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Max Fuller, member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee. (20 June 2006)
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- Part 1:
- Part 2:
Part 1: Operation Knockout in Diyala Demonstrates US Collusion with Death Squads In November last year Sunni members of the Diyala provincial council began to boycott meetings in protest at a 13 November raid on the provincial capital Baquba and surrounding towns, according to a report by UPI’s Pentagon correspondent, Pamela Hess. According to a US military official, the boycotting council members sent a letter to the chairman of the council in which they alleged that that raid had been orchestrated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) as part of a plan to disenfranchise Sunnis during the upcoming elections. Such accusations chime with almost every commentator it seems both inside and outside Iraq, who have lavished criticism on SCIRI and the paramilitary militia known as the Badr Brigade associated with it. Whilst anti-occupation sources tend to regard SCIRI and Badr as US allies, the Western media have chosen to focus on their relationship with Iran, where they were primarily based since their foundation in 1982. In either case, commentators charge that SCIRI’s militiamen have infiltrated or been amalgamated into Iraq’s nascent security forces. Many reports make little or no distinction between the Badr Brigade and the security forces. In the Western media lens, this depiction tends to function as apologia for human rights abuses attributed to the security forces (for examples of this in action, see Soloman Moore writing in the Los Angeles Times or Jonathan Steele writing in the London Guardian). Hess agrees with the media consensus, stating that ‘anecdotal evidence of targeted and unsanctioned violence against Sunnis from cities across Iraq suggests Badr or other rogue elements have a presence throughout the ministry’. In the case of the Baquba raid which had prompted the walkout by Sunni councilors, Hess informs us that in this instance it was the Wolf Brigade, an ‘Iraqi special police unit of some 2,000’, that ‘swept into Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, and arrested some 300 people’. As if to clarify matters, she then tells us, citing a US military source, that ‘The operation came in the wake of the appointment by the Shiite governor of Diyala of a new police chief for the province ... The new police chief has no law enforcement experience ... but he is associated with the SCIRI, the political arm of the Badr brigade’. But in fact what initially appears to be an open and shut case is not so straightforward. While, according to the same military spokesperson, the governor may have requested the raid ‘to show that he’s got muscle to flex’, ‘US police assistance teams worked with the Wolf Brigade to plan the operation and American assets – including a surveillance drone, medical team and a quick reaction force – were assigned to support it’. Nonetheless, the spokesperson goes on to imply that support was reluctant, adding, ‘We put forces with each of their units so that we could watch them work’. In the case of the 13 November raid, outside observers are fortunate that, unlike Pamela Hess, they do not have to rely solely on one military spokesperson feeding a line to the press. The raid in question was called Operation Knockout and was the first time that the Iraqi Special Police Forces of the Ministry of the Interior had planned, prepared and executed a division-size raid ‘designed to destroy or disrupt all of their [ie insurgents’] cells in a large locality in a single night’. For a far more in-depth depiction of the action, we can be grateful to US Army Col James K Greer, who was so impressed by the whole operation that he wrote an account of it for the November–December issue of Military Review. The following passages are taken from Greer’s account. In late October, the minister of the interior [Bayan Jabr] told the Operations Directorate to study options for a large-scale, simultaneous strike in Diyala against a large number of suspected insurgents and their support and information networks ... [On 5 November] the Operations Directorate provided a list of insurgent and terrorist targets to the Public Order Division commander with a warning to be prepared to move to Ba’qubah and conduct operations to detain those targets. The Public Order Division immediately began planning, focusing on developing target folders for the hundreds of discrete targets forces would have to secure. Simultaneously, Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) was notified through its cell in the MOI National Command Center. Planning and coordination continued with an MOI/Multinational Command-Iraq (MNC-I) meeting on 9 November ... Throughout the planning and coordination stage of Operation Knockout, Special Police Transition Teams (SPTTs) under Colonel Gordon B. ‘Skip’ Davis and Colonel Jeffrey Buchanan advised the Iraqis and planned and coordinated their own support to the operation. These teams of 10 to 12 soldiers lived, trained, and fought alongside the Iraqi Special Police 24 hours a day and contributed significantly to the Iraqi’s development ... At execution, Public Order Division elements, reinforced by a brigade of Iraqi Special Police commandos, moved along three separate routes to their objectives in and around Ba’qubah, conducting clean-up operations in small towns along the way ... Operation Knockout demonstrated the necessity for and effectiveness of intelligence-based COIN [counterinsurgency] operations. The MOI Intelligence Office of the Operations Directorate spent several weeks developing the targets that would eventually be raided. Local informants confirmed potential targets, and the Intelligence Office produced one- to three-page papers detailing why each individual was targeted ... Special Police units developed a target folder for each individual. Surreptitious eyes-on provided last-minute updates to target sets. In the rare case of Operation Knockout, we even have a third, official military account of proceedings given at a press briefing. This description adds one further important detail, which is that 70 per cent of the 377 detainees were Sunni, 30 per cent were Shia and 10 were Kurds. While these proportions may not accurately reflect the ethno-confessional makeup of Diyala province (exact figures are hard to come by), they do indicate that the raid was far from exclusively directed against Sunni targets, despite popular impression. Implications of the reports This illustration of an intelligence-based counterinsurgency operation undertaken by US-trained proxy forces, which could have been written just as well about Vietnam, the Philippines, El Salvador or present-day Colombia, reveals a number of important points about the conflict in Iraq. (i) SCIRI had no part in orchestrating Operation Knockout One of the most important conclusions to be drawn is that we can be certain SCIRI had absolutely nothing to do with the 13 November raid on Baquba and its environs. This simple fact discredits 99% of what has been written in the mainstream media about the role of SCIRI and Badr within the new Interior Ministry. (ii) Even within Iraq it is very difficult to accurately assess security operations It is striking in this case that, if we are to believe Hess’s sources, even public representatives on the ground in Iraq are unable to distinguish between what they perceive to be sectarian paramilitaries and the forces operating directly on behalf of the Occupation. This is in no way intended to represent a criticism of those on the ground, but only highlights the duplicity of the US Imperial war machine, whose goal is to cover its own tracks and spread discord amongst its enemies. (iii) The Wolf Brigade continues to be used by the media as a fob-off It is extremely revealing of the mainstream media position that even in Hess’s relatively detailed and informative report, the responsibility for a joint MOI/MNF-I operation was subtly shifted towards SCIRI and that it was the Wolf Brigade which was reported to have carried out the raid. While Hess does not underline the point in this piece, the reference is unlikely to be missed altogether. The significance of the attribution is that in many media analyses of human rights abuses related to the Ministry of the Interior, the Wolf Brigade has been singled out for blame. Rather than seeking to analyze its structure, most commentators have been content to describe it as a police commando unit attached to the Interior Ministry with a specifically Shiite leaning (for instance, see the Knight Ridder report by Hannah Allam, now very hard to find on the Internet). In this UPI report, the US military spokesperson describes the Wolf Brigade as a ‘public order Brigade’ rather than as police commandos. In fact, the MOI special police forces are made up of both police commandos and public order brigades, all of them trained and supported by embedded advisors from MNF-I. According to Greer’s account, the 13 November raid was planned by a Public Order Division and was conducted by Public Order Division elements, reinforced by a brigade of Special Police Commandos, probably the Wolf Brigade. The effect of the UPI report is once again to divert attention from structure and organization and frame discourse within narrow sectarian lines that exclude US responsibility. (iv) Counterinsurgency operations are not in the remit of backroom militias In view of the persistent reports that the majority of extrajudicial killings can be attributed to members of the security forces following the detention of the victims (eg UN Human Rights Mission, Iraqi Organization for Follow-up and Monitoring), it is beholden on all interested parties to take any insight into the workings of those