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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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October 10th, 2006 - Baquba
Erupts |
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By Dahr Jamail & Ali al-Fadhily Inter Press Service October 10, 2006 Baquba - The little-known city
of Baquba is emerging as one of the hotbeds of resistance in Iraq, with
clashes breaking out every day. The violence in this city 30
mi. northeast of Baghdad is also now spreading elsewhere around Diyala
province. "The new waves of
terror are now forming a variety that we predicted long ago," a
political leader in the city told IPS. "The Iraqi people have complained
to everyone, but naturally no one will do anything about it. We know who is
in charge and who is responsible and eventually who is to be dammed. It is
the government of the United States of America." The local leader, speaking
from his home in Baquba, said the situation in the area was becoming dire in
the face of the recent violence. "The worst is the
direct participation of the national security forces in criminal acts, and
the U.S. Army's sudden disappearance from the scene as soon as those
murderers show up," he said. Many have been killed, and hundreds
arrested in the province, he said. The al-Tawafuq Sunni party
has demanded a full investigation into the violence in Baquba, and immediate
release of the detained civilians. "We are sure the arrests were made
under sectarian flags and those detainees are innocent farmers captured in
their own plantations," the group said in a statement. An Iraqi army colonel told
reporters in Diyala last week that that U.S. troops had arrested 10 Iraqi
soldiers suspected of sectarian killings. There was no official U.S. comment. Iraqi MP Muhammad al-Dayni appeared
on al-Jazeera television to say that Brig. Gen. al-Kaabi, leader of the fifth
division in charge of Diyala province security, had led the arrest of 400
civilians. Hundreds of houses had been looted, he said. Al-Dayni accused the
parties in power of supporting such acts, referring to the Shia parties in
parliament. The fighting has intensified
now, but Baquba has long been a city of fierce resistance to the occupation.
Resistance groups have often frustrated the efforts of the Multi-National
Forces (MNF) and Iraqi security forces to bring the city under their control. Residents of Baquba told IPS
that an Iraqi police brigadier-general had used loudspeakers to announce dire
warnings to residents. "We were used to
hearing our own government calling us terrorists, Saddamists and Zarqawis
before, but this man added new words to the vocabulary like bastards and
expressions of that sort," Abu Omar, a law student at Diyala University
told IPS. "Yet we were not surprised because we know he was just repeating
what his green-zone masters have always said." Mazin al-Zaidy, a resident
of Baquba, told IPS that the situation in Diyala province could be the worst
in Iraq because people of many ethnicities live in the area. "The MNF
and militias concentrate on clearing it of the Arab Sunnis prior to any
federalism plan." Al-Zaidy said "there
are Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis who share the province, and that has to be
altered for the benefit of the first two groups." Al-Zaidy was referring
to the towns Mendily, Jalowlaa, and surrounding areas that are marked Kurdish
on the Kurdistan map. The influence of each group
changes often. "Each day I wake up I don't know who is in control of my
city," said a religious sheik in Baquba who asked to be referred to as
Sheik Ahmed. "One day it is the Americans, the next day a militia, the
next day a resistance group." Diyala province gets little
media attention "because of the journalists' fear of going in,"
said al-Zaidy. The new violence has ripped
apart old traditions, he said. "The people of the province do not
understand how these powers could turn it into a sectarian city from a
wonderful 1,400 years of community peace and intermarriages." The U.S. military has
announced meanwhile that bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high.
The number of U.S. soldiers killed is now approaching the 3,000 mark. The number of Iraqi
casualties runs into hundreds of thousands. External link: http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=9823 |