Zaki Chehab, author of 'Iraq Ablaze', speaks in Sydney

Zaki Chehab, one of the Arab world’s leading journalists. He is political editor of the London based Al Hayat and of the Arabic TV channel LBC. For over 25 years he has covered Middle Eastern conflicts for local and Western media, contributing to The Guardian, and appearing regularly on CNN, Channel 4 and the BBC as a commentator. He is the firstjournalist to have broadcast interviews with the Iraqi resistance. This is the transcript of his opening address at a public forum at Sydney University on February 23, 2006.

Zaki Chehab speaking at Sydney University

I will start from the end - yesterday the bombing of one of the holiest shrines for the Shia in Iraq. What we saw yesterday is something I have been expect no one has claimed responsibility yet, but I can tell you 99% it's Al Qaida led by Moussab Al-Zarqawi.

For the last two years we have seen statements issued by his organisation accusing the Shia religious leadership of being infidels, tools of the Americans and much more. The fact is that the majority of Sunnis in Iraq condemn these attacks, and condemn the attacks which target civilians, Sunnis or Shia.

There are many comments I heard yesterday and today through interviews I had with many news organisations abroad and here, saying that Iraq is about to slip into a civil war or sectarian war.

My response is that Iraq will never slip into this war, whatever might happen, for one simple reason. Iraq is different from any other Arab or Islamic country in terms of mixed marriages between Shia and Sunni to the extent that the percentage of marriages in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias exceeds 30%. This is one guarantee that Iraq would not slip into a sectarian war.

The second important guarantee is the wise religious leadership of both Sunnis and Shia, in spite of the heavy attack yesterday. We have heard the Shia Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani asking his people to restrain themselves from attacks against Sunnis, because he knows that would play into the hands of Al-Zarqawi and Al-Qaida.

Many of you might ask - why is Al-Zarqawi doing it? Definitely Al-Zarqawi has no interest in seeing Iraq progressing in terms of trying to get on its feet, rebuild the country and get back to normal. Many will say, where is the peace in Iraq? I can tell you that it is a very bad situation. I have travelled war zones for over 25 years, I've been to Mogadishu, I've covered the war in Afghanistan, I've been to the war in Yemen, I've been to the West Bank and Gaza. I began my job covering the civil war in Lebanon. But I can assure you that I've never come across a war zone as dangerous as Iraq is today. But still I'm really hopeful that this country can still get together.

Why is Al-Zarqawi keen to go ahead with his attacks? How influential is he in Iraq? Only two weeks ago did we see the first signs of a serious dialogue or channels the Americans are trying to open with the main theme of the insurgency in Iraq. Something was announced but unfortunately it did not attract headlines in the Western media. I don't know why, maybe the Americans did not want to broadcast it. But the meeting took place in Iraq and the one who attended from the American side was the Commander of US forces in Iraq, from the government side the Prime Minister Mr Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, and the Ministers of Interior and Defence. From the insurgents there were three influential tribal leaders from the Sunni Triangle. In fact there is no such thing as the Sunni Triangle because geographically it's more a rectangle than anything else. But the fact that the meeting took place is an important sign that the Americans, after three years, decided to be serious about addressing the concerns of the Sunnis.

Many will ask you who are the insurgents and why are they fighting? Many of us who have dealt with this issue suggest that it started from day one, the seeds of it. The confrontation, when it started, was not in the shape of a political war, it started with the shape of something tribal. Who started it was either Baath Party, nationalists, or Islamists. The Islamists are from the moderate to the extreme. And the nationalists don't want to see their country occupied by foreign forces. Added to that, some of the loyalists of Saddam Hussein, and the ones who were in power and woke up one morning to find that Saddam was nothing. That's the insurgents.

And the numbers, so many tried to guess from day one. The American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in July 2003 told a briefing at the Pentagon that he could assure the world that there are a few hundred, and that in a few months the fight against them would be over. We waited a few months to hear the same Defence Secretary say that there are four to five thousand, and definitely within a year's time they would sort things, and things would go back to normal in Iraq. Three days ago I read in The Australian here that the second-in-command of the American forces world-wide, General John Abizaid, was here to meet the Prime Minister. A journalist asked him about the number of insurgents and he said there are about 20,000 and we don't expect to withdraw from Iraq in 2006.

