Torture
And civilian Deaths
Reach Record Levels In Iraq
By Peter Symonds
23 September 2006
World
Socialist Web
The
latest UN findings on Iraq provide a devastating picture of torture,
escalating civilian deaths and lawlessness that represents a damning
indictment of US-led occupation. Three years after the illegal invasion,
the violent activities of the US military and its allies in suppressing
any opposition have been supplemented by a spiralling sectarian civil
war.
According to a United Nations
Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) report released on Wednesday, the
civilian death toll throughout the country reached a record of 6,599
for July and August, or more than 100 a day, up from 5,818 for previous
two months. The UNAMI figures plot a rise from 710 in January to 1,129
in April and 3,149 in June followed by 3,590 in July and 3,009 in August.
The actual toll is likely
to be far higher. UNAMI estimates are based on two sources: the Ministry
of Health, which records deaths reported by hospitals, and the Medico-Legal
Institute in Baghdad, which tallies the unidentified bodies it receives.
During July, the health ministry reported no deaths in Anbar province—the
region of fiercest resistance to the US military.
UNAMI stated it continued
to receive reports of US-led forces participating “in incidents
of excessive use of force and restrictions imposed on the movement of
civilians”. Deaths are also being caused by anti-US resistance
groups as well as criminal gangs. However, the huge toll is increasingly
due to sectarian violence.
“These killings reflect
the fact that indiscriminate killings of civilians have continued throughout
the country, while hundreds of bodies appear bearing signs of severe
torture and execution-style killing. Such murders are carried out by
death squads or by armed groups, with sectarian or revenge connotations,”
the report stated.
UNAMI also pointed to rising
numbers of “honour killings” of women, with an increase
of women and girls shot through the chest, rather than the head. According
to local informants, extremist Sunnis and Shiites have created secretive
sharia committees, responsible for the brutal enforcement of their regressive
moral codes for women.
Most of the killings—5,106
for July and August—took place in Baghdad, which has been turned
into a battleground between sectarian militia. Violent attacks and reprisals
involving the often-arbitrary killing of civilians are a daily occurrence.
A city of more than five million people, or about 20 percent of the
total population, that once prided itself on its cosmopolitanism is
being carved into ethnically cleansed suburbs.
The UNAMI report estimated
that 300,000 people have been displaced from their homes since February
when the bombing of the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra triggered
a sharp rise in communal violence. UN secretary general Kofi Annan warned
on Monday of a “grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down,
possibly in the midst of a full-scale civil war”.
The responsibility for this
sectarian carnage rests with the Bush administration, which has relied
on Shiite fundamentalist and Kurdish nationalist parties to impose its
rule in Iraq. Many of the gangs of killers that operate inside the police
force, including the Interior Ministry’s notorious Wolf Brigade,
were established by American operatives in 2004 and modelled on US-backed
right-wing death squads in Latin America. A growing stream of US commentators
have this year openly advocated the partition of Iraq on communal and
sectarian lines as the means for bring the country and its oil firmly
under US control.
It is no surprise that shadowy
government forces and various militia groups operate networks of secret
torture chambers throughout Baghdad. Washington’s handpicked prime
minister Awad Allawi set the example in 2004 when, according to eyewitness
accounts to the Sydney Morning Herald, he personally shot dead at least
six handcuffed prisoners in Baghdad’s Al-Amariyah security centre
in front of police and US military personnel. As one of the eyewitnesses
declared: “Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and
soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone.”
Torture and brutal executions
are now an everyday occurrence. The UNAMI report stated: “Bodies
found at the Medico-Legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture,
including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances,
missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes, missing
teeth and wounds caused by power drills and nails.”
Speaking in Geneva on Thursday,
Manfred Nowak, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture and cruelty,
declared that torture was “totally out of hand” in Iraq.
“The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it had
been in the times of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “You have
terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these
militias. There are so many people who are abducted, seriously tortured
and finally killed.”
Nowak conducted extensive
interviews with Iraqi refugees in neighbouring Jordan. He said he received
allegations of torture in prisons run by Iraq’s interior and defence
ministries as well as jails under the control of the US and its allies.
“Many of these allegations, I have no doubt that they are credible,”
he said. Nowak called for the full publication of the results of a government
inquiry into human rights violations at Al-Jadiriya detention centre
in November 2005.
Speaking to the London Times,
a US State Department official vehemently rejected Nowak’s statements,
saying: “How anyone could compare state-sanctioned torture under
a dictator to the situation today is beyond us.” Torture, however,
is exactly what the Bush administration has sanctioned not only in Baghdad,
but Guantánamo Bay and a network of CIA-run prisons around the
world. Nowak diplomatically declared that the situation appeared to
have improved since the exposure of US abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
But there is no independent confirmation of the current conditions inside
US military prisons in Iraq.
The UNAMI report said 35,000
Iraqis were being held in detention at the end of August, a 28 percent
increase from the end of June. Of those, 13,571 were being held by US
and other foreign forces, which continue to conduct arbitrary, widespread
searches and detentions. All the prisoners in US custody are being held
indefinitely without charge, in flagrant violation of their basic democratic
rights. As of September 9, only 1,445 had been put on trial in Iraqi
courts, and 1,252 convicted.
Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin
Hassan told Associated Press last weekend that he was detained “for
security reasons” in April 2004 and held for 13 months at Abu
Ghraib and Bucca where he was interrogated incessantly. He was refused
a lawyer or any contact with his family. Another former prisoner Waleed
Abdul Karim, who was incensed about his treatment in a US military jail,
declared: “I will hate Americans for the rest of my life.”
In a report to the UN Security
Council on September 1, secretary general Annan tentatively expressed
“concern” that arbitrary detention and torture continued
to be widespread. “On June 1 2006, a joint inspection of a prison
site by representatives of the Iraqi Government and the Multinational
Force found 1,431 detainees with signs of physical and psychological
abuse. A total of 52 arrest warrants have been issued against officials
of the Ministry of the Interior but they have yet to be served,”
he stated.
Torture and execution-style
killings are continuing unabated. Over the past week, nearly 200 bodies
have been found in the capital. US military spokesman Major General
William Caldwell declared on Wednesday that there had been “a
spike”, saying: “Many bodies found had clear signs of being
bound, tortured and executed. We believe death squads and other illegal
armed groups are responsible for this type of violence.” Given
the origins of the death squads, however, the involvement of US forces
certainly cannot be ruled out.