*Sami Radmadani
(Researcher, author and commentator)
**Carol Turner
(Life-long peace campaigner)
***Dr Saad Kindeel
(Former diplomat, Engineer)
Twenty years ago Iraq was targeted by an American-led military coalition, ending the era of the Ba’th Party and the rule of Saddam Hussain. It was one of most controversial military campaigns in modern times that had sown the seeds of a wave of terrorism not seen before. Today, Iraq is still paying a hefty price for that most destructive military campaign in terms of stability, social and political cohesion and a humbled regional political role. From the rubble of that terrible war emerged most unpleasant phenomena; instability, fragmentation, corruption and terrorism. Regionally, dictatorship became entrenched, paving the way to new fault lines, with Israel reaping the fruit as the regimes rushed to sign peace treaties with Tel Aviv. Where is Iraq heading? What is the price of democracy? And how significant has Iraq become to the Arab collective Action?
Tuesday 7th March 2023
Sami Ramadani: One thing I would like to start with is to say that although we are here to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq I would like to start by saying that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has not ended. Iraq is still a semi occupied country, a semi independent country. The United States still exercises massive power within the country. They rely not only on their military forces which are still present in Iraq along with some NATO forces.
Because they occupied Iraq and invaded it they created a number of conditions for the continuation of their influence and power within the country. So aside from their military presence they have established quite powerful roots within chiefly in term of their relations and dominance over certain political forces within Iraq. Chief among these forces and influential political forces within the country is the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Barzani. He exercises massive influence on politics in Iraq.
I will explain later the role of that force within the country, its relations with Israel. It is a very important force since the occupation of Iraq. They also established secret militias in the north western part of Iraq. The US embassy is still the largest in the world. The new US ambassador within seven to eight weeks of the new prime minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani they appointed and she also had 45 meetings with various ministers in Iraq. Ten of the meetings at the last count were with the new prime minister, three or four meetings with the finance minister, three or four meetings with the president and the vice president, all the key ministries and the Iraqi Central Bank. So you can see the role of the US embassy in terms of dictating what should and should not happen within the country.
Because the government led by Sudani is a bit different in terms of its political orientation from the previous prime minister Khademi who was more or less working with the USA hand in glove in Iraq. So they are a bit nervous as to the orientation of the government. Again I can comment on that a bit later.
But to go back to my point about the United States dominating the scene a key element of their control is over the Iraqi economy. All Iraqi oil sales still go through the Federal Bank. This is a remnant from the 1991 and the imposition of sanctions on Iraq when the Security Council decided to take over Iraqi oil exports and only give enough Iraq enough for food to prevent starvation in the country.
This is a remnant of that policy although the Security Council has lifted the condition on Iraq Iraq is still doing that. The US holds $50 – 60 billion of reserves of Iraqi dollars as well as the current account of Iraqi petrol dollars and two years ago the Federal Bank decided that in terms of its trade relations any dollar that leaves Iraq must be electronically monitored. That was two years ago under Khademi’s regime. But they did not apply it. As soon as this new government came to power a couple of months ago they imposed this condition and this immediately created a dollar crisis with prices hitting the roof. Obviously that hit the poorer sections of the population really badly.
The government tried to salvage the situation . They managed to stabilise the Iraqi dinar through certain measures. The new government is treading a very fine line. They are too scared to clash with the United States over the economy and over the presence of US forces in the country. If you remember a few years ago in 2019 Abdul Madhi’s government passed a motion to evict the foreign forces including US forces. Obviously the United States refused to abide and the government of Khademi, the previous government to this one, allowed them to stay. This government is trying to negotiate an agreement whereby combat forces will not remain in the country and they will only keep so-called trainers and people who train on US equipment in the country. This is obviously a compromise. This government wants to be independent but it is handicapped by the US presence and by economic levers over its policies. This is quite a tricky situation and the US never ceases to threaten the country.
As soon as this new prime minister Sudani actually came to power the US embassy issued a statement saying they hoped this new government will follow human rights measures and will also fight corruption. Why would the US embassy issue such a statement?
