The New Dark Age

21 October, 2009 — UN Observer & International Report

As the U.K. Enquiry by Sir John Chilcot into the Iraq invasion seeks testimony from those affected, Iraq Solidarity Campaign founder, Hussein Al-Alak, writer on Middle East issues, veteran campaigner, gives a revealing glimpse into some of the enormous duplicity which led to the 2003 and subsequent tyrannicide.

“The whole background began in the 1980’s and the founding of The Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI) by Ann Clwyd, M.P., known by many as ‘Mrs Talabani’ because of her close association with the Kurdish movement.”

“When the Kurdish autonomous region was eventually established and had their first ‘free’ elections in the early 1990’s, CARDRI were invited as monitors.” Foxes and hen houses come to mind. CARDRI joined the CIA and Israeli representatives, both established in Kurdistan in 1992.

“The three bibles of CARDRI were ‘The Republic of Fear’, (by Sami al Khalil, real name Kanan Makiya, who left Iraq in 1982) and two CARDRI collections of writings”, says Al-Alak: “Saddam’s Iraq – Revolution or Reaction” and “Iraq After the Gulf War – the Case for Democracy”. Contributors included Ahmed Chalabi – who left Iraq in 1958, was convicted in Jordan’s Central Criminal Court and sentenced to over twenty years hard labour, for bringing down Jordan’s Petra Bank (a conviction he claimed was politically motivated) – the Dawa Party, “a Shi’ite party under Iranian influence”, SCIRI, also with strong Iranian links and the Iraq Communist Party.[1]

Iraq’s “Prime Minister” Nuri Al Maliki is allied to the Dawa, which tried to assassinate President Saddam and then Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz in Dujail, in 1982.(News, websites.)

Further, it was Kanan Makiya, the strongest of proponents of the invasion, who says that, on 10th January 2003: “As I told the President, I think (the troops) will be greeted with sweets and flowers.” (News, websites.)

It was CARDRI, alleges Al-Alak, which created the stories of human shredding machines and boiling alive in acid in Iraq. It seems that even since the invasion. no convincing picture has emerged of either.

CARDRI, states Al-Alak, was split over the 1991 onslaught but the Iraqi Communist Party allegedly received moneys from Moscow and Eastern Europe which also, allegedly, found its way into CARDRI coffers.

Subsequently, Ahmed Chalabi (whose parents had been favoured by the British in their previous Iraq adventures) formed the Iraqi National Congress (INC), selling it as an almost ANC, anti-apartheid in Iraq, concept. “The I.N.C. gave a lot of people a feeling of self importance”, comments Al-Alak.

“Although the regime was repressive, the huge exaggeration of human rights abuses, became the norm. There was a ‘strategy’, by an organisation which worked on a campaign of hearsay and whisper, to talk of the dozens of families of members who had been murdered. When questioned on hard facts, the policy was to burst into tears”, he alleges. “Halabja, of course, made anything possible.”

When it comes to appalling weapons, there are no clean hands. It took until the mid-1990’s for the relevant US authorities to admit that they had tested mustard gas on sixty five thousand of their own troops in the 1940’s, to ongoing devastating effects. On January 11th this year, the University of Alberta released a detailed study of current suffering on those affected.[2]

Further, both Britain and America, of course supplied Iraq with copious amounts of gruesome chemical and biological weapons well after Halabja and even in the run up to the Kuwait invasion.[3]

Al Alak continued, re CARDRI: “Even the words used were dictated, the whole thing was orchestrated, a set up, such as instructions to say ‘small children’ were routinely murdered.”

Subsequently INDICT was launched in the British Parliament, when the INC was stumbling, to label Saddam Hussein the new Hitler and “Butcher of Baghdad”. INDICT was funded generously by the Free Iraq Foundation, not a million miles from the CIA.

“Ann Clwyd led INDICT in its difficult teething days from its launch on voluntary donations in 1997 until it was awarded $3 million under the Iraq Liberation Act[4] passed by the US Congress in 1998. When she says that she has been ‘shouting in a vacuum for a very long time’, she means it.”

