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Haifa Zangana
IT goes without saying that very little space has been available in the media, whether Arabic or international, for Iraqi voices that challenge the dominant rhetoric about the situation in Iraq.Under the dark shadow of US “War on Terror”, the crimes and massacres of 11 years of Iraq invasion, occupation, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the daily oppression carried out by a sectarian kleptomaniac regime, have been covered up, not just by a garb of democracy but also by the media’s silence coined the “Iraq fatigue”, only to be looked at, in the last few weeks, to be reduced yet to a fight against terrorist organisation called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS), supported by (take your pick) either one or all the following countries, no matter how bizarre the notion is: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel not forgetting Turkey.
Once again, as in 2003 feverish drumming up for war, desperate Iraqis who are trying to defend themselves against a ruthless regime that uses the pretext of combating terrorism as a ploy to silence critical voices have been sidelined, not to be heard and not to be seen.
In the Arab countries, joining the choir of exaggerating the role of ISIS in Iraq and elsewhere became the bleach to clean the bloody hands of those responsible of invading, occupying and laying the fertile ground for endless acts of terrorism including state terrorism.
Today, thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes. So far this year, an estimated 1,2 million Iraqis have been displaced by fighting, including from Anbar and Ninewa, west and Northern governorates. Carrying out air strikes in Mosul and Tikrit as well as extra judicial executions of detainees by the regime’s forces and militias in Tal ‘Afar, Mosul and Ba’quba in northern Iraq have raised fears of a large scale vengeful attacks leading to a large scale humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, an international competition is on the way between US, Russia and Iran to supply the regime with weapons. Russia has already sent five Sukhoi fighter jets, the first of 25 war planes expected to be delivered soon, the US has sent Special Forces, Apache attack helicopters and drones as part of the top up in US military presence, and the fact that Iraq has been, for many years now, a battlefield to settle scores on nuclear programme between US and Iran will only lead to an endless bloodshed reaching far beyond the region where the politically correct whispers about the Maliki regime’s “violations of human rights” in annual governments’ reports, are seen as adding salt to injuries.
In this hysterical atmosphere of supplying arms while tainting everything happening in Iraq by ISIS, which is by no mean comparable to the nearly one million strong army and security forces and especially to the Special Forces (inherited from the occupation, trained by the US and now attached directly to Maliki’s office), it is worth remembering how the current eruption of fighting began.
It began with a few hundred people demonstrating in both Anbar and Nineveh, in December 2012, at the news of rape of women detainees at the hands of the Iraqi security forces under Maliki’s command as Commander in Chief.
Within few days the protests morphed into a genuine mass movement and a vigil which lasted for over a year. The demand for the release of 4 500 women detainees, some of whom have been tortured, raped or threatened with rape gained a wide support, igniting a gradual escalation.
Other demands focused on release of prisoners and the repeal of section 4 in the Terrorism Act which allows the arrest of anyone without a warrant and without submitting him/her to courts and to abolish or suspend the Justice and Accountability Law which have been used to target political dissidents labelling them Ba’athist.
To arm the current regime by any country is a crime against Iraqi people. The last 11 years have proved the total failure of US policy in Iraq, and the world is not safer than what it used to be before the invasion. Compare the US list of terrorist organisations acting in Iraq in 2003 with its list now to measure the success of its policy.
Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi novelist, artist and activist. This article is reproduced from Counterpunch
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