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May 1, 2005, Voices UK
The UK's role
Information about the UK’s military role in Iraq remains sparse. What follows are some of the more intriguing items that have been caught voices attention over the past two months.
- ‘The most secret military unit serving in Northern Ireland is to be pulled out if the Province and posted to Iraq and to other operational missions overseas’ (Times, 18 Apr). The Joint Support Group ‘is the successor of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which acquired notoriety in the 1980s amid allegations that the unit … colluded with Special Branch officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the loyalist terrorist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in the murder of several republicans.’
- On 31 Mar the Telegraph reported that the British Army had accidentally raided the house of a prominent MP from Basra, ‘one of their closest allies in Iraq’s second city.’ According to the MP ‘British tanks and helicopters surrounded his house before soldiers blew open the front door with explosives,’ and arrested his family, including his two children. “They smashed the windows of the cars parked in the garage, smashed the computer to the ground and took $260,000 from the house,” he said.
- In a little-noticed 27 Jan Parliamentary answer – which surfaced in the Times on 11 April - the MoD stated that between 1 May ‘03 and 26 Nov ’04, “200 Iraqis believed to be enemy combatants ha[d] died … in incidents where military force was deliberately applied by UK forces” and that a further five Iraqis “believed not to have been enemy combatants” had died during British military action in the same period. According to the MoD’s web-site a total of 22 British service personnel died as a result of hostile military action in Iraq during in the same period (http://www.operations.mod.uk/telic/casualties.htm). The MoD was careful to note that the figures “do not necessarily indicate that UK forces caused the casualties” and that they were “not an accurate estimate of Iraqi casualties, either those caused by UK forces or those caused by insurgent activities, and should not be taken as such.” The point is well taken: on 6 and 16 Feb the Independent published the pictures and stories of seven Iraqis shot dead by British forces during the period Aug ’03 – Jan ’04. Last year UK troops claimed to have killed at least 400 ‘insurgents’ during the period May – Aug (Telegraph, 30 Aug ’04).
- Journalists working for the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC) – a body entirely funded by the Ministry of Defence – have been commissioned to provide news reports about Iraq to the BBC (SpinWatch.org.uk, 15 Mar). One such report, broadcast on Good Morning Scotland last Nov, portrayed British occupation forces in Basra as a peacekeeping force. There was, of course, no mention of MoD funding. In its own words the SSVC’s work “makes a considerable contribution to the maintenance and morale of the three Services” and ‘a[ll] profits are donated towards Forces’ welfare.’
- To date, the UK Government has allocated £5.06bn to a Special Reserve, the bulk of which is believed to be going on military operations in Iraq (IraqAnalysis.org briefing, April 2005). ‘Rough estimates suggest that an extra £1 billion will be required for each further year UK forces remain in Iraq.’ According to UNICEF £5.06bn would fund two years of full immunization for every child in the developing world.
October 21, 2004, Voices UK
"Very bloody and nasty"
Last Friday a US official told washingtonpost.com that, “If we have to fight in Fallujah it’s going to be very bloody and nasty” (16 Oct). Just how bloody and nasty is evident from the last large-scale assault on the city in April:
- Hundreds of Iraqis were killed, many of them civilians. On 11 April the director of Fallujah’s general hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, estimated – on the basis of figures gathered from four clinics around the city as well as the hospital itself - that more than 600 people had been killed and that ‘the vast majority of the dead were women, children and the elderly’ (Guardian, 12 April).
- Warplanes, fighter bombers, military helicopters, gunships and remotely piloted Predator reconnaissance aircraft were all used in the attack on the city (New York Times, 30 April 2004). Houses - and at least one mosque - were attacked from the air, reportedly killing scores of civilians:
* ‘An airborne assault on a mosque killed at least 40 worshippers attending prayers’ on 7 April and ’16 children and eight women were reported to have been killed when US aircraft hit four houses’ the previous day (Independent, 8 April).
* Menem Latif Hussain told the Guardian how a house at the end of his street suffered from a direct hit from a powerful bomb. “We ran to the house because they were my friends. In the garden I saw three men had been sitting on a bench. They were all dead, they had been cut in half by the bomb’ (Guardian, 24 April).
- There were numerous press reports of US snipers firing on – and killing – unarmed civilians:
* Mohammed Hadi, told the Telegraph that US marines snipers had taken up position in the minarets of a local mosque and shot dead his neighbour (12 April). “He was just on his way to buy tomatoes,” he told the paper. And 17-year-old Hassan Monem, who claimed that two of his friends ‘were shot as they stood in my yard.’
