By Shirley Wentworth

December’s London Peace Conference may have been a hit in Europe, but it scarcely made ripples back across the Atlantic.

However, as much as the majority of American citizens might like to shield themselves from the reality of the war, some 1,400 or so international conference participants recognized the Iraq invasion and occupation as the central problem in world politics today. Conference delegates not only called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. and U.K. troops and an end to the occupation, but called for an immediate release of illegally detained prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

“It affirms that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful, in breach of the Charter of the United Nations and justified by the invading powers with lies designed to manipulate public opinion.

“It declares that the occupation of Iraq by U.S. and British military forces has brought misery and suffering to the people of Iraq. The occupation represents the denial of their national rights, impedes social, economic and political development and threatens the wider peace in the Middle East and the world. It has accounted for the loss of tens of thousands of lives of the Iraqi peoples, as well as more than 2,000 soldiers from the occupying armies,” said a statement issued by conference participants.

Oregon had its own presence at the conference in delegate Brian Bogart, who last fall began a campus strike for peace at the University of Oregon, where he is completing his master’s degree in peace studies. The strike successfully brought the issue of Department of Defense-funded research underway at the university to the campus senate, which reportedly plans to address the issue at a February meeting.

Bogart said there is a striking contrast between the U.K.’s public engagement with the Iraq war versus that of the U.S. public.

“Everyone I met (in England) — they’re all against the war,” he said. “They have no idea why the U.K. is involved with the U.S. Their TV news people are all over the torture scandal and Bush flying prisoners around the world to be tortured. Everyone in England thinks the war is crazy — they’re all wondering, ‘Where are the American people?’”

Though Bogart considered the lack of strategy and organizational efforts to follow through with a plan to end the war disappointing, the opportunity to interview members of the Iraqi delegation orally substantiated much of what he’s learned from documents.

Among the things Iraqis talked about was the systematic looting taking place before the 2003 invasion,during which hundreds of trucks crossed the Jordan border daily carrying out portions of dismantled or disrupted Iraqi infrastructure to sell as scrap. This would include supplies of wire, steel and pipes; medical supplies; material from railroad tracks and stations,and from water and sewer structures; and even entire electrical power stations.

“We don’t know about the other countries — this is the only border we know about,” Bogart said. “Another 100 trucks (figure guesstimated) are coming in every day from over the Kuwait border with supplies to replace what was taken so Halliburton and Bechtel are getting paid at inflated prices (to replace what was taken.) The Iraqi delegates validated this a hundred times over — they see this happening all day every day.”

Perhaps this is the place to recap that Halliburton’s no-bid contract awards began before the Iraq invasion, and that portions of Cheney’s pre-9/11 Energy Task Force meetings were spent ogling maps marking Iraqi, Saudi Arabian and UAE oilfields and lists detailing suitors for the oilfields.

Bogart said he was also able to speak with Hassan Juma, president of Iraq’s Southern Oil Workers’ Union, who has been quite vocal about the fact that Iraqi workers are left unemployed while the foreign carpetbaggers reap the jobs. Juma also pointed out that only 10 to 20 percent of Iraqi oil has ever been in production. The new constitution has an oil production clause that would open the remainder of Iraq’s oil to international bidding, with a strong possibility of placing the U.S. in the best bidding position by virtue of who it places in the new government. Juma’s outspokenness has made him a target of assassination attempts.

Internationally renowned scholar and novelist Tariq Ali, who also spoke at the conference, elaborated on the oil spoils in a January Guardian article in which he noted that global corporations are preparing production-sharing agreements that will garner profits from between 42 and 162 percent in an industry where minimum returns are about 12 percent. Iraqis will lose billions in revenues, he also notes, and the U.S. and U.K. can withdraw troops and claim victory only as long as an Iraqi government backs those agreements.

“The triumph of freedom would be reflected in the oil agreement,” he wrote, adding that the deal would sooner or later likely fall apart without the presence of imperial troops.

Iraqi delegates also told Bogart that many Iraqis view the actions taken under the U.S. occupation as transparent machinations to exploit regional differences to further U.S. oil interests. Such tactics include replacing Iraqi workers with Kurdish workers, which not only creates resentment but are also used with the hope that the Kurds will allow the development of military bases in their region.

The Sunni-Shiite division is also mainly false, as there is much intermarriage between the two sects and actual differences between the denominations is minimal, but is used as propaganda to foster the notion of a chaotic religious-based civil strife in need of U.S. intervention to prevent further deterioration, according to the delegates. They also reportedly said that some 80,000 U.S.-hired mercenaries are in Iraq posing as insurgents — a figure that is double what Bogart found from Department of Defense sources. When civilians are hit, Iraqis say, it is not from resistance fighters, but from U.S. “insurgents.” They say the small resistance force does not kill citizens, target mosques or kidnap, and that U.S. “insurgents” carry out such crimes to prove that the U.S. is necessary as a stabilizing presence.

The elections are considered fraudulent because of the chaos and omnipresent danger in which Iraqi citizens live, afraid to even let their children out of doors — let alone vote themselves. The Iraqi delegates are urging people from outside the country to push for humanitarian efforts that will marginalize U.S. policy, such as U.S. nongovernmental organizations that are paid to support and promote the occupation.

“In the early 1990s, Iyad Allawi, backed by the CIA, formed a group to dominate unions by coercion; thus there is no safe place for legitimate union groups,” said Bogart, also noting that the U.S. has prevented union members from meeting to discuss the occupation and evaluate its impact on their situation.

In addition to Tariq Ali, other conference speakers included George Galloway, Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin, among many others. Their speeches are available by audio at www.traprockpeace.org.

The conference ended with a promise to organize international demonstrations on the March 18 anniversary of the Iraq invasion, calling once again for immediate withdrawal and end to occupation; push for a full international inquiry into last year’s Fallujah assault; campaign against the privatisation of Iraqi oil; and oppose attacks on Iran or Syria.

Shirley Wentworth is a freelance writer based in the West.