[PAA-Discuss] FW: 'Operation Forward Together' Deeper Into the Quagmire - by Dahr Jamail

[Lee Loe]

'Operation Forward Together': Deeper Into the Quagmire 


by Dahr Jamail <http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/> 


On Tuesday, June 13, while Mr. Bush spent a brave five hours in the "green
zone" of Baghdad with puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at least
36 people were killed across Iraq amid a wave of bombings. Eighteen of those
died in a spasm of bombings in the oil city of Kirkuk in the Kurdish north.

The minute word hit the streets in Baghdad of Bush's visit, over 2,000
supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in protest.
The protesters chanted "Iraq is for the Iraqis," and Sadr aide Hazem
al-Araji publicly condemned the peek-a-boo visit of the man he referred to
as "the leader of the occupation."

Day One

The very next day, not coincidentally, Maliki instituted the biggest
security crackdown in the capital city since the U.S. invaded Iraq, dubbed
"Operation Forward Together." An estimated 75,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers
clogged the already seriously congested streets of Baghdad, using tanks and
armored vehicles to man checkpoints, impose a more strict curfew in
liberated Baghdad (9 p.m.-6 a.m., as opposed to the more generous 11 p.m.-6
a.m.), and attempt to impose a weapons ban.

Just after "The Operation" began, a car bomb detonated, killing one person
while wounding five others. Major General Mahdi al-Gharrawi, who commands
"public order forces" under the deadly umbrella of the controversial
Interior Ministry, made a statement for which George Orwell would have been
proud: "Baghdad is divided according to geographical area, and we know the
al-Qaeda leaders in each area," he told reporters. "We are expecting clashes
will erupt in the predominantly Sunni areas." So Sunnis in Iraq, according
to Gharrawi, are tied to al-Qaeda.

Lest we forget, the Iraqi "army" ran a similar draconian security crackdown
in Baghdad in May 2005 called Operation Lightning. That one, too, was tens
of thousands of Iraqi "police" and "soldiers" backed by American troops and
air support. Civilians across Baghdad complained about the mass detentions,
random violence, and torture meted out by the death squads during that
"operation." And we see how well that operation managed to improve security
in Baghdad over the last year.

So here we go again - only this time with even more troops, raiding even
more homes, manning more checkpoints, and of course more death squads
operating - with backup support from American soldiers and, of course, their
air strikes.

Iraq's puppet prime minister, in an effort to soothe the fear in the hearts
of Baghdad's residents who are concerned about more detentions, random
violence, and "torture by electric drill," which the U.S.-backed Shia death
squads prefer with their victims, told reporters of the operation, "The
raids during this plan will be very tough . because there will be no mercy
towards those who show no mercy to our people."

The same day Operation Forward Together began and the day after Bush bid
farewell to Baghdad, Bush dismissed calls for a U.S. withdrawal as
"election-year" politics. Refusing to give a timetable for withdrawal or
some kind of benchmark with which to measure success that may allow troops
to be brought home, Bush said simply, "It's bad policy," at a news
conference in the Rose Garden. He thought it would "endanger our country" to
pull out of Iraq before we "accomplish the mission." Of his visit to
Baghdad, Bush said, "I sense something different happening in Iraq."

While pounding his fist on the podium set up for him at the press
conference, Bush proudly repeated his mantra of propaganda: "If the United
States of America leaves before this Iraqi government can defend itself and
sustain itself and govern itself, it will be a major blow in the war on
terror."

Day Two

Thursday morning the Pentagon announced the death of the 2,500th U.S.
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13337155/>  soldier in Iraq.

Meanwhile, back in liberated Baghdad, also on that same day, I received an
e-mail from a very close friend of mine. It is a sobering glimpse into
Operation Forward Together and what Bush alluded to when he said, "I sense
something different happening in Iraq."

"Habibi, we are divided in three houses today. I am at our home in Adhamiya.
My wife and two youngest boys are at her sister's house in Bab Al-Moudam
because it's safer for them. It's a mixed Sunni and Shia area, so there are
no detentions. Our daughter is with her husband in their home, and my oldest
son is at his house with his wife and baby, although he is not in a safe
area. There is often fighting there, but not too many detentions. 

"Today Adhamiya is totally under occupation since early morning. None of the
shops are open, the soldiers are holding up all cars and searching them, and
home raids are happening. The city is a city of ghosts. This situation is
the same in all the Sunni areas. Checkpoints are all over Baghdad, the
highways between Baghdad and the other cities are all closed and nobody can
go on them. The airports are closed, and no flights are coming in or out of
Baghdad. 

