Operation
Iraqi Bloodbath
By James Conachy
07 April 2004
World Socialist Website
The
invasion of Iraq last year was christened Operation Iraqi Freedom
in an attempt to deflect from the utterly predatory and criminal character
of US ambitions in the Middle East. Twelve months later, as American
troops prepare to close in on the Shiite youth who have taken up arms
against them in Baghdad and other cities, and marines prepare reprisals
against the city of Fallujah, a more apt name would be Operation
Iraqi Bloodbath.
As the situation
stood on Monday night, an arrest warrant has been issued by the US Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) against the religious leader of the Shiite
uprising, 31-year-old cleric Moqtada Sadr. Along with many of his most
senior associates, he has been accused of responsibility for the killing
of a Shiite cleric in April 2003. No evidence has been provided and
the allegation has been repeatedly denied.
Sadr is barricaded
inside the main mosque in the city of Kufa. He has issued a statement
that he will not leave until the US occupation authority guarantees
when foreign forces will leave Iraq and the lifting of the ban on his
newspaper Al Hawza. Thousands of his young supporters, both armed and
unarmed, are occupying the mosques courtyard and surrounding area
to prevent any attempt by the American military to seize him.
In a direct threat
against the clerics life, US General Mark Kimmett told the press
yesterday: Whether Sadr decides to come peacefully, or whether
he decides to come not peacefullythat choice is the choice of
Mister Moqtada Sadr. Kimmitt declared: Individuals who create
violence, who incite violence... will be hunted down and captured or
killed. Its that simple.
A member of Sadrs
Mehdi Army militia told Agence France Presse (AFP) in Kufa:
We are ready to sacrifice our lives for our leader Moqtada if
the coalition troops touch a single strand of his hair.
The 500,000 citizens
of Fallujah, the Sunni Muslim centre where four American mercenaries
were killed and paraded through the streets last week, are waiting for
the inevitable re-entry of US troops into the city. The American military
has sealed off the roads with earth barricades and imposed a dawn to
dusk curfew. Al Jazeera reported that its journalists have been blocked
from entering the city. Helicopters and jet fighters are stalking the
sky above.
A force of 1,200
marines and hundreds of Iraqi Civil Defence Corp (ICDC) troops are poised
to go in, according to a marine spokesman Lieutenant James Vanzant.
The US troops reportedly have lists of addresses they allege are the
homes of resistance fighters, or of youth who were involved in parading
the mercenaries corpses. Leaflets were distributed throughout
the city yesterday warning people to stay inside their homes.
Air strikes were
called in Sunday night against a residential area the American military
claimed was being used as a mortar base. Five houses were damaged, five
civilians killed and a number of others injured. One marine was reportedly
killed and several wounded on the fringes of the city by mortar attacks.
A marine colonel
told the Los Angeles Times on the weekend: Fallujah is a barrier
on the highway to progress. Were going to eliminate the barrier
without damaging the highway.
Reprisal mentality
The reprisal mentality
guiding the American military forces calls to mind nothing less than
the conduct of Nazi occupation forces in Europe during World War II.
By the end of the war, the very term reprisal had become synonymous
with the mass killing of civilian populations supporting popular and
legitimate guerilla warfare against the Nazis. Hitler, in answer to
the operations of Soviet partisans, for example, issued instructions
in 1942 that whatever succeeds is correct. The German military
command responded by ordering its occupation troops to use any
means, even against women and children, provided they are conducive
to success.
The prospect is
looming in Iraq for an orgy of killing by US troops, in desperate and
murderous efforts to carry out the orders of the Bush administration
that they bring the situation under control. Bush declared from North
Carolina that the US had to stay the course, and we will stay
the course [in Iraq].
He was joined by
Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry. While calling again for
the involvement of the United Nations and other powers in Iraq, he declared
his full support for whatevers necessary to protect our
troops that are there and to provide for stability and success.
Other leading Democrats have followed suit.
The implications
of restoring stability are enormous. Entire swathes of the
country are now in a state of revolt over the crackdown against Sadr.
Militiamen have
control of the streets of Najaf, where they have taken up positions
around one of the holiest sites of the Shiite faith, the mausoleum of
Ali. Spanish troops in the area came under what the Spanish Defence
Ministry described as sporadic attack from mortar launchers.
The Spanish statement declared: The situation in Najaf has been
one of high tension. The Iraqi police have reportedly abandoned
the city to Sadrs supporters.
In Karbala, Kut,
Amara and Basra armed militiamen are also on the streets. So far, British
and other occupation forces have avoided a direct confrontation, but
gunfire exchanges took place at various times during the day.
