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US military shows callous disregard for
lives of civilians
Farah tried to plead with US troops, but she
was killed anyway
By Peter Beaumont
Farah Fadhil was only 18 when she was killed. An American soldier threw
a grenade through the window of her apartment. Her death, early last Monday,
was slow and agonizing. Her legs had been shredded, her hands burnt and
punctured by splinters of metal, suggesting that the bright high-school
student had covered her face to shield it from the explosion.
She had been walking to the window to try to calm an escalating situation;
to use her smattering of English to plead with the soldiers who were spraying
her apartment building with bullets.
But then a grenade was thrown and Farah died. So did Marwan Hassan who,
according to neighbors, was caught in the crossfire as he went looking
for his brother when the shooting began.
What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition
troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid
with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable.
What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the
story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation
of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently
beyond any accountability.
For while the media are encouraged to count each US death, the Iraqi civilians
who have died at American hands since the fall of Saddam’s regime
have been as uncounted as their names have been unacknowledged.
Mahmudiya is typical of the satellite towns that ring Baghdad, and the
apartment block where Farah died was typical of the blocks to be found
there — five stories or so high, set among dusty paths lined with
palms and stunted trees. In Saddam’s time, the people who lived here
were reasonably well-off — junior technicians for the nearby factories
run by the Ministry of Military Industrialization. These are not the poorest,
but they are by no stretch of the imagination well-off.
When the Americans arrived, say neighbors, the residents of this cluster
of blocks liked the young GIs. They say there were no problems and that
their children played with the troops, while residents would give them
food as the patrols passed by.
But all that came to a sudden bloody end at 12.30am last Monday, when
soldiers arrived outside the apartment block where Farah and her family
lived. What happened in a few minutes, and in the chaos of the hours that
followed, is written across its walls. The bullet marks that pock the
walls are spread in arcs right across the front of the apartment house,
so widely spaced in places that the only conclusion you can draw is that
a line of men stood here and sprayed the building wildly.
This is what the residents, and local police, told us had happened. Inside
the apartment with Farah were her mother and a brother, Haroon, 13. As
the soldiers started smashing doors, they began to kick in Farah’s
door with no warning. Panicking, and thinking that thieves were breaking
into the apartment, Haroon grabbed a gun owned by his father and fired
some shots to scare them off. The soldiers outside responded by shooting
up the building and throwing grenades into Farah’s apartment.
Abdul Ali Hussein was in the apartment next door to Farah’s when
the shooting began. ‘I was asleep when we heard the shooting, and
then an explosion blew open my door and filled my apartment with smoke.
I grabbed my family and took them to another room and covered them with
my body.
“I went to see if anyone needed my help next door. I went into three
rooms, saw Farah lying in the kitchen near the window. She was injured
and burnt, but still alive. I ran to get cotton wrapping and bandages
to try and treat her. We didn’t have enough and so tore up a head-cloth
to try and stop the bleeding. The soldier shouted at me: ‘Where are
the fedayeen?’ They told me to leave her because she was dead.’
As we were talking, a weeping man in a head-cloth arrived — Qasam
Hassan, the brother of the second fatality, Marwan. Qasam told us how
Marwan died. “When I heard the heavy shooting, I was in another apartment
building visiting friends. My brother was worried, so he went out to look
for me. He was not carrying any arms. He could not find me, and as he
came back to the building the Americans shot him. He ran and fell behind
the building and died. Among all of them they only had one translator.
How could people know what was going on?”
What is most curious about this story is that, when I called the US military
press office in Baghdad, it said it could find no record of the raid or
of the deaths. It is curious because the police in Mahmudiya have told
us how US military policemen delivered the bodies to their station the
next morning; how the local commander had expressed his commiserations;
how the same Iraqi police had complained that the new troops from the
82nd Airborne Division, who arrived fresh from the US last month, had
apparently reversed the policy of the previous US unit in the town to
take local police on raids.
It became less puzzling when I spoke to Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for
the International Committee for the Red Cross, who confirmed what she
has said before — that despite repeated requests from the Red Cross,
it can neither get information nor figures on civilian deaths during raids.
What happened at Mahmudiya would be disturbing enough if it was unique,
but it is not. It is part of a pattern that points not to a deliberate
policy but perhaps to something equally worrying, an institutional lack
of care among many in the US military for whether civilians are killed
in their operations. It is not enough to say, as some defenders of the
US military in Iraq do, that its soldiers are tired, frightened and under
pressure from the simmering guerrilla attacks directed against them. For
it is the impression that the US military gives of not caring about those
innocent Iraqis that they kill that is stoking resentment.
