Doug Lorimer
On June 30, the US-British Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that currently rules Iraq will hand over governance of the country to a new US embassy headed by John Negroponte. This embassy will be staffed by 1200 US officials and 2000 Iraqi employees, and will attempt to enforce its will on the Iraqi people through 138,000 US and 15,000 allied occupation troops.
This transfer of authority will be accompanied by a massive public relations charade that will pretend that CPA head Paul Bremer is handing over governance of Iraq to a "sovereign" interim Iraqi government.
The key members of this government — a president, two vice-presidents, a prime minister and 26 ministers — are to be named before the end of May by Lakhdar Brahimi, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's special envoy to Iraq.
Brahimi previously worked with US officials to install Hamid Karzai, formerly a manager for Union Oil of California, as president of Washington's puppet Islamic Republic of Aghanistan.
The May 27 Washington Times reported that all of "Brahimi's candidates will be approved by the United States before their names are announced ... state department spokesman Richard Boucher said that White House envoy Robert Blackwill, who is working alongside Brahimi, and Paul Bremer ... would make sure no undesirable figures were chosen".
The Iraq "handover" charade is aimed at fooling world public opinion, especially US voters, into believing that the US-led occupation of Iraq will end on June 30. It began on May 24, when Negroponte, currently the US ambassador to the UN, presented a new draft resolution on Iraq to the UN Security Council.
The draft resolution "reaffirms the authorisation for the multinational force under unified [i.e. US] command established under resolution 1511 (2003) and decides further that the mandate for the multinational force shall be reviewed 12 months from the date of this resolution or at the request of the transitional government of Iraq".
However, Reuters reported that James Cunningham, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, "acknowledged there was no authority [in the resolution] for Iraq to ask foreign troops to leave", merely to ask the Security Council to "review" the US-led occupation mandate. Since the US can veto any resolution ending the occupation mandate, Washington can maintain its troop presence in Iraq indefinitely.
Arab cover?
Washington's aim in seeking a new UN resolution is to get other countries, especially Arab states, to participate in the post-June US-led occupation of Iraq. However, in an interview with the Dubai-based Arabiya satellite TV network on May 25, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said any Arab government deploying troops in Iraq would be taking "a very big risk".
Moussa added that "Arab troops entering Iraq when it is under occupation would mean an Arab occupation of Iraq".
Ali Hamadeh, a political analyst with Lebanon's leading An Nahar newspaper, said that "no Arab country would want to give a cover for the US occupation" and that foreign Arab soldiers would simply be used by US troops "as sandbags to guard against attacks" by Iraqi resistance fighters.
On May 24, US President George Bush gave a 33-minute televised speech to the US Army War College outlining what his administration has decided will happen in Iraq over the next year.
"This new government will be advised by a national council which will be chosen in July by Iraqis representing their country's diversity", Bush declared. The "interim government will exercise full sovereignty until national elections are held" by the end of January, after which "a transitional national assembly ... will choose a transitional government with executive powers. The transitional national assembly will also draft a new constitution, which will be presented to the Iraqi people in a referendum scheduled for the [autumn] of 2005."
Bush also announced that Washington's "new embassy in Iraq" — the largest US embassy in the world — "will have regional offices in several key cities" to "work closely with Iraqis at all levels of government".
As US troop fatalities in Iraq passed the 800 mark, Bush made it clear there he has no plans to begin withdrawing US troops after June 30. Indeed, he reaffirmed his administration's commitment to send more US troops. If US military commanders request them, "I will send them", Bush stated.
Not only will the post-June "fully sovereign" interim Iraqi government have no say over US troops levels in Iraq, it will have no say over their operations within the country.
This was made crystal clear when US Secretary of State Colin Powell rebuffed British PM Tony Blair for claiming on May 25 that the interim Iraqi government would have "final political control" over the operations of foreign troops in Iraq.
Within hours of Blair's statement, Powell affirmed that the operations of US troops in Iraq would remain under US command. "Obviously we would take into account whatever [the Iraqis] might say", Powell generously added.
"On Iraq's streets", the May 25 Boston Globe reported, "President Bush's Monday evening speech was met Tuesday with the same blend of skepticism and hostility that have greeted most major pronouncements on Iraq's future, whether from American or United Nations officials.
Ahmed Hamdan, a former Iraqi Army sergeant, told the Globe: "Bush's speeches have brought us death, deliberate killing, rape, sewage on the streets, poverty and unemployment."
From Green Left Weekly, June 2, 2004.
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