THE BUSH administration is fighting a desperate rearguard action against worldwide protests about its mass detention and torture policy. They are especially on the defensive over an Amnesty International report saying that Guantanamo is "the new Gulag". At the same time repression inside Iraq is reaching a new crescendo, as US and allied Iraqi forces carry out ever more indiscriminate attacks and detention sweeps. PHIL HEARSE examines the evidence. April was a bad month for the US aim of militarily crushing the resistance fighters. A total of 77 US troops were killed -the most since November's attack on Fallujah - as well as hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and police.
According to the US army, insurgent attacks have doubled since early this year. In some places the fighting has turned into Sunni-Shia gun battles, while other Shia fighters have attacked US and British forces. Hundreds have been killed in bomb attacks.
US forces have stepped up their attempts to draw resistance fighters into open battle. In early May thousands of marines launched "Operation
Matador' in Anbar province,
the desert region West of
Baghdad, in an attempt to
find and eliminate fighters, as
well as to try to stem the influx of fighters across the Syrian border.
According the Los Angeles Times: "For seven days, Marines rumbled through desert villages and fought pitched battles against a surprisingly well-co-ordinated enemy.
On the first day of the operation, insurgents appeared to be willing to stana tel ground and fight the Marines, but U.S. military officials now believe that may have been a tactic to delay U.S. troops from crossing the Ramana region north of the Euphrates River. This delay, officials said, could have given many of the insurgents time to escape into Syria.
"It's an extremely frustrating fight,' said Maj. Steve White, operations director for the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment. Fighting these guys is like picking up water. You're going to lose some every time'." Indiscriminate
Bombardment
Local people complained that the Marines had bombarded villages from the air indiscriminately, and they had returned to their homes
to find them destroyed.
The conclusion many US observers drew is that there
are just not enough US troops
in the area, or in lraq as a
whole, to successfully thwart a
guerrilla war.
Since the beginning of the
year American forces have
resorted to huge house-tohouse sweeps looking for suspected insurgents, particularly
in Baghdad, and resulting in
hundreds being detained.
On May 23, thousands of
US and allied Iraqi troops
swept through suburbs of
Baghdad in "Operation
Squeeze Play", detaining -according to their figures -According to one observer, The conclusion many US observers drew is that there are just not enough US troops in the area, or in Iraq as a whole, to successfully thwart a guerrilla war. "Bystanders were also apparently caught up in the dragnet, however. Some Iraqis said that while Operation Squeeze Play took some insurgents off the streets, it's also likely to fuel the same cycle that has hounded the American presence for two years: angering moderate Iraqis while giving insurgents a friendiier environment in which to carry out attacks." (Tom Lasseter , Knight Ridder newspapers, May 23, 2005).
The emergence of fighting in some towns between Sunnis and Shias, and an apparent war of tit-for-tat
assassinations is lending a sinister new twist to the quagmire.
It is clear from the number
of bodies which have been
discovered that death squads are operating, and it is not
clear exactly who they are.
According to Mohammad Bazi "The signs of sectarian warfare are everywhere in Iraq these days: clerics assassinated outside their mosques, dozens of execution victims turning up in ditches and car bombers inflicting heavy casualties on the country's Shia Muslim majority." (Newsday, May 23, 2005)
At the beginning of the year the US was considering putting in place an assassination programme to try to eliminate insurgency leaders.
According to formers UN arms inspector Scott Kitter; "... the Pentagon is considering the organisation, training and equipping of so-called death squads, teams of Iraqi assassins who would be used to infiltrate and eliminate the leadership of the Iraqi resistance.
If the US was operating assassination squads secretly assisting them, would not be the first time in
According • to Ritter, when Baghdad was conquered by the Americans, licensed Shia death squads to assassinate Baathists.
It is entirely possible that some of those turning up dead are suspected insurgents, assassinated at the behest of the occupiers.
Brutal colonial war
Now the US has decided to swamp Baghdad with troops
to try to make insurgent bomb
attacks more difficult.
Operation Lightning aims at
the permanent deployment of
40,000 US and Iraqi troops
around the city.
Overall then, while constructing a provisional government the US is following
the classical path taken in
brutal colonial wars - in Aden,
Kenya, Algeria, Vietnam and
many other - placco of
responding -LU unresolved
insurgency by drastically
increasing violence and