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In Tatters Beneath a Surge of Claims
Analysis by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
23/02/08 - -- - BAGHDAD, Feb 22 (IPS) - What the U.S. has been
calling the success of a "surge", many Iraqis see as evidence of
catastrophe. Where U.S. forces point to peace and calm, local
Iraqis find an eerie silence.
And when U.S. forces speak of a reduction in violence, many
Iraqis simply do not know what they are talking about.
Hundreds died in a series of explosions in Baghdad last month.
This was despite the strongest ever security measures taken by
the U.S. military, riding the "surge" in security forces and
their activities.
The death toll is high, according to the website icasualties.org,
which provides reliable numbers of Iraqi civilian and security
deaths.
In January this year 485 civilians were killed, according to the
website. It says the number is based on news reports, and that
"actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers
recorded on this site."
The average month in 2005, before the "surge" was launched, saw
568 civilian deaths. In January 2006, the month before the
"surge" began, 590 civilians died.
Many of the killings have taken place in the most well guarded
areas of Baghdad. And they have continued this month.
"Two car bombs exploded in Jadriya, killing so many people, the
day the American Secretary of Defence (Robert Gates) was
visiting Baghdad last week," a captain from the Karrada district
police in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.
"Another car bomb killed eight people and injured 20 Thursday
(last week) in the Muraidy market of Sadr City, east of Baghdad,
although the Mehdi army (the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr)
provides strict protection to the city," the officer said.
"There is no security in this country any more."
Unidentified bodies of Iraqis killed by militias continue to
appear in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The Iraqi government
has issued instructions to all security and health offices not
to give out the body count to the media. Dozens of bodies are
found every day across Baghdad, residents say. Morgue officials
confirm this.
"We are not authorised to issue any numbers, but I can tell you
that we are still receiving human bodies every day; the men have
no identity on them," a doctor at the Baghdad morgue told IPS.
"The bodies that have signs of torture are the Sunnis killed by
Shia militias; those with a bullet in the head are usually
policemen, translators or contractors who worked for the
Americans."
The "surge" of 30,000 additional troops came to Iraq, mostly
Baghdad, in February of last year. The total current number of
U.S. troops in Iraq is approximately 157,000. They were sent to
end violence, and with a declared aim of helping political
reconciliation.
But where peace of sorts has descended in Baghdad, Iraq's
capital city of six million (in a population of 25 million), it
comes from a partitioning of people along sectarian lines. The
Iraqi Red Crescent reports that one in four residents has been
driven out of their homes by death squads, or by the "surge".
According to an Iraqi Red Crescent report titled 'The Internally
Displaced People in Iraq' released Jan. 27, 1,364,978 residents
of Baghdad have been displaced.
The Environment News Service reported Jan. 7 that "many of the
capital's once mixed areas have become either purely Sunni or
Shia after militias forced families out for belonging to the
other religious branch of Islam."
Some of the eerie calm in areas of Baghdad comes because
togetherness has ended. Sunnis and Shias who lived together for
generations are now partitioned. This is not the peace many
Iraqis were looking for, surge or no surge.
On Jan. 8, UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond announced that there
were at least 2.2 million Iraqis internally displaced within the
country, and that at least another two million had fled the
country altogether. This, no doubt, would make many areas
quieter.
The U.S. military has erected three to four metre high concrete
walls around several neighbourhoods, forcing residents to choose
either Sunni or Shia areas in which to live. Such separation has
brought large-scale displacement, and protests.
Sunni Muslims seem to have the worst of it. Many Iraqis are
outraged by the number of Sunni detainees the "surge" has taken.
Residents of Amiriya district of western Baghdad demonstrated
Feb. 11 against mistreatment by U.S. and Iraqi forces involved
in the "surge". The "surge" aims to eradicate al-Qaeda from
Iraq, but this has meant that most military operations have been
carried out in Sunni areas like Amiriya.
"We are here to protest against the unfair arrests and raids
conducted against the innocent people of Amiriya," Salih al-Mutlag,
chief of the Arab Dialogue Council in the Iraqi government told
IPS at the demonstration. "This has gone too far under the flag
of fighting terror."
Al-Mutlag said they were also demonstrating against arrests in
the western parts of Baghdad, despite an apparently peaceful
situation there as a result of residents' cooperation with Iraqi
army units. Large numbers of residents came out in the Dora
region of southwest Baghdad to protest against the U.S. military
for arresting 18 people, including an 80-year-old man.
"We are the ones who improved the situation in western parts of
Baghdad without any interference from the Americans and their
puppet Iraqi government," former Iraqi Army Major Abu Wussam
told IPS in Amiriya. "We negotiated with our brothers in the
Iraqi national resistance who agreed to conduct their activities
in a different way from the traditional way they used to work.
"It seems Americans did not like it, and so they are punishing
us for it, instead of releasing our detainees as they promised."
Some of the apparent peace on the street is a consequence of
rising detentions. In November last year Karl Matley, head of
the Iraqi branch of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, declared that more than 60,000 prisoners and detainees
are held in prisons and other detention centres. A large number
of these were taken during the "surge".
By August 2007, half a year into the "surge", the number of
detainees held by the U.S.-led military forces in Iraq had
swelled by 50 percent, with the inmate population growing to
24,500, from 16,000 in February, according to U.S. military
officers in Iraq.
The officers reported that nearly 85 percent of the detainees in
custody were Sunni Arabs.
Given that the majority of the detained are Sunnis, the "surge",
rather than bridging political differences and aiding
reconciliation between Sunni and Shia groups, appears to have
had the opposite effect.
And yet, there could be more dangerous reasons to doubt such
success of the "surge" that is claimed.
Among the recent arrests in Baghdad, the U.S. military counted
six members of the Sahwa (Awakening) forces. This is a force of
resistance fighters now ostensibly working with the U.S.
military. The U.S. pays each member 300 dollars monthly. More
than 80 percent of about 70,000 Sahwa members are Sunni.
The arrest of some Sahwa members is indication of U.S. military
doubts about the loyalties of some of these Sahwa fighters. Shia
political parties and militias already accuse them of being
resistance fighters in disguise. Many believe that large numbers
of Sahwa forces are resistance fighters simply riding the
"surge".
"How come Sunni parts of Baghdad became so quiet all of a
sudden," says Jawad Salman, a former resident of Amiriya who
fled his house in 2006 after Iraqi resistance members accused
him of being a government spy. "It is a game well played by
terrorists to divert the fight against Shia groups. I lived
there and I know that all residents fully support what the U.S.
calls the terrorists."
The Sahwa strategy has brought down the number of U.S.
casualties – for now. But the U.S. strategy seems to have done
less for Iraq than for its own forces.
(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close
collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer
on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle
East) (FIN/2008)
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