But a significant statement was that there will be trouble in the streets like what happened to Abdul Mahdi’s government. And this is an important point to raise. How the US embassy through its occupation and its presence has become very powerful.
There was this massive uprising in 2019 with people demanding jobs. Students and hundreds of people went into the streets. But quickly the US embassy came to the fore very quickly through non-governmental organisations, so called human rights organisations and obviously some Iraqi political forces who have links with the embassy. They quickly took over this uprising and they dictated the main slogans.
You can see it on social media. There are a number of Iraqi characters, including a famous comedian Ahmed Al Bashir who have millions of followers on Twitter and face book accounts. Every time they want to change the slogan in the streets all these pro American social media voices would unify their voices and dictate what sort of slogans should be raised in the streets. Quickly within weeks they really took over.
Spontaneous uprisings are very common in the streets but if there is no cohesive organisation which leads such uprisings then other forces do come in and the US is the best place in that sense as the most organised and the most materially present force that can come and mobilise its supporters and its voices.
Their control over the media is very powerful. Ninety percent of Iraqi tv stations are US line dominated so the propaganda machine is powerful. So instead of talking about our independence, Iraqi independence, from the United States they are constantly taking about Iran as if it is Iranian forces that are in the country. Or billions of dollars are sitting in Iran rather than in New York in the federal bank.
So they have very powerful levers within the country and it is very difficult to fight them without big mobilisation in the country. If this government really wants to become independent they have to rely much more on the people. They have to explain what they are doing? Why is the dollar still residing in the federal bank? When is Iraq going to withdraw these dollars? When is Iraq going to deal with other countries in different currencies.
This government made a small move. They allowed some banks to trade with China using Chinese currency – not dollars. So this was regarded as extremism. It was a small step. It only involved five Iraqi banks that have relations with China because relations with China became a huge point of contention between Iraq and the United States.
Abdul Mahdi resigned in 2020. That government made a massive visit to China. The prime minister and his entire cabinet signed numerous strategic agreements for China to build Iraq’s infrastructure in return for oil. No cash exchange. So oil sold in the international market. All the money from those oil sales will go to an agreed bank established between China and Iraq.
Trump phoned the prime minister, Pompidou phoned the prime minister, they issued so many threats. The country was mobilised to say that China is going to colonise Iraq. It was a terrifying campaign. They succeeded in overthrowing it. Khademi’s government and they froze the China agreement. General Electric dominated the Iraqi electricity scene. Iraq gave them billions of dollars and there is still no electricity to speak of in the country. There are lots of power cuts.
So General Electric went and brought Siemens from Germany and signed a massive deal with it and scrapped the General Electric deal. Again Trump and Pompidou started threatening Abdul Mahdi about the Siemens agreement. He took some measures but he did not mobilise the masses. He did not rely on the people. He took all these steps that terrified the US but there were no building materials within the country so he was isolated.
One of the aims of the United States in Iraq apart from controlling Iraq for what it is as a strategic country with lots of resources is that they wanted to use Iraq as a base against Iran -literally a military and a terrorist base and there are armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan that infiltrate into Iran and carry out military operations. They became quite active during the recent demonstrations in Iran. One of these terrorist groups is a Kurdish force that has close ties with Barzani, with the United States and Israel and this is quite a significant problem within Iraq because Iran occasionally bombs their bases inside Iraqi Kurdistan so this is creating all manner of tensions and problems.
They were also pushing Iraq to deal with Israel. This has collapsed because there was such a massive outcry in the country. Even the pro Israelis said we cannot deal with this. I did not go into the death and destruction because I know you know what they did to Iraq. Depleted uranium in the country is still a factor in cancer cases, unemployment is massive, poverty has risen enormously, health conditions are very bad, housing is really terrible, the agriculture has been decimated with little proper investment.
Industry has been crippled. There were 350 quite big industrial establishments in Iraq. They produced all manner of domestic goods. And the first thing Paul Bremmer did was to freeze their activities. He created three columns. One is to be sold, one is to be closed and one is to be mothballed. None of them is to go immediately into production. He clipped private Iraqi industry not the state sector.
