Iraq:
A country Drenched In Blood
By Patrick Cockburn
in Khanaqin, Diyala Province
22 March, 2007
The
Independent
"I have fled twice in the
past year," said Kassim Naji Salaman as he stood beside his petrol
tanker outside the town of Khanaqin in central Iraq this weekend. "I
and my family used to live in Baghdad but we ran for our lives when
my uncle and nephew were killed and we moved into a house in the village
of Kanaan in Diyala."
Mr Salaman hoped he and his
family, all Sunni, would be safer in a Sunni district. But almost everywhere
in Iraq is dangerous. "Militiamen kidnapped my brother Natik, who
used to drive this tanker, and forced him into the boot of their car,"
he continued. "When they took him out they shot him in the head
and left his body beside the road. I am frightened of going back to
Kanaan where my family are refugees because the militiamen would kill
me as well."
Iraqis expected their lives
to get better when the US and Britain invaded with the intention of
overthrowing Saddam Hussein four years ago today. They were divided
on whether they were being liberated or occupied but almost no Iraqis
fought for the old regime in 2003. Even his own Sunni community knew
that Saddam had inflicted almost a quarter of a century of hot and cold
war on his own people. He had reduced the standard of living of Iraqis,
owners of vast oil reserves, from a level close to Greece to that of
Mali.
No sooner had Saddam Hussein
fallen than Iraqis were left in no doubt that they had been occupied
not liberated. The army and security services were dissolved. As an
independent state Iraq ceased to exist. "The Americans want clients
not allies in Iraq," lamented one Iraqi dissident who had long
lobbied for the invasion in London and Washington.
Guerrilla war against the
US forces by the five million strong Sunni community erupted with extraordinary
speed and ferocity. By summer 2003, whenever I went to the scene of
a bomb attack or an ambush of US soldiers I would find jubilant Iraqis
dancing for joy around the pools of drying blood on the road or the
smouldering Humvee vehicles.
For Iraqis, every year has
been worse than the last since 2003. In November and December last year
alone 5,000 civilians were murdered, often tortured to death, according
to the UN. This toll compares to 3,000 killed in 30 years of conflict
in Northern Ireland. Many Iraqis have voted with their feet, some two
million fleeing - mostly to Syria and Jordan - since President George
Bush and Tony Blair ordered US and British troops across the Iraqi border
four years ago today.
So dangerous is it to travel
anywhere in Iraq outside Kurdistan that it is difficult for journalists
to provide evidence of the slaughter house the country has become without
being killed themselves. Mr Blair and Mr Bush have long implied that
the violence is confined to central Iraq. This lie should have been
permanently nailed by the Baker-Hamilton report written by senior Republicans
and Democrats, which examined one day last summer when the US military
had announced that there had been 93 attacks and discovered that the
real figure was 1,100. In other words the violence was being understated
by a factor of 10.
Diyala is one of the most
violent provinces. It used to be one of the richest, with rich fruit
orchards flourishing on the banks of the Diyala river before it joins
the Tigris south of Baghdad. But its sectarian geography is lethal.
Its population is a mixture of Sunni and Shia with a small Kurdish minority.
For at least two years it has been convulsed by ever-escalating violence.
It is impossible for a foreign
journalist to travel to Diyala from Baghdad unless he or she is embedded
with the US forces. I knew, having made the journey before, that it
was possible to get to Khanaqin, in the Kurdish controlled north-east
corner of Diyala by taking a road passing through Kurdish villages along
the Iraqi side of the Iranian border.
We started in Arbil, the
Kurdish capital, and drove through the mountains to Sulaimaniyah three
hours to the east. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party
of Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President, arranged a guide who knew the
road to take us on to Khanaqin the following morning. We drove out of
the mountains through the Derbendikan tunnel and then followed the right
bank of the Diyala river, swollen by torrential rain, until we got to
the tumble down town of Kalar. It is important here to turn right over
a long bridge across the Diyala because the next town on the road, Jalawlah,
is contested between Kurds and Arab Sunni. The road then goes in the
direction of the Iranian border until it reaches Khanaqin, which is
under PUK control.
