Heavy-Handed Raid Backfires, This Time
by Dahr Jamail, The NewStandard
web version:
http://blog.newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches/archives/000286.html
April 28 (commentary) - The 26 April explosions at a chemical warehouse
being raided by the U.S. military constitute yet another example of
heavy-handed tactics gone awry. US officials say they had reason to believe
the facility was being used to manufacture chemical munitions. Rather than
use other means to investigate, such as better human intelligence or a more
discreet method of entry, the military used its preferred reconnaissance
approach: a cadre of soldiers, armored vehicles and a blowtorch. Troops
stormed their way into the facility, with horrendous consequences.
The US military reports two soldiers died and fifteen were wounded in two
massive explosions that immediately followed troops attempt to access the
building.
When I arrived at the scene, a witness told me, People were jumping and
dancing on the burning Humvees because of the hatred towards the Americans
due to their dealings with Iraqis. People were cheering for Falluja. Images
of the aftermath were broadcast and printed throughout the Western media.
In order for Western observers to understand why the deaths of people
presented to Western audiences as liberators would be cheered by those
supposedly being liberated, the media would need to present the hundreds of
raids that result in Iraqi suffereng. Mondays perfume factory calamity was
certainly not the first time a military raid in occupied Iraq has backfired
on the soldiers carrying it out.
But botched raids typically go unnoticed by the international media because
officials are loathe to point them out and reporters rarely follow the
numerous leads that circulate around Baghdad and beyond.
Earlier in this month, for instance, the Army conducted an early morning
raid searching for weapons in the Abu Hanifa Mosque in a Sunni neighborhood
of Baghdad. The fruits for crashing through two gates with tanks, for
driving a Humvee over and destroying three tons of food-aid stockpiled for
Falluja, for holding 210 people inside the mosque at gunpoint, for smashing
through classroom doors and for shooting up walls and ceilings? Not one
bullet. The raid wasn't entirely without results for occupation forces,
though. The U.S. military gained even more resentment, distrust and rage
from the Iraqis in Baghdad.
Troops conduct home raids throughout Iraq on a daily basis. At times these
do produce weapons, and sometimes even a person engaged in the increasingly
popular resistance to the US-UK occupation. However, a great number of them
yield nothing but anguish.
In one case I reported on last winter, a late night raid on a house found
soldiers breaking the door to the home of two Baghdad University professors,
even though they were offered free access. The home was destroyed, furniture
broken and torn apart, bags of rice dumped on the kitchen floor, and the
husband and son detained.
The next day soldiers revisited the home, I was told, excusing themselves
for having had poor information. The husband and son remain in detention,
whereabouts unknown to the family.
The raid on 26 April erupted into more than the two explosions reported by
eyewitnesses. The warehouse incident is symbolic of so many raids the
occupation forces have conducted. One witness told me he saw the warehouses
owner offer a key to the soldiers before they entered, but they refused it,
preferring instead to force their way in.
Stories such as this abound on the Iraqi street. More often than not, they
end in dead, beaten or detained Iraqis and personal property stolen by
soldiers.
This time, because it ended in American deaths, the raid received at least
some mention in the Western press.
When human rights organizations estimate that at least half of the 13,000
detainees in the horrid, overflowing Abu Ghraib prison had no affiliation
with the armed resistance prior to being arrested by occupation forces, one
can imagine how they, their families and friends now view the Anglo-American
occupation of their country.
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Dahr Jamail is Baghdad correspondent for The NewStandard. He is an Alaskan devoted to covering the untold stories from occupied Iraq. You can help Dahr continue his crucial work in Iraq by making donations. For more information or to donate to Dahr, visit http://newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches .
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Posted by Hannah at April 29, 2004 05:43 AM