07/19/14 – Dahr Jamail – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all this is anti-war radio here on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is the heroic Darja Mail unembedded reporter from the last Iraq war author of Beyond the Green Zone dispatches from an unembedded journalist in occupied Iraq and Also co-author with Chris Hedges of the will to resist Soldiers who refuse to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He's now writing for truthout.org And this one is at Tom dispatch calm the great Tom Englehart site Tom dispatch calm And we also ran it under Tom's name at anti-war calm.
It's called how America's policies sealed It rocks fate.
Welcome back to the show dar.
How are you doing?
Thanks Scott.
Always good to be with you Very good to have you here and we have a limited amount of time Usually we go a full half hour, but we've only got about a quarter hour to spend So I will just let you go and tell this story of the American Legacy in Iraq, I guess contra the theory that oh You know how those people are always fighting over who's a Shia or not but you've been back to Iraq and they're not too distant past here and Obviously have a lot of experience about that country going back to the start of the war.
So please fill us in Well, essentially this what we're seeing in Iraq today is the legacy of the US invasion and occupation I'll run through it is as briefly as I can But we have to you know, we can't talk about what's happening today without good historical context as with any story But this is particularly so with Iraq.
We go back Fast-forward or fast rewind back to just prior to the invasion of 2003 Iraqi said look we we yeah, there was there was sectarianism There was stuff there that Saddam exploited but by and large, you know We had a large percentage of marriages between Shia and Sunni We grew up in neighborhoods not knowing if our neighbor was Sunni or Shia just wasn't an issue Enter the u.s.
Invasion and Immediately the sectarianism was was highlighted and exploited I remember interviewing a religious sheik in back in Bakuba and he said look three weeks after Baghdad fell So we're talking about late April early May 2003 he said a military commander came and showed up in Bakuba and Set up a big tent invited all the tribal and religious sheiks to attend And then when we did he literally had he said, okay we want Sunnis on one side and Shia on another and And that's how it went and then fast-forward a bit to late 2004 when it became clear that resistance was so intense against the occupation both between Shia and Sunni We had some collaborations starting to happen between resistance fighters in Fallujah and and members of Baghdad al-sadr's Mahdi army militia and then there were demonstrations in Sadr City in In solidarity with the people of Fallujah and then later on Later on that year when in when the u.s.
Started attacking Sadr down and around down in Hilla and around Najaf Actually fighters from Fallujah were helping them out with weapons with helping the the Sadr's out with weapons So so we had a unit unifying Situation between resistance groups against the u.s.
Occupation, but so the u.s.
Decided to bring in nagra Ponte as ambassador of Central America fame under Reagan Desquad fame brought in his old cohort steel retired.
Colonel James Steele They set up and started running the desk but the primarily Shia militia death squads and then that set in motion all the horrific chain of events with the 2006 2007 sectarian bloodlettings And then the u.s.
Brings in Around that general time frame of the occupation, of course Maliki and installs him as dictator to suffice him not winning the majority vote that it occurred and Maliki then comes in and immediately starts targeting Sunni extremely Sectarianism that set the stage for Sunni protests that began in late 2012 carried on every Friday through 2013 Where They were protesting because government forces were regularly coming into places like Fallujah predominantly Sunni areas of Baghdad Detaining people killing them torturing.
It was around actually.
Oh six.
Oh seven.
Oh eight We started to see large numbers of Sunnis turning up in Maliki's prisons This was unearthed by by some reporting at the time Horrific things human rights watch and amnesty both were writing very condemning reports against the Maliki regime for his treatment of Sunnis and then these protests were going on through 2013.
I witnessed the Boiling rage.
I would attended one of these that I'd mentioned in the article that I just published with Tom being on stage with with Community leaders basically religious and tribal sheikhs of Anbar province on stage on a highway outside of Fallujah They shut down the highway between Amman and Baghdad and they they were basically the crowd was mostly really young Angry men from pollution and other parts of Anbar and these sheikhs started saying look give us a little more time We're trying to use diplomacy and politics in Baghdad Don't want to have this escalate and people were so enraged they wanted to fight so bad that they lit we had to literally evacuate the stage because they started pelting it with water bottles and rocks and and They just wanted to fight and then out in the crowd.
