The US wants to turn Iraq into a colony

[Anonymous]

The US wants to turn Iraq into a colony

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki raised last June the possibility that his country won't sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), an agreement on the status of American forces, with the United States and will ask US troops to go home when their UN mandate to be in Iraq expires at the end of the year. Maliki made the comment after weeks of complaints from Iraqi lawmakers who claim that US proposals about a continued troop presence in Iraq would infringe on Iraq's sovereignty.

Earlier, Maliki acknowledged that talks with the US on the SOFA had "reached an impasse" after the American negotiators presented a draft that would have given the US access to 58 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and waters and immunity from prosecution for US military at Iraqi courts. It gives the US the right to arrest or persecute any Iraqi working against its interests, within Iraq, and to launch any military offensive deemed necessary to protect US soldiers without the Iraqi government´s prior authorization. This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status.

After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the First World War, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country's nominal independence. The Washington Post reported a top aide to Maliki as saying: "The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq." Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) fraction of the Iraqi parliament, said, "We reject the whole thing from the beginning. In my point of view, it would just be a new occupation with an Iraqi signature." It is noteworthy to point out that the SIIC is the most important member of the current government coalition.

The Bush administration has long been moving to formalize the frankly colonial relationship between the US and Iraq, and US officials predicted an agreement sometime in July, but Maliki's latest remarks -as well as those by influential members of parliament- make that deadline seem unrealistic. The consensus now in Baghdad seems to be that no deal will be reached before the US presidential election in November.

To convince the Iraqis, the Bush administration is holding no less than 50 billion dollars of Iraqi money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The US Treasury has used its powers to veto Iraqi requests to diversify some of its reserves out of the depreciating US dollar into other currencies. But, facing strong popular opposition in Iraq, the signature of the SOFA is unlikely to take place in this year. Maliki knows that if he signed the deal, it would delegitimise the government of Baghdad which is already seen as an American stooge.

Sadrist speakers have denounced SIIC and Maliki-led Dawa as US puppets, called for a timetable for an American withdrawal and demanded a referendum on any proposed agreement that allows US forces to remain in Iraq after this year. However, the US is completely against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be overwhelmingly voted down. It is clear that after more than five years of occupation, more than one million dead and over four million people forced from their homes, the majority of Iraqis oppose any US presence in Iraq.

No wonder scores of Iraqi parliamentarians, Sunni and Shiite alike, fear the deal is basically a cover to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran. The Bush administration's accusations that the Iranian military is arming and training Shiite insurgents resisting the occupation therefore could be manipulated to justify an attack on Iran on the grounds of defending Iraqi sovereignty. Therefore, Iraq would inevitably become a battleground in a US-Iran war, threatening the prospect of anti-US and anti-government uprisings among Iraqi Shiites.

In June, Maliki went to Tehran and solemnly promised that Iraq would not be used as a US base for an attack on Iran. Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Maliki that Iraqis have to "think of a solution to free" themselves from US power. "The fact that a foreign element wants to interfere in the affairs of Iraq and dominate the country... is the main problem for the development and well-being of the Iraqis," he said. Not surprisingly, Khamenei advised Maliki not to sign the deal. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, also said that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans," he added.

In short, the SOFA would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November. The agreement would also undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November. What is certain is that, if Bush's plans for indefinite foreign rule in Iraq and the takeover of its oil is forced down the throats of the Iraqi people, the war will intensify. Many Iraqi observers agree that the blatantly neo-colonial terms of the US proposal will probably reignite widespread armed resistance against the occupiers.