Read Online Don't Panic: Isis, Terror and the Middle East by Gwynne Dyer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gwynne Dyer
Tags: General, Social Science, History, Political Science, Modern, middle east, Terrorism, World, Islamic Studies, 21st Century, Middle Eastern
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movement in the Arab world was at an ebb. It had been entirely suppressed in Syria, and was in the final stages of losing the long civil war in Algeria. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood was collaborating with the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in exchange for being allowed a shadowy existence in politics (seventeen “independent” candidates were elected to parliament in the 2000 election) and a somewhat more visible role in providing social services in the poorest parts of the cities, but the more radical groups that had engaged in terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s had been stamped out. And in Iraq there was no Islamist movement to speak of: they were all either dead or in exile.
Al Qaeda had no members and few contacts in the country, and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood were also largely absent. Saddam Hussein’s police state had ruthlessly hunted down and killed Islamist activists in the Sunni community. And, being an equal opportunity oppressor, Saddam dealt with Shia religious leaders who grew too prominent in the same way. So the earliest resistance to the American occupation camemostly from army officers and soldiers who had just taken their uniforms off and gone home, in the “Sunni triangle” west of Baghdad.
They had gone home because in May 2003 the newly appointed head of the “Coalition Provisional Authority,” retired American diplomat L. Paul Bremer III, disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police force. He also banned all senior Ba’ath Party members from future employment in government service, together with anyone in the top three management layers of government ministries, government-run corporations, universities and hospitals who had been a party member at all. (As in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe, membership in the ruling party had been a requirement of promotion to senior rank in these institutions, so he was dismissing the entire top management of all these organizations, although few of them would actually have been Ba’athist activists in any meaningful sense.)
These were Bremer’s own decisions, so far as is known, and not imposed on him by the Bush administration. In effect he was not only putting the entire Sunni Arab elite out of work (for most of these jobs under Saddam were reserved for that elite), but also gutting the only two institutions, the army and the police, that at least in theory rose above mere sectarian concerns. He threw half a million people, most of them with weapons training, serious organizational abilities, or both, out on the street in the most humiliating way imaginable—and then was surprised by what they did next.
Even if Bremer had not done what he did, Iraq would likely have produced a serious resistance movement to the American occupation. It was as if a completely different army from a different United States had arrived in Iraq. Instead of the low profile and deliberate restraint of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq got an American army that treated the country like a free-fire zone. It was true at the beginning, and remained true for years, that any American soldier could kill any Iraqi for any reason—or none—and get away with it. This reckless behaviour was accompanied by absolutely massive corruption: of the $40 billion that was made available for reconstruction in the year after the invasion (frozen Iraqi funds held in foreign banks, and money voted by the U.S. Congress), less than $10 billion was actually spent on reconstruction. The rest went in cost-plus contracts to American contractors with good White House connections, on deals with Iraqi contractors that involved huge kickbacks, and in straightforward, industrial-scale theft by Americans and Iraqis alike.
Iraq was awash in cash—in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money. We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west, crazy atmosphere the likes of which none of us had ever experienced .
Frank
Al Qaeda had no members and few contacts in the country, and other Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood were also largely absent. Saddam Hussein’s police state had ruthlessly hunted down and killed Islamist activists in the Sunni community. And, being an equal opportunity oppressor, Saddam dealt with Shia religious leaders who grew too prominent in the same way. So the earliest resistance to the American occupation camemostly from army officers and soldiers who had just taken their uniforms off and gone home, in the “Sunni triangle” west of Baghdad.
They had gone home because in May 2003 the newly appointed head of the “Coalition Provisional Authority,” retired American diplomat L. Paul Bremer III, disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police force. He also banned all senior Ba’ath Party members from future employment in government service, together with anyone in the top three management layers of government ministries, government-run corporations, universities and hospitals who had been a party member at all. (As in the former Communist states of Eastern Europe, membership in the ruling party had been a requirement of promotion to senior rank in these institutions, so he was dismissing the entire top management of all these organizations, although few of them would actually have been Ba’athist activists in any meaningful sense.)
These were Bremer’s own decisions, so far as is known, and not imposed on him by the Bush administration. In effect he was not only putting the entire Sunni Arab elite out of work (for most of these jobs under Saddam were reserved for that elite), but also gutting the only two institutions, the army and the police, that at least in theory rose above mere sectarian concerns. He threw half a million people, most of them with weapons training, serious organizational abilities, or both, out on the street in the most humiliating way imaginable—and then was surprised by what they did next.
Even if Bremer had not done what he did, Iraq would likely have produced a serious resistance movement to the American occupation. It was as if a completely different army from a different United States had arrived in Iraq. Instead of the low profile and deliberate restraint of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq got an American army that treated the country like a free-fire zone. It was true at the beginning, and remained true for years, that any American soldier could kill any Iraqi for any reason—or none—and get away with it. This reckless behaviour was accompanied by absolutely massive corruption: of the $40 billion that was made available for reconstruction in the year after the invasion (frozen Iraqi funds held in foreign banks, and money voted by the U.S. Congress), less than $10 billion was actually spent on reconstruction. The rest went in cost-plus contracts to American contractors with good White House connections, on deals with Iraqi contractors that involved huge kickbacks, and in straightforward, industrial-scale theft by Americans and Iraqis alike.
Iraq was awash in cash—in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money. We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west, crazy atmosphere the likes of which none of us had ever experienced .
Frank
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