You could say I have pictures of it You can see the black flags of Isis waving So very very fertile recruiting ground And so that is why when this lightning attack these lightning takeovers of cities starting with Mosul Began and literally within weeks a huge section of the entire country had been taken over by Isis That's why because they had public support They had sympathy because they were actually taking the fight back to these forces that had been For well for several years at that point Persecuting Sunnis and so that's that's basically the why this happened why Isis has been so effective now Of course, what's happening is is it's going in another direction That's another situation if we talk about their brutality and you know Them trying to institute extreme Islamic law in these places and exert taxes and convert Christians and all this kind of lunacy but the bottom line is this kind of extremism was There was fertile ground for it because of Maliki and because of the unbridled support that the u.s.
Kept giving him Yeah, you know Patrick Coburn from the Independent talks about Isis and their view of Shia and Compares them like they're Nazis looking at the Jews where the the Shia are so beneath contempt to Isis that their intent is At least when they get the chance to carry out their final solution That's how horrible that they are on even the existence of the Shia But then he says just like you this started out a difference of who's on whose side for power And that was how you had the different coalitions of Sunni and Shia and as you say all under American occupation and supervision but then now it has become a situation where the after all the most Fundamentalist and ruthless fighters are in in many cases certainly in Iraq's recent history The most effective ones and and then the most effective leaders So you have the people running Isis after now a decade of America destroying that society It's not just about you know, who's on whose side and who's getting the oil revenue and this and that it is about Blasphemy and heresy and the most the kinds of things that can't be reconciled You know because of America's legacy there as you say and I don't know if you agree with that or not That was the way he puts it.
No, that is right.
And that's what I've been that's the information I've been getting to that they are they are beyond radical and and that is how they personify Shia and that's why we see these horrific things.
I mean if you follow human rights watch there's there's been several reports They've done interviewing people at length about what they've seen what's been happening and and just really really horrific stuff All right.
Now, let me rewind a little bit back to what you were saying about Under American occupation and Muqtada al-sadr twice in 2004 as you say aligning with the Sunni uprising in Fallujah while he's in Najaf and in East Baghdad and Them aligning back with him again during this whole time Robert Dreyfus did a lot of great work around that time, etc Sader wanted what he called the government of national salvation, which would be an alliance with the Sunnis we're all Iraqis first and so You know, this could have been prevented not the Saudis the greatest guy and later on of course His militia was responsible for a lot of the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad, of course against the Sunnis But back before that 2004 or 5 even into 2006, I think he was trying to make that coalition Why didn't America let him do that?
Why did they choose the Dawa party and the Supreme Islamic Council Maliki and his cronies instead of Sader?
Among the Shiites who were the majority who had won in the democracy the Shiite coalition party the United Iraqi Alliance Three words divide and conquer.
I mean it's by you describing the name of Sodders unit unity political party that he was hoping to bring into reality That would completely undermine the u.s goal of divide and conquer and then have a government structure a parliament structure set up in Baghdad not unlike that in Lebanon, which basically renders it completely impotent that you know It's so factionalized and so fractioned that there's no way they're ever going to be able to have a unity government there That really serves everybody fairly and and so that's why the u.s Has always been so dramatically opposed against solder and then kept the Sunnis marginalized because there's been a large portion of the Sunni population that wanted the same thing that solder did as far as that kind of a unit United political force in Baghdad.
And so they bring in a guy like Maliki who is Extremist and that he's he's going to take the Iran line all the way down the line he's going to buy whatever however many tens of billions of dollars of Military training and weaponry that the u.s Wants to sell them and then and then keep keep the door at least cracked for u.s Access into Iraq's oil fields and at least certain parts of the country.
So he he was willing to play ball He was he was the useful tool the useful idiot and he's come in and that's why he's enjoyed u.s Support up until now and and now I'm sure the u.s Is look they're they're literally looking for someone else to try to replace him Although of course Malik, he's not going to go quietly into the good night Well, it kind of seemed to me like he played them to telling George Bush.
