A conservative counterinsurgency expert recently sent me a video, spliced together by the U.S. military in Iraq. It showed night-vision aerial surveillance of suspected “terrorists” as they moved about at night with what was described as a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, the muzzle still warm from firing.
The tiny figures of the “terrorists” walked into a forested area where they were mowed down by miniguns from an AC-130. Their truck also was blown to bits.
It’s not clear, however, how the tiny figures were identified as “terrorists,” except that the term is applied loosely in Iraq, even against Iraqis who consider themselves nationalists resisting a foreign occupation of their homeland.
Other tidbits of troubling information – which often end up below the fold on the inside pages of newspapers – reveal how Iraq steadily has been transformed into a more efficient police state than dictator Saddam Hussein could have ever imagined.
For instance, the “surge” has involved widespread arrests of Iraqi MAMS, sweeps that detain thousands of young men on the flimsiest of suspicions.
During a summer 2007 trip to Iraq, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies was briefed on U.S. plans to dramatically expand the number of Iraqis in American detention by the end of 2008.
“The detainees have risen to over 18,000 and are projected to hit 30,000 (by the U.S. command) by the end of the year and 50,000 by the end of 2008,” Cordesman wrote in his trip report, adding that the vast majority were Sunnis. “Shiite detainees are often freed while Sunnis are warehoused,” he wrote.
When MAMS are detained, the U.S. military processes their biometric information, including iris scans, so a database can be built for tracking suspect Iraqis if they are subsequently released.
Americans rarely get a glimpse of this emerging police state, except when it gets a positive spin. On Nov. 8, for instance, reporters were invited to a crowded U.S. detention center at Camp Victory as nearly 500 of these Iraqis were released in a show of good will.
Some of the Iraqis complained that they had been pulled off the streets and were not allowed to contact their families.
“I was detained in March 2007 for no reason,” said one of the former prisoners, Tariq Jabbar, a 25-year-old taxi driver from Zafaraniya, a neighborhood in southeast Baghdad. [NYT, Nov. 9, 2007]
Other Iraqis have been even less lucky. On Nov. 16, a Sunni tribal group that had been cooperating with the U.S. military said American forces attacked and killed 50 of its members on the suspicion that they were insurgents.
The air and ground assault was launched on Nov. 13 near Taji, a town north of Baghdad. After detecting “hostile intent,” helicopters and airplanes strafed buildings and ground troops fired on the Iraqis, the U.S. military said.
“We had some people on the ground who identified these individuals as bad guys, basically,” Lt. Justin Cole told the New York Times. “That’s why we engaged.”
Sheik Jasim Zaidan Khalaf, who is part of the U.S.-backed Awakening Council, said some of his fighters had captured suspected members of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia and were planning to turn them over to American forces when the attack occurred. Frantic phone calls to the American military failed to stop the assault.
“The whole issue started with a mistake,” the sheik said. [NYT, Nov. 17, 2007]
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