Iraq Seen Through The Eyes of Other Realities
The United States would have us see the current status of Iraq as vastly improved from the condition it collapsed toward in the violent throes of internecine conflict, Sunni against Shia, al-Qaeda battling foreign forces and just incidentally Iraqis as well - of any religious persuasion. Anarchy is gone, chaos replaced by the stillness of morbid violence exhausted. In Baghdad and environs, at any event.In Basra, Britain sees matters somewhat differently. That's the area where early in the conflict British troops were seen to have exhibited a firm grasp on the situation of pacifying insurgents and fleeing Baathists. Now, the British claim that the situation in Basra remains tenuous at best, that it remains in the grip of militias and criminal gangs. That would be, largely, native Iraqis still beset with unsettled rage against one another.
And, in the free-for-all of violence and hatred unleashed, suffering under the added onslaught of lawlessness, the criminal element so long held down under the iron grip of Saddam Hussein, seeing themselves free now to be the savage criminal predators on the local populace they seem most comfortable with. Violence against civilians continues unabated. Local police are infiltrated by corrupt and unsavoury elements of the population.
Britain wills itself to a more slender force in Iraq; the people would have it so, the country is tired of its role in the U.S.'s "coalition of the willing". Visiting MPs to Basra drew conclusions that were unveiled before the British House of Commons' defence committee and the picture they drew was compellingly pessimistic. The Iraqi army is continuing on its trajectory of growth and utility, but they remain in dire need of an armed and ready British presence.
The fact of the matter appears to be that while attacks on U.K. forces in the region have diminished, attacks against the civilian population have not. "The relative security of Basra is said to owe more to the dominance of militias and criminal gangs, who are said to have achieved a fragile balance in the city, than to the success of the multinational and Iraqi security forces in tackling the root causes of the violence."
In other words the countervailing influence of sectarian co-operation in dividing the spoils rather than continuing to battle one another for dominance is influencing the status of the city. Much as the violently forced separation of Shia and Sunni into sector-specific enclaves has led to an uneasy quiet in Baghdad, freeing up the U.S. to claim that sectarian violence has diminished. Cleansing of an area of the presence of opposing influences can clearly have that effect. But does it qualify as evidence of unification?
Hatred still seethes, the population remains in helpless thrall to the protection afforded by their sectarian militias, while the criminals among them go about their business dealing in crime and corruption. Somewhat like a disordered return to the status quo under Mr. Saddam. A fragile balance has been achieved. What does this auger for the future of the country?
Under a government whose lawmakers themselves, representative of the divide between Sunni, Shia and Kurd, cannot achieve their own unification?
Adding to this struggle to achieve an element of eventual normalcy as a working country is an independent analysis by Transparency International that ranks Iraq as the third most corrupt country worldwide. Theft is endemic; the U.S. itself estimates that fully one-third of their expenditures on Iraqi contracts and grants are stolen, a portion ending up in the coffers of Shia or Sunni militias.
Iraq's chief of anti-corruption saw 31 of his agency's employees killed in the last three years; estimating that $18-billion in Iraqi funds to have been lost to corrupt schemes in that same period.
Which practise, understandably, limits the government's capacity to provide essential civic services, vital to sustaining the country's security. Aside from which the general acknowledgement of the level of corruption leads to a public distrust of the government, while standing also in the way of national reconciliation, since self-interested groups within the Shia-led government resist reforms that would have the effect of hindering their self-enrichment.
At the grass-roots level Iraqis acknowledge that the widespread practise of corruption is affecting them materially and emotionally. As adherents to the precepts of Islam, the Koran clearly informs that "God does not love the corrupters". The entire country has succumbed to the taint of corruption. Theft and corruption have become the tools of survival; dishonest transactions are the order of the day, troubling many whose moral conscience has become besmirched by succumbing to these realities.
Some are becoming rich through the corrupt enterprises they have embraced. While others remain desperate to endure, to find meaningful and paid employment. Women resort to begging in the streets, while around them life spirals into a cycle of cynicism and grasping opportunities.
Violence of the spirit prevails.
Labels: Political Realities, Troublespots, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 03, 2007
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