Oh, yeah I want to let you have 60 bases and all this Let me go talk to the guys and we'll work it out and then came back and Bush You know, the the clock was ticking on Bush's presidency He had to sign the status of forces agreement and Maliki said sorry No immunity deal after the end of 2011 and the expiration of the UN mandate.
Sorry no bases for you Bush sign and And so it seemed to me like he was really playing them more than they were playing him and Really, you know, they thought well he needs us.
So he's got to keep us.
But like you said he's with Iran It was solder who wanted to marginalize the Iranians and the Americans and so all America did was put Iran's guys in power And then they kicked our ass out.
I mean, you're right He's been buying our planes ever since and that kind of thing But I mean a few guys at the embassy is not the same thing as 56 permanent Rumsfeldian lilypad bases over there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, that's totally right And I mean, it's it's been clear from the very beginning that the u.s.
Went into this situation Geopolitically playing Checkers where Iran has been playing chess from the from the very beginning and and that we're seeing this played out now You know Iran has literally taken over the entire southern part of Iraq without having to have any direct over military Involvement whatsoever and the same can now be said for of course their control over the vast majority of Baghdad You know, they have just simply been playing at a higher geopolitical game than the u.s.
In the West and you know Of course you look at the machinations and the complete incoherence of the u.s Government both under Bush and now under Obama and that's that's no surprise at all I mean another thing that we have to mention is that Isis doesn't exist without What the u.s.
Is doing in Syria that directly and indirectly they've they've been getting arms and funding and support into them either by them or Qatar or Saudi and Created this monster of Isis in Syria to go against Assad and that's another reason that they're as strong and as effective as they are And that needs to be mentioned to how the u.s.
Is effectively funding and backing both sides of this war, right?
Yeah, and in fact, it's such a blatant contradiction That even people on TV news are sort of scratching their head about it and talking about it out loud about how Ironical it is and and that kind of thing when they start to put it together Well wait, so Assad is against Isis, right?
But then and Assad is allies with Maliki you can see him figuring it out live on TV sometimes, you know That's right.
That's right I mean and it is it is extremely confusing But at the end of the day if you just look at where the u.s.
Support is going it helps it become less confusing and then of course you bring in the fact that well Well, who's making the most money off this in the u.s.
What kind of weapons contractors, etc?
What's Israel's role and so that all of that adds up to start clarifying it pretty quickly and it becomes pretty cynical yep, and of course, we've got Mitchell Prothero at McClatchy newspaper reporting from herbal and saying that they're rebuilding and Expanding the CIA base there.
There's no secret about it And that the Joint Special Operations Command the CIA and probably just regular so calm to Rangers as opposed to Delta You know, but they're building up in Kurdistan right now.
So and and drones are flying and it's already on Dara I don't know why the carpet bombing hasn't started yet to be honest I thought it would have started by now, but thank goodness it hasn't but it doesn't look like anybody's stopping it from being about to happen Yeah, this is still I think in the beginning stages of where this conflicts going to go and how much worse it's going to get I don't see how there's not going to be some kind of massive military adventure launched against Isis in that country and and it also makes sense the u.s.
Has to maintain some sort of a stable foothold in the country and basically at this point Kurdistan is all they have left Baghdad Baghdad is is gone.
All right, that's it.
I'm sorry.
We're all out of time I talked to you all afternoon about this stuff, but thank you so much and we'll do this again soon for sure Thanks Scott.
All right, everybody.
That is the heroic Darja male Unembedded reporter from the last Iraq War now covering this one for truth out and Tom dispatch calm he's the author beyond the green zone dispatches from an unembedded journalist in occupied Iraq, which is great and The will to resist soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.
And that's it for the show everybody Thanks very much for listening.
I'm Scott Horton here for anti-war radio every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7fm in LA you can find my full interview archive more than 3,000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton org and you can follow me on twitter at Scott Horton.
Thanks very much for listening.
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