[Peace-discuss] Creating Saddam's successor

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Published on Friday, April 22, 2005 by NYC Indymedia Center
Let a Thousand Militias Bloom
by A.K. Gupta
 
In trying to defeat the Iraqi insurgency, the Pentagon has
turned to Saddam Hussein's former henchmen. Under former
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, U.S. officials has
installed many of the hated Baathists who tormented Iraq in
high-level posts in the interior and defense ministries. But
the new Iraqi government, overwhelmingly composed of Shiites
and Kurds who suffered the most under Hussein, have announced
that they are going to purge the ex-Baathists, putting them on
a collision course with the United States.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made one of his surprise
visits to Baghdad last week, warning the new government not to
"come in and clean house" in the security forces. The official
line is that the U.S. is worried about losing the "most
competent" security forces. But there is a deeper concern that
purging the security forces could feed into sectarian tensions
and explode in civil war.

Much of that is due to a ruthless U.S. policy of using any
tactic, no matter how unsavory, in trying to defeat the
insurgency. According to a slew of reports, the U.S. military
is encouraging tribal vendettas, freeing kidnappers to spy on
insurgents, incorporating ethnic-based military units into the
security forces, and encouraging the development of illegal
militias that draw in part from Hussein-era security forces.

There is clear evidence that the tactics are having an effect.
U.S. casualties have declined by 75 percent since their peak
of 126 combat deaths in November 2004. Part of that is
probably due to sweeping thousands of Sunni Arab males of the
street-Iraqis imprisoned under U.S. control have more than
doubled since last October to 10,500.

It is the more ruthless methods that may be having a greater
effect on squeezing the insurgency. Yet the establishment of
militias may backfire. U.S. military officials express concern
that if the former Baathists who lead the militias are
removed, they could take their forces with them.

A report by the Wall Street Journal from Feb. 16 revealed that
numerous "pop-up militias" thousands strong are proliferating
in Iraq. Not only are many of these shadowy militias linked to
Iraqi politicians, but the Pentagon is arming, training and
funding them for use in counter-insurgency operations.

Most disturbing, one militia in particular-the "special police
commandos"-is being used extensively throughout Iraq and has
been singled out by a U.S. general for conducting death squad
strikes known as the "Salvador option." The police commandos
also appear to be a reconstituted Hussein security force
operating under the same revived government body, the General
Security Directorate, that suppressed internal dissent.

High-level White House officials are banking on the police
commandos to defeat the insurgency. In hearings before the
Senate Appropriations Committee on Feb. 16 Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the commandos are among "forces
that are going to have the greatest leverage on suppressing
and eliminating the insurgency."

The police commandos were identified as one of at least six
militias by Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter. Last October it
was said to have "several thousand soldiers" and lavishly
armed with "rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, mortar tubes
and lots of ammunition." Yet these militias owe their
allegiance not to the Iraqi people or government, but to their
self-appointed leaders and associated politicians such as
interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Even the commander of U.S.
forces in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admitted in
testimony before Congress on March 1 that such militias are
"destabilizing."

Of these militias, at least three are linked to Allawi. Jaffe
writes, "First came the Muthana Brigade, a unit formed by the
order of. Allawi." The second is the Defenders of Khadamiya,
referring to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Baghdad,
which appears to be "closely aligned with prominent Shiite
cleric Hussein al Sadr." Al Sadr ran on Allawi's ticket in the
January elections and proved himself loyal when he attacked
the main Shiite ticket publicly for stating it was endorsed by
Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. (Al-Sadr also held the
infamous press conference in Baghdad where several journalists
in attendance were seen receiving $100 gifts from Allawi's
government.)

The special police commandos is led by Gen. Adnan Thabit, who
participated in the disastrous 1996 coup against Saddam
Hussein that Allawi coordinated. Thabit was jailed and
subsequently released shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion.
He is also the uncle of Iraq's interim minister of the
interior, under which the commandos operate.

Thabit told the Armed Forces Press Service last October that
the police commandos are drawn from "police who have previous
experience fighting terrorism and also people who received
special training under the former regime" of Saddam Hussein.
The report from Oct. 20, 2004, also quotes U.S. Army Col.
James H. Coffman Jr., who specifies that police commandos are
"former special forces and (former Directorate of General
Security) personnel."

