Iraq’s
Death Squads: An Instrument
Of The Occupation
By Ghali Hassan
04 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
On November 14, 2006 militias
and death squads dressed as police commandos kidnapped up to 150 staff
and visitors in broad daylight raid – one of daily raids throughout
Iraq – on the Higher Education Ministry annexe in central Baghdad.
Although some hostages have been released, the fate of others is unknown.
It is alleged that large number of the hostages have been tortured and
others were murdered. The totality of the raids, kidnapping, torture,
ongoing civilian massacres and murder were part of the illegal and racist
war of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. and Britain against a defenceless
nation in disregard of International Law and contempt for International
institutions.
Let me stating the obvious. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish
“democracy” and “free Iraqis”. The U.S. invaded
and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims –
Arabs in particular –, protect Israel’s Zionist expansion
and control Iraq’s natural wealth. So, the U.S.-imposed democracy
by force is fraud. ‘Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom
up, not from top down’. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine
and U.S. support for Israel’s criminal destruction of Lebanon
are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea
that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq to stabilise the situation
is a falsehood. Destabilisation was one of the aims of U.S. foreign
policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the continuing U.S. presence
in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the
largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising
factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide
the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges,
with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and its allies were involved in the
training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators.
The most conspicuous of these militia groups are: 1. The Iraqi National
Congress (INC) led by the indicted conman Ahmed Chalabi. 2. The Iraqi
National Accord (INA) led by Iyad Allawi, the U.S./Britain most preferred
‘strongman’ because of his criminal past. Both groups constitute
of Iraqi expatriates (including ex-Ba’athists), trained and armed
by the U.S. and Britain. 3. The Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the
Da’awa/SCIRI religious 'parties' led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim
al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki. This group constitutes of thousands of
Iraqi expatriates and illegal Iranian immigrants expelled from Iraq
in 1980s. The group trained and heavily armed by Iran and the U.S. 4.
The Kurdish militia (the Peshmerga) led by opportunist warlords were
trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel. All four groups were involved
in acts of terrorism and took arms against the Iraqi State. With U.S.
blessing and guns, they have replaced the disbanded Iraqi military and
police force.
There is also the Sadr movement (known as the Mehdi Army), the anti-Occupation
movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement bears the brunt of Western
media attacks, including demonisation and accusations of crimes. U.S.
forces and U.S. collaborators in different parts of Iraq have targeted
the movement with deadly attacks. The recent car and mortar attacks
on Sadr City, which took the lives of more than 200 civilians and injured
many more were coordinated – as always – with U.S. forces.
The movement’s involvement in crimes against Iraqi civilians remains
unproven. It is also unknown how much influence does al-Sadr exerts
on the many units of the Mehdi Army. However, al-Sadr has yet to publicly
denounce those who work against the interests of all Iraqis, including
the puppet government.
During the invasion of Iraq, the four groups of trained militia were
piggybacked into Iraq by the invading forces to provide support and
to terrorise the civilian population. The Badr Brigade armed with tanks
and personal carriers, invaded Iraq from Iran to assist the invading
U.S./British forces in the invasion. The Kurdish militia attacked Iraqi
forces stationed in the Northern provinces. Without exception, the four
groups participated in the pillaging and looting of the Iraqi State
and Iraq’s wealth, including Iraqi cultural heritage under the
radar screen of the invading forces. Today, the leaders of the militias
form about two-thirds of the U.S.-imposed Iraqi puppet government, and
exert significant influence on the newly U.S.-created Iraqi army and
security force, including the Ministry of Interior.
Since the invasion, each militia group has mutated into several groups
of death squads and criminal gangs such as; the Wolf Brigade, the Karar
Brigade, the Falcon Brigade, the Amarah Brigade, the Muthana Brigade,
the Defenders of Kadhimiyah, and the special police commandos. They
are armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies, and fully integrated
into the Occupation. Each group is carefully used by the occupying forces
for terrorising the Iraqi civilian population in a campaign designed
to erode the civilian population’s support for the Iraqi Resistance
against the Occupation. U.S. military sources have openly admitted that
the population, where support for the Resistance is high, “is
paying no price for the support it is giving to the [Resistance] …
We have to change that equation”, (Newsweek, 14 January 2004).
In other words, Iraqis civilians are deliberately targeted for rejecting
the Occupation.
In his Let
a Thousand Militias Bloom, Arun Gupta writes that ‘the U.S.
government is not only aware of these illegal militias but is arming,
training and funding them for use in their counter-insurgency operations’.
According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the “special
police commandos” – is being used throughout Iraq and has
been conducting criminal assassinations known as the “Salvador
option” with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. “Pound for
pound, though, they are the toughest force we’ve got”, Col.
Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. David Petraeus’s command
told Greg Jaffe (WSJ, February 16, 2005). The occupying forces have
also succeeded in turning one militia group against the other using
the civilian population as a fodder. “And it's all happening under
the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene”,
revealed Deborah Davies in a special Channel 4 investigation, ‘Iraq’s
Death Squads’.
To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal
campaign of “De-Ba’athification”, which implied the
liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba’ath Party as well
as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. “De-Ba’athification”
is simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying
the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, U.S. Special Forces,
the pro-Occupation militias and death squads have embarked on deliberate
campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of scientists,
including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have
been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and
medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher
Education reported that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and
some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the
UN more than 3,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid
being killed. More than 1.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.
The aim is to create a climate of terror and incite civil war among
Iraqis in order to justify the ongoing Occupation of Iraq and the fraudulent
“war on terror”. The growing number of daily civilian massacres,
rapes and torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces and their collaborators are
deliberately ignored by the media, making Iraq the biggest hidden U.S.
atrocity in the U.S. history of violence against defenceless people.
It is also possible that the violence is created to provide a “safety
net” for foreign troops' withdrawal and discredit the heroic struggle
and Resistance against the Occupation and deny Iraqis victory against
the most violent and powerful war machine in history.
For example, in his lengthy article (Boston Review, 27 November 2006)
Nir Rosen dwells on the manufactured significance of al-Sadr and rarely
holds the U.S. accountable for the illegal and criminal destruction
of Iraq and the murderous crimes again the Iraqi people. He writes;
“The civil war was spreading. Violence between Sunnis and Shias
[sic] took on a life of its own, operating outside the reaches of the
occupation and its forces. Sectarian violence even extended to the American
prisons in Iraq, and prisoners segregated themselves”. How the
violence operates “outside the reach of the occupation and it
forces”, and inside the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq”? Rosen
provides no explanation. Similarly, Peter Beaumont of the London Observer
(08 October 2006), called the Occupation “a brutal conflict”
and replaced the illegal invasion with the phrase “American arrival”
in Iraq, deliberately shielding the U.S. from any responsibility for
the horrific crimes committed against the Iraqi people. According to
Rosen, and Beaumont, the ‘New Iraq’ is occupied by “Iraqis
fighting Iraqis”, and that the more than 200,000 U.S. troops and
foreign mercenaries are nowhere to be seen.
From the outset of the Occupation, the media continue to obfuscate reality
on the ground in Iraq, misinform (see Max Fuller Crying
Wolf) the public and divert public attention from the Occupation
as the generator of the violence, and blame Iraqis themselves. Hence,
Iraq is reconstructed according to Western media and pundits. The use
of the phrase “sectarian violence” and the labels of “Sunnis”
versus “Shi’ites” are invented to cover-up deliberate
crimes against civilians, shield the occupying forces from any responsibility
and portray the Occupation-generated violence as Iraqis killing Iraqis.
The U.S. policy of “let them kill each other” is an integral
part of U.S. foreign policy carefully executed to serve U.S. imperialist
interests. Hence, the comment of Senator Carl Levin, “We cannot
save the Iraqis from themselves”, designed to deflect any U.S.
responsibility away from war crimes and misleadingly presenting the
Occupation as the saviour of Iraqis. We know that the vast majority
of Iraqis disagree and want the immediate end of the Occupation. More
than 61 per cent of Iraqis approve of the Resistance attacks against
the occupying forces. The U.S. and its allies bear full responsibility
for the destruction of Iraq and for the death of more than 700,000 innocent
Iraqi civilians.
Iraqis have gone many generations without fighting each other. Iraqi
(males and females) worked studies and conducted their business in a
safe environment. Regardless of their religious affiliations and ethnic
backgrounds, the Iraqi people were living in peaceful environment despite
the horror of the West-imposed genocidal sanctions. Why have they suddenly
started fighting? Why all these crimes and bloodshed did not take place
under the government of Saddam Hussein, even when his government was
scrutinised by Western NGOs and human rights organisations? Today, these
NGOs and human rights organisations have remained silent, preferring
to use the fraudulent and farcical trial of Saddam to claim credibility
of “defending” human rights. In less than four years, the
U.S. and U.S.-trained and armed death squads and militias have destroyed
Iraq beyond comprehension.
The immediate arrest of senior police commandos after the raid on the
Higher Education Ministry annexes and the immediate release of some
hostages shed light on the extent of U.S. complicity in the ongoing
crimes against the Iraqi people. Therefore, the longer the U.S. forces
stayed in Iraq, the more violence they generate. Only full and immediate
withdrawal of U.S. forces and mercenaries will contribute to the end
of violence and ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people.
Ghali Hassan an independent writer lives in Western Australia
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights