WELCOME TO IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 09, March 28, 2003

THE MISSING REBELS A key reason Iraqis have not risen up against Saddam
Hussein is that hundreds of thousands were "disappeared" the last time
they did. By Dr. Sahib el-Hakim in London.

AN ARAB AWAKENING, AT LAST? The Iraq and Palestine conflicts are
converging, and the Arab street is stirring. By Rana el-Khatib in Phoenix.

AMERICA'S MUSLIM MISCALCULATION The war is creating a major realignment
within the Islamic world, with even moderate Moslems calling for jihad
against the US. By Fawaz A. Gerges in New York.

TAKING IT IN STRIDE War is drawing ever closer, but for the moment the
main concern in Iraqi Kurdistan is clouds. By Ali Sindi in Pirmam, Iraqi
Kurdistan.

****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ******************

As an educational charity, IWPR depends on grants and donations. To
support IWPR's educational, training and reporting programmes directly,
you can now give online, at: http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?top_donate.html

*******************************************************************

Readers are urged to subscribe free to IWPR's full range of electronic
publications on Afghanistan, the Balkans, Belarus, the Caucasus, Central
Asia and the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. To manage your own
subscriptions, visit:
https://www.global-list.com/secure/iwpr/subscribe_pop.asp

****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ******************

THE MISSING REBELS

A key reason Iraqis have not risen up against Saddam Hussein is that
hundreds of thousands were "disappeared" the last time they did.

By Dr. Sahib el-Hakim in London

The United States is surprised that Iraqis are not rising up to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. A popular uprising, it seems, was part of President Bush's
war plan.

Many reasons have already been given to explain why Iraqis are not
rebelling against the Ba'athist structures that maintain Saddam Hussein
power today. They recall that President Bush the father urged Iraqis to
rise up in 1991 and then allowed them to be put down with overwhelming
force. They warn that Washington has misunderstood the Iraqi character: no
Iraqi wants a military governor, or even a civilian governor, imposed from
outside.

But so far no-one has mentioned the reason which, I believe, is the most
important: in crushing the 1991 uprising, Saddam Hussein "disappeared"
more than 250,000 Iraqis - by our count and by that of other,
international, human rights groups. Virtually all of them are missing to
this day. Among them are many who could have given leadership and
direction both during this war and when - if - Saddam's regime is finally
overthrown.

On 20 October last year, in an apparent attempt to win popular support for
a war he knew was threatening, Saddam Hussein amnestied all Iraq's common
criminals. He released one political prisoner - Sayyed Mohammed
el-Tabatabai, a Shia cleric from the holy city of Kerbala. The release of
el-Tabatabai, an octogenarian, grabbed the headlines. Overlooked was the
fact that all the other political prisoners, including the hundreds of
thousands who were "disappeared" in 1991, remained behind bars.

Shortly before the outbreak of war, the Iraqi government invited
journalists gathering in Baghdad to visit the notorious abu Ghraib jail.
They found it empty. This, again, made headlines. But again there was an
omission: no mention of the fact that another, even more notorious jail -
Radwaniyah - was not opened for public scrutiny. Not Radwaniyah - and not
any of jails run by Iraq's feared Amn security services.

What happened to the men and women taken from abu Ghraib? Where are they
now? Are they dead? Or transferred to some jail deep in the Iraqi desert?
We are very much afraid that they have all been killed.

Although it is not possible to gather exact figures, investigations in 14
of Iraq's 18 provinces by the Organisation of Human Rights in Iraq suggest
that as many as 400,000 Iraqis could have been "disappeared" in or
immediately after the 1991 uprising. The majority are Shias and Kurds. As
well as many ordinary men and women, they include more than 100 clerics on
the staff of the late Grand Ayatollah abu al-Qasm al-Khoei; two brothers,
sons and nephews of Sayyed Mohammed Bahr el-Uluum; and Mohammed Ridha
el-Hakim, detained in the holy city of Najaf in March 1991 and never seen
since.

Mohammed Ridha is one of dozens of members of the el-Hakim family who have
gone missing without trace since Saddam rose to power. Another 27 have
been murdered by the regime.

Today the concern of human rights activists and of Shias in Iraq and all
across the Shia world is that Saddam, in an attempt to rally the Shias of
Iraq behind him, will shell the holy shrines in Najaf and Kerbala and
blame it on British and American forces.

Exactly this happened in 1991, on the orders of Hussein Kamel, one of
Saddam's sons-in-law. Today the man in charge of the war in southern Iraq
is Ali Hassan el-Magid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen and the
"Chemical Ali" of Kurdish legend - a man who will stop at nothing to
prevent Shias from rising up against the regime.

Around the holy cities, the armies of both sides are attacking and
retreating. No reliable news from inside is reaching the outside world.
There are no words to express our concern and our fear.

