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By David Peterson at Mar 19, 2007 |
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The release Monday, March 19, of the results of the D3 Systems
survey of public attitudes among Iraqis as they enter their fifth
year of foreign military occupation and war reminded me to go on
a hunt for an old blog of mine about an earlier -- and suppressed --
survey of Iraqi attitudes carried out in the middle of May, 2004 --
nearly three years ago, and shortly after the news from the U.S.-owned and operated Abu Ghraib resort spa really hit the fans.
See below, where I'll reproduce the old survey. (The results are still there, as electronically available as ever, in case anybody cares to check.)
But unlike the period of May - June 2004, when nobody would report the findings of how miserable the Iraqi people were under the terror and torture regime of the U.S. occupation, this time the anguish of the Iraqi people is long past the suppression stage. Even by the establishment media.
"Polling in Iraq: Planning, Luck, and Tragic Stories," Gary Langer, ABC News, March 19, 2007
"Poll: Iraqis Gripped by Fear and Anger," Will Lester, Associated Press, March 19, 2007 (as posted to Al Jazeerah.info)
"Pessimism 'growing among Iraqis'," BBC News International, March 19, 2007
"Iraq poll 2007: In graphics," BBC News International, March 19, 2007
"From hope to despair in Baghdad," John Simpson, BBC News International, March 19, 2007
"US public's support of Iraq war sliding faster now," Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 2007
"In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unity," Sami Ramadani, The Guardian, March 20, 2007
"Four years of the most grievous suffering," Editorial, The Independent, March 20, 2007
"Angst, Verzweiflung, Hoffnungslosigkeit," Jan Oltmanns, Tagesschau.de, March 20, 2007
"Refugee crisis rattles Iraq," Tim Harper, Toronto Star, March 20, 2007
"Support peaceful plan so the U.S. can leave Iraq," Yusra Moshtat and Jan Oberg, Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, March 19-20, 2007
"Iraq's fault lines easily traced in opinions on its plight, fate," Susan Page, USA Today, March 20, 2007"Iraq: Burden of UN Sanctions," Hans-Christof von Sponeck, Economic and Political Weekly, November 19, 2005
A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq, Hans-Christof von Sponeck (Berghahn Books, 2006)
The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-06, Gilbert Burnham et al., October, 2006 (as posted by the Center for International Studies, MIT)
"Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates," Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, October 11, 2006
Dreams and Nightmares, American Friends Service Committee mobile exhibit on life and death in Iraq (ongoing)
"Four Years Later... And Counting: Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster," Anthony Arnove, TomDispatch.com, March 18, 2007
"ABC (Under)counting Iraqi Dead," Action Alert, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, March 21, 2007
"And how do you rate conditions where you live?" ZNet, March 19, 2007
THE COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY'S SUPPRESSED OPINION POLL
(ZNet, June 15, 2004)
A hitherto suppressed survey of public opinion conducted in six Iraqi cities on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority in mid-May has found, in the words of one CPA pollster, a "pretty grim" view of the Americans.
He was being optimistic. Associated Press's gloss on the poll came much closer to the truth. It provides the Bush regime a "stark picture of anti-American sentiment ," AP's reporter writes, with "more than half of Iraqis" expressing the belief that "they would be safer if U.S. troops simply left." (John Solomon, "U.S. poll of Iraqis finds widespread anger at prison abuse, worry about safety," June 15.)
The survey, "Public Opinion in Iraq: First Poll Following Abu Ghraib Revelations" (May 14-23, 2004), is accessible online in a slide format (so called). Aside from this and today's AP report, news of the survey remains virtually nonexistent.
"Refusals were the highest seen to date," the pollsters note, meaning the number of Iraqis who refused to participate in the survey was the highest ever (p. 2).
Not surprisingly, security tops Iraqi concerns by a large margin (59%, compared to 16% for the economy) (p. 3).
Moreover, Iraqis have less confidence in the CPA and the occupying forces than any other institution operating in the country (p. 6). (See p. 6, where the chart depicts confidence in these two institutions as almost wholly in the RED ZONE, meaning non-existent.)
In contrast, Iraqis expressing varying degrees of confidence in anything Iraqi (pp. 8-11). Even the religious-cum-military figure Moqtada al-Sadr (p. 14).
