Ron Haleber
18-07-03, 22:00
The Unexpected Aftermath of O p e r a t i o n “I r a q i F r e e d o m”
IBRAHIM AL- MARASHI
Ibrahim al-Marashi is a Ph.D. candidate at St. A n t o n y ' s
College, Oxford, UK, and is a research associate at the Center
for Non-proliferation Studies in California, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Prime Minister Tony Blair stelde het intelligence-rapport dat hij in het Lagerhuis verdedigde ter rechtvaardiging van de Irak-invasie, via copy-paste samen uit een voorstudie van de PH.D.-these van Ibrahim al-Marashi die op internet stond.
De Irakees Ibrahim moet zich thans verbergen buiten UK en USA om de media te ontlopen en om zijn studie te voltooien.
Tony Blair heeft zich nimmer bij Ibrahim geėxcuseerd of een vergoeding aangeboden voor het door hem gepleegde plagiaat. Blair is dus op dit punt al een boef.
In onderstaand artikel geeft Ibrahim zijn kritische visie weer op de nadagen van de Irak-invasie.
Ibrahim betreurt dat Tony Blair zijn tekst zeer tendentieus vervalste om zijn casus belli feller kleur te geven. Ook Sjors Bush en Colin Powell waren zeer onder de indruk van de analyse van Blair = van deze deze Irakese student.
Het is boeiend om te zien hoe velen op deze site die zich op de intelligence-rapporten van Blair en Powell beriepen niet het vermogen hadden om zich kritischer op te stellen en dus de kritiek van o.a. Lennart en mijzelf als volstrekt ongegrond afdeden...!
(uit pdf-tekst moeizaam overgezet van de ISIM-site)
As Operation Iraqi Freedom has come to a close, the US has declared victory in achieving its objectives.
Given the rapid pace of this campaign, most analysis focused on
t h e course of events, with little academic and often inaccurate assessment of the war and i t s aftermath in Iraq.
Such assessments are crucial when addressing the question of
whether Iraq will survive as a viable state, a s well as what form it will take.
Faulty forecasts about Iraq’s future, combined with failing to understand its internal political dynamics could have disastrous effects on
both the Iraqi people and the American and UK forces stationed there .
In the US and UK policy analysis circles,
overnight experts dominated the air-
waves and the discourse on Iraq, which
would later influence those govern-
ment bodies that conducted the war.
As a confession, I was also featured
prominently in the US and UK media,
and believed that my assessments were
of more value since I had devoted my
academic career to studying Iraq. Yet,
even I made many of these failed as-
sessments, due to the fact that I left my
native country when I was a child and
since most of my views on Iraq where
influenced by the Iraqi exile communi-
ty. Nevertheless, the dearth of public
knowledge on Iraq led to many false
predictions of how the war would
evolve and how the Iraqis would
react to the American and British pres-
ence once Saddam was removed.
Assessing Iraq’s past
These failed forecasts could partially be attributed to American and
British academic circles, where the study of Iraq has been neglected,
with only a handful of scholars that can be genuinely characterized as
experts. The literature on Iraq suffers from a lack of research conduct-
ed within the country itself. Simple logistical reasons have led to this
deficiency, as archival work and fieldwork in Iraq was nearly impossi-
ble. While the literature lacks an internal analysis of how the Iraqi state
and society function and operate, several authors have published
works on IraqÕs internal politics. Prominent among them is Kanan
Makiya's work, which gives a detailed background to the emergence
and foundation of the Iraqi security apparatus and Baath Party. While
his book The Republic of Fear is considered the textbook on Iraq's inter-
nal politics, Makiya wrote the book while in exile. In the US and UK,
Peter Sluglett and Charles Tripp are among the few scholars who have
recently written on Iraq, while other known scholars include the Israeli
academics, Amazia Baram and Ofra Bengio. All have conducted their
research on Iraq from outside of its borders. In fact, the last substantial
work based on research in Iraq only covered the period up to the 1958
Revolution in Iraq; the late Hanna Batatu's work is based upon the se-
cret records of the Iraqi monarchy, which were made public after the
1958 Revolution. Nevertheless, the few academic experts were not fea-
tured prominently in the media: perhaps out of their own volition; per-
haps they were never contacted. In fact, in the US and UK media circles,
former military generals dominated the media outlets, demonstrating
the media obsession with how Iraq was being destroyed. Little atten-
tion, however, was given to how it would be rebuilt.