The Directorate of General Security was one of the main
security services Hussein used to maintain an iron grip on
Iraq. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies describes the
service's role as "detecting dissent among the Iraqi general
public" by monitoring "the day-to-day lives of the population,
creating a pervasive local presence."

Col. Coffman reports to Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the
mammoth U.S. effort to create Iraq's myriad security forces.
Petraeus calls the police commandos "a horse to back" and has
done so by providing it with "money to fix up its base and buy
vehicles, ammunition, radios and more weapons." In a satellite
briefing to the press on Feb. 4, Petraeus repeatedly praised
the special police commandos, calling the leadership
"tremendously aggressive" in operations. Petraeus also
revealed that the commandos, the Muthana Brigade and another
militia called the Defenders of Baghdad were used to provide
security on election day.

But a senior officer on Petraeus's staff confided, "If you
tried to replace Gen. [Thavit] he'd take his...brigades with
him. He is a very powerful figure."

Ousting wholesale the ex-Baathist security forces now in the
government could push them to join the insurgency. And this
precisely what Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabini is
suggesting. According to the BBC, Talabani argues "the
insurgency could be ended immediately if the authorities made
use of Kurdish, Shia Muslim and other militias. Jalal Talabani
said this would be more effective than waiting for Iraqi
forces to take over from the US-led coalition."

The militias Talabani is referring to include the Kurdish
Peshmerga and Shiite units such as the Badr Brigades. But such
a move would cement the conflict as a sectarian one.

Military analyst William Lind notes that "the rise and spread
of Shiite militias devoted to fighting Sunni insurgents puts
ever-greater pressure on Iraq's Sunnis to cast their lot with
the insurgency." Add to this the use of Kurdish Peshmerga also
against Sunni Arabs and civil war would likely result.

U.S. BETS ON BAATHISTS

Ironically, Allawi-with U.S. encouragement-has put a network
of former Baathists in charge of various security services to
fight what the U.S. claims are other Baathists who form the
core of the insurgency. They include Thavit's nephew, Interior
Minister Falah al-Naqib, who is the son of a prominent Baath
official. The Minister of Defense is Hazem al-Shaalan, a
former Baathist from al-Hillah, and. Brig. Gen. Muhammad
Abdullah Shahwani, an old-time Ba'ath officer, is now head of
the Iraqi secret police, according to author and analyst Milan
Rai.

This policy of "re-baathification" is actively supported by
Bush administration. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 11,
2003, that the CIA met with Allawi and another member of his
Iraqi National Accord party to create "an Iraqi intelligence
service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are
targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new
government." The plan was to "screen former government
officials to find agents for the service and weed out those
who are unreliable or unsavory." Evidence of this role comes
from Thabit who told the Armed Forces Press Service that
former regime personnel in his force "were efficiently chosen
according to information about their background."

Even before he officially assumed the post of interim prime
minister, Allawi announced a reorganization of security forces
at his first press conference on June 20, 2004. According to a
Human Rights Watch report on torture in Iraq, Allawi mentioned
"Special police units would also be created to be deployed 'in
the frontlines' of the battle against terrorism and sabotage,
and a new directorate for national security established."
Human Rights Watch also noted that Al-Nahdhah, a Iraqi
newspaper, reported on June 21 that the interior ministry
"appointed a new security adviser to assist in the
establishment of a new general security directorate modeled on
the erstwhile General Security Directorate. one of the
agencies of the Saddam Hussein government dissolved by the CPA
in May 2003." That security advisor was "Major General 'Adnan
Thabet al-Samarra'i." (There are numerous variations on
Thabet's last name.)

Then on July 15, 2004, just two months before the police
commandos became public, Allawi said the government would
establish "internal intelligence units called General Security
Directorate, GSD, that will annihilate. terrorist groups."
Jane's Intelligence Digest commented at the time that the GSD,
"will include former members of Saddam Hussein's feared
security services, collectively known as the Mukhabarat. These
former Ba'athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected to
hunt down their colleagues currently organizing the insurgency."

