30 April 2003

Yes, But Where Are the Saddam Look-Alikes?

The Times of India, April 30, 2003

Yes, but where are the Saddam look-alikes?

By Siddharth Varadarajan

Ever since the fall of Baghdad, everyone's been asking where's Saddam and where are the weapons of mass destruction he allegedly had. Fair enough. But the question that intrigues me the most is this: Where on earth are his famed look-alikes? If Saddam is dead, did they all, to the last man, die with him? And if he's slipped out of the country -- to Syria, Belarus, wherever -- did he manage to take each and every one of his replicas with him? Are there, even as we speak, a dozen Saddams sadly sipping vodka (doubles, no doubt) in some seedy bar in Minsk or Vitebsk?

From the first day, Iraqi television began broadcasting footage of a defiant Saddam untouched by the US `decapitation strike' against him, the American and British media have been telling us not to trust our own eyes. Even though you think you're seeing Saddam, reporters told us breathlessly, you can't be sure because the Iraqi leader is known to use a series of body doubles for his public appearances. This claim was often simply asserted as fact, or at best sourced to "Iraqi exiles" and "Western intelligence agencies".

To tell you the truth, I was always a bit skeptical about this explanation. First of all, in the 38 years I've been around on this planet, I've yet to see any human being with an exact body double, let alone several such human replicas so perfect in every manner as Saddam's were said to be.

And then there was the administrative aspect which bothered me. Was there a special department of the Iraqi government which kept track of the look-alikes, graded them according to quality and reliability, and decided whether Saddam 1, 4 or 8 should be used for such and such appearance? Finally, what would happen if one of the look-alikes - or his handlers - were to assert that the real Saddam was actually an impostor and order his summary execution? Was there a procedure laid down conclusively to identify the real McCoy? DNA tests, blood groups, perhaps a conveniently inflicted scar on the derriere?

On my part, I'm willing to bet that the failure of the US occupiers to locate and capture even one of the alleged Saddam doubles strongly suggests the Iraqi leader never had any. I reckon the story about body doubles is a classic psy-op, a theory probably floated by the Pentagon's erstwhile Office of Strategic Influence in order to demoralize and disorient the enemy. I don't know who or how this bit of information warfare was first foisted on the media but once it was out there, there was no shortage of journalists and editors gullible enough to retail an obviously suspect, nonfalsifiable theory.

But the psy-ops didn't end there. Throughout the war, the Pentagon used the media to spread disinformation about the course of the fighting, inventing civilian uprisings where there were none (Basra), chemical weapons factories where there were none (near Najaf), Iraqi anti-aircraft fire falling back onto earth to kill civilians (rather than US missiles being responsible), and bizarre claims about Iraqi soldiers "pushing women and children on to the street" and firing at "coalition forces" from behind these "human shields." Though the last claim has by now entered war lore, there is not even one credible eyewitness account from an embedded journalist to substantiate this charge, let alone establish that this was a widespread, pervasive Iraqi tactic. What the claim did, however, was to shift the blame for civilian deaths away from the invading army and on to the defenders.

The most impressive psy-op of the war, however, occurred on its last day, when US soldiers toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdous Square, Baghdad. The square is right opposite the Palestine Hotel where foreign journalists were staying. All US TV stations showed carefully framed, close-up footage of what seemed like a largish crowd toppling the statue with the assistance of a US army vehicle. The footage was shown live for hours, repeatedly broadcast throughout the day, especially by CNN and BBC, and cited by US leaders as proof of the 'legitimacy' of the war.

While most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam, they had been reluctant to perform in large numbers for the invading army. With the blood of 2,000 Iraqi civilians and 10,000 soldiers on their hands, Bush and Rumsfeld needed cathartic footage of the oppressed masses surging forward towards freedom. The Firdous Square statue toppling was conceived for this purpose and executed brilliantly.

Had TV cameras shown a long shot of Firdous Square, the impression the toppling would have created would be very different. There is a long shot posted on the web (http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=55384&group=webcast) which shows a largely empty square cordoned off by US tanks. Small clusters of Iraqis outside the square can be seen watching the toppling of the statue, as silent spectators rather than active participants.