* Likewise, Ali, 28, who had managed to escape with part of his family, related how “one man in an Opel drove his wife and children to the bridge so they would walk over. As he drove back to town, an American sniper killed him” (Guardian, 12 April).
* Abu Mohammed (30) told the Guardian that as he “was about to leave [Fallujah] there were two ladies trying to get out. American snipers shot them dead. Their bodies are still lying out on the street in al-Jumhuriya” (30 April).
One US Marine Major told Time magazine that it was “hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians. You just have to go with your gut feeling.” (Time, 11 April). A marine corporal explained that “Sometimes a guy will go down and I’ll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies,” a marine corporal explained. “Then I’ll use a second shot”(Daily Oakland Press, 17 April).
A senior UK army officer, told the Sunday Telegraph that “when US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area … They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are’, ‘they view [Iraqis] as untermenschen [the Nazi expression for “sub-humans”]. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful’ (11 April).
- Several reports strongly suggested that US snipers targeted ambulances in Fallujah. The head of mission of a European humanitarian agency with staff in Fallujah told BBC News Online that two of their ambulances had been shot at ‘probably by US snipers’ (BBC, 23 April); and a UK national, Jo Wilding, was present in a clearly marked ambulance that she claims was shot at by US snipers (see www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/114/index.php ).
- The New York Times reported that at least one battalion [in Fallujah] had ‘orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not (14 April). Recounting how he shot dead ‘an Iraqi man … walking down the street in no-man’s land … [who had] his hands suspiciously in his pockets’, Corporal Ryan Long from Alpha Company explained: “I got one of my juniors to fire a warning shot, but the guy kept on walking, so I said: ‘Let me do it’ … Last year I’d have never shot a guy without a weapon’’ (Times, 15 April).
- So many Iraqis were killed that the Fallujah Sports Club was turned into a makeshift cemetery. Times reporter Stephen Farrell counted 32 graves on the pitch and 180 more on the practice park, including the graves of Omar (9, killed 9 April), Wisam Salah (eight months) and Mohammed Khalaf (15 months) (Times, 3 May). ‘The gravediggers said the cemetery was full of women and children’ (New York Times, 27 April).
- ‘The city’s main hospital … was closed by the marines’ and, according to the Iraq emergency co-ordinator for Medicins sans Frontieres – who visited Fallujah during the fighting – “The Americans put a sniper on top of the hospital’s water tower” in violation of the Geneva Convention (Guardian, 24 April).
, Voices UK
"Waiting for the big attack"
The recent encirclement of Fallujah and the US request for hundreds of British soldiers (currently stationed in the south of the country) to be redeployed to just south of Baghdad with the ‘aim of … free[ing] US forces to attack Fallujah’ (Telegraph, 18 Oct) has led to a flurry of speculation regarding the timing of the much-heralded major assault on the city. Nonetheless, ‘[a] senior Pentagon official [has] told the Sunday Telegraph that there [i]s no plan to enter and take back Fallujah during the holy month of Ramadan, which began on Friday’ (Sunday Telegraph, 17 Oct). We shall see.
“Smash[ing]” Fallujah
The encirclement began last Thursday. ‘The first explosions were heard two hours after a senior Iraqi official threatened to “smash” the city if it did not surrender foreign fighters’ and there followed ‘12 hours of overnight strikes by American helicopters, fighter-bombers, field artillery and tanks’ (washingtonpost.com, 16 Oct) which included the ‘dropping of 11 satellite- and laser- guided 500-pound bombs … as 1,600 American marines moved forward under artillery fire to set up checkpoints, designed to snare insurgents moving out of the city’ (New York Times, 16 Oct). ‘Electricity and water were cut off to the city … an action that US forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra’ (washingtonpost.com, 16 Oct).
“A useful by-product”
Today, UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon confirmed that ‘about 850 troops and support staff’ would be redeployed ‘to near the capital, Baghdad’ (BBC, 21 Oct). Some have expressed concern that this will lead to a higher death toll amongst British troops in Iraq. However, as one ‘senior American officer’ explained to the Sunday Telegraph, British deaths would actually help with US domestic PR : “There is a perception out there that this is an American war and only our soldiers are being killed. If the British re-deploying outside their current theatre of operations helps dispel that perception, then that’s useful by-product,” he told the paper (Sunday Telegraph, 17 Oct).
Of course, with a few honourable exceptions, none of the myriad commentators, MPs and pundits have expressed any concern over Iraqi deaths in the looming US bloodbath in Fallujah, or the UK’s role in helping them to accomplish this.
