Iraq: Stop the massacre in Sadr City…

… so says Al-Ghad.

In the weeks following the high profile attack on Basra by the Iraqi army and its high profile failure something of a low-level war has been going on across Iraq much behind the scenes of the mainstream media. Yet now the situation seems to be coming to a head.

Al-Ghad issued a statement giving an urgent warning that an imminent massacre of the people of Sadr City is being planned:

The occupiers have decided to implement the Israeli style ghettos of imprisoning people in concrete walls. When this didn’t solve their problem, they came to the idea of mass slaughter of the whole of Sadr-City, using mass bombing, rockets and heavy artillery against a civil population.

Wafaa’ Al-Natheema condemned the attacks against hospitals in Baghdad:

Today the Shu'la hospital in Karkh district was attacked… Historically, I am unaware of military operations targeting civilian hospitals!!…

Who will evacuate the dead bodies and heal the wounded? I really can not keep silent when today my colleague, the journalist, Yasir Shammri described Sadr City Hospital as the hospital of death whose function is just to keep corpses.

While Ladybird reports rumours of plans to use chemical weapons on Sadr City:

I don’t know the truth behind this story … but there are rumors .. that neighborhoods around Sadr-City are being evacuated.

According to al-Badeel al-iraqi, their sources in Sadr-City sent a message saying that the attacking forces are preparing to hit the city with opiate fentanyl non-lethal gas, the same gas the Russians used to attack the rebels in Moscow theater in 2002.

Whatever can be said about the new security plan in Iraq, it has not come without cost. The new Iraqi army can hardly be called non-sectarian. Zeyad posts a video showing Iraqi Security Forces raiding a small town in Iraq in a scene reminiscent of Saddam's violent quelling of an uprising in 1991. He writes:

A massacre that you will not see on CNN, perpetrated by the US-backed “Iraqi security forces” or, more accurately, Badr/SIIC/ Da'wa gangs in uniform and out of uniform… The soldiers are heard spitting out obscenities at the wounded detainees and even at dead bodies. Others are seen dragging another injured detainee, kicking him violently and cursing him before throwing him on a pile of dead bodies… Those are the “security forces” that our American friends want us to trust and to condemn attacks targeting them.

Raed posts stills from the same video and writes:

The Iraqi police, army, interior ministry forces, and other US backed forces are nothing more than nice titles for militias that happened to be called “governmental”. The Sunnis and Shiites allied with the US get to have their militias treated as “good militias” with governmental titles, but the other Sunnis and Shiites who represent the majority of Iraqis and oppose the occupation are the ones with “bad militias” that are described as terrorists and extremists…

The congress has approved billions of dollars of US-taxpayers money to fund these sectarian militias who are directly responsible of the ethnic and sectarian cleansing that has been taking place in Iraq during the last 5 years.

On a lower level Last of Iraqis has a confrontation with the same kind of soldiers at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was stopped and nearly arrested. He writes:

During the ordeal many things were running through my head, I was thinking about the previous trouble that I have faced and remembered the comments; that really helped me to be cool, I was thinking about my dead friend; Omar who was killed by the Iraqi army in a situation like mine, he was talking with my other friend on the phone when he reached a checkpoint for the Iraqi army in Harthia neighborhood so he placed the phone aside and my friend could hear everything through the phone…it was so similar to my case but they took him and the next day his dead body was found in a garbage!!!

I know you are bored from the same story being told over and over by me but this is what the ordinary Iraqis go through everyday despite the countless explosions and assassination. That's the army and police that should protect us!! How funny.

These events leaves me with the same questions that Wafaa’ raised:

Aren't these disasters sufficient to move the conscience? What freedom and democracy and what government reform, reconstruction and national unity are those? Will these events move the corrupt political parties to PM Maliki's table? What constitution allows the army to kill people and insults and threatens doctors? Is there any wise man amongst you, deputies and ministers? Where is the Islam of the Islamic parties where is the democracy of the liberal and patriotic parties?

