To defend their country, the Iraqi people have a legitimate right to resist, and use all forms of resistance to this war and occupation. Any resistance to the current imperial aggression is legitimate resistance. "International law grants a people fighting an illegal occupation the right to use 'all necessary means at their disposal' to end their occupation and the occupied are entitled to seek and receive support".

As I write these lines, U.S. forces are bombing Iraqi civilians in their homes. In the town of Qaim, on the Syrian border, U.S. forces have besieged the town for many days. Residents told IPS on telephone; "all the fighters here are Iraqis from this area". The on going abuses by U.S. soldiers had provoked people into confronting the occupying forces. "The fighters are just local people who refuse to be treated like dogs," one resident said. "Nobody wants the Americans her", added another resident. Many innocent civilians have been killed and the city centre "has been almost completely destroyed", including the city hospitals and schools. "[The Americans] are using warplanes, mortar shells and tanks to shell the city indiscriminately, hurt citizens and bomb the houses with warplanes". Like the atrocity of Fallujah, the silence of the Western media is deafening, while Iraqi cities and towns are destroyed one by one.

It appears that the common agenda of Western governments led by the U.S. and Britain is the revival of the old Western colonialism masked in the fake rhetoric of "democracy" and "liberation". Like Western governments, Western media have bought into the so-called "federation of Iraq", a euphemism to divide Iraq into colonies controlled by Western powers.

Once again the media have failed to report the US led policy of ethnic cleansing, conducted by Kurdish terrorist groups from northern Iraq, particularly from the city of Kirkuk. Thousands of Iraqi (Arabs and Turkomans) families, who lived for generations in northern Iraq, are forced by armed Kurdish Peshmerga to flee their homes and seek sanctuaries further south. Today, the ethnic cleansing of Iraqis is comparable to that conducted against the Palestinian people in 1948 by Zionist terrorists. The fact that Israeli commandos are in northern Iraq training the Kurdish militias in the art of land dispossession is a case in point.

Sectarianism and ethnic tensions in Iraq "are not a product of cultural differences. They are the product of a history of imperialism and colonialism in the region and domestic Iraqi politics". "This applies as much to the Arab-Kurd tension as it does to the Sunni-Shias [sic]", wrote Rami El-Amine of Left Turn magazine. Iraq is a mosaic society. "There is no history of communal strife or civil war in Iraq, and the degree of socioeconomic integration and unity of purpose amongst the Iraqi people is often underestimated. There is also a powerful secular tradition in Iraq that transcends all religions and sects", said Dr. Sami Ramadani of London Metropolitan University.

Iraqis are united against the Occupation. If there is any divide, this "divide, already narrower in Iraq than in some parts of the Arab world, is by all accounts shrinking each day that Iraqis agree their most immediate problem is the occupation", wrote The Washington Post correspondent R. Chandrasekaran. Only two years ago, Iraqi Christians, and Muslims lived together in harmony despite their religious and political differences. If there is any division between Iraqis today, the division has been created quite deliberately by the U.S. Occupation.

The April 19, 2005 demonstration of more than 300,000 Iraqis in Baghdad alone (the largest in Iraq for many decades), jointly organized by the Al-Sadr movement and the Association of Muslim Scholars, showed that all Iraqis are united against the US Occupation and terrorism. This unity contradicts the West's perception of Iraqis as a divided society and rejects the occupiers' imperialist policy of 'divide and rule'.

Sadly, neither the "alternative" nor the mainstream media has George Galloway's courage to stand up against unjust wars and tell the truth about Iraq and the crimes committed against the Iraqi people.

As a result of media disinformation, many people in the West, Americans in particular, continue to support an illegal war of "crimes against humanity" perpetuated in their name. The Western media should follow an ethic of moral responsibility toward the Iraqi people and provide impartial and accurate information to the outside world.

Instead of serving as propaganda agents for imperial power and an unjust war against the Iraqi people's right to self-determination, the Western media would do well to hold the governments behind the US led coalition accountable for this illegal act of aggression.

Those who are responsible for this murderous crime against the Iraqi people should face, with their accomplices, war crimes trials similar to those conducted by the Nuremberg Tribunal. The only peaceful solution to the chaos in Iraq is the full withdrawal of U.S. forces. Ordinary Iraqis and the Iraqi Resistance groups will continue to resist the Occupation until the U.S. leaves Iraq. No amount of U.S. firepower will quell the desire of the people of Iraq to achieve sovereignty and national independence.

Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be reached at G-Hassan@mwcnews.net

First published on www.Globalresearch.ca 

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4