After arresting Iraqi President Saddam Husayn, the US Administration started searching for a scapegoat to blame for its crimes in Iraq and its failure to transform it into a model of democracy and stability in the region as it promised. So it found its scapegoat in an unknown person, whose existence we are not sure of in the first place, named Abu-Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi.
Yesterday, this administration distributed a message it attributed to Al-Zarqawi calling for launching attacks at Shiites in Iraq in order to cause sectarian discord and infighting between the children of one country.
The message that was said to have been addressed to Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin and Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qa'ida leaders, could be a forgery concocted by US intelligence itself. We do not think that this intelligence, which invented the presence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the West, and made up "terrorist" links between Al-Qa'ida and President Saddam Husayn's regime, would have any trouble creating such a letter and raising the value of the reward for the capture of Al-Zarqawi to $10 million in order to give the issue greater importance.
Abu-Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi may really be in Iraq and resisting US occupation, but he is not a person who has super powers to spark sectarian discord and civil war between the people of one country even if he wanted to unless the conditions were set and the appropriate climate for this discord existed.
Before talking about this sectarian discord, we must ask ourselves which party will benefit first and foremost from it. After that, we point our fingers at the elements that want to cause it using modern scientific methods of diagnosing the crime in order to pinpoint the parties that would benefit from it.
The US Administration is the most prominent benefactor from any internal discord that could arise in Iraq because it would find excuses to weaken and divide the country, preoccupy its people with infighting, and move away from the real reason for all Iraq's current problems; namely, US occupation.
The US Administration wants to transfer Iraqis' life into an unbearable hell and is following a divide-and-conquer policy in order to prolong its presence in permanent military bases on Iraq's land. Otherwise, how could we explain the fact that electricity, water, and basic services have not yet been restored to Iraqis almost one year after Iraq was occupied? Is it logical that the biggest empire in history and the owner of the most modern scientific and technological capabilities is unable to provide electricity to the majority of Iraqi citizens?
Yes there are those who want to sectarian war to break out in Iraq, but it is definitely not Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi; rather, this person could be a small fish in that ocean. Current US practices in Iraq are the ones creating the appropriate atmosphere for this war and are pushing toward it. Only a handful of "foreigners" have been arrested for carrying out "terrorist" operations in Iraq out of some 30,000 Iraqi prisoners living under tragic conditions behind bars with no trials or defense and without getting any attention from the Iraqi Governing Council members who have always talked about oppression, arrests, and suffering in Al-Ba'th's prisons.
US policy in Iraq is entrenching sectarianism and disuniting the people of one country by favoring one sect and oppressing another, turning sectarian militias into the main nucleus of the new Iraqi security forces, and making sectarian standards the basis of the Iraqi army's formation.
US policy has ripped apart Iraq and its social fabric and national unity. It is preparing for a phenomenon that is unprecedented in this country; namely, a sectarian war. The US has dismissed the Sunni sect and dealt with it as a terrorist sect because Saddam was Sunni. It favored the Shiite sect and its members in order to eliminate this sect's revolutionary tradition and transform it into a sect that works for the occupation under the excuse that Saddam was oppressing it. It is thus a policy that is destroying the two sects and placing them in direct confrontation. How can resisting British occupation through the glorious Revolution of Twenty be considered jihad, and blessing and collaborating with the US occupation in the 21st century be considered ethical?
The Al-Qa'ida network was not in Iraq before the war and talk of its existence and ties between it and the Ba'th regime was only heard in Washington and London. The document that was said to have been found with the Iraqi president when he was captured in which he warns his supporters of cooperating with the Al-Qa'ida is only additional proof of the continuous US lies.
Al-Qa'ida came to Iraq after the war, not before it, as a result of the widespread chaos that this occupation created. We would not be exaggerating if we say that US policy has fulfilled the dreams of Al-Qa'ida and its leaders in finding a safe haven in the heart of the Arab region to fight the US forces after it had lost this haven, even though it was not as important, in Afghanistan.
Al-Qa'ida was "exiled" in Afghanistan and surrounded by a non-Arab and unfamiliar environment. It now finds itself among its own people and brothers, resisting an "infidel" US occupation, according to its description. Resisting occupation is legitimate in all conventions. It will definitely increase this network's popularity and support base and will create the suitable environment to recruit more supporters.
The Arab nation is currently confronted with a process of "media terrorism" by the United States. It takes different forms starting with blackouts and ending with forgery: Forging facts and planting wrong and distorted information through a policy of flooding US and Arab satellite channels, newspapers, magazines, and radio stations, which are cloning in a terrifying manner and multiplying in a way that raises a lot of question marks.
It was no coincidence that the newspapers that publish lists of oil coupons (our newspaper's name was not among them) are being funded by US central intelligence. It was no coincidence that the purpose of this media terrorism is to distort values of Arabism and Islamic national principles in resisting occupation. The US Administration did not allocate $1 billion to fund media projects just to serve Arab culture.
The US occupation of Iraq is the mother of calamities, big and small, and is "the mother of all great sins." The media terrorism will not prevent us from saying that resisting this occupation is a legitimate ethical issue and a religious duty and that cooperating with this occupation is a great crime and an abandonment of religion and Arab and Islamic values and principles.
We repeat: Abu-Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is not the motivator of sectarian discord; rather, it is the US occupation and all its collaborators inside and outside Iraq. This is not in defense of Abu-Mus'ab or others, but a clarification of the truth and setting things straight.
(Description of Source: London Al-Quds al-Arabi in Arabic — London-based independent Arab nationalist daily with an anti-US and anti-Saudi editorial line; generally pro-Palestinian, tends to be sympathetic to Bin Ladin)
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