Much of the literature on Iraq has focused on its eight-year war with
Iran or the 1991 Gulf War, primarily devoted to the military aspects of
the wars, with no works dealing with the internal Iraqi politics during
the conflict. While the literature primarily dealt with the international
diplomacy surrounding the invasion and subsequent military conduct
of the 1991 Gulf War, there is a general lack of information on the
events that took place inside of Kuwait from 2 August 1990 to 16 Janu-
ary 1991. While numerous works have been written on the subject, in-
cluding military analyses, eyewitness accounts, and journalistic pieces,
not one has utilized primary documents produced by the Iraqi state it-
self during its occupation of Kuwait.
Inother words, there is a lack of research
on how Iraq administered and defend-
ed its 'Nineteenth Province' . Under-
standing such internal Iraqi political
dynamics during the Iran-Iraq War or
the 1991 Gulf War would have been
critical to understanding how the
Iraqis would have defended the coun-
try in what is really the Third Gulf War.
One could argue that research on Iraqs
internal dynamics during these two
wars could not be conducted due to
Iraqi government restrictions. Howev-
er, since 1999, an often under-utilized
electronic archive of four million cap-
tured Iraqi state documents from the Iran-Iraq War, as well as 300,000
documents from the 1991 war, has been publicly available.
It is questionable that even the few works on Iraq were properly con-
sulted and analysed by the powers that conducted Operation Iraqi
Freedom. These doubts were confirmed when a UK intelligence dossier
on Iraq's intelligence agencies, presented to Colin Powell in February
2003, was found to be plagiarized from a historical, academic article I
had written on IraqÕs intelligence agencies. After this affair, one must
ask how familiar the US and UK governments really were with Iraq be-
fore they launched this war .
Assessing the war
The neglected study of the internal dynamics of Iraq's domestic poli-
tics and security apparatus led to many failed forecasts when US and
UK forces went to war against those institutions of the Iraqi state. The
American and British media as well as the policy-making think tanks
provided many failed assessments of how the war would be fought.
Generally, these institutions predicted the S h i ' i population in the south
would revolt against their Sunni, Tikriti masters, leaving the toughest
battle to the decapitation of the regime in Baghdad. On the contrary,
the S h i ' i t e s did not revolt, the most pitched battles were in the south, and Baghdad fell relatively easily. It was predicted that Saddams elite Special Republican Guard and security organizations would fight to
the very end to defend the capital; however, the para-military organi-
zations such as Fidayin Saddam, which did not have formal military
training, posed the most serious challenge to coalition forces. Finally,
SaddamÕs feared weapons of mass destruction were not deployed
against military forces as they approached Baghdad.
The Iraqis were mistakenly classified into two camps: pro-Saddam
and anti-Saddam factions, and thus once the pro-Saddam factions
were vanquished, the anti-Saddam tendencies in Iraq would rally be-
hind the US. The US forecasts failed to account for the role of Iraqi na-
tionalism and the Iraqi citizensÕ loyalty in defending the nation op-
posed to the regime. For example, reports on 25 March 2003 from
British military forces stationed around Basra, stated that civilians had
revolted against Iraqi government forces. In fact, no revolts occurred in
Basra; nor did they occur in most of the S h i ' i towns of the south.
When the leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Ayatullah al-Hakim, was asked about why no S h i ' a revolt materialized, he said that Ō[t]here are a number of reasons why there has not been an uprising, most important of which is that Iraqis perceive the United States as an occupying rather than a liberating force.
The second rea-
son has to do with people's strong sense of nationalism, the painful
memories of the war of 1991, and the fear that anyone who rises up
against the regime will be crushed.Õ After the Second Gulf War, in
March 1991 an uprising began in Basra and literally spread overnight
throughout the south of Iraq. However, the US failed to support this
uprising and Iraqs Republican Guard brutally crushed it, leaving many
S h i ' i t e s feeling abandoned by the US, and such feelings among the
S h i ' a were not taken into account
Assessing Iraq’s future
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many inaccurate assumptions were made
such as that Iraqi soldiers would not fight at all, American forces would
be greeted as liberators, and Iraqi exiles would be enthusiastically re-
ceived. Once the war had finished, assessments failed to take into ac-
count the almost immediate animosity directed towards the US once
Saddam was removed, and what the Iraqis envisioned for their future
state.
