The
Independent
London, Tuesday, April 6, 2004 Iraq on the
brink of anarchy By Robert Fisk
in Fallujah NOT content with surrounding the
largest Sunni city west of Baghdad with tanks,
armoured personnel carriers and heavy machine guns,
US forces used Apache helicopters to attack the
Shia Muslim slums of Shoula yesterday, sent dozens
of their main battle tanks into the hovels of Sadr
City and then slapped an arrest warrant on the Shia
cleric Muqtada Sadr -- who must dearly have
wanted the United States to do just
that.  David
Irving comments: I HAVE been troubled by
the curious references to American
"civilian contractors" which have cropped
up ever since four of them were killed
under horrific circumstances in Fallujah
last week.
The pictures were
sickening enough, although unlike the
television moguls and newsroom producers
we in the West have not seen the worst
stuff; I am sure that DVDs of it are
already on sale in the street markets of
Iraq.  The scenes were probably as gruesome as
any to be seen in Iraq after we, the
"coalition of the willing," dropped our
napalm bombs on villages, or sent cruise
missiles into private family villas where
Ahmad Chalabi (above) and
his henchmen had wrongly told us to find
Saddam Hussein and his friends.
What however is a
civilian contract? From American
movies like The Godfather and The
Sopranos, we are familiar with the notion
of putting a contract out on somebody, and
these people seem to have been not
unassociated with killing in the recent
past, as their curriculum vitae all seem
to include an impressive period of
employment by Special Forces, or Seals, or
whatever other name commandos nowadays
operate under. MY problem is this: In the eyes of
military and international law are they
combatants, protected by the 1949
convention, or are they not?
The four hapless victims
were  said
by Dan Senor, (right), the
Hebrew-University
educated chief spokesman for Paul
Bremer, to have been escorting a food
convoy. That is in itself a rather curious
occupation for burly, able-bodied men
being paid rather more than the average US
Army grunt; it is a fair guess that these
four men had more than peashooters,
slingshots, and B B guns in their
pockets.
Why are the press not
commenting on the curious fact that the
Americans are employing "civilian
contractors" as soldiers in plain clothes,
call them whatever else you will. Because
that is a risky business. In the eyes of
international law they may be seen as
francs tireurs, liable to be
summarily executed if caught in military
engagements.
The Germans faced
precisely the same problem in 1944, when
the Americans captured numbers of civilian
(or at least non-military) workers for
Xaver Dorsch's huge Todt
Organisation, the body that constructed
the autobahns in peacetime, and then the
fortifications, weapons sites, etc., in
the occupied countries during the war.
Although the OT workers
wore swastika armbands which carried the
words Organisation Todt, the
Americans considered them to be francs
tireurs if caught on the battlefield
and executed more than a few of them until
protests were lodged through the
Protecting Power, if my memory of the
archive material serves me right (or did
Dorsch tell me that himself when I
interviewed him?)
During the invasion of
Normandy in 1944 -- oops, "liberation" is
the approved word -- the Americans adopted
an unusual tactic, one used by the Germans
in their own occupied territories: young
French women had to bare their right
shoulder, and if a bruise was seen on it
-- resulting from a poorly handled rifle
recoil -- they were deemed to have engaged
in unlawful combat, and shot on the
spot.
Nobody suggests that
these four American civilians were in fact
francs tireurs. But the law becomes
very murky when a military government arms
its own civilians and sends them into a
battle zone, undistinguished by uniform or
insignia.
Why weren't four
uniformed US soldiers sitting in that SUV,
escorting the "food convoy" that day? Are
the Americans unwilling to show their own
uniform in battle zones now?
A reader has helpfully drawn my attention
to this book by P W Singer Corporate
Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized
Military Industry (Cornell University
Press, 2003).
