The war against Iraq and the people of Africa

global economic crisis and the continued militarisation of the planet.

Within the peace and social justice movement the occasion has been used as a means of mobilising citizens about the tremendous cost of more than US$2,2 trillion to the society. After accounting for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or maimed, these peace groups have been seeking to learn lessons of the cost of the war.

There has been no clear accounting of the cost of the war against the people of Iraq for Africa. From the moment of the build-up to the war, Africans were integrated and implicated into this global imperial attack on Iraq. It was also from Africa where there has been the clearest opposition, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa calling for George Bush and Tony Blair to be tried as war criminals.

The discussions of the impact of the war in Iraq is pertinent in Africa for another reason, many of the private military contractors that enjoyed lucrative contracts in Iraq are stoking the fires of instability in Africa to provide the employment opportunities for US private military contractors.

The non-governmental organisations from the USA who now work in tandem with the US Africa Command have remained silent in the face of the reorganised military thrust in Africa under the banner of defence, development and diplomacy. It is from the network of those same forces that have been discredited in Iraq where the US counter-terror experts are planning for the expansion of US military activities in Africa.

This week provides another opportunity to spell out the cost of this war on Africa and why increased mobilization must take place by the international peace forces to oppose the militarization of Africa under the guise of fighting a Global War on Terror.

Cost of the war project

March 19, the 10th anniversary of the war against the peoples of Iraq provided another opportunity for a thorough examination of the negative impact of this war on humanity. Most of the commentaries inside the United States have served to distort the full impact of this war on the world economy.

Very few citizens of the United States remember the original justification for this war, that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. These two justifications for the war were fabrications and 10 years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the peoples of Iraq are now less free than they were under the ‘dictatorship’ of Saddam Hussein. As if to underline the levels of insecurity 10 years after this freedom operation on March 19, 2013, there was a wave of bombings in Baghdad which killed more than 50 people.

A comprehensive analysis of the War has been compiled by the Cost of the War Project of Brown University. According to the first comprehensive analysis of direct and indirect human and economic costs of the war, this report outlined that the war has killed at least 190 000 people, including men and women in uniform, contractors and civilians and will cost the United States US$2,2 trillion — a figure that far exceeds the initial 2002 estimates by the US Office of Management and Budget of US$50 to US$60 billion. 0
Among the findings of this Report:

More than 70 percent of those who died of direct war violence in Iraq have been civilians — an estimated 134 000. This number does not account for indirect deaths due to increased vulnerability to disease or injury as a result of war-degraded conditions. That number is estimated to be several times higher.

The Iraq War will ultimately cost US taxpayers at least US$2,2 trillion. Because the Iraq war appropriations were funded by borrowing, cumulative interest through 2053 could amount to more than $3.9 trillion.

The US$2,2 trillion figure includes care for veterans who were injured in the war in Iraq, which will cost the United States almost US$500 billion through 2053.

The total of US service members killed in Iraq is 4 488. At least 3 400 US contractors have died as well, a number often under-reported.

Terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighbouring countries.

Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war. More than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country.

The US$60 billion spent on reconstruction for Iraq has not gone to rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, health care, and water treatment systems, but primarily to the military and police. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found massive fraud, waste, and abuse of reconstruction funds. These findings are of tremendous importance for Africa because there have been wars led by the US in Africa, especially in Somalia but there has been no similar study on the Costs of War in Africa.

Implications for Africa

The first and most important implication for Africa is the clear recognition that the justification for war in Iraq was based on clear fabrication. At every step of the way, these fabrications enmeshed African societies and diverted resources away from reconstruction and transformation of Africa. From the fabrication of the facts that Iraq was planning to import yellow cake from Niger in order to enhance its capabilities for the production of nuclear weapons to the dossier compiled by CIA on the links between Saddam and Al Qaeda – all of this proved to be part of the disinformation and lies of war.

Because the lies about what happened in Iraq cannot be agreed on, there is dispute on the exact war crimes committed by the United States and its allies in Iraq. The medical journal Lancet has written extensively on the adverse health consequences of the Iraq War (2003—11) and stated that the effects were profound. The authors of the study for Lancet stated that ‘at least 116 903 Iraqi non-combatants and more than 4 800 imperial military personnel died over the eight- year course. Many Iraqi civilians were injured or became ill because of damage to the health-supporting infrastructure of the country, and about five million were displaced. More than 31 000 US military personnel were injured and a substantial percentage of those deployed suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other neuropsychological disorders and their concomitant psychosocial problems.

Many family members of military personnel had psychological problems. Further review of the adverse health consequences of this war could help to reduce the adverse health consequences of, and help to prevent, future wars.’

This neutral language of Lancet could not, however, hide the truth of the full dimensions of the US-led attack on the peoples of Iraq. Prior to the war, this society was the most secular in the Middle East and the society with the most developed professional class. Western military intervention stoked sectarian religious violence and this sectarianism was compounded by the counter-insurgency strategies of the US war machine.

Very few of the commentaries from mainstream organs such as the Brookings Institute or the New York Times dwelt on the clear torture and debasing actions of the US military such as the siege of Fallujah where the US military turned a city of 350 000 people into a free-fire zone. The war and violence in Fallujah remains one of the low points of human conduct of warfare since the experiences of World War II because the US military bombed the citizens of Fallujah with white phosphorus shells. This kind of weaponry had been banned under international law.

In addition to the images of the use of banned materials in Fallujah were the images that came out of the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib. Up to the present the question of the systematic use of torture by the US military has now created an image of US military personnel as torturers. That Hollywood has been willing to celebrate this aspect of the US military overseas has only expanded the knowledge of this use of torture by US military and intelligence services.

Private military contractors

If torture and use of poisonous substances represented the second major lesson of the US campaign in Iraq, then the third major lesson was the use of private military contractors in war. By the time of the surge of General David Petraeus in 2007, the number of US-paid private contractors in Iraq exceeded that of American combat troops. In 2007 the Los Angeles Times reported that more than 180 000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — were working in Iraq under US contracts. This figure compared to the 160 000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq by the Department of Defence.

If the war in Afghanistan had become the experimental base for this kind of integration between private contractors and the US military, then Iraq was where the model was perfected.

Jeremy Scahill in his study of Blackwater and other contractors, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, drew attention to the reality that these contractors operated as a law unto themselves and that there was absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations.

These contractors were not subjected to military justice and after the killings at Nisoor Square, the real powers of these contractors was demonstrated in so far as their contracts remained with the State Department.