September 23, 2005
As expected, the British and the corporate press are blaming
Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army for the recent troubles in Basra,
obscuring the fact two SAS undercover troublemakers were caught
red-handed readying a terrorist attack against Iraqi Shi’ites. Adrian Blomfield,
writing for the UK Telegraph, characterizes the arrest of the British
terrorists as "two SAS soldiers [held] hostage in Basra" and the
allegations that the two were plotting murder and mayhem a "smear
campaign" that translates into "another blow to the British Army’s
hopes of restoring its affection among locals," as if Iraqis are fond
of the idea of occupation and foreign troops stationed in their
country.
Basra’s governor, Mohammed al-Wa’eli, accused
Britain of "imperial arrogance," a shoe that fits and the Brits (and
Americans) should wear it. The average UK Telegraph reader may not know
it—as many Americans do not know their own checkered history—but
"imperialism" is precisely what the Brits imposed on Iraq for decades,
beginning after the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1914. Britain, in
standard arrogant and back-stabbing fashion, promised the Arabs of what
they would later call Iraq independence, only to betray them. Instead
of independence, Iraq became a "mandate" territory under the League of
Nations and British "supervision." Outraged Iraqis revolted in 1920 and
the British put down the rebellion with aerial bombardment. It was Winston Churchill,
as colonial secretary, who remarked, "I do not understand this
squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using
poison gas against uncivilized tribes," for instance the Kurds in
northern Iraq. Churchill was also responsible in part for drawing the
current borders of Iraq, carved out three Ottoman districts—the
northern mostly Kurdish district administered from Mosul, the middle
predominately Sunni Arab district, including Baghdad; and the southern
largely Shiite district, whose major city is Basra. It was indeed the
"imperial arrogance" of the British that angered the Arabs (and Kurds)
of what is now Iraq and motivated them to revolt.
"The
governing council has decided to stop all co-operation with the British
until they meet three demands," declared al-Wa’eli. "To apologize for
what happened, to guarantee that it does not happen again, and third,
to provide some compensation for all the damage they did during the
operation," demands that prompted a British embassy spokesman in Basra
to remark that the conditions put forward "shouldn’t be a problem,"
even as the "Foreign Office described the demand for an apology as a
local issue and not a reflection of the feelings of the Iraqi prime
minister, who met the UK defense secretary on Wednesday in London,"
according to the Financial Times.
In short, nobody should get too concerned about a few riled up
Shi’ites. "Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said the incident would not
harm his government’s relations with Britain, while [John Reid, UK
Defense Minister] said the subsequent street unrest in Basra would not
deter the 8,500 British troops stationed in southern Iraq from
continuing their mission." In other words, the Brits believe it is
business as usual with the same degree of "imperial arrogance," and no
doubt a green light for future undercover operations designed to keep
the Shi’a and Sunni at each others throats and eventually splinter Iraq
into three religious and ethnic pieces, as long envisioned and proposed
by the Israelis and, more recently, their neocon fellow travelers in
America.
Iraqis, characterized as "uncivilized tribes" by
revered British politicians, understand this plot well. "Everyone knows
the occupiers’ agenda," declared Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, one of al-Sadr’s
officials in Basra. "They are in bed with Mossad and their intention is
to keep Iraq an unstable battlefield so they can exploit their
interests in Iraq…. We have to take the moral high ground and resist
this provocation by the British. This is a very dangerous, very
sensitive time in Iraq but we must calm our supporters or we will fall
into the British trap." In other words, a Shi’a uprising against the
Brits (and Americans) will not occur until the time is right. Since
many Shi’ites consider the SAS plot and the subsequent "rescue"
(flattening buildings and killing Shi’ites in the process) a "second
Abu Ghraib," a newfound resistance against occupation may not be far
off.
Last year Rumsfeld said the fighting in Iraq was simply
the work of "thugs, gangs and terrorists" and General Myers added that
there was "not a Shiite uprising" in southern Iraq and "Mr. Sadr has a
very small following," as the Sydney Morning Herald
reported at the time. However, as Ghassan al-Attiyah, executive
director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy in
Baghdad, explained, there was "a general mood of anti-Americanism among
the people in the streets" that went far beyond al-Sadr’s followers. In
the wake of the SAS blunder and the British response, no doubt this
antipathy has grown, not only against the Americans but the Brits as
well. The British, as characterized by the comments of John Reid, may
believe Basra is "returning progressively to a level of normality"
(that is to say, occupation as usual), but it appears the Shi’a have
other ideas. As a primary example of how just out of touch the
corporate media in Britain is, consider the comment in the Telegraph
that the "locals" have "affection" for British administered occupation,
demonstrating that the legacy of "imperial arrogance" has not
subsided—not in Tony Blair’s government or in the ranks his good
friends at the right-wing Telegraph, a newspaper "group" (conglomerate)
once owned by the "The Right Honorable" Conrad Moffat Black, Baron
Black of Crossharbour, a scurrilous neocon who once "appropriated"
(i.e., he stole) over $62 million from a workers’ pension fund.
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