forces and the processes by which ‘targets’ are selected for arrest with the utmost seriousness. Yet no journalist has so much as mentioned the existence of an Operations Directorate, still less MNF-I’s cell within the MOI National Command Center, while the one journalist that seems to have written about Operation Knockout has fallen back into the familiar groove of ‘allegiance to Shiite groups’ etc. The reason that I have quoted from Greer’s account at such length is to demonstrate the enormous behind-the-scenes effort required to conduct counterinsurgency warfare. To reiterate the stages by which targets were selected: 1) Two months before the operation the intelligence section of the Operations Directorate began preparing a list of suspects based on intelligence gleaned from local informers; 2) The intelligence section produced dossiers on individual suspects; 3) One week before the operation the intelligence section passed the list of suspects to the Public Order Division commander; 4) The Public Order Division prepared folders on the individual suspects, making use of an airborne mapping capability; 5) Before commencement of the operation, last minute visual checks were made of individual suspects. In the case of Operation Knockout, which seems to have half-served as PR exercise, Greer et al are falling over themselves to persuade their audience that the police behaved in exemplary fashion and that detainees were treated humanely. So how far is it possible to regard this operation as representative and how should we evaluate such operations in human rights terms? Beyond Knockout By far the most important aspect of this operation from an analytical perspective is that it was ‘Intelligence Based’. It is quite clear from Greer’s description that what that means in layman’s terms is that lists of targets were put together in some sort of centralized planning hub before being passed to individual police units responsible for seizing them in the middle of the night. Whilst nothing like the level of detail offered in Greer’s report is available for most of the cases of arrest and extrajudicial killing by the security forces, in a few accounts we do have evidence that the victims have been selected based on lists of suspects (eg see Sydney Morning Herald, 11 March 2006, Reuters, 17 November 2005), These details are the hallmarks of ‘intelligence based’ counterinsurgency operations and strongly indicate that most or all of the campaigns of mass arrests taking place nightly across Iraq emanate from the intelligence offices of the Interior Ministry. This impression is further reinforced by another UPI account of an earlier raid that took place in Baghdad in June 2004. Once again, we are told that the lists of suspects (in this case ordinary criminals) had been meticulously prepared in advance through the use of informers by the intelligence branch at the Ministry of the Interior, incidentally under the command of a Sunni Kurd. Such operations simply cannot be conceived and carried out from some backroom at Badr or Mahdi HQ. If we were still to persist in advocating that SCIRI, or some such party, was behind these operations, against all of the available evidence, we would also be forced to conclude that the US had ceased to have influence inside the Interior Ministry, unless of course they were acting in tandem. In fact, we know that Iraq’s entire new intelligence apparatus was built by the CIA (see Washington Post, 11 December 2003, Knight Ridder, 8 May 2005) and we can be certain that the intelligence offices at the Interior Ministry and elsewhere remain saturated with US intelligence agents/advisors (New York Times, 14 December 2005). And despite reassurances from the US military that Knockout represents the new style of ‘humane’ Interior Ministry operation, the empirical evidence keeps mounting up , day upon day, week upon week and month upon month, that death squads are continuing their genocidal campaign without stint. The latest figures from Baghdad suggest that an average of 70 new victims of extrajudicial execution appear in the Morgue every single day and these are now starting to be backed up in Basra, where we told that on average one person is killed per hour. Let us pray that in this case the more than 300 detainees taken during Operation Knockout have indeed been treated humanely. In this case it is beholden not just on the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior but on Multi Nation Force-Iraq to demonstrate that every one of the people seized from the Baquba vicinity on 13 November has either been released or continues to be held in ‘humane conditions’. If MNF-I really wants to prove that it is not responsible for the death squads, it must publicly release the names of all 377 supposed suspects so that the world can see who it is arresting and tell us where they are today. It needs to prove to its critics that the human rights of its detainees have been respected and that they have not been hung by their wrists until their arms are dislocated or beaten until it is impossible to tell the color of their skin, or burnt with cigarettes, or had their eyes gouged out or their fingernails removed. MNF-I needs to prove that one of its proxy policemen hasn’t tortured a single one of them with an electric drill and thrown their body onto the street like the other thousand that appear every month in Baghdad. It needs to prove it, because otherwise we’ll know for sure that this time it ordered it! Part 2: Out for the count? Interpreting conflicting narratives Operation Knockout proved to be no final engagement for the security forces either in Diyala province or just around Baquba. Since then the social and political space has been dominated by at least five forms of violence. The following analysis is drawn from a trawl of mainstream Western media sources on the Internet and from a day by day examination of Iraqi Resistance reports compiled by Free Arab Voice between 13 November and the middle of May. It is not intended to be seen as comprehensive. (i)Police/army raids Resistance reports make reference to around a dozen supplemental raids since Operation Knockout in which hundreds more Iraqis have been detained. No information is available about the fate of the detainees and detailed reports of the raids themselves are absent. The raids are variously described as having been undertaken by ‘troops’, ‘Interior Ministry Shock Troops’, ‘US occupation forces backed up by Iraqi puppet army troops’, ‘Interior Ministry troops’, ‘militiamen with official government documents issued by the Ministry of the Interior’, etc. From such descriptions it is difficult to know which units were responsible, although in most cases one suspects units of the Special Police. Western media sources do not make identification any easier and fewer raids have been reported. (ii) Resistance attacks against US/Iraqi security forces, including killings of alleged collaborators and members of Shiite militias Most of these attacks took the form of roadside bombs, but well-orchestrated assaults on police/army bases and checkpoints were also frequently reported. A handful of alleged ‘collaborators’ are also reported to have been executed by Resistance fighters. (iii) ‘Mysterious’ bombings Several bombs which exploded in civilian areas were described in Resistance reports as mysterious. Mosques seem to have been the intended targets in several instances; one is reported to have been Sunni, one Shiite, and two others are not attributed. Other targets included a girls’ school and a crowded market. According to a report for Middle East Online, dated 1 May 2006, the police chief of Baquba claimed that 70 bombs had been planted on the city streets in the preceding two weeks alone, of which 40 had gone off, killing 12 people. (iv) Extrajudical killings and assassinations Several instances of extrajudicial killings bearing the hallmarks of death squads have been reported. On 23 December 2005 three bodies were found with multiple gunshot wounds in Southern Baquba; the bodies were found blindfolded with their hands and legs bound. On 23 February gunmen pulled factory workers off buses and killed 47 of them; the bullet-riddled bodies were found behind a brick factory. On 25 February 2006 13 members of a Shia family were killed in their home by gunmen. On the same day, 12 farm laborers, both Sunnis and Shiites, were found shot dead in an orchard; the victims had been shot in the head and face. On 26 February two boys were killed when gunmen opened fire on a group of teenagers playing football. On 28 February nine bodies were found in wasteland around Tarfiya; the victims had been shot in the head. On 27 March at least 18 bodies of males were found in a deserted brush area around Tarfiya; the victims are variously described as having been decapitated or having been shot in the head. On 8 April 10 bodies were found in black body bags in Balad Rooz; the victims had been shot in the head. On 19 April three professors were killed when gunmen opened fire at Diyala University. On 10 May 11 workers at an electrical plant were killed by gunmen on their way from or to work. On 13 May four unidentified bodies with bullet holes in their heads and chests were dumped in a stream in Khan Bani Saad; according to one report they were Shiites. It should be noted that the spike in reports after 23 February may well represent increased media attention following the bombing of the Askari mosque in Samarra, rather than any quantifiable surge in attacks. (v) Ethnic cleansing According to Quds Press, quoted in a Resistance report for 8 March, around 1000 Sunni families have fled their homes in the Madain area after receiving death threats from members of the police and special police. While these accounts of various forms of violence and intimidation undoubtedly reflect a climate of pervasive and widespread