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Soldiers raid homes across Iraq to crush
resistance
Compiled by Eamon Martin
July 2 (AGR)— As 2,000 Shiite Muslims rallied on Saturday, June
28, against the United States’ occupation of Iraq, American troops
psyched up on a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film “Apocalypse
Now” before crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen and “subversives”.
With Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” still ringing in
their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers rammed
vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided houses in the
western city of Ramadi. One unit of troops dragged half a dozen men
from their homes as women wailed nearby.
The Ramadi raid was part of Operation Desert Scorpion, launched on June
15, and just one of several military actions aimed at stamping out Iraqi
resistance to the Western occupation of their country. By Saturday,
90 Desert Scorpion raids had captured 540 people.
American military commanders have greatly stepped up the pace of house-to-house
sweeps, in which hundreds of soldiers have fanned out across Iraq, temporarily
closing off neighborhoods and then searching each house for weapons
or any hints of loyalty to Saddam Hussein.
This week, US officials said they were going into towns with “overwhelming
combat power” as they announced the debut of a newer mission: Operation
Desert Sidewinder.
Sidewinder began on Monday, June 30, when US forces detained close to
200 people in a series of lightning raids across the country, involving
tanks, armored vehicles and thousands of troops aimed at squelching
resistance activity.
Lt. Col. Bill McDonald said the campaign “is the third in a series
of operations focused on rooting out various subversive elements attempting
to undermine coalition efforts to restore basic infrastructure and stability
in Iraq.”
Pictures of the raids show US soldiers handcuffing men, women and children,
facedown on their living room floors.
Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division said
it is “an ugly business, but it is the business we are in.”
Russell’s men come in like SWAT teams, ramming down compound walls.
Children cry, women are terrified, and men are handcuffed and led away,
sometimes with nylon bags over their heads.
More often than not they are innocent, or family members of the targets,
or housekeepers or guards, and later released.
“We want to send a message of ‘don’t mess with us’,”
explained Lt. Col. Aubrey Garner.
Sidewinder is taking place across an area of central Iraq stretching
from the Iranian border to the north of Baghdad, and is expected to
last for several days.
On Sunday night, less than 24 hours after Sidewinder’s start, two
M-1 tanks patrolling Baqouba were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades.
Attacks on American troops hit a new intensity in the last week, killing
more than a half-dozen US soldiers in Baghdad and central Iraq.
The violence only seemed to escalate while US Defense Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, insisted Iraq would not become another Vietnam —despite
the fact that US troops are getting ambushed everywhere and every day.
Private risk analysts for corporate investment firms are warning of
an “even chance” of Iraq descending into open revolt.
And although the term is rarely used at the Pentagon, from every description
by military officials, what US troops face on the ground in Iraq has
all the markings of a guerrilla war — albeit one in which there
are multiple opposition groups rather than a single movement.
Until the past few days, US military officials had insisted that the
attacks were merely a product of the final rooting out of the remnants
of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now they are beginning to float the
idea that US forces face several different opposition forces —and
military experts outside the government concur with that assessment.
On Sunday, June 22, a 12-year-old-girl opened fire with an AK47 on patrolling
US soldiers in her hometown of Ramadi.
Six British soldiers were killed that following Tuesday in southern
Iraq during a shooting rampage by townspeople furious over the killing
of four neighbors during a demonstration, apparently at the hands of
British troops.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, assailants blew up a US military vehicle
with a roadside bomb, dropped grenades from an overpass, destroyed a
civilian SUV traveling with US troops, demolished an oil pipeline and
fired an apparent rocket-propelled grenade at a US army truck.
The pipeline sabotage was the sixth in two weeks.
The next day, ambushes and hostile fire killed at least two US soldiers,
two Iraqi civilians and wounded at least eight other Americans. One
victim included a soldier who was shot in the head at point-blank range
while shopping for DVDs at an outdoor market in Baghdad.
There was no let-up in the bad news for US forces over the weekend.
Attackers lobbed a grenade at a US convoy making its way through Baghdad
late Friday, killing one American soldier and wounding four others.
Elsewhere, a US army truck struck an explosive device on a dirt road.
On Saturday, the remains of two soldiers who had been abducted from
their post in Balad were recovered a few miles away. That night, assailants
lobbed two grenades near US soldiers guarding the Iraqi National Museum.
On Sunday, two US soldiers were wounded and an Iraqi civilian was killed
in a bomb attack on a US convoy heading towards Baghdad International
Airport. A US patrol was also attacked with rocket-propelled grenades
near Khaldiyah.
On Tuesday, July 1, four US soldiers in central Baghdad were killed
and two others wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their
vehicle by unknown assailants. At dawn, US troops in Fallujah also came
under fire in the fifth consecutive day of anti-US strikes in the town,
while a military vehicle was burned out by attackers in Yusufiyeh.