I will stop now as I have to abide by the chair.
Carol Turner: Thank you for inviting me. It was suggested that I might take as the theme of my talk was the anti war movement right? The answer is yes and that would be the end of my talk. What more is there to say?
What I am going to do is to have a brief look at Iraq. But I also want to look at what is happening today in particular how NATO has developed its propaganda and its war techniques in relation to what is going on. I was particularly interested to hear Sami talking about the use of social media and American propaganda in Iraq and we can see it in lots of other places.
I have been involved in CND and Stop the War and international solidarity campaigns since the 1980s and I got involved in Iraq in 1990 when the United Nations got together to condemn the invasion of Kuwait and later set a date for a war which took place in February 1991.
Bruce Kent the leader of CND who recently died called a meeting of British politicians, trade unionists and campaigning organisations to found the committee to stop the war in the Gulf. We held our first meeting not far from here and we marched to Hyde Park where Tony Benn and various other people spoke.
At the time there was very little knowledge among the British people about what was happening. By the time the war broke out we had a demonstration that was substantial with 50,000 people. I am very proud because I was involved in organising it. I remember sitting in front of the television the night the bombing began watching parts of Baghdad burning and watching the news and seeing an image which is still in my mind. It was a man emerging from an air raid shelter in Baghdad carrying a dead child in his arms and calling on Allah. And you did not need to be an Arabic speaker to imagine the sorts of things he was saying. The United States, Britain and NATO said they bombed a chemical making factory.
Another memory which sticks very much in my mind was at the end of the war when the surrendering Iraqi army was moving from the south up the country and US planes strafed the forces and the Guardian was one of the few newspapers brave enough to publish those horrendous photos; a burned out tank and a dead Iraqi soldier.
The reason I mention the images is because I want to speak about how NATO has subsequently developed. When the war in 2003 broke out I think public opinion in Britain and elsewhere in North America and in Europe was familiar with what had happened. Since we had that bombing in 1991 and the no fly zone and the cancers that were caused by depleted uranium. And for ten years Iraq had been dropping into our news. I think the British public was more aware. And Stop the War two years old organised one of the biggest demonstrations if the not the biggest demonstration Britain has ever seen. But it was still not enough.
What I would like to talk about is the way in which NATO learned about propaganda. When the bombing began in February 1991 the first week to ten days the news media in Britain, in West Europe and North America was seeing the devastated infrastructure, peoples houses and neighbourhoods bombed and destroyed.
There was a point at which public opinion began to shift because bodies were seen on the screen. And then NATO got hold of the propaganda and realised that the opponents of the war were getting a bit of a propaganda coup themselves watching the photographs. The images became more controlled and the propaganda became more massaged. I am sure that people are aware of that.
The next NATO interventions in the 1990s were two interventions in the war in the former Yugoslavia. There was the bombing of Bosnia Herzogovina and later Serbia. And the difference in propaganda was immense. One of the things and I would say that is true in 2003 in Afghanistan. One of the things that NATO has learned and implemented was that rather than allowing the journalists to roam free as they wish in the country it provided ‘services’ – services in the wrong word – it provided a facility for journalists to become imbedded with the occupying military.
So even the journalists who were sympathetic to the population and were taking some distance from the American and British actions were actually fed the news of what was happening in front of them via the occupying military. That was very effective indeed.
I hope you will forgive me if I go off the topic of Iraq and the Middle East to what is happening today. But just before I do I will add a couple of words of my own. I am probably the person in the audience who is the least knowledgeable about Iraq but in successfully overturning Saddam Hussein’s regime and in destroying the country and brutalising the people the United States created possibly deliberately and consciously a situation whereby it could hand over to surrogate nations, surrogate states the control and safe handling of the Middle East.
So its attempted to bring together some of the Gulf states with Israel to attempt to broker some arrangements and agreements. It stood by while Syria was attacked and destroyed and Libya was attacked and destroyed. It has broken the pool of resistance to Western imperialism and is successfully isolating Iran. And it is doing that for a particular reason and the reason is for America and Nato to turn the attention away from the Middle East and towards China and the countries around it.
