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Paper from Working Group 5 5.1 (Rashad)
Iraq from Dictatorship to Democracy, A Recipe for Reform It is well known that the Coalition Forces led by the United States of America invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the pretext of searching for WMD. However, after interrogating Iraqi WMD scientists, close scrutiny of relevant documents and searching all controversial and suspect facilities, no WMD was found. During the invasion, Saddam’s regime was toppled, army and security forces were disbanded, Iraq's vast boarders were left open and looting took place everywhere. Various ammunitions and weapons were left in the hands of militias and civilians, the Iraq Museum was looted and the Iraqi National Library was burnt down. Despite chaos and violence, the process of democracy building kept going, two general elections were held, the permanent constitution was drafted and approved in a referendum. The elected Parliament (the constitutional) formed the permanent government and is debating changes and amendments to certain clauses of the constitution. Following the fall of the regime, Iraqis, for the first time in their modern history enjoyed freedom and human rights, political parties are permitted, free market economy is launched, average wages increased from a few dollars a month to a few hundred (Iraqi currency, the “Dinar” increased in value over 50%), media is free, Iraqis now use Satellite TVs, Cell Phones, Internet…etc. Most Iraqis welcomed the troops and considered them liberators; American soldiers were invited into Iraqi homes. There was great hope that Iraq would be a country of democracy and freedom. The United States pledged 18.4 billion US Dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq as part of 33 Billion Dollars from other countries as was agreed during Madrid conference in Oct.2003. The United States through their advisors to Iraqi Ministries proposed a lot of engineering and administrative projects to rebuild Iraq and to transfer technology. Rehabilitation of schools and hospitals started very soon after. It was unfortunate that the joy of liberation did not last long, only few weeks after the liberation (invasion, call it what you like) violence and atrocious acts took place in Baghdad and Western Iraq. It was unfortunate too that correct measures were not taken at the time to confine and contain the violence. Violence went on and spread all over Iraq as we see it now after. Today, Baghdad, the capital, and some other important cities of Iraq have been paralyzed with fear, shops are closed and streets are empty. A significant number of middle and high class people, including scientists, doctors, engineers and business cadre have moved to Amman, Damascus, Cairo and United Arab Emirates. Some cities of Iraq fall occasionally into the hands of terrorists or extremists, in addition, tens of innocent individuals are kidnapped or slain by death squads on a daily basis in the sectarian strife which started just after the bombing of the Islamic holy shrines at Samarra, 125 km north Baghdad at the beginning of this year. The elected Government is weak and cannot achieve success to preserve sovereignty and restore overall security; the power is actually in the hands of various militias, not to mention corruption, shortage of electricity and oil products and absence of essential services. Daily death rates are shockingly horrible and the total death toll increased sharply, According to a report of the UN, 5818 civilians were killed and 5672 wounded in the months of May and June 2006. The Iraqi Government put the total death toll of Iraqis around 50000 and US sources put it around 30000 since March 2003. In another UN report, at least 914,000 Iraqis have fled their homes, more than a third since the sectarian bloodshed started early this year. As of Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006 and since the beginning of the war in March 2003, at least 2785 members of the US military have died and 21077 service personnel have been wounded,. Iraqi scientists, academics and intellectuals are consistently and persistently targeted, many are killed and many of those who survived fled Iraq after having been tortured and paid ransom. In mid August-September 2006, a group of top six doctors were found slain and according to Ministry of Health some 220 doctors killed and more than 1000 fled Iraq. The killers of Iraqi scientists and intellectuals are largely unknown and in general, assassinations do not follow any religious or sectarian pattern nor specific field of speciality. The killers intend to cripple the country's intellectual elite in order to hinder Iraq's development for years to come. Terror culprits, insurgents, baathists and Saddam loyalists stopped reconstruction and rehabilitation of schools and hospitals, attacked power generation and transmission lines and exploded oil pipelines. Militias, sectarian groups and others are killing, kidnapping and enforcing migration of innocent people. This scenario of violence repeats itself and grows by the day. Iraqi community which is a combination of ethnical groups of Arabs, Kurds, Turkoman, Childo Assyrians and some others, the majority Muslims (Shiite and Sunni) have never split and fell into sectarian strife. Al Qaeda terrorists were the first to declare war on Shiite Muslims followed by bombing of holly Islamic shrines at Samarra early this year. These atrocious acts of Al Qaeda were one of the main reasons to bring Muslim Arabs into fierce inter- sectarian strife. The main political factions who won in the general elections held on 15th Dec, 2005 were three, they were either religious viz. the Unified Iraqi Coalition (Arab Shiites) 128 seats and the Iraqi Accord Front (Arab Sunni) 44 seats or ethnical, viz. Kurdistan Coalition, 53 seats. The total number of the Parliament seats were 275. These three factions have different political agenda and views about the future of Iraq and they are in conflict and have no trust for each other. There is great threat and concern that the conflict between these three factions may lead to the split of Iraq into three entities, the biggest in the south (Arab Shiite) having about 90% of Iraq’s oil reserve. Political observers expect that if Iraq is actually split into the a/m entities, not only Iraq but the whole Middle East will explode. Iraq's Issue is critical, crucial and detrimental to peace in the Middle East and the World. It is important to all of us to know what has brought Iraq into this proximity of civil war? Who is responsible into bringing Iraq onto the verge of collapse? Who let Iraq miss the historical opportunity to build a democratic Iraq wherein human rights were observed and Iraqi ethnical and religious versatility were respected? Was it Americans due to their unintentional mistakes and/ or no pre war plans? Was it Americans due to their lack of understanding of Iraqi culture, behavior and mentality? Was it Americans for their strategic plans to control the Middle East and its oil reserves? Was it Arab Sunnis who could not tolerate the new Iraq? Was it radical Arab Shiite or Arab Sunni Muslims? Was it Kurds who did not deny their separatist agenda to establish their independent state in the north of Iraq as a nucleus for the Grand Kurdistan? Was it some neighboring countries who did not like to see a modern Democratic Iraq or wanted to achieve their strategic plans and goals? Surely all or some of these contribute to the Iraqi dilemma at different proportions. But most political analysts agree that the three main Iraqi factions bear the brunt of the responsibility in bringing Iraq into the current situation. An Iraqi commentator said “Iraqis could neither get benefit of the occupier’s technology and resource capabilities to build Iraq as Germans and Japanese did nor negotiate with the occupiers to leave Iraq peacefully as Indians did”. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is to blame for what happened in Iraq, some mistakes whether unintentional or deliberate were vital. In a recent interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister (of the Kurdistani Coalition) on Wednesday 18th Oct.2006 with The Associated Press, He blamed American officials who ran Iraq before its own government took nominal control for bringing the country to the present state of chaos, he said “ Had our friends listened to us, we would not be where we are today". The events which led Iraq to the present situation could be summarized as follows:
The Iraq dilemma is still on going. Innocent Iraqis are totally confused in trying to be safe and uncertain on how to get electricity, oil products , food and medicine. It is a situation of total apathy which needs a prompt solution by a grand savior who is not at sight as it seems.
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