Now, the question is, who were the few dozen Iraqis trying to bring the statue down? Obviously people the Americans trusted because the footage clearly shows some two dozen boisterous men clambering on top of the US army vehicle and charging at the statue. Remember, this was barely ten days after the suicide attack in central Iraq which claimed the lives of four US soldiers and a few days after nervous, trigger happy marines had mowed down a whole family when their car didn't slow down at a checkpost.

But even if the statue topplers were men the Americans could trust, who were they? Photographs doing the rounds on the Net strongly suggest they were members of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress militia who had been flown into Nasiriya on April 6. One INC man in uniform shown with Chalabi at Nasiriya reappears in civilian clothes in a Reuters photograph from Baghdad on April 9, the day the statue is toppled, celebrating the entry of US soldiers. Readers can view and compare the two photographs at the same website mentioned above.

The only explanation for the coincidence is that like Saddam, the Chalabi supporter also has a body double. Wily aren't they, these Iraqis?

25 April 2003

Ungrateful Ali: The Painful Paradox of Embedded Freedom

25 April 2003
The Times of India


Ungrateful Ali
The Painful Paradox of Embedded Freedom


By Siddharth Varadarajan

As he ran his tank deep into Iraq three weeks ago, Sgt Sprague from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, took time off momentarily to reflect upon the noble campaign he was part of. "These people got nothing," he told the Guardian's James Meek. "We've been all the way from Basra to here and I ain't seen one shopping mall or fast food restaurant. Even in a little town like ours, you got a McDonald's at one end and a Hardee's at the other." The victors of every war produce their own narratives -- some epochal, some ephemeral -- to chronicle or celebrate, criticize, rationalize or exorcise the furies of armed conflict. But as the nature of the battlefield changes, so too must its literature. If Sgt Sprague's observations seem slender compared to, say, Thucydides, this is perhaps because the historian of the Peloponnessian War had 27 years of fighting to reflect upon. And though shorter, the Mahabharata war -- chronicled by Sanjaya, perhaps the world's first "embedded journalist" -- took so many complex twists that the story perforce ran into several volumes.

In any case, how does one chronicle a war where we are told both sides emerged victorious? There is no doubt that the U.S. won. But having proclaimed victory -- crowning its triumph with the staged, spectatorial toppling of a Saddam statue -- and installed a retired American general as viceroy, the Bush administration says the real victors are the Iraqis themselves. Iraqis who are now free, as Donald Rumsfeld put it generously, "to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." Even loot museums and burn libraries. "Freedom's untidy," the U.S. defence secretary told CNN. "Stuff happens." Fortunately for the Iraqi people, the untidiness of Rumsfeldian freedom did not extend to the country's oil wealth. As Baghdad descended into chaos last week, the one building U.S. troops secured -- by coincidence, presumably -- was the oil ministry.

Unlike the Mahabharata, the chroniclers of Operation Iraqi Freedom have not been tormented by moral dilemmas, self-doubt or remorse. Consider this uplifting performance by CNN's Kyra Phillips last week. Phillips was interviewing Dr Imad al-Najada, the Kuwaiti surgeon treating a 12-year-old Iraqi child, Ali, who lost his arms -- and his entire family -- in the U.S. bombing.

CNN: Doctor, Tell us what this little boy has been saying to you.

Dr al-Najada: Actually, today he was in good condition... and started speaking with a journalist. The thing which he (asked Ali was) what message he wants to reflect from the war. He said, first of all, thank you for the attention they're giving to him, but he hopes nobody from the children in the war will suffer like what he suffer.

CNN: Doctor, does he understand why this war took place? Has he talked about Iraqi freedom and the meaning? Does he understand it?

I didn't see the live interview, and the transcript on CNN's website provides no hint of how the doctor reacted to Ms Phillips' touching belief that little Ali -- "free" at last but orphaned, burned and bereft of limbs -- would actually be grateful to the U.S.. The transcript merely records the doctor replying that he hadn't discussed this issue with Ali because "he's in very bad psychological trauma." "But," he added, "we discussed this issue with his uncle and the message we got from his family, they said they are living far away from the American troops, from the military of Saddam...and they don't know how they (i.e. the U.S.) hit them by missiles."
After insisting for years that sanctions imposed to force Iraq to give up weapons of mass destruction did not affect ordinary Iraqis, the U.S. is now citing their plight to demand sanctions end immediately. The only problem is that the thousands of litres of anthrax and nerve agents that the U.S. insisted Iraq has have not yet been found.