violence, including an ongoing struggle between the forces of occupation and an organic resistance, it is extremely difficult to make objective comments about their significance. The following passages drawn from four separate accounts underline this point. a) ‘If the insurgency stays at this level, I expect to free up combat power before the end of our deployment,’ [US Col] Salazar says. The Nation, 9 April 2006 b) In this confessionally divided provincial capital [Baquba] just north of Baghdad, the mounting sectarian tensions that have gripped the new Iraq have spelled a spate of tit-for-tat killings of civilians as Shiite militiamen avenge attacks by Sunni insurgents, sparking a vicious circle of violence ... "Drive-by shootings and other gun attacks have proved deadlier, killing nearly 40 people in the past two weeks," Bawi said ... The apparent impotence of Iraq’s fledgling security forces in the face of the worsening bloodshed has sparked anger among residents. Middle East Online, 1 May 2006 c) rebels spread control over most of Diyala Province of which the city of Baquba is the capital. The city’s nearly 350,000 live in a state of terror as the security forces charged with keeping law and order can hardly protect themselves. Azzaman, 11 May 2006 d) Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: ‘They threatend the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out ... It was impossible to travel to Baquba, the capital of Diyala, from Baghdad without extreme danger Independent, 20 May 2006 It should be noted that the US assessment referred to here predated a major increase in attacks against occupation forces that began towards the end of April, which might well invalidate the opinion expressed by US Col Salazar. Nonetheless, even comparing these descriptions of the overall situation with the various accounts of violence that are available is far from straightforward. The account in Middle East Online indicates a level of violence against civilians that is not adequately reflected in either the mainstream media nor the Resistance reports. However, it remains credible because we know the same relationship would hold in areas where we have a better overall impression of the extent of the violence. Uniting the narratives The accounts offered in the Independent and Azzaman appear to stand in total opposition to one another. If the Resistance has spread control over Diyala, surely a communitarian civil war of the kind alluded to in the Independent is extremely unlikely to be taking place. That is, unless we are prepared to entertain a very special definition of ‘civil war’. Such a definition would require us to accept that the Resistance represents an exclusively Sunni faction (not even borne out in the US military’s statistics for detained suspects, see above) and that the security forces, especially the counterinsurgency brigades, represent an exclusively Shiite faction (not borne out in any credible analysis of their composition, nor in their relationship to the occupying powers, including the presence of special police transition teams). Thus, with a fierce conflict taking place between the Occupation and the Resistance, it might indeed be possible to conclude that a ‘sectarian civil war’ was underway. This seems to be the preferred definition for the Western media establishment. But what of Mrs Mohammed? It is possilbe that angry Sunnis have responded to perceived sectarian assaults in kind, but, assuming that this story is real, it seems much more likely that she and her family are the victims of a cruel deception designed to fracture the country along ethno-confessional lines. More and more evidence of such a pattern is starting to emerge, including a recent account published by the BRussells Tribunal anonymously from within Iraq, which refers to evidence that the same special covert units are employed to fabricate sectarian attacks against both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. In addition, there are indications that other killings are being carried out by death squads operating from within the paramilitary Facilities Protection Service. If we want to make sense of what is happening in Iraq we need to recognize that words like SCIRI, Badr and Mahdi, together with phrases like civil war, sectarian violence, revenge killings and tit-for-tat murders all serve to deemphasize the centrality of the occupation and mystify what is a very real and deadly counterinsurgency war. From an external perspective, it is extremely difficult to discern whether the Resistance has seized control of Diyala or whether a genuine civil war along sectarian lines has broken out. What we must suspect, though, based on concrete reasoning, is that the security forces trained, armed and guided by the British and Americans will be committing terrible crimes against humanity in their role as attack dogs for the occupation. This is not to try to say that every single killing is carried out by the security forces, but it is to say that the security forces are so obviously involved in a great many cases that the Western media and other apologists for the occupation and abettors of genocide have been forced to resort to claiming that the security forces have been infiltrated by various militias. If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a US colonel enters the room. And if there are masked gunmen claiming to be from Badr of Mahdi or anywhere else, the first question we should all be asking is where did they get their lists of victims from? For my money, they will have come straight out of the Intelligence Office of the Operations Directorate at the US-run Ministry of the Interior. Appendix: The Memory Vortex Communities fight back against raids Two reports in May seem to indicate that communities are seeking ways to fight back against nighttime raids. According to an Iraqi Resistance report dated 1 May 2006, citing Mafkarat al-Islam, fierce fighting erupted around the areas of al-Hadid and Abu Zayd when a raid by ‘Iraqi puppet police and puppet army troops’ was opposed by armed residents. According to the report, nine of the assailants and dozens of locals were killed in the fighting. Following the battle, US troops joined the Iraqi forces in carrying out massive and indiscriminate arrests. On 11 May, international press sources reported that village leaders and clerics alerted police and US soldiers when gunmen, some of them wearing military uniforms, raided two ‘Sunni’ villages near Khan Bani Saad. According to these reports, US and Iraqi forces were able to rescue seven of 10 men that were being abducted. Thirty people were arrested, including an unknown number of the gunmen. According to the reports, some gunmen told police they belonged to the Shiite militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. This attribution was supported by the Interior Minister at the time, Bayan Jabr, who claimed that the gunmen were carrying badges identifying them as belonging to the Force Protection Service (FPS) of the Ministry of Health, which has been reported to be under the control of Muqtada al-Sadr. A spokesman for al-Sadr subsequently claimed that that the FPS members had gone to help, according to the Christian Science Monitor. It is difficult to believe that these two account are not related despite the time gap, although I can find no evidence that this is the case. It is also difficult not to credit the Mafkarat al-Islam as being a far more plausible general depiction of events. Clearly, if Sadr militiamen had formed a secret death squad to attack villages around Khan Bani Saad, we should be hearing about it all over the press. Unfortunately, this is yet another case ‘under investigation’ that is likely to be consigned to the dustbin of history and blacked out by the Western media. Diyala police linked to death squads On 27 March, in what was described as ‘an unusual admission’, Reuters reported that the Iraqi Interior Ministry had arrested a police major, Arkan al-Bawi, in Diyala province for operating death squads in Baquba. According to the Interior Ministry, Bawi confessed that his gang members wore police uniforms stolen during attacks on police checkpoints and that they had killed many people. On 28 March, Reuters reported that the police chief in Diyala, major-general Ghassan al-Bawi, the brother of Arkan, had been arrested for ‘corruption and threatening security’. Unbelievably, even this bombshell of a story died instantly [in fact, the story now seems to have been removed from the Internet; the version offered here is copied from a printed extract of the original]. Even more remarkably, on 28 April, provincial police chief Maj. Ghassan al-Bawi was reported to have stated that troops and police were on the streets of Baquba and roads to the city were closed because of fears the insurgents might regroup [This story too is now extremely hard to come by, with only two examples still available through Google; the only other evidence that Ghassan al-Bawi has retained his post is a cached BBC page which refers to an Interview with al-Bawi in June 2006]. It appeared that the arrest of two senior police officers linked to death squads in Diyala had simply not taken place at all. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps it was another major-general Ghassan al-Bawi that had been arrested for ‘threatening security’! If we go right back to Hess’s UPI report of the November 13 raid, we will recall that the new police chief ‘is associated with the SCIRI, the political arm of the Badr brigade’. Is that not then newsworthy either! Mahdi militiamen in death squad arrested in act and SCIRI police appointee linked to death squads! Apparently not. One can only assume that any detailed independent investigation would rapidly be forced to conclude that neither Mahdi nor SCIRI were responsible, but the US-installed police force were.
