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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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January 19th,
2007 - The War Becomes More Unholy |
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By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily Inter Press Service January 19, 2007 Fallujah – A stepped up
military offensive that targets mosques, religious leaders and Islamic
customs is leading many Iraqis to believe that the US-led invasion really was
a "holy war." Photographs are being
circulated of black crosses painted on mosque walls and on copies of the
Quran, and of soldiers dumping their waste inside mosques. New stories appear
frequently of raids on mosques and brutal treatment of Islamic clerics,
leading many Iraqis to ask if the invasion and occupation was a war against Islam. Many Iraqis now recall
remarks by US President George W. Bush shortly after the events of Sep. 11,
2001 when he told reporters that "this crusade, this war on terrorism,
is going to take a while." "Bush's tongue
'slipped' more than once when he spoke of 'fascist Islamists' and used other
similar expressions that touched the very nerve of Muslims around the
world," Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubayssi of the Association of Muslim
Scholars (AMS), a leading Sunni group, told IPS in Baghdad. "We wish they
were just mere slips, but what is going on repeatedly makes one think of
crusades over and over." Occupation forces claim that
mosque raids are being conducted because holy places are being used by
resistance fighters. A leaflet distributed in Fallujah
by US forces late November said mosques were being used by
"insurgents" to conduct attacks against "Multinational
Forces," and that this would lead to "taking proper procedures
against those mosques." The statement referred to
daily sniper attacks against occupation forces in Fallujah in which many US
soldiers have been killed. Local people refute these
claims made by coalition forces. "Fighters never used
mosques for attacking Americans because they realize the consequences and
reactions from the military," a member of the local municipality council
of Fallujah told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Nonetheless, US soldiers
always targeted our mosques and their minarets." During Operation Phantom
Fury of November 2004, scores of mosques in Fallujah were damaged or
destroyed completely. Fallujah is known as the city of mosques because it has
so many. Many of these