From “Democracy” to Police State

by Karen Button

After six months, I’m back in Amman, Jordan and signs of urban growth is everywhere. The future bus station across from my hotel, a few connected walls before, is now near completion, with an opening date set in March. New buildings are being constructed across the city and the sounds of pilings being driven is part of the background noise. I’m told 400,000 people moved to this desert crossroad country of six million last year alone.

What has surprised me most though, is the increased numbers of Iraqis here in Amman, all escaping the nearly unbearable living conditions, compounded by a violence that is not only lethal, but ever more indiscriminate.

After meeting with just a few Iraqis on my first days here, already I have several meetings set up with those who’ve recently fled what’s left of their Iraq. Many are doctors who’ve fled after either being threatened with kidnapping or having survived kidnapping, adding to an exodus of academics who’ve been targeted by criminal gangs or worse. Many believe that secret police, both Iraqi and American, are behind some of these abductions, others believe they are common criminals, and still others believe it is the religious fundamentalists causing much of the problem…some claim the Mullahs of Iran want control of Iraq. This is not without some substantiation. Many of Iraq’s Shi’a are followers of the High Council of Islamic Revolution party, most of whose leaders follow Tehran. However, supporters of Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr, who is a strong opponent of US occupation and representative of the poor of Baghdad, is growing.

Also present though is al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group of jihadists never before known in Iraq prior to the US-led invasion. Though wading through the resistance’s various factions is impossible, more complicated still is the multiple layers of the so-called legitimate armed forces—forces that include what an Iraqi contractor for the US Department of Defense who I met on the plane-ride over called “grey fox,” the secret security forces set up by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that only he and Mr. Bush have any knowledge of or jurisdiction over. A group of operatives made doubly dangerous by receiving their orders from a man who’s made it clear he has no time for such trivialities as international treaties and laws governing war and the treatment of human beings. (This contractor also offered me a job, saying I could make upwards of $900,000/year.)

Add to this unholy mix the mercenaries—most prefer the ambiguous term “contractor”—which constitute the second largest force in the Coalition (or Collision as one Iraqi friend recently mispronounced it, but I thought rather prescient) of the Willing. To give an idea who these people are, take the case of retired British commando, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, who, according to a Boston Globe report, is known for his illicit arms deals in Africa and commanding a “murderous military unit in Northern Ireland.” His “past work includes a ‘psychological campaign’ against the inhabitants of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, who were complaining about environmental destruction from a copper mine on their island.” The Pentagon awarded Spicer’s company a $293 million contract for “coordinating security” in Iraq.

Also operating a campaign of terror are the US-trained Iraqi secret police force known as the Wolf Brigades. CIA operatives, Shi’a-run Iraqi secret prisons, US and British troops with prisons of their own, and religious armies, such as the Badr Brigades, followers of Iran’s al-Sistani and the Medhi army who follow the Iraqi Shi’a leader al-Sadr all combine to form a deadly fabric of daily violence.

How many of the 400,000 recent arrivals in Jordan are Iraqis? Hard to say. But I’ll soon meet a large number who come together weekly to discuss Iraq, their situation here in Jordan, and what their future holds. Many of them, I’m told, are doctors, professors and teachers, business leaders, and other professionals.

“Iraq is being emptied of all our educated ,” one man tells me. “How can we ever re-build our country without these people?”