The Iraqi resistance only exists to end the
occupation
The escalating attacks are not usually aimed at civilians, but
are a direct response to the brutal actions of US-led troops
By Haifa Zangana
04/12/07 "The
Guardian" -- - In Muqdadiyah, 50 miles from
Baghdad, a woman wearing a traditional Iraqi abaya blew herself
up this week in the midst of Iraqi police recruits. This was the
seventh suicide attack by a women since the Anglo-American
invasion in 2003, and an act unheard of before that. Iraqi women
are driven to despair and self-destruction by grief. Their
expectations are reduced to pleas for help to clear the bodies
of the dead from the streets, according to a report by the
international committee of the Red Cross, released yesterday.
It's the same frustration that drew hundreds of thousands to
demonstrate against foreign forces in Najaf on Monday.
In the fifth year of occupation, the sectarian and ethnic divide
between politicians, parties and their warring militias has
become monstrous, turning on its creators in the Green Zone and
beyond, and not sparing ordinary people. One of the consequences
is a major change in the public role of women.
During the first three years of occupation women were mostly
confined to their homes, protected by male relatives. But now
that the savagery of their circumstances has propelled many of
them to the head of their households, they are risking their
lives outdoors. Since men are the main target of US-led troops,
militias and death squads, black-cloaked women are seen queuing
at prisons, government offices or morgues, in search of
disappeared, or detained, male relatives. It is women who bury
the dead. Baghdad has become a city of bereaved women. But
contrary to what we are told by the occupation and its puppet
regime, this is not the only city that is subject to the
brutality that forces thousands of Iraqis to flee their country
every month.
Bodies are found across the country from Mosul to Kirkuk to
Basra. They are handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-ridden,
bearing signs of torture. They are dumped at roadsides or found
floating in the Tigris or Euphrates. A friend of mine who found
her brother's body in a hospital's fridge told me how she
checked his body and was relieved. "He was not tortured", she
said. "He was just shot in the head."
Occupation has left no room for any initiative independent of
the officially sanctioned political process; for a peaceful
opposition or civil society that could create networks to bridge
the politically manufactured divide. Only the mosque can fulfil
this role. In the absence of the state, some mosques provide
basic services, running clinics or schools. In addition to the
call to prayer, their loudspeakers warn people of impending
attacks or to appeal for blood donors.
But these attempts to sustain a sense of community are regularly
crushed. On Tuesday, troops from the Iraqi army, supported by US
helicopters, raided a mosque in the heart of old Baghdad. The
well-respected muazzin Abu Saif and another civilian were
executed in public. Local people were outraged and attacked the
troops. At the end of the day, 34 people had been killed,
including a number of women and children. As usual, the summary
execution and the massacre that followed were blamed on
insurgents. The military statement said US and Iraqi forces were
continuing to "locate, identify, and engage and kill insurgents
targeting coalition and Iraqi security forces in the area".
It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not
only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but
also as a response to the reality of the brutal actions of the
occupation and its administration. It is a response to arbitrary
break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests, detention and torture.
According to the Red Cross, "the number of people arrested or
interned by the multinational forces has increased by 40% since
early 2006. The number of people held by the Iraqi authorities
has also increased significantly."
Many of the security detainees are women who have been subjected
to abuse and rape and who are often arrested as a means to force
male relatives to confess to crimes they have not committed.
According to the Iraqi MP Mohamed al-Dainey, there are 65
documented cases of women's rape in occupation detention centres
in 2006. Four women currently face execution - the death penalty
for women was outlawed in Iraq from 1965 until 2004 - for
allegedly killing security force members. These are accusations
they deny and Amnesty International has challenged.
There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for the
US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting
to end the occupation. And to acknowlege that it consists of
ordinary Iraqis, not only al-Qaida, not just Sunnis or Shias,
not those terrorists - as Tony Blair called them - inspired by
neighbouring countries such as Iran. To recognise that Iraqis
are proud, peace-loving people, and that they hate occuption,
not each other. And to understand that the main targets of the
resistance are not Iraqi civilians. According to Brookings, the
independent US research institute, 75% of recorded attacks are
directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi
government forces. The average number of attacks has more than
doubled in the past year to about 185 a day. That is 1,300 a
week, and more than 5,500 a month.
Another way of understanding this is that in any one hour, day
or night, there are seven or eight new attacks. Without the
Iraqi people's support, directly and indirectly, this level of
resistance would not have happened.
· Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile who was imprisoned by Saddam
Hussein, is the author of Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad
and London - haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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