It is doing that relatively effectively. There was a small hiccup, forgive me for describing it in a somewhat light hearted way but there is a small hiccup when it comes to Ukraine. The danger of the situation there is the fact that it is two nuclear states fighting, one fighting a war and the other using Ukraine as a surrogate for its own actions.We have passed the point where the USA and NATO want Ukraine to be a base on the border with Russia from which to control things in future.
Having said that let me return to the propaganda. Our media (North American and European) is so full of the evils of Putin and the war crimes of Russia that we simply are not getting the true story. I am not here to support Russia but I think the very obvious point is that all countries commit war crimes. We have heard very much about what Russia is doing but we have not heard very much about how the USA and Britain are facilitating war crimes by the Ukranian forces.
As a member of CND I am very aware of the dangers and the dangers of accidents. At the end of August last year Ukranian forces attacked an area next to the biggest nuclear civil power plant in the whole of Europe. They were only able to do that with the active support of the United States because they were using equipment provided by the United States which couldn’t be used without US intelligence inter connectivity and so forth. Apart from a few honourable journalists very little has been said. It is possible that you are not even aware of the incident I am describing.
The final point with regard to the Ukraine and what is happening today is social media. The University of Adelaide in Australia did a study. It was the spring of last year. They looked at over five million tweets and they focused on anti- Russian propaganda and followed and analysed it. What they found was that 85 percent of anti Russian propaganda which was reaching us and our smart phones came from controlled twitter accounts that just pump out empty publicity.
What is my point? NATO has always been a nuclear first strike state. It has always said that in war time it will in extremis use nuclear weapons and it will strike first. It is changing and it is not changing for the better. From the 1950s onwards efforts to change that position of NATO were entirely unsuccessful.
Each year the United States produced a series of security documents in which it states what its is strategy is. A few years ago the United States changed its policy on the use of nuclear weapons. What it is saying is that in certain cases if there was a non nuclear conflict the United States would be prepared to use its nuclear weapons. That was followed by Britain which now has a similar clause. The United States and Britain have returned to the late 80s and early 90s period and have attempted to develop what they call low yield usable battle field nuclear weapons.
The idea is that the fallout area that the nuclear weapon covers in these mini nukes will be so small as to make them containable. There have only been two nuclear bombs ever used dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Both of those weapons would qualify as low key nuclear weapons.
You mentioned the cancers and issues that are still ongoing in Iraq. The fourth generation of Japanese people in and around those areas are still suffering today from health threats. So my message is not a nice one or a friendly one. It is be very afraid. Be aware of the degree in which NATO is involved both militarily and on the propaganda side and for God sake keep on campaigning.
Dr Saad Kindeel: What I will try to do is to give a critical view of Iraq during the past twenty years since the massive change in 2003. Of course the change of 2003 is the start of the long term process of political transformation, social transformation and the economic transformation.
This process of transformation brought lots of challenges from our point of view and at the end of 20 years we can see some issues and some successes and some failures. This is what I will try to highlight in this critical view. The successes and the failures.
The main challenges: the first one is what we do with the remnants of the Baath Party whose numbesr has reached one million officially. This is not necessarily the real number. The American occupation engaged in what they call deBathification which is mainly trying to isolate this element out of political and social sight.
Of course from our point of view there were rules to apply and the principals of justice in regard to those people who have committed crimes in the previous regime to establish justice and to also compensate the victims. There were calls to have a smooth transition towards democratization towards the political change and that needs to apply to transitional justice rather than long haul justice so that we avoid instability with regard to a large number of Baath Party members.
The other challenge is to maintain services. There were calls for sectarian flare up between Shias and Sunnis and the previous regime which relied more on the Sunnis and the Shias and the Kurds who came together to overthrow the regime and are now trying to re establish themselves. That has produced new instability and friction on such a level that it was important to maintain the social fabric and keep the civil peace.
There were also challenges to national unity. The Kurds have already got autonomy and from 1991 until 2003 they were controlling their area and they were very much hopeful that they would continue this autonomy which would lead to independence. This was their aspiration.
