Heavy Handed
Raid Backfires
By Dahr Jamail
29 April, 2004
The New Standard
The
26 April explosions at a chemical warehouse being raided by the U.S.
military constitute yet another example of heavy-handed tactics gone
awry. US officials say they had reason to believe the facility was being
used to manufacture chemical munitions. Rather than use other means
to investigate, such as better human intelligence or a more discreet
method of entry, the military used its preferred reconnaissance approach:
a cadre of soldiers, armored vehicles and a blowtorch. Troops stormed
their way into the facility, with horrendous consequences.
The US military
reports two soldiers died and fifteen were wounded in two massive explosions
that immediately followed troops attempt to access the building.
When I arrived at
the scene, a witness told me, People were jumping and dancing
on the burning Humvees because of the hatred towards the Americans due
to their dealings with Iraqis. People were cheering for Falluja.
Images of the aftermath were broadcast and printed throughout the Western
media.
In order for Western
observers to understand why the deaths of people presented to Western
audiences as liberators would be cheered by those supposedly being liberated,
the media would need to present the hundreds of raids that result in
Iraqi suffereng. Mondays perfume factory calamity was certainly
not the first time a military raid in occupied Iraq has backfired on
the soldiers carrying it out.
But botched raids
typically go unnoticed by the international media because officials
are loathe to point them out and reporters rarely follow the numerous
leads that circulate around Baghdad and beyond.
Earlier in this
month, for instance, the Army conducted an early morning raid searching
for weapons in the Abu Hanifa Mosque in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad.
The fruits for crashing through two gates with tanks, for driving a
Humvee over and destroying three tons of food-aid stockpiled for Falluja,
for holding 210 people inside the mosque at gunpoint, for smashing through
classroom doors and for shooting up walls and ceilings? Not one bullet.
The raid wasn't entirely without results for occupation forces, though.
The U.S. military gained even more resentment, distrust and rage from
the Iraqis in Baghdad.
Troops conduct home
raids throughout Iraq on a daily basis. At times these do produce weapons,
and sometimes even a person engaged in the increasingly popular resistance
to the US-UK occupation. However, a great number of them yield nothing
but anguish.
In one case I reported
on last winter, a late night raid on a house found soldiers breaking
the door to the home of two Baghdad University professors, even though
they were offered free access. The home was destroyed, furniture broken
and torn apart, bags of rice dumped on the kitchen floor, and the husband
and son detained.
The next day soldiers
revisited the home, I was told, excusing themselves for having had poor
information. The husband and son remain in detention, whereabouts unknown
to the family.
The raid on 26 April
erupted into more than the two explosions reported by eyewitnesses.
The warehouse incident is symbolic of so many raids the occupation forces
have conducted. One witness told me he saw the warehouses owner
offer a key to the soldiers before they entered, but they refused it,
preferring instead to force their way in.
Stories such as
this abound on the Iraqi street. More often than not, they end in dead,
beaten or detained Iraqis and personal property stolen by soldiers.
This time, because
it ended in American deaths, the raid received at least some mention
in the Western press.
When human rights
organizations estimate that at least half of the 13,000 detainees in
the horrid, overflowing Abu Ghraib prison had no affiliation with the
armed resistance prior to being arrested by occupation forces, one can
imagine how they, their families and friends now view the Anglo-American
occupation of their country.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dahr Jamail is Baghdad
correspondent for The NewStandard. He is an Alaskan devoted to covering
the untold stories from occupied Iraq. You can help Dahr continue his
crucial work in Iraq by making donations. For more information or to
donate to Dahr, visit The
NewStandard.
COYLEFT NOTICE:
The above message is Copyright © 2004 Dahr Jamail and The NewStandard.
Reprinting for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Permission
is readily granted for nonprofit purposes as long as (1) adequate credit
is provided, (2) a link back to http://newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches
is prominently posted along with the text and (3) the journalist's bio
at the end of the text is kept intact.