Sahib el-Hakim is a human rights activist and head of the London-based
Organisation of Human Rights Organisation in Iraq.


AN ARAB AWAKENING, AT LAST?

The Iraq and Palestine conflicts are converging, and the Arab street is
stirring.

By Rana el-Khatib in Phoenix

"If it bleeds, it leads," the old saying goes. But if it bleeds too long,
many move on and look elsewhere for new blood. The world's attention,
understandably, is now on Iraq, and old wounds like Palestine are left
festering and unhealed.

Images of British and American bombs in the first week of war have
produced incandescent patterns against the night skies of Iraq. Viewing
the barrage of lights on television, over the voices of commentators
talking of a targeted war to "free Iraq", it is difficult to comprehend
the real "impact" the illuminations are having on those experiencing them
at first hand. The American media have succeeded in convincing most
Americans that bludgeoning Iraq is somehow a good thing, that anything
Iraq does to defend itself, on its own soil, is in breach of the "rules of
war".

Myopia has set in. America focuses solely on its war against Iraq and
ignores its own flouting of international agreements. The rest of the
world will just have to wait until it is done. But it is not that simple -
especially in the Middle East.

The news in Palestine remains much the same as it always is: miserable. A
15-year-old boy was shot in the head and killed in another day of curfew
on Jenin. Three men from the Aida refugee camp were extra-judicially
executed by Israeli soldiers. A school teacher, his wife and their two
daughters were fired on by Israeli soldiers as they drove along a main
road. All four sustained bullet wounds, and the youngest child died.

Israel's chokehold on the Palestinians tightens, yet still there is almost
no word in America of its brutality against Palestinian civilians. Who has
the time when America is fighting the good fight? But America has never
given the Palestinians' plight much airtime. What little there has been
has been fragmented and distorted. This war has buried the Palestinian
cause further down the pipeline of "bleed" stories to report.

But something is starting to change. And, as Iraq endures round after
round of inhumanity that the West calls "humane", it all connects back to
Palestine.

This war to democratise Iraq by bombing it back into the 12th century has
ignited a spark that will not easily be extinguished. What is different
about Iraq? The Arab world has lived with puppet governments before. It
has endured countless wars fought on its soil for indefensible reasons. It
has put up with a century of decline and neglect. And every time it gets a
twinkle of "No more!" in its eyes, it is beaten back into submission.

Not this time. What this war appears to have done, miraculously, is to
resuscitate the Arab streets. It really does appear that the Arab world is
stirring from its numb state. Perhaps the Arabs have finally had enough.
Perhaps this is the last straw that will break the camel's back. Perhaps
the beast is no longer willing to carry the burden.

The Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts are converging. They are
interconnected like a fault line, and over the years the plates have
shifted enough times that the tremors are felt all the way down the line
and everywhere in between. Within days of the US-led onslaught, the Arab
street could be heard clearing its throat and contemplating its voice.
Stifling one protest seems to encourage others.

The world has turned a blind eye to the glaring favouritism that guides US
policy in the Middle East, perhaps because that favouritism undermined the
sleeping, stultified Arab states. The US uses many reasons to justify
dominating the region's wealth and maintaining hegemony - prime among them
today, democratic change. But the Arab world is no longer buying it.

What America, like Israel, does not seem to comprehend is one of the basic
laws of physics: for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.
When countries like the United States aggress routinely, either indirectly
by funding an oppressive government or directly by declaring war against
countries unable to defend themselves, a reaction must be expected. Pull
an elastic band long and hard enough and it will snap. The Middle East
appears to have reached its threshold.

Though the Palestinian diaspora and its ripple effects are often
overlooked by the West, the persistence of occupation and humiliation has
taken its toll on the entire region. Add the atrocities in Iraq, and a
decade of sanctions, and you have the makings of social unrest never
before seen in the region.

As far as Mr. Bush is concerned, this war is just one more slap on the
insignificant face of the Arab world that the Arab world will get over.
But this slap appears to have resonated deep into the tissue of the
collective Arab face and, this time, has left an impression. The Arab
world is stirring. If America does not heed the grumbling on the street
along the fault line, something will have to give. Stay tuned for years
and years of backlash.

Rana El-Khatib is a Palestinian writer living in Phoenix, Arizona.


AMERICA'S MUSLIM MISCALCULATION

The war is creating a major realignment within the Islamic world, with
even moderate Moslems calling for jihad against the US.

