For the People on
the Streets This Is Not
Liberation But a New Colonial
Oppression
Robert Fisk Writing
From Baghdad - 17th April
The Independent (UK)
For the people on the
streets, this is not liberation
but a new colonial oppression
America's war of 'liberation'
may be over. But Iraq's
war of liberation from
the Americans is just
about to begin
It's going wrong, faster
than anyone could have
imagined. The army of
"liberation"
has already turned into
the army of occupation.
The Shias are threatening
to fight the Americans,
to create their own war
of "liberation".
At night on every one
of the Shia Muslim barricades
in Sadr City, there are
14 men with automatic
rifles. Even the US Marines
in Baghdad are talking
of the insults being flung
at them. "Go away!
Get out of my face!"
an American soldier screamed
at an Iraqi trying to
push towards the wire
surrounding an infantry
unit in the capital yesterday.
I watched the man's face
suffuse with rage. "God
is Great! God is Great!"
the Iraqi retorted.
"Fuck you!"
The Americans have now
issued a "Message
to the Citizens of Baghdad",
a document as colonial
in spirit as it is insensitive
in tone. "Please
avoid leaving your homes
during the night hours
after evening prayers
and before the call to
morning prayers,"
it tells the people of
the city. "During
this time, terrorist forces
associated with the former
regime of Saddam Hussein,
as well as various criminal
elements, are known to
move through the area
... please do not leave
your homes during this
time. During all hours,
please approach Coalition
military positions with
extreme caution ..."
So now with neither
electricity nor running
water the millions
of Iraqis here are ordered
to stay in their homes
from dusk to dawn. Lockdown.
It's a form of imprisonment.
In their own country.
Written by the command
of the 1st US Marine Division,
it's a curfew in all but
name.
"If I was an Iraqi
and I read that,"
an Arab woman shouted
at me, "I would become
a suicide bomber."
And all across Baghdad
you hear the same thing,
from Shia Muslim clerics
to Sunni businessmen,
that the Americans have
come only for oil, and
that soon very
soon a guerrilla
resistance must start.
No doubt the Americans
will claim that these
attacks are "remnants"
of Saddam's regime or
"criminal elements".
But that will not be the
case.
Marine officers in Baghdad
were holding talks yesterday
with a Shia militant cleric
from Najaf to avert an
outbreak of fighting around
the holy city. I met the
prelate before the negotiations
began and he told me that
"history is being
repeated". He was
talking of the British
invasion of Iraq in 1917,
which ended in disaster
for the British.
Everywhere are the signs
of collapse. And everywhere
the signs that America's
promises of "freedom"
and "democracy"
are not to be honoured.
Why, Iraqis are asking,
did the United States
allow the entire Iraqi
cabinet to escape? And
they're right. Not just
the Beast of Baghdad and
his two sons, Qusay and
Uday, but the Vice-President,
Taha Yassin Ramadan, the
Deputy Prime Minister,
Tariq Aziz, Saddam's personal
adviser, Dr A K Hashimi,
the ministers of defence,
health, the economy, trade,
even Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf,
the Minister of Information
who, long ago, in the
days before journalists
cosied up to him, was
the official who read
out the list of executed
"brothers" in
the purge that followed
Saddam's revolution
relatives of prisoners
would dose themselves
on valium before each
Sahaf appearance.
Here's what Baghdadis
are noticing and
what Iraqis are noticing
in all the main cities
of the country. Take the
vast security apparatus
with which Saddam surrounded
himself, the torture chambers
and the huge bureaucracy
that was its foundation.
President Bush promised
that America was campaigning
for human rights in Iraq,
that the guilty, the war
criminals, would be brought
to trial. The 60 secret
police headquarters in
Baghdad are empty, even
the three-square-mile
compound headquarters
of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service.
I have been to many of
them. But there is no
evidence even that a single
British or US forensic
officer has visited the
sites to sift the wealth
of documents lying there
or talk to the ex-prisoners
returning to their former
places of torment. Is
this idleness. Or is this
wilful?
