News – Quasi-Peace and Winds of Change (1/2)

I felt anger and general annoyance as I wrote this news entry. I had urges to hit things, but I restrained such base urges. Even now I still feel a bit of it, writing this foreword after it is completed. It is too obvious that, despite the good, this war and resolution will leave the Iraqi people changed. Their history has been destroyed because of negligence and their culture is threatened by dubious private relief agencies and the sure to follow influx of American culture. What will happen to Iraq? Where will it be in ten years? I wonder..

Talk of peace has started in Iraq. But in a meeting, which was to have the attendance of 60 Iraqis, from radical and mainstream Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim, Kurdish and monarchist groups, there was discontent. A source of it, as some have predicted and opined about was the one chosen to head the post war situation. Jay Garner. Iraq’s main Shi’ite Muslim opposition group boycotted the meeting altogether.

The fact is that Iraq is a country highly divided by religions, ideological and tribal ties. And Garner, with his dies to Israel, was a poor choice, not based upon ability, but acceptability to those who we need to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of. Already clerics are organizing armed people to bring order to the streets. By the time the US seeks to exert some means of control, they could well find factions in place that don’t want to give up the power they’ve carved out. Blair seems optimistic though, stating the opinion that Iraq could have free elections by late 2004. I’m skeptical. Of many things. Especially when I see that the companies elected to rebuild Iraq have high level contacts in the Bush Administration and a history of donations to the Republican party. Looks like all those generous, thoughtful contributions are about to pay off big.

There’s a suggestion that previous opponents of the Iraq war might get the cold shoulder from Bush, but this is already apparent in the UKs note that there is a UN role if they stop ‘playing games’ and accept reality. But that’s Straw talking, not Blair. I’m wondering if Blair has changed his stance in trying to get the UN involved.

Marines and Iraqi police are finally starting to hit the streets of Baghdad, but it has long since been an issue as I have heard many government buildings(save for the protected Ministry of Oil and Ministry of the Interior, which had US forces stationed) and museums were damaged. As was a library that held tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts from Iraq’s history was burned to the ground. Yet with no means of holding criminals, they are simply shooed away, rather than detained. That is likely to raise the hackles of their victims. And considering that important sights such as the Baghdad Museum were left to the looters with no apparent attempt made to protect the culture of Iraq, this seems a hollow gesture now. The British Museum is trying to help, but may find itself blocked.

A Slate author makes an interesting case for looting in Iraq, but misses the point of hospitals being bereft of supplies when they are needed and the damage to Iraq’s history by the lawlessness. So much has been lost, it’s saddening.

Safwan has no electricity, no water, no police and no local government or functioning schools. And it isn’t in Northern Iraq or some far out of the way spot. It’s a southern border town with Kuwait, an area generally under US control since early in the war. If this little 8k population town can’t be brought up to speed quickly, it doesn’t bode well for larger and more distant towns and cities in need of reconstruction and basic supplies. The aid operation, IMHO, was not planned for the scale that was required.

On the chemical weapons front, US forces found 11 buried vans that they think were used as mobile chemical weapons labs. Mind you, they found no chemicals yet. But there was apparently about 1,000 pounds of documentation and unspecified ‘equipment’ worth about a million bucks. I don’t anticipate we’ll be told anymore than that. Or that it was later ‘confirmed’, if we hear anything at all.

So who was this war good for? As the jury is still out on if it ends up good for the world at large and Iraq in particular(it still has the potential to go horribly wrong), we can have a look at a few smaller groups that may well have benefited from the war. Honestly, it has given me a lot to write about. :p