Max Fuller has worked for some years as a member of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign in the UK and has read extensively on US policy and Latin America. He is the author of several reports published in the 'Bulletin of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign'. Max Fuller is the author of ‘For Iraq, the Salvador Option Becomes Reality’ and 'Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq' , both published by the Centre for Research on Globalisation. He is a member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee and he is an authority in the field of "Death Squads" and "the Salvador Option". He can be contacted via the website www.cryingwolf.deconstructingiraq.org.uk
Conflicting Media Accounts: Evidence of Iraqi Death Squad Conspiracy
Max Fuller, 26 June 2006.
On 27 October 2005, the BBC reported the following incident.
At least 20 Shia militiamen and Iraqi policemen have died in clashes with Sunni insurgents, Iraqi officials say.
Most of those killed were Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. Two Iraqi policemen were also killed and others wounded.
A spokesman for the militiamen said they were ambushed as they went with police to aid a comrade kidnapped by Sunni militants near Baghdad.
Some reports said the clash resulted from tensions between the communities.
Whether it involves insurgents or not, it is clearly a case of Sunnis fighting Shias - an alarming development in a country where the fear of civil war is increasingly coming to the fore, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.
The battle took place in the town of Nahrawan, some 15 miles (25km) south-east of Baghdad.
Yet, on the same day and describing the same incident, Thomas Wagner, filed the following report for Associated Press, BBC, Deutsche Presse-Agentur and Reuters.
At least 27 people, most of them police, were killed in clashes with civilians in Nahrawan township, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, Thursday, said Iraqi army sources.
Captain Ahmed Jassin of the Iraqi army told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa that forces belonging to two brigades of the Interior Ministry launched a raid in Al-Haj village of Nahrawan to release a kidnapped person.
He said the police were in civilian uniform, prompting the villagers to open fire thinking that the police were terrorists. Jassim's army brigade intervened to end the fighting.
He said the severe clashes which took place killed 25 policemen and two civilians. Four villagers were arrested.
Police in civilian uniform! What on earth are readers supposed to make of that in the context of a conflict that has seen thousands of people arrested, tortured and subsequently murdered by members of the police and security forces (eg UN Human Rights Mission, Iraqi Organization for Follow-up and Monitoring).
More than merely arousing suspicion, Wagner’s report recalls the recent reference to an anonymous confession by an Iraqi purporting to belong to a secret black operations unit. In the confession, the author states that special Iraqi forces were created before and after the occupation by US and Israeli officers to infiltrate all of the branches of the new security apparatus. Once in position, these agents have been used to fabricate sectarian attacks against both Sunnis and Shiites. According to the confession, they attack Sunnis ‘in uniforms, IDs and police cars’ and they attack Shiites ‘in cars normally used by the Mujahideen’ and undoubtedly ‘in civilian uniform’. Clearly, the ‘Shia militiamen’ at Nahrawan were at pains not to be identified as police, so were their intended victims in this case Shiite?
It’s hard to know. According to an Iraqi Resistance Report compiled by Free Arab Voice, the Sunni resistance organization Jaysh Ansar as-Sunnah posted a statement on the Internet in which they claimed that forces of the National Guard and puppet police, who had arrived in 50 white non-military pickups, attempted to arrest local men during morning prayers. A violent confrontation developed in which local villagers and residents of nearby villages joined forces against the raiders. According to the Jaysh Ansar as-Sunnah version of events, Mahdi militiamen fought alongside the security forces.
From an alternative perspective, Shaykh ‘Ali al-Musawi’, a leader of the Sadr movement in Diyala Province stated that ‘what a number of members of the Jaysh al-Mahdi or its patrons [??] did should not be counted against the Muqtada as-Sadr movement as a whole’ and that the movement ‘is united with the Resistance on one goal and that is the definite requirement that the American occupation must depart Iraq and that the unity of Iraq – the land and the people – must be safeguarded’ (op cit.).
Whether or not the forces that participated in this incident were part of a covert operations unit isn’t particularly important. What is important is that they were not the Shiite militiamen linked to Muqtada al-Sadr that the BBC wants us to believe. Infiltrated or not, they belonged to two brigades of the Interior Ministry and were disowned by the Sadr movement. If further militiamen really were present, they attacked as auxiliaries to the police units.
All of this is particularly significant in view of the number of supposedly sectarian attacks that have been taking place in the Nahrawan area as part of a campaign of terrorization and ethnic cleansing.
The best-documented case involves an assault on the village of Al-Fursan by ‘hordes of men in black, who were driving cars of the ministry of interior’ on 27 February 2006. Eight people, including a 10-year-old boy, were executed and property and livestock was destroyed. According to Voice of Freedom and Human Rights and the Red Crescent, the residents did not try to protect themselves because they believed the killers to be police. In this case the victims appear to have been Sunni families.
Similar attacks are reported to have occurred against Shiite families.
If you can find them, maybe you can hire … the Mahdi Army!
According to Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald, the mayor of Nahrawan has turned to the Mahdi Army to provide security for his ‘Shiite’ ward in the absence of alternative law-enforcement agencies capable of taking on the ‘insurgency’. Of course, McGeough knows perfectly well, as does Edward Wong of the New York Times, that the Mahdi Army that they’re talking about is the one that receives its uniforms, weapons, training and salaries from the US-sponsored state. For such commentators, the solution to this apparent contradiction is to conclude that the militias draw their pay by day and conduct their real business by night.
