Douglas Wood, the US-based, Australian construction contractor held for six weeks by Iraqi resistance fighters, has been freed. But what about the hundreds of Arabic- speaking and Turkomen Iraqis who have been abducted at gunpoint in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk by Kurdish forces backed by the US military?
The June 15 Washington Post reported that at least 250 Iraqis in Kirkuk have been abducted and are being held hostage by Kurdish militias that work with the US occupation forces. The Post reported that a confidential US State Department document addressed to the White House, the Pentagon and the US embassy in Baghdad expressed concern about the abductions and the secret transfers of the hostages to prisons in Kurdish cities in northern Iraq.
The Washington Post report also said that the document makes it clear that the US military knew about the unlawful detentions.
In fact, the whole of Iraq is being held hostage to the dictates of the US-led occupation forces.
The call for the occupation forces to leave has been growing. Mass demonstrations, prayer meetings and sit-ins of Iraqis from all religious and ethnic backgrounds, have made the call. Nearly every party that participated in the US-organised parliamentary elections in January gave the call lip service.
It's not hard to understand why. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may be facing trial, but was his ouster worth the destruction of whole cities, villages, vital infrastructure and the mass murder of so many innocent Iraqis?
The Iraq Body Count (IBC) website estimates that at least 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US occupation began two years ago. It says that the monthly death rate is on the rise and notes that, despite all the rhetoric about the elections bringing peace, the number of media-reported incidents involving the deaths of civilians in the three months to March is more than double the number for the same period a year ago.
This mass murder of Iraqi civilians has been carefully downplayed by the supporters of the occupation, which includes most of the corporate media. Instead, we are urged to identify only with Westerners who, for one reason or another, have been caught up in the war between the US-led occupation forces and the patriotic Iraqi resistance.
The "coalition of the willing" governments of the US, Britain and Australia will only be forced to withdraw their troops from Iraq if domestic anti-war opposition mounts to the point that it becomes politically unsustainable to keep the troops in Iraq. This means demonstrating, as much as possible, that we are still concerned for the plight of ordinary Iraqis, and that we oppose the military occupation of other countries by "our" governments.
There is bipartisan support in Australia to send more troops to Afghanistan. The "opposition" Labor Party has even been attempting to out-flank the Coalition government on this, with shadow foreign minister Kevin Rudd arguing on June 16 that "if we're serious about the war against terrorism, that's where the effort is still to be concentrated".
The Afghan and Iraqi people have suffered enormously from the imperialist West's so-called war on terror. In reality, this is a war to crush all opposition in the Third World, particularly the oil-rich Middle East, to the Western corporate takeover of these countries' markets and natural resources.
The international anti-war movement needs to continue to campaign to force the "coalition of the willing" governnments to end their predatory wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Douglas Wood got out of the war alive. More than 25,000 Iraqis didn't. How many more won't?
From Green Left Weekly, June 22, 2005.
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