US
Occupation Sets Off
Sectarian Atrocities In Tal Afar
By James Cogan
31 March, 2007
World
Socialist Web
After
suffering four years of US occupation, constant violence and unspeakable
living conditions, communities in some of the most traumatised cities
in Iraq are facing a new wave of sectarian and politically motivated
killings, provoked by the stepped up operations being carried out by
American troops and the predominantly Shiite and Kurdish Iraqi government
security forces against largely Sunni insurgents.
Shiites in Tal Afar were
brutally targeted by suspected Sunni extremists on Tuesday. The Sunni
population in the north-west Iraqi city was subjected to a massive US
attack in late 2005 and has lived since under the guns of Kurdish and
Shiite police and troops. On Tuesday, a man drove an explosives-packed
truck into a Shiite neighbourhood and attracted a large crowd around
the vehicle by announcing he was distributing flour from a humanitarian
organisation. As families gathered in the hope of food assistance, the
bomber blew up the truck.
A second bomber detonated
a car bomb in a busy Shiite shopping area a short time later, collapsing
buildings and homes and inflicting carnage. As many as 80 people, mainly
women and children, were killed by the two blasts. At least another
185 were wounded. According to one report, gunmen fired on ambulances
attempting to take the casualties to medical facilities. The Tal Afar
hospital, which has never recovered from the US assault on the city
18 months ago, was unable to cope with the number of injured.
Shiite police and militiamen
retaliated by massacring civilians in Sunni areas. According to Sunni
political organisations, police and masked gunmen rampaged during the
night, smashing into homes, dragging men into the streets and shooting
them through the head. An Iraqi Army commander told Associated Press
that 70 men were murdered and another 40 had been kidnapped. In an attempt
to prevent the killings, the Iraqi government ordered army units into
the Sunni suburbs and confined the police to their barracks. As many
as 18 Shiite police were arrested but, according to the provincial governor,
were released to prevent “unrest”. Relations between Shiites
and Sunnis within the city have been left in a poisoned state.
The situation in Tal Afar
is a sharp warning of what the Bush administration’s “surge”
in Iraq is likely to produce. President Bush and US military commanders
have repeatedly held up the massive assault on the city in late 2005
as an example of how a flood of American and government troops into
a volatile part of Iraq produces “stability”. This week’s
sectarian atrocities highlight the reality. The US and mainly Shiite
government forces have brutalised the city’s Sunni community,
among whom insurgents were based, provoking suicide attacks against
innocent Shiite civilians. Far from stability, US operations are aggravating
sectarian tensions and fuelling the civil war that is now raging across
much of the country.
In Diyala province, where
American and government troops are conducting sustained operations against
Sunni insurgents, reports came in Wednesday that Sunni fundamentalists
are now ordering Shiite and Kurdish families to leave their villages
or be killed. Dozens of alleged Sunni guerillas have been killed or
captured over the past several weeks in and near the province capital,
Baquba.
Sectarian violence between
rival Sunni and Shiite groups is also ongoing throughout Baghdad, amid
the deployment of thousands of additional US and government troops.
Each day this week, the mutilated bodies of Sunni men have been found
dumped in various parts of the city—most likely the victims of
Shiite militia death squads.
In Hilla, a city to the south
of Baghdad, Shiite militias reportedly carried out revenge attacks on
three Sunni mosques on Tuesday, following the bombing of a Shiite place
of worship on the weekend. On Saturday, unknown gunmen fired on children
playing soccer in a Shiite neighbourhood. On Tuesday, four people were
killed and 14 wounded when mortar shells were indiscriminately fired
into a Shiite district. A car bomb killed at least two people in another
Shiite district the following day.
Yesterday was the bloodiest
day of all. Five suicide bombings took place in Shiite areas in or close
to Baghdad. At least 79 people were slaughtered and over 80 wounded
when two bombers detonated explosives strapped to their bodies in the
middle of the Shalal market in the Shaab district of the capital. Three
vehicle bombs—including one hidden inside an ambulance—were
exploded in the town of Khalis, north of Baghdad, killing 43 and wounding
another 86.