Currently there are numerous, often contradictory, visions for a
post-Saddam Iraq, ranging from a US-supported, neo-Baathist Iraq in
the guise of a democracy, to a decentralized, federalist Iraq proposed by
the exile opposition and Kurdish groups. On the other end of the spec-
trum, many Iraqis are calling for an Islamic state/theocracy, with dis-
agreement over whether it should be formed on the Iranian model.
As Iraqs S h i ' i t e s mobilize to play a dominant role in Iraq, amply
demonstrated by their holy processions in the last week of April, US ad-
ministration officials admit they underestimated their organizational
strength and were unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American,
Islamic theocracy in the country. A Washington Post article stated: ŌAs
the administration plotted to overthrow HusseinÕs government, U.S. of-
ficials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspi-
rations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into
a fundamentalist government. Others were more focused on the over-
riding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynam-
ics of religion and politics in the region.Õ The US administration fears
that the Iraqi S h i ' a would come under the sway of Iranian influence.
Were some of these US officials to buy a copy of Yitzhak NakashÕs book,they would realize that the Shi'itesÕ strong sense of Iraqi nationalism and a resistance to the Iranian concept of a single supreme S h i ' i t er u l e r (velayet-e faqih) would keep the Islamic RepublicÕs influence in check.
The failure to understand Iranian foreign policy, especially in the US,
could lead to disastrous consequences for the future of Iraq. Those in
the US administration that argue Iran should be denied an influence in
Iraq, ignore the centuries-old historical ties between the Iranian S h i ' i t e s and those in Iraq and fail to comprehend the religious significance of the holy sites in Iraq for all S h i ' i Muslims. US forces in Iraq cannot change
this historical legacy. Additionally, the idea of exporting the Iranian rev-
olution has long expired in Irans foreign policy, but rather the Iranians
are more weary of yet another American satellite state on the other side
of its borders.
While the US focuses on alleged Iranian attempts to influence the
S h i ' a towns of Najaf and Karbala, there are mounting tensions develop-
ing in the predominantly S h i ' i district of Baghdad known as Saddam
City, which has now be renamed Sadr City, in honour of the clerical fam-
ily that has played a pivotal role for this community. For the most part,
US forces have not been deployed here, and the district has been run by
armed factions who support the Sadr faction in the growing contention
over who will dominate Iraqs S h i ' ic o m m u n i t y .
IBRAHIM AL- MARASHI
Ibrahim al-Marashi is a Ph.D. candidate at St. A n t o n y ' s
College, Oxford, UK, and is a research associate at the Center
for Non-proliferation Studies in California, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Prime Minister Tony Blair stelde het intelligence-rapport dat hij in het Lagerhuis verdedigde ter rechtvaardiging van de Irak-invasie, via copy-paste samen uit een voorstudie van de PH.D.-these van Ibrahim al-Marashi die op internet stond.
De Irakees Ibrahim moet zich thans verbergen buiten UK en USA om de media te ontlopen en om zijn studie te voltooien.
Tony Blair heeft zich nimmer bij Ibrahim geėxcuseerd of een vergoeding aangeboden voor het door hem gepleegde plagiaat. Blair is dus op dit punt al een boef.
In onderstaand artikel geeft Ibrahim zijn kritische visie weer op de nadagen van de Irak-invasie.
Ibrahim betreurt dat Tony Blair zijn tekst zeer tendentieus vervalste om zijn casus belli feller kleur te geven. Ook Sjors Bush en Colin Powell waren zeer onder de indruk van de analyse van Blair = van deze deze Irakese student.
Het is boeiend om te zien hoe velen op deze site die zich op de intelligence-rapporten van Blair en Powell beriepen niet het vermogen hadden om zich kritischer op te stellen en dus de kritiek van o.a. Lennart en mijzelf als volstrekt ongegrond afdeden...!
(uit pdf-tekst moeizaam overgezet van de ISIM-site)
As Operation Iraqi Freedom has come to a close, the US has declared victory in achieving its objectives.
Given the rapid pace of this campaign, most analysis focused on
t h e course of events, with little academic and often inaccurate assessment of the war and i t s aftermath in Iraq.
Such assessments are crucial when addressing the question of
whether Iraq will survive as a viable state, a s well as what form it will take.
Faulty forecasts about Iraq’s future, combined with failing to understand its internal political dynamics could have disastrous effects on
both the Iraqi people and the American and UK forces stationed there .