Killing children
Meanwhile the killing continues. On Sunday the Independent on Sunday reported the murder of eight members of the al-Jabouri family – ‘killed as they slept, their home destroyed’ by US missiles in the middle of the night (17 October).
‘Among the dead in the al-Jabouri family were 26-year-old Atika, who was six months pregnant, her three-year-old son Omar, her husband Thamir, 28, her sister Athra and her mother. Atika's prematurely born baby lived for a few hours after her, but they were buried in the same grave.'
Maiming Children
‘The only member of the family to come out alive was Atika's five-year-old daughter, Ayisha. She was asleep, hugging her grandmother, who was killed instantly.
Miraculously the little girl survived, but she was badly injured, burnt and lacerated by shrapnel and flying glass. Ahmed Fawzi, Ayisha's uncle, recalled: “I live nearby and ran over after hearing the explosions. There was nothing left. We had to bring out the bodies one by one.” Ayisha, with injuries to her shoulder, arms, back and legs, was taken to a hospital in nearby Ramadi for treatment ... Lying on a mattress on the floor, she does not betray the considerable pain she must be under. But the normally bright and inquisitive girl is very quiet. Mr Fawzi said: “When in hospital in Ramadi, she overheard some discussion about an operation on a boy called Omar. She said to us afterwards ‘I hear them talking about Omar’. She did not know at the time he was dead. That is the only time she had talked about her brother. She has not once asked anything about her mother or father. It is very sad, but what can we do?”’
“Waiting for the big attack”
As usual ‘the US military issued a statement saying that fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi … had been taken out in a precision strike in Fallujah.’ The US and the US-appointed Iraqi Government ‘have demanded that the town hand over Zarqawi … or face retribution [but] [c]ivic leaders have protested that this is an impossible demand. They point out that the Americans, for all their military might and a reward of $25m, have not managed to capture or kill the Jordanian-born militant.’ According to the Washington Post representatives of the insurgents claim that Zarqawi – who was recently branded a “criminal” by the head of the is ‘not in Fallujah’ (18 Oct)
‘Rahim Haidar Mohammed, a resident of Fallujah, said: “The Americans have created a bogeyman in Zarqawi. We haven't seen him. They can't kill him, so they kill us. We are just waiting for the big attack”’ (Independent on Sunday, 17 Oct).
September 2, 2004, Voices UK
'Different Parameters': attacking Iraq's slum dwellers
According to Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, ‘The fight with renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is not over and the U.S. military must retake his stronghold in Baghdad's Sadr City slum’ (AP, 2 September)
‘The job will take a matter of weeks, Chiarelli said, giving no timetable for the start of an operation.’ “We’re going to go in and first, make Sadr City safe for the residents,” he said, apparently without irony (see 2 September blog entry ‘After Najaf’ for some background on previous US assaults on Sadr city).
‘If it comes to a showdown with the U.S. military in Sadr City, no ultra-sensitive Muslim holy places will get in the Army's way, Chiarelli said, harking to how sensitivities over damaging the revered Imam Ali Shrine prevented a full-bore attack on al-Sadr's militia in Najaf. “We feel very strongly that Sadr City is not Najaf,” Chiarelli said. “You have a totally different set of parameters in Sadr City.”
, Voices UK
Get Sadr?
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that ‘a tentative peace pact’ between the US-appointed Iraqi Government and the Sadrists had been ‘abruptly cancelled by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’ (NYT, 1 September). According to the ‘leaders of the Mahdi Army … and two well-placed Iraqi sources … an agreement had been reached late Monday that called for the disarming of the rebel force and a halt in American military operations in Sadr City.’
Mr Allawi was not available for comment but ‘an Iraqi source said Dr Allawi had decided to take a harsher approach toward [Sadrist leader Moqtada] Sadr and the Mahdi Army, possibly including the use of military force.’ The same source told the paper that ‘Dr Allawi appeared to be motivated by disappointment with the agreement in Najaf … [which] left the Mahdi Army intact and made Mr Sadt stronger than ever in the eyes of many Iraqis.’ The source also suggested that Allawi had ‘recently come under intense pressure from Shiite political parties that fear that the entry of Mr Sadr into the political mainstream could diminish their own potential at the polls’ and ‘would prefer that Mr Sadr be eliminated’ (NYT, 1 September).
‘US officials have long argued that the solution to the Sadr problem [sic] has to originate with Iraqis. Their calculation is that the US position in Iraq would not be helped by having US troops kill the rebel cleric,’ the Washington Post reports (29 August). “At some point the Iraqis themselves will take Sadr out – like the Colombians taking out drug lords with [the] US in the background,” a Pentagon official told the paper.
