Iraq: a patriotic war
'Mohamed Belaidi' Internationalist Brigade in Iraq against the War
April 2 2003. CSCAweb (www.nodo50.org/csca )
Let us not make a mistake with the people denying them once again their identity: the population is resisting and every day is more willing to continue resisting, that simple; not only the régime, but essentially the people. Their discourse here in Baghdad is more transparent every day for those who want to hear it, in the rooms of the hospitals - the wounded and their family -, to the front of the destroyed housings: we will combat until the end."
In an self-assuring exercise, the Bush Administration tried during the months preceding the beginning of the war, to believe and make the rest of the international community believe the self-interested evaluations that the mercenary Iraqi opposition in Washington presented: that the Iraqi régime would collapse immediately in the beginning of the intervention and that the population, drained by twelve years of international sanctions and with the forecast of turning free of a sanguinary dictatorship, would receive with open arms the liberators armies. This consideration seemed especially valid for the south of the country, with a shi'í majority, community that was considered especially disaffected to the régime of Baghdad.
After thirteen days of intervention the evidence is another: the British and American armies, euphemistically denominated by the media as allies, have not been able to occupy a single city of the south, only the small port of Um Qasar that in fact is just no more than a narrow jetty, and it did after a week of intense combats. The military failure of the USA and Great Britain in this first phase of the war is more than evident: the Iraqi resistance is unquestionable, in spite of the incommensurable military superiority of the invaders. The crisis between the Military and the State Department shows it.
Taking this in consideration, the Pentagon is reprocessing its speech as quickly as possible: it is the régime, the Party or the elite units of the Iraqi army who resist, posted behind a panicky and passive population, used as "human shields". However, an alleged uprising in Basra has had to be denied by the same Pentagon, after the testimony of Arab media present in the city. Furthermore, everything seems to indicate that the resistance in Basra, Naseriyya, Nayaf, Mosul, etc, at least in the first days of combat, has been sustained essentially by militiamen, not even by the Iraqi regular army and much less by their elite units.
We, the brigadistas group, are in Baghdad, but when we visited Basra three weeks ago, the situation was, as it is here, surprisingly calm, without a military unfolding nor large defensive preparations than those that we saw in the capital, i.e., very limited, in spite of the forecast that that area would be the first invasion front.
Hardly 48 to 24 hours before the first bombings, Baghdad was filled with armed civilians as the same time that the defenses were increased in the streets and squares of the city, in each public building or business, activity that continues until today: trenches, some already covered, and railings, besides the petroleum gutters that cover Baghdad set on fire as an antiaircraft defense of a dense layer of black smoke. Now there are thousands of armed civilians in all the neighborhoods of Baghdad, with suits or green jackets or civilian clothing, with the presence of the conventional army limited to the periphery of the city or in very concrete points of the interior. There is no heavy armament inside the city.
As the same war, in an admirable miracle that repeats itself every morning, this armed, decentralized presence, organized by neighborhoods and civilian or administrative production centers, in spite of their numbers, has not lost the welcoming and friendly character of this city at all. It is never intimidating, neither toward our group, after all foreigners, nor toward the population. These groups of two, four or five men, of various ranges and ages, from adolescents to old men, never make ostentation display of their weapons that are carried discreetly or left leaning against the wall or the railing, while they eat nuts, sip tea, buy groceries or play with their own children or with those of their neighbors. When we go by, they greet us smiling, always contrite, but with the direct and frank look as it is norm here, lifting an open hand or making the sign of victory, with a welcome or with the proper Arabic expressions.
We have never seen neither an expression of hostility or prepotency from the militiamen towards their neighbors, not even in moments of tension, during a bombing or after the impact of a missile, or during the funeral rituals of victims of the attacks, like in the one that we participated in the main street of Addamiyya the day after a group of houses were blown up by the impact of a missile in that neighborhood to the east of the city [1]. Just the opposite: each other share in the markets, in the hospitals, in the streets, among children who, having the schools closed since the day before the beginning of the bombings, run and play in the streets in spite of the mortal risk of the bombings that since a week ago are also during the day. The kids are mildly reprehended by their fathers when they stubbornly decide to squeeze together around our picturesque group or when they climb on the mountains of rubble from destroyed houses, or when they continue running and chasing between burnt cars and missiles craters.
We have no doubt that the USA and Great Britain are developing since last week a terror strategy against the population by means of continuous and indiscriminate attacks against residential areas. Our impression is that, in spite of it, in spite of the terrible slaughters in Saab and Shu'ala or to the last one just yesterday of Dailiyya [2], all them during full light of the day, or to the continuous impacts of missiles and bombs in all the neighborhoods of Baghdad, as the dozens of wounded that are admitted daily to the hospitals testify, every day there are more people in the streets of this city, more stores that open their doors, in the most poor neighborhoods, the will to live is most clearer.
Again there are traffic jams and the public transportation has not been off, with the typical two-floor red buses made in China that continue circulating regularly full of passengers.
Let us not again make a mistake with this people denying them once again their identity: the population is resisting and every day is more willing to continue resisting, that simple; not only the régime, but essentially the people. Their discourse here in Baghdad is more transparent every day for those who want to hear it, in the rooms of the hospitals - the wounded and their family -, to the front of the destroyed housings: we will combat until the end."
The slaughters in poor neighborhoods, the continuous bombings day and night, the getting up every morning to see how entire blocks of neighbors' houses have been blown up or to realize that the neighborhood telephone power station has exploded, to bury your own dead or those of your friends, are, like Santiago Alba would say, "truths like fists"[3] that Saddam Hussein doesn't need to invent, contrary to the lies that Bush, Blair and Aznar are forced to chain once and again. [4].
Why do we refuse to accept something so simple to understand as it is that this people understand perfectly that they are being invaded, occupied and slaughtered by the colonial power against which they also fought one century ago, Great Britain, and against the USA, who all and each one of the inhabitants of this region hate? Let us don't add an ignominy more on these people: here, in Iraq, there is not any people hostage of their régime. This is a patriotic war in the sense that any sensible person should understand: defense of their own land against an invader, and this is the way the Iraqis are living and confronting the war, we believe that the immense majority, like any other people would do. Is it so difficult to understand? Only this can explain what is happening in the south of the country, that unexpected Iraqi resistance that seems to surprise all and at the same time allows to predict that the battle for Baghdad will be terrible, an authentic massacre if we don't prevent it.
To resist is to conquer.
Baghdad, April 1 2003
'Mohamed Belaidi' Internationalist Brigade in Iraq against the War
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