Iraq has become an apartheid state. The division is between Iraq citizens and foreigners. Iraqis continue to have to pass through an exhausting number of checkpoints to get anywhere, but you don’t see U.S. soldiers manning them anymore. Now the checkpoints have an Iraqi face. The U.S. military is, however, pulling the strings. There are 16,000 U.S. military and employees in the Green Zone of Baghdad, where the U.S. embassy is.

By Sami Rasouli  March/April 2013 Newsletter  WomenAgainstMilitaryMadness.org

Traffic is divided into two different traffic lanes—one for civilian Iraqis and the other for military and the foreigners. The foreigners move freely across Iraq in black SUVs with shaded windows without having to submit to delays or checks. But there are many, many stories of Iraqi drivers being stopped and remote control bombs going off in their traffic lanes.

Visitors stopped at checkpoint attempting to visit the tomb of the Prophet Ezekeil.  photo: Steve Clemens/Mennonista.blogspot.com

There are not as many explosions as there once were, but there are still explosions. Only Iraqis are the victims. It is unknown who is being targeted or why. The explosions take place where Iraqis are waiting, such as in long lines at checkpoints. Baghdad is always crowded, so the checkpoints there are very dangerous.
Iraqi’s new army is fully engaged to control thousands of checkpoints across the country but Iraqi’s national borders are not secured!
Every Iraqi city has a Green Zone. Checkpoints exist to protect them. Most of the time women cannot get some places because they cannot undergo the “body checks”—there are no women police or soldiers to perform body checks on them.
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Iraq is being prepared for division into three sections. That, I believe, is the plan and this is how it has been working. I can hear Iraqis when I travel around saying, “If the division of Iraq will save our lives, so be it.”
Iraq is governed under the same set of anti-terrorism “laws” that the U.S. passed with the Patriot Act. In accordance with this system, effective Sunni leaders have been driven from the Iraqi government. Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi should have been president but evidence of terrorism was fabricated against him. (Hashimi is now in exile in Turkey.) The Minister of Finance, Rafi’a Al Esawi, who is Sunni, was the next in line, but he also was accused of being a terrorist by secret evidence fabricated against him under the “Terrorism 4 Act.” Hashimi was tried in absentia and found guilty, just before a national reconciliation to stabilize Iraq was about to take place. Convictions on secret evidence were the straw that broke the camel’s back and the reason for the recent Sunni uprising, in which more than 100 people were killed in cities around Iraq.
Sunnis want Al-Maliki to step down so that they can take part in the government. This would be to the eventual advantage of Turkey. The first move will be taken by the Kurdish in the north. While Shia and Sunnis fight between themselves, Kurdish Iraq, will separate from them after controlling Kirkuk, the rich Iraqi city of oil. The U.S. and its western allies will recognize an independent Kurdish state. Turkey will then take over Kurdistan and oil will be shipped to the U.S. and Israel through Turkey.
Iran is then poised to obtain the immense oil fields in Rumaila in southern Iraq. But the U.S. and Israel and their allies want control. The rationale behind the threats aimed at Iran exists mainly for this reason, not because of a fear of nonexistent nuclear weapons.
For these reasons, it is possible that Iraq, as a nation, will no longer exist.
Though it is possible that the nation of Iraq may alter, the people and their culture will continue: “On the other hand they [Iraqis] do have a sense of history and of their people having 5000+ years of history living where they do. They express pride and optimism,” Kathy McKay, executive director of Iraq American Reconciliation Project, who lives in Minneapolis, the sister city of Najaf, Iraq, commented on recently returning from a visit to Iraq. “I invite you to join us in ensuring that the next ten years see a strong activation toward peace, friendship, and mutual respect from Americans toward Iraqis.”

Sami Rasouli is the founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT), which is modeled after the nonviolent philosophy and practices of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He lives in Najaf, Iraq, with his wife and three children and travels frequently to the U.S. to work with the Iraq American Reconciliation Project.

© 2013 Women Against Military Madness.
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By Published On: April 16th, 2013Comments Off on Sami Rasouli> Ten Years After Shock and Awe

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