According to a document obtained by the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh ‘last summer [ie. 2003] … the Bush adminstration directed the marines to draft a detailed plan … for the arrest and, if necessary, assassination of Sadr’ (New Yorker, 28 June, see Voices’ briefing ‘So Long As You Win’ for more background)
, Voices UK
After Najaf
Despite last Friday’s accord ending the siege in Najaf, the killing has continued elsewhere in Iraq.
Fallujah and Sadr City
Last Saturday AP reported US airstrikes against Fallujah on both the 27th and the 28th August (AP, 28 August). The Friday strike killed three people and wounded 13 others, including a 6-year-old girl according to medical officials. This morning (2 September) Reuters reported a further US military strike on Fallujah killing – again, according to local doctors - 17 people, including 3 children, a woman and an elderly man.
On Saturday the US battled ‘Shiite militants’ in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, and ‘US soldiers in Humvees drove through the impoverished neighbourhood with loudspeakers, demanding people stay home because coalition forces were “cleaning the area of armed men”’ (AP, 29 August) – but with no important religious sites to worry about this was barely news.
Sadr City had been the scene of intense fighting during the assault on Najaf with the US claiming at one point to have killed 50 militiamen in one night - though according to the owner of a local soft drinks shop, Riyadh Aabid (who was ‘fed up with the Mahdi Army’ and its tactics), ‘most of the victims were ordinary people’ (Guardian, 20 August). “My two children couldn’t sleep,” Mr Aabid told the paper. “I held both of them in my arms all night. The American bombs were so loud. Our message to the Americans is ‘stop shooting into houses – unarmed people live there’.”
A fresh assault on Fallujah?
Meanwhile the New York Times reports that in Ramadi and much of Anbar Province, ‘American troops [are] confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert’s edge’ and that ‘what little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armoured vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts’ (NYT, 29 August).
Most disturbing of all, ‘marine officers have said, American hopes of creating stability [sic] in Iraq will necessitate a new attack on [Fallujah]’ – where the US massacred hundreds of civilians in April – ‘this time one that will not be halted before it can succeed.’
We have been warned.
August 28, 2004, Voices UK
Destruction in Najaf
According to the Times, pilgrims entering Najaf last Friday ‘found a front line akin to Sarajevo – buildings blasted to their foundations and the Street of the Messenger turned into Sniper Alley’ (28 August).
American commanders claim to have killed as many as 1,000 ‘guerillas’ since the beginning of August, while US deaths stand at 11 (New York Times, 28 August) – a ratio of almost 100 to 1.
‘For every shot they took, American troops returned scores or hundreds,’ the NYT reports with ‘overwhelming American firepower … caus[ing] nearly all of the structural damage’ in the city.
“If we take fire from it, we destroy the whole building,” an Army commander explained (Washington Post, 28 August). “It’s the best feeling in the world. We’ve been given the best tools in the world for waging war,” Maj. Tim Karcher of the 7th Cavalry Regiment told the paper. No doubt Nazi troops in occupied Poland and British soldiers in late 19th century Africa felt much the same way.
August 21, 2004, Voices UK
No agenda but bloodshed and chaos?
According to Ann Clwyd, Tony Blair’s “Special envoy on human rights in Iraq” (who, to our knowledge, has yet to utter so much as a peep of protest concerning the massive killings and human violations carried out by US forces in Fallujah in April) the Iraqi ““resistance” … has no alternative or agenda other than more bloodshed and chaos” (Guardian, 5 July). It is perhaps worth contrasting this sweeping statement with the stated motivations of some members of this “resistance” (which, of course, is far from monolithic):
- The son of a Najafi factory worker told the Independent: “I am ready to join Muqtada al-Sadr now. Did the Americans come to Iraq because of Saddam Hussein? No, they came for money and oil and because they want to destroy Islam. They want to control the country and leave the poor people suffering” (14 August)
- Hassan Sadiq, a 28-year old Najaf cook, explained why his peers had joined the Mahdi army: “The coalition killed many civilians and destroyed many homes. Moqtada is the only one who cares about us, especially Shia. The new government only cares about the Americans. Look at the people in the government, they all lived in Britain, the US and France. They have no idea what’s happening, about our lives.” (Sunday Telegraph, 15 August)
- Eisa (34), a gunman for the Mahdi army who usually works in a graphics shop designing business cards and stationary told the Washington Post (15 August): "I know the Americans have better weapons. They have better plans. They have uniforms that cost $3,000, and we have only our clothes. But I have principles. I have holy land to defend. I have family to protect, so I feel stronger than them. The occupation forces are nothing but mercenaries who fight for money, so I feel stronger."
