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Dismantling the Iraqi State, Destroying an Entire Country Destroying
Iraqi culture, erasing collective memory
By Dirk Adriaensens
URL of this article:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21781
Global Research, November 5, 2010
The United Nation's Human Rights Council in Geneva reviews the human
rights record of the United States on the 5th of November 2010, on
the occasion of the Ninth Session of the Universal Periodic Review
(UPR), 1 to 12 November 2010. The following is a presentation given
by Dirk Adriaensens in Geneva on 3 November.
Just days after the devastating attacks of 9/11 Deputy Defense
secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared that a major focus of US foreign
policy would be ending states that sponsor terrorism. Iraq was
labelled a terrorist state and targeted for ending. President Bush
went on to declare Iraq the major front of the global war on terror.
US forces invaded illegally with the express aim to dismantling the
Iraqi state. After WWII focus of social sciences was on state-building
and development model. Little has been written on state-destruction
and de-development. We can now, after 7 years of war and occupation,
state for certain that state-ending was a deliberate policy objective.
The consequences in human and cultural terms of the destruction of
the Iraqi state have been enormous: notably the death of over 1,3
million civilians; the degradation in social infrastructure, including
electricity, potable water and sewage systems; over eight million
Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance; abject poverty: the
UN Human rights report for the 1st quarter of 2007 found that 54%
of Iraqis were living on less than $1 a day; the displacement of
minimum 2.5 million refugees and 2.764.000 internally displaced
people as to end 2009. One in six Iraqis is displaced. Ethnic &
religious minorities are on the verge of extinction. UN-HABITAT,
an agency of the United Nations, published a 218-page report entitled
State of the Worlds Cities, 2010-2011. Prior to the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living in
slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage
has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban
dwellers.
Destroying Iraqi education
The UNESCO report Education Under Attack 2010 Iraq, dated 10
February 2010, concludes that Although overall security in Iraq had
improved, the situation faced by schools, students, teachers and
academics remained dangerous. The director of the United Nations
University International Leadership Institute published a report
on 27 April 2005 detailing that since the start of the war of 2003
some 84% of Iraq's higher education institutions have been burnt,
looted or destroyed. Ongoing violence has destroyed school buildings
and around a quarter of all Iraqs primary schools need major
rehabilitation. Since March 2003, more than 700 primary schools
have been bombed, 200 have been burnt and over 3,000 looted.
Populations of teachers in Baghdad have fallen by 80%. Between March
2003 and October 2008, 31,598 violent attacks against educational
institutions were reported in Iraq, according to the Ministry of
Education (MoE). Since 2007 bombings at Al Mustansiriya University
in Baghdad have killed or maimed more than 335 students and staff
members, according to a 19 Oct 2009 NYT article, and a 12-foot-high
blast wall has been built around the campus. MNF-I, the Iraqi Army
and Iraqi police units occupied more than 70 school buildings for
military purposes in the Diyala governorate alone, in clear violation
of The Hague Conventions. The UNESCO report is very clear: Attacks
on education targets continued throughout 2007 and 2008 at a lower
rate but one that would cause serious concern in any other country.
Why didnt it cause serious concern when it comes to Iraq? And the
attacks are on the rise again, an increase of 50%, as these statistics
show:
Murdered Academics (source: BRussells Tribunal)
Date unknown
115
killed in 2003-2005
2003
16
2004
36
2005
65
2006
113
2007
63
2008
19
2009
10
2010
16
(Until 15 October 2010)
Murdered Media-professionals (source: BRussells Tribunal)
2003
26
6 Iraqis
2004
59
53 Iraqis
2005
59
58 Iraqis
2006
90
88 Iraqis
2007
82
81 Iraqis
2008
19
19 Iraqis
2009
8
8 Iraqis
2010
12
12 Iraqis (Until 15 October 2010)
(On the 20th of March 2008, Reporters Without Borders reported that
hundreds of journalists were forced into exile since the start of
US-led invasion.)
Eliminating the Iraqi middle class
Running parallel with the destruction of Iraqs educational
infrastructure, this repression led to the mass forced displacement
of the bulk of Iraqs educated middle class the main engine of
progress and development in modern states. Iraqs intellectual and
technical class has been subject to a systematic and ongoing campaign
of intimidation, abduction, extortion, random killings and targeted
assassinations. The decimation of professional ranks took place in
the context of a generalized assault on Iraqs professional middle
class, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges as well as
political and religious leaders. Roughly 40 percent of Iraq's middle
class is believed to have fled by the end of 2006. Few have returned.