Importantly, the greatest degree of positive feelings about Iraqi figures is expressed towards the religious figure Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (51%), Ebrahim Jaafari, the Deputy President designate of the Interim Iraqi Government, and one of the most popular political figures in Iraq (39%), and Moqtada al-Sadr (32%). But the Iraqi figures with the greatest degree of negative feelings expressed towards them are the Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani (50%) and Massoud Barzani (49%), and the Prime Minister-designate, Ayad Allawi (40%). (p. 15)
And so on. By and large, anything that seems Iraqi has some positive connotations associated with it; anything that smacks of American Power has a decisive negative connotation associated with it. The entire section of the opinion survey titled "Interim Government & Elections Commission" (p. 17-23) reads as such.
Thus, Iraqis feel that the occupying power has kept them in the dark about the whole Interim Iraqi Government process (p. 18, p. 22). Getting rid of the CPA and replacing it with Iraqis could only make things better, 63% believe (p. 21). Asked by the pollsters how much influence specific institutions should have in selecting the Interim Iraqi Government, religious communities, international experts, tribal leaders, the United Nations, and community political leaders, all come out on the positive side. (See all of the green-colored bars on the right-hand side of the chart (p. 23).)
The sentiment reverses, and reverses dramatically, when Iraqis are asked about American input: 69% of Iraqis believe that the CPA should have zero input; and 55% believe the American-appointed Governing Council also should have none. (See all of the red-colored bars on the left-hand side of the same chart (p. 23).)
Moral: If the Americans have touched it -- forget it.
The story continues throughout. Fear and insecurity are now all-consuming emotions for Iraqis. Not fear of the ousted tyrant -- whose regime, after all, was very concrete and familiar. Rather, fear itself. Paranoia. The fear that accompanies a society devastated in Biblical proportions from on-high. In answer to the pollster's question, "What kind of violence do you think is most dangerous to Iraq?" (p. 27), no less than 13 different categories are tabulated. (I'm not counting responses that fall in the "Don't know" category.) This is astonishing. This is to live in the midst of fear.
Another important theme reported by the opinion survey is the Iraqis' newfound sense of unity. The extreme levels of fighting between the Americans and the Iraqis on the streets of Fallujah and Najaf, say, as well as the American's singular focus on Moqtada al-Sadr, have given the Iraqis a greater sense of unity (64%, in fact (p. 28)).
A relatively high degree of confidence in an all-Iraqi police and army (i.e., close to nine-in-ten Iraqis (p. 33)) contrasts starkly with Iraqi sentiment towards the occupying forces (pp. 34-41).
* 92% of Iraqis see the Coalition forces as "occupiers" (p. 35).
* 85% of Iraqis think Coalition forces should leave Iraq as soon as possible, 41% saying these forces should leave "immediately" (p. 36).
* If Coalition forces left Iraq immediately, 55% of Iraqis would feel "more safe" (pp. 37-38).
* In answer to the question whether Coalition forces should remain in Iraq or leave, and why, all but 71 respondents out of a total of 1,068 gave reasons why they thought the Coalition forces should leave Iraq (p. 39).
* 67% of Iraqis "totally agree" with the statement that the violent attacks on Coalition forces around Iraq "have increased because people have lost faith in coalition forces" (p. 40).
* Whereas very few Iraqis believe that the attacks on Coalition forces are related to efforts to return the previous regime to power, clear majorities of Iraqis believe these attacks stem from what a generation or two ago would have been recognized for the "national liberation"-type ideas they express (p. 41). (Sorry I can't reproduce this very important chart here. But don't miss p. 41.)
The final section of this opinion survey, which is devoted to Iraqi opinions about the Americans' practice of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad (pp. 42-48), reads pretty much the way an opinion survey of American attitudes towards the same story might read. With one major exception: More than half (54%) of the Iraqis surveyed said they believe that "all Americans are like this" (p. 46), and 64% said that they've come to "expect the worst from Americans" (p. 45).
They have very good reasons to.
But that is not the case in
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 31, 2007 14:50 PM
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And your point is the Iraqi
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 25, 2007 10:02 AM
People who have lived together for generations generally tend to coalesce into a coherent national grouping, even if there remain points of significant departure among them as is the case in India. Though, of course, in some cases they never gel together, as can be argued was the case with Yugoslavia, East & West Pakistan, etc. Matters can move in the other direction as well, even in places like Canada and Belgium with their democratic institutions.
