Most Iraqis want regime change, but not war

It is not the case that those who argue for peace are arguing for complete inaction against Saddam

Imagine this. Imagine that within Saddam Hussein's jails there were, currently, six British men, falsely accused of setting off bombs in Iraq. Imagine that these men had been badly beaten by interrogators. Imagine that their families had been threatened if the men refused to confess. Imagine that they had been tied with ropes and suspended upside down from the ceilings of their cells; tied by their hands to the tops of cell doors; deprived of sleep for up to 10 days.

If this were the case, then every time we turned on the news we would find Tony Blair urging us to think of these men and to steel ourselves to accept the moral case for bringing down a government that could so trample on the rights of British citizens.

But, sadly for these six British men who currently sit in jails in the Middle East, they are being held by the government of Saudi Arabia, our ally. And so they have vanished off the radar of our Government.

Reports in last Sunday's newspapers returned to the ongoing ill-treatment in prison of these six, who have been falsely accused of planting bombs. But our Government couldn't be stirred. "We can't interfere with the judicial process of another state," said a spokesperson for the Foreign Office. I'm not saying that the government of Saudi Arabia is equivalent, in its abuses of human rights, with the abuses practised by the government of Iraq. But when Tony Blair talks of the human rights of the Iraqi people, doesn't he also wonder about the rights that are trampled on in other Arab states, including those states that his Government is currently happy to support with money and arms sales and strategic alliances and diplomatic nods and winks?

Blair's argument that this war on Iraq will not only remove a threat to the West, but also liberate the Iraqi people, has always been the strongest possible case for the war. But the fact that it comes from a government that has never recognised the importance of human rights for ordinary people throughout the Arab world makes it rather hard to swallow at face value. And what makes it even harder to swallow is that many people who are arguing most vociferously for the rights of the Iraqi people and the removal of the current regime are not persuaded of the case for war.

The people in the peace camp are not all, as they have been misrepresented to us in recent days, apologists for Saddam Hussein. Although many Iraqis who have been forced out of their country do support the war – and some have been quoted extensively by Tony Blair – many do not. I have spent some time talking to these exiles, and what struck me in my recent conversations with them is that even though they do not support the war, they have not despaired about the possibility of regime change – sooner rather than later. It is not the case that those who argue for peace are arguing for complete inaction.

Many of these exiles see, now, a real opportunity in the current situation to strengthen the Iraqi people against Saddam Hussein without resorting to war. One of these exiles, Zuhair Chalabi, an electronics engineer, was typical of others I spoke to.

He does not support war, but as a longstanding dissenter from Saddam Hussein's regime, he does not want a return to the status quo before the current build-up of diplomatic hostility. He sees the strong presence of United Nations weapons inspectors in the country as providing a possible lever to put pressure on Saddam Hussein not just on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, but also on human rights. "This could begin to erode the tyranny, if the UN presence was greatly strengthened in the country," he told me.

Nadje Al-Ali, an Iraqi now living in Britain who helped to set up a group called Act Together: Women Against War and Sanctions on Iraq, also told me that she believed the best way for the international community to act was not through war, but through alternative pressure. This should be threefold: first, containment of the regime through continued weapons inspections. Second, the lifting of sanctions so that the Iraqis could rebuild their health and economy. And, third, a strong UN presence to protect minorities and to monitor human rights abuses.

"The future rests with the ordinary people of Iraq. We must give them a chance," she said.

Other exiles I spoke to echoed these words, and also spoke about how important it was, if such measures were taken, for the international community now to isolate only the regime and not the ordinary people of Iraq. One, who preferred not to give his name because his family is still in Iraq, told me: "If you had real communication again between Iraqis inside and outside the country, it wouldn't take long for political dissent to build again. Iraqis are so hungry for contact with the rest of the world and we outside are so eager to build this. If the international community could help to facilitate this we would build up the opposition again without the need for war."

These arguments that the UN should act to monitor human rights abuses as well as weapons building in Iraq are not, interestingly, new arguments. Max van der Stoel, who was the UN Special Rapporteur on Iraq from 1991 to 1999, called for the deployment of human rights monitors in Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War. It is a pity that the US and the UK did not care enough for the human rights of the Iraqi people to push through such a measure at the time. As a recently published report, Building Democracy in Iraq (published by Minority Rights Group International), emphasises, such monitors are not peace-keeping forces, but even in a situation as combustible as Iraq they can function as a deterrent to violations and build confidence.

Now, you would think that those who care about the situation of the Iraqi people – such as, naturally, our own Government – would eagerly grasp the opportunity to start building a system of such monitors in Iraq. However, resistance to such a move is now coming from the United States, said to be under pressure from its allies in the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, which feels that such monitors would create a dangerous precedent. What, exactly, does this tell us about the extent of the US's interest in human rights in Iraq? Those people who put the moral case for war are over-pessimistic about the potential of any action other than war in changing the situation on the ground. But they are also over-optimistic about the aftermath of such a war. Do we really expect the US and Britain to put human rights at the centre of the post-war settlement, even if it were to mean alienating its supporters in the region?

Reports last week that the US State Department might already have given up on the idea of building democracy in Iraq made for chilling and convincing reading. Proposals made by Zalmay Khalizad, George Bush's special envoy to Iraq, set out a plan in which the infrastructure of the the Baath party would remain "largely intact" with the top two officials in each ministry replaced by US military officers. Even Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi exile who has argued most vociferously in favour of the war as a route to democracy, has said that such a plan is "an appeasement of the existing bankrupt Arab order".

It's hardly surprising that so many continue to believe that the moral case for peace is still stronger than the moral case for war.

n.walter@btinternet.com