“2003 was entirely down to the INC and INDICT”, claims Al-Alak. “Then in the wake of the horrors it produced, Ann Clwyd became Tony Blair’s ‘human rights advisor’ to Iraq.” Truth surely outdoes fiction.

Interestingly, Ahmed Chalabi and Ann Clwyd have a registered interest together, listed at Companies House In Cardiff, Wales.[5]

“The whole disaster has a lot to do with a convicted embezzler, a women and others with some interesting connections to both CIA and agencies in eastern Europe – and ultimately, those with CARDRI connections got high positions in the interim Iraqi government and in the British parliament. Clwyd herself became Chair of the Labour Party.

“We can rest assured that the British soldiers who died in Iraq met their fate in no small measure to the actions of the former Chair of the Labour party.”

Democratic Iraq Elections?

Al-Alak has an interesting view. “Of Iraqi background, you could be born in the UK or US, yet vote on the future of a foreign country, in an election entirely illegal, as the country is under occupation. More astonishing, as British soldiers died for ‘freedom and democracy’, Iraqis were lining up on the streets of London and Manchester, to vote for a Quisling regime, many with ties closer to Tehran, than Baghdad.”

“According to sources in the Iraqi resistance, there was evidence that within the UK, people were being allowed to vote a number of times because they were friends, or related to, or members of the same political party as those who were manning the polling booths.”

“Dawa had an exceptional amount allocated for the election (including Foreign and Commonwealth Office money) with rumours that in one instance, £30,000 went missing.”

Al Alak should know. He was a member of CARDRI. However, after the 1991 onslaught on Iraq, most members of CARDRI in North West England split from the Clwyd axis, in disgust, as the full scale of the destruction and the subsequent impact of the silent slaughter of sanctions became clear.

Influential associate pressure groups, NGO’s and individuals felt they had been duped. In 1997, North West CARDRI became The Coalition Against Sanctions and War on Iraq, which subsequently transformed, in 2002, to The Iraq Solidarity Campaign.[6]

The Galloway Dossier

Any Iraq watcher will remember the pristine dossier found in a burned out Baghdad building, purportedly written on Iraqi government writing paper, implicating MP George Galloway in various nefarious dealings. (He won libel cases against publications who printed them.) “Because of his stance against the embargo and perceived relationship with Saddam Hussein and Tareq Aziz, the dossier was entirely written by members of the Iraqi opposition in Jordan and edited in the North West of England, by people closely associated with CARDRI”, alleges Al-Alak, adding: “It is believed that one of the editors is known as ‘Cashmere Coat’, since his sartorial tastes seem distinctly at variance with his less than towering salary.”

Ann Clwyd was defeated as Chair of the Labour Party by Tony Lloyd in December 2006, having been seen as too close to Tony Blair, whose political gloss had become considerably tarnished. However, a quick check on her name comes up on a site for Labour Friends of Iraq – and a direct link to the Dawa Party. “Kurdish nationalist”, Jalal Talabani is President of Iraq.

Kanan Makiya returned to Iraq after the invasion and was awarded a position as advisor to the interim government. In 2006, he fled back to the safety of the United States and now holds somewhat different views on the wisdom of the invasion.

The cynic might ponder, a few enemies within. Oh, and might also ponder, who are the paramount tyrants?

Footnotes

1. ‘From Sumer to Saddam’, Geoff Simons, Macmillan, 1994.

2. The minutely referenced ‘Rogue State’, William Blum, Spearhead, 2002 (updated version.)

3. ibid

4. http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Legislation/ILA.htm

5. http://www.duport.co.uk/company-formation and simply enter both names.

6. http://www.iraqsolidaritycampaign.blogspot.com

(Interestingly all reference to INDICT which had copious links, prior invasion input, seems to have vanished.)

Felicity Arbuthnot
Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary, “Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq” and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.)

Please also see:

‘Chilcot inquiry may consider legality of Iraq war’ By Kim Sengupta

‘Rape of Iraqi Women by US Forces as Weapon of War: Photos and Data Emerge’

Saddam Hussein (photo source)