Iraqi Government Killing Opposition
Leaders
Countercurrents.org
James Cogan
November 27, 2005
In contrast to Washington's propaganda that a stable democracy is
emerging in Iraq, a campaign of terror and intimidation is continuing against
opponents of the US occupation in the weeks leading up to the December 15
election.
The November 13 exposure of a secret prison in Baghdad, where American
troops found interior ministry police commandos torturing alleged members of
the guerilla resistance, has been followed this week by the blatant
assassination of a Sunni Arab leader.
At 4 a.m. on November 23, dozens of men wearing Iraqi army uniforms sealed
off the streets and forced their way into the Baghdad home of 70-year-old Sheik
Kadhim Sarhid Hemaiyem, a leader of one of the largest Sunni tribes, the
Dulaimi. Many members of the tribe reportedly support or participate in the
armed resistance to the US occupation. In a matter of minutes, the elderly
sheik, three of his sons and a son-in-law were gunned down.
Over recent weeks, the sheik had been giving political and practical support
to an election campaign by his brother. Whereas the overwhelming majority of
Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections in January, millions may cast a ballot on
December 15. This follows calls by religious and tribal leaders such as
Hemaiyem for opponents of the occupation to vote. Sunni-based parties could win
15 to 20 percent of the seats in the next parliament.
A police spokesman claimed the killers were "terrorists' seeking
to intimidate Sunnis into not voting. However, the sheik's brother, Abdel
Moniem Sarhid Hemaiyem, rejected the allegation, telling the Los Angeles Times:
"They attacked us at 4 a.m., during the curfew, so they had to be from
the authorities. I want to ask the ministers of defence and interior ... why
are they killing us?'
A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the umbrella
organisation for thousands of Sunni clerics, also blamed the interior ministry,
stating: "We warn the government against continuing this
tyranny.'
The major Shiite parties in the government are the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da'awa organisation of the
current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. SCIRI leader Bayan Jabr is the
interior minister. Many interior ministry officials and police are allegedly
members of SCIRI's Badr Organisation militia, which was formed in Iran in
the 1980s to fight against the Iraqi military in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq
War.
Both Da'awa and SCIRI backed the US invasion in 2003, seeing it as the
means of gaining power and privilege for the Shiite religious elite, which had
been sidelined by the previous predominantly Sunni Baathist regime. In the
elections in January this year, the Sunni boycott and a large Shiite turnout
enabled the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) to win close to 48 percent of
the vote and more than half the seats in the parliament.
After the Jaafari government was formed in April and SCIRI took control of
the interior ministry, reports of extra-judicial killings steadily increased.
The British Independent's Iraq correspondent Kim Sengupta commented on
November 20: "Behind the daily reports of suicide bombings and attacks on
coalition forces is a far more shadowy struggle, one that involves tortured
prisoners huddled in dungeons, death-squad victims with their hands tied behind
their backs, often mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught
families searching for relations who have been
‘disappeared'.'
The Observer reported the same day that human rights groups claimed to have
"hundreds of cases on their books' of Iraqis who had
"disappeared' into the hands of government security forces.
The violence has fueled the sectarian tensions between Shiites and Sunnis.
Sunni extremist groups such as Al Qaeda are carrying out increasingly frequent
suicide and car bombings on Shiite civilian targets, killing and maiming
hundreds every month. The New York Times reported on November 20 that as many
as 20 cities and towns around Baghdad are "segregating,' with Sunni
and Shiite families having to abandon their homes in areas where their sect was
the minority.
The dirty war of death squads and torture could not be taking place without
the full knowledge of the White House, the US military or the US intelligence
agencies. The activities of the Iraqi government are scrutinised by the largest
American embassy in the world with over 3,000 officials. US advisors have been
slotted into every ministry. For decades, the use of death squads has been a
hallmark of US operations from South East Asia to Latin America.
While there have been hypocritical expressions of shock over the Baghdad
torture centre from Washington, the primary motive for the raid by the US
military on November 13 was not to end such activities. Rather, it appears to
have been to weaken SCIRI's position. The organisation has close links to
Iran, one of the next potential targets of American and British aggression.
Moreover, while SCIRI has collaborated fully with the occupation, its
influence in the government is viewed as an obstacle to convincing more of the
Sunni elite to end their support for the resistance and accept a role in the US
puppet state. American and British plans to withdraw troops have been hinged on
Iraqi government forces being able to deal with the predominantly Sunni
insurgency.