If the Kurds could achieve this the Sunnis would also be encouraged to go in this direction and there were so many calls within the Shias to have Shia autonomy in the south and this would lead to more friction on the social level and more disintegration of the political unity of Iraq.
Other challenges are maintaining a productive economy. The American occupation destroyed the whole basis of the collective economy, the infrastructure has been destroyed altogether and all productive units have been stopped or dismantled. There is now a consumer economy 97 percent of which relies on oil sales and the private sector is just inactive. About six million people – more than 50 percent of the work force – are government employees which is the highest figure in the world. That is again the challenge that we need to face. We need to reshape the economy so that it is more productive and less reliant on oil.
Another challenge is terrorism. Iraqi was facing terrorism before the American occupation but the strategy of the American occupation was to open the borders which acted as a magnet to attract terrorist groups so they could deal with them on Iraqi ground rather than dealing with them on American ground which meant that the Iraqi people would pay the price. These are the main challenges that we are facing.
If I move to the successes where we have moved forward the main achievement was to draw up the Iraqi constitution by the Iraqi people and by a committee which was voted for by the Iraqi people. That was the requirement of Ayatollah Sistani. It was contrary to the way the governor Paul Bremmer wanted to do it in a way similar to the American election campaigns. He wanted to appointed different groups in various provinces and from those groups would come some representatives in a central committee which would be given the responsibility of writing the constitution.
Ayatollah Sistani threatened to issue a fatwa against this constitution if it was written in this way and he called for the constitution to be written by elected Iraqi people and that is what happened. And that was very important to unify the Iraqi people and to provide a basis for the political process that ensured.
With the civil peace again there were many successes to bring together all the components of Iraqi society the two main nationalities, the Kurds and the Arabs and also two main sects the Sunnis and the Shias as well as Iraqi multi ethnic Muslims and Christians and Yezidis and other religious groups.
I will highlight that when the leader of Al Qaeda an investigation of his paper work that was seized showed that he was issuing a call to his people that without inflaming the flare up between the Sunnis and the Shias Al Qaeda would have no basis to work from in Iraq and they should get out of Iraq.
We have achieved a peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box six times and that has shown a lot of stability and provided direction for the political process to move in the direction of democratization. I claim that democracy is not yet established in Iraq and there is a lot more to do. We still need to sort out democratic institutions like the Commission of Elections like having political parties that are competing based on an agenda rather than competing as is the case now on ethnic grounds.
Other issues in which we failed is corruption. I have to admit that corruption has become widespread in all sectors of the government and you all heard in the media in the last maybe one or two years there were massive calls to deal with the corruption issue.
The economy is still a consumer economy. We are still 97 percent reliant on oil There has been no progress at in developing that productive economy. Every year more and more people are appointed as government employees which is having a negative effect on the economy.
Another issue that is related to the democratization process is that the government although it is coming through elections is really not representing the public will. Iraq is more controlled by the state rather than the actual government. The government is more answerable to the parties rather than to the people so there are a lot or reforms that need to be made. I will stop here and if there are any more details we can discuss them at question time
*Sami Ramadani is a senior lecturer in sociology at London Metropolitan University. Sami was born in Iraq and became an exile from Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1969, as a result of his political activities in support of democracy and socialism. He opposed the sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people (1991-2003) and the invasion of Iraq (2003). He is active in the movement to end the US-led occupation. He is a member of the steering committee of Stop the War Coalition.
**Carol Turner is a long-time peace campaigner, a member of Stop the War Coalition’s National Officer Group, and author of Corbyn and Trident: Labour’s Continuing Controversy. Carol is co-chair of London Region CND. She is a directly elected member of CND’s National Council and part of the International Advisory Group. She is active in ideological and political debates and appears on TV shows, lectures and conferences.
***Dr Saad AW Jawad Kindeel was born in 1955 in Kerbela, Iraq. After 2003 he became Ambassador of Iraq to several countries: Iran, South Africa, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Before that he had held several posts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad. He was also a Member of Parliament. In the UK he was senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and The Technology Polytechnic. He worked at Lucas CAV) Ltd. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Brunel University and BSc from University of Newcastle.
