Killing Them Softly

Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq the farmers there have suffered tremendously. It's no accident that muslim farmers are targeted relentlessly. Next to life itself, food is our greatest common denominator, and is now being used as a weapon by scumbags in power. There isn't anything else that compares to growing food as the symbol of being independent and hope for the future. Fascism dictates that those two things must be eradicated and replaced by fear and abject dependence.

The US had it planned right from the beginning. You remember L. Paul Bremer, the CPA administrator in the chaotic first days of Iraq's destruction as a functioning society? A legacy of his was the infamous Order 81, a colonial mandate which was forced down Iraqi farmers' throats on April 26, 2004, like they were being waterboarded:

"What the United States' man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer -- growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years -- that from here on out they could not reuse seeds from their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto."

But the policy of destroying the farmers in the "fertile crescent" began a long time before 2003.
After 20 years of bombing, sanctions, oil-for-food, and depleted uranium, the effort was to effectively collapse the ability of farmers in Iraq to supply enough food for their society:

"In 1991, the U.S. deliberately bombed Iraq’s civilian infrastructure of water purification and electrical plants, and then prevented Iraq from rebuilding same by imposing sanctions (more accurately a “military blockade” – an act of war). In both 1991 and 2003, “US bombing raids targeted cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fertilizer warehouses, pumping stations, irrigation systems, fuel depots and pesticide factories . . . --- the very infrastructure of Iraqi agriculture."

How many times do you have to read that farmers in their fields were "mistakenly" slaughtered because it was thought they were "militants", or "insurgents", before you realize the true intentions of the country's occupiers? The agenda was and is to crush indigenous agriculture and instead absorb the country into corporate america's orbit, forcing the farmers to grow high yield crops for export to the US instead of feeding the Iraqi people.

Now, with the onset of summer's heat, the situation is critical - Nature Adds to Occupation Blows

"Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.
Nothing now seems more difficult in Iraq than the business of farming."

Nobody should expect the occupation with all it's bullshit five year rhetoric about "reconstruction" to do anything about the situation. The plan to collapse agriculture in america's colony is proceeding quite well, thank you.

"The government is doing little to help people over this crisis. "The directorate is impotent and can give nothing to the farmers," the irrigation centre employee said. "Hundreds of thousands of acres are now desolate, and thousands of people jobless."Most villagers work in farming, and now that farming no more sustains people as it did, life there is badly hit. Agriculture in this area kept Iraq supplied, and also produced enough for exports. But now farmers sometimes have a hard time feeding themselves."

"The majority of our village farmers have quit and the rest will follow."