206 comments

  • […] Global Voices Online: The occupiers have decided to implement the Israeli style ghettos of imprisoning people in […]

  • timothy foor

    we only hear what the news wants us to hear. but litte of it is the real story. My son is there a medic in the army . he has givin aid to many iraqis .all while being called baby killers and muders by on his email. hes been blown up 4 times and shot at daily. peace is a 2 way street !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • We need to leave Iraq and let it fall to their fellow muslims. Then they can be whatever they want fully oppressed! We have bleed enough blood for ungreatful people!

  • mike callahan

    It is a sad state of affairs when a country, as great as Iraq was, can be manipulated by radical Islamic neighbors, pitting Iraqi against Iraqi to fullfil their own countries agenda without the least care of the impact it is having on the Iraqi people and their nation. It is hard to believe that people fall for this kind of propoganda allowing their country to be ripped apart in the name of Alla. If they dont want Americans to be in their country, form a functioning goverment, work together to restore order in their country and the Americans will leave. The reason why that will not happen is that Iraqs neighbors dont want Iraq to become a functioning independent country. They want them to be a satelite country that reflects their own views and policies, not thoughs of the Iraqi people. As long as they can keep Iraq devided they will have the power to dictate the course of the Iraqi peoples future.
    It is so obvious and no one is will to see it. What a shame, so much waste.

  • J.R.

    Mike Callahan,

    Your statement is exactly correct.

  • Ray Mahlberg

    I feel the problem is the violent muslumf aith and the tribal mentanilty. You have brother killing brother in the name of God. Most of what is sean is people who like to kill, and blaim others.
    Do you want the US out of your country? Stop killing each other. Very simple. If you do not like the goverment. Then vote in a goverment that you like. So simple.
    Once you stop killing each other because 1,000 years ago one group insulted another group. So for 1,000 years you kill eachother to get revenge? The world can see what you are.

  • steve

    Its always the Americans that are to blame isn’t it. The muslims never take responsibility for there own actions. All those American troops would love to come home and let the Iraqi people do the only thing their good at, killing each other in the name of their religion. That a democracy could ever be created in a muslim country was a fools errand on the part of George Bush. None of the surrounding countries will allow it to happen and their all doing everything they can to ensure that Iraq fails and the Iraqi people are playing right into their hands with these stupid conspiracy theories. America could have easily laid waste to the whole country if that was our goal. Its the trying to stop Iraqi from killing Iraqi that is a thank less job. I say let them have their freedom. Lets pack up and go and see how long it takes for them to figure out that the Americans were the only true friend that they had. Muslims will never have a democracy because they have to be told what to do and if something can’t be blamed on the west then they have to look to themselves for the answer and they can’t do that. Iraq for the Iraqis I say and let the bloodbath begin.

  • HM

    Mike Callahan, no truer words have been written.

  • Teri

    It would be facinating to see how the Iraqis would respond to a true carpet bombing of their cities like was done to the Germans in WWII (they gave up their facist attitude after a time didn’t they?). America only fails militarily when it respects the enemy more than it’s own military objectives. Here’s to hoping Sadr City is properly fire bombed into submission.

  • Rey

    You know, I have opposed the invasion since before it happened. We marched against it in New York City months before it began. BUT — steve is correct. Had the US government actually wanted to commit genocide, or lay waste to the country — there would have been a genocide, or no two stones would set on top of one another anywhere in the country. Do I approve of Mr. Bush’s reasons for this treasonous war? No, not at all — but I do acknowledge that his intent, for very flawed reasons though it was made, was NOT to kill the Iraqi people or destroy the Iraqi nation. He is a fool and a cretin and an evil man — BUT he believed that the Iraqi people wanted a nation of their own. He did not believe — although I know academics who tried to tell him — that the Iraqis were still very tribal, that the religious divisions were covers for tribal divisions and that civil war would follow. He believed that the Iraqis would cooperate in forming a better, lasting union for themselves. He should have known better — friends of mine who are from other mid-eastern countries did know better — but he, to some degree (and I say that very grudgingly) and certainly most (NOT ALL) of the troops who were deployed, initially believed that they would be doing good. They were wrong — and frankly, we need to withdraw, continue the development of alternatives, and let the groups slaughter each other. I think we should take any children out who THEMSELVES want out — I think we could find homes for them — and let the people who don’t want to help themselves or anyone else go to it.

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