By Azmat Haroon
Doha: The Western media had a major role in the events that led to the invasion of Iraq, Azmi Bishara, director of the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), and a former Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, said.
“The media in the US and UK published lies to mobilise public opinion in favour of military intervention in Iraq,” Azmi said while speaking at a two-day conference marking 10 years of Baghdad’s fall, yesterday.
He said the same media organisations were now contradicting themselves by publishing pieces against the intervention. The issue was a concern for Arab researchers and intellectuals, who had yet to raise critical questions about the role of the media that had helped propagate ‘lies’.
“How do we continue to welcome people like George Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld and Dennis Ross — who are in fact, the criminals of the Iraq war? How can we call on the international war criminals to interfere and even mediate on our issues?” he asked.
Within the Arab world, there was a stark difference between the policies of the government and what the people sought to resolve disputes in Iraq.
Speaking at a panel discussion on the eyewitness accounts of the war, Naji Sabri Al Hadeethy, an Iraqi legal scholar on human rights affairs, said the attack on Iraq was planned 20 years in advance.
Jonathan Steele, chief foreign correspondent of the The Guardian, pointed out that sectarian disputes within Iraq had come to affect the entire region.
“The extremist forces are very active in Iraq. Initially, the Shia militias were recruited to combat Al Qaeda, but that provoked sectarianism,” Steele said.
Stability in the GCC may soon be ‘badly hurt’ by the conflict in Iraq, especially if they do not step in to mediate, according to Tareq Al Hashemi, a former Vice President of Iraq.
“The GCC countries will be the first to be affected by the situation in Iraq, especially if Iraq decided to go for a division,” Hashemi said.
He said the growing influence of certain groups from Iran was affecting the sovereignty of Iraq, which should also be a serious concern for the GCC.
Although the pro-Iranian groups will oppose intervention from GCC states, a majority of Iraqis still sought support from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, Hashemi said.
The conference, that ends today, is discussing leading studies on Iraq during its academic sessions.the peninsula
