Tamara Pearson, Sydney
SYDNEY - Frequent, long power cuts; dirty water that is often turned off; people queuing for petrol for seven hours in 45°C heat and soldiers aiming guns at them when they get to the petrol station.
This is the Iraq Donna Mulhearn described to 80 people at a Parramatta Peace Group meeting on June 7. Mulhearn was a human shield in Iraq when the invasion began, and recently spent a further six months there.
Raid Abduljabar, an Iraqi who came back with Mulhearn, also addressed the meeting. "We want change, we know Saddam wasn't good, but we don't want this. Iraqis now say, 'Give us back Saddam'," he said. "I hope Australian people can make Australian troops leave Iraq."
Mulhearn, who will be touring around Australia to speak about her experiences in Iraq, told Green Left Weekly: "The military presence in Iraq is the root cause of all the violence that is currently occurring in Iraq, so for Iraqis to get the peace that they deserve, the foreign occupiers need to leave. Australia should follow the example of Spain and be the next major partner to withdraw.
"Previously Iraqis had respect for Australia, but now our role there is jeopardising that relationship. Australian troops also need to leave, to rescue Australia's integrity. Having troops remaining in Iraq opens Australia up to attacks."
Mulhearn doesn't believe anything will change after the official handover on June 30. "The handover ... is meaningless for the average Iraqi person. It is totally irrelevant to their lives. They have no respect for the governing council, who are just appointed by America, paid by America, and who come from outside Iraq. Iraqis don't know who [the councillors] are many of them have been convicted for corruption.
"Handover on June 30 won't do anything to change the lives of Iraqis - the power cuts, dirty water, the violence on the streets, the lack of security and the oppression that they feel of been occupied, wont change after June 30. There will still be no elected government."
Mulhearn believes Australians are not getting the true story of Iraq from the mainstream media. "[The Australian mainstream media] follow the military action of the day, but they don't go deeper, into the human side of the war, the occupation. I don't believe they reflect the reality of the occupation for ordinary Iraqis. With a few exceptions, they are just portraying what the coalition would like them to portray."
Mulhearn described the Iraqi resistance as "a mixture of people from different backgrounds who have come together to oppose the occupation. They are ordinary people who have taken up arms to defend their country. Many of them don't have a history of being in the army.
"The Iraqi resistance is very loosely organised, all around the country. Most members have no relationship at all to Saddam's regime. They are a mixture of grandfathers, workers, professionals and poor people who say the war is not over until the last soldier leaves Iraq."
From Green Left Weekly, June 23, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.