By Fawaz A. Gerges in New York

In selling its case to invade Iraq and topple its government, the Bush
administration asserted that the war will hammer another deadly nail in
the coffin of terror by showing terrorists and their state supporters that
Washington is determined to use pre-emptive force to protect its vital
interests. Although American officials did not establish a direct link
between the Iraqi president and either al-Qaeda or the September 11
attacks, they argued the Iraq war will make the United States less
vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

In their effort to garner domestic and international support for the war,
President Bush and his security team promised to bring democracy to Iraq
and empower liberal voices throughout the Muslim Middle East. Their aim is
to transform the whole region in America's image by transplanting
Jeffersonian democracy into the heart of the Arabian desert. By doing so,
they hope to strike at the root causes of militancy and extremism.

But a US invasion of Iraq that results in large numbers of civilian
casualties will deepen the sense of victimisation and defeat already felt
by Arab youths and incline them to join cells of the al-Qaeda variety. In
this way, US policy toward Iraq will play into the hands of al-Qaeda and
give it a new lease on life. Far from undermining militancy and combating
terror, war will sow the seeds of further militancy. The ripples of the
Iraqi crisis will reverberate throughout Arab lands, further threatening
regional stability and the legitimacy crisis of pro-Western Arab states.

The US invasion of Iraq is a God-send for Osama bin Laden and other
militant elements. Far from empowering liberal forces in Iraq and other
Muslim states, as some of the hardliners in the Bush administration
assert, the American invasion is already radicalising Arab politics and
playing into the hands of reactionary groups.

Washington's war has blurred the lines between mainstream, liberal and
radical politics in the world of Islam, and with it squandered most of the
empathy engendered after 9/11. A new realignment against the United States
that brings together a broad spectrum of political forces is crystallising
in Arab and Muslim lands. Distinguished Islamic institutions and
renowned - and moderate - clerics have urged Muslims to join in jihad to
resist the US-led onslaught.

Al-Azhar, the highest, oldest and most-respected institution of religious
learning in the Muslim world, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, advising
"all Muslims in the world to make jihad against invading American forces".
Although Islam possesses no organised church, the significance of
al-Azhar's call is comparable to a Papal call on Catholics to fight a just
war to defend the faith. The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed
Tantawi, a reformist who was one of the first clerics to condemn 9/11 and
who dismissed bin Laden's jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that
attempts to resist the US attack ON IRAQ are a "binding Islamic duty."

Until now Tantawi has been attacked by conservative and reactionary
clerics as a pro-Western reformer. His new stance shows the extent of the
realignment of political opinion in the world of Islam.

Another widely-respected Egyptian-born cleric based in Qatar, Sheikh
Youssef Al-Qaradawi, accused the Bush administration of declaring war
against Islam - and behaving like "a god". Qaradawi, who also denounced
al-Qaeda terrorism after 9/11, said fighting US troops is "legal jihad"
and "death while defending Iraq a kind of martyrdom."

Moderates and radicals now appear to be fully united in opposition to the
American war. In an editorial in al-Hayat, a leading secular-liberal
writer warned of the "new American tyranny . . . an empire that cannot be
questioned." Similarly, a leader in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, a
well-organised and mainstream Islamist organisation with millions of
members in several Arab countries, called on his followers everywhere to
join in jihad in defence of Iraq. The Muslim Brothers have not been
considered a militant group since the 1970s when they forsook violence and
agreed to play by the rules of the political game.

Bin Laden must be laughing in his grave - or cave, whichever the case may
be. His apocalyptic nightmare of a clash of religions and cultures is
finally resonating in both camps. What was unthinkable a year and a half
ago has happened: two versions of a just war theory, one Western and the
other Muslim, are clashing over Iraq.

The challenge now is how to limit the damage inflicted by the US invasion
of Iraq, minimise its costs and isolate its reverberations inside Iraq and
the wider region. Half-measures won't do any longer. The United States
must not only enable Iraqis to govern their country, but also must assist
them in the complex and costly task of socio-political reconstruction. It
must redouble its efforts to resolve the festering Palestinian tragedy and
to provide the means to build a viable Palestinian nation-state. The
promotion of human rights and the rule of law must be high on Washington's
agenda.

American policy-makers must recognise the limits of the use of force in
international politics, particularly in the Muslim Middle East where
accumulated grievances against US foreign policies abound. The Iraq war
pours fuel on an already raging fire. In the long term, the potential
risks of the American adventure in Iraq outweigh any imagined benefits not
only to Iraq and the region, but also to America itself.

Fawaz A. Gerges holds the Christian Johnson Chair in Middle East and
international affairs at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York,
and is author of the forthcoming "The Islamists and the West".


TAKING IT IN STRIDE

War is drawing ever closer, but for the moment the main concern in Iraqi
Kurdistan is clouds.

By Ali Sindi in Pirmam, Iraqi Kurdistan

As I write I can hear the sound of the allies' planes flying overhead.
They have been flying continuously for the past 24 hours now, but Kurds
are not worried. It is these planes, and the sound of them, that has kept
us living in hope for the past 12 years. It is the first time in our
history that air forces are protecting us - not attacking us.

