A BRUTAL OCCUPATION IN IRAQ
Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) are bitterly critical of actions carried out by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq, mainly for indiscriminate shootings of noncombatants and mass detentions under deplorable conditions.
Violence toward innocent civilians, according to a BBC report Aug. 5, has reached the point where the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA — the military government) is offering "blood money" sums of between $500 and $1,500 to grieving relatives of the victims in an effort assuage mounting anger against the occupation armed forces.
Such violence is taking place on a daily basis, and the CPA evidently prefers to look the other way. On July 27, for example, Baghdad residents reported that at least 11 civilians were killed in the streets by a barrage of gunfire from U.S. troops as they raided a home in search of former President Saddam Hussein. According to an article by Robert Fisk the next day in the UK daily Independent, "two children, their mother and crippled father" were among the victims.
Agence France Press reported recently that many Iraqi civilians have been beaten at military checkpoints. The French news agency quoted an American MP, who insisted on anonymity, as saying he witnessed more than 20 instances of beating and robbing of civilians at the checkpoints. The mistreatment of civilians, he continued, has become "an embarrassment for us. A lot of this has to do with the war being over, and there being not a lot for us to do, and soldiers getting killed, and then their friends take it out on regular civilians."
At least four MPs are being held for beating civilians, but this is clearly only a token compared to the number of Iraqis who have been brutalized. The extent to which anti-Arab racism is a factor in these attacks is not known, but it certainly cannot be ruled out.
Since President Bush declared the war over some three months ago, U.S. troops have conducted hundreds of mass raids against civilians, often using violent tactics to extract information, including not infrequent reports of torture. Several thousand civilians are still being held in 18 military jails.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported from Baghdad July 29 that "according to human rights groups, none of the detainees...has been allowed to see a lawyer or meet with relatives, and none has yet been charged with a crime or brought to trial. They have essentially fallen into a black hole."
Both Amnesty and HRW have been critical of what they term the "inhumane conditions" in which the prisoners are being held. They have also deplored the military authority's interrogation techniques. In addition each has condemned the shootings of innocent civilians.
In a report issued by Amnesty in late July, the group detailed the death of Mohammad al-Kabuki, a 12-year-old boy, at the hands of trigger-happy GIs in Baghdad July 26. "That evening, as usual," the account revealed, "Mohammad was carrying the family bedding up to the roof when a soldier shot at him from the opposite house. Mohammad was still alive when neighbors tried to rush him by car to the nearby hospital, but they were stopped by soldiers in a tank on the way. The soldiers forced the neighbors to the ground, and after 15 minutes ordered them to return home because the curfew had started. Mohammad was already dead."