U.S. bombs Iraq to force in new ‘constitution’

On Oct. 15 occupied Iraq will vote in a referendum on a “constitution” that effectively divides the country in three parts. It was drafted by the occupying U.S. force and is being imposed by 152,000 U.S. troops and U.S. air power. It is unlikely to legitimize the puppet regime any more than the Jan. 30 national voting farce did.

In an attempt to bomb the most rebellious areas of Iraq into submission, the Pentagon has unleashed “Operation River Gate” in western Anbar province near the Syrian border. Major targets were the 12 bridges over the Euphrates River, eight of which had been destroyed by Oct. 6.

“We’re going to fight our way to the referendum, and we’re going to fight our way to the election,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told the media on Oct. 6. He said that U.S. troops held four bridges and that the remaining eight had been eliminated. Saddam Hussein’s trial by the puppet government is scheduled for Oct. 19; there will be a parliamentary election in December.

For the U.S. to unleash its bombers on the nation’s infrastructure was in itself an admission that Washington has abandoned hope that the referendum and election will stabilize Iraq in the near future. Many Iraqis are now concerned that U.S. policy is focused more on splitting the Iraqi nation by using a divide-and-rule strategy.

The current offensives are able to punish Iraqis, whose resistance had succeeded in stalling the U.S. war machine, but not stop them.

Almost 5,000 U.S. troops and 4,000 puppet Iraqi troops, according to General Lynch, have been taking part in this assault on the Euphrates river valley, which runs from the Syrian border to the town of Ramadi, some 70 miles west of Baghdad. The two main operations are called “Iron Fist,” an attack on the town of Si’ida, near the Syrian border, and “River Gate,” further south in the Euphrates valley.

Thousands of Iraqi refugees from northern towns fled to Syria to escape the bombing and fighting. This comes at a time when Washington has threatened “international isolation, economic sanctions and possible military action” against Syria. (Lebanon Daily Star, Oct. 11)

Jet fighter-bombers and phalanxes of heavily armed helicopters have been used in the attacks. Lynch says the “operations will continue through to the election,” and were aimed at denying resistance forces “and foreign fighters the Euphrates river valley as an avenue of approach into Iraq; that we deny any safe havens to the insurgency along the Euphrates river valley; and we ... allow the Iraqi government to re-establish control over their border with Syria.”

In Iraq’s south, the U.S. and British military have launched another offensive, this one directed at the forces following Muqtada al-Sadr, who also opposes the new constitution dividing Iraq.

Even those politicians taking part in the current Iraqi puppet government, if they are from the region of the country most strongly supporting the resistance, have criticized the U.S. military offensive. They complain that the people cannot vote if they have to risk being bombed. It is assumed that the Iraqis of this region, who are mostly Sunni, will either vote “no” on the referendum or will boycott the election.

On Oct. 5, Sunni politicians Saleh al-Mutlak and Hussein al-Falluji, who are in the national assembly, said their colleagues would meet soon and might call for another voting boycott if U.S. forces did not halt major operations in western Iraq. “If U.S. forces keep attacking Sunni cities, then in three or four days’ time we will announce a boycott of the referendum,” said Mutlak. (Toronto Globe and Mail, Oct. 6)

Opponents of the ‘constitution’

Of course, all the resistance groups from the Sunni areas of the country oppose the constitution. In all public statements they oppose even negotiating with the U.S. until the occupiers agree to leave the country.

But even in the south of Iraq, groups like the Mehdi Army, who follow Muqtada al-Sadr, have opposed the constitution. In an interview in Beirut in late September with the Italian daily newspaper Il Manifesto, Sheik Hassan Zargani, foreign representative of this movement, said:

“We are against the articles of the constitution which prescribe the division of the country, but at the same time it is not our intention to provoke a confrontation between yes and no that would play the game of the occupiers.

“We are against the occupation of Iraq and we fight it in any possible political, social and institutional way and also with arms. And we will continue to do so until liberation. At the same time we think that it must take forms that do not damage the Iraqi people and the civilian population.”

Regarding religious differences, he said: “The problem in Iraq is of a political and not religious nature. The risk of frictions of this type derives from two factors linked to the occupation: In the first place the institutional political structure impos ed on Iraq by the USA, with the distribution of all the responsibilities and of posts in the state power on the basis of percentages assigned to the several ethnic and religions groups. A system in which the parties and the politicians are not called upon to do well for Iraq, the country, but for their community or ethnic group, itself damages the collective.

“There is then the ominous effect that many politicians, often having returned to the native land after decades abroad, who have no popular following, try to justify their power by stoking the flames of the religious and ethnic differences.”