By Robert Fisk - 17 June 2004

They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain’s 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books…

On the eve of our “handover” of “full sovereignty” to Iraq, this is a story of tragedy and folly and of dark foreboding. It is about the past-made-present, and our ability to copy blindly and to the very letter the lies and follies of our ancestors. It is about that admonition of antiquity: that if we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. For Iraq 1917, read Iraq 2003. For Iraq 1920, read Iraq 2004 or 2005.

Yes, we are preparing to give “full sovereignty” to Iraq. That’s also what the British falsely claimed more than 80 years ago. Come, then, and confront the looking glass of history, and see what America and Britain will do in the next 12 terrible months in Iraq.

Our story begins in March 1917 as 22-year-old Private 11072 Charles Dickens of the Cheshire Regiment peels a poster off a wall in the newly captured city of Baghdad. It is a turning point in his life. He has survived the hopeless Gallipoli campaign, attacking the Ottoman empire only 150 miles from its capital, Constantinople. He has then marched the length of Mesopotamia, fighting the Turks yet again for possession of the ancient caliphate, and enduring the grim battle for Baghdad. The British invasion army of 600,000 soldiers was led by Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude, and the sheet of paper that caught Private Dickens’s attention was Maude’s official “Proclamation” to the people of Baghdad, printed in English and Arabic.

By Robert Fisk

June 29, 2004 “The Star” — Beirut

So, in the end, America’s enemies set the date.

The handover of “full sovereignty” was secretly brought forward so that the ex-CIA intelligence officer who is now premier of Iraq could avoid another bloody offensive by America’s enemies.

What was supposed to be the most important date in Iraq’s modern history was changed - like a birthday party, because it might rain on Wednesday.

Pitiful is the word that comes to mind.

Here we were, handing “full sovereignty” to the people of Iraq - “full”, of course, providing we forget the 160 000 foreign soldiers whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has apparently asked to stay on in Iraq, “full” providing we forget the 3 000 US diplomats in Baghdad who will constitute the largest US embassy in the world.

And we never even told the Iraqi people we had changed the date.

Few, save of course for the Iraqis, understood the cruellest paradox of the event.

BACKGROUND: Office of Foreign Assets Control v. Voices in the Wilderness In January, 1996 Voices in the Wilderness formed as a campaign to end the sanctions against Iraq. They decided to bring medicine to the people of Iraq to relieve the suffering caused by sanctions.

In December, 1998, the US Treasury Department’s wing governing trade, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a “pre-penalty notice” to Voices (threatening fines of $100,000).

Voices responded by saying they refused to take part in any aspect of the sanctions regime (including applying for a license to deliver medicine) because the law compels us to help those in need.

In November, 2002, the Treasury Dept. sent notice that it intended to collect the fines, now dropped to $20,000. Voices replied that they refused to pay.

On June 20, 2003, the Justice Department filed a “Complaint for Civil Penalties” in federal court to collect those fines, based on trips to Iraq in July and September, 1998, in which VitW “exported medical supplies to Baghdad, Iraq.”

On September 26, 2003, VitW filed an answer to the government’s allegations and a counterclaim.

In short the defense states:
1) The OFAC regulations on food and medicine were not authorized by the Presidential directives, acts of congress, or UN resolutions
2) The sanctions regime was designed to cause suffering in Iraq and was illegal (citing Madeleine Albright’s “The price was worth it” referring to the 1/2 million deaths of Iraqi children)
3) International law and common law (the “Nuremberg principles,” that one must violate a domestic law if that law runs contrary to international law) demanded that VitW take these actions to prevent the loss of human life in Iraq, acting in the defense of others
4) The US is selectively targeting VitW because of its first amendment expressions against US policy and denying its religious freedom to act on ethical, moral or religious conscience

and the counterclaim further alleges:
1) The licensing provisions were created to offset public outcry against the effects of sanctions
2) The sanctions constituted warfare against a civilian population

and seeks
1) Dismissal of the fines
2) Declaration that the sanctions were illegal
3) An injunction against future government restriction on humanitarian aid
4) Compensatory damages (funds to be used to provide medicine to the people of Iraq) and attorney’s fees

The papers filed by Voices’ lawyers, Bill Quigley (of Loyola University School of Law), Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard (of the Partnership for Civil Justice) cite numerous cases in which the government has admitted that humanitarian aid cannot be prohibited. One such case involved the delivery of aid to Nicaragua in trucks, where the trucks were left behind. The government agreed the medical aid was exempt from regulation, but that the trucks were not “humanitarian aid.”

Compiled by Dan Handelman

By JOE FEUERHERD

A federal district court judge ordered the government to show it has acted “promptly” in its suit seeking a $20,000 fine against Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based antiwar group.

At a June 4 hearing, Judge John D. Bates gave prosecutors two weeks to explain why the government took nearly four years to take action against Voices, which is accused of providing unauthorized medical assistance to Iraqis in violation of the pre-war U.S. trade embargo against that government. Justice Department regulations require the government to act “promptly” against those accused of violating the embargo.