“For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.
Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry’s spokesman – an American “adviser” and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn’t matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.
The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of “cakewalking” into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military “footprint” on the nation’s neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing “privatizations” that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, and the planned opening of Iraq’s oil reserves to select foreign investors – a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people’s wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, the Independent reports.
The violence is already dividing the county into more rigid sectarian enclaves, the New York Times reports, as Shiites flee Sunni commandos and Sunnis flee Shiite militias in the grim tag-team of their joint endeavor. It’s all grist for the Bushist mill: an atomized, terrorized, internally riven society is much easier to manipulate. And of course, a steady stream of bloodshed provides a justification for maintaining a substantial American military presence, even as politic plans for partial “withdrawal” are bandied about.
There’s nothing new in this; Bush is simply following a well-thumbed playbook. For example, in 1953 the CIA bankrolled Islamic fundamentalists and secular goon squads to destabilize the democratic government of Iran – which selfishly wanted to control its own oil – and pave the way for the puppet Shah, as the agency’s own histories recount. In 1971, CIA officials admitted carrying out more than 21,000 “extra-judicial killings” in its “Phoenix” counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam. (The true number of victims is certainly much higher).”
Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq December 1, 2005
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لدي صديق مسن نقلت اليه، منذ ايام، انتقادات البعض لصمته، عن انتهاكات النظام السابق لحقوق الانسان، منذ ان غزت قوات الاحتلال بلادنا، أجابني الصديق قائلا: لكنني قضيت عقودا من حياتي وانا اناهض وافضح، كتابة ونشاطا، انتهاكات النظام السابق. ان المسؤولين عنها معتقلون ويحاكمون حاليا. ء
ماذا عن المسؤولين عن الجرائم في ظل الاحتلال؟
حقاً. نحن نعرف جيدا تفاصيل جرائم الماضي وانتهاكات حقوق الانسان، كما نعرف هوية مقترفيها، ولكن، ماذا عن الحاضر؟ ماذا عن الجرائم والانتهاكات التي يعيشها أهلنا يوميا؟ من هو المسؤول عنها؟ وهل سيتم تقديم المتهمين الي المحاكم لينالـــوا جزاءهم العادل؟
مهزلة حقوق الانسان في العراق الجديد
هيفاء زنكنة
December 3, 2005