Up to 75 percent of Iraq's doctors, pharmacists and nurses have
left their jobs since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. More than half
of those have emigrated. Twenty thousand of Iraqs 34,000 registered
physicians left Iraq after the U.S. invasion. As of April 2009,
fewer than 2,000 returned, the same as the number who were killed
during the course of the war.
To this date, there has been no systematic investigation of this
phenomenon by the occupation authorities. Not a single arrest has
been reported in regard to this terrorization of the intellectuals.
The inclination to treat this systematic assault on Iraqi professionals
as somehow inconsequential is consistent with the occupation powers
more general role in the decapitation of Iraqi society.
Destroying the Iraqi culture and erasing collective memory
All these terrible losses are compounded by unprecedented levels
of cultural devastation, attacks on national archives and monuments
that represent the historical identity of the Iraqi people. On
Americas watch we now know that thousands of cultural artefacts
disappeared during Operation Iraqi Freedom. These objects included
no less that 15.000 invaluable Mesopotamian artefacts from the
National Museum in Baghdad, and many others from the 12.000
archaeological sites that the occupation forces left unguarded.
While the Museum was robbed of its historical collection, the
National Library that preserved the continuity and pride of Iraqi
history was deliberately destroyed. Occupation authorities took no
effective measures to protect important cultural sites, despite
warnings of international specialists. According to a recent update
on the number of stolen artefacts by Francis Deblauwe, an expert
archaeologist on Iraq, it appears that no less than 8.500 objects
are still truly missing, in addition to 4.000 artefacts said to be
recovered abroad but not yet returned to Iraq. The smuggling and
trade of Iraqi antiquities has become one of the most profitable
businesses in contemporary Iraq.
The attitude of the US-led forces to this pillage has been, at best,
indifference and worse. The failure of the US to carry out its
responsibilities under international law to take positive and
protective actions was compounded by egregious direct actions taken
that severely damaged the Iraqi cultural heritage. Since the invasion
in March 2003, the US-led forces have transformed at least seven
historical sites into bases or camps for the military, including
UR, one of the most ancient cities of the world and birthplace of
Abraham, including the mythical Babylon where a US military camp
has irreparably damaged the ancient city.
Destroying the Iraqi state
Rampant chaos and violence hamper efforts at reconstruction, leaving
the foundations of the Iraqi state in ruins. The majority of Western
journalists, academics and political figures have refused to recognise
the loss of life on such a massive scale and the cultural destruction
that accompanied it as the fully predictable consequences of American
occupation policy. The very idea is considered unthinkable, despite
the openness with which this objective was pursued.
It is time to think the unthinkable. The American-led assault on
Iraq forces us to consider the meaning and consequences of
state-destruction as a policy objective. The architects of the Iraq
policy never made explicit what deconstructing and reconstructing
the Iraqi state would entail; their actions, however, make the
meaning clear. From those actions in Iraq, a fairly precise definition
of state-ending can be read. The campaign to destroy the state of
Iraq involved first the removal and execution of the legal head of
state Saddam Hussein and the capture and expulsion of Baath figures.
However, state destruction went beyond regime change. It also
entailed the purposeful dismantling of major state institutions and
the launching of a prolonged process of political reshaping.
Bremer's 100 orders turned Iraq into a giant free-market paradise,
but a hellish nightmare for Iraqis. They colonized the country for
capital - pillage on the grandest scale. New economic laws instituted
low taxes, 100% foreign investor ownership of Iraqi assets, the
right to expropriate all profits, unrestricted imports, and long-term
30-40 year deals and leases, dispossessing Iraqis of their own
resources.
This desecration of the past and undermining of contemporary social
gains is now giving way in occupied Iraq to the destruction of a
meaningful future. Iraq is being handed over to the disintegrative
forces of sectarianism and regionalism. Iraqis, stripped of their
shared heritage and living today in the ruins of contemporary social
institutions that sustained a coherent and unified society, are now
bombarded by the forces of civil war, social and religious atavism
and widespread criminality. Iraqi nationalism that had emerged
through a prolonged process of state-building and social interaction
is now routinely disparaged. The regime installed by occupation
forces in Iraq reshaped the country along divisive sectarian lines,
dissolving the hard-won unity of a long state-building project.