, Voices UK
Killing Iraqis
‘‘In a pool of blood on a hospital operating room floor yesterday, doctors were battling to save the life of six-year-old Ali Hussain - shot in the belly. "He had gone to buy an ice cream," said his mother, 23, watching the laboured breathing of her unconscious son. "He had just made it back to the front door when soldiers in an American tank started firing. They did not even stop as we tried to carry him inside." An exhausted doctor looked up. "I don't think he is going to make it," he said. "We have had at least 20 dead brought in today." Outside the hospital, two minibuses parked beside the main gate. On their roof racks, tied down with ropes, were four small coffins. "My children, my children," an old man wailed, his fists flailing. "Curse those dogs. Why have they slaughtered my children?"’ (Telegraph, 12 August).
‘That civilians are being killed by US troops is not in doubt,’ Adrian Blomfield writes (Telegraph, 12 August).If the US and British governments could be forced to admit this simple truth – Blair has repeatedly stated that US and British forces do not kill civilians – they would doubtless cry some crocodile tears over such deaths. On the other hand they actively boast of the number of “militiamen” they have killed.
Early in the current crisis US forces claimed to have killed 300 ‘insurgents’ in Najaf over a period of two days – a figure hotly disputed by the Sadrists themselves who put the total at 36 (Independent, 7 August) and earlier this year U.S. military officials estimated that they had killed 1500 Sadrists (Washington Post, 26 June) - and more than 800 Iraqis in Baghdad’s vast Shi’ite slum Sadr City alone (LA Times, 7 June) - during April, May and early June.
All of which prompts the question: who are the Sadrists? ie. who exactly have we been killing in such large numbers over the past few months?
Killing the poor
The simple answer is: poor Iraqis. Indeed, the very Iraqis whose families and neighbourhoods have borne the brunt of US and British policy towards Iraq over the past 13½ years.
One such Iraqi was Muhammed Hussein, born in 1985 and shot dead near his family’s house whilst firing at American and Iraqi forces.
‘He lived through the crippling economic sanctions that were imposed in 1991, after Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and maintained until the 2003 invasion. This led to a deepening of poverty in areas like Sadr City and the growth of a younger generation that was less educated and had fewer opportunities than the one that came before it.
‘Muhammad Hussein's family was not destitute. Even so, Mr. Hussein had never owned a telephone, never been on an airplane, never been abroad. He had finished only seven years of school. In contrast, his brothers, ages 48 and 56, have secondary degrees, one in music, another in mechanical engineering. One has even traveled abroad and speaks a foreign language.’ (NYT, 14 August).
A lost generation
According to University of Warwick Iraq expert Toby Dodge Moqtada Sadr’s appeal is mainly “to those young and desperate Shia in Iraq’s urban slums who have not seen any benefit to their lives from liberation” (BBC News Online, 11 August). ‘They are a lost generation, young people who grew up during Iraq's decline into war and economic sanctions over the past 20 years. But they are far from a homogeneous group. Their reasons for fighting often have more to do with their poverty and a desire to belong than with any strongly held beliefs about religion or nationalism.’ (NYT, 14 August).
, Voices UK
The breakdown of the "ceasefire"
More information has now emerged about the origins of the breakdown of the “ceasefire” between the US and the Sadrists earlier this month. The current wave of fighting was sparked on August 2nd ‘when a Marine patrol drove directly past one of Mr Sadr’s houses in Najaf – violating an informal agreement that American units would stay away from Mr Sadr’s strongholds, treating them as part of an “exclusion zone” that was at the heart of the cease-fire in the city’ (NYT, 18 August). The Marines had only replaced the US Army in Najaf on 31 July and ‘[t]he incident may have been a misunderstanding,’ the Economist notes (14 August).
A few days later, on August 5th, the marines ‘engaged Mr Sadr’s forces at the request of the local Iraqi police’ without ‘seek[ing] approval from senior military commanders or from Iraqi political leaders, with the exception of the [local] governor,’ following an attack on a police station in Najaf. This in turn prompted Mr Sadr to summon reinforcements from around the country, leading to a ‘domino effect’ which resulted in fighting in more than half a dozen cities and towns across southern Iraq, including Sadr City, Diwaniya, Kut, Al Hayy, Nasiriya, Amara and Basra.
Nonetheless, ‘whatever the causes, it rapidly began to look as though the interim Iraqi government had found its pretext to finish what it saw as the unfinished business left by the uneasy truce in June’ (Independent on Sunday, 15 August).
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