Since May 1, when US president George W. Bush declared major combat
operations over in Iraq, 65 Americans have died, including 25 in hostile
action.
Donald Rumsfeld said the American public was prepared to accept the
mounting death toll and felt the effort was “worthwhile”.
The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer dismissed suggestions that
the violence reflected a wider discontent with US rule and insisted
his Provisional Authority was making great strides in restoring services
and sovereignty.
Bremer said resistance in Iraq would be crushed. “We are going
to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if
necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country,”
he said. “Unfortunately it is the case that we will continue to
take casualties.”
Despite the mounting violence, Bremer claimed this week, that “day
by day things are continuing to improve.”
US forces were blamed for a blast at a mosque in Fallujah, which killed
10 Iraqis, including the imam who was preaching when the explosion happened
on Monday night. Fifteen people were also injured.
Several eyewitnesses said the mosque had been the target of a US airstrike,
as an aircraft was heard flying over the town before the shrine was
hit by what they said was a missile.
Thousands of Iraqis chanted angry slogans as they buried the dead: “America
is the enemy of God! Avenge the killings!”
“We will kill many American soldiers for this,” said Abdullah,
one of the crowd, as he looked at the ruins.
Falluja has been a hotbed of anti-US activity, and the scene of several
confrontations between US troops and insurgents. US soldiers shot and
killed 20 protesters in April, provoking widespread resentment.
Later that day, the main US military base in the town came under a rocket-propelled
grenade attack.
Iraqis interviewed about attacks on US forces largely approve of them.
One Iraqi observer said: “Iraqis generally believe it is good that
the Americans are attacked not because they support Saddam Hussein.
But they think that the US takes them lightly because the war only lasted
three weeks and therefore the Americans thought they could ignore Iraqi
opinion about the reconstruction of their country.”
So far there is no evidence that the attacks are centrally coordinated.
But the friction between Iraqis and the US troops is increasing, particularly
because of the failure to restore public security and the continuing
shortage of electricity and water as the torrid summer heat increases.
In Baghdad in particular the sense of personal insecurity felt by Iraqis
is exacerbated by the failure to get public services working. At the
beginning of last week there was no water supply in most of the capital
where at the height of summer the temperature can reach 140°F. Friday
was the fifth day in a row that most of Baghdad was without electricity.
Just last week Bremer had asserted that, with a few exceptions, Baghdad
was now receiving 20 hours of electricity a day.
“It simply isn’t true,” said one Iraqi, shaking his head
in disbelief after listening to Bremer. “Everybody in Baghdad knows
it.”
Last week, people in al-Thawra unearthed hidden rifles and threatened
to kill the manager of the local electrical sub-station if he did not
resume power supplies.
Christian Aid spokesman Dominic Nutt said Bremer’s optimistic view
of the humanitarian situation was “unmitigated nonsense.”
“Security is deteriorating day by day,” he said.
On Wednesday, Bush had a tough message for Iraqi militants attacking
US troops.
“There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they
can attack us there,” Bush said. “My answer is: Bring them
on.
“There’s people there that’d like to run us out of there,
create the conditions where we get nervous and decide to leave. We’re
not going to get nervous,” Bush insisted.
In a Washington Post report this week, Staff Sgt. Charles Pollard sent
his own message to the White House. “US officials need to get our
[expletive] out of here,” said the 43-year-old reservist from Pittsburgh,
PA, who arrived in Iraq with the 307th Military Police Company on May
24. “I say that seriously. We have no business being here. All
we are here is potential people to be killed and sitting ducks.”
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, Financial Times
(UK), Globe & Mail (Toronto), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Los
Angeles Times, New York Times, Reuters, The Scotsman, Seattle Times,
Sydney Morning Herald, Washington Post
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Post-9/11 immigrant roundup backfired
- report
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, June 26 (IPS)— Measures taken by the US administration
against Arab and Muslim immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks against New York and the Pentagon have not only failed to protect
US security, but may have made it more vulnerable, according to a major
report released here June 26.
The round-up and detention of more than 1,200 immigrants after the attacks
were particularly abusive, says the report by the Washington-based Migration
Policy Institute (MPI), an influential think tank.
It said that the government’s efforts to depict some of those who
were detained as terrorists were simply wrong. “The only charges
brought against them were actually for routine immigration violations
or ordinary crimes,’’ concludes the 165-page report, “America’s
Challenge: Domestic Security, Civil Liberties, and National Unity After
September 11”.
“Many of the policies that have been adopted in the wake of Sept.
11 are an attempt to use immigration as a proxy for anti-terrorism,’’
said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior counter-terrorism official
in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who is on MPI’s board
of advisers and helped prepare the report.
“We haven’t learned anything about pre-empting terrorism in
America, but we have intimidated, antagonized and alienated many [minority]
communities [which is] counter-productive to what the FBI and other
agencies are trying to do,” he added at the report’s release.