Perhaps Allawi's announcement was spurred by events in the
city of Samarra. A July 15 report from Radio Free Europe noted
that a Shiite website, www.ebaa.net , stated Islamic militants
had blown up numerous sites in Samarra, including "the
headquarters of the Iraqi National Movement Party led by
Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, the City Council, the
headquarters of the [Kurdish] peshmerga forces, and the home
of Municipal Council Chairman Adnan Thabit."

It seems then, former Baathist brutes may have gone from one
security service under Hussein to the exact same one as under
Allawi, another ex-Baathist. And the rougues apparently
haven't forgotten their old tactics.

'GAY ORGIES'

The police commandos have been supplying suspects who confess
their crimes on the TV show, "Terrorism in the Hands of
Justice." Described as the Iraqi government's "slick new
propaganda tool," the program runs six nights a week on the
Iraqiya network, which was set up by the Pentagon and is now
run by Australian-based Harris Corp. (a major U.S. government
contractor that gave 96 percent of its political funding, more
than $260,000, to Republicans in 2004). According to the
Boston Globe, camera crews are sent "wherever police commandos
make a lot of arrests."

The show features an unseen interrogator haranguing alleged
insurgents for confessions. Virtually every press account
notes that the suspects appear to have been beaten or
tortured, their faces bruised and swollen. The London Guardian
states "some have. robotic manners of those beaten and coached
by police interrogators off-camera." The Boston Globe
observed, "The neat confessions of terrorist attacks at times
fit together so seamlessly as to seem implausible." And then
there's the nature of the confessions. Many suspects admit to
"drunkeness, gay orgies and pornography," according to the
Guardian. The Financial Times reported that, "One long-bearded
preacher known as Abu Tabarek recently confessed that
guerrillas had usually held orgies in his mosques." Another
preacher giving a confession says he was fired for "having sex
with men in the mosque," the Globe account stated that
suspects "frequently admit to rape and pedophilia."

The show is said to be popular, particularly among many
Shiites and Kurds, which causes concern that depicting Sunni
Arab nationalists as "thieving scumbags" could deepen communal
strife. Political and religious leaders from the Sunni Arabs
have denounced the show, calling for it to be pulled off the air.

The police commandos' penchant for tall tales caused them
considerable embarrassment after they crowed about a major
operation that killed more than 80 insurgents at a training
camp along Lake Tharthar in Al Anbar on March 22. Within a day
many discrepancies emerged-how many insurgents were killed,
reports of more than 20 prisoners versus none, a number of
different locations cited, many miles apart. The story fell
apart after an AFP reporter visited the camp and still found
40 to 50 insurgents camped there.

But the police commandos are still receiving special treatment
from the U.S. occupation. A State Department report to
Congress from Jan. 5 noted that at the request of the Iraqi
Ministry of the Interior, "billeting space" was provided for
1,500 police commandos in the Baghdad Public Safety Academy,
postponing a basic training class of 2,000 scheduled to begin
in November and limiting the number of students to 1,000 while
the commandos received training "until the planned January
2005 elections."

Overall, the militias are a tacit admission that the U.S.
effort to create an Iraqi military force has been a colossal
failure, costing at least $5 billion to date. During the most
recent large-scale military campaign, "Operation River Blitz,"
U.S. Marines raided towns West of Baghdad along the Euphrates
River. The first order of business in many of these Sunni Arab
towns, according to the Christian Science monitor, was to
"round up and detain police officers"-the very ones who had
been "trained" by the U.S. to fight the insurgency. In Tikrit
in early March, the police went on strike after U.S. troops
raided the provincial police headquarters there and arrested
two high-ranking officers. (About the same time in Samarra,
the mayor and city council resigned after the mayor's office
was raided and in protest of U.S. troops refusing to withdraw
from the city as agreed.)

At the end of March, police brandishing Kalishnikovs staged a
demonstration in Hit, one of the towns targeted, demanding
their jobs back. An AP account of the protest dated March 29
noted that police forces have been dismissed across the
province of Al Anbar, the heart of the insurgency, and "former
local police officers have been protesting in several cities
in recent weeks against a new plan to replace them with police
from other Iraqi provinces."