In the US and UK policy analysis circles,
overnight experts dominated the air-
waves and the discourse on Iraq, which
would later influence those govern-
ment bodies that conducted the war.
As a confession, I was also featured
prominently in the US and UK media,
and believed that my assessments were
of more value since I had devoted my
academic career to studying Iraq. Yet,
even I made many of these failed as-
sessments, due to the fact that I left my
native country when I was a child and
since most of my views on Iraq where
influenced by the Iraqi exile communi-
ty. Nevertheless, the dearth of public
knowledge on Iraq led to many false
predictions of how the war would
evolve and how the Iraqis would
react to the American and British pres-
ence once Saddam was removed.
Assessing Iraq’s past
These failed forecasts could partially be attributed to American and
British academic circles, where the study of Iraq has been neglected,
with only a handful of scholars that can be genuinely characterized as
experts. The literature on Iraq suffers from a lack of research conduct-
ed within the country itself. Simple logistical reasons have led to this
deficiency, as archival work and fieldwork in Iraq was nearly impossi-
ble. While the literature lacks an internal analysis of how the Iraqi state
and society function and operate, several authors have published
works on IraqÕs internal politics. Prominent among them is Kanan
Makiya's work, which gives a detailed background to the emergence
and foundation of the Iraqi security apparatus and Baath Party. While
his book The Republic of Fear is considered the textbook on Iraq's inter-
nal politics, Makiya wrote the book while in exile. In the US and UK,
Peter Sluglett and Charles Tripp are among the few scholars who have
recently written on Iraq, while other known scholars include the Israeli
academics, Amazia Baram and Ofra Bengio. All have conducted their
research on Iraq from outside of its borders. In fact, the last substantial
work based on research in Iraq only covered the period up to the 1958
Revolution in Iraq; the late Hanna Batatu's work is based upon the se-
cret records of the Iraqi monarchy, which were made public after the
1958 Revolution. Nevertheless, the few academic experts were not fea-
tured prominently in the media: perhaps out of their own volition; per-
haps they were never contacted. In fact, in the US and UK media circles,
former military generals dominated the media outlets, demonstrating
the media obsession with how Iraq was being destroyed. Little atten-
tion, however, was given to how it would be rebuilt.
Much of the literature on Iraq has focused on its eight-year war with
Iran or the 1991 Gulf War, primarily devoted to the military aspects of
the wars, with no works dealing with the internal Iraqi politics during
the conflict. While the literature primarily dealt with the international
diplomacy surrounding the invasion and subsequent military conduct
of the 1991 Gulf War, there is a general lack of information on the
events that took place inside of Kuwait from 2 August 1990 to 16 Janu-
ary 1991. While numerous works have been written on the subject, in-
cluding military analyses, eyewitness accounts, and journalistic pieces,
not one has utilized primary documents produced by the Iraqi state it-
self during its occupation of Kuwait.
Inother words, there is a lack of research
on how Iraq administered and defend-
ed its 'Nineteenth Province' . Under-
standing such internal Iraqi political
dynamics during the Iran-Iraq War or
the 1991 Gulf War would have been
critical to understanding how the
Iraqis would have defended the coun-
try in what is really the Third Gulf War.
One could argue that research on Iraqs
internal dynamics during these two
wars could not be conducted due to
Iraqi government restrictions. Howev-
er, since 1999, an often under-utilized
electronic archive of four million cap-
tured Iraqi state documents from the Iran-Iraq War, as well as 300,000
documents from the 1991 war, has been publicly available.
It is questionable that even the few works on Iraq were properly con-
sulted and analysed by the powers that conducted Operation Iraqi
Freedom. These doubts were confirmed when a UK intelligence dossier
on Iraq's intelligence agencies, presented to Colin Powell in February
2003, was found to be plagiarized from a historical, academic article I
had written on IraqÕs intelligence agencies. After this affair, one must
ask how familiar the US and UK governments really were with Iraq be-
fore they launched this war .
Assessing the war
The neglected study of the internal dynamics of Iraq's domestic poli-
tics and security apparatus led to many failed forecasts when US and
UK forces went to war against those institutions of the Iraqi state. The
American and British media as well as the policy-making think tanks
provided many failed assessments of how the war would be fought.