So is McGeough claiming that the mayor of Nahrawan is content to only receive his protection after hours from some yawning militiamen who’ve only just had time to change out of their uniforms before undertaking raids? Or, if there’s a grain of truth to his story, is he suggesting that the mayor is actually benefiting from the presence of units of the Iraqi security forces? If so, it would be more helpful if he would tell his readers which ones. We can assume that they’re not ordinary policemen because Nahrawan already has ordinary policemen. So what does that leave? It essentially leaves units of the Iraqi special police, either Public Order Battalions or Special Police Commandos.
In fact, the description of both the 27 October and 27 February raids sound very much like the kind of operations being undertaken by the specialist counterinsurgency units attached to the Ministry of the Interior. The members of such units might or might not have belonged to the Mahdi Army or the Badr Brigade, but within the units of the Special Police they live, work and fight alongside embedded US special-forces trainers. And, even more importantly, their operations are carefully planned by the new CIA-built intelligence apparatus and orchestrated by American intelligence operatives (see ‘Operation Knockout: Coin in Iraq’).
Whichever way you want to cut it, the bungled raid of 27 October is yet one more example of the US-directed war being actively waged against the Iraqi people and Jim Muir is yet one more example of the liars of the mainstream media who are attempting to cover up the tracks of their genocidal colleagues. In view of the lack of credible reporting and the terrible gravity of the events unfolding, the only immediate solution is to demand independent investigations by international bodies into what is taking place. Who could possibly oppose so utterly reasonable and humane a demand? Only those whose hands are steeped in blood and those devoted to protecting them.
Voor Irak wordt de ‘Salvador-optie’ realiteit
Door Max Fuller
2 juni 2005
Origineel artikel: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html
Samenvatting
Het volgende artikel is een onderzoek naar de bewijzen dat de ‘Salvador-optie’ in Irak reeds enige tijd in werking is en een poging om de betekenis ervan te verklaren. Er wordt bijzondere aandacht besteed aan de rol van de Speciale Politiecommando’s, waarbij de achtergrond van hun banden met de VS en hun inschakeling in Irak in aanmerking worden genomen. verder wordt er gekeken naar de bewijzen voor slachtingen in de stijl van doodseskaders en naar de nagenoeg volledige afwezigheid van enig onderzoek. Als zodanig is dit artikel een aanzet om enkele van deze massamoorden op te sommen en te onderzoeken en is het bedoeld om anderen aan te sporen naar meer bewijzen op zoek te gaan. Tot slot wijkt dit artikel af van het idee dat sektarisme als verklaring voor het geweld in Irak volstaat, door het als een onderdeel van de voortdurende economische onderwerping van Irak binnen de staatsstructuur te plaatsen.
Toenemende bewijzen tonen aan dat de ‘Salvador-optie’ die voor Irak wordt overwogen reeds volop aan de gang is
Op 8 januari van dit jaar publiceerde Newsweek een artikel waarin werd beweerd dat de regering van de VS een ‘Salvador-optie’ overwoog om de opstand in Irak te bestrijden. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newswwek/) De Salvador-optie verwijst naar het militair hulpprogramma uit de jaren ’80 dat door Jimmy Carter werd ingesteld en vervolgens door de regering Reagan werd voortgezet. Volgens dit programma trainde de VS het Salvadoraanse leger en bood materiële ondersteuning bij de anti-rebellencampagne tegen de door het volk gesteunde FMLN guerrilla’s. Het artikel in Newsweek werd in de media veel geciteerd, maar de beweringen werden al gauw ontkend door Minister van Defensie, Donald Rumsfeld. Hoewel in de verslagen sprake was van mensenrechtenschendingen, werd er doorgaans weinig aandacht besteed aan het feit dat de eenheden die door de Amerikaanse militaire adviseurs waren opgeleid dikwijls voor de afschuwelijkste misdaden* verantwoordelijk waren, en dat er een duidelijke samenhang was tussen nieuwe trainingsreeksen en erop volgende misdrijven. (zie Noam Chomsky, ‘The Crucifixion of El Salvador’, http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-02.html).
In een eerder interview van 10 januari, nam de gepensioneerde Generaal Wayne Downing, voormalig hoofd van de VS troepen voor speciale operaties, een heel andere stelling in toen hij zegde dat de door de VS gesteunde speciale eenheden aanvallen tegen de leiders van de zogenaamde opstandelingen hadden uitgevoerd sinds maart 2003 (geciteerd in ‘Phoenix Rising in Iraq’ door Stephen Shalom, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7227). Hoe het ook zij, Downing verklaarde voorzichtig dat de implementering van een Salvadoraanse strategie een bijkomende soort van eenheid aan het bezettingsarsenaal zou toevoegen. Wat de pers, Donald Rumsfeld en Generaal Downing niet vermeldden, was dat de Salvador-optie reeds behoorlijk in voege was, en wel veel letterlijker dan men zich zou kunnen voorstellen.
Volgens een artikel dat onlangs in New York Times Magazine verscheen, werd in september 2004 de adviseur van de VS-ambassadeur voor Iraakse veiligheidsdiensten, James Steele, aangeduid om met een nieuwe Iraakse elite-eenheid te werken. Deze zogenaamde Speciale Politiecommando’s werden onder controle van het Iraakse Ministerie van Binnenlandse zaken gevormd en waren bedoeld om de opstand te onderdrukken. (‘The Way of the Commandos’, Petzer Maass, http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/TheWay_of_the_Commandos.html).
Van 1984 tot 1986 had de toenmalige Kolonel Steele de US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador geleid, waarbij hij tijdens het hoogtepunt van het conflict instond voor de ontwikkeling van speciale operatietroepen op het brigadeniveau. Deze troepen waren samengesteld uit de meest brutale beschikbare soldaten en vergelijkbaar met het soort van kleine eenheidsoperaties die Steele kende uit zijn diensttijd in Vietnam. Eerder dan zich op terreinwinning te concentreren was het hun rol om de ‘rebellen’-leiding, hun aanhangers, hun logistieke faciliteiten en hun basiskampen aan te vallen. In het geval van de 4de Brigade, lieten deze tactieken toe dat een 20-hoofdige troepenmacht in staat was om 60 % van het totaal aantal slachtoffers van de eenheid voor hun rekening te nemen. (Manwaring, El Salvador at War, 1988, pag. 306-8). In militaire kringen was de toepassing van zulke tactieken bepalend om de guerrilla’s uiteindelijk te verslaan; voor anderen, zoals de Katholieke priester Daniel Santiago, had de aanwezigheid van mensen zoals Steele een heel andere betekenis:
In El Salvador worden mensen niet zomaar gedood door doodseskaders. Ze worden onthoofd, waarna hun hoofden worden opgespiest en gebruikt om het landschap te vullen. Mannen werden door de Salvadoraanse politie niet enkel afgeslacht; hun afgesneden genitaliën werden in hun mond gestopt. Salvadoraanse vrouwen werden niet enkel door de Nationale Garde verkracht; hun baarmoeders werden uit hun lichaam gesneden en gebruikt om hun gezicht te bedekken. Het volstond niet om hun kinderen te doden; ze werden over prikkeldraad gesleept tot het vlees van hun botten viel, terwijl de ouders gedwongen werden toe te kijken. (Geciteerd door Chomsky, op cit.)
