Executions
Not Leading
To Reconciliation
By
Ali al-Fadhily
23 November,
2007
Inter Press Service
BAGHDAD,
Nov 22 (IPS) - The executions of former regime officials are
creating greater division, rather than reconciliation, among Iraqis.
Special courts
formed by the American occupation authorities in Iraq are issuing death
sentences -- like that carried out on former Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein, on 30 December 2006 -- on what many Iraqis are interpreting
as a political basis.
"Executing
Saddam cost Iraqis a lot of hatred and more division between the sects,
" Walid Al-Ubaidi, post-graduate law student at Baghdad University
told IPS.
"Now
they [U.S.-backed Iraqi Government] are executing the Ex-Minister of
Defense, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, who was very well known for being a professional
general who led the Iraqi army against Iran," Al-Ubaidi said, stressing
that, "This man represents a symbol for the Iraqi army that defended
Iraq."
On 24 June
2007 the Iraqi High Tribunal found Ahmed guilty of presiding over the
killing of thousands of Kurds during the Anfal campaign in the 1980s.
Several legal
delays, and more recently a delay for a religious holiday, have postponed
the execution.
A clerk in
the court where Ahmed and a number of his generals were sentenced spoke
with IPS on condition of anonymity. He asked to be referred to as Hassan.
"We
were surprised by the sentence," Hassan told IPS in Baghdad, "This
general was no more than a government official who carried out orders
with notable skill and proficiency."
"What
makes us better than any of those we called dictators and war criminals?"
Hassan asked.
"These
generals were the ones who defeated Iran in the war and so [Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri] Al-Maliki and his American masters want to punish them
in order to please the Iranian Ayatollahs," former Iraqi army colonel
Saad Abbas told IPS in Baghdad.
Anger against
the U.S. occupation for the sentences has also been aroused because
of the promise for asylum the general was given before he surrendered
to U.S. military forces.
"They
promised him asylum and that was why he surrendered to them in peace,"
a relative of the general, speaking on condition of anonymity, told
IPS.
"They
even asked him to take a post in the new system, but he refused, and
maybe that is why they sold him to his enemies," the relative said.
An Iraqi
resistance fighter spoke with IPS on condition of strict anonymity.
"We
are not happy for this man’s execution, but we believe it was
his fault to trust the Americans," he said. "He should have
known, as a general who negotiated with them more than once, how bad
they were. Moreover, he should have joined the resistance against occupation
rather than surrender to his dirty enemies."
"This
man and his colleagues represent the army that terrified those Arab
tyrants in an Arab neighboring country," Thuraya Shamil, an engineer
from Baghdad Municipality told IPS.
"They
cannot forget the day that they ran out of their palaces like rats,"
Shamil emphasised.
Others view
the situation differently, but still agree that the generals do not
deserve to be sentenced to death.
"At
the moment we are looking for solutions to the dilemma of internal divisions,
comes these sentences to widen the gaps between sects and groups,"
Malik Nazar, a member of the Iraqi Dialogue Front that has nine MPs
in the Iraqi Parliament, told IPS.
"We
must stop sacrificing our men for the sake of sending messages of compassion
to Iran and others who have feuds with our heroic army men," Nazar
stressed.
"They
are killing any Sunni Arab who might one day lead Iraqis, or at least
a group of Iraqis, when this dirty occupation leaves the country,"
Ali Salman, a teacher in Baghdad, told IPS, "As long as Iranians
and Kurds are our real rulers, all our good men will always be targeted."
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