Wednesday
Jul 22, 1998
03:45 PM PDT

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Myths about the Iraqi Opposition:

#1: The Opposition Supports US Intervention in Iraq.

#2: The Opposition was started by the CIA. Point-of-Fact, the Iraqi Opposition to Saddam Hussein has been fighting for self-determination since the '70s.

#3: The Opposition supports UN Sanctions against the state of Iraq. Point-of-Fact all Iraqis, whether for Saddam Hussein or against him are united against UN economic sanctions.

#4: The Opposition supports the break up of the state of Iraq. Point-of-Fact, the Opposition supports a united democratic Iraq.

#5: When the Opposition overthrows Saddam Hussein or the Ba'athist Rulers Sanctions will be ended. Point-of-Fact, Sanctions will only be ended when the United States and Great Britian has weakened the state of Iraq, so as not to pose a military and democratic threat to it's neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There are no promises of ever ending the sanctions from the US/UK Security Advisors.

Subject: Kurds Against Bombing

Don't torture my people like this
                 The infrastructure, from the sewage to the 
electricity systems, remains in ruins

                 By Laith Hayali
                 The Guardian   Saturday December 19, 1998

                 There is no rational basis for believing that the 
current bombardment of Iraq will either achieve the objectives set by 
the American and British governments or solve the problems of the 
Iraqi people. Indeed there is every likelihood that once a halt is 
called to these vicious attacks, Saddam Hussein will still be in power 
and will still have stocks of chemical and biological weapons. On that 
basis alone, this use of force is excessive and cannot be justified.

                 As an Iraqi political exile - who operated with the 
Kurdish Pesh Mergas and anti-Saddam resistance inside Iraq in the 
1980s and helped found the solidarity committee Cardri - I need no 
lessons in the nature of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, particularly 
from those in the West who backed him in the past. Friends and 
comrades of mine have been tortured and executed in his jails and I 
have been forced to live abroad.

                 I am also convinced that Iraq must be rid of chemical 
and biological weapons, because there is always the potential that at 
some point in the future this kind of regime might use them against 
its own people or its neighbours. But even the British Foreign 
Secretary has admitted that the bombing will not bring about their 
elimination.

                 The basis of the onslaught is said to be the report 
of the Unscom weapons inspectors, who are supposed to be under the 
control of the United Nations.
                 But the Anglo-American attack began when the ink was 
scarcely dry on William Butler's report - given to President Clinton 
days before Kofi Annan was permitted to see it - without allowing the 
UN Security Council the chance to discuss either the report or 
consider any alternative response. Action on this scale demands broad 
international support, which simply does not exist.

                 Iraq is already on its knees militarily and - as will 
be clear from the primitive means now being used against the aerial 
attacks - has no real chance of defending itself. The entire 
infrastructure of the country, from the sewage to the electricity 
systems, remains in ruins from the merciless and utterly 
disproportionate bombardment during the Gulf War. The destruction of 
buildings housing various branches of Saddam's military and security 
machine will not destroy those institutions themselves. But innocent 
people are being unjustifiably killed and maimed in the process.

                 Any possible solution to the problems of Iraq and its 
relations with the rest of the world will depend on political change 
inside the country.
                 But - as has become clear to me from regular contact 
with people in Iraq - the more Iraqis are subjected to aerial assault 
and the grinding effect of sanctions, the more they tend to see the 
main threat to them as coming from the actions of foreign powers, and 
look for a safe haven with the regime, rather than seeking to 
overthrow it.
                 People in the West should not kid themselves that 
Iraqis find any justification in sanctions, which reduce them to 
misery - struggling to live and selling their personal belongings 
to survive - while those in charge of the country are unaffected.

                 Nor does political change in Iraq simply mean 
replacing Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime with a regime based on the 
existing opposition, which is deeply divided on ethnic and religious 
lines, largely undemocratic in its internal operation, heavily 
infiltrated by Saddam's agents and increasingly dependent on western 
funding and support. The danger of direct foreign involvement in Iraqi 
politics is that it will not end with a change of regime, but continue 
to tie Iraq to the oil-driven strategic aims of the United States in 
the Middle East.

                 What is needed instead is a shift of UN policy 
towards united international pressure on Iraq to open up its political 
system and allow the re-emergence of genuine home-grown political 
forces in the country. Even modest moves in that direction would begin 
to create the conditions for normalisation of Iraq's relations with 
the rest of the world. The risk of current US-British policy is that 
even if it were eventually to dislodge Saddam's regime, the price paid 
by the people of Iraq - as was the case in Afghanistan- could be 
disastrously and inhumanly high.

                 Laith Hayali is an Iraqi political exile based in 
London.



Note: Mashriq, a Shi'a Rights Organization, endorses the territorial 
integrity of Iraq. The consensus is that the bombing of Iraq is an act 
of aggression. A nation does not go to war against an individual, such 
as Saddam Hussein, a nation goes to war against all the peoples within 
it's borders. Thus an attack against Iraq is an attack against Kurds, 
Shi'a and all persons in Iraq. We point out, again, Ayatollah Hakim of 
SCIRI has called for the removal of the US from internal Iraqi 
matters.

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