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Haditha Massacre Stirs World Outrage Over U.S. Role
in Iraq
by Gerry Foley / June 2006 issue Socialist Action
U.S. and Iraqi government officials
announced the death on June 8 of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the legendary
Islamic guerrilla leader. He was reportedly killed in a targeted air
strike, along with seven aides and a woman and child.
Although President Bush and British Premier
Tony Blair, along with their Iraqi clients, hailed the
"elimination" of the al-Qaeda leader, they cautiously warned
against expecting that it would weaken the insurgency, and for good reason.
They had previously promised that the capture of Saddam Hussein would
weaken the resistance, and it obviously did not.
Even less is the death of Zarqawi likely to
defuse the insurgency. In fact, for some time his lunatic advocacy of the
indiscriminate slaughter of Shiites has been the biggest liability of the
resistance, a disastrous factor of division. Thus, the rejoicing of the
imperialists and their local allies at his "elimination" is apt
to prove very short lived.
Iraq continues to blow up in the face (and
under the wheels and feet) of the U.S.-led occupation. Relevations of the
killings of innocent civilians are stroking the anger of the population and
forcing even U.S.-sponsored politicians to protest.
Associated Press reported June 2: “‘It
looks like the killing of Iraqi civilians is becoming a daily phenomenon,’
the chairman of the Iraqi Human Rights Association, Muayed al-Anbaki, said
Friday after video ran on television of children and adults slain in a raid
in March on the Iraqi village of Ishaqi north of Baghdad.’”
The dispatch continued: “Al-Anbaki's
comments came a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki upbraided the U.S.
military over allegations that Marines killed two dozen unarmed civilians
in the western city of Haditha, calling it 'a horrible crime.’ They were
his strongest public comments on the subject since his government was sworn
in last month.”
Al-Maliki gained his post as a result of
U.S. pressure. His precedessor was considered too dependent on the support
of Muqtada al-Sadr, an anti-occupation Shiite leader.
The military announced June 2 that its
investigation had shown that U.S. troops did nothing wrong in Ishaqi. But
the AP dispatch cited above reported: “… video shot by an AP Television
News cameraman at the time and aired on March 15 shows at least five children
dead. The video shows at least one adult male and four young children with
obvious entry wounds to the head. One child has an obvious entry wound to
the side caused by a bullet.”
There have, in fact, been many instances in
the past in which official U.S. reports of such incidents have been refuted
by eyewitness accounts and pictures.
The Haditha massacre story is sending out
widening waves of revulsion. Some commentators are comparing it to the
Mylai massacre in Vietnam. It seems to have the same origin—that is, a
hatred of the soldiers for the entire civilian population, who they have
come to see as threatening them. Reportedly, the shooting took place when
troops went berserk after one of their comrades had been killed by a
roadside bomb.
On May 31, U.S. troops shot and killed two
Iraqi women at a checkpoint. One of them was pregnant and was being rushed
to a hospital to give birth.
The southern port city of Basra,
until now one of the quietest parts of the country, is acknowledged by the
majority Shiite Baghdad government to be descending into chaos because of
the conflicts between competing Shiite militias and the growth of organized
crime.
The British Guardian reported May 31:
“Basra has seen a dramatic increase in violence over the past year, and
local police say almost 140 people have been killed this month.
“The previously relatively calm
relationship between the local population and the 9000 British troops
stationed in the city has also been shattered. Nine British soldiers,
including two members of the Queen's Dragoon Guards who died in a roadside
bombing on Sunday [May 28], have died since the start of May.”
The increasing losses among the British
troops in Basra is reinforcing the demand for withdrawal in Britain, where
a majority of the population is opposed to the Iraqi operation.
The Christian Science Monitor reported June 2: “Locals
say death squads openly patrol the streets, and a police official reached
by phone reports at least 400 assassinations in the past two months.”
In response to the violence in the southern
city, the Baghdad government has declared a state of emergency in the area,
vowing to suppress the militias and criminal gangs. However, the warring
Shiite militias are linked to parties in the ruling Shiite coalition. Moreover,
they have heavily infiltrated the official Iraqi security forces.
In addition to whatever moral credit it has
earned by its past sacrifices, Basra accounts for virtually all of the
income from oil exports that goes to the Baghdad government, and some of
the warring groups and criminal gangs have threatened to cut off the flow
of oil if they do not get their way.
And this is the situation in the south, the
part of the country that the U.S. occupiers claim is basically quiet, in
contrast to the northwestern Ambar province, where the U.S. military admits
that it is facing a fierce struggle with insurgents.
On June 1, Reuters reported that 1500 more
U.S. troops have been rushed from Kuwait to Ramadi, the capital of Ambar
province, where insurgents, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, have gained control
of considerable areas. There were already 20,000 U.S. troops in the
province.
This increase in the deployment of U.S.
troops in Iraq comes at a time, moreover, when the Bush government is
promising to begin withdrawing soldiers and when it needs to do that to
have any hope of defusing the hostility at home to its Iraqi adventure.
The occupation has so aroused the hatred of
the Iraqi people that it is unlikely that the U.S. will ever be able to
maintain its control of the country’s oil resources. It is not just the
troops’ brutality toward the civilian population that fuels this hatred but
the ruin of the basic social infrastructure caused by the invasion and the
sanctions that preceded it.
On May 15, Reuters reported: “Malnutrition
among Iraqi children has reached alarming levels, according to a UN-backed
government survey showing people are struggling to cope three years after
U.S.-forces overthrew Saddam Hussein.
“Nine percent—almost one in 10—of children
aged between six months and five years, suffered acute malnourishment, said
the report on food security and vulnerability in Iraq.”
In the capital city, the May 25 San Francisco Chronicle reported,
“three years after the U.S. invasion, during which most of the Iraqi
capital's infrastructure collapsed, rudimentary services here remain
sporadic at best.
“Decades-old water treatment plants that
were supposed to have been fixed during postwar reconstruction meet only 60
percent of Baghdad's needs, said Lt. Col. Chris Hall, whose unit, attached
to the 101st Airborne Division, is helping Iraqis rebuild power and water
facilities.
Garbage chokes the city of 4.5 million people. Trash
collection is erratic or nonexistent, depending on which part of the city
you live in. Insurgents use heaps of garbage to hide roadside bombs.”
So, it is not surprising that one bomb
after another blows up in the face of the U.S. rulers—dynamite bombs,
political bombs, and social bombs alike.
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