For me it's impossible to tell you how many are the insurgents, for one simple reason. I'll tell you my story with them. Once I had arranged to go to meet some of them, through a connection, and the guy who was supposed to take me, said he would do it on one condition. We would go to his house and he would introduce me to his family as a schoolmate of his at an earlier time, and he concealed our camera. The companion with me was to be our common friend.

We went there that evening when his father had returned from work, and introduced me to them as an old friend who happened to be in town and wanted to stay with them. At that time, the agreement with him was that after dark and when his parents were relaxed, he would take me to where I can film a group of insurgents. He said goodnight to his parents, and we slipped through the back door and through the fields to our meeting.

I was surprised at what kind of people I came across. It was my first meeting of this kind, on June 28, 2003. It was the first time a journalist came to the middle of the insurgency and spoke to them. The first statement they made to the outside world was through me. The main theme of the message was to tell Iraqis and the rest of the world that this insurgency had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and his loyalists. He ended by saying we have to blame Saddam Hussein himself for bringing all these forces to our country, and one thing we hope for is to see Saddam Hussein arrested or killed, to prove that our resistance will continue long after him, to see our country liberated. That was the message.

In December 2003 Saddam Hussein was arrested, and all the comments from analysts all over the world was that this was the end of the insurgency. On the contrary, what we have seen is the attacks are developing and getting more advanced. Why? Because the more the Americans stay, the more familiar the locals become to their tactics. Iraq is a very large country and the Americans need at least half a million soldiers to manage to control it. So they are overstretched to the extent that their patrols are four or five humvees or lorries, and they have a soldier or two in each one.

The minute the insurgents realised these tactics, they started attacking the first and the last vehicles and the others were stuck in the middle and they just go after them. I have filmed many of these attacks and the number of casualties became very high.

One thing I was not aware of, and I'm sure you are not either, is the number of American casualties in Iraq. I found out when I stayed in Tikrit, trying to make a piece to camera for television in front of one of Saddam's palaces there. A group of young Iraqis in their early twenties came to me and asked me who I worked for. I said I worked for Lebanese television. One said, 'Oh, you Arabic television are the same as the western television'. I asked why. He said that you never cover what we do here every day. So I pretended I knew nothing, and asked what do you do here every day? He said, we attack the Americans every day here. Only yesterday, we attacked their main headquarters here and at least 10 or 15 were killed. Just go and ask the neighbours, they will tell you.

Believe me, I had been in Baghdad and nobody had told us about this.

He said, if you have the courage, stay here and tonight you will see for yourself how we attack the American headquarters tonight. I was scared to ask him where he lived so that I could check if it was true.

I stayed in a house owned by a friend of mine, who happened to be Saddam's Minister of Information at one stage. Because he was from Tikrit and Saddam never trusted anyone from his home town, he decided to send this Minister to New York as Iraq's representative at the United Nations. At some stage, Saddam having never trusted him, fired him, and he joined the Iraqi opposition. I stayed in his brother's house, his brother is a lecturer at the Salahedin University in Tikrit. While we sat having coffee and tea about 8.30pm, he started hearing shelling one after another, directed towards the palace which the young man told me they were going to target. I couldn't sleep that night because I had to go in the morning and find that guy.

He had given me a wrong name, and when I'd asked for an address he just said to look in the main market and ask for him. I went there and despite asking many - they might not have known him or felt that I was a stranger - they didn't tell me. I gave up and was about to leave and someone came up and whispered in my ear that he lives in a certain area. So I asked the driver to go straight there, and we crossed the river. His place faced the American headquarters. I went there and the house seemed empty and I shouted his name. No one answered.

So I walked up to the house and his younger brother recognised me from the day before and from the TV report that night. So I was familiar. I didn't comment about the shelling, I just asked for his brother. He said, oh, he's not here because we couldn't sleep last night. I asked what happened, and he said that the Americans came and stayed all night in the fields around us. It seems that the Americans were looking for who had been shelling the area. By the time I finished I found my car and driver surrounded by American forces. I was a bit worried. Anyway I crossed towards them with a show of confidence and innocence and asked them if they needed anything. They asked me what I was doing there. I said I was looking for a friend and was just leaving. They were a bit relaxed and a bit scared of me too, because they saw my car was marked 'press' . They were about to raid one of the houses next to where I was and were waiting for me to leave the area. So I was happy to go and leave them to their mission.