Daily life is still very calm in Iraqi Kurdistan even though there was a
small, no-injury explosion in Erbil today. The blast created a small cloud
in the sky. After Saddam's chemical attacks, Iraqi Kurds are particularly
concerned with clouds: once bitten, forever smitten. The interior minister
called the explosion the action of traitors, to destabilize our region.

It is now one week since war began. Food, clean water, electricity are
still available and affordable, although for the past three days the Dohuk
area, which gets its power from Saddam-controlled Mosul, has been without
electricity. Dohuk's population of 250,000 is now depending on generators
which cover only a quarter of the area's needs - most importantly,
hospitals and water projects.

Around Erbil and other cities near the front, Kurdish forces are gathered
in groups and camps. The main local radio station, Dangi Kurdistani Iraq,
or Voice of Iraq Kurdistan, is broadcasting messages from allied forces
asking Iraqi soldiers to surrender and not to defend the regime. It is
telling them why this war is being fought and what international
obligations the Iraqi regime broke.

The Kurdish parties, led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, are fielding more than 70,000 fighters. Most
believe it is preferable for Iraqis to liberate Iraqis - or at least
Iraqis working alongside foreigners. Iraqi troops know that the Kurds are
not looking for revenge. In 1991, tens of thousands of Arab soldiers who
surrendered to the Kurdish area were treated humanely. Now the Kurdish
media is educating the public about the Geneva Convention and the rights
of surrendering troops. Already a few thousand Iraqis have surrendered and
we are sure many more will follow.

I remember exactly when the first Gulf war, against Iran, started - 22
September 1980 - and when the second Gulf war, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,
started - 1 August 1990. Each time, I, like many others, thought the
conflict would be short - a few days, perhaps a few weeks. The first days
of war were greeted with fear and caution, and then things changed: while
the threats of the first days still existed, and perhaps were even
greater, people felt less worried; they adapted. There is no alternative.

In January 1991 I was in Baghdad. Conditions were very tough and the
bombardment much more extensive than it is in Iraqi Kurdistan until now.
But people adapted within weeks. Thus it is that people in Iraqi Kurdistan
are returning to their homes now - not because the threat is over, but
because they are desensitized.

Iraqis in general and Kurds in particular have been repeatedly inoculated
with an anti-war vaccine. This vaccine - experience - desensitizes you to
the fear of war and makes you apathetic to its consequences. A pity it
does not work on children . . . Only last week I noticed how my nephew was
shivering while talking about war. He is 13 years old and he had the
vaccine when he was one year old. In later years he received smaller
doses, but still to no effect.

I told him we, the men, should not be afraid of anything. "Well," he said.
"I am not afraid, but my friends in school are saying terrible things
about chemical weapons."

I understood then that we were not on the same wavelength - and that he
was right to be afraid. I myself began to be afraid. Welcome to the
republic of fear!

While writing, for the first time, I feel the windows and the ground
shaking. The bombardment less than 30 miles from here is heavy. Iraqi
missiles? It's possible. I went out to investigate and found clouds. I
used the most advanced technology available to Kurds: the nose. These
clouds do not smell, as chemical weapons do, of decaying apple. These are
the leftover clouds of yesterday's rain. Good.

Imagine living like this. Imagine your children and loved ones living like
this. The people of Iraq have suffered under Saddam for 30 years - three
generations. All have suffered psychological trauma as a result. Some
people are still defending this regime in the south. True. But those who
are against the regime are 20 times more numerous.

Ali Sindi, a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a
Kurdish surgeon and former deputy minister of health in the Kurdish
government.

****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ****************

The reports are also being published on the Web in English, Arabic and
Kurdish.

This project is supported by the Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation and
International Media Support. IWPR also thanks the following for
institutional or development support which has assisted in the launch of
this project: the Dutch Foreign Ministry, the Ford Foundation, the
Ploughshares Foundation.

For further details on this project, other publications and IWPR
educational and media development programmes, visit: www.iwpr.net

Iraqi Project Coordinating Editor: Julie Flint; Editorial Assistant: Emma
Wallace

IWPR Project Development and Support -- Executive Director: Anthony
Borden; Director of Operations: Alan Davis; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan;
Senior Operations Manager: Duncan Furey; Associate Editor: Alison
Freebairn

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) is a London-based
independent non-profit organisation supporting regional media and
democratic change.

Lancaster House, 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 7130, Fax: +44 (0)20 7713 7140 E-mail: info@iwpr.net
Web: www.iwpr.net

The opinions expressed in Iraqi Crisis Report are those of the authors and
do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR.

Copyright (c) 2003 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

IRAQI CRISIS REPORT No. 09