-of-the-art ordnance.
As the divisions between Shia, Sunni and Kurd take shape at government level, the effects are being felt in the military. Both Iraqi and American officers say that the Ministry of Defence in Baghdad has fallen under the control of Kurdish political parties, and that this now affects all decisions taken by the ministry.
One Iraqi officer also speaks of the influence of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the biggest Shia political party which now controls the National Assembly and the ministry of the interior. "The Badr Brigade is the biggest terrorist group and they run the interior ministry. The Kurds are running the MoD. The first thing they ask you when you want to become an officer is, 'Are you an Arab or a Kurd?' " Most Arab applicants, he maintains, are now being turned down for officer status.
In fact, the Kurds are seeding non-Kurdish units with their own officers, in a ploy to out-Saddam Saddam. They are exploiting the fact that decades of waiting for orders from above have robbed the Iraqi units of initiative, and that any order, as long as it comes from above, will be obeyed.
U.S. advisers work in groups called Mitts - Military Transition teams, in an honest effort to do the impossible. Lieutenant-Colonel Dan Kessler has his unexpected troubles:
Kessler and the Iraqi colonel were in the middle of planning a big security operation when, to their astonishment, a young Kurd with a colonel's insignia on his shoulders arrived and introduced himself as the new commander of 2nd Brigade. He had been appointed by General Babakir Zebari, the Iraqi army's Kurdish chief of staff back in the capital. The Americans had to intervene politely and send the officer, who had been in the army for just two years after serving in the Kurdish militia in the north, back to his base, escorted by his own platoon of Kurdish militiamen. "It is very frustrating, the sectarianism. Everyone has something for himself. The head of the staff is a Kurd, the commander of the division is a Kurd," says Kessler. "I always try to understand what everyone has for himself, so I can use it against them."
Bremer was always very coy about where the order to disband the 400.000 strong Iraqi army came from. Trails seem to indicate that order came from the Oval Office. Nonetheless, it's ensured that it will be a long, long time before the Iraqis can handle their own security. And that is just perfect to the Neo-Cons.
An American sergeant stepped out of his tank and went to inspect the first checkpoint, a small fortress of concrete blast walls, Hesco barriers and sandbags supplied by the Americans. One Iraqi soldier sat on a chair with his Kalashnikov on his lap. The rest were either fast asleep or in the back having a breakfast of scrambled eggs and tea. One man, when he saw American soldiers in the checkpoint, got dressed and went home, telling his soldiers: "As long as they are here, no one will attack you."
Yes, can you smell the hypocrisy? That crazed loon Rumsfeld standing before Congress or the U.S. public, speaking of how well the effort to "hand over Iraq to the Iraqis" is going, while his president states that "we will not stay in Iraq one day longer than necessary". And both these Keystone Cops are doing their absolute best to make certain that the stay is long. Probably until the place runs out of oil, and not one day longer.
The Guardian's reporter on the ground, Ghait-Abdul-Ahad, spent two weeks with a Mitt unit. And in his estimation, the U.S. will get really familiar with Mesopotamia in the decades ahead.
He followed the unit on an all-Iraqi mission to empty a village of insurgents, by detaining suspects in the middle of the night.
"Give me the maps," the captain in turn orders his lieutenant. "Which maps? No one gave me any maps, sir," answers the lieutenant. The major turns to the informant. "Do you know the houses?" "No, sir, I am not from this village," answers the informant from behind his black balaclava.
After a few minutes of deliberations, the informant comes up with a new plan: detain a man from the village and force him to be their guide. "Sir, they are all cousins here. Anyone in the village will know where everyone lives," the informant says.
They then proceed to crash through doors, whacking about villagers and rounding up the usual suspects.
I couldn't help laughing several times, when I read Ghait's article. The unit bangs into the courtyard of the first house in the village, wakes the man of the house, and starts their serious business:
"Where is Salman?" whispers the major, reading the first name on the list.
"Who is Salman?" replies the man, with a look of horror.
Then it wasn't funny any more. He is slapped about, until he recognizes one of the names on the list.
