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Posted on 26-10-2004
Brutal Lessons In Iraq
By Kim Sengupta, 26.10.2004
They were a group of unarmed Army recruits, young Iraqis who had
volunteered to help build a force capable of providing their country with
security when the international troops had returned home.
But to the insurgents they were traitors working hand-in-hand with the
hated powers of occupation. And so they were massacred, 49 of them, in one
of the most brutal acts of violence in the present rebellion.
With Iraqis scheduled to go to the polls in January - and Americans voting
next week - the murder of the recruits starkly demonstrates the difficulty
of building a domestic force able to perform the function of foreign
troops when they leave. It also makes a nonsense of claims that the
situation is stabilising.
Iraqi officials say it was probably an inside job.
There have been persistent reports of insurgents infiltrating the Iraqi
security apparatus, receiving training and weapons from the US and British
while setting up attacks on other members of the force.
Aqil Hamid al-Adili, the Deputy Governor of Diyala, said: "There was
collusion. Otherwise the gunmen would not have got the information about
the soldiers' departure."
Ali al-Kaaki, a commander in the Iraqi National Guard, said: "These people
were executed. It was done as an example. The insurgents could have just
attacked the buses and killed them. But they were making a point.
Villagers called the police."
The attack took place near Baquba, 65km northeast of Baghdad, part of the
Sunni triangle into which British soldiers will begin deploying within the
next 48 hours. Yesterday, the troops, from Black Watch, held their last
church service before the journey from Basra to the Iskandariyah area,
near Baghdad, to help US forces who are preparing the assault on Fallujah.
The Iraqi men had been on their way home on Sunday to the cities of Amara
and Kut from a training base run by the Americans outside Mandali in
eastern Iraq, near the Iranian border, in five minibuses. They had checked
in their weapons at the base and were dressed in civilian clothes.
They were stopped on a stretch of road between Baladruz and Badra in the
Diyala province by insurgents dressed as security personnel at a fake
checkpoint.
The gunmen shot the buses' tyres and fired rocket-propelled grenades at
the engines of two vehicles.
The recruits were taken in batches of 12 to the side of the road and made
to remove their shoes and lie face down on the ground before being shot in
the back of the head.
The killings are seen as a significant step in the growing confidence and
propensity to violence of the militants. Although hundreds have died in
bombings and mortar attacks, this is the first time they had carried out a
planned operation with such a high number of casualties.
A group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who abducted and killed the Briton
Ken Bigley, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Zarqawi's newly renamed group, the Al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in
Iraq, said in a statement posted on a website often used by militants that
it killed 48 "apostates" in the attack. Iraqi authorities said 49 men were
killed.
"The mujahideen killed them all, stole two vehicles and the salaries they
had just received from their masters," said the statement. Its
authenticity could not be verified.
The discovery of the bodies yesterday took place on another day of
killings across Iraq.
Ed Seitz became the first member of the US diplomatic staff to be killed
since the invasion during a mortar attack on Camp Victory, a guarded
military base near the airport. Five more people were killed in US air
strikes on Fallujah.
Seitz, a senior security specialist for the State Department, was involved
in planning protective measures for US officials. Last year, he
investigated the attempted assassination of Deputy Defence Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, regarded as one of the architects of the Iraq invasion, in
Baghdad.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said: "Ed's death is a tragic
loss to me personally, and for all of his colleagues at the Department of
State. Ed Seitz died in the service of his country and for the cause of
liberty and freedom for others. There is no more noble a sacrifice."
John Negroponte, US ambassador to Iraq, declared: "He came to Iraq, as did
his fellow Americans here, to help the Iraqis defeat terrorism and the
insurgency, establish democracy, and rebuild their economy".
But it is the fledgling Iraqi Army and police that are taking the brunt of
attacks by insurgents and yesterday's killings were a blow to a force with
morale already plummeting.
On Sunday, two suicide bombings against the police and the Iraqi National
Guard killed 20 people. Last week, nine policemen returning from training
in Jordan were killed when their minibus was ambushed.
An Iraqi militant group claimed it had assassinated the chief of police in
the northern city of Arbil and threatened to kill Kurdish leader Masoud
Barzani. The Army of Ansar al-Sunna said it had killed Colonel Tah Ahmed
as a message to Barzani that "the hands of the mujahideen would soon reach
him".
Iraqi politicians, including those in the Government, have begun to
express doubts about whether, with rising attacks, viable elections can be
held at all in January.
The United Nations, which is supposed to play a main role in organising
the elections under a Security Council resolution, still has fewer than 40
personnel in the country. Attempts to get member countries to supply
troops to protect UN personnel so more officials can come has failed to
produce any offers, apart from a small contingent from Fiji.
Further large-scale violence also appears to be imminent with the expected
US assault on Fallujah and the threat by insurgents to step up their
campaign during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Instead of the hoped-for return of foreign investment and aid
organisations which left the country as the violence stepped up, the
exodus has grown with the spate of kidnappings with Margaret Hassan, the
head of the charity Care International in Iraq, the latest victim.
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