One Big Hizballah
By Uri Avnery, 13.7.02
OK, so we are going to kill
Saddan Hussein. America wants it. And if America wants something, we want it,
too. Right?
After all, there can be no
doubt. The last time, Saddam threw Scuds at us, just in order to win popularity
in the Arab world. (At that time somebody invented the story that "the
Palestinians are dancing on their roofs"' and Yossi Sarid wrote his
article "From now on, the Palestinians can search for me".)
Now all this has become topical
again. George Bush Jr. wants to start a war, the same war that George Bush Sr.
stopped in the middle. The son wants to finish the job begun by the father. How
touching.
Also urgent. Bush Jr. is deeply
involved in the financial scandal that is exciting the American public, and his
Vice President (Vice is the right word) is involved even more. In times of
government scandals, there is always a tendency to start a little war. A war
makes people forget everything else and rally around the leader.
So we are going to have a war.
America leading, we following in step, listening to the same drummer.
In spite of everything, I
suggest that we think about it for a moment. True, Saddam is abominable, and so
is his regime. But will killing Saddam and overthrowing his regime be good for
Israel?
Let's pose another question
first: why did Father Bush stop that war? The Iraqi army was beaten, the way to
Baghdad open. So why did Bush order his army to stop?
To solve this riddle, one has
to know a little more about the country called Iraq.
It is an artificial state,
created by the British for their own ends. In practice it is a nearly
accidental conglomeration of three different states, merged into one by a
distant empire.
Schematically, one can divide
Iraq into three components: north, middle and south.
In the north there are the
Kurds, who are different from the Arabs in every respect, except religion. They
have their own language and their own culture. Their homeland is Kurdistan, a
country arbitrarily cut up and divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
They are oppressed by all of them. From time to time they rebel, at one time in
one state, another time in another.
In Iraq the Kurds constitute
something like a quarter of the population. They are Sunni Muslims and religion
plays a big role in their lives. One of the greatest warriors of Islam,
Salah-al-Din (Saladin), who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, was a Kurd.
The Iraqi Kurds dream of
independence and the unification of all Kurdistan. When they rose up under
Mustafa al-Barzani, the Israeli army sent officers and equipment to assist
them. For the time being they enjoy some sort of autonomy under the protection
of the American air force, which prevents Saddam's from getting near them.
If the Iraqi State falls apart,
the Kurds in the north will declare their independence. That may kindle the
fire of Kurdish irredentism in Turkey, too. That's why the Turks asked Bush Sr.
to stop the war.
In the south there are the
Shiites. They are Arabs in every respect, but religion divides them from their
brothers in the north and connects them with neighboring non-Arab Iran.
The Shiite version of Islam was
born in Iraq, where the dramatic events of its inception took place. There the
holiest places of the Shia are located. There, generations of Shiite scholars
and revolutionaries were brought up – including the Ayatolla Humeini, the
father of present-day Iran.
The Shiites are not a small
minority. They make up something like half the population of Iraq.
Between the Kurds in the north
and the Shiites in the south there are the Arab Sunnis. They are a minority in
their country, but they control practically everything. Baghdad is their city,
the army is their army. Saddam Hussein, who is, of course, a Sunni Arab, has
manned many of the key position with people from his home town, Takrit. (Since
all of these, like himself, bear the family name al-Takriti, Saddam has
forbidden the use of family names in Iraq, on the grounds that this is a
Western habit.)
Even the Americans admit that
in Iraq they have no local opposition worth its name. Unlike Afghanistan, where
they used local forces to their good advantage, there are no such forces to
assist them and to keep a unified Iraq intact after the fall of Saddam.
Therefore, upon the elimination
of the tyrant, one of two things will happen:
Either - Iraq will break up
into three components. In the north, a Kurdish state will emerge, in the center
a Sunni-Arab statelet, and the south will join Iran, opening before it the
whole Middle East. Iran will become the dominant state in the region, directly
threatening the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Or – Iraq will continue to
exist as a unified country but will turn, in reality, into an Iranian
protectorate, with the same results.
Both cases will pose an
existential danger to the Arab states. A rekindled, fanatical fundamentalist
fervor will engulf them. That is why the Arab rulers panicked at the time and
cried SOS. Bush the Father, who is an intelligent person (and a former
intelligence chief to boot) called the war off. But Bush the Son is not known
for his exceptional intelligence, and his advisers have other agendas. They
don't really care.
But
we should care. From the point of view of our national interest, this is an
existential danger: the whole region may turn into one gigantic Hizballah.