Weekly Worker 438 Thursday June 27 2002
Letters
War on Iraq
I am writing to you as a British person and ex-member of the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, who has lived in Iraq, because of the possibility that the UK may be drawn into further conflict with Iraq with the ultimate aim of bringing down president Saddam Hussain.
For over a decade now, the Iraqi people have suffered the sanctions regime, with reports of over 6,000 children dying each month as a result of shortages in medicines, etc. As most people know, sanctions were imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The reasons why the western world claimed they were needed and continue to be maintained is because of Baghdad’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction, regardless of the fact that these weapons were being produced and sold to Iraq years before the Gulf War of 1991 and that Scott Ritter, former chief of Unscom’s concealment unit, has said: “It was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, from a strictly qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed.”
For example, as early as 1985, Iraq was the world’s leading importer of arms, with a military budget of $1 billion a month. A lot of these arms happened to come from the United Kingdom, as well as other European countries. Around this time no-one or very few politicians ever seemed to raise the question: was Iraq using these ‘weapons of mass destruction’ against its own people? Most of the public in the UK only really became aware of the plight of the Kurds and ordinary Iraqis through the gassing of the town of Halabja.
Although Halabja occurred in 1988, United Nations reports in 1984, 1986 and 1987 had confirmed that in fact Iraq was using the same or similar weapons that were later used in Halabja. These weapons included toxic chemicals, mustard gas, cyanide and the nerve agent Tabun and these were to prove useful to Saddam in suppressing the Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war, the people of Kurdistan and the resistance movements in the Southern Marshes.
The regime had developed its interest in making and obtaining chemical weapons in around 1979 and by 1981 there were reports of nerve gas being produced at Aqashat, which is close to the Jordanian border. This is backed up by Iraqi military historian A Abass and by the sale of 10,000 protective kits and breathing equipment - made in Britain to Iraqi specifications, and suitable for use by chemical weapons production workers - which was approved by the British ministry of defence.
Yet in the year 2002 the western world talks about bringing down Saddam Hussain once again - just over a decade after the Gulf War - even though, as we all know, there has been ample opportunity for the dictator to be removed and for a real democracy to be established.
Democracy was the main objective of the 1991 uprising, where large sections of the army broke away from the official ruling Ba’athist regime and joined with the mass of the people in taking over many of the major cities within Iraq. President George Bush senior had even urged this uprising on, but then, as the prospect of a new Iraq was dawning for the people, the Americans decided to stand back and offer no assistance to the resisters. In fact, according to Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, they gave “assistance to Saddam’s forces by preventing rebels from taking desperately needed arms and ammunition in abandoned Iraqi stores. Much of these captured stocks were destroyed, but paradoxically the CIA took possession of an appreciable quantity and shipped it off to fundamentalists in Afghanistan, favoured agency clients in that country’s civil war.” This left the uprising defenceless against Saddam’s military machine and so was brutally crushed.
Yet George Bush junior talks about joining his ‘coalition of freedom’ - or you’re on ‘the other side of the tracks’ in this so-called fight against terrorism. For a man to feel it is his god-given right to simply march into countries and bring down governments and take suspected ‘terrorists’ hostage does not indicate being on the right side of the tracks - rather well and truly off the rails. So far they have been unable to capture their man, bin Laden, and have now around 2,400 suspected terrorists, with only one having been charged.
But the western leaders seem to think it is fine to plan another attack - this time upon Iraq, a country whose infrastructure has collapsed due to the economic blockade, whose children suffer malnutrition and die from water-carried diseases, and whose cancer patients cannot even get proper treatment. Not only are people suffering under the sanctions and Saddam. They are also suffering as a result of the almost daily bombing campaigns by Britain and America - campaigns that hold no legal authorisation from the UN security council. Any further military action is only going to exasperate an already unsteady situation in world relations.
As we know, Saddam Hussain is either the villain of the piece or the hero of the decade. But the main issue that is now facing most people inside Iraq is not whether Saddam Hussain remains in power or not, but it is a question of survival against a world that is now threatening a further war with no foreseen end. Can we live with the consequences of our governments’ actions? I don’t think so.
Ann-Margaret Parkinson
Manchester
Vote ‘yes’
In calling for a ‘no’ vote, or an ‘active boycott’ of the referendum on the euro, the left are passing the initiative once again to a range of rightwing and reactionary forces, from the party of IDS to the UKIP and the fascists.
The winner of a ‘no’ vote will be a revitalised right. To bemoan the neoliberal aspects of the EU is to forget that since entry to the EC the British left have been abstentionist or for withdrawal and thus allowed the right to set the agenda. Arguably, Jacques Delors’ policy of workers’ rights, the ‘social Europe’, helped to divide and split the right in the 1990s. The left needs to support the ‘social Europe’ and build on this vision.
By supporting a ‘yes’ vote, the left can help neutralise the tide of reactionary nationalism, encourage parties and trades unions to become internationalised, and challenge the neoliberal agenda in Europe.
Chris Maddox
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