Iraq: Liberated or colonized?

By
Max J. Castro                                                                       Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com

“There
will not be another colonization of Iraq,” Hoshyar Zebari, the
country’s foreign minister has declared.

With
American oil companies poised to take control of a substantial
portion of Iraq’s oil operations, the U.S. government pushing hard
for a long term, strong role for the U.S. military in the country,
and an Iraqi government desperate to prevent a quick U.S. withdrawal,
Zebari’s statement may be more an empty boast and a bow to Iraqi
national pride than a serious promise.

Still,
things are not going well for the United States in Iraq on the key
political front when such language comes out of the mouth of a top
official of a government utterly dependent on the United States.
After all, according to the Bush administration, the United States
went into Iraq to liberate it, not to colonize it. Why now are the
liberated concerned about being colonized by their liberators? It’s
another item to add to the list of things that did not go according
to plan for the United States in its Iraq adventure.

The
foreign minister’s comment came in the context of ongoing
negotiations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments aimed at
providing a legal basis for continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq
once the UN mandate expires at the end of this year. The United
States has been seeking a long-term agreement that would provide wide
latitude for American forces operating in the country and allow for
military bases that would be permanent in all but name.

The
Iraqi government, facing elections and a public opinion opposed to a
long term U.S. presence, has not been as pliant as American policy
makers would have liked them to be. Indeed, there are signs that the
ambitious “status of forces agreement” the United States hoped
could be signed by the end of this year may fall through. In that
case, the United States will have to settle for a short-term
provisional arrangement. Even if there is a full agreement, the
foreign minister has stated that “we are not talking about 50
years, 25 years or 10 years; we are negotiating about one or two
years…”

The
United States already has had to make some concessions, including
removing the immunity from Iraqi law previously enjoyed by U.S.
military contractors. But these concessions are hardly enough to
safeguard even a semblance of Iraqi sovereignty, and they won’t be
accepted by some of the key political players. For example, Falah
Shanshal, a member of parliament from Moktada
al-Sadr’s bloc, has said that the objective of an agreement
should be “to submit the American soldiers, their security
companies and their movements and behaviors in military operations to
Iraqi law.”

The
United States, for its part, will fiercely resist any limitations on
its military operations and will not accept any agreement under which
American troops are subject to prosecution under Iraqi law. This sets
the stage for an impasse — or for endless strife and entanglement by
the United States in Iraq.

Where
have we seen this picture before? In Cuba, among other places, where
110 years after the end of the Spanish American War and the start of
the first U.S. occupation of the country, the United States
government still feels it has a right to dictate the country’s
future and political system. The Iraqis better be careful lest the
status of forces agreement turns out to be a more onerous variant of
the Platt Amendment while some portion of Iraqi territory ends up as
another Guantánamo “leased” to the United States in
perpetuity.

U.S.
citizens need to be forewarned as well, especially in this election
season in which the Republican candidate has said he has no problem
if U.S. forces stay in Iraq for 100 years, that such a scenario would
be extremely costly for their country in every way imaginable —
military, economic, diplomatic, and moral. 

Editor’s
Note:
The Platt Amendment was voted on in the U.S. Congress and imposed as
an annex to the Cuban Constitution in 1901 as a condition for
granting independence. Through this humiliating amendment, the U.S.
had the right to intervene in Cuba whenever it deemed it necessary
and obtained territories for the creation of naval bases. Those bases
can only be cancelled with the consent of both parties, according to
a subsequent treaty. In the 1930s the Cuban government negotiated the
termination of the Platt Amendment, but the U.S. Navy Guantánamo
Base remains against the wishes of the Cuban government and its
people.