"We cannot leave the country until the beginning of next month. By the way,
three of my son's friends were killed by explosions two days ago while they
were having fruits in the market. He came home crying because of that. The
situation is very bad. The son of Abdul Sattar Al Kubaisy, who is in the
Ministry of Interior, has been kidnapped from inside the Ministry. He was
found in one of the trash cans outside the Ministry of Interior building .
so even the offices of the government are no longer safe!!! 

"God is with us insh'allah [God willing]." 

Day Three

On Friday, a hospital source in Fallujah reported that eight Iraqis, some of
whom were women and children from the same family, were killed and six
wounded when U.S. warplanes bombed a home in the northeastern Ibrahim Bin
Ali district of the city.

That same day, a story titled "Shi'ite
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR200606150
2180_pf.html>  Militias Control Prisons, Officials Say," was released by the
Washington Post Foreign Service.

The story reads, 

"Iraq's prison system is overrun with Shi'ite Muslim militiamen who have
freed fellow militia members convicted of major crimes and executed Sunni
Arab inmates, the country's deputy justice minister said in an interview
this week.

"'We cannot control the prisons. It's as simple as that,' said the deputy
minister, Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, an ethnic Kurd. 'Our jails are
infiltrated by the militias from top to bottom, from Basra to Baghdad.'"

The story continued, 

"In an interview this week, Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zobaie, the top
Sunni Arab in Iraq's new government, showed photographs taken from one
recent inspection of an Interior Ministry detention center. An inmate in one
of the photos held out his misshapen, limp hands for the camera. The man's
hands had been broken in a beating, Zobaie said. Other inmates showed
massive, dark bruises on their skin; one bore a large, open infected sore.

"Inmates in another photo clustered around chains hung from the middle of
one of the crowded cells. The chains were used to hoist prisoners by their
bound hands, Zobaie said. The practice, noted frequently in inspection
reports of Interior Ministry detention centers, often results in the
dislocation of prisoners' shoulders.

"Ninety percent of the men crowded into Interior Ministry detention centers
are Sunni Arabs, Zobaie said."

On the previous Saturday,

"[A] group of parliament members paid a surprise visit to a detention
facility run by the Interior Ministry in Baqubah, north of Baghdad. 'We have
found terrible violations of the law,' said Muhammed al-Dayni, a Sunni
parliament member who said as many as 120 detainees were packed into a
35-by-20-foot cell. 'They told us that they've been raped,' Dayni said.
'Their families were called in and tortured to force the detainees to
testify against other people.'

"'The detention facilities of the ministries of Defense and Interior are
places for the most brutal human rights abuse,' he added."

"Despite broad U.S. efforts to encourage the Iraqi government to improve
conditions in prisons, the problem of militia control could prove
particularly intractable. Shi'ite militias such as the Badr Organization and
the Mahdi Army, loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are backed by dozens of
members of parliament whose political parties run the armed groups.

"'You can't even talk to the militias, because they are the government,' Yei
said. 'They have ministers on their side.'"

Day Four

Saturday evening, two U.S. soldiers were detained by resistance fighters
just south of Baghdad. With a Bush administration that openly advocates the
use of torture and props up a Shia prime minister in Iraq who says things
like "there <http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060614-124233-6956r.htm>
will be no mercy" when referencing his new "security operation," their fate
is indeed a dark one.

At least 40 <http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO726183.htm>  people
were killed and over 80 wounded amid a rash of bomb and mortar attacks, most
of which took place in Baghdad. The deadliest attack occurred at an Iraqi
police checkpoint, while another car bomb targeting the Iraqi army and
police killed another 11 people. Meanwhile, 15 others were wounded at a
joint Iraqi army and police checkpoint, also in Baghdad.

Day Five

Gunmen kidnapped 10
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060618/wl_mideast_afp/iraq>  bakery workers
from a predominantly Shia neighborhood in Baghdad. Ten bullet-riddled bodies
of men who had apparently been tortured were also found in Baghdad. A mortar
<http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=564754445
544850009>  round hit al-Sadiq University on Palestine Street in the capital
city - five students and one teacher were wounded. The U.S. military
continued to search in vain for its two missing soldiers. Residents
continued to stream out of the capital city of al-Anbar province, Ramadi,
due to the threat of an all-out U.S. assault on the city. Thousands of the
refugees are wandering around the province with nowhere to go.

Coming Days, Weeks, Months, Years?

With Operation Forward Together off to a dazzling beginning, how long will
the occupation be allowed to continue? Each passing day only brings the
people of Iraq and soldiers serving in the U.S. military deeper into the
quagmire that the brutal, despicable, tortured occupation has become.

This piece originally appeared at Truthout.org <http://truthout.org/> .


 

 

 

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