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Volume IV,  Number 21              June 27 - July  3, 2004            Quezon City, Philippines


 





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Analysis

‘Handover’ Will Tighten U.S. Grip on Iraq

If there is any “handover” to speak of, it is not the “democratic transition” from “years of tyranny” that the June 30 event is supposed to symbolize. Rather, it is the legitimization of the economic hegemony that the United States has established in Iraq following the invasion, particularly the privatization of oil and other strategic industries from state management to private foreign multinational control. 

By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat.com

After being exposed as the biggest hoax in decades, George W. Bush’s justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq is once again plugging yet another lie: the “handover” of “full sovereignty” to the Iraqi people on June 30. The “handover,” touted by Bush apologists as an act of a “benevolent power,” is taking place at a time when Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-UK colonial occupation is heating up and the U.S. president’s political future is dimmed by growing domestic and international outrage over the “war on terror.”

If there is any “handover” to speak of, it is not the “democratic transition” from “years of tyranny” that the June 30 event is supposed to symbolize. Rather, it is the legitimization of the economic hegemony that the United States has established in Iraq following the invasion particularly the privatization of oil and other strategic industries from state management to private foreign multinational control. The June 30

Iraqi resistance fighters launched coordinated attacks last June 24 in the cities of Baquba, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad.

“handover” will move forward the grand American design to install the same imperialist template in the rest of the Middle East under the pretext of fighting terrorism and popularizing democratic rule.

It is ironic that the power that launched a barbaric, preemptive war against an independent state the pretext for which (to dismantle weapons of mass destruction) has been unmasked as a big fraud is the same power that has now drafted the UN Security Council (SC) paving the way for the sovereignty “handover.” The UN Council Resolution 1546 crafted by the U.S. permanent delegation and approved by the SC on June 8 calls for turning over the “political authority” of the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the Iraqi interim government on June 30 as well as the drafting of a permanent constitution, the forming of a federal government and the holding of elections by Dec. 31, 2005.

International anti-war advocates, among them Austrian Prof. Hans Koechler who was in the Philippines recently, agree however that there is no “political authority” that will be handed over by the U.S. occupation forces. Although U.S. and British forces, backed by a “multinational force,” have deployed about 150,000 men and the most lethal weaponry for the colonial occupation of Iraq they have established no significant military foothold throughout the country. The fact that the U.S.-commanded multinational forces are pinned down by Iraqi resistance fighters in major parts of the country and that - except for the puppet authorities American proconsul Paul Bremer had appointed to power - most Iraqis want the foreign occupiers out of their country, belie the claim of “political authority.”

International law

The preemptive and unilateral invasion itself was seen as illegal given the fact that the full-scale military operation was offensive (Iraq was never a threat to the United States, many Americans now believe) and violated international law particularly the UN Charter itself. The act robbed the Iraqis, who were already suffering from more than 10 years of bombardment and economic sanctions, of their own sovereignty. It further violated international humanitarian law and other war covenants by waging a war of genocide and torturing Iraqi prisoners while insisting that U.S. forces are immune from any prosecution.

So what did Bush and his fellow conspirators, financial oligarchs and the military-industrial complex seek to achieve in Resolution 1546?

The Council resolution gave the veneer of legitimacy that the architects of the Iraq invasion now hanker to support their indefinite military occupation as well as to support the puppet interim government that they set up and the neoliberal economic blueprint that they began to implement last year.

The resolution itself sets no deadline for the pullout of the U.S.-led multinational force. In the absence of any clear exit strategy, the American and British occupation forces can now use the pretext of defending the “democratic gains” against the Iraqi resistance threat – which the resolution notes – to justify their continued stay. The U.S.-drafted resolution is silent on how to treat the 14 military bases that the Americans are building inside Iraq which, according to Pentagon, will be used for anti-terrorist operations in the entire Middle East and beyond.

Continued political hegemony

While indeed the CPA “authority” will be dissolved on June 30, the U.S. government will continue to exercise political hegemony through the Iraqi interim government that it has installed. Appointed by Bremer, the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is a former asset of the CIA and the British intelligence agency, MI6. The U.S. hold on the interim government will give the Americans the leverage in making sure that the permanent constitution that will be drafted and, possibly, the new government that will be elected are both compatible with U.S. vital interests in the years to come.

Assured of both military and political domination in Iraq, the Americans have now all the liberty to lay out the neoliberal economic blueprint that, incidentally, was at the back of the invasion of Iraq. Drafted by the giant consultancy firm Bearing Point (which had Bremer as its chief executive officer) and approved by the U.S. Treasury Department and USAID, the U.S. economic blueprint guarantees the imperialist control of Iraq’s oil industry – the second biggest in the world after Saudi Arabia – as well as of other industries and enterprises that, under Saddam Hussein, used to be managed by the state and had guaranteed a model social welfare program for the Iraqi people.

As a whole, the U.S. economic program, which will be assisted by the World Bank and IMF, seeks to overhaul the Iraqi economy through trade liberalization, privatization and deregulation. This is the same template that led to the devastation of the economies of the former Soviet Union republics, the Balkan countries, South America and many other countries in the Third World including the Philippines.

Another insidious plan

The bigger question, however, is whether the immediate and long-term colonial objectives of the American Empire in Iraq will bear fruit given the stiff local armed resistance the foreign powers are now confronted with. This is where another insidious plan of the Americans comes in: to train, organize and equip a new puppet military force that will be used as a cannon fodder against the resistance guerrillas. The new surrogate army will be another key to ensuring U.S. hegemony in Iraq so that even if the puppet government it maintains may turn out to be unreliable later U.S. imperialism can always count on its surrogate army to protect its political, economic and military interests.

As old-time imperialists, the American power holders can always devise new strategies and deceptions so that even if they are confronted with new realities and problems they can always assert their vital interests in the end. The June 30 event is just a replication of the same technique used by imperialist powers during the past century to make their colonial and neo-colonial footholds more acceptable and to soften local resistance. To the anti-war activists and those advocating reforms for the UN, there should be no surprise at all that U.S. imperialism can evade charges of “unilateralism” and preemptive power by going back to the UN and using it to win international legitimacy that it now desperately needs.

No, the real “handover” will not happen this June 30. It will happen when the whole Iraqi people, backed by a strong international solidarity, would have won back their sovereignty that was robbed from them by the invading forces. Bulatlat.com

*This article was based on the author’s notes he presented in a June 18 forum on the “The U.S. Handover of Sovereignty in Iraq: Implications, Problems and Prospects.”Organized by Bayan, the forum was held at Balai Kalinaw, University of the Philippines, Diliman campus, Quezon City. The other speaker was Dr. Hans Koechler, president of the Vienna-based International Progress Organization and a noted UN reform advocate. The author also talked on the same topic in the popular radio program, “Ngayon na Bayan,” over DZRJ June 24.

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