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Iyad Allawi: Saddam Sans Mustache |
Current rating: 0 |
by Greg Guma
(No verified email address) |
07 Aug 2004
Modified: 10:06:40 PM |
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Of course, he's not the first bully boy to be embraced by over-confident US leaders or an obsequious press corps. Nicaragua's Somoza, Zaire's Mobutu, Iran's Shah, the Philippines' Marcos, and many more have received similar kid glove treatment over the years. |
In case you've been living in a duct-taped bomb shelter, we're in the midst of a national dialogue about strength. It's central to President George W. Bush's public persona and a main argument for his effectiveness. Not to be outdone his Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., has done everything from riding a motorcycle to making "stronger at home" a campaign mantra to sell a muscular image.
Strength is also central to the image of the new Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, whom Newsweek described as "Iraq's New SOB," and has been lauded as a ruthless strongman in The New York Times and Washington Post. Locally, he's known as "Saddam without the mustache."
Of course, he's not the first bully boy to be embraced by over-confident US leaders or an obsequious press corps. Nicaragua's Somoza, Zaire's Mobutu, Iran's Shah, the Philippines' Marcos, and many more have received similar kid glove treatment over the years.
But it is possible to be too strong? That's the prospect raised by unproven allegations that Allawi personally executed six prisoners in June, just a week before the handover of power by Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer.
The story, first published by the Sydney Morning Herald on July 17, was written by Paul McGeough, who got the details from two separately interviewed Iraqi witnesses.
Both insisted that Allawi shot the handcuffed and blindfolded men in cold blood, in front of U.S. military and Iraq police witnesses, while visiting the Al-Amariyah security center in Baghdad.
He was sending a message, Allawi allegedly explained, and showing Iraq police how to "deal with" the opposition. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked about it, he dismissed the allegation as "odd" and called Iraq's new prime minister a "deeply humane person."
Despite the seriousness of the allegation, U.S. newspapers and networks avoided covering the story for almost a week. Some still haven't. Eventually, Los Angeles Times reporter Alissa Rubin did develop a follow up; but her July 22 report, "Iraq rumors reflect debate over need for a strongman," classified McGeough's story as one of several "urban myths" circulating about Iraq's new leader.
Rubin opted to interview random citizens about their attitudes. One opined, "We really need such tough measures to be taken." Iraq's deputy prime minister told her such "rumors" are evidence of a political culture that equates strength with force.
Her story ended with the bleak notion that many Iraqi's are relieved and comforted by the impression the rumors about their prime minister have created.
If that's really true, here are a few more examples that ought to rouse cheers in Iraq's apparently bloodthirsty street. According to a July 11 New York Times feature by Dexter Filkins, Allawi cut off one prisoner's hand to make him confess about "terrorist" activities. Talk about protecting the homeland! In Filkins' view, this show for force demonstrated why Allawi is "the perfect man" to bring this "fractious country" together.
Citing CIA sources, the Times also has published reports that Allawi's organization, the Iraqi National Accord, conducted bombings that killed civilians during the 1990s. He was opposing Saddam at the time, after running Baath Party organizations in Europe during the 1970s. Made up mostly of defectors from the military and intelligence services, his anti-Saddam group received financial support from Britain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and, eventually, the CIA.
Before his June elevation, while chairing of the Interim Governing Council's security committee, Allawi is also alleged to have recruited former torturers to serve in a new secret police apparatus while, of late, he has threatened martial law, shut down sections of the media, suggested the government might delay elections, and moved to bring back the death penalty. Sounds more despotic than strong.
Rubin's story trivializes the murder rumor and downplays Allawi's brutal style, her survey of Iraqi opinion does raise an interesting point. Deeply divided societies, especially those frayed by violence, often question "whether democracy or dictatorship will best deliver the life people desire," she suggests.
Before the Iraq invasion, we heard that the United States needed to oust a tyrant and establish a democracy. Now the argument is that the unruly country needs a tough guy ready to impose martial law, ban protest, and use secret police to "annihilate" opponents. In other words, a tyrant.