What breakthroughs have been made in identifying and apprehending terrorists
have been the result of traditional police and intelligence work and
cooperation and information-sharing with foreign intelligence agencies,
not from any of the immigration initiatives taken by the administration,
says the report, which also includes the most comprehensive compilation
of the individuals detained after 9/11 and their experiences.
“Arresting a large number of non-citizens ... only gives the nation
a false sense of security,’’ the document added.
The report is likely to be taken seriously. The MPI’s advisory
board members include the last two commissioners of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS): James Ziglar, who just served in the
current administration; and Doris Meissner, INS head under former President
Bill Clinton. Meissner co-authored the report.
In addition to Cannistraro, it also includes Mary Jo White, who, as
a former US attorney in the southern federal district of New York, gained
a reputation as a tough and relentless prosecutor in high-profile terrorism
cases.
The report also coincided with news that the Justice Department’s
inspector general (IG) is investigating possible abuses by federal prison
guards in Brooklyn against immigrants detained there.
In a widely noted report released earlier this month, the IG found “significant
problems’’ in the way federal officials dealt with the post-Sept.
11 roundups. Dozens of detainees were subject to verbal and physical
abuse by guards at the facility, where they were left to languish in
“unduly harsh’’ conditions for months, some without access
to family members or attorneys, it said.
The MPI report, whose scope is broader than the plight of the detainees,
nonetheless “puts flesh on the bones of the IG’s report,’’
according to David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who also
contributed to the document.
It found, for example, that, unlike the Sept. 11 hijackers, the majority
of those detained had significant ties to the United States and roots
in their communities here. Of the detainees on which relevant information
was available, almost half had lived in this country for at least six
years and had close family relationships here.
The report examines the government’s post-
9/11 immigration measures from three distinct perspectives — their
effectiveness in actually fighting terrorism, their impact on civil
liberties, and their effect on America’s sense of community as
a nation of immigrants. In each case, it concludes that the administration’s
policies were largely counter-productive.
The key to fighting terrorism, according to the report, is focusing
on improved intelligence, information and information sharing; better
and more targeted border protection; vigorous intelligence-based law
enforcement; and engagement with Arab- and Muslim-American communities.
“We believe it is possible to use immigration measures more effectively
to defend against terrorism, while also protecting the fundamental liberties
at the core of American identity,’’ Meissner said.
The latest raids follow an established pattern in US history, according
to the report. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, Congress enacted
strong anti-immigration measures while, during the “Red Scare’’
that followed World War I, the attorney general at the time, A. Mitchell
Palmer, ordered thousands of immigrants rounded up and detained without
due process.
During national security crises, Washington has often followed “the
course of least resistance,’’ according to Cole, who noted
that immigrants are particularly vulnerable to abuses at such times.
But the greatest harm to US anti-terrorist efforts in this case has
been the impact of the administration’s harsh measures on Arab-
and Muslim-American communities says the report. Programs such as requiring
special registration by males from certain countries carried out last
year has discouraged cooperation with law-enforcement agencies, in part
because they became a vehicle for sweeping up those with minor immigration
violations.
At the same time, the alienation and persecution felt by the same communities
immediately after Sept. 11 have also had the unintended effect over
time of reaffirming their identity as Muslims and Arabs in the United
States, according to Muzaffar Chishti, an MPI senior fellow and co-author.
“The experience of Muslim and Arab communities post-Sept. 11 is,
in many ways, an impressive story of a community that first felt intimidated,
but has since started to assert its place in the American body politic,’’
he said.
But Cannistraro stressed that the administration’s ham-fisted attack
on immigrant communities had also taken a heavy toll on its image in
the immigrants’ homelands overseas.
“If anything, we have painted an image of us as a narrow, biased
society that really believes in the Clash of Civilizations,’’
he said, singling out Attorney General John Ashcroft as especially responsible.
“It serves us poorly abroad, and it has provided ammunition to
some of the fiery imams who encourage young people (to sacrifice) themselves.’’
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TVA ruling fails to settle clean air
act debate
Atlanta, Georgia, June 27 (ENS)— The Tennessee Valley
Authority can ignore the Environmental Protection Agency’s orders
to clean up pollution at nine of its coal-fired power plants, a federal
appeals court ruled June 25. The ruling, made strictly on procedural
grounds, did little to clarify the ongoing debate over the New Source
Review provisions of the Clean Air Act, which the government alleged
the federally owned power company had violated.
The agency’s complaint with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
stems back to 1999, when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
alleged that TVA violated the New Source Review provisions when it carried
out 14 projects at nine of its coal fire plants between 1982 and 1996.
TVA’s coal-fired plants account for 63 percent of its power generation
and it is the largest single utility buyer of coal in the United States.
For the rest of this article, please see www.ens-news.com.
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