Eman Khammas11 maart 2008 – 15:17

The American Occupation of Iraq:
Most Flagrant Crime of Modern History

The American ongoing crime of invading and occupying Iraq since 2003, was the most notorious and comprehensive political and military aggression in modern history, mocked at all the moral codes of humanity and the international laws. While all the world, including the American administration itself, was completely aware that all the pretexts of invading Iraq (WMD, link to terrorism, or liberation) were false, and in spite of the fact that the international community opposed that aggression and protested against it, the Bush administration ignored everything and everybody and invaded one of the oldest civilizations of the world. Iraq, 6000 years of history, the cradle of civilizations, where the first letter was written, the first law was put, the first university was built, the first money was done, the first irrigation system was created , the first poetry was written…

What the occupation authorities and their Iraqi agents did during the last 5 years of controlling Iraq, and what they are still doing now, were even more flagrant. Iraq was subjugated to systematic destruction. The State was dismantled, the institutions were abolished, the educational, health, economic, security and infrastructure systems were broken, even the cultural and social fabrics were torn apart. So far 1.3 million civilian Iraqis were killed, more than 5 million are refugees outside Iraq or displaced inside (1.5 m of them are children), 2 million orphans and more widows, and hundreds of thousands are detainees, exposed to the worst kinds of torture and humiliation (including 10.000 women), and without any kind of legal procedures…

According to the UN 8 million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance. 70% of Iraqi’s are without access to safe drinking water supplies. Electricity supply is beneath pre-invasion levels (in many areas electricity simply does not exist). 43% of the population lives on less than half a Dollar a day. Living standards in Iraq are getting worse despite contracts of over $20 billion being paid to companies to rebuild Iraq, they were swallowed by governmental corruption. Iraq now is the 3rd on the list of the most corrupted states in the world. The Iraqi Government figures say that unemployment is between 60% and 70%. Child malnutrition has increased from 19 percent during 1990s "economic sanctions period" before the invasion, to 28 percent today.

But worst of all these hardships is the dark future that is awaiting Iraq. The old colonial divide and rule strategy is 100% responsible for the sectarian divisions, and the longer the occupying armies remain the greater the chances of civil war and a break up of the country. The occupation created different official security bodies out of sectarian militias, hence giving them the authority to kill or to support and help those who kill, kidnap, displace on sectarian bases. On the other hand there are 180,000 mercenaries (apart from 170,000 official American troops) who are committing different kinds of killings, assassinations and explosions of civilian areas in the name of sectarian conflict.

The American administration is working with its Iraqi agents in the Iraqi government to sign a long term treaty that will control Iraq politically, economically (including oil), and militarily for decades to come. Needless to say this treaty is illegal as it is signed by two illegal parties: the occupying state (by its name it has no right to sign) and the Iraqi government which was created under (and by the occupation) , and also because it is the third most corrupt government in the world according to the international reports.

The only way to stop all these crimes, to hold the American and other criminals responsible of them, and to start the real rebuilding of Iraq is to support the Iraqi people in its resistance to the occupation, to mobilize the world community against it, and to stop the world silence and indifference to the first genocide of the 21st century.

Eman Khammas
Iraqi journalist and activist, former director of Occupation Watch, now a refugee.

Bericht aan de Bevolking is een initiatief van Het beschrijf, in samenwerking met het B/Russell/s Tribunal. Een aantal auteurs van deze teksten treedt ook aan op de Literaire Wake n.a.v. 5 jaar oorlog in Irak, op woensdag 19 maart van 20 u. tot 24 u. in Literatuurhuis Passa Porta, A. Dansaertstraat 46, 1000 Brussel. Zie www.passaporta.be

Link naar het overzicht