Dominant narratives now falsely claim that sectarianism and ethnic
chauvinism have always been the basis of Iraqi society, recycling
yet again the persistent and destructive myth of age-old conflicts
with no resolution and for which the conquerors bear no responsibility.
Contemporary Iraq represents a fragmented pastiche of sectarian
forces with the formal trappings of liberal democracy and neo-liberal
economic structures. We call this the divide and rule technique,
used to fracture and subdue culturally cohesive regions. This
reshaping of the Iraqi state resulted in a policy of ethnic cleansing,
partially revealed by the Wikileaks files.
The Wikileaks documents
The Wikileaks documents, first made public on 22 October 2010, show
how the US military gave a secret order not to investigate torture
by Iraqi authorities discovered by American troops.
The data also reveal how hundreds of civilians were killed by
coalition forces in unreported events, how hundreds of Iraqi
civilians: pregnant women, elderly people and children, were shot
at checkpoints.
There are numerous claims of prison abuse by coalition forces even
after the Abu Ghraib scandal. The files also paint a grim picture
of widespread torture in Iraqi detention facilities. Two revelations
await the reader of the Wikileaks section dealing with civilian
deaths in the Iraq War: Iraqis are responsible for most of these
deaths, and the number of total civilian casualties is substantially
higher than has been previously reported.
The documents record a descent into chaos and horror as the country
plunged into so-called civil war. The logs also record thousands
of bodies, many brutally tortured, dumped on the streets of Iraq.
Through the Wikileaks files we can see the impact the war had on
Iraqi men, women and children. The sheer scale of the deaths,
detentions and violence is here officially acknowledged for the
first time.
A thorough research of these documents will give us a further insight
into the atrocities committed in Iraq. The Wikileaks logs can serve
as evidence in courts. They are important material for lawyers to
file charges against the US for negligence and responsibility for
the killing of thousands. A fair compensation for the families of
the victims and the recognition of their suffering can help to heal
the wounds. In the first official US State Department response to
the massive WikiLeaks release of these classified Iraq War documents,
spokesman P.J. Crowley shrugged off the evidence that US troops
were ordered to cover up detainee abuse by the Iraqi government,
insisting the abuse wasnt Americas problem. This response is
infuriating. The perpetrators of this violence and those who ordered
the soldiers to turn a blind eye when being confronted with torture
and extra-judicial killings should be convicted for war crimes. The
US and UK forces and Governments clearly refused to fulfil their
obligations under international law as a de facto occupying power.
However, these logs reveal only the 'SIGACT's or Significant Actions
in the war as told by soldiers in the United States Army: the reports
of the regular US troops. The logs contain nothing new, they merely
confirm and officialize what the Iraqis and un-embedded Western
observers have been trying to convey to the public for years. While
all of the press is now reporting the Wikileaks story, few media
outlets are going back to their own coverage and acknowledging how
they have failed to honestly report about the crimes.
What these 400.000 documents do not reveal is the US involvement
of irregular troops in Special Operations, counter-insurgency war
and death squads activities. When will the documents of the dirty
war be revealed? The BRussells Tribunal, monitoring this horrendous
invasion and occupation since 2003, is convinced that the leaked
logs only scratch the surface of the catastrophic war in Iraq. What
we can extract from the Wikileaks documents is only the tip of the
iceberg. It is time to take a dive into the troubled waters of the
Iraq war and try to explore the hidden part of the iceberg.
Ethnic cleansing
It became clear after the invasion in 2003 that the Iraqi exile
groups were to play an important role in the violent response to
dissent in occupied Iraq. Already on January 1st 2004, it was
reported that the US government planned to create paramilitary units
comprised of militiamen from Iraqi Kurdish and exile groups including
the Badr brigades, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National
Accord to wage a campaign of terror and extra-judicial killing,
similar to the Phoenix program in Vietnam: the terror and assassination
campaign that killed tens of thousands of civilians.
The $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in November
2003 included $3 billion for a classified program, funds that would
be used for the paramilitaries for the next 3 years. Over that
period, the news from Iraq gradually came to be dominated by reports
of death squads and ethnic cleansing, described in the press as
sectarian violence that was used as the new central narrative of
the war and the principal justification for continued occupation.
Some of the violence may have been spontaneous, but there is
overwhelming evidence that most of it was the result of the plans
described by several American experts in December 2003.