Anyway I succeeded in convincing the young boy in the house to come with me to look for his brother. We did not succeed, but did meet some of his relatives, who were extreme Saddam Hussein loyalists. That's the type of people I came across in Tikrit.

Tikrit was the home town of Saddam and at Saddam's time no one was even allowed to cross the street because no car is allowed even to stop there if something is wrong along the road to the palace. They would be shot at. So many Iraqis used to avoid passing through Tikrit because they didn't want to have trouble wth Tikritis because of their influence and relations with Saddam.

To my surprise, if you go to Tikrit's back streets you will find many poor houses. Later on I discovered that the majority, if not all, the influential tribes in Tikrit hate Saddam Hussein.

Next day my friend asked me to stay longer, because there was to be a meeting of all the tribal leaders of Tikrit. He said they were going to issue a statement because everyone thinks that because we are in Tikrit we are for Saddam Hussein. We will tell the world for the first time the truth. Their statement distanced themselves from everything Saddam Hussein had done. They added more by saying Tikrit had paid a price no less than the price paid by Shia an Kurds. They gave me a long list of examples, to the extent that no senior high ranking Iraqi officer from Tikrit stayed alive. Saddam Hussein used to execute them and send them to their families with a warning not even to allow the parents to put a sign on their graves. They only managed to do so after the fall of the regime. That is the kind of treatment Saddam Hussein gave his home town.

That explained to me why Tikrit itself, after the fall of Baghdad, did not resist the American invasion. All of us expected that Saddam's main battle would be in his home town. All observers said he was withdrawing his forces to his home town, where he would have his last stand. In fact, not a single shot was fired there. How? All the elders of Tikrit agreed among themselves to secretly negotiate with the Americans through the current Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani. They managed to reach a deal that they would convince Saddam's loyalists and military to just go home and allow the Americans to come into the city. That's what happened.

Samarra , the Sunni town where the mosque was bombed, is near Tikrit. Historically it was the capital of the province. But Saddam's hatred for Samarra led him to demolish everything and deprive military personnel from that city - known to Shia all over the world for its religious places - any senior positions, for fear that they might overthrow him.

Fallujah, which became a symbol of resistance in Iraq, was the first city to stand against Saddam Hussein, long before Kerbala and Najaf, where Saddam killed many thousands. The nature of the people in Fallujah is very Islamist and conservative but that doesn't mean they are militants - but they had a different way of life. Saddam was not religious, to the extent that when the American forces entered the palaces, despite the siege and embargo on Iraq, they managed to find thousands of cases of silver label whiskey - much better than the red and the black. Saddam didn't like to see the religious life going on in Fallujah. The same thing in Ramadi, also in the Triangle, where many high ranking military officers were executed by Saddam, and they were Sunnis.

So when the Americans overthrew the regime, they ignored the Sunnis. Many thought they were being punished just because Saddam Hussein was Sunni. This really upset the Sunnis living in these areas - Mosul, Ramadi and other towns. Ambassador Paul Bremer's government made many mistakes at that time - dissolving the army and the de-Baathification policy.

Today Iraq is facing very important choices in its life, because of the negotiation between the main parties there - Sunnis, Shia and Kurds - to form a government, and definitely the Americans are worried as much as these parties themselves. From the briefings I had in Baghdad straight after the elections, and the statements I can read in the press yesterday and today made by the American Ambassador from Baghdad in these recent days, I see that the Americans did not like the results of the elections. These elections are leading to a Shia alliance forming a government. George Bush never dreamed of having a pro-Iranian government in Iraq, and if he had realised this would happen he would have avoided going to war with Saddam Hussein.

There is still a serious move to form a united government. In spite of the success the Shia had in winning 130 members in the parliament, they still hope to have a others involved in their government. The only question is how far others will be involved, what influential ministries they will have charge of. Sunnis and Kurds are reported to make sure the Shias will not rule the country. So they have to make concessions. Till today there is no sign that they are about to reach such a concession, for one reason.

