| Is present-day Iraq better off than Saddam’s Iraq? | Send to a friend |
| Monday, 16 August 2010 09:55 |
 Addressing the question constituting the heading under perspective today, one needs not go far. Just get hold of the remote control of your TV set and surf the station that you think will provide you with latest news on Iraq.You have CNN, BBC and other stations. But I suspect these first two seems to be the favorite stations of most people. Depending on the news agenda of the day, you are most likely bound to discover that both the choice of stories and angle picked to broadcast those stories do not differ substantially between the two global “news leaders” of the western world believed to be “credible” by unsuspecting people or just ordinary people wanting to be informed on what is happening around the world. For instance, when allied Anglo-American armies invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003, the fact that the United States and Britain had actually invaded Iraq was completely obscured in favor of an ambiguous headline on both stations which read something like this - “war in Iraq”! Eh! Bwana! War in Iraq, fine; but who started it? Why was a more forthright headline - ‘The United States and Britain invade Iraq’ missing? What followed in the course of the invasion and subsequent occupation and the subsequent “trial” and hanging of President Saddam Hussein was a again a shared news agenda by the global news monopolies which held almost a unanimous news agenda that “democracy” had returned to Iraq and a ‘dictatorship’ ended. But the cost, in terms of loss of life and resources was never highlighted in the course of the invasion and occupation! For instance, when the United States and Britain had concluded their invasion of Iraq, President Bush was to declare on January 5, 2003: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed…” But what he conveniently avoided to state was that the major objective of the invasion that was to rid Iraq of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) and eliminate a “terrorist threat” had decimally failed. Iraq had no WMD in the first place and the terrorist threat did not exist. What is more, installing a western style liberal democracy had failed decimally as most people reading this perspective may have noted. A factor also conveniently swept under the carpet by the western media and the leaders that went to war in Iraq is the fact that around 5,000 American troops were killed as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003, not to mention Iraqi civilian casualties in their hundreds and thousands. According to informed sources, the financial cost of the war has been staggering - with direct costs running to over $600 billion - and long-term cost projections of the war running in trillions of dollars. The questions to address here are: was the war and occupation of Iraq worthwhile both to the people of Iraq and the United States in the first place? Has stability, tranquility and peace enjoyed by Iraqis before the invasion returned to Iraq? Is the American shift from Iraq to Afghanistan subsequently been a sensible move? Since I began this perspective by hinting on the unanimity of the news agenda by the big western TV networks and similarities of news stories on developments in Iraq during the invasion and subsequent occupation, here is an interesting news factor which the big western stations, the CNN and BBC today choose to play down. This is the weekly if not daily bombings and killings in Baghdad and across the country by insurgents otherwise described as “terrorists”. These developments, which have escalated in notoriety are, for some reason, obscured by the big two broadcasting houses. For those, whose TV remote controls are able to surf other TV networks may agree with me on this factor and they may agree that such reports on frequent bombings and killings in Iraq is extensively covered by a non-western international broadcasting house, that is Qatar Based Al-Jazeera television. Why there is a news blackout on such ugly and murderous situation in Iraq on the part of the big western media is not difficult to see. The managers of the broadcasting houses must conform to the respective authorities which sanctioned the war and occupation in the first place. An image must be created that Iraq is a success story of the birth of “democracy” and “peace” which has been won! But the opposite is the case. According to one writer on the Iraqi post war situation, the current bombings and instability is reflective of the failure of post war planning on the part of the United States. Says the analyst: “The Bush Administration did little to prepare for post-war contingencies in Iraq and left the American military with the dangerous job of keeping the peace in a nation that was increasingly breaking apart along sectarian and ethnic lines. It exacerbated a dangerous situation by disbanding the Iraqi army and put in place harsh de-Baathification standards…” For those who may have forgotten, the President of Iraq the Americans presided over his hanging with a very thick rope, Saddam Hussein had a political party called Baath Party. It translates simply as ‘Rebirth’ party. Like Tanzania before acceding to multi-party rule in the nineties, Saddam had a one party democracy. Yes, it was democracy! Who said, there can be no democracy in one party rule? And who said multipartyism is necessarily an end-all and be-all democratic system suitable every where and in very culture? And who said democracy was exportable and as standard as a bottle of coca cola? Well, this may constitute a separate theme on its own! But as Tanzanians are learning it the hard way today, multi-party democracy can as well mean the reign of a filthily rich over a staggering poor majority if the recent primaries in the run up to General elections here is anything to go by! Fortunately, I visited Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as he celebrated ten years of his assumption of power via his Baath party. What I saw in Iraq was a non-ethnic and non-sectarian society pulling together towards higher development in science and technology and good standard of living to all. Today, thanks to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation, the country is highly polarized, with the citizenry at the neck of each other! Hence the question: Is present day Iraq better off than Saddam’s Iraq? The answer is clear to everyone. Unfortunately, those who unleashed this calamity to the Iraqi people have moved grounds elsewhere, in Afghanistan. A Nato occupation is in place over there, again to cleanse the country of “terrorism” and usher in ‘democracy’! But I am afraid, Nato powers, led by the United States will discover soon, if they have not discovered already that they are sitting ducks and convenient targets to most Afghans. The reason of their predicament is simple: Once a people see foreigners with guns over their heads in their country, they forget almost immediately their internal differences. They unite as one to face what is inevitably an occupation of their given country. This is what the American forces and their allied Nato allies are discovering on a daily basis in Afghanistan. It will be a repeat story, just like in Iraq! Makwaia wa Kuhenga is a senior Tanzanian journalist and author Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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