Bush Administration Providing Military Support To Armed Baath Militias In Southern Iraq
by Steve
With Iraq’s Shiites winning nearly a majority of the votes for selection of the national assembly, the Bush Administration has been looking for ways to rescue their PNAC dreams of holding onto power and control of the oil inventory in Iraq. The southern parts of Iraq contain a large amount of the country’s oil reserves and future revenues and profits, yet the Shia south was for decades impoverished by Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party while those profits were skimmed and sent north into Sunni areas and into the Baath Party coffers.
Now with their election success fresh in their minds, Shia political parties are hoping to not only gain power to implement an Islamic-based government at least in the south, but they also want to reclaim control over the oil and the revenues that will come from that oil, and keep more of that money closer to home so that it can finally benefit the people of southern Iraq.
As you might have guessed, the Bush Administration has already tipped its hand that it has different ideas.
Already, leading Shi'ite clerics in Iraq are pushing for "Islam to be recognized as the guiding principle of the new constitution".
To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".
Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.
The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.
In other words, for the sake of maintaining control of the oil, the United States is prepared to foment civil war between the emerging Shia powers, who assume that with the election they will finally see the benefits of "liberation", and the same Baathists who ran with Hussein all these years.
For the Americans, the situation in southern Iraq has turned into a double-edged sword. Iraqis there fully embraced the elections - even if they had to be convinced by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to do so - and this participation was welcomed as a sign of democracy taking root in the country.
But with Shi'ite religious parties emerging as the strongest power, no sooner were the elections over than voices were raised for the creation of an autonomous southern Iraqi region, and for vilayet-e-faqih .
People from different walks of life from Basra and other southern provinces can be heard on television and radio channels demanding a federal system in which southern Shi'ites could govern their oil resources for their benefit.
Notably, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading secular Shi'ite candidate in the Iraqi elections, has called for autonomy for the Shi'ite south, which contains some of the world's largest oil fields. Chalabi, a former US favorite who fell out with Washington after the 2003 invasion, said the move would ensure a fairer share of wealth for a region that provides the bulk of Iraqi revenue but receives only a fraction of state spending. The mainly Shi'ite southern provinces of Amara, Nasiriya and Basra are Iraq's poorest, Chalabi said.
So, what the PNAC cabal thought they could control politically by installing their guy as PM, only to see him lose out to the Shiite factions, they now will try to control through armed militias, with direct ties to the United States.
Obviously, the Bush Administration’s definition of liberation is different than the Iraqis’ definition of liberation.