Take the Qasimiyeh security
station beside the river
Tigris. It's a pleasant
villa once owned
by an Iranian-born Iraqi
who was deported to Iran
in the 1980s. There's
a little lawn and a shrubbery
and at first you don't
notice the three big hooks
in the ceiling of each
room or the fact that
big sheets of red paper,
decorated with footballers,
have been pasted over
the windows to conceal
the rooms from outsiders.
But across the floors,
in the garden, on the
roof, are the files of
this place of suffering.
They show, for example,
that the head of the torture
centre was Hashem al-Tikrit,
that his deputy was called
Rashid al-Nababy.
Mohammed Aish Jassem,
an ex-prisoner, showed
me how he was suspended
from the ceiling by Captain
Amar al-Isawi, who believed
Jassem was a member of
the religious Dawa party.
"They put my hands
behind my back like this
and tied them and then
pulled me into the air
by my tied wrists,"
he told me. "They
used a little generator
to lift me up, right up
to the ceiling, then they'd
release the rope in the
hope of breaking my shoulder
when I fell."
The hooks in the ceiling
are just in front of Captain
Isawi's desk. I understood
what this meant. There
wasn't a separate torture
chamber and office for
documentation. The torture
chamber was the office.
While the man or woman
shrieked in agony above
him, Captain Isawi would
sign papers, take telephone
calls and given
the contents of his bin
smoke many cigarettes
while he waited for the
information he sought
from his prisoners.
Were they monsters, these
men? Yes. Are they sought
by the Americans? No.
Are they now working for
the Americans? Yes, quite
possibly indeed
some of them may well
be in the long line of
ex-security thugs who
queue every morning outside
the Palestine Hotel in
the hope of being re-hired
by the US Marines' Civil
Affairs Unit.
The names of the guards
at the Qasimiyeh torture
centre in Baghdad are
in papers lying on the
floor. They were Ahmed
Hassan Alawi, Akil Shaheed,
Noaman Abbas and Moham-med
Fayad. But the Americans
haven't bothered to find
this out. So Messrs Alawi,
Shaheed, Abbas and Fayad
are welcome to apply to
work for them.
There are prisoner identification
papers on the desks and
in the cupboards. What
happened to Wahid Mohamed,
Majid Taha, Saddam Ali
or Lazim Hmoud?A lady
in a black chador approached
the old torture centre.
Four of her brothers had
been taken there and,
later, when she went to
ask what happened, she
was told all four had
been executed. She was
ordered to leave. She
never saw or buried their
bodies. Ex-prisoners told
me that there is a mass
grave in the Khedeer desert,
but no one least
of all Baghdad's new occupiers
are interested
in finding it.
And the men who suffered
under Saddam? What did
they have to say? "We
committed no sin,"
one of them said to me,
a 40-year-old whose prison
duties had included the
cleaning of the hangman's
trap of blood and faeces
after each execution.
"We are not guilty
of anything. Why did they
do this to us?
"America, yes, it
got rid of Saddam. But
Iraq belongs to us. Our
oil belongs to us. We
will keep our nationality.
It will stay Iraq. The
Americans must go."
If the Americans and
the British want to understand
the nature of the religious
opposition here, they
have only to consult the
files of Saddam's secret
service archives. I found
one, Report No 7481, dated
24 February this year
on the conflict between
Sheikh Mohammed al-Yacoubi
and Mukhtada Sadr, the
22-year-old grandson of
Mohammed Sadr, who was
executed on Saddam's orders
more than two decades
ago.
The dispute showed the
passion and the determination
with which the Shia religious
leaders fight even each
other. But of course,
no one has bothered to
read this material or
even look for it.
At the end of the Second
World War, German-speaking
British and US intelligence
officers hoovered up every
document in the thousands
of Gestapo and Abwehr
bureaux across western
Germany. The Russians
did the same in their
zone. In Iraq, however,
the British and Americans
have simply ignored the
evidence.
