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Reports From Iraq > Wed., Apr. 7, 2004
The Dead Keep Piling Up In Iraq
American tanks continue their siege of Baghdad's Sadr
City while the American Army lays siege to Fallujah. |
by Aaron Glantz
Diala, Iraq -- The dead keep piling up in Fallujah. More
than 200 Iraqi dead in the last 24 hours -- Hospital officials
report sixteen children and eight women were reported killed
when warplanes struck four houses late last night. 40 more
Iraqi's died when American helicopter gun-ships fired on a
neighborhood mosque while it was filled with worshippers.
30 American soldiers are also dead.
"The Fallujahs are going to realize that we're the strongest
force in the country," predicts American Major John Clearfield.
"It's in their best interest to reject these foreign
fighters and terrorists and embrace the coalition."
But many Iraqi's say the American military crackdown will
likely only increase violence. While battle raged in Fallujah,
militants forced down a U.S. OH-58 Kiowa helicopter in Baqouba,
30 miles north of Baghdad, where former Iraqi Army General
Farouk Mu'adan has been trying to broker a cease fire. But
with the American attacks on Fallujah and the Mehdi Army of
Muqtada al-Sadr, the General is not optimistic.
"You cannot blame anyone who shoots the Americans,"
he says. "You cannot say he was wrong because he is under
occupation and they keep rolling and rolling and rolling with
the Apache helicopter and the tanks. All these things make
the man uncomfortable, restless. He just boils and boils and
boils. What do you expect. There must be some kind of resistance."
The situation is exacerbated by the lack of an Iraqi government
which could make its own policy. The US military launched
its massive assault without approval from the Bush-appointed
Iraqi Governing Council. Dr. Musla abul-Hamid of the Sunni
Iraqi Islamic Political Party, which holds a seat on the Governing
Council says they offered to negotiate with the rebels in
Fallujah but were turned down by the American Army.
"The Governing Council didn't make any important statement
about the situation or the people who believe in Muqtada al-Sadr,"
he notes. "It's because the Governing Council didn't
want to lose the support of the man on the street, but the
Governing Council also is in contact with the occupation force."
The Governing Council has also been largely silent on the
American crackdown on radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
-- which has provoked a violent reaction across Southern Iraq.
Zaid Sadi of the more moderate Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, whose leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim was appointed
to Bush's Iraqi Governing Council says Sadr's Mehdi Army is
more than a gang of terrorists.
"They are civilian people," he says. "They're
workers, students, and teachers. When they join the Mehdi
Army they think they are better than before. They think otherwise
no one will give them their rights."
Zaid Sadi says to truly understand the anger of the poor,
young Shi'ite men who make up the Mehdi Army, one has to look
at the environment they grew up in. He cites 13 years of tough
United Nation's sanctions on Iraq which chocked the country's
education system to a screeching halt.
"There are a lot of people who are uneducated,"
he notes, "who didn't finish secondary school. And because
of the situation our secondary school is nothing compared
to other countries. At that time, the teachers were only paid
one or two dollars a month. That's nothing. So they only worked
three days a week and spent the rest of their days working
as garbage men or construction workers."
Today, these boys -- now young men -- are facing the tanks
and helicopters of George Bush's "coalition of the willing"
with kalashnikovs, knives, and rocket propelled grenades.
They've taken the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, along
with nearby Kut. In Nasseriya, they have kidnapped two Korean
human rights workers. They say they won't release them until
the American Army releases their comrades.
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