|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
|
April 14th,
2006 - The “King” of Iraq (the 2000s) Excerpt
of the book “A History of the Car Bomb” by Mike Davis |
|
The “King” of Iraq (the
2000s) By Mike Davis Excerpt of the book “A History of the Car Bomb” April 14, 2006 “Insurgents exploded 13 car
bombs across Iraq on Sunday, including eight in Baghdad within a three-hour
span.” (Associated Press news
report, January 1, 2006) Car bombs - some 1,293
between 2004 and 2005, according to researchers at the Brookings Institution -
have devastated Iraq like no other land in history. The most infamous, driven
or left by sectarian jihadists, have targeted Iraqi Shiites in front of their
homes, mosques, police stations, and markets: 125 dead in Hilla (February 28,
2005); 98 in Mussayib (July 16); 114 in Baghdad (September 14); 102 in Blad
(September 29); 50 in Abu Sayda (November 19); and so on. Some of the devices have
been gigantic, like the stolen fuel-truck bomb that devastated Mussayib, but
what is most extraordinary has been their sheer frequency - in one
48-hour-period in July 2005 at least 15 suicide car bombs exploded in or
around Baghdad. The sinister figure supposedly behind the worst of these
massacres is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian arch-terrorist who
reportedly criticized Osama bin Laden for insufficient zeal in attacking
domestic enemies like the "infidel Shias." Al-Zarqawi, it is
claimed, is pursuing an essentially eschatological rather than political
goal: a cleansing of enemies without end until the Earth is ruled by a
single, righteous caliphate. Toward this end, he – or
those invoking his name - seems to have access to an almost limitless supply
of bomb vehicles (some of them apparently stolen in California and Texas,
then shipped to the Middle East) as well as Saudi and other volunteers eager
to martyr themselves in flame and molten metal for the sake of taking a few
Shiite school kids, market venders, or foreign "crusaders" with
them. Indeed the supply of suicidal madrassa graduates seems to far exceed
what the logic of suicide bombing (as perfected by Hezbollah and the Tamil
Tigers) actually demands: Many of the explosions in Iraq could just as easily
be detonated by remote control. But the car bomb - at least in Al-Zarqawi's
relentless vision - is evidently a stairway to heaven as well as the chosen
weapon of genocide. But Al Zarqawi did not
originate car bomb terrorism along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates;
that dark honor belongs to the CIA and its favorite son, Iyad Allawi. As the
New York Times revealed in June 2004: "Iyad Allawi, now the
designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on
deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990s's to
plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the
CIA, several former intelligence officials say. Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi
National Accord, used car bombs and other explosives devices smuggled into
Baghdad from northern Iraq… One former Central Intelligence Agency officer
who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that
period ‘blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed.'" According to one of the
Times' informants, the bombing campaign, dead school kids and all, "was
a test more than anything else, to demonstrate capability." It allowed
the CIA to portray the then-exiled Allawi and his suspect group of
ex-Baathists as a serious opposition to Saddam Hussein and an alternative to
the coterie (so favored by Washington neoconservatives) around Ahmed Chalabi.
"No one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then,"
another CIA veteran reflected. "I don't think anyone could have known
how things would turn out today." Today, of course, car bombs
rule Iraq. In a June 2005 article entitled, "Why the car bomb is king in
Iraq," James Dunnigan warned that it was supplanting the roadside bomb
(which "are more frequently discovered, or defeated with electronic
devices") as the "most effective weapon" of Sunni insurgents
as well as of Al Zarqawi, and thus "the terrorists are building as many
as they can." The recent "explosive growth" in car ownership
in Iraq, he added, had made it "easier for the car bombs to just get
lost in traffic." In this kingdom of the car
bomb, the occupiers have withdrawn almost completely into their own forbidden
city, the "Green Zone," and their well-fortified and protected
military bases. This is not the high-tech City of London with sensors taking
the place of snipers, but a totally medievalized enclave surrounded by
concrete walls and defended by M1 Abrams tanks and helicopter gunships as
well as an exotic corps of corporate mercenaries (including Gurkhas,
ex-Rhodesian commandos, former British SAS, and amnestied Colombian
paramilitaries). Once the Xanadu of the Baathist ruling class, the
10-square-kilometer Green Zone, as described by journalist Scott Johnson, is
now a surreal theme park of the American way of life: "Women in shorts and
T-shirts jog down broad avenues and the Pizza Inn does a brisk business from
the parking lot of the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy. Near the Green Zone
Bazaar, Iraqi kids hawk pornographic DVDs to soldiers. Sheik Fuad Rashid, the
U.S.-appointed imam of the local mosque, dresses like a nun, dyes his hair
platinum blond and claims that Mary Mother of Jesus appeared to him in a
vision (hence the getup). On any given night, residents can listen to
karaoke, play badminton or frequent one of several rowdy bars, including an
invitation-only speakeasy run by the CIA." Outside the Green Zone, of
course, is the ‘Red Zone' where ordinary Iraqis can be randomly and
unexpectedly blown to bits by car bombers or strafed by American helicopters.
Not surprisingly, wealthy Iraqis and members of the new government are
clamoring for admission to the security of the Green Zone, but U.S. officials
told Newsweek last year that "plans to move the Americans out are
‘fantasy.'" Billions have been invested in the Green Zone and a dozen
other American enclaves officially known for a period as "enduring
camps," and even prominent Iraqis have been left to forage for their own
security outside the blast walls of these exclusive bubble Americas. A
population that has endured Saddam's secret police, U.N. sanctions, and
American cruise missiles, now steels itself to survive the car bombers who
prowl poor Shiite neighborhoods looking for grisly martyrdom. For the most
selfish reasons, let us hope that Baghdad is not a metaphor for our
collective future. This article - a preliminary
sketch for a book-length study - will appear next year in Indefensible Space:
The Architecture of the National Insecurity State (Routledge 2007), edited by
Michael Sorkin. External link: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=76824 |