There's an even more
terrible place for the
Americans to visit in
Baghdad the headquarters
of the whole intelligence
apparatus, a massive grey-painted
block that was bombed
by the US and a series
of villas and office buildings
that are stashed with
files, papers and card
indexes. It was here that
Saddam's special political
prisoners were brought
for vicious interrogation
electricity being
an essential part of this
and it was here
that Farzad Bazoft, the
Observer correspondent,
was brought for questioning
before his dispatch to
the hangman.
It's also graced with
delicately shaded laneways,
a creche for the
families of the torturers
and a school in
which one pupil had written
an essay in English on
(suitably perhaps) Beckett's
Waiting for Godot. There's
also a miniature hospital
and a road named "Freedom
Street" and flowerbeds
and bougainvillea. It's
the creepiest place in
all of Iraq.
I met extraordinarily
an Iraqi nuclear
scientist walking around
the compound, a colleague
of the former head of
Iraqi nuclear physics,
Dr Sharistani. "This
is the last place I ever
wanted to see and I will
never return to it,"
he said to me. "This
was the place of greatest
evil in all the world."
The top security men
in Saddam's regime were
busy in the last hours,
shredding millions of
documents. I found a great
pile of black plastic
rubbish bags at the back
of one villa, each stuffed
with the shreds of thousands
of papers. Shouldn't they
be taken to Washington
or London and reconstituted
to learn their secrets?
Even the unshredded files
contain a wealth of information.
But again, the Americans
have not bothered
or do not want
to search through these
papers. If they did, they
would find the names of
dozens of senior intelligence
men, many of them identified
in congratulatory letters
they insisted on sending
each other every time
they were promoted. Where
now, for example, is Colonel
Abdulaziz Saadi, Captain
Abdulsalam Salawi, Captain
Saad Ahmed al-Ayash, Colonel
Saad Mohammed, Captain
Majid Ahmed and scores
of others? We may never
know. Or perhaps we are
not supposed to know.
Iraqis are right to ask
why the Americans don't
search for this information,
just as they are right
to demand to know why
the entire Saddam cabinet
every man jack
of them got away.
The capture by the Americans
of Saddam's half-brother
and the ageing Palestinian
gunman Abu Abbas, whose
last violent act was 18
years ago, is pathetic
compensation for this.
Now here's another question
the Iraqis are asking
and to which I
cannot provide an answer.
On 8 April, three weeks
into the invasion, the
Americans dropped four
2,000lb bombs on the Baghdad
residential area of Mansur.
They claimed they thought
Saddam was hiding there.
They knew they would kill
civilians because it was
not, as one Centcom mandarin
said, a "risk free
venture" (sic). So
they dropped their bombs
and killed 14 civilians
in Mansur, most of them
members of a Christian
family.
The Americans said they
couldn't be sure they
had killed Saddam until
they could carry out forensic
tests at the site. But
this turns out to have
been a lie. I went there
two days ago. Not a single
US or British official
had bothered to visit
the bomb craters. Indeed,
when I arrived, there
was a putrefying smell
and families pulled the
remains of a baby from
the rubble.
No American officers
have apologised for this
appalling killing. And
I can promise them that
the baby I saw being placed
under a sheet of black
plastic was very definitely
not Saddam Hussein. Had
they bothered to look
at this place as
they claimed they would
they would at least
have found the baby. Now
the craters are a place
of pilgrimage for the
people of Baghdad.
Then there's the fires
that have consumed every
one of the city's ministries
save, of course,
for the Ministry of Interior
and the Ministry of Oil
as well as UN offices,
embassies and shopping
malls. I have counted
a total of 35 ministries
now gutted by fire and
the number goes on rising.
Yesterday I found myself
at the Ministry of Oil,
assiduously guarded by
US troops, some of whom
were holding clothes over
their mouths because of
the clouds of smoke swirling
down on them from the
neighbouring Ministry
of Agricultural Irrigation.
Hard to believe, isn't
it, that they were unaware
that someone was setting
fire to the next building?