We met a tribal leader from
Jalawlah called Ghassim Mohammed Shati, who was also a police captain.
He said: "The centre of the town is safe enough but my his father
and brother and aunt were murdered on the outskirts in March 2005."
Surprisingly Mr Shati did not favour shooting the insurgents who had
killed his relatives. "The only solution is to give employment
to the police and army officers who were sacked and now support al-Qa'ida.
If they get jobs they will stop," he said. Everybody agreed the
situation in Diyala was worse than ever. And the insurgents say they
are setting up the Islamic emirate of Diyala.
Earlier this month the US,
with much fanfare, sent 700 soldiers to Diyala to restore government
authority. It fought a ferocious battle with insurgents in which it
lost two armoured "Stryker" vehicles. But, as so often in
Iraq, in the eyes of Iraqis the presence or absence of American forces
does not make as much difference to who holds power locally as the US
military command would like to believe. Supposedly they are supporting
20,000 Iraqi security forces, but earlier this year it was announced
that 1,500 local police were to be fired for not opposing the insurgents.
At one embarrassing moment US and Iraqi military commanders were claiming
at a video-link press conference that they had a firm grip on the situation
in Baquba when insurgents burst into the mayor's office, kidnapped him
and blew it up.
Power in Diyala is fragmented.
As in the rest of Iraq it is difficult to know who is in charge. The
Iraqi government, whose ministers issue optimistic statements about
the improving state of their country when on visits to London or Washington,
carries surprisingly little weight outside the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Often its interventions do nothing but harm. For instance the main source
of employment in Khanaqin is the large border crossing from Iran at
Monzariyah. Cross-border traffic provided 1,000 jobs. But the government
has closed the crossing point and the road that used to be crowded with
trucks a few months ago is now empty.
No rations, on which 60 per
cent of Iraqis depend, have been delivered in Diyala for seven months.
Those delivering them say it is too dangerous to do so since the drivers
of trucks containing the rations are often deemed to be collaborators
by insurgents and shot to death. In Mr Salaman's village of Kanaan,
five men were burnt to death for guarding two petrol stations.
A difficulty in explaining
Iraq to the outside world is that since 2003 the US and British governments
have produced a series of spurious turning points. There was the capture
of Saddam Hussein in December 2003, the supposed hand back of sovereignty
in June 2004, the two elections and the new constitution in 2005 and
- recently - the military "surge" into Baghdad. In all cases
the benefits of these events were invented or exaggerated.
After Sunni fundamentalists
blew up the golden-domed Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February
last year, central Iraq was torn apart by sectarian fighting. Baghdad
broke up into a dozen hostile cities, Sunni and Shia, which fired mortars
at each other. Government ministries, if controlled by different communities,
fought each other. The Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150
people from the Sunni-held Higher Education Ministry and killed many
of them.
For a brief moment last November,
after the mid-term elections in the US and the Baker-Hamilton report,
it seemed that the US was going to be start negotiations with its myriad
enemies in around Iraq. But in the event President Bush refused to admit
failure. Some 21,500 troop reinforcements are being sent to Baghdad
and Anbar province to the west. So far there is little sign that the
"surge" will really change the course of the war.
Diyala, its once-prosperous
villages now becoming heavily armed Sunni or Shia fortresses, is a symbol
of the failure of the occupation that began four years ago. From an
early moment it was evident that only the Kurds in Iraq fully supported
the US and British presence.
The invasion four years ago
failed. It overthrew Saddam but did nothing more. It destabilised the
Middle East. It tore apart Iraq. It was meant to show the world that
the US was the world's only superpower that could do what it wanted.
In fact it demonstrated that the US was weaker than the world supposed.
The longer the US refuses to admit failure the longer the war will go
on.
© 2007 Independent News
and Media Limited
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