Voices

This war is not over yet, nor is it likely to finish any time soon.

The ready enthusiasm of those who try to claim that the turnout at the elections represented a justification of the armed intervention denies the reality of votes exchanged for food and of clerical intimidation at polling stations. It denies a reality where every day the dead are counted in their dozens and where pacification, reconstruction and freedom are further away every day.

Those who trust in the non-existent credibility of a puppet government, those who talk about soldiers having fallen for the good of the Iraqi people and about a struggle against evil and chaos are trying to hide the growing polarization between international economic interests and the local interests of supremacy on the part of those who seek a role for themselves by killing enough people in order to be considered that bit more important.

This is the situation in which the Italian government is pushing through its Bill to continue the financing of the Italian mission in Iraq. In 2004 it budgeted around €19,025,000,000!

The current Bill, just the Mangusta A129 combat helicopters to be sent are being financed at the rate of €27,314 a day. Each?

Is this money needed to win the war and bring democracy and progress to Iraq?

So far, it has served only to send Iraq back into the arms of Islamic traditionalism which previously did not exist there. It's been sent back from the 20th century to the Middle Ages, thanks to a US administration which brought elections and Western democracy to Iraq and which considers Saudi Arabia as its best ally in the region - a country where women have no voting rights or even the right to drive a car.

But despite all this, in Iraq there are voices.

Free voices which are trying to tell the world about the Iraqi civilian society which is rebelling against the anvil of occupation and the hammer of so-called resistance.

Free voices which are organizing strikes in order to protect even the most basic labour rights.

Free voices which are fighting for human rights and the rights of women to be respected, for a secular society and for the freedom of speech.

Some of these voices are imprisoned by persons unknown.

Some of them are being strangled by repression.

Others are being suffocated at the hands of those like "our" soldiers who are part of an occupying army which brings only destruction and death.

Other voices, here in Italy and in the whole Western world, must answer these voices. Ours are the voices of those who recognize no flag, no fatherland, no religion but only the hope for freedom, social justice and peace.

These voices must keep alive the anti-war movement without failing, even at the risk of being gagged.

These voices must be the mouthpiece of those who have no voice and promote rights, social solidarity and freedom.

It is the voices who must win the war in order for it to end.

Because this war, like all wars, is against all of us. And we can only be against all wars!

Article from "Alternativa Libertaria" January 2005, online news-sheet of the FdCA