Also, the "French people" were extremely polarized politically before they were invaded (one of the reasons put forth in hindsight for their collapse within 3 days of the start of the German offensive). This is just talking about people who had been French for generations, not immigrants (a high proportion always in France, a descendant of one of whom is front-runner for French presidency right now), North Africans, inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, Breton speakers, etc. You might wish to read up on French history before sharing your insights about the "French people" with the rest of the world.
Your knowledge of Shia and Sunnis seems derived from propaganda that's too absurd to comment upon. I speak as someone who has lived in the Persian Gulf for several years and has actually met and interacted with flesh and blood persons of different sects, not some cardboard caricatures of your overheated fantasy.
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Your analogy of the Vichy
By Anonymous, Anonymous at Mar 25, 2007 09:05 AM
Your analogy of the Vichy is not accurate. Prior to the German conquest the French were a free people. Regardless of politics, there was a "French people", before, during and after the German occupation. The French resistance had a clear objective and program, they were not using the German as an excuse to primarily murder civilians of the Vichy Republic. The German occupation didn't just occur as an afterthought to the resistance amist the mayhems and murders.
But that is not the case in Iraq.
It is true,--and I have acknowledged the point,--that the U.S. invasion has unleashed the sectarian violence. But it did not create it out of the blue. The enmity is historical and long standing as anyone with a passing interest in the Middle East and Islam knows (Shiites are called "Jews" by the Sunnies, it is the ultimate insult).The only reason that it didn't explode before(in fact it did) was because Saddam brutally kept the Shiites and the Kurds in their places through torture, mass murder and white terror(with some mateial support from the U.S. though that is often exaggerated by the left). There has been an internal occupation long before the U.S. fired the first shot.
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Our actions should be judged
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 25, 2007 06:03 AM
The example I cited wasn't in any way a question of the "White Man" shouldering his burden to bring civilization to his "new-caught sullen peoples / Half devil and half child". In my example, a group of white men (Germans) stripped another group of white men (French) of their sovereignty and going by Anonymous' logic, the former couldn't be held accountable for the terrrible consequences that flowed from their original crime against peace, war of aggression--the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Of course, this is not to deny the French their agency in the terrible events and divisions in their society that came to the fore following the brutal occupation of their country by a stronger military power, but that none of these events would have happened had their country not been under foreign occupation. In fact, a significant majority of states, contingent and highly arbitrary entities that they are, would not come out of hostile foreign occupation in one piece. Just in stable and prosperous Western Europe, Belgium, Italy, UK, and Spain are highly likely to disintegrate (possibly with attendant civil war) under foreign occupation, which isn't even to mention other internal schisms that would come to the fore and plague future generations in relatively homogenous countries that survived such an experience in one piece, like the ones France faced under Vichy and whose after-effects it's still grappling with in 2007.
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How did I abslove the U.S.?
By Anonymous, Anonymous at Mar 24, 2007 11:48 AM
How is it absolving the U.S by pointing out the dynamics in Iraq is more complicated than the standard leftist narrative of resistance?
You insist on seeing the world through the U.S prism. But I believe people do have their own minds, their own histories and agendas and are active agents in creating their stories rather than mere props for U.S. foreign policies. Your simplistic view of the world is a flip side of the white man's burden. Even though the white man plays an opposite role in the neo left narrative, but it is still like the old one in that it also denies non white people may have a mind of their own and may not stick to the script written for them by well meaning Westerners,--whether the old colonial types who spreaded "civilization" with the gun or the leftist junkies depserately finding their good anti-imperialist, anti-West fix.
I read Fisk's article. If "Ancient hatred" is a "myth" it is more of a myth that there is an unified "Iraqi people". This is borne out by your own source that the Sunnis consider themselves fighting "two occupation", somehow I don't think the Shiite majority (and the Kurd minority)look at the government as an Iranian occupation.
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Going by Anonymous'
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 24, 2007 07:55 AM
Gilbert Achcar has a useful analysis based on "literature and statements that come from the Sunni areas" which "don't necessarily say, 'We hate the Shiites,' but they use expressions like the 'Safavid Shiites,' which amounts to an insult (it is a reference to the dynasty that brutally imposed Shiism in Persia in the sixteenth century)...they would say they are fighting two occupations: the US occupation and the Iranian occupation." Robert Fisk has also written about these deterministic myths of "ancient hatreds" and their uses (which have been milked for all they're worth to mystify the Arab-Israeli conflict, for that matter).
