BY ROHAN PEARCE
There is growing hostility among ordinary Iraqis at Washington's attempts to impose a puppet government on the country. While there is little nostalgia for the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein, there seems to be determination not to acquiesce to Washington's efforts. There are frequent protests against the US-led occupation, some of which, particularly by the younger Iraqis, involve pelting US soldiers and their bases with rocks.
Revealing the real face of the occupation, US soldiers have not hesitated to break up protests with brute force — leaving Iraqis dead, injured and wondering whether one dictatorship has merely been replaced by another.
On April 27, according to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV network, between 13 and 15 Iraqis were killed when US troops opened fire on an unarmed protest in Fallujah, attended mainly by students. At least three children under 11 were killed. The protesters were demanding that the soldiers leave the city, and particularly the school which they have taken over as a base, so that classes could resume.
On April 29, US troops in Fallujah murdered two more civilians, and injured 14 others, when they shot at 1000 protesters outside the former headquarters' of Hussein's Baath Party in the city — now occupied by the US 82nd Airborne Division. According to foreign journalists and Iraqi witnesses, the protesters threw rocks at the building and were then shot down by troops inside. None of the demonstrators, according to witnesses, were armed.
The 1000-strong demonstration was protesting against the massacre committed by US troops two days earlier. On May 1, in apparent retaliation, two grenades were lobbed into a compound in the city used by US soldiers, injuring seven.
The US troops' justification for the killings followed a pattern established after earlier repression of Iraqi protests: the military claimed that demonstrators were armed and that US troops came under fire, a claim denied by witnesses. Colonel Arnold Bray told journalists they should ask al Jazeera "which kind of schoolboys carry AK-47s".
Prior to the Fallujah massacres, US troops in Mosul on April 15 and 16 shot dead a total of 17 Iraqi protesters. Troops opened fire after angry Iraqis threw stones at Mashaan al Juburi, the pro-US governor installed by the invaders.
"It's frustrating. They're like little gnats that you can't get away from", US Army Captain James McGahey told Reuters on April 26. The captain, stationed in the northern city of Mosul, was referring to crowds of Iraqi children following US soldiers, frequently showering the troops with abuse.
Another soldier called the children "seagulls", "because if you give one seagull a piece of bread, the next minute you'll have a whole flock of them". The comments encapsulate the racist, colonial mentality of the US-led forces occupying Iraq and the frustration felt by troops at the evaporation of what little welcome the invading troops enjoyed.
While the Mosul and Fallujah massacres have been the most overt displays of Washington's intention to impose its will on the country by any means necessary, they are far from the only killings for which US troops are culpable. As of April 30, according to the Iraq Body Count web site (), between 2180 and 2653 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a direct result of the US invasion; thousands more are at risk of death from the humanitarian crisis that the US has done little to avert. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers were also massacred during the invasion.
On April 9, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI), requested formal permission from the US to allow the return of UN humanitarian staff to the country. UNOHCI's David Wimhurst told Agence France-Presse on April 9 that the agency had "requested for more than a week an air corridor from the coalition forces and we did not get it. We don't know why, because the situation on the ground is safe and there is no reason that we can ascertain why we're being blocked access. It's a mystery." It wasn't until weeks later that the UN was permitted to resume aid operations. For many, it may be too late — aid groups have reported possible outbreaks of cholera in Baghdad, Nasiriya and Basra.
An aid worker in Nasiriya, Mary McLoughlin, told the BBC on April 23 that that city will become a "major humanitarian crisis". "Cholera is endemic in southern Iraq, but we are in grave danger of a cholera epidemic by the summer. That will sweep through the population and kill thousands", she warned. This is further fuelling anger at the US.
While electricity, medical and water supplies remain precarious or non-existent throughout Iraq, the occupying forces have been quick to ensure the flow of oil to Basra is restarted, while technicians are working to repair that city's refinery.
No doubt, the announcement that Philip Carroll, a former president and chief executive of Shell Oil Company, the US arm of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, has been appointed by the Pentagon to manage Iraq's oil resources will confirm Iraqis' suspicions that the US is more concerned about securing Iraq's oil supplies than it is about guaranteeing the well-being of Iraq's peoples.
An April 26 article in the London Times reported, "Iraq's oil sector is to be restructured into two tiers, with the former Shell man leading an advisory board of up to 15 foreign nationals and Iraqis". The appointment of Carroll is part of an ongoing process, controlled by the White House, of constructing an occupation regime.
Personnel are being drawn from US military, corporate and political elites, from among Iraqi "exiles" (many of whom are US citizens whose activities outside Iraq have been sponsored and directed by the Pentagon and State Department), and from former members of Hussein's dictatorship. Former US general Jay Garner, who heads Washington's efforts to manufacture a Quisling regime, has refused to invite key Iraq-based parties to talks about Iraq's future government.
Describing the recruitment of Baathists, US Marines Brigadier-General Rich Natonski told the April 25 British Guardian: "In Iraq it is almost impossible to find someone who is not a Baathist."
He told the paper that occupation forces would "identify the top person in a department, then go to his deputy and the man below that and ask what the top man was like. It is hard for people to understand that. They think being a Baathist is automatically bad. We want to show we are not here to take over. We are trying to put across the theme 'Iraq for the Iraqis'. The goal is to show that by working with us you can get things working the way they were before, minus Saddam."
Many Iraqis object to what the US is attempting to impose: Baathism "minus Saddam". On April 21, thousands of Iraqis converged on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. Islam Online reported that protesters chanted "No to colonialism". According to IOL, demonstrators described the US as "another ugly face of Saddam" and yelled "No to America, no to Saddam, no to tyranny!".
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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