By introducing of militias and other units composed of Shiites
and Kurds into the Sunni Arab regions, the U.S. may just turn
the insurgency into a civil war.

10,000 STRONG

In terms of numbers, a column by David Ignatius in the Feb. 25
Washington Post notes that Thabit "commands a force of about
10,000 men," which would make them larger than the British
military, the second largest foreign force in Iraq. The
commandos have been used extensively, first last October in
the assault on Samara that was called a "model" for how to
retake a city from insurgents (but which is stilled roiled by
regular attacks). The commandos have also become a fixture in
major cities such as Ramadi and Mosul. In Ramadi, The Stars
and Stripes describes the commandos as "the Iraqi forces that
might soon be responsible for security in the city."

A report in Dec. 25 issue of The Advisor-a Pentagon
publication with the tagline "Iraq's Official Weekly Command
Information Reporter"-stated that the "Special Police
Commandos have been deployed all over Iraq to hunt down
insurgents and to help provide security for the upcoming Jan.
30 elections."

FEARS OF CIVIL WAR

Jaffe notes many of the pop-up militias come "from
Shiite-dominated southern Iraq." And they appear to be
operating mainly in Sunni Arab areas. The police commandos in
particular are taking the lead in operations in such Sunni
Arab hotspots as Samarra, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit and Baghdad.
Last October they were assigned to Haifa Street, which had
been a resistance stronghold on the edge of the Green Zone,
the heart of the U.S. occupation. It's a district of 170,000
Sunnis and Shiites where insurgents find willing recruits
among the Sunni neighborhoods. Two Iraqi battalions of more
than 2,000 patrol the neighborhood, and the New York Times
observes that one is lead by a Shiite general "commanding a
unit composed mostly of Shiites." (The units are the Iraqi
302nd and 303rd Battalion; it's unclear if they are affiliated
with the police commandos assigned there.)

Knight Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter filed a report from
Haifa on March 16, also noting that "Most of the Iraqi troops
who patrol the area. are Shiite." During the operations,
Lasseter wrote, "When Iraqi and American soldiers detained a
suspected Sunni insurgent in Haifa this week, a group of the
Shiite troops crowded around him. A sergeant kicked him in the
face. Another soldier grabbed him by the neck and slammed his
head into a wall. A third slapped him hard in the face." The
Americans' Iraqi interpreter yelled at the detainee, "If you
come with us, we will slaughter you."

The ethnic-based militias are having a trickle-down effect on
Iraqi society. With no functioning government, various
communities are increasingly arming themselves. In another
report, Lasseter spoke to a Shiite soldier who claimed that,
"Shiite neighborhoods on the edges of Haifa have formed
militias to enforce the sectarian boundary." The soldier
added, ""That militia is secretly funded by a sheik at a local
Shiite mosque... what's happening right now could be the
beginning of civil war in Baghdad." And in what remains of
Fallujah, "Sunni residents say anger toward Shiite troops is
reaching a boiling point." Bush may be right after all that
"freedom is on the march" in Iraq: the freedom to hate and kill.

As for the "hunt" for insurgents, it seems to include death
squads. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, the former head of all
U.S. special operations forces, appeared on NBC's Today show
on Jan. 10 to discuss a Newsweek report about the Salvador
option. The reference is to the extensive use of death squads
by El Salvador's military during its war against the left in
the 1980s. Downing called it a "very valid tactic" that has
been employed "since we started the war back in March of
2003." In the account, brought to light by analyst Stephen
Shalom, Downing adds, "We have special police commandos now of
the Iraqi forces which conduct these kind of strike operations."

And there is evidence for such operations. According to the
March 12 London Times, the body of Qahtan Jouli was delivered
to his family in Samarra by commandos from the interior
ministry. He had appeared on "Terror in the Grip of Justice"
and confessed to collaborating with insurgents in 10 killings.
Qahtan's father charged that "My son was killed after he was
tortured by the Interior Ministry commandos. They killed him
to cover up the lies they broadcast on the al-Iraqiya channel
that my son killed many people, including Iraqi army officers."