After few more slaps, the man recognises one of the names, and leads the force to one house where a "suspect" is found. The suspect's face is lit by a torch and two soldiers grab him, one by his neck, the other by his hands, and drag him into the street. As the suspect begs for mercy, his mother starts to wail, begging the soldiers to let her son go. "You are Iraqis like us. Why do you become like the Americans? He is our only son! In God's name, let him go!" she cries.
Yes, why do you become like the Americans, the bringers of liberty, peace and the ideals of blue-fingered Democracy...
Ghait is very clear, he writes that if the prerequisite for an American withdrawal is that the Iraqis should be able to control their own country, then the U.S. is in for a long stay.
Meanwhile, you had better get familiar with the name of Ziad Tareq Cattan. This man, a Kurd, made what can best be described as a benchmark setting career at the CPA, where he was hired as district councilman, but quickly rose to become the Defense Ministry's chief weapons buyer. ('quickly' being in a few months). His chief talent seems to be to spend a lot of money, without having much to show for it. Billmon writes something that could just as well fit this scandal: Instead of skimming some of the funds intended for real projects and diverting them to corrupt uses, the authors of this particular scandal appear to have taken a small fraction of the money intended for corruption and diverted it to legitimate projects.
Ziad Tareq Cattan has now been fired, due to misuse of "employer's funds".
Defense officials said he sometimes submitted scraps of paper as receipts for multimillion-dollar weapons deals and was notorious for charging a 10 percent "finder's fee" for the contracts he negotiated.
"There is no doubt he took advantage of opportunities," said John Noble, senior Western adviser to Iraq's defense ministry. "Certainly millions, possibly even hundreds of millions" of dollars were lost through Cattan's business ventures, Noble said.
One of these ventures involved the purchase of 30 years old Russian helicopters from Poland (after all, the Poles have to get something out of this, don't you think?). These helicopters were considered scrap. They were bought from Poland for a little over 5 million dollars, but the receipt Cattan handed in read just a smidgen over 100 million dollars, for those same helicopters. When Iraqis went to Poland to check out their purchase, they realized they had been tricked. Disgusted, they cancelled the purchase, and left Poland without getting the money that Cattan had paid up front.
Knight-Ridder comes through, as usual: Iraqi waste
While fueling the Neo-Con's longer ambition, to anchor the U.S. in the Middle East for the long term, this chaos is also making other parts of the world lively.
There have never been so many orders for luxury yachts from the well known wharfs that build them, for instance. In fact, the international luxury trade is speaking of the Baghdad Boom.
Next time you hear Rumsfeld speaking of how the U.S. will shortly be out of Iraq, think of this:
Looking on from the back of a pickup truck where he is sitting with his soldiers is a young officer (
Iraqi) in the strike platoon. A Shia Muslim formerly of the Iraqi special forces who fought the Desert Rats in Basra in 2003, he speaks of his experience in Iraq's new military.
"When you join the Iraqi army now, you have to know that you are a dead man. You should be sure that you will be killed," he said. "The only question is when and how: will you be assassinated, killed by a suicide bomber or an IED [improvised explosive device]?"
Pointing at the detainees, he says: "This is a sectarian war. Those Sunnis, they have the right to resist."
Then try guessing how long it will take.
An Iraq that breaks out in sectarian strife will be simpler to partition. The deals have already been cut in the oil-rich North, where the Kurds are dependent upon U.S. support to get the oil out in spite of Turkey's protests. And with a partitioned south, oil revenues from there will likewise be secured, if the Shi'as feel they are dependent upon being protected by U.S. firepower against the Sunnis.
Of course, having the Iraqi government get cozy with Iran may not play as well in Neo-Con central, and clearly explains why they are so bent upon "doing something about Iran."
Update [2005-7-19 12:8:27 by SteinL]: Just when you are hoping it can not get any worse, it gets worse. Two Sunni members of the Iraqi Constitution panel were assassinated today. The article is a good illustration of the extensive sectarian strife plaguing Iraq.
NYTimes article