If sanctions are lifted today without these WMD being accounted for, they could just as easily have been lifted before the war started, or even many years earlier, before the blood of the half a million Iraqi children UNICEF says died as a result was spilt.

The U.S. wants sanctions to be lifted so that Iraqi oil can be exported, the revenues used to defray the costs of military occupation and U.S. oil companies can take lucrative upstream positions there. The UN must not cooperate. Until the WMD are fully accounted for by UN weapons inspectors or the Iraqi people manage to end the U.S. occupation, Iraqi oil revenues must go only into a UN-run account. Here, their use can be regulated to ensure companies from the U.S. -- which defied the UN in invading Iraq -- do not benefit from the aggression.

The embargo on non-military imports can immediately be suspended without the WMD being accounted for, provided the U.S. acknowledges in the Security Council that its stated rationale for invading Iraq -- to destroy prohibited weapons it finally never found -- had no legal basis. The U.S. must also agree to submit its political and military leadership to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for the Prosecutor to establish the extent of their liability for war crimes and the crime of aggression.

Finally, Ali and other victims of the U.S. invasion -- and of the economic sanctions kept in place all these years by Washington -- should be allowed to sue the U.S. government. The money for Iraq's reconstruction should come from these reparations, and not from the oil resources of a people who have already suffered so much.

06 April 2003

US may not be able to treat Iraqi fighters as terrorists

6 April 2003
The Times of India

US may not be able to treat Iraqi fighters as terrorists

By SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
Times News Network

NEW DELHI: Can the irregular Iraqi fighters who launch suicide attacks
on the occupying US and British armies be called terrorists because
they are not wearing uniforms? Pentagon commanders say they can and US
President George W Bush has threatened to put the Iraqi leadership on
trial for war crimes for instigating this form of resistance.


However, US troops in Afghanistan have been operating in civilian
clothes for more than a year without anyone in Washington remembering
to invoke the Geneva Conventions. This, despite the fact that the US
tactic has created problems for aid workers as well as international
peacekeepers.


On February 19, 2003, the Christian Science Monitor's correspondent in
Kabul reported an incident in which Dutch soldiers surrounded a Toyota
pick-up full of heavily armed men, wearing civilian clothes and bushy
beards. The men turned out to be US soldiers. Last January, the
Guardian published an article by two volunteers from Medecins Sans
Frontieres who complained that the US policy of operating
out-of-uniform led many Afghans to suspect aid workers were actually
soldiers.


Unmindful of this double standard, the Pentagon says Iraqi fighters
found operating in civilian clothes would be deemed illegal combatants
or terrorists rather than POWs and could be incarcerated at the US
naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba.


Several hundred Iraqi civilians have already been arrested by the US
and British occupying forces on suspicion of being members of the
Saddam Fidayeen. CNN on Saturday showed footage of the British 1st
Fusiliers brutally arresting Iraqi civilians from their homes near
Basra, forcing them to squat in the open sun with canvas and even
plastic bags tied around their heads. The right of a people to resist
foreign occupation on their own territory is considered almost
absolute in international law.


Indeed, attempts by the US and Israel to brand armed action by
irregular forces against an occupying power as terrorism in the
ongoing UN negotiations over an International Convention on Terrorism
have proved unsuccessful so far. Leaving aside the irony of labeling
as terrorism a suicide attack on Iraqi soil by Iraqi nationals against
occupying soldiers when more than 1,000 civilians have already been
killed by invisible US and British bombs, the Pentagon plan for
deporting Iraqis to Guantanamo is most certainly barred by the Geneva
Conventions.


Article 49 of the Geneva Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War, states: "Deportations from occupied
territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any
other country are prohibited regardless of motive." And Article 76
states: "Protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in
the occupied country, and if convicted, they shall serve their
sentences therein."