Iraq through the American looking
glass
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
26
December 2003 : (The Independent) Something very unpleasant is being let loose
in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in
the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the
guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to "instill fear"
in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just
taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and grand-daughters
into believing that she was being arrested.
A battalion commander in the
same area put the point even more baldly. "With a heavy dose of fear and
violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people
that we are here to help them," he said. He was speaking from a village that his
men had surrounded with barbed wire, upon which was a sign, stating: "This fence
is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be
shot."
Try to explain that this treatment - and these words - offend the
very basic humanity of the people whom the Americans claimed they came to
"liberate" and you are met in Baghdad with the same explanation: that a very
small "remnant" of "diehards" - loyal to the now-captured Saddam Hussein, etc,
etc - have to be separated from the civilians whom they are
"intimidating".
To point out that the intimidation is largely coming from
the American occupation force - to the horror of the British in southern Iraq
who fear, understandably, that Iraqi revenge will be visited upon them as it was
on the Italians and the Spanish - is useless.
Instead, we are told that
American troops are winning those famous hearts and minds with the spirit of
Christmas. There was a grim example of this - and the inherent racism that
pervades even reporting of such events - on the Associated Press wire agency
just this week.
Describing how an American soldier in a Santa Claus hat
was giving out stuffed animals to children, reporter Jason Keyser wrote that one
11-year- old child "looked puzzled, then smiled" as the soldier gave him a
small, stuffed goat. Then the report continued: "Others in the crowd of mostly
Muslims grabbed greedily at the box," adding the soldier's remark that: "They
don't know how to handle generosity."
I don't doubt the soldier's wish to
do good. But what is one to make of the "mostly Muslims" who "grabbed greedily"
at the gifts? Or the soldier's insensitive remarks about generosity? Iraqi
newspapers have been front--paging a Christmas card produced by US troops in
Baghdad: "1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Wishes you a very Merry Christmas!" it
says.
But the illustration is of Saddam Hussein in his scruffy beard just
after his capture, with a Santa hat superimposed on top of his head. Funny
enough for us, no doubt - I can't personally think of a better fall-guy for St
Nicholas - but a clear insult to Sunni Arabs who, however much they may loathe
the beast of Baghdad, will see in this card a deliberate attempt to humiliate
Muslim Iraqis. It is for Iraqis to demean their ex-president - not their
American occupiers.
It's almost as if the occupying powers want to look
through Alice's looking glass. This week, we had the odd statement by British
General Graeme Lamb that Saddam could be compared to the Emperor Caligula. Now
the good general was probably relying on Suetonius's Twelve Caesars for his
views on Caligula. But if anything, the Roman was a good deal more insane than
Saddam and even more heedless of human life.
The crazy Uday Hussein, son
of Saddam, might have been a more appropriate parallel. But what was all this
supposed to achieve? A serious war crimes trial - preferably outside Iraq and
far from the country's contaminated judiciary - is the way to define the nature
of Saddam's repulsive regime.
All references to the ex-dictator as
Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun or Caligula - like all suggestions that Tony
Blair or George Bush are Winston Churchill - are infantile. And again, they will
appear insulting to the Sunni Muslims of Iraq, the one community which the
Americans should be desperate to placate, since it is the Sunnis who are
primarily resisting the occupation.
But the looking-glass effect seems to
have taken hold of US pro-consul Paul Bremer's entire authority. Like President
George Bush, Bremer has now taken to repeating the absurdity that the greater
the West's success in Iraq, the more frequent will be the attacks on American
troops.
"I personally feel that we'll actually have more violence in the
next six months," he said a couple of week ago, "and the violence will be
precisely because of the fact that we're building momentum toward success." In
other words, the better things become, the worse they're going to get. And the
greater the violence, the better we're doing in Iraq.
I wouldn't worry
about this nonsense so much if it wasn't mirrored on the ground in Iraq. Take
the US claim - now regarded as an absurdity - that they killed "54 insurgents"
in Samara a month ago. The truth is that they killed at least eight civilians
and there's not a smidgen of evidence that they killed anyone else. But still
they insist on sticking to the story of their great victory.
Last week,
they pushed out a similar version of the same story. This time there were 11
dead "insurgents" in Samara. But when The Independent investigated, it could
only find records of four dead civilians and a lot of wounded. None of the
wounded - presumably "insurgents" if the Americans believe their own story - had
been visited in hospital by US forces who might, if they didn't question them,
at least have apologised.
An even more peculiar habit has now manifest
itself among spokesmen for the occupation authorities. When a tank drove over a
prominent Shiite Muslim cleric in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City three weeks
ago, they claimed this was a "traffic accident", as if driving an M1A1 Abrams
tank over a car and a robed prelate is the kind of thing that can happen on any
downtown street.
A few days later, after a truck-bomber crashed into a
car and killed 17 civilians, the occupation lads churned out the same rubbish
again. It was, they said, a "traffic accident" involving a petrol tanker. But
there was no tanker attached to the lorry.
The first American troops on
the scene found the grenades intended to detonate the bomb and the victims were
all blasted to bits - not burned, as they would have been if the petrol tanker
had simply caught fire. Those of us who reached the scene shortly after the
slaughter could still smell the explosives. But it was a "traffic
accident".
Only yesterday we had an equally bizarre event. Jets, C-130
aircraft mounted with chain guns, and heavy artillery were all reported to be
striking "guerrilla bases" in Operation Iron Hammer south of Baghdad. But
investigation proved that the targets were empty fields and that some of the
heavy guns were firing blank rounds as part of an artillery maintenance
routine.
So let's get this right. Insurgents are civilians. Truck bombs
and tanks that crush civilians are traffic accidents. And the "liberated"
civilians who live in villages surrounded by razor wire should endure "a heavy
dose of fear and violence" to keep them on the straight and
narrow.
Somewhere along the way, they will probably be told about
democracy as well.
Coptright: The Independent