In the United States, both major party candidates want to be seen as the real Iron Man. After 9/11, Bush morphed from compassionate conservative into "war president." In wartimes, stubbornness is sometimes confused with true strength, and trumps values like individual liberty and human rights. For most Democrats, it nevertheless followed that choosing a war hero -- their own strongman -- was the best ticket back to the White House, even though many of them opposed the war and still yearn to end the occupation their champion ambiguously supports.
Like Iraq, does U.S. culture now equate strength with force? How many millions in this fragile democracy are comforted by the idea that their commander in chief is ready to "do whatever it takes?" Are policies like preemptive war and the abuse of suspected enemies merely knee-jerk reactions, or the fateful power plays of an arrogant superpower?
At the Democratic coronation, former President Bill Clinton argued that "strength and wisdom are not opposing values." Good line. But in politics, looking tough usually works better than sounding smart, and, in journalism, playing it safe too often wins over boldly seeking the whole story.
At this point, maybe the best we can hope for is a little more wisdom from our leaders and a bit more courage from the press.
Greg Guma is the editor of Toward Freedom, a Vermont-based world affairs magazine, and author of "Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization, and What We Can Do." He can be contacted at towardfreedom.com.
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
http://www.upi.com |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Soldiers Detail Iraqi Abuse of Prisoners |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Aug 2004
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PORTLAND, Ore. — Oregon National Guard soldiers tried to stop Iraqi jailers from abusing dozens of prisoners, but were ordered to return the prisoners to their abusers and leave, according to an article published in the Oregonian, which had a writer with the unit.
A soldier with the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, spotted a man beating a prisoner June 29 — Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country — in a courtyard near the Interior Ministry, the newspaper reported in Sunday's edition. Members of the unit later saw other prisoners who appeared to have been beaten, and items such as metal rods and rubber hoses that could have been used to torture them.
Capt. Jarrell Southall gave the newspaper a written account of the incident and other guardsmen, speaking on condition of anonymity, echoed his account, the newspaper said.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq said that the United States had raised questions about the "brutality" with Iraq's interior minister. The embassy said the members of the Guard "acted professionally and calmly to ease tensions and defend prisoners who needed help."
The incident reportedly occurred after Iraqi officials announced a crackdown on crime and police and security forces arrested about 150 people in a Baghdad neighborhood. They were taken to the grounds of the Interior Ministry.
The Oregon soldiers who were on a routine neighborhood patrol alerted headquarters. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson, led a group of soldiers to the compound and entered the detention yard unchallenged, according to the account by Southall, of Newark, Calif., who serves with the Oregon Guard.
The guardsmen separated the prisoners from the Iraqi police and gave the prisoners water and administered first aid. "Many of these prisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over," Southall said. "I witnessed prisoners who were barely able to walk."
After Hendrickson radioed the Army's 1st Cavalry for instructions, he was told to return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.
Copyright 2004 Associated Press |
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NPR Report on This Incident |
by anon
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Aug 2004
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http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3839047 |
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Ordered to Just Walk Away |
by Mike Francis
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
08 Aug 2004
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BAGHDAD -- The national guardsman peering through the long-range scope of his rifle was startled by what he saw unfolding in the walled compound below.
From his post several stories above ground level, he watched as men in plainclothes beat blindfolded and bound prisoners in the enclosed grounds of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.
In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices -- metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.
But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 -- Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S.-led invasion.
The incident, the first known case of human rights abuses in newly sovereign Iraq, is at the heart of the American dilemma here.
In handing over power, U.S. officials gave Iraqis authority to run their own institutions -- even if they made mistakes. But officials understand that the United States will be held responsible when the new Iraqi authorities stumble.
"Iraqis want us to respect their sovereignty, but the problem is we will be blamed for leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse," said Michael Rubin, a former adviser to the interim Iraqi government who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "We did not generally put good people in."
An Oregon guardsman who witnessed the day's events, Capt. Jarrell Southall, provided The Oregonian with a written account of the incident. Other guardsmen interviewed in Iraq corroborated Southall's account on the condition that their names not be used.
The U.S. Embassy in Iraq confirmed the incident occurred and disclosed for the first time that the United States raised questions about the June 29 "brutality" with Iraq's interior minister.