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Gun battles in Sadr City overnight had cost the
lives of up to 40 Iraqis and at least eight
Americans, but in the sewage-damp streets
yesterday, they were handing out letters, allegedly
written by the Sunni townspeople of Fallujah, newly
surrounded by 1,200 marines. "We support you, our
brothers, in your struggle," the letters said. If
they are authentic, it should be enough to make the
US proconsul, Paul Bremer, wonder if he can
ever extricate Washington from Iraq. The British
took three years to turn both the Sunnis and the
Shias into their enemies in 1920. The Americans are
achieving it in just under a year.Anarchy has been a condition of our occupation
from the very first days when we let the looters
and arsonists destroy Iraq's infrastructure and
history. But that lawlessness is now coming back to
haunt us. Anarchy is what we are now being plunged
into in Iraq, among a people with whom we share no
common language, no common religion and no common
culture. Officially, Mr Bremer and his president are
standing tall, claiming they will not "tolerate"
violence and those who oppose democracy, but
occupation officials -- in anticipation of a far
more violent insurrection -- have been privately
discussing the legalities of martial law. And
although Mr Bremer and President George Bush
are publicly insisting that the notional "handover"
of Iraq's "sovereignty" will still take place on 30
June, legal experts attached to the
American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council have
also been considering a delay of further months.
Many Iraqis are now asking if the Americans want
disaster in Iraq. Surely not, but yesterday's
violence told its own story of blundering military
operations and political provocations that will
undoubtedly add to the support for the charmless
and provocative Shia cleric whom Mr Bremer now
wants to lock up -- allegedly for plotting the
murder of a pro-Western Shia cleric, Abdul-Majid
el-Khoi. Sadr was surrounded by his militiamen
yesterday, in a mosque in Kufa from where he issues
regular denunciations of the occupation. Dan Senor, a spokesman for the occupying
power, would not tell anyone exactly what the
evidence against Sadr was -- even though it has
supposedly existed since an Iraqi judge issued the
warrant some months ago. The US military response to the atrocities
committed against four American mercenaries in
Fallujah last week has been to surround the entire
city and to announce the cutting off of the
neighbouring international highway link between
Baghdad, Amman and Damascus -- thus bringing to a
halt almost all economic trade between Iraq and its
two western neighbours. What good this will do "new" Iraq is anyone's
guess. Vast concrete walls have been lowered across
the road and military vehicles have been used to
chase away civilians trying to bypass them. A
prolonged series of Israeli-style house raids are
now apparently planned for the people of Fallujah
to seek out the gunmen who first attacked the four
Americans. The corpses were stripped, mutilated and
hanged. The helicopter attacks
in Shoula -- by ghastly coincidence the very
same Shoula suburb in which civilians were
slaughtered by an American aircraft during last
year's invasion -- looked like a copy of every
Israeli raid on the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed,
Iraqis are well aware that the US military asked
for -- and received -- Israel's "rules of
engagement" from Ariel Sharon's
government. America's losses over the past 48 hours -- at
least 12 soldiers killed and many wounded -- come
nowhere near the number of Iraqi victims over the
same period. US forces in Sadr City believe they were
fighting up to 500 militia men from Sadr's
black-uniformed Army of Mehdi early yesterday. Even
so, using Apache helicopters in a heavily populated
district to hunt for gunmen raises new questions
about the rules to which occupation troops are
supposed to adhere.
THE British fared less badly in Basra, Iraq's
second city, where they avoided violence with
militiamen who had taken over the town hall and
wounded no one in a brief gun battle. Spanish
troops were again involved in shooting with
militiamen in Najaf. The grim truth, however, is
that the occupying powers are now facing
insurrection of various strengths in almost every
big city in Iraq. Yet they are still not
confronting that truth. For the past nine
nights, for example, the main US base close to
Baghdad airport -- and the area around the
terminals -- has come under mortar fire. But the occupying powers have kept this secret.
"Things are getting very bad and they're going to
get worse," a special forces officer said close to
the airport yesterday. "But no one is saying that
-- either because they don't know or because they
don't want you to know." As for Sadr, he will, no doubt, try to surround
himself with squads of gunmen and supporters in the
hope that the Americans will not dare to shoot
their way in to him. Or he will go underground and we'll have another
"enemy of democracy" to bestialise in the approach
to the American elections. Or -- much more serious
perhaps -- his capture may unleash far more
violence from his supporters. And all this because Mr Bremer decided to ban
Sadr's trashy 10,000-circulation weekly newspaper
for "inciting violence." 
Ancient
artefacts looted by US soldiers in Iraq go on
sale on Internet -
Six Mossad
agents killed in north Iraqi town of
Kirkuk
-
US troops kill
journalist of independent al-'Arabiyah
Satellite TV in Baghdad | Arab
journalists walk out of Colin Powell news
conference in protest
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