Rohan Pearce
Anyone naive enough to think that the Iraqi elections scheduled for January will produce a genuinely, as opposed to formally, independent government is likely to have their illusions shattered by a new crackdown on political opposition to the US occupation. Washington appears to be particularly sensitive to Iraqi criticism of its attack on Fallujah.
At dawn on November 16, US troops raided the house of Nasir Ayif and took him into custody. Ayif is the deputy head of Iraq's consultative parliament — the National Council — and a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP).
Washington's motivation for arresting Ayif isn't hard to discern. Little more than a week earlier, on November 8, the IIP announced it was withdrawing from participation in the US-appointed Interim Government of Iraq because of IGI Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's support for the US military's invasion of Fallujah.
"This action [Ayif's arrest] is a kind of punishment to the Islamic Party because we object to what is happening in Iraq, especially Fallujah, and to the security policies adopted by the Americans and the Iraqi government", a party official was quoted as saying in a report on the website of Aljazeera, the Qatar-based satellite TV channel. The IIP is considered by the Western media to be the most influential Islamist party among Iraq's Sunni Muslims (roughly 40% of the country's 25 million inhabitants).
Washington is also targeting Iraqi journalists whose reporting doesn't conform to the official mantra that the anti-occupation resistance fighters are "terrorists" and anti-Iraqi. A November 9 statement by the IGI's Media High Commission directed reporters not to attach "patriotic descriptions to groups of killers and criminals".
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based group, the statement told Iraqi journalists: "You must be precise and objective in handling news and information. We hope you comply ... otherwise we regret we will be forced to take all the legal measures to guarantee higher national interests."
The Media High Commission is run by Ibrahim Janabi, a member of the same political grouping as Allawi — the CIA-created Iraqi National Accord.
From Green Left Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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