The Machiavellian Snake

When I first heard that Ahmad Chalabi recently gave an interview on al-Baghdadiya and was asked a few questions about my father I expected to hear some nonsensical gibberish. I didn't expect him to spew lie after lie in front of the camera.

The first time I met Chalabi was in September 2003 in the al-Khoei Foundation office building in London. He was a brilliant actor. He actually made everyone believe he was genuinely upset about my father and in no uncertain terms made it clear he believed the Sadrists, acting on orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, murdered my father. He then declared very pompously, but seriously 'when I go back to Iraq I will be the first to put a bag over Moqtada's head'. 'من ارجع للعراق اني اول واحد راح البس الكيس على راس مقتدى'

When I heard that Chalabi a few months later was warming up to Moqtada, who as far as I could see had no bag over his head or handcuffs around his wrists, I knew Chalabi was a snake. It didn't take long for me to realise that he had left his friends in Washington and made new ones in Tehran. Courteous relations with the Sadr Movement was now not just expected of him, but demanded.

When he came to visit in 2003 he was President of the Iraqi Governing Council and of course as it was a private meeting his reputation, political career, and most importantly his life, was not on the line. On al-Baghdadiya a few days ago he churned up a very different story because the circumstances have radically changed. Apparently now he has no idea whether or not Moqtada al-Sadr is responsible for my fathers murder, and could not have promised my family that he would see to it Moqtada would be arrested because he claims he doesn't even know who carried out the murder of my father, let alone who ordered it.

Chalabi's recent remarks on al-Baghdadiya is just another cheap attempt to clean Moqtada's blood-stained hands ahead of the general election. Chalabi is running alongside many Sadrists on the same electoral ticket, and he could even get elected this time on the back of Sadrist votes. This isn't the first time my fathers blood has been used as a bargaining chip in Iraqi politics and it certainly won't be the last.

I am certain that if my father knew his death would bring about real change for the Iraqi people he would have died and died again a hundred times over, but what he couldn't have known was that his death, even 7 years on, is being used as some sort of card on the playing decks of sinister and sly Iraqi criminals who are masquerading as politicians. The real tragedy here is that some of these criminals are hiding behind the veil of Islam and are under the banner of the - it couldn't have been more inappropriately named - 'Iraqi National Alliance'.

I do not believe my fathers blood is special because he wore a black turban or is the son of a Grand Ayatollah. I believe his blood is special because he is my father. The Islamists running for election in the INA do however believe in these religious significances and their despicable and utterly shameful indifference or complicity should send a clear warning signal to every Iraqi that is even contemplating voting for them. How many other Iraqi families, like mine, have seen their fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters taken away from them and nothing is done about it because political points need to be scored? The answer is too many.

Now you see?

It is 9am on December 8th 1998 in the city of Nasiriya in Southern Iraq. An order is given to Fedayeen Saddam – ‘Saddam’s Men of Sacrifice’ - to behead Abdul-Hassan Misbah, Ehsan Hussain and Mohammed Subhi. Their hands are tied behind their backs, their feet tied together and they are blindfolded. They are carried to a concrete block with their heads hanging over the road like sheep to the slaughter.

Fedayeen, over a dozen of them all dressed in black with masks covering their faces, crowd the condemned. They hold them in place and shift their bodies accordingly to get the ideal position. Before the victims are executed a member of the Fedayeen uses a set of tools to pull out their tongues and then proceeds to cut them. The three men seem resigned to their fate and do not put up any resistance. They do not shake, jolt or even twitch. It is almost as if they died before they died. Whilst one is having his tongue cut off the other is already being hacked to death by a sword-wielding Fedaye who starts from behind the neck until the head is decapitated.

Once they conclude with the heads the Fedayeen hold onto them as trophies and start dancing around them with the enjoyment, excitement and amusement you would expect in a wedding. Their bodies were not even returned to their families. When the mother went to the Fedayeen centre asking for her son she was told he was a traitor to his country and that his body should not just have been thrown to the dogs, but also burnt. The mother finally found her son’s body after Saddam was toppled. Head buried beside body.

