A rchive Date
[ 26-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
|
[http://allafrica.com/stories/200304130157.html
Relief Dawns On Iraqis
Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
EDITORIAL
April 11, 2003
Posted to the web April 13, 2003
A Pulitzer prize winning columnist working for Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, recently commented that the bulk of Western European countries opposing the war in the Middle East did so out of sheer interest to challenge the dominance of the United States, but also in large part because of the fact that they don't know what it is to live under tyranny.
The eastern European countries, he said, on the other hand, stood on the side of the United States on the war in Iraq, principally because these countries had direct experience with life under dictatorship "and of being liberated from that tyranny by American power."
It can't be helped, but for all the demonstrations staged in every conceivable country outside Iraq, the final results as we saw them in the last couple of days have come to be totally different.
Nobody, of course wants war, and it is necessary to avoid war at all costs if one can get an inch of opportunity of solving tense situations by peaceful means. Pitifully though, such peaceful means have been tried and tried on shameful leaders that have now been ignominiously thrown into the dustbin of history, like Slovodan Milesovic and our own Mengistu Haile Mariam. Genuine relief came to the people most concerned - the citizens of these states - only after force was used. Experience thus shows that negotiations, to whatever extent they are dragged on are no help if we are dealing with steely minded-brutal dictators of whom the world has seen plenty.
The same, it seems, is happening with Iraq.
For anybody that has seen the massive outpouring of exhilarating emotions of the people of Baghdad yesterday, it beggars belief but that all those massive opposition to the war by different sections of peoples of the planet has been pointless. For in this case, what indeed matters for the people of Iraq is known and determined by the Iraqis themselves. The only problem was that Iraqis were not able to make their voices heard, in the first place, because they were tied silent under the brutal grip of the regime that is now thankfully becoming history.
Who would have thought that the people of Iraq would massively come out and express their joy at the defeat of the regime, just a couple or so weeks ago when the war began?
The tide, however, was different and unexpected and Iraqis are now at least experiencing the onset of promising days of freedom. A catalogue of reasons could also be presented here that have impoverished and depressed an otherwise proud and potentially prosperous Iraqi people. Decades of brutal rule by the regime, it must be said, systematically reduced the country and its people into rust. In addition to having led Iraq into two wars and, in so doing, squandering the country's oil wealth, the regime succeeded in facing down all internal challenges to his rule. In 1991, shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf War, the regime suppressed an uprising among Shias in the south.
Kurds who rebelled in the north were saved from complete defeat only because the international community protected them. He also arrested, exiled, and killed a considerable number of Iraqi citizens who were thought to threaten his rule.
Some parallels could even be drawn between the people of Iraq and Ethiopia.
One can imagine the huge sigh of relief the Ethiopian people experienced in the early 1990s with the going of the Dergue regime that had brutalized the country for almost two decades and destroyed the lives of a significant number of Ethiopians. What actually happened after that is another matter, but the emotions of Ethiopians seeing the bloody dictators of the Dergue flee at the time, could not have been smaller or less genuine than what is now the case with the great people of Iraq.
The war now nearing completion, hope definitely seems to turn its favor towards the Iraqi people. And situations going normal as expected, those great people of Iraq will henceforth be able to build a democratic and prosperous Iraq, led by genuine and committed people selected democratically from among all sections of the population. This way they will also have the chance to tap the people's immense, cultural, scientific and social potential for the betterment of the country and its people. Most of all, however, they will be able to exploit their vast oil wealth to the maximum and make their country a peaceful and prosperous country, which is exemplary to others.
As the saying goes, all is well that ends well, and what is good for the people of Iraq, despite all the murky processes, seems to have at last dawned right in their midst these several weeks.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|