Despite subsequent American efforts to distance US policy from the
horrific results of this campaign, it was launched with the full
support of conservative opinion-makers in the USA, even declaring
that The Kurds and the INC have excellent intelligence operations
that we should allow them to exploit... especially to conduct
counterinsurgency in the Sunny Triangle as a Wall Street Journal
editorial stated.
The Salvador Option
In January 2005, more than a year after the first reports about the
Pentagons planning for assassinations and paramilitary operations
emerged, the Salvador Option hit the pages of Newsweek and other
major news-outlets. The outsourcing of state terrorism to local
proxy forces was regarded as a key component of a policy that had
succeeded in preventing the total defeat of the US-backed government
in El Salvador. Pentagon-hired mercenaries, like Dyncorp, helped
form the sectarian militias that were used to terrorize and kill
Iraqis and to provoke Iraq into civil war.
In 2004 two senior US Army officers published a favourable review
of the American proxy war in Colombia: Presidents Reagan and Bush
supported a small, limited war while trying to keep US military
involvement a secret from the American public and media. Present
US policy toward Colombia appears to follow this same disguised,
quiet, media-free approach.
It reveals the fundamental nature of dirty war, like in Latin America
and the worst excesses of the Vietnam War. The purpose of dirty war
is not to identify and then detain or kill actual resistance fighters.
The target of dirty war is the civilian population. It is a strategy
of state terrorism and collective punishment against an entire
population with the objective to terrorizing it into submission.
The same tactics used in Central America and Colombia were exported
to Iraq. Even the architects of these dirty wars in El Salvador
(Ambassador John Negroponte and James Steele) and in Colombia (Steven
Casteel) were transferred to Iraq to do the same dirty work. They
recruited, trained and deployed the notorious Special Police
Commandos, in which later, in 2006, death squads like the Badr
Brigades and other militias were incorporated. US forces set up a
high-tech operations centre for the Special Police Commandos at an
undisclosed location in Iraq. American technicians installed satellite
telephones and computers with uplinks to the Internet and US forces
Networks. The command centre had direct connections to the Iraqi
Interior Ministry and to every US forward operating base in the
country.
As news of atrocities by these forces in Iraq hit the newsstands
in 2005, Casteel would play a critical role in blaming extrajudicial
killings on insurgents with stolen police uniforms, vehicles and
weapons. He also claimed that torture centres were run by rogue
elements of the Interior Ministry, even as accounts came to light
of torture taking place inside the ministry headquarters where he
and other Americans worked. US advisers to the Interior Ministry
had their offices on the 8th floor, directly above a jail on the
7th floor where torture was taking place.
The uncritical attitude of the Western media to American officials
like Steven Casteel prevented a worldwide popular and diplomatic
outcry over the massive escalation of the dirty war in Iraq in 2005
and 2006, consistent with the disguised, quiet, media-free approach
mentioned before. As the Newsweek story broke in January 2005,
General Downing, the former head of US Special Forces, appeared on
NBC. He said: This is under control of the US forces, of the current
Interim Iraqi government. Theres no need to think that were going
to have any kind of killing campaign thats going to maim innocent
civilians. Within months, Iraq was swept by exactly that kind of a
killing campaign. This campaign has led to arbitrary detention,
torture, extra-judicial executions and the mass exodus and internal
displacement of millions. Thousands of Iraqis disappeared during
the worst days of this dirty war between 2005 and 2007. Some were
seen picked up by uniformed militias and piled into lorries, others
simply seemed to vanish. Iraqs minister of human rights Wijdan
Mikhail said that her ministry had received more than 9,000 complaints
in 2005 and 2006 alone from Iraqis who said a relative had disappeared.
Human rights groups put the total number much higher. The fate of
many missing Iraqis remains unknown. Many are languishing in one
of Iraq's notoriously secretive prisons.
Journalist Dr. Yasser Salihee was killed on June 24th 2005 by an
American sniper, so-called accidentally. Three days after his death
Knight Ridder published a report on his investigation into the
Special Police Commandos and their links to torture, extra-judicial
killings and disappearances in Baghdad. Salihee and his colleagues
investigated at least 30 separate cases of abductions leading to
torture and death. In every case witnesses gave consistent accounts
of raids by large numbers of police commandos in uniform, in clearly
marked police vehicles, with police weapons and bullet-proof vests.
