Freedom To Suffer
Five years following the launching of Freedom Iraq, itself following on the military invasion of Afghanistan in the Enduring Freedom invasion, is the world any closer to combating terrorism? Is the United States, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, any safer from the deadly scourge of militant Islam engaged in their pact with holy jihad - themselves intent on liberating the world from the triple scourges of liberal democracy, free-market capitalism and faith-corrupting modern social license?The cost in lives lost in the battle to apprehend and destroy vigilante Islamic terror groups has been enormous. On the part of the contributing countries' troops in the jointly-engaged confrontation with militant Islamists under the direction of the United States, the cost to those nations of their young recruits has been a difficult one to bear. One that their respective societies deplore, resenting the perceived need to send their troops to foreign lands.
As for the cost in civilian lives lost in the deadly heat of fascistic Islam's recourse to spreading murder and mayhem in as wide a path as possible, embracing the globe in its violent cleansing for Muhammad and Allah, it has been breathtaking in its scope. The backlash of the invasion was never envisioned beforehand. The United States, leading the "coalition of the willing" imagined themselves welcomed with open arms, freeing an oppressed population from a brutal despot.
Little did they realize - as they might have, had they readied themselves by making an attempt to understand the society they were prepared to "liberate", and to fairly calculate the end result of their undertaking - the nightmare of reality the near future would bring. Which, in the case of invading and occupying Iraq had far more to do with an incautious whim on the part of a coterie of high-testosterone-charged White House hawks than history and reason should have dictated.
The explicable response to the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington lay in the original decision to look to Afghanistan as the breeding ground of the Taliban and champions of al-Qaeda. There, once it was assured that the invasion had completed its task, matters should have concluded. There, once it was established that the murderous agenda of Osama bin Laden's terror contingent was completely eradicated, attention should have turned to assisting Afghanistan.
Post-invasion reconstruction, a commitment to helping the country stabilize itself should have been the natural outcome of the original invasion. With a civil authority established in that oft-invaded and resource-poor country to firmly lead itself into modernity reflecting its own singular Muslim values, the cost of the aid given to Afghanistan for reconstruction and security would have paid for itself many times over in ensuring that violent insurgents could not re-gain a foothold.
Where a population assisted in overcoming its historical poverty and strife-torn past with a turn-about from rule by corrupted and hereditary war-lords to that of an elected parliament, would not fall victim again to fundamentalist and self-availing mullahs intent on installing their hard-line version of restrictive shariah law. Instead, now, Afghanistan and the installed NATO- and UN-affiliated troops fight a rear-guard action against Taliban jihadists.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq remains determined to conquer the presence of those they term the infidels, the Crusaders, the oppressors of Muslims. While battling the presence of alien troops, equally engaged to victimize those beleaguered of their own faith, visiting deadly atrocities upon them, deeming them insufficiently dedicated to the noble cause of Islamic imperialism.
That the West has responded to jihadist terror by mounting a counter-offensive has only, predictably, increased the fervour of Islamist fundamentalists.
Convinced as they were to begin with, that the West - their accursed religions, politics, world-wide economic grabs and grotesquely failed social mores - was, in its triumphant march to smother the rest of the world in its contemptible values and predatory practises, preparing to conquer and defeat the pure shining light of Islam, just as it was absorbing for its own gain all the natural resources of weaker countries, particularly those endowed with oil wealth.
Committed jihadists, and those newly dedicated to the holy war on infidel occupation of Arab and Muslim lands, flocked through neighbouring borders into Iraq, to inflict pain and suffering on civilian Iraqis in equal measure to their intent to battle Western military contingents. When the invasion of Iraq destroyed its central authority, leaving the chaos of unleashed sectarian hatred in its wake, this danger added exponentially to the anguish of the population.
With no brutally-measured constraints of the deposed Baathist government in place, ancient hatreds re-ignited and Shia and Sunni militias developed their strategies of visiting atrocities upon one another's non-combatants. The dedicated militias of each faction set out to cleanse neighbourhoods of one or the other. There was no planned strategy from the invading army to reduce the likelihood of ongoing internal strife post-Saddam.
The insurgency that followed the successful routing of Saddam Hussein's Baathist army took the Americans, the British and their other allies off guard. As did the profoundly disturbing and atrocity-bent determination of the sectarian violence that ensued. Iraq, five years after invasion, is still beset by violence, a stillborn economy, political uncertainty, and the discomforting humiliation of stabilizing foreign occupation.
The country, along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, has the distinction of being one of the deadliest, most dangerous places on the planet, with ongoing suicide attacks and sectarian killings. Legions of Iraqis remain in detention, torture is an ongoing concern, over four million people have been displaced from their homes, internally and through external refuge-seeking. Many cannot return because their homes have been occupied by rival sect members.
The refugees live tenuous lives of endemic poverty, uncertainty for the future. Those living as refugees abroad remain unwilling to return to their country because of the ongoing state of unrest and its underlying commonality of violence. Even though, abroad, they live in poverty and with full knowledge of the resentment their presence in the countries which reluctantly have given them shelter, breeds.
Within Iraq most of its population has no access to safe drinking water. A large proportion of the population exists on emergency aid. The international Red Cross describes the country's humanitarian situation as being among the most critical in the world today.
In the face of which reality, one can only wonder at the dire consequences of idly meddling minds' - at the highest political levels - decision-making prowess.
Labels: Middle East, Realities, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 22, 2008
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