Then I spotted another
fire, three kilometres
away. I drove to the scene
to find flames curling
out of all the windows
of the Ministry of Higher
Education's Department
of Computer Science. And
right next to it, perched
on a wall, was a US Marine,
who said he was guarding
a neighbouring hospital
and didn't know who had
lit the next door fire
because "you can't
look everywhere at once".
Now I'm sure the marine
was not being facetious
or dishonest should
the Americans not believe
this story, he was Corporal
Ted Nyholm of the 3rd
Regiment, 4th Marines
and, yes, I called his
fiancée, Jessica,
in the States for him
to pass on his love
but something is terribly
wrong when US soldiers
are ordered simply to
watch vast ministries
being burnt by mobs and
do nothing about it.
Because there is also
something dangerous
and deeply disturbing
about the crowds
setting light to the buildings
of Baghdad, including
the great libraries and
state archives. For they
are not looters. The looters
come first. The arsonists
turn up later, often in
blue-and-white buses.
I followed one after its
passengers had set the
Ministry of Trade on fire
and it sped out of town.
The official US line
on all this is that the
looting is revenge
an explanation that is
growing very thin
and that the fires are
started by "remnants
of Saddam's regime",
the same "criminal
elements", no doubt,
who feature in the marines'
curfew orders. But people
in Baghdad don't believe
Saddam's former supporters
are starting these fires.
And neither do I.
The looters make money
from their rampages but
the arsonists have to
be paid. The passengers
in those buses are clearly
being directed to their
targets. If Saddam had
pre-paid them, they wouldn't
start the fires. The moment
he disappeared, they would
have pocketed the money
and forgotten the whole
project.
So who are they, this
army of arsonists? I recognised
one the other day, a middle-aged,
unshaven man in a red
T-shirt, and the second
time he saw me he pointed
a Kalashnikov at me. What
was he frightened of?
Who was he working for?
In whose interest is it
to destroy the entire
physical infrastructure
of the state, with its
cultural heritage? Why
didn't the Americans stop
this?
As I said, something
is going terribly wrong
in Baghdad and something
is going on which demands
that serious questions
be asked of the United
States government. Why,
for example, did Donald
Rumsfeld, Secretary of
Defence, claim last week
that there was no widespread
looting or destruction
in Baghdad? His statement
was a lie. But why did
he make it?
The Americans say they
don't have enough troops
to control the fires.
This is also untrue. If
they don't, what are the
hundreds of soldiers deployed
in the gardens of the
old Iran-Iraq war memorial
doing all day? Or the
hundreds camped in the
rose gardens of the President
Palace?
So the people of Baghdad
are asking who is behind
the destruction of their
cultural heritage: the
looting of the archaeological
treasures from the national
museum; the burning of
the entire Ottoman, Royal
and State archives; the
Koranic library; and the
vast infrastructure of
the nation we claim we
are going to create for
them.
Why, they ask, do they
still have no electricity
and no water? In whose
interest is it for Iraq
to be deconstructed, divided,
burnt, de-historied, destroyed?
Why are they issued with
orders for a curfew by
their so-called liberators?
And it's not just the
people of Baghdad, but
the Shias of the city
of Najaf and of Nasiriyah
where 20,000 protested
at America's first attempt
to put together a puppet
government on Wednesday
who are asking
these questions. Now there
is looting in Mosul where
thousands reportedly set
fire to the pro-American
governor's car after he
promised US help in restoring
electricity.
It's easy for a reporter
to predict doom, especially
after a brutal war that
lacked all international
legitimacy. But catastrophe
usually waits for optimists
in the Middle East, especially
for false optimists who
invade oil-rich nations
with ideological excuses
and high-flown moral claims
and accusations, such
as weapons of mass destruction,
which are still unproved.
So I'll make an awful
prediction. That America's
war of "liberation"
is over. Iraq's war of
liberation from the Americans
is about to begin. In
other words, the real
and frightening story
starts now.
The Independent
|