The Sunnis want to make sure they at least have influential ministers. The Kurds are after the Presidency and maybe the Foreign Minister as well, or the Deputy Prime Minister or something similar. The main concern is what kind of Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry will Iraq have. That's the main concern of the Americans. Why? Because the Americans will never trust a ministry led by people who are pro-Iranian. Iraq is a large country with large oil reserves, and if it was not for the wars and destruction of infrastructure, Iraq would be one of the richest on earth. Negotiations are still going on to solve this problem and we don't know the outcome. But I'm sure at some stage a deal will be reached.

Yesterday Zalmay Kalilizad, the US Ambassador, said he didn't think the US taxpayer would sponsor or support a ministry - he didn't name it - which has a sectarian policy. This was a reference to the large number of Shia militia in charge of the Ministry of the Interior. The same applies to the Ministry of Defence.

The question now is how long will foreign forces stay in Iraq. Americans, British and Australians have said for the last few months that they are willing to withdraw from Iraq the moment the Iraqis are capable of looking after their own security.

The question we all ask is are Iraqis capable of looking after their own security? The answer today is no. many statements from the Pentagon for the past year, the past few months, say that they have trained 120,000 Iraqi soldiers. But I can say I haven't seen an Iraqi soldier in the streets of Baghdad. I can see police here and there. Their job is to give the citizens of the capital a sense of security. But these police hide their faces because the are scared that if they go to their neighborhood somebody might recognise them and kill them. So if this symbol of security is scared itself, how will it give others a sense of security.

What will be done? From day one Paul Bremer was in charge. He was the government. The United States went to the United Nations with a resolution claiming that the United States is the occupier of Iraq, giving Governor Paul Bremer the authority to represent Iraq internationally. Bremer did so much damage that he couldn't show Iraqis any good results. Until today, after three years, there are electricity shortages in Iraq. There is not enough water. Iraq was supposed to export oil to the outside world - unfortunately if you cross the border to Turkey you will see thousands of trucks bringing oil products into Iraq, because the Iraqis don't have it.

Most professionals in Iraq who can manage to leave the country have done so. If you go to the Jordanian capital Amman, you find plenty of them there. They love their country but they had to leave because their lives were in danger. Their kids, as young as seven years old, are often kidnapped by criminal gangs.

We don't hear of that in the West, only the western workers or journalists kidnapped, but no one talks about Iraqi journalists. Last year 16 Iraqi journalists were killed - not a single story about them. Just before I came here, two Iraqi journalists were kidnapped, but there wasn't a single line about them. Tens of journalists stay at home of the simple reason that people tell them that if they go to work they will be killed. The Sunday Times journalists in Baghdad two weeks ago received a letter telling him to stop writing for the Sunday Times. Inside the letter was a small bullet, and he stopped writing. We can't publish that story because it would endanger his life, but at the same time, we can help him to survive.

No one is safe. If you drive behind an American patrol in Baghdad, you will feel sorry for the soldiers driving these heavy tanks. They are looking nervously and if a small child screams they will fire. They are so tense. If you find these young American soldiers in the desert, you will wonder what brought them here. I spoke to many of them during my trips to Iraq. They were bored, worried. They were supposed to stay for three months, six months, many expected the job to be done soon and they would return home. But their stay was extended for months and for some of them for more than a year. Many of them are students. They joined the army looking for an interest free loan to go to university. Many of them got stuck.

Recent studies show that the Pentagon is finding it very hard to get recruits for the army. This is the fact on the ground. Security is not there for anyone. Kidnapping is happening on a large scale.

If you are a business man, gangs will be after you to pay $15,000 or $20,000. If they think you are of more value and they can't afford to protect you, they will sell you to a bigger gang. The political kidnappings start like this - they see someone with blond hair, think they are working for a contracting company that will pay a ransom of hundreds of thousands if not millions, and that's how it starts. The majority of them, if they don't succeed in making contact, they will kill their victim because that is easier, and then make political panels claiming a political motive. But most of the killing is for money.

For who can justify the killing of anti-war campaigners who travel all the way from Germany, Britain and the United States to help Iraqis. Nothing justifies this. These people have taken the risk, they know it is very dangerous, but they want to show support for the people of Iraq. Nothing justifies the kidnapping of these people, some of them over the age of 70. It is all gangs, nothing to do with politics.

In spite of this gloomy picture, let's hope and pray that Iraq will stand on its feet and the efforts to rebuild it will succeed at some stage. I know that many of you have made commitments in the past, but we have to put the past behind us and look for the future.

© Walk Against the War Coalition 2003.
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