Terrified
Soldiers Terrifying People
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali al-Fadhily
10 January, 2007
Inter
Press Service
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Jan
8 (IPS) - Ten-year-old Yassir aimed a plastic gun at a passing
U.S. armoured patrol in Fallujah, and shouted "Bang! Bang!"
Yassir did not know what
was coming. "I yelled for everyone to run, because the Americans
were turning back," 12-year-old Ahmed who was with Yassir told
IPS.
The soldiers followed Yassir
to his house and smashed almost everything in it. "They did this
after beating Yassir and his uncle hard, and they spoke the nastiest
words," Ahmed said.
It is not just the children,
or the people of Fallujah who are frightened.
"Those soldiers are
terrified here," Dr. Salim al-Dyni, a psychotherapist visiting
Fallujah told IPS. Dr Dyni said he had seen professional reports of
psychologically disturbed soldiers "while serving in hot areas,
and Fallujah is the hottest and most terrifying for them."
Dr. Dyni said disturbed soldiers
were behind the worst atrocities. "Most murders committed by U.S.
soldiers resulted from the soldiers' fears."
Local Iraqi police estimate
that at least five attacks are being carried out against U.S. troops
in Fallujah each day, and about as many against Iraqi government security
forces. The city in the restive al-Anabar province to the west of Baghdad
has been under some form of siege since April 2004.
That has meant punishment
for the people. "American officers asked me a hundred times how
the fighters obtain weapons," a 35-year-old resident who was detained
together with dozens of others during a U.S. military raid at their
houses in the Muallimin Quarter last month told IPS.
"They (American soldiers)
called me the worst of names that I could understand, and many that
I could not. I heard younger detainees screaming under torture repeating
'I do not know, I do not know', apparently replying to the same question
I was asked."
U.S. soldiers have been reacting
wildly to attacks on them.
Several areas of Fallujah
recently went without electricity for two weeks after U.S. soldiers
attacked the power station following a sniper attack.
Thubbat, Muhandiseen, Muallimeen,
Jughaifi and most western parts of the city were affected. "They
are punishing civilians for their failure to protect themselves,"
a resident of Thubbat quarter told IPS. "I defy them to capture
a single sniper who kills their soldiers."
Many of those killed in the
ongoing violence are civilians. The biggest local complaint is that
U.S. forces attack civilians at random in revenge for colleagues killed
in attacks by the resistance.
More than 5,000 civilians
killed by U.S. soldiers have been buried in Fallujah cemeteries and
mass graves dug on the outskirts of the city, according to the Study
Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a non-governmental organisation
based in Fallujah.
"At least half the deceased
are women, children and elderly people," group co-director Mohamad
Tareq al-Deraji told IPS.
Overstretched U.S. soldiers
appear to be punishing civilians while suffering from some form of post-traumatic
stress disorder. IPS reported Jan. 3 that new guidelines released by
the Pentagon last month allow commanders now to re-deploy soldiers suffering
from such disorders.
According to the U.S. military
newspaper Stars and Stripes, service members with "a psychiatric
disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty
performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic
stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.
Steve Robinson, director
of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America told IPS correspondent
Aaron Glantz that "as a layman and a former soldier I think that's
ridiculous."
"If I've got a soldier
who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds
of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their
hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves
and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has
its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions,
and is gambling that they can be successful."
(Ali al-Fadhily is our Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist
writer who has spent eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has
been covering the Middle East for several years.)
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