de politiecommando’s zijn grotendeels het geesteskind van een andere Amerikaanse anti-rebellenveteraan, Steven Casteel, een voormalige topfunctionaris van de DEA die als hoofdadviseur in dienst was van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken. Casteel was betrokken bij de jacht op de beruchte Colombiaanse cocaïnebaron, Pablo Escobar, tijdens dewelke de DEA samenwerkte met een paramilitaire organisatie gekend als Los Pepes. Deze werd later omgevormd tot de AUC, een koepelorganisatie die alle Colombiaanse paramilitaire doodseskaders omvatte. (http://cocaine.org/colombia/pablo-escobar.html; http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/040105isac.htm).
Zoals de Colombiaanse doodseskaders cultiveren ook de Iraakse Politiecommando’s opzettelijk een angstaanjagend paramilitair imago. Tijdens de razzia’s dragen ze bivakmutsen en zwarte lederen handschoenen en ze intimideren en brutaliseren de verdachten openlijk, zelfs in het bijzijn van buitenlandse journalisten (zie het verslag van Peter Maass). Het is opmerkelijk dat veel van deze commando’s, hun leider incluis, Soennitische moslims zijn.
Bewijs van de slachtingen
Met de ontdekking van verscheidene massagraven in en rond Bagdad de laatste weken wordt het bewijs voor meerdere buitengerechtelijke moorden zichtbaar. Maar in feite onthult zelfs een vluchtig doornemen van archieven zoals dat van Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.net) dat er de laatste zes maanden in Irak massa-executies hebben plaatsgevonden. Hierbij valt in het bijzonder op dat veel van deze moorden gebeurden sedert de Politiecommando’s operatief werden en dikwijls overeenkomen met de gebieden waar ze ingezet worden.
De duidelijkste samenhang is in Mossoel terug te vinden, waar de Politiecommando’s eind oktober operatief werden (http://www.strykernews.com/archives/2004/10/29/special_iraqi_police_commandos_continue_operations.html). Midden november werd gemeld dat opstandelingen een offensief uitvoerden en bijna alle (reguliere) politie uit de stad hadden verdreven. Daarop volgde een zogenaamd tegenoffensief door VS troepen en Politiecommando’s. De Politiecommando’s voerden vanaf 16 november razzia’s uit in het oude stadsdeel, waarbij tientallen verdachten werden opgepakt. Tijdens een van de razzia’s op een moskee en een theehuis zag men de arrestanten door de commando’s geblinddoekt en geboeid weggevoerd worden (http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html). In de volgende weken en maanden doken meer dan 150 lichamen op (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4105009.stm), dikwijls met meerdere tegelijk en velen ervan duidelijk geëxecuteerd, gewoonlijk met een hoofdschot. (bvb. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/iraq/?id=12147).
Men beweerde herhaaldelijk dat de meeste slachtoffers tot de veiligheidsdiensten behoorden en de ‘opstandelingen’ werden ervan beschuldigd een intimidatiecampagne te voeren. Nochtans droegen de meeste lijken burgerkleding en waren de mogelijkheden tot identificatie beperkt. Van de paar gevallen die toch geïdentificeerd werden, gebeurde dit aan de hand van onduidelijke bewijzen. Zo is er het voorbeeld van negen slachtoffers die beschreven werden als met een hoofdschot gedode soldaten, waarbij een Amerikaanse luitenant stelde dat ‘een paar jongens van een eenheid die onlangs naar een van de VS-basissen verplaatst werd, waren vermist’. (http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html); op de foto’s van de slachtoffers droegen ze burgerkleren. Een frappant geval van desinformatie betreft een groep van 31 lijken die in maart 2005 door de Politiecommando’s ‘ontdekt’ werd. Ze lagen verspreid rond een begraafplaats in westelijk Mossoel. Volgens een woordvoerder van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken waren het lichamen van burgers, politiemannen en soldaten, en zouden ze het slachtoffer zijn geweest van één enkele politieman, Shoqayer Fareed Sheet. In het door de oprichter van de Politiecommando’s, Adnan Thavit, bedachte tv-programma, ‘Terrorisme in de handen van gerechtigheid’, had hij deze en talrijke andere moorden bekend (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23448-2005Mar10.html). Dit programma verstoot niet enkel tegen elke morele en legale norm, maar het is berucht voor de opvoering van duidelijk gemartelde gevangenen die gedwongen worden homoseksualiteit, pedofilie en moorden toe te geven (http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:OkQ0b9q9QbkJ:uniraq.org/documents/Arabic%2520_%2520Regional%2520News%252022%2520March%25202005.doc+%22TV+confessions+said+creating+religious+rift%22&hl=nl&gl=be&ct=clnk&cd=1).
Gezien het extreem gebrek aan bewijzen, het ontbreken van betrouwbare identificatie en de desinformatie door het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, bestaat er op zijn minst een grote kans dat veel, of zelfs alle buitengerechtelijke moorden in Mossoel door de Politiecommando’s werden begaan.
Politiecommando’s rechtstreeks beschuldigd
Een gelijkaardig, doch minder volledig patroon doet zich ook voor in andere gebieden waar de commando’s opereren. Vooral in Samarra, waar onlangs lichamen bij het Thartharmeer werden gevonden. (http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=41936) Nochtans ontwikkelt het fenomeen zich momenteel het sterkst in Bagdad, waar tijdens de laatste weken een golf van moorden resulteerde in rechtstreekse beschuldigingen aan het adres van de statelijke veiligheidsdiensten, en meer in het bijzonder de politiecommando’s. Deze beschuldigingen situeren zich rond drie verschillende slachtpartijen. Op 5 mei werd in het industriegebied van Kasra-Wa-Atash een ondiep massagraf met 14 lichamen ontdekt. De slachtoffers, allen geblinddoekte en geboeide jonge mannen, waren met een hoofdschot geëxecuteerd. Ze vertoonden tekens van foltering zoals gebarsten schedels, brandwonden, slagen en verwijderde rechteroogbollen. In dit geval konden de familieleden de slachtoffers identificeren; het waren Soennitische boeren die bij hun verdwijning op weg naar de markt waren geweest. Volgens Phil Shiner van de in Groot-Brittannië gevestigde organisatie Public Interest Lawyers waren de mannen tijdens een razzia op de groentemarkt door de veiligheidsdiensten gearresteerd. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1488096,00.html), (http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=760368 ).