Generally, these institutions predicted the S h i ' i population in the south
would revolt against their Sunni, Tikriti masters, leaving the toughest
battle to the decapitation of the regime in Baghdad. On the contrary,
the S h i ' i t e s did not revolt, the most pitched battles were in the south, and Baghdad fell relatively easily. It was predicted that Saddams elite Special Republican Guard and security organizations would fight to
the very end to defend the capital; however, the para-military organi-
zations such as Fidayin Saddam, which did not have formal military
training, posed the most serious challenge to coalition forces. Finally,
SaddamÕs feared weapons of mass destruction were not deployed
against military forces as they approached Baghdad.
The Iraqis were mistakenly classified into two camps: pro-Saddam
and anti-Saddam factions, and thus once the pro-Saddam factions
were vanquished, the anti-Saddam tendencies in Iraq would rally be-
hind the US. The US forecasts failed to account for the role of Iraqi na-
tionalism and the Iraqi citizensÕ loyalty in defending the nation op-
posed to the regime. For example, reports on 25 March 2003 from
British military forces stationed around Basra, stated that civilians had
revolted against Iraqi government forces. In fact, no revolts occurred in
Basra; nor did they occur in most of the S h i ' i towns of the south.
When the leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Ayatullah al-Hakim, was asked about why no S h i ' a revolt materialized, he said that Ō[t]here are a number of reasons why there has not been an uprising, most important of which is that Iraqis perceive the United States as an occupying rather than a liberating force.
The second rea-
son has to do with people's strong sense of nationalism, the painful
memories of the war of 1991, and the fear that anyone who rises up
against the regime will be crushed.Õ After the Second Gulf War, in
March 1991 an uprising began in Basra and literally spread overnight
throughout the south of Iraq. However, the US failed to support this
uprising and Iraqs Republican Guard brutally crushed it, leaving many
S h i ' i t e s feeling abandoned by the US, and such feelings among the
S h i ' a were not taken into account
Assessing Iraq’s future
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many inaccurate assumptions were made
such as that Iraqi soldiers would not fight at all, American forces would
be greeted as liberators, and Iraqi exiles would be enthusiastically re-
ceived. Once the war had finished, assessments failed to take into ac-
count the almost immediate animosity directed towards the US once
Saddam was removed, and what the Iraqis envisioned for their future
state.
Currently there are numerous, often contradictory, visions for a
post-Saddam Iraq, ranging from a US-supported, neo-Baathist Iraq in
the guise of a democracy, to a decentralized, federalist Iraq proposed by
the exile opposition and Kurdish groups. On the other end of the spec-
trum, many Iraqis are calling for an Islamic state/theocracy, with dis-
agreement over whether it should be formed on the Iranian model.
As Iraqs S h i ' i t e s mobilize to play a dominant role in Iraq, amply
demonstrated by their holy processions in the last week of April, US ad-
ministration officials admit they underestimated their organizational
strength and were unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American,
Islamic theocracy in the country. A Washington Post article stated: ŌAs
the administration plotted to overthrow HusseinÕs government, U.S. of-
ficials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspi-
rations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into
a fundamentalist government. Others were more focused on the over-
riding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynam-
ics of religion and politics in the region.Õ The US administration fears
that the Iraqi S h i ' a would come under the sway of Iranian influence.
Were some of these US officials to buy a copy of Yitzhak NakashÕs book,they would realize that the Shi'itesÕ strong sense of Iraqi nationalism and a resistance to the Iranian concept of a single supreme S h i ' i t er u l e r (velayet-e faqih) would keep the Islamic RepublicÕs influence in check.
The failure to understand Iranian foreign policy, especially in the US,
could lead to disastrous consequences for the future of Iraq. Those in
the US administration that argue Iran should be denied an influence in
Iraq, ignore the centuries-old historical ties between the Iranian S h i ' i t e s and those in Iraq and fail to comprehend the religious significance of the holy sites in Iraq for all S h i ' i Muslims. US forces in Iraq cannot change
this historical legacy. Additionally, the idea of exporting the Iranian rev-
olution has long expired in Irans foreign policy, but rather the Iranians
are more weary of yet another American satellite state on the other side
of its borders.
While the US focuses on alleged Iranian attempts to influence the
S h i ' a towns of Najaf and Karbala, there are mounting tensions develop-
ing in the predominantly S h i ' i district of Baghdad known as Saddam
City, which has now be renamed Sadr City, in honour of the clerical fam-
ily that has played a pivotal role for this community. For the most part,
US forces have not been deployed here, and the district has been run by
armed factions who support the Sadr faction in the growing contention
over who will dominate Iraqs S h i ' ic o m m u n i t y .