Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/040704E.shtml

  Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
  By Robert Fisk in Fallujah
  Independent UK

  Tuesday 06 April 2004

  Not content with surrounding the largest Sunni city west of Baghdad with
tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavy machine guns, US forces used
Apache helicopters to attack the Shia Muslim slums of Shoula yesterday, sent
dozens of their main battle tanks into the hovels of Sadr City and then
slapped an arrest warrant on the Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr who must dearly
have wanted the United States to do just that.

  Gun battles in Sadr City overnight had cost the lives of up to 40 Iraqis
and at least eight Americans, but in the sewage-damp streets yesterday, they
were handing out letters, allegedly written by the Sunni townspeople of
Fallujah, newly surrounded by 1,200 marines. "We support you, our brothers,
in your struggle," the letters said. If they are authentic, it should be
enough to make the US proconsul, Paul Bremer, wonder if he can ever
extricate Washington from Iraq. The British took three years to turn both
the Sunnis and the Shias into their enemies in 1920. The Americans are
achieving it in just under a year.

  Anarchy has been a condition of our occupation from the very first days
when we let the looters and arsonists destroy Iraq's infrastructure and
history. But that lawlessness is now coming back to haunt us. Anarchy is
what we are now being plunged into in Iraq, among a people with whom we
share no common language, no common religion and no common culture.

  Officially, Mr Bremer and his president are standing tall, claiming they
will not "tolerate" violence and those who oppose democracy, but occupation
officials in anticipation of a far more violent insurrection have been
privately discussing the legalities of martial law. And although Mr Bremer
and President George Bush are publicly insisting that the notional
"handover" of Iraq's "sovereignty" will still take place on 30 June, legal
experts attached to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council have also
been considering a delay of further months. Many Iraqis are now asking if
the Americans want disaster in Iraq. Surely not, but yesterday's violence
told its own story of blundering military operations and political
provocations that will undoubtedly add to the support for the charmless and
provocative Shia cleric whom Mr Bremer now wants to lock up allegedly for
plotting the murder of a pro-Western Shia cleric, Abdul-Majid el-Khoi. Sadr
was surrounded by his militiamen yesterday, in a mosque in Kufa from where
he issues regular denunciations of the occupation.

  Dan Senor, a spokesman for the occupying power, would not tell anyone
exactly what the evidence against Sadr was even though it has supposedly
existed since an Iraqi judge issued the warrant some months ago.

  The US military response to the atrocities committed against four American
mercenaries in Fallujah last week has been to surround the entire city and
to announce the cutting off of the neighbouring international highway link
between Baghdad, Amman and Damascus thus bringing to a halt almost all
economic trade between Iraq and its two western neighbours.

  What good this will do "new" Iraq is anyone's guess. Vast concrete walls
have been lowered across the road and military vehicles have been used to
chase away civilians trying to bypass them. A prolonged series of
Israeli-style house raids are now apparently planned for the people of
Fallujah to seek out the gunmen who first attacked the four Americans. The
corpses were stripped, mutilated and hanged.

  The helicopter attacks in Shoula by ghastly coincidence the very same
Shoula suburb in which civilians were slaughtered by an American aircraft
during last year's invasion looked like a copy of every Israeli raid on the
West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, Iraqis are well aware that the US military asked
for and received Israel's "rules of engagement" from Ariel Sharon's government.

  America's losses over the past 48 hours at least 12 soldiers killed and
many wounded come nowhere near the number of Iraqi victims over the same period.

  US forces in Sadr City believe they were fighting up to 500 militia men
from Sadr's black-uniformed Army of Mehdi early yesterday. Even so, using
Apache helicopters in a heavily populated district to hunt for gunmen raises
new questions about the rules to which occupation troops are supposed to adhere.

  The British fared less badly in Basra, Iraq's second city, where they
avoided violence with militiamen who had taken over the town hall and
wounded no one in a brief gun battle. Spanish troops were again involved in
shooting with militiamen in Najaf. The grim truth, however, is that the
occupying powers are now facing insurrection of various strengths in almost
every big city in Iraq.

  Yet they are still not confronting that truth. For the past nine nights,
for example, the main US base close to Baghdad airport and the area around
the terminals has come under mortar fire.

  But the occupying powers have kept this secret. "Things are getting very
bad and they're going to get worse," a special forces officer said close to
the airport yesterday. "But no one is saying that either because they don't
know or because they don't want you to know."

  As for Sadr, he will, no doubt, try to surround himself with squads of
gunmen and supporters in the hope that the Americans will not dare to shoot
their way in to him.

  Or he will go underground and we'll have another "enemy of democracy" to
bestialise in the approach to the American elections. Or much more serious
perhaps his capture may unleash far more violence from his supporters.

  And all this because Mr Bremer decided to ban Sadr's trashy
10,000-circulation weekly newspaper for "inciting violence."


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