Geen twee weken later, op 15 mei, werden op twee plaatsen in West-Bagdad nog 15 lichamen ontdekt. Acht van hen werden in Al-Shaab gevonden en de overige zeven achter een moskee in Ore. (http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=733276) Volgens de Chicago Tribune “waren sommige van hen geblinddoekt, hadden de meeste de handen op de rug gebonden en waren ze allen met een hoofdschot omgebracht.” (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl) De Association of Moslim Scholars reageerde snel op de moorden en beschuldigde soldaten en commando’s van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken ervan imams en moskeewachters te hebben gearresteerd, hen te hebben gemarteld en gedood, en vervolgens hun lichamen op een stortplaats in het district Shaab te hebben gedumpt. (http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=238784&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/) “Dit is staatsterrorisme van de hand van het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken,” zegde Hareth al-Dhari, de secretaris-generaal van de organisatie. (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/47613c82-c804-11d9-9765-00000e2511c8.html) Als al-Dhari ook de met de regerende Sjiitische coalitie verbonden Badr-brigades beschuldigde, werden zijn aantijgingen in de officiële pers snel aangepast om enkel dit aspect van de beschuldiging en het beeld van het sektarisch vergeldingsgeweld te versterken. (bvb. http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4569103.stm) De reactie van de Iraakse regering op de beschuldigingen was voorspelbaar arglistig. De nieuwe verdedigingsminister gaf de schuld aan terroristen in politie-uniformen. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl) Het mag hoe dan ook geen verrassing wezen dat de regering begin mei een repressieve actie tegen de opstandelingen had aangekondigd, waarbij wellicht goedgetrainde commando’s op Bagdad en andere probleemgebieden zouden worden losgelaten. (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8725.htm)
Verder bewijzen voor slachtingen
Gezien deze specifieke beschuldigingen tegen de door de VS getrainde anti-rebellentroepen is het de moeite waard om kort enkele andere bloedbaden te vermelden die de laatste maanden in Irak plaatsvonden. In oktober 2004 werden op een afgelegen weg op 50 km ten zuiden van Baquba 49 lichamen ontdekt. De slachtoffers in burgerkledij waren allemaal met een hoofdschot om het leven gebracht. Het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken verklaarde dat het om soldaten met verlof ging. Sommige bronnen bij de politie zegden dat het om rebellen in Iraakse militaire uniformen ging, maar de details waren verre van duidelijk. (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/24/international0921EDT0440.DTL, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html)
In maart van dit jaar werden in Rumana bij Qaim, vlak bij de Syrische grens, eveneens 26 lichamen ontdekt. Volgens het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken waren de meeste slachtoffers leden van een interventieteam. De slachtoffers waren geblinddoekt, geboeid en met een hoofdschot gedood. Ook deze lichamen waren als burgers gekleed en ze werden gevonden in een gebied waar het VS-leger Operation River Blitz had uitgevoerd, een door de marines geleide aanval op opstandelingen in de vallei van de Eufraat. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html ; http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/09/iraq.main/ )
Om het nog wat ingewikkelder te maken werden op 9 mei de lichamen van acht mannen uit Sadr City gevonden in Yussufiah op 40 km ten zuiden van Bagdad. De gemartelde en met een nekschot geëxecuteerde slachtoffers droegen legeruniformen, maar familieleden verklaarden dat het burgers waren. Kapitein Ahmed Hussein suggereerde dat de moordenaars wilden doen geloven dat ze soldaten hadden omgebracht. (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1701988,00.html)
Er zijn nog meer gelijkaardige gevallen van massamoorden, evenals talrijke moorden waarbij het aantal slachtoffers veel lager lag. Het zijn er te veel om op te noemen. Het is hoe dan ook aangewezen te benadrukken dat geregeld lichamen (reeds meer dan 100) uit de Tigris worden opgevist, vooral rond Suwayra ten zuiden van Bagdad. Het vinden van zulke lijken met een ratio van één á twee per dag werd vanaf eind februari opgemerkt. In april steeg het aantal. Sommige slachtoffers, meestal mannen maar soms ook vrouwen en kinderen, waren vastgebonden. Anderen doodgeschoten of onthoofd. In april beweerde President Talibani dat de slachtoffers in het dorp Madain door opstandelingen waren ontvoerd, doch degenen die tot op heden konden geïdentificeerd worden, bleken uit de verre omtrek afkomstig te zijn en stamden ook niet uit eenzelfde reeks van ontvoeringen. De politie in Suwayra verklaarde dat veel van de slachtoffers waarschijnlijk door gemaskerde mannen aan geïmproviseerde controleposten tegengehouden werden. Sommige Soennieten zeggen echter dat enkele van de slachtoffers mogelijks door de politie waren aangehouden. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/22/MNG45CDDBQ1.DTL)
Wat deze lichamen in de Tigris betreft, is het belangrijk de aandacht te vestigen op een vreemd bericht op de website Jihad Unspun over VS-soldaten die ’s ochtends vroeg vanuit helikopters lijkenzakken in de Dialirivier in Oost-Irak gooiden. De auteur van het bericht redeneerde dat het om lichamen van Amerikaanse soldaten of buitenlandse huurlingen ging, die het leger voor het publiek wilde verborgen houden. (http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100552&list=/home.php&) Deze onwaarschijnlijke theorie geeft geenszins uitsluitsel over de identiteit van de lichamen die het VS-leger wil verbergen en herinnert tevens aan een verslag dat aan het BRussels Tribunal werd voorgelegd, ‘Tarmiya: the Silent Agony’. Dit verslag bevat de directe getuigenis van een landarbeider die een executiepoging door een Amerikaans speciale eenheid overleefde. De getuige werd samen met een collega op de boerderij waar ze werkten ontvoerd en naar een afgelegen bos meegenomen, waar hun de keel werd overgesneden. Ze werden voor dood achtergelaten, maar op miraculeuze wijze overleefde een van hen. (http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Articles.htm) Hoewel een onafhankelijke bevestiging van het verslag ontbreekt en de betrokkenen om veiligheidsreden anoniem gehouden worden, is het een overtuigende beschrijving van het soort van langdurige ‘verkenningsmissies’ die mensen zoals James Steel in Vietnam uitvoerden.
De Iraakse oorlog in een model weergegeven
Terwijl veel van het geweld in Irak chaotisch overkomt, beginnen zich een aantal lijnen af te tekenen die het patroon en de logica van andere anti-rebellenoorlogen vertonen. Toen in El Salvador de oorlog eindelijk tot een einde kwam, werd duidelijk dat de meerderheid van de slachtoffers leden van progressieve sociale bewegingen waren geweest, of boeren die met de guerrilla’s sympathiseerden of hen ondersteunden. Het doel van de oorlog was niet om een ideologisch gemotiveerde rebellie te verslaan, doch om de mogelijkheid van een progressieve sociale verandering te voorkomen en het land in zijn traditionele grondstofleverende rol binnen de economische invloedsfeer van de VS te houden.
Het zelfde kan men vandaag over Colombia zeggen, waar de langdurige fase van interne conflicten, waarin duizenden sociale activisten werden vermoord, naadloos samenliep met ‘s lands blootstelling aan economische liberalisering. Kort gezegd, legitieme sociale eisen worden met geweld onderdrukt, teneinde buitenlands kapitaal toe te laten om uit de rijke Colombiaanse grondstoffen superwinsten te vergaren en het land uit te verkopen. Het conflict situeert zich grotendeels binnen de zogenaamde ‘burgerlijke samenleving’, waar progressieve leiders worden uitgesloten of geëlimineerd, terwijl degenen die bereid zijn hun lot met het roofzuchtige buitenlands kapitaal te verbinden worden beloond en geprezen.