The embassy declined to say what response was received in the meeting between the minister and James Jeffrey, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat in Iraq, saying it would be "inappropriate" to discuss "details of those diplomatic and confidential conversations."
The embassy, in a written statement, said U.S. soldiers are "compelled by the law of land warfare and core values to stop willful and unnecessary use of physical violence on prisoners." The U.S. soldiers involved in the incident, it said, "acted professionally and calmly to ease tensions and defend prisoners who needed help."
The June 29 confrontation between U.S. troops and Iraqi officials at the Interior Ministry has been mentioned in news accounts in the United States and Britain. But details about the prisoners' injuries, the actions of the Oregon Guard and the high-level American decision to leave the injured detainees in the hands of Iraqis has not been previously reported.
For their part, the Oregon guardsmen of the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry left the Interior Ministry confused over their roles in the murky job of nation building. Hendrickson, a Corvallis police officer, refused to discuss details of the incident but said:
"Oregonians should be proud of the actions taken by the 2/162 on June 29."
The Oregonians intervene
When U.S.-led forces drove Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003, the Iraqi army was disbanded, and the country's social order collapsed. Looting was common and petty crime skyrocketed. Local thugs settled scores and exacted bribes with impunity. The rise in crime, coupled with the wave of car bombings and kidnappings, undermined the legitimacy of the provisional government.
In late June, on the eve of the transition of power, Iraq's prime minister in waiting, Ayad Allawi, announced a crackdown on crime. Police and security forces rounded up about 150 people in a seedy east Baghdad neighborhood. Many Iraqis cheered the action, which netted a collection of immigrants and poor Iraqis.
The Iraqi police took those arrested to a compound on the grounds of the Interior Ministry.
On the morning of June 29, Oregon guardsmen set off from their base near the Interior Ministry on routine neighborhood patrols.
Lookouts climbed towers ringing the base, and scouts took their usual positions in hidden vantage points around the neighborhoods of east Baghdad, looking for threats and signs of trouble.
One of the scouts posted in a tall building squinted through his rifle scope at the courtyard adjoining the Interior Ministry. He saw a man in plainclothes standing over a handcuffed and blindfolded prisoner. The guardsman watched through his rifle scope as the man reared back and brought what appeared to be a stick or metal rod down on the prisoner, who was lying on the ground.
The scout took pictures through his scope and considered his options.
The Oregon guardsman did not speak for this story. But others who spoke with the soldier said he radioed battalion headquarters to report the beating. According to one soldier, he said he would begin shooting the Iraqi guards if someone didn't intervene.
That message was passed to Lt. Col. Hendrickson, the battalion's commander, who gathered soldiers from the unit's headquarters company and a translator. Soon after, Hendrickson led a procession of Humvees from the guards' Patrol Base Volunteer to the Iraqi compound.
The squad of armed and armored Oregon guardsmen pushed into the detention yard "basically unchallenged," according to the written account by Southall, a Newark, Calif., middle school teacher who serves with the Oregon Guard.
Southall said he was speaking as an individual and not as a military officer. Senior Army officers have instructed soldiers not to discuss the incident.
According to Southall and other soldiers, the guardsmen began by separating the prisoners from the Iraqi policemen.
Some of the detainees said they had been held for three days with little water and no food. "Many of these prisoners had bruises and cuts and belt or hose marks all over," Southall said. At least one had a gunshot wound to the knee.
"I witnessed prisoners who were barely able to walk," Southall said.
The Oregon soldiers moved the prisoners into the shade of a nearby wall, cut them loose and handed out water bottles. They administered first aid when necessary and gave intravenous fluids to at least one dehydrated prisoner.
At about that time, U.S. military police arrived on the scene and began disarming the Iraqi policemen and moving them farther away from the prisoners, according to Southall.
Hendrickson demanded through the interpreter to speak with someone in charge of the Iraqi policemen. Two men came forward.