Despite the pressure, the insurgency is still capable of
conducting large-scale attacks. It's still mounting 50 to 60
strikes a day across Iraq. The difference is U.S. forces have
become more effective at responding to the attacks-with more
armor, more surveillance and electronic countermeasures. The
insurgents have responded by shifting their targets to the
Iraqi security forces and intensifying economic sabotage by
crippling the electrical and petroleum infrastructure. They
still have the upper hand there by showing the U.S. and its
Iraqi allies are incapable of ruling the country.

The militias are central to many of these roundups. According
to The Advisor, in Samarra, the special police commandos
detained 200 suspected insurgents in the "short time [they]
have been operational in the area." In one week in the Mosul
area, according to a Dec. 7 press release from U.S. Task Force
Olympia, the commandos and Iraqi National Guardsmen, backed by
U.S. troops, detained 232 people. A report from the Iraqi
Ministry of Defense claimed that more than 400 suspects were
seized in Baghdad in just one week in March with hundreds more
taken from surrounding towns. Many of those arrested remain
under Iraqi control-where many are tortured according to human
rights groups as well as the U.S. State Department. Thus the
actual prison population in Iraq is unknown, with many more
thousands probably in custody above the U.S. total (which
itself is unverified).

U.S. Marine units have taken the militia strategy to a new
level: by creating their own. In a recent sweep through Al
Anbar province, The 7th Marines Regiment brought with the
Iraqi Freedom Guard, a 61-man unit set up by the Marines in
January and paid $400 a month each, according to a Reuters
report. During the same operation, Marines of the 23rd
Regiment were accompanied by 20 members of a special forces
unit called the Freedom Fighters. The Christian Science
Monitor described them as Shiites from the southern city of
Basra, with "little love between them and the Sunni Arab
citizens of Anbar."

In the greatest irony, U.S. forces have reached a pact with
elements of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army to have
them hunt down insurgents. This is the same militia that U.S.
forces fought in lopsided battles last year that saw the
Americans' massive firepower devastate much of Sadr City in
Baghdad and Najaf's old city and kill thousands of Iraqis.

According to Agence France-Presse, U.S. forces are using a
Shiite tribal leader to enforce vigilante justice in Baghdad's
Dura district. One U.S. officer calls the leader, Sayed Malik,
"the godfather" and notes he's received lots of public works
contracts, enough to make him a millionaire. Another Sadr
official states point blank that "people from Sadr
organization are publicly hunting down the terrorists." This
apparently includes the kidnapping and disappearing of a Sunni
cleric from a mosque in Dura.

The U.S. military is so obsessed with defeating the insurgents
that it is "routinely freeing dangerous criminals in return
for a promise to spy on insurgents," according to The
Independent. One senior Iraqi police officer charged that "The
Americans are allowing the breakdown of Iraqi society.We are
dealing with an epidemic of kidnapping, extortion and violent
crime, but even though we know the Americans monitor calls on
mobiles and satellite phones, which are often used in ransom
negotiations, they will not pass on any criminal intelligence
to us. They only want to use the information against insurgents."

Despite the grab bag of ruthless and destabilizing tactics,
the insurgency is far from over. One U.S. general recently
noted that it takes on average nine years to defeat an
insurgency. Additionally, it's the violence of the U.S.
occupation that gives the insurgency such force. Even if the
rebellion is contained to "manageable" levels for the
Pentagon, meaning a low rate of combat deaths, that does not
mean the resistance will end. U.S. forces long ago lost the
battle for hearts and minds.

And Iraq's own "democracy" is already in trouble, leaving many
Iraqis disillusioned. The winning parties have been unable to
form a government almost three months after the election. They
are still squabbling over who will control the most important
portfolios-defense, interior and oil-which is where the real
power lies. With a do-nothing government ensconced in bosom of
the deadly U.S. occupation, the stage is now set for a further
descent into rebellion and repression.

A.K. Gupta is an editor with the NYC Indymedia Center,
www.nyc.indymedia.org . This is an updated version of an
article that appears in the May issue of Z Magazine.

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