Iraqis have been killed at vehicle checkpoints and killed in their homes
in night-time raids. Policemen have been shot down doing what US forces
have asked them to do, trying to keep the peace. Indeed, the allegations
that US soldiers are too “trigger happy” even led to complaints,
in mid-August from Ibrahim al-Jaffri — then holding the rotating
presidency of the Iraqi provisional government — urging US troops
to exercise more care before firing.
“All we want are answers,” said Qassam Hassan. “All we
are asking for is justice.”
Source: Observer (UK)
Meglomania as foreign policy
By Ron Jacobs
“He must be removed from the stage of history,” said the
Israeli Defense Minister the other day in regards to Yassir Arafat.
He went on to say that the world now considers Minister Abbas the leader
of Palestine. This statement got me to wondering if this world that
recognized Mr. Abbas was the same world that recognized that the war
in Iraq was over. Or maybe it’s the world that thinks George Bush
was honestly elected to the office he now holds. Then again, it could
be the world that is convinced that the globalization of capitalism
is helping the poor people of the world get rich.
All I know is it’s not the world I live in. I’ve never been
a fan of Mr. Arafat, mostly because I’ve always disliked his nationalist
politics that border on the reactionary. In addition, his early support
of terror as a political/military tactic has always seemed morally questionable
and politically ignorant. Furthermore, his distaste for the grassroots
that appears at times to be based on a fundamental mistrust has helped
to keep the Palestinian people in the morass they are in. Indeed, it
could be argued that this apparent mistrust is a fundamental reason
his branch of the Palestinian movement chose terror as a military strategy.
Nonetheless, he does represent a substantial portion of the Palestinian’s
hopes in today’s world, which is exactly why the Israeli government
would love to render him irrelevant. If their words don’t do so,
one wonders what their next move might be. Whatever it turns out to
be, it won’t be pretty.
Americans and Israelis who support their respective governments are
in for a rude awakening. Military occupations do not foster docility.
Even the Nazis faced constant resistance. It’s our present day
shame that the government claiming to represent the people most hated
by the Nazis (Israel) and the government (US) who did much to free them
and their compatriots from their hell are now the governments most often
compared to their former enemy.
I receive responses to my commentaries and articles from people around
the world. Besides those who write only to threaten my person and attack
my masculinity, there are a number from folks who opposed the US war
on Iraq and other parts of the world but disagree with my call for an
immediate withdrawal of all US forces. Their usual reasons for their
opposition include the fear of potential chaos and a return of Saddam
Hussein. None of them address the fact that it is the Iraqis who are
demanding that the US pull out of their country. That fact should be
reason enough. The US was not invited in, nor was it invited to stay
after it finished its blitzkrieg attack. Indeed, the resistance to its
presence is greater now than at that time. Not only is it greater, but
it is growing increasingly more deadly, just like in the West Bank and
Gaza, which has been occupied by Israel for more than thirty-five years.
You’d think we would learn.
The arrogance implicit in Israel’s stance regarding Arafat is also
present in the rhetoric of the regime in Washington, DC. Now that they
see their Iraq strategy stumbling badly—so badly, in fact, that
it could ruin their hopes of another four years of their reign—they
have made statements to the effect that they would like other governments
to commit troops to the colonization of Iraq. Despite the US newspaper
headlines implying that these new troops would be under UN control,
this is not the case. Indeed, if one reads the statements from the US
administration one thing will be immediately clear. I quote the Washington
Post: “What remains key is that the US remain in charge of the
operation,” a senior defense official said. Any government who
honestly believes that their soldiers will be anything but substitute
targets for the GIs the resistance would rather be shooting at is beyond
foolish. One can only assume that these regimes are hoping to get some
substantial crumbs from the Empire’s table in return for the sacrifice
of their citizens. History tells us otherwise, but it also tells us
that governments are only too free with the lives of those poor souls
who fill their militaries.
The government of Bush and Oberfuehrer Rumsfeld has no intention of
sharing the military command, the colonial government, or the oil of
Iraq with any other nation or people, including the Iraqis. This has
been clear since well before the war in Iraq. Despite this, there are
some governments in the world who would like to be involved in this
imperial folly. The only way their megalomania will be stopped is if
the people of every nation make it clear to their governments that collaboration
with the Bush regime will mean their removal from the stage of history.
Who knows, but Tony Blair may be able to explain this better than I
can in a couple more weeks. One can only hope.
Source: Counterpunch
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