News & Views 03/30/07

Photo: Insurgents lie dead with a live hand grenade besides them in Ramadi during an operation to clear insurgents on Wednesday, March 28, 2007, in Ramadi, Iraq, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers shot the men, one of them holding a grenade, as the men tried to attack a house. They died during a US-Iraqi house-to-house sweep through what American commanders said was one of this city's last insurgent strongholds. The operation ended with rooftop gunfights, airstrikes and dead guerrillas on the streets. (AP Photo/Todd Pitman)

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Fallujah Fears a 'Genocidal Strategy'

Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy. Since the mysterious explosion at the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samara in February last year, more than 100 Iraqis have been killed daily on average, without any forceful action by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military to stop the killings. U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces working with them are also executing people seized during home raids and other operations, residents say. "Seventeen young men were found executed after they were arrested by U.S. troops and Fallujah police," 40-year-old Yassen of Fallujah told IPS. "My two sons have been detained by police, and I am terrified that they will have the same fate. They are only 17 and 18 years old." Residents of Fallujah say the local police detention centre holds hundreds of men, who have had no legal representation. Others are killed by random fire that has long become routine for U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. Sa'ad, a 25-year-old from the al-Thubbat area of western Fallujah was killed in such firing. "The poor guy kept running home every time he saw U.S. soldiers," a man from his neighbourhood, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "He used to say: Go inside or the Americans will kill you." Sa'ad is said by neighbours to have developed a mental disability. He was recently shot and killed by U.S. soldiers when they opened fire after their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb. Last week, U.S. military fire severely damaged the highest minaret in Fallujah after three soldiers were killed in an attack. What was seen as reprisal fire on the minaret has angered residents. "They hate us because we are Muslims, and no one can argue with that any more," 65- year-old Abu Fayssal who witnessed the event told IPS. "They say they are fighting al- Qeada but they are only capable of killing our sons with their genocidal campaign and destroying our mosques." Others believe occupation forces have another sinister strategy. "It is our people killing each other now as planned by the Americans," Abdul Sattar, a 45- year-old lawyer and human rights activist in Fallujah told IPS. "They recruited Saddam's security men to control the situation by well-known methods like hanging people by their legs and electrifying them in order to get information. Now they are executing them without trial." IPS has obtained photographs of an elderly man who residents say was executed last month by U.S. soldiers. "Last month was full of horrifying events," a retired police officer from Fallujah told IPS. "Three men were executed by American soldiers in the al-Bu Issa tribal area just outside Fallujah. One of them was 70 years old and known as a very good man, and the others were his relatives. They were asleep when the raid was conducted."

Iraqi Widow Saves Her Home, But Victory Is Brief

The two men showed up on Tuesday afternoon to evict Suaada Saadoun's family. One was carrying a shiny black pistol. Saadoun was a Sunni Arab living in a Shiite enclave of western Baghdad. A widowed mother of seven, she and her family had been chased out once before. This time, she called American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile to the east. The men tried to drive away, but the soldiers had blocked the street. They pulled the men out of the car. "If anything happens to us, they're the ones responsible," said Saadoun, 49, a burly, boisterous woman in a black robe and lavender-blue head scarf. The Americans shoved the men into a Humvee. Neighbors clapped and cheered as if their soccer team had just won a title. The next morning, Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market. ……..The final hours of Saadoun's life reveal the ferocity with which Shiite militiamen are driving Sunni Arabs from Baghdad house by house, block by block, in an effort to rid the capital of them. It is happening even as thousands of additional American troops and Iraqi soldiers have been sent to Baghdad as part of President Bush's so-called surge strategy.

Protests Called for April 9th

Muqtada al-Sadr issued a scathing attack on the United States today, after one of the country’s bloodiest days, blaming Washington for Iraq’s troubles and calling for a mass demonstration April 9 - the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. As al-Sadr’s remarks were read in a mosque, Shiites in Baghdad loaded wooden coffins into vans and shoveled broken glass and other debris into wheelbarrows in the aftermath of a double suicide bombing at a marketplace. At least 181 people were killed or found dead yesterday as Sunni insurgents apparently stepped up their campaign of bombings to derail the seven-week-old security sweep in Baghdad. "There is a race between the government and the terrorists who are trying to make people reach the level of despair," said Sami al-Askari, an aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "But the government is doing its best to defeat terrorists, and it definitely will not be affected by these bombings."

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

Fate of Five Detained Iranians Unknown

As the Western media turns its attention to the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters over the weekend, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a U.S. military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on Jan. 11 remains a mystery. Even though high-level Iraqi officials have publicly called for their release, for all practical purposes, the Iranians have disappeared into the U.S.-sanctioned "coalition detention" system that has been criticized as arbitrary and even illegal by many experts on international law. Hours before President Bush declared they would "seek out and destroy the [Iranian] networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," U.S. forces raided what has been described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and detained six Iranians, infuriating Kurdish officials in the process. The troops took office files and computers, ostensibly to find evidence regarding the alleged role of Iranian agents in anti-coalition attacks and sectarian violence in Iraq. One diplomat was released, but the other five men remain in U.S. custody and have not been formally charged with a crime. "They have disappeared. I don't know if they've gone into the enemy combatant system," said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in the White House under former President Jimmy Carter. "Nobody on the outside knows."