Before the conquest of Iraq
By
SOON, Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq will be history except there is a sudden realignment of international forces on its part. This belief is no longer a secret in the West, both quantitative and qualitative analyses dominate the western media of possible outcomes of a US invasion of the sovereign state of Iraq. In what is described as a staff college exercise, a pincer movement from both Turkey and Kuwait in the North and South respectively, will leave Iraq with 424,000 armed men and 650,000, reserves pulverised and the unfinished job of a George Bush Sr. will have been completed by a Bush Jr. An analysis of this imminent face-off between Iraq and US before the end of an era(?) is necessary for a number of reasons. One, we need to grapple with the points at issue beyond propaganda issuing from the imperialist media. Two, to appreciate the fact that global politics is one of social Darwinism. Three, to appreciate the danger posed to global peace by unipolarity. Four, to wake up African leaders from their slumber on the need for a moral position on the naked aggression against Iraq in the absence of nuclear warheads and stealth B2 bombers to balance terror.
In 1991, Operation Desert Storm was launched against Iraq ostensibly to protect the sovereign state of Kuwait from Iraq's aggression but the latent function of the exercise was to protect US energy interest in the Gulf. Kuwait had subverted Iraq's national interest by tapping Iraq's oil from a disputed oilfield and brought down prices by oversupply at a time Iraq needed to revamp from its devastating eight-year war with Iran. That war you recall that was fuelled by the US in order to tame the Islamic fundamentalism spurred by the advent of the spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Arab politics. Since the defeat of Iraq in 1991, the so-called allied forces had imposed a no-fly zone over much of Southern Iraq, had its oil embargoed, permitting only selective sales and had been subjected to harassment by arms inspectors in search of weapons of mass destruction. These sanctions against Iraq have led to systematic genocide against the Iraqi people due to shortage of food and medicament. One of the arms inspectors, Scot Ritter had openly said that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. But what had the Americans done against Israel the most heavily armed country in the Middle East? Israel has nuclear capability and other weapons of mass destruction? Israel has continued to carry out genocidal acts against the Palestinians. These issues do not cut ice with Washington.
September 11, 2001, provided a basis for labelling old enemies the "axis of evil" by the "Great Satan" itself. The industrial-military complex, which rigged into power the Bush administration, needs payback through bloated military budget. Of course you need imaginary enemies to exhaust the budget. In this manner Iraq came to the drawing board. Significantly, Iraq was not linked in anyway with the al-Qa'eda network. Afterall, it is a secular state. Besides, there is no evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, the most we saw in the "mother of all battles" was simply scud missiles. It was the allied forces that made a phobic experiment with anti-chemical weapons inoculation which left some of their troops devastated after the campaign. The other hollow pretext is that Iraq must allow the UN weapons inspectors back into the country in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. In the absence of a casus belle for war against Iraq, it is clear that attacking it is sheer ego-tripping. Some American politicians have spoken to this effect. The war drums must sound whether there is evidence or not. It stands to reason that the war may therefore be one against Islam. Once Iraq is out of the way, Iran, for sure, will follow suit. This should inform Iran's position. It is in its interest to work for pro-Iraq Arab coalition before the escalation of hostility. This explains the reluctance of EU countries to be dragged into a senseless offensive against Iraq, except Tony Blair, who is hell bent on dragging Britain into a war that not only public opinion is against but even both front and back-benchers, from Clare Short, Overseas Development Secretary to former Foreign Affairs Secretary, Robin Cook are staunchly opposed. Ironically, the politics of the impending invasion of Iraq by America and perhaps with support from Britain and its satellite emirates in the Gulf has suddenly turned Britain into imperial Britannia notwithstanding its shoulder to shoulder alliance with the US which clearly underscores its weakness and vulnerability. Countries like Nigeria and Angola are being promised a US market through de-investment from Saudi Arabia in order to beat Saudi back to support the planned invasion of Iraq. US priority supply plan lies in the Caspian Sea oil from the Soviet Union and the CIS states if it cannot return to status quo with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela whose government it tried to subvert recently. West Africa ranks low in its priority. Its current military activities in Ghana and Nigeria have dependency trappings for West Africa and the continent.
The global threat to peace lies not in the so-called rogue states but the United States that has amassed weapons of mass destruction. America parades awesome bio-weapons that is not only a threat to itself but also the rest of the world as the anthrax backlash showed quite clearly. Recently the US refused to sign the verification protocol on the biological weapons convention of 1972. In 1998, it refused to sign up the chemical weapons convention and even enacted a legislation which disallows chemical samples from the US laboratories to be taken by international weapons inspectors. The country has advanced factory manufacturing lethal microbes with the capacities to destroy cities. Besides, it has warheads with microbes encased in large aerosol chambers at its Edgewood Chemical Biological Centre in Maryland and has begun to develop genetically engineered materials-eating bacteria. Also, it has large stockpiles of smallpox and lethal anthrax. These simply add up to the nuclear stockpiles whose deadly impact was seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So in the war against Iraq, what should Africans and their leaders do? They must simply denounce it as unjust and must use all avenues available in the international system to say so. It is a violation of the national sovereignty of Iraq. It is Iraq today; it may be South Africa or Nigeria tomorrow.
August 2002