Master and Apprentice

DESPITE OVERWHELMING evidence to the contrary, there is now a myth, repeated by distinguished writers and commentators, that most Iraqis initially welcomed the US-led invasion. No matter that the widely-broadcast pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad by US forces and the 'Pentagon Iraqis' involved about two hundred people in a city of six million. There was no uprising in Basra after all. And there was no reported mass meeting or demonstration, except in Iraqi Kurdistan, which attracted more than a few hundred in support of the invasion. All the large gatherings since have been in opposition.

The opposition is now turning into large scale, popularly backed resistance inexorably leading to a war of attrition with echoes of Vietnam unless the US withdraws.

The invasion is widely seen as an obvious extension of past US policy. This popular sentiment is similar to how Iraqis used to view Britain's influence in Iraq after its conquest from 1914 to 1921, the establishment of the modern state in 1921, up until the 1958 overthrow of the monarchy. State policies were seen as sanctioned by Abu Naji, as Britain is nicknamed by Iraqis. Revealingly, the annual release of historical documents at the Public Records Office in London does not contradict this popular notion of how the country was ruled, despite the trappings of independence and the solidity of the ruling elite.

RUTHLESS AND AMORAL

This perception of Britain's role has receded into history, no longer arousing much passion or hostility. For the new US master - ussta - was not only much more powerful but had an apprentice - sani - in Saddam, who surpassed in ruthlessness and amoral practice any other tyrant that Iraq had ever seen.

This ussta-sani duality, a very popular metaphor in Iraq, was turned into a rousing chant in Sadr City in Baghdad and elsewhere when tens of thousands recently marched in protest against the occupation. Most of these angry gatherings have been taking place in regions that bore the brunt of Saddamist massacres during and after the massive March 1991 uprising. It is said that many of the thousands killed ended up in the infamous mass graves.

People still have vivid memories of those events and how President George Bush senior abruptly stopped the war soon after the uprising started. They describe how US planes hovered above Saddam's helicopter gunships while they accomplished their deadly missions. The gunships were allowed to fly under the March ceasefire agreement signed by generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Sultan Hashim, whom Saddam later promoted to defence minister. Hashim negotiated his surrender a few weeks ago after exchanging chummy messages with a US general.

ETCHED IN THE MIND

Similarly, the effects of the 1990-2003 economic sanctions are etched in the popular mind. Not only did the US-led and Saddam-manipulated sanctions claim the lives of many thousands, they also had a deeply damaging impact on ordinary people, including a large minority of Kurds in Baghdad but excluding the largely unaffected Iraqi Kurdistan.

Conversely, they created a new class of multi-millionaires and enhanced the fabulous wealth of the regime's cronies. The contrast of poverty and conspicuous wealth reached obscene levels. And who did the people blame: the ussta and the sani. Not one or the other, but both. It is that umbilical chord again.

Opposition to the occupation early on was there for all to witness when more than two - some say up to four - million people joined the Ashora march to Karbala to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. To most Iraqis - Shi'ites or Sunni, religious or secular - there is no greater heroic figure: he is seen as the quintessential champion of the poor, who stood by his principles and was killed by the rich and powerful in the battle of Karbala over thirteen hundred years ago. That is why most successive regimes harassed or banned the annual processions. Indeed, a sure way of gauging popular political mood is to listen to the chants and poems marking the occasion: 'Down with the occupation, down with Saddam'; 'No to America, no to Saddam!'

SCARE THE PEOPLE

Armed resistance is still primarily confined to parts of Baghdad and some central and northern regions. Looking closely at American military tactics, there is little doubt that the principal reason for the unexpectedly swift growth in forceful resistance is aggressive US operations to fully disarm and control those regions.

Search and destroy missions reportedly killed civilians and unarmed demonstrators in Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul and elsewhere. The calculation was that these areas were not as practised in the arts of opposition as Baghdad and the south, where people are much more heavily armed and skilled in clandestine political and armed resistance.

There is now a tense standoff in Sadr City between occupiers and the people. This is reflected in the religious centres of Karbala, Najaf and Kufa, and many southern cities including Basra, Iraq's second largest and the base of most of the British contingent.

US propaganda that Saddam and Al Qaeda are behind the resistance appears designed to isolate it from world opinion and, perhaps more importantly, to scare people with the spectre of the return of Saddam's tyranny. But popular sentiment openly welcomes the targeting of American forces, while attacks on civilians, public utilities, the UN and aid organisations are seen as criminal outrages by Saddam's thugs, to which US troops are believed to have turned a blind eye.

LONG-STANDING SUPPORT

Baghdad brims with astute political observers who endured four decades of ruthless repression: since February 1963, when the Central Intelligence Agency stood by during the bloody Ba'athist-led coup, to be copied in Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1972. Thousands of socialists, communists and democrats were slaughtered by thugs, one of whom was the young Saddam.

According to popular Iraqi views, the US also backed the Ba'athists in 1968 when Saddam was installed as vice-president; it helped him and the Shah of Iran crush the Kurdish nationalist movement when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger mediated the Saddam-Shah agreement of 1975; it increased its support after 1979 when Saddam elevated himself to the presidency, happy that he went to war with revolutionary Iran; it backed him through the horrific eight years of that war, in the knowledge that he was using chemical weapons against Iranians, Kurds and marsh Arabs; it failed to discourage him in 1990 when the Arabic-speaking US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, told him a week before he invaded Kuwait that the US had 'no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts'; it turned a blind eye to the crashing of the March 1991 uprising that engulfed the south and Iraqi Kurdistan; and it decided he was the 'lesser evil' from 1991 to 2001 under the painful sanctions umbrella, cloaked as 'containment'.

To most Iraqis, it is obvious the US record does not make it a legitimate force for democratic transformation. Washington is unlikely to accept a democratic verdict not to its liking in a strategically important country with the world's second largest oil reserves. Its continued presence is the main obstacle to sweeping away the vestiges of Saddams tyrannical state and building democracy.

Now the US plans Iraqification, but apparently by expanding the powers of those chosen by US Administrator Paul Bremer. The occupation authorities have been recruiting Saddams leading security men to suppress the rising tide of resistance. The long shadows of Vietnam are looming again with Iraqis being organised to kill Iraqis.

There is little doubt that most Iraqis want a swift end to the occupation and to decide their own destiny with the help of friends of their choosing. This cannot be achieved without active international support, particularly from the American people.