I wonder what Anonymous would have made of US government fears of racial conflict in the South after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This story described in John Dower's 'War Without Mercy' got wide coverage in national press at the time: "An elderly black sharecropper had occasion to talk to his white boss and murmured, upon leaving, 'By the way, Captain, I hear the Japs done declared war on you white folks.'" By the lights of Anonymous, I suppose, it would have been just desserts for the "American people" (still dealing with after-effects of an extremely bloody Civil War and regarded as a hybrid, artificial hodge-podge by quite a few Europeans, not just Fascists and their sympathizers) to be riven by race wars had foreign powers occupied the country and then fanned these none too latent conflicts (incidentally, a millenia old old technique for lording over foreign lands, known to smug Roman patricians as divide et impera ).
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The US lost the elections
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 23, 2007 15:15 PM
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If this is a puppet
By Anonymous, Anonymous at Mar 22, 2007 21:26 PM
If this is a puppet government with no popular support in your opinion who is the legitimate ruler of Iraq? Saddam Hussein and the defunct Bathists?
I don't know how you can call this is a puppet government. The U.S. was regging the election in Allawi's favor if you are not too forgetful. Despite that the Shiite coalition won with a respectible margin. You may not like the fact that the governmnet chooses to cut deals with the U.S but it is not a puppet.
You are twisting things to fit your preconcieved narrative of heroic resistance against puppet collaborators. Fact is Iraq has spiralled down into a civil war with the Sunnis and Shiites on each other's throat. Their enmity is historical.The U.S. invasion did not create this sectarian hatred, it only unleashed it by removing the boot that has been on the Shitte's collective chest,--Saddam.
There is probably no unified "Iraqi people", which is a modern creation by, yes, the Western imperial powers. The Americans are certainly an occupation force, but then so was Saddam's Sunni government in the eyes of the Shiite majority and the Kurds.
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Iraqi puppet government
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 22, 2007 03:09 AM
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Interesting comments by
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 21, 2007 20:09 PM
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Reply to "BBC and Iraq" (Wed, 2007-03-21 04:05)
By Kissenger, Clark at Mar 21, 2007 06:30 AM
After reading your comments (thank god I barely touch the TV news channels, except to monitor them for special purposes), it dawned on me to check what the homepage of Human Rights Watch in the States may be reporting at this moment with respect to the March 19 - 20, four-year anniversary of the U.S. - U.K. aggression against Iraq.
Okay. -- At this moment (Wednesday, March 21, around 11:30 AM EST - 15:30 GMT), the HRW homepage is featuring material on Thailand, the UN Human Rights Council, and Burundi, with 18 less-featured items listed below these, one of which is a fine commentary by the director of HRW's London-based office, reproduced from The Independent ("The Refugees Fleeing Iraq are our Responsibility," Tom Porteous, March 6). "The last time so many people were on the move in the Middle East was in 1948 in the aftermath of the war which led to the creation of the state of Israel," Porteous writes, though he had nothing to say about how the war was started. Other than to recite the deliberately misleading phrase "pre- emptive war of choice."
As for the rest: Take a look at the webpage that lists HRW's most current News Releases. Therein we find (in reverse chronological order) items on Thailand, Poland, Egypt, a fizzler on U.S. policy toward 'terrorism', North Korea, Sri Lanka, Israeli conduct in the OT, Burundi, Pakistan, the UN Human Rights Council, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, China, how best to prevent the spread of HIV in U.S. prisons (how about emptying them, for starters?), and so on -- but nothing, I repeat nothing, on the fourth anniversary of the U.S. - U.K. aggression against Iraq. Let alone anything expressed in the voice of HRW, the organization, condemning the war. Or calling for withdrawal. The payment of reparations. And, last but not least, for the punishment of the political leadership in the states most responsible for starting this war.
(On the other hand, I strongly urge everybody to read the statement HRW issued prior to the start of the war: "Human Rights Watch Policy on Iraq." As self-damning a document as can be imagined. Short of outright, Weekly Standard- and New Republic-style cheerleading for the war.)
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
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