The UIA as a whole has been discredited by the confirmation of the
widespread rumours that the Shiite-dominated government is repressing its
rivals using almost identical methods as the former Baathist regime. Hazim
al-Nuaimy, a politics professor at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University told
Reuters: "The prisoner torture scandal will have an impact on the prime
minister and his interior minister. It will have a negative impact on voting
for his list [the UIA] at the elections, at least among intellectuals and the
better educated.'
Even before the November 13 raid, the UIA's electoral prospects were
declining. The two main factors in the large turnout in the January election
were a religious edict by Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani instructing Shiites to
vote, and the UIA's promises to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of
foreign troops and improve living standards. Da'awa and SCIRI abandoned
their pledges as soon as the election was over. Their collaboration with the
occupation has produced widespread alienation among ordinary Shiites.
Reflecting the anger toward the governing parties, Sistani has refused to
endorse the UIA in the coming ballot.
The Bush administration has made no secret of whom it hopes will benefit.
Ahmed Chalabi and Iyad Allawi have both been promoted in the US press as
Washington's favoured candidates to head the next government. Both are
longtime CIA assets and advocates of the privatisation of the oil industry.
They are secular Shiites who have collaborated with the US plans to invade Iraq
since 1991. Allawi, an ex-Baathist, with ties to the Sunni establishment and
former Iraqi military, was installed by the White House as Iraq's interim
prime minister in 2004.
Chalabi's return to prominence is particularly noteworthy. In early
2004, as the Bush administration reversed his policy of de-Baathification,
Chalabi was pushed aside and accused of being an Iranian spy. He developed
relations with the Shiite fundamentalists and secured the position of deputy
prime minister in the government. Last week, he was feted in Washington with
private meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice. The Washington Post referred to him on November 17 as
"the choice of many US officials'.
Either Chalabi or Allawi would be considered by Washington as a far more
reliable prime minister than Jaafari or the SCIRI leadership. After the
December election, the primary tasks of the first so-called "sovereign
government' will be selling off Iraq's oil to US energy
corporations and sanctioning permanent US military bases in the country. In a
report published this month, the London-based environmental and social justice
network "Platform' provided an insight into what is at stake. The
report revealed that foreign energy companies could reap between $US74 billion
and $194 billion in revenue over 30 years from the first 12 oil fields
contracted out.
In order to secure Iraq for US interests, the American military is
continuing to unleash brutal offensives on rebellious areas of the country.
This month, 2,500 US marines and up to 1,500 Iraqi government troops carried
out assaults on Husayba, a town of 30,000 on the Iraq-Syria border near the
major city of Qaim, and the nearby towns of Karabilah and Ubaydi. The American
Forces Press Service reported they were "clearing the city house by
house'. Dozens of air strikes were carried out, reducing numbers of
buildings to rubble.
The purported targets were so-called "foreign fighters' aligned
with Al Qaeda crossing into Iraq from Syria to carry out attacks on US forces.
According to Iraqi doctors, however, dozens of the dead were civilians,
including women and children. At least 10 air strikes were launched on November
6 alone.
Thousands fled their homes to escape the bombardment. Karim Ayaj, a teacher
in Husayba, told CNN on November 13 that as many as 28,000 people were living
in palm groves and tents on the outskirts of the town and suffering from
shortages of food and medicine.
The areas being savaged by the US offensive are in the predominantly Sunni
Arab-populated Anbar province, where 97 percent of people who voted in the
October 15 referendum on a new constitution rejected the US-vetted document.
The province has been subjected to continuous repression since the 2003
invasion. An unknown number of people, possibly as many as 6,000, were killed
during the marine assaults on the city of Fallujah in April and November 2004.
The capital Ramadi has been the scene of constant American raids and clashes
between guerillas and US troops.
According to the US military, at least 700 alleged insurgents have been
killed during offensives against the resistance strongholds along the Syrian
border since September. No figure has been released for civilian casualties. As
many as 1,500 men have been detained. On November 1, the US military admitted
to holding 13,900 Iraqis in custody.
Dozens of American families have also paid a bitter price. The fighting has
helped push US casualties to an average of three dead and at least 20 wounded
per day. The monthly toll for October—96 dead and some 600
wounded—was the largest since January.
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