This article from London’s Financial Times illustrates one of the inherent perils of “regime change” from above — the distance between the perceptions of the changers and those of the people of the country whose regime is being changed, about what the regime should change to, and how.
Opposition groups reject US military rule plan
By Gareth Smyth in Salahaddin, northern Iraq
Published: April 7 2003 5:00 | Last Updated: April 7 2003 5:00
As the time arrives for decisions about running Iraq, both the main Kurdish and Shia opposition groups yesterday rejected US plans to put Jay Garner, a retired general, in charge.
“We are concerned that this looks more and more like an occupation,” said Hamid al-Bayati, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the most prominent Iranian-backed Shia group.
“With this approach the Americans will face both security and administrative problems.”
Fawzi Hariri, an official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), added: “We will always be grateful to the Americans for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but they need to understand that military rule just won’t work.”
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Many in the northern-based opposition are privately scathing about those they regard as being dependent on the US - meaning both the Iraqi-Americans gathering in Kuwait and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group long supported by the Pentagon and receiving US funding.
“What is their constituency? It’s not inside Iraq,” said a senior KDP official. “They don’t even have a medium for talking to people in the country.”
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