In Baghdad, senior
members of Sadrs organisation are barricaded inside their headquarters
in the eastern Sadr City suburb, which was named after the
radical clerics father. American tanks and troops are in battle
positions just hundreds of metres away. Militiamen are manning road
and rooftop positions and at main intersections leading into the area.
When US forces attempted to move toward the headquarters earlier in
the day, crowds of unarmed Shiite civilians sat down in the middle of
road to block their path, chanting Long live Moqtada.
Fighting flared
early Monday in the northwest Baghdad suburb of Shuala. A convoy of
US and ICDC troops attempting to enter the area was attacked and one
truck set ablaze. According to an unconfirmed report, the ICDC troops
joined the militia and turned their guns on the Americans. For the first
time since last November, Apache attack helicopters were called in to
provide covering fire while the US troops pulled out.
It is now clear
that the events on Sunday have already inflicted large numbers of civilian
casualties in Baghdad. At least 47 people were killed when US troops
opened fire on a pro-Sadr demonstration in the city centre. During the
fighting that raged Sunday night in Sadr City, a market and a number
of buildings were levelled by American tanks. They came in humvees
and we kicked their asses, a 20-year-old youth told United Press
International, but after we burned the two humvees, their tanks
came late last night and shot everyone.
UPI reporters saw
at least 12 civilian bodies in one hospital, including two children.
Doctors claimed at least 12 others had already been taken away by their
families. According to militiamen, they did not take their dozens of
dead and wounded to the hospitals out of fear they would be arrested.
Doctor Tariq Atham
told UPI: I never saw a more despicable and evil action by the
Americans. Even Sharon or Saddam are better. They [the American troops]
shot children and women in the face and neck every time.
An illegal occupation
In the midst of
such atrocities, and preparations for even greater ones, CPA head Paul
Bremer denounced Sadr yesterday as an outlaw, who was attempting
to establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority.
The only authority
Bremer is referring to is the repressive power of the American military.
Despite the Islamic fundamentalist perspective of Sadrs organisation,
the movement that erupted on Sunday in his name is based among Iraqs
urban poor and is motivated by justified, anti-colonial resistance to
the American conquest of their country.
No institution created
by the US invasion, especially the one Bremer heads, has any political
or moral legitimacy, let alone popular support. The war was illegal
and conducted on the basis of threadbare liesone of the most threadbare
of which, apart from Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction,
was that the Iraqi people would welcome foreign invaders as liberators.
The majority of
Iraqis have been reduced to unspeakable poverty and deprivation by 13
years of US-led wars and economic sanctions. While still enduring mass
unemployment and deprivation, they are witnessing the US attempt to
install a puppet government that they do not support and which will
give the US control over the countrys energy resources and territory
for military bases.
There is a clear
element of provocation in the US actions against Sadr. Bremer and the
military have sought to push the clericwho has been one of the
more vocal critics of the US plans for a puppet regimeinto a corner
from which he had no choice but to either completely capitulate or sanction
an uprising.
Sadrs newspaper
was banned on March 28 for inciting violence, bringing thousands
of his supporters into the streets throughout last week in protest.
Amidst the turbulence, one of his closest associates was arrested on
Saturday on murder charges. The resulting mass protests on Sunday were
fired on by coalition troops in both Najaf and Baghdad, leading to the
uprising and pitched battles of Sunday night. It is doubtful whether
Sadr had any particular control over the course of events.
In a column in todays
British Guardian, journalist Naomi Klein posed the obvious question:
Why would the US provoke armed resistance in the Shiite population when
it is already incapable of suppressing the guerilla war in the Sunni
regions of the country?
Klein gave one possible
answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power
to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos
it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation
will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad
as if the hand-over happens and the country erupts, an increasingly
likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of
the interim constitution and the US-appointed Governing Council.
The speculation
is entirely valid. The invasion of Iraq has become a political debacle
for the Bush administration. The latest Pew Research opinion poll shows
that only 32 percent of Americans believe the White House has a clear
plan of what to do in Iraq. Only 50 percent support keeping troops
in the country, down from 63 percent in January. Bushs personal
approval rating of 43 percent is the lowest the survey has ever registered.
The US political
and media establishment, which completely backed the war and is totally
committed to continuing the occupation, faces an increasingly skeptical
and hostile American public that believes anything Bush says about Iraq
is a lie. All that are left are hollow appeals that the US cannot risk
the global political consequences of being seen to cut and run
in the face of the growing quagmire. The Democrats have stepped forward
as the main promoters of this position. The US, Kerry declared yesterday,
cannot allow this [Iraq] to end in failure.
The American working
class, however, has everything to gain from the failure of the criminal
enterprise in Iraq. It is being carried out against their interests,
at the expense of their democratic rights and at the cost of hundreds
of American, and thousand of Iraqi, lives. The only progressive answer
is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq of all US and
foreign forces.