In the predominantly Sunni
Arab cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province, which have been
devastated by constant battles between insurgents and occupation troops
since the March 2003 invasion, US policies have provoked bloody fighting
between local tribes and guerillas loyal to Sunni religious groups.
Over recent months, American commanders in Anbar have spent considerable
amounts of time and money attempting to bribe Arab tribes away from
supporting the insurgency. Islamic extremists believed to be linked
to Al Qaeda are now responding in murderous fashion.
In Ramadi, a suicide bomber
blew up a car on Tuesday outside a restaurant frequented by members
of an Arab tribe whose sheik has begun assisting US and government troops.
In western Baghdad, two suicide bombers killed the son of another Sunni
tribal sheik who has publicly declared opposition to Al Qaeda.
In Fallujah, two suicide
bombers were intercepted on Wednesday as they attempted to drive trucks
laden with chlorine into the offices of the city mayor. Gunfire detonated
the vehicles, forcing dozens of American and Iraqi soldiers to seek
treatment for chlorine inhalation. The attack came in the wake of another
chlorine bombing two weeks ago against a village of the Albu Issa tribe—a
large Arab tribe in the area that has refused to pledge allegiance to
fundamentalist parties who have declared Anbar province to be an Islamic
state. Dozens of people, including children, were poisoned. At least
eight attacks using chlorine have taken place this year. Tribe members,
many of whom fought US troops during the battles in Fallujah during
2004, are now alleged to be assisting government forces hunting down
Islamic militants.
The sectarian carnage is
the focus of media coverage in the United States and internationally
for an obvious reason: it is used to justify the false claim by the
Bush administration that American troops are engaged in a struggle against
terrorists who would carry out mass killings if the occupation were
ended.
Millions of Iraqis are aware,
however, that the divisions tearing apart the country have been directly
stoked by the US occupation since 2003. Until now, the various puppet
governments permitted to function in Baghdad have been explicitly based
on the interests of small Shiite and Kurdish elites, who have been offered
a minor stake in the wealth that will be plundered as the country’s
oil and gas resources are opened up to transnational energy conglomerates.
The Sunni population, from which the former Baathist regime derived
most of its support, has been marginalised.
The Shiite working class—which
is so often the target of Sunni extremist attacks—has also gained
nothing from US occupation but impoverishment and is equally hostile
to the presence of American troops. One of the major aims of the US
surge is the repression of Shiite opposition in the working class suburb
of Sadr City, where sectarian atrocities against Shiite civilians have
been followed by bitter demonstrations demanding the immediate withdrawal
of US forces from the country.
The stepped-up counter-insurgency
operations have only added to the seething anger in Sunni areas and
among Shiite urban poor. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that
Iraqi government prisons are overflowing with detainees who were rounded
up during street sweeps during February. One prison was found to have
over 700 people crammed into an area designed to accommodate just 75.
The prisoners are both Sunni
and Shiite. Over the past several months, hundreds of men have been
detained as alleged members of the Mahdi Army Shiite militia, which
is primarily based in Sadr City and is accused of staging attacks on
US forces.
Insurgents demonstrated again
this week their ability to strike at the very centre of the US occupation
when they unleashed a barrage of rockets into the highly defended Green
Zone on Tuesday. One American soldier and a civilian contractor were
killed. Last week, another attack on the Green Zone saw a rocket detonate
just 50 metres from where Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was in
talks with United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
Since George Bush announced
the surge of troops on January 10, American deaths have averaged close
to three per day, with at least another 20 wounded. Total US casualties
have now reached 3,245 dead, 24,314 combat wounded and over 25,000 non-combat
medical evacuations. Iraqi soldiers and police collaborating with the
US forces are being killed and injured in even greater numbers.
The broad opposition to the
occupation among Iraqis of all backgrounds underscores the reactionary
character of the sectarian violence. Bombings and massacres such as
those that occurred in Tal Afar serve only to divert the resistance
of the Iraqi people into the dead-end of communalism and away from a
unified struggle against the US attempt to subjugate the country.
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