"One was a well-dressed obese man who told LTC Hendrickson that there was no prisoner abuse and that everything was under control and they were trying to conduct about 150 investigations as soon as possible," Southall said. The other, smaller man, who Southall said identified himself as "Maj. Ahmed," claimed he was responsible for outside security only and that those responsible for any prisoner abuse were inside the building.
Hendrickson then led some of the Oregon guardsmen inside to investigate further.
"There were several rooms within the building," Southall said. "One room, about 20 by 20 feet squared, contained even more prisoners, all in the same sad shape as the prisoners found in the outer area. There were about 78 prisoners crowded in this little room with no available furniture, no air conditioner, no water or food or restrooms available."
Southall said one prisoner claimed the Iraqi police arrested him at a market and confiscated his passport even though he had "paid a tremendous bribe" to the arresting officer. Others, many of whom appeared to be non-Arab shopkeepers and workers, said they had been detained for lack of proper identification.
The Oregon guardsmen walked into the adjoining office, where they saw several Iraqis sitting around a table smoking cigarettes.
"There was a tightly bound and gagged prisoner crumpled at the feet of these men," Southall said. "There was a recently eaten tray of food . . . and a nice water cooler that was standing upright in good order. This room was heavily air conditioned, which was a stark contrast to the rooms that contained prisoners."
The men in the room said they had not beaten anyone. They asserted, however, "that these prisoners were all dangerous criminals and most were thieves, users of marijuana and other types of bad people," according to Southall's account.
As U.S. soldiers continued to fan out in the building, they found more bound-and-gagged prisoners, and "hoses, broken lamps and chemicals of some variety," which could have been used as torture devices, Southall said.
Hendrickson radioed up the chain of command in the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, relaying what he had seen and asking for instructions. As the soldiers waited, Southall said, the Iraqi policemen began to get "defiant and hostile" toward the Americans.
It wasn't long before the order came: Stand down. Return the prisoners to the Iraqi authorities and leave the detention yard.
That order infuriated the Oregon guardsmen, who viewed themselves as protectors of the abused prisoners. Nonetheless, the soldiers obeyed. None of the soldiers interviewed for this story said which U.S. general gave the order.
In the preceding weeks, the guardsmen had been bombarded with images of Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention center. Those images, which continue to reverberate through the Arab world, had been replayed frequently on the televisions at Patrol Base Volunteer.
The guardsmen who later gave their account of that day said they wanted Americans to know about the actions they took to protect unresisting prisoners -- and that they were ordered by U.S. military officials to walk away.
"The guys were really upset," said one soldier. Said another who talked to them immediately afterward, "They were really moved by what they'd seen."
Hendrickson referred questions about the episode to Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond of the 1st Cavalry. The story of what happened June 29 "needs to be told," Hammond acknowledged when interviewed by The Oregonian. But he said that, "because of the nature of this issue, it's being handled at a higher level than me."
What happened to the prisoners after the Americans departed is not clear. Guardsmen interviewed for this story said they've watched the detention facility closely since then, and that many of the prisoners were released soon after the raid on the detention facility.
The soldiers said they have not seen any further prisoner abuse occur there.
On July 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi ordered another sweep of poor, crime-ridden east Baghdad neighborhoods. Afterward, Iraq said Allawi's crackdown had netted more than 500 "killers, robbers, car thieves and kidnappers."
U.S. officials say how Iraq handles the complaints about the roundups will be a test of the country's fragile institutions. The new Iraqi constitution bans "torture in all its forms, physical or mental," as well as "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment."
The country now has a minister of human rights. Government ministries have also assigned inspectors general to examine allegations of wrongdoing.
The U.S. Embassy's statement cast the United States as a supporting player in building a government that is accountable. "The role of the United States," it said, "is to assist the sovereign Iraqi government as it continues on its path toward providing its citizens the opportunities and protections available through a free and representative society."
But Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the United States gave the Iraqis sovereignty over a country that lacked functioning institutions and faced daunting security problems.
"We didn't want to put in enough forces to defeat the insurgency," Kagan said. "Now we hand it to the Iraqis, and we're surprised at how they do it?"
Stephen Engelberg of The Oregonian contributed to this report.
© 2004 Knight-Ridder
http://www.oregonlive.com |
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