News Right Now: Fatal Framework

Welcome to News Right Now: Fatal Framework

America occupied Iraq in 2003, bringing an unfathomable amount of death and destruction to the land and its people. The US obliterated entire cities, and hundreds of towns, cultural attractions, farms, vast swathes of agricultural land, historic landmarks and world heritage sites. Naturally, the war mongering US government, their delinquent soldiers, and the parties invested in the complete ruination of Iraq, all set out to pillage the nation’s wealth by stealing priceless artifacts from its museums, siphoning off the nation’s wealth through the control of the oil industry, and dismantling its nuclear capacity; even re-distributing its material.

Calculations using the best information available show a catastrophic estimate of 3.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion. The U.S. led the heaviest bombing campaign since the Vietnam war, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other Iraqi cities to rubble. 40,000 civilians were slaughtered in Mosul alone and 11,000 people are still reported missing by their families. A British polling firm Opinion Research Business (ORB) conducted studies published in the Lancet, estimating 1.3 million men, women and children were killed by between 2003 and 2007 - then applying a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s methodology from 2007 to the present day, using revised figures from Iraq Body Count, they estimate at least 3.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of America’s illegal invasion. The number of wounded and permanently disabled is at least triple this number and those displaced and homeless within Iraq and abroad are literally in the millions.

After the annihilation of Iraq, America’s colonial project was to keep control of the oil wealth and benefit from its strategic location in the Middle East by creating a self-serving puppet government - and like every imperialist nation before it, the US planted a governing system that would serve its own interests above those of the people.

Barack Obama willingly continued what the Bush administration started when he welcomed the now supposedly sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki, to begin a new chapter in history with a “normal relationship between sovereign nations, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect”.

Since then Iraq has gone from bad to worse, with a political, social and economic situation that is spiraling out of control. Rampant corruption has spread throughout the provinces, and tensions and altercations are rampant between members of parliament, who’s party affiliations dictate their interests instead of the vital issues. Likewise, huge amounts of money are lost and laundered out of the country, leaving Iraq impoverished instead of hugely wealthy as it should be, given its oil, minerals and vast amounts of natural resources.

A nearly $700 million in public funds has been misappropriated from state-run banks in Iraq in a scandal implicating more than 40 people, an anti-corruption commission said Thursday, after a three-year probe. A total of 926 billion Iraqi dinars ($697 million) went missing due to “forgery, embezzlement, manipulation, money laundering (and) abuse of position,” the Commission for Integrity said in a statement.

The intentional re-creation of Iraq along sectarian and tribal fault lines by the US and UN was to cement regional rivalries, such as, between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Likewise the intention was always to grow identity and sect based political movements, regardless of the dire consequences of what is effectively tribalism, upon such a huge geographical area. The political influence upon the new Iraq via its membership of the global institutions, and of the regional authoritarian regimes as well as its legacy of doom from years of foreign intervention, have together driven state failure and even state collapse at many levels.

This is undisputed given the clear actions of the US in supporting factions, and agents who would promote their causes, at the behest of the good of the country and the elections are an example of the biggest lie invented by the American occupation in Iraq, as it established the quota system that spread corruption in the state’s apparatuses. It made the system of government federal and divided the powers among the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and it set the constitution, leaving the people to choose who implements this clearly fractured system. Proving this very point, just this week the powerful Shia leader Muqtada al Sadr, a staunch opponent of both Iran and the United States, resigned publicly, walking out of parliament along with 73 of his loyalists after an 8 month deadlock in negotiations for a new government. He had been locked in a power struggle with Shia rivals backed by Iran, and was unable to put together a coalition that could form a majority government. Due to this, his opponents and their allies won with a large majority of 122 seats. This put al-Sadr back for the first time since 2005, and has allowed pro-Iranian factions to determine the makeup of the next Iraq government. “Sadr said, he had reached the point of accepting the bitter reality that it’s nearly impossible to form a government away from the Iranian-backed groups,” and that, “it was a sacrifice from me for the country and the people to rid them of the unknown destiny”. However, now al-Sadr’s supporters, many of whom had fought the US occupation and still have firepower, could take to the streets, leading to clashes with Shia rivals.

Iraq’s fractured and corrupt political system is collapsing in on itself, and under the current framework it will never be able to provide stability or any real and lasting change. The presence of sectarianism throughout the political spectrum is nothing to do with diversity or inclusive as the evil US and interfering West would have us believe; although it’s well known in the West that coalition governments are far from a prized ideal. The Muslim world is led to believe that this is some kind of enlightened level of democracy and progress!

In fact only Islam can genuinely unite people and provide stability, because it never seeks to dominate and restrict people’s innate needs, or any rights connected to our inherent nature, or Fitra. Islam’s holistic system facilitates social and economic empowerment within its just framework based on the Ahkam Shara. Just as Islam facilitates excellence in the private sphere, it has every capability to create lasting growth and continued progress in the social and political domain too.

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