This was just another day in Nasiriya.

The execution video, parts of which have since been uploaded on YouTube, was shown to members of the Ba’ath Party and Fedayeen paramilitaries on trial in Baghdad last Thursday and after one of the defendants closed his eyes in horror at the video the presiding Judge, Mahmoud al-Hassan, could no longer hold back his anger. While the video was still playing he remarked ‘Yes look away, as if you never saw it. Look how he closes his eyes. Go on close your eyes, close your eyes! It’s a sickening scene? Now you see? Now you see?’

The Judge orders the video to be stopped and returns his attention to the defendants, a few of which were present when the execution took place eleven years ago. He is furious at the men and tells them even if someone had killed his own father it would be difficult for anyone to carry out a murder in that fashion. He asks how they could have heard of such a thing and accepted it. He declares ‘will you say you didn’t hear? Will you say you didn’t know? Go on, let one of you tell me he didn’t know about this. We used to hear about the Fedayeen and their unit, which beheads people, but we have never seen. We have never seen with our own eyes.’

There was pin drop silence and no one dared to interrupt him. The Judge was visibly shaken by the video. Between his shouts, the only sound that can be heard is the weeping of the mother of Ehsan Hussain, who came to bear witness and had to watch every horrible moment all over again as the video was resumed. She cries as she watches the men dance around her son’s head. The video is then paused and an unmasked face becomes clearly discernible. His name is Falah and he is a member of the Fedayeen. He denies he beheaded any of the men but admits he was one of those celebrating the deaths of these ‘traitors’.

This was just another day in Baghdad.

Chemical Ali

Was it worth it?

The Blair Trial

The British people are going into frenzy over the Chilcot Inquiry Blair saga. Everyone in the UK is almost shocked Blair did not offer an apology or show remorse. Everyone in Iraq I spoke to said ‘huh?’ or ‘what?’ and have never even heard of the inquiry which seeks to establish why their country was invaded in the first place.

The whole thing is very quintessentially ‘British’. Who said what and why and how that changed who’s view on what which led to the invasion. They are very precise and technical and demand to know every single little detail. Iraqis on the other hand are asking their politicians very different questions. Namely how soon they can live in peace with no bombs going off and less money being stolen.

Tony Blair says he has no regrets for getting rid of Saddam, and that feeling is shared by tens of millions of Iraqis who are not asking Blair to apologise for toppling the brutal dictator.

The British people demand to know why Blair used the WMD line to con them into going to war. The Iraqi people on the other hand know what a WMD looks like, smells like, and feels like. The British people demand to know how UNSCR 1441 made it ‘legal’ for Blair to send in Armed Forces into a sovereign state and occupy it. The Iraqi people are grateful that Saddam’s Fedayeen can longer roam the streets cutting tongues off in public squares and hacking their victims’ heads off with machetes. 7 years on British mothers are asking why their sons have been sent to war on a lie. 7 years on Iraqi mothers can still remember having to pay for the bullets ‘wasted’ on their sons’ executions.

Say what you will of the chaos and destruction that followed the March 2003 invasion of my country. It was, and still is, nothing compared to the three decades of oppression and tyranny the Iraqi people had to put up with during Ba’ath rule.

If your family is being executed one by one by some psychopathic murderers, the last thing you want an armed police officer to think about is the ‘legality’ of his reaction.

The British people are of course not just obsessed with the legality of the war; they discuss its ‘morality’. We have heard the argument time and time again. It was the Western powers who supported him against the war with Iran. It was the Western powers who armed Saddam and gave him so many of his weapons. They seem to be confusing only themselves. Bush was not the President of the US when that was happening and Blair could not even get a seat at the Hackney Borough Council when the Iraq-Iran war started. To say they cannot correct the mistakes of previous governments because it would make them hypocrites is an argument that is fundamentally flawed.

A constant question they ask is 'was it moral to get rid of Saddam?'

The simple answer is that it would have been immoral not to.