In Irak bestaat de oorlog uit twee fasen. De eerste is voleindigd: de vernietiging van de bestaande staat, die zich niet naar de belangen van het Britse en Amerikaanse kapitaal schikte. De tweede fase omvat de opbouw van een nieuwe staat die met diezelfde belangen verbonden is, en waarbij elke afwijkende sector of samenleving wordt vernietigd. Openlijk gebruikt men hier de zelfde soort van economische shocktherapie die ook in grote delen van de Derde Wereld en Oost-Europa zoveel schade heeft aangericht. Onder de oppervlakte betekent dit dat de oppositie wordt geïntimideerd, ontvoerd en vermoord.
De economische aanval op Irak is volop aan de gang. De zichtbare werkloosheid staat op een catastrofaal niveau van 28 %. Grote delen van de openbare sector zijn reeds uitverkocht en de lonen gekelderd (dikwijls tot minder dan de helft van het vooroorlogse niveau), deels door de invoering van duizenden goedkope werkkrachten uit Pakistan, India en de Filippijnen. Deze arbeiders werden dikwijls op bedrieglijke wijze aangelokt en hun paspoorten werden hun afhandig gemaakt. Ze werken als slaven om de gewone Iraakse levensstandaard te ondergraven. Reconstructieprojecten worden bijna alleen aan buitenlandse (hoofdzakelijk Amerikaanse) bedrijven toegewezen, die een vaste belasting van 15 % betalen en hun winsten onbegrensd kunnen repatriëren, terwijl Iraks staatsbedrijven worden uitgesloten. (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3005) Op het platteland worden de Iraakse boeren nu verplicht een licentie te kopen om genetisch gemanipuleerde zaden aan te bouwen en is het herzaaien van het zaad dat hun voorvaders in de wieg der beschaving ontwikkelden verboden. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html)
Ook de verborgen aanval heeft een start genomen. Aanvallen op arbeiders en vakbondsmensen worden steeds gebruikelijker (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000200.html) en het feit dat de spoorwerkersbond, in een industrie die op de lijst voor privatisering staat, door plaatselijke Amerikaanse ambtenaren die met de import van Indische arbeiders dreigen in het bijzonder wordt geviseerd, is veelzeggend. (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000117.html) Terwijl de IFTU, de dominante nieuwe staatsgesteunde vakbondskoepel, de bezetting ondersteund heeft, deed de Federatie van Arbeidersraden en Vakbonden in Irak (FWCUI) dat niet. In elk geval zullen de gewone Iraakse arbeiders toenemend in conflict komen met de marionettenregering, wanneer ze trachten hun elementairste levensstandaard te verdedigen. Acties in de bedrijven zijn reeds wijdverspreid in Irak, hoewel de officiële pers daar slechts spaarzaam over bericht.
Een nog schrikwekkender beeld duikt op in de sector van het Hoger Onderwijs, waar sinds het begin van de bezetting een 200-tal academici werden vermoord, terwijl controle en intimidatie een systematische vorm hebben aangenomen. Veel van de slachtoffers werkten in de sector van de sociale wetenschappen, waar overlapping met progressieve sociale bewegingen onvermijdelijk is. (http://www.newstatesman.com/200409060018)
Ongelukkig genoeg is het in Irak bijna onmogelijk om met zekerheid uit te maken aan wie de moorden en standrechterlijke executies kunnen worden toegeschreven, terwijl de Amerikaans-Britse propagandacampagne velen laat geloven in spookbeelden zoals Al-Zarqawi (zie: Michel Chossudovsky, ‘Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405B.html)). We weten echter wel dat honderden Irakezen worden vermoord, en dat de paramilitaire eskaders van de gevolmachtigde regering, die door instructeurs uit de VS met een smakeloze voorgeschiedenis van staatsterrorisme worden georganiseerd, in toenemende mate daarmee geassocieerd worden.
In een land waar goede informatie uitermate schaars is, desinformatie en verdoken propaganda ingebakken zijn en onafhankelijke journalisten en observatoren doelgericht worden geëlimineerd is het van vitaal belang om de situatie als model weer te geven, zodat ze kan worden begrepen en, hopelijk, indruk maakt. Zulk model bestaat uit twee principiële dimensies. Ten eerste wordt Irak regelmatig met Vietnam vergeleken. De gelijkenis bestaat erin dat de VS aanzienlijk meer dan 100000 soldaten op de grond heeft. Deze analogie is evenwel misleidend, daar in Irak het conflict met een grote vijandelijke staat, zoals ook in Noord-Vietnam het geval was, snel eindigde. El Salvador is als model evenmin volledig accuraat. In El Salvador bevonden zich slechts weinig VS-‘adviseurs’ en ze mochten bovendien niet aan de gevechten deelnemen. Toch tracht de VS naar dit model te evolueren, in de hoop de vuile bezettingshandel aan Iraakse bondgenoten te verpachten. Op vele vlakken biedt echter het hedendaagse Colombia de meest treffende analogie: niet omwille van de opstelling van het leger, maar omdat hier hetzelfde proces van onteigening, verarming en plundering, die aan de conquistadores herinnert, diep en blijvend ingebed is. Hier vindt men dat allerduidelijkste patroon terug van aanslagen op academici, onafhankelijke vakbondslui en boerenorganisaties, die ook Irak in toenemende mate karakteriseren voor hen die bereid zijn achter de schermen te kijken. Dit is de tweede dimensie die in elk model aanwezig moet zijn. Maar in essentie wordt dit patroon telkens weer bij elke imperialistische oorlog om zogezegd een opstand te onderdrukken herhaald, want achter elke van deze oorlogen schuilt de realiteit van uitbuiting en klassenstrijd. En zoals elke opeenvolgende imperialistische macht heeft aangetoond, bestaat de basislijn van de strijd tegen de hoop en dromen van het gewone volk in de verspreiding van terreur door extreem geweld te gebruiken. In Irak kan de Salvador-optie betekenen dat men thuiskomt en zijn volledige familie rond de tafel vind met hun hoofden voor zich geserveerd en een kom bloed als aperitief.
* Een van de ergste misdrijven gebeurde in december 1981 in het dorp El Mozote in het departement Morazon door het Atlacatl-bataljon, een elite-eenheid die door de VS-adviseurs was getraind en beschouwd werd als El Salvadors beste gevechtseenheid. Meer dan 200 mannen, vrouwen en kinderen (het hele dorp) werden op één dag systematisch gefolterd en vermoord.
Max Fuller was enkele jaren werkzaam als lid van de Colombia Solidariteitscampagne in het Verenigd Koninkrijk en heeft de VS-politiek en Latijns-Amerika uitgebreid bestudeerd. Hij is de auteur van verschillende verslagen die in het Bulletin of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign verschenen.