And in every case the detained were later found dead, with almost
identical signs of torture and they were usually killed by a single
gunshot to the head.
The effect of simply not pointing out the connection between the
US and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade militia, the US-backed Wolf
Brigade and other Special Police Commando units, or the extent of
American recruitment, training, command, and control of these units,
was far-reaching. It distorted perceptions of events in Iraq
throughout the ensuing escalation of the war, creating the impression
of senseless violence initiated by the Iraqis themselves and
concealing the American hand in the planning and execution of the
most savage forms of violence. By providing cover for the crimes
committed by the US government, news editors played a significant
role in avoiding the public outrage that might have discouraged the
further escalation of this campaign.
The precise extent of US complicity in different aspects and phases
of death squad operations, torture and disappearances, deserves
thorough investigation. It is not credible that American officials
were simply innocent bystanders to thousands of these incidents.
As frequently pointed out by Iraqi observers, Interior Ministry
death squads moved unhindered through American as well as Iraqi
checkpoints as they detained, tortured and killed thousands of
people.
As in other countries where US forces have engaged in what they
refer to as counter-insurgency, American military and intelligence
officials recruited, trained, equipped and directed local forces
which engaged in a campaign of state-sponsored terror against the
overwhelming proportion of the local population who continued to
reject and oppose the invasion and occupation of their country.
The degree of US initiative in the recruitment, training, equipping,
deployment, command and control of the Special Police Commandos
made it clear that American trainers and commanders established the
parameters within which these forces operated. Many Iraqis and
Iranians were certainly guilty of terrible crimes in the conduct
of this campaign. But the prime responsibility for this policy, and
for the crimes it involved, rests with the individuals in the
civilian and military command structure of the US Department of
Defense, the CIA and the White House who devised, approved and
implemented the Phoenix or Salvador terror policy in Iraq.
The report of the Human Rights Office of UNAMI, issued on September
8th 2005, written by John Pace was very explicit, linking the
campaign of detentions, torture and extra-judicial executions
directly to the Interior Ministry and indirectly to the US-led
Multi-National Forces.
The final UN Human Rights Report of 2006 described the consequences
of these policies for the people of Baghdad, while downplaying their
institutional roots in American policy. The sectarian violence that
engulfed Iraq in 2006 was not an unintended consequence of the US
invasion and occupation but an integral part of it. The United
States did not just fail to restore stability and security to Iraq.
It deliberately undermined them in a desperate effort to divide and
rule the country and to fabricate new justifications for unlimited
violence against Iraqis who continued to reject the illegal invasion
and occupation of their country.
The nature and extent of involvement of different individuals and
groups within the US occupation structure has remained a dirty,
dark secret, but there are many leads that could be followed by any
serious inquiry.
The Surge
In January 2007, the US government announced a new strategy, the
surge of US combat troops in Baghdad and Al-Anbar province. Most
Iraqis reported that this escalation of violence made living
conditions even worse than before, as its effects were added to the
accumulated devastation of 4 years of war and occupation. The UN
Human Rights report for the 1st quarter of 2007 gave a description
of the dire conditions of the Iraqi people. The violence of the
surge resulted i.e. in a further 22% reduction of the number of
doctors, leaving only 15.500 out of an original 34.000 by September
2008. The number of refugees and internally displaced has risen
sharply during the period 2007-2008.
Since Interior Ministry forces under US command were responsible
for a large part of the extra-judicial killings, the occupation
authorities had the power to reduce or increase the scale of these
atrocities more or less on command. So a reduction in the killings
with the launch of the security plan should not have been difficult
to achieve. In fact, a small reduction in violence seems to have
served an important propaganda role for a period until the death
squads got back to work, supported by the new American offensive.
The escalation of American firepower in 2007, including a five-fold
increase in air strikes and the use of Spectre gun-ships and artillery
in addition to the surge was intended as a devastating climax to
the past 4 years of war and collective punishment inflicted upon
the Iraqi people. All resistance-held areas would be targeted with
overwhelming fire-power, mainly from the air, until the US ground
forces could build walls around what remained of each neighbourhood
and isolate each district. Its worth mentioning that General Petraeus
compared the hostilities in Ramadi with the Battle of Stalingrad
without qualms about adopting the role of the German invaders in
this analogy. Ramadi was completely destroyed as was Fallujah in
November 2004.
The UN Human Rights reports of 2007 mentioned the indiscriminate
and illegal attacks against civilians and civilian areas and asked
for investigations. Air strikes continued on an almost daily basis
until August 2008 even as the so-called sectarian violence and US
casualties declined. In all the reported incidents where civilians,
women and children were killed, Centcom press office declared that
the people killed were terrorists, Al Qaeda militants or involuntary
human shields. Of course, when military forces are illegally ordered
to attack civilian areas, many people will try to defend themselves,
especially if they know that the failure to do so may result in
arbitrary detention, abuse, torture, or summary execution for
themselves or their relatives.
Forces involved in Special Operations:
Another aspect of the surge or escalation appears to have been an
increase in the use of the American Special Forces assassination
teams. In april 2008 i.e. President Bush declared: As we speak, US
Special Forces are launching multiple operations every night to
capture or kill Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq. The NYT reported on 13
May 2009: When General Stanley McChrystal took over the Joint Special
Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando
force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military
and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he
worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with
the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. (...) In Iraq, where he oversaw secret
commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials
say that he had an encyclopaedic, even obsessive, knowledge about
the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively
to kill as many of them as possible. (...) Most of what General
McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified,
including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint
Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the
Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. The secrecy
surrounding these operations prevented more widespread reporting,
but as with earlier US covert operations in Vietnam and Latin
America, we will learn more about these operations over time.
- An article in the Sunday Telegraph in February 2007 pointed towards
clear evidence British Special Forces recruited and trained terrorists
in the Green Zone to heighten ethnic tensions. An elite SAS wing,
called Task Force Black, with bloody past in Northern Ireland
operates with immunity and provides advanced explosives. Some attacks
are being blamed on Iranians, Sunni insurgents or shadowy terrorist
cells such as Al Qaeda.
- the SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics), extensively used
in counter-insurgency operations. The mission of SWAT is to conduct
high-risk operations that fall outside the abilities of regular
patrol officers to prevent, deter and respond to terrorism and
insurgent activities. It was reported that The foreign internal
defense partnership with Coalition Soldiers establishes a professional
relationship between the Iraqi Security and Coalition forces where
the training builds capable forces. Coalition soldiers working
side-by-side with the SWAT teams, both in training and on missions.
On 7 October 2010 the Official website of US Forces in Iraq reported
that The Basrah SWAT team has trained with various Special Forces
units, including the Navy SEALs and the British SAS. The 1st Bn.,
68th Arm. Regt., currently under the operational control of United
States Division-South and the 1st Infantry Division, has taken up
the task of teaching the SWAT team.
- the Facilities Protection Services, where the private contractors
or mercenaries, like Blackwater, are incorporated, are also used
in counter-insurgency operations.
- the Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF), probably the largest
special forces outfit ever built by the United States, free of many
of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal
forces. The project started in Jordan just after the Americans
conquered Baghdad in April 2003, to create a deadly, elite, covert
unit, fully fitted with American equipment, which would operate for
years under US command and be unaccountable to Iraqi ministries and
the normal political process. According to Congressional records,
the ISOF has grown into nine battalions, which extend to four
regional "commando bases" across Iraq. By December 2009 they were
fully operational, each with its own "intelligence infusion cell,"
which will operate independently of Iraq's other intelligence
networks. The ISOF is at least 4,564 operatives strong, making it
approximately the size of the US Army's own Special Forces in Iraq.
Congressional records indicate that there are plans to double the
ISOF over the next "several years."
Conclusion: the dirty war in Iraq continues. Even as President
Barack Obama was announcing the end of combat in Iraq, U.S. forces
were still in fight alongside their Iraqi colleagues. The tasks of
the 50,000 remaining US troops, 5,800 of them airmen, are advising"
and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out
"counter-terrorism" missions.
According to the UN Human Rights report, upon a request for
clarification by UNAMI, the MNF confirmed that the US government
continued to regard the conflict in Iraq as an international armed
conflict, with procedures currently in force consistent with the
4th Geneva Convention and not that the civil rights of Iraqis should
be governed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights and other human rights laws, because this would have
strengthened the rights of Iraqis detained by US or Iraqi forces
to speedy and fair trials. The admission that the US was still
legally engaged in an international armed conflict against Iraq at
the end of 2007 also raises serious questions regarding the legality
of constitutional and political changes made in Iraq by the occupation
forces and their installed government during the war and occupation.
Legitimizing torture
When the public revelations of abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib
prison created a brief furor in the world, the ICRC, Human Rights
First, AI, HRW and other Human Rights groups documented far more
widespread and systematic crimes committed by US forces against
people they extra-judicially detained in Iraq. In numerous human
rights reports they established that command responsibility for
these crimes extended to the highest levels of the US government
and its armed forces.
The forms of torture documented in these reports included death
threats, mock executions, water-boarding, stress positions, including
excruciating and sometimes deadly forms of hanging, hypothermia,
sleep deprivation, starvation and thirst, withholding medical
treatment, electric shocks, various forms of rape and sodomy, endless
beatings, burning, cutting with knives, injurious use of flexicuffs,
suffocation, sensory assault and/or deprivation and more psychological
forms of torture such as sexual humiliation and the detention and
torture of family members. The ICRC established that the violations
of international humanitarian law that it recorded were systematic
and widespread. Military officers told the ICRC that between 70%
and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been
arrested by mistake.
All these facts are well known, but only the lower ranks in the
Army were mildly punished. The Commands Responsibility report
revealed that the failure to charge higher ranking officers was the
direct result of the key role that some same officers played in
undermining chances for full accountability. By delaying and
undermining investigations of deaths in their custody, senior
officers compounded their own criminal responsibility in a common
pattern of torture, murder and obstruction of justice. Senior
officers abused the enormous power they wield in the military command
structure to place themselves beyond the reach of law, even as they
gave orders to commit terrible crimes. It was in recognition of the
terrible potential for exactly this type of criminal behaviour that
the Geneva Conventions were drafted and signed in the first place,
and that is why they are just as vital today.
Nevertheless, the responsibility for these crimes is not limited
to the US army. The public record also includes documents in which
senior civilian officials of the US government approved violations
of the Geneva Conventions, the 1994 Convention against Torture and
the 1996 US War Crimes act. The United States government should
thus be held accountable for this terrible tragedy it inflicted
upon millions of Iraqi citizens and should be forced to pay appropriate
compensations to the victims of its criminal policy in Iraq.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We learned that on Tuesday the 26th of October the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged Iraq and the
United States to investigate allegations of torture and unlawful
killings in the Iraq conflict revealed in the Wikileaks documents.
We are very surprised by this statement. Does the High Commissioner
think it is appropriate for criminals to investigate their own
crimes? Wijdan Mikhail, the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights in Iraq
has called for putting Julian Assange on trial instead of investigating
the crimes. And since the Obama administration has shown no desire
to expose any of the crimes committed by US officials in Iraq, an
international investigation under the auspices of the High Commissioner
of Human Rights is necessary. Different Special Rapporteurs should
be involved: i.e. the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary
or arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion
and protection of human rights while countering terrorism and the
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment. A Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in Iraq should be urgently appointed.
Although the U.N. did not authorize the invasion of Iraq, it did
legalize the occupation a posteriori in UNSC resolution 1483 (22
May 2003), against the will of the overwhelming majority of the
world community, that didnt accept the legality or the legitimacy
of that UN resolution. And it was during the occupation that the
war crimes brought to light by WikiLeaks took place. As should the
U.S., the U.N. has the moral and legal duty to respond.
The world community has the right to know the complete and unbiased
truth about the extent and responsibilities of American involvement
in Iraqs Killing Fields and demands justice for the Iraqi people.
We appeal to all states to ask the US about all these crimes against
the Iraqi people during the UPR on the 5th of November.
We also demand that procedures be set up to compensate the Iraqi
people and Iraq as a nation for all the losses, human and material
destruction and damages caused by the illegal war and the occupation
of the country lead by the US/UK forces.
Dirk Adriaensens is Member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive
Committee
Note: this presentation contains information available in the public
domain, it is compiled of several official reports, press articles,
BRussells Tribunal witness accounts, Max Fullers articles on the
counter-insurgency war (http://www.brusselstribunal.org/FullerKillings.htm)
and two books:
Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, of which Dirk Adriaensens is co-author
(Pluto Press, London, ISBN-10: 0745328121, ISBN-13: 978-0745328126)
and Blood On Our Hands, The American Invasion And Destruction Of
Iraq, written by Nicolas J.S. Davies. (Nimble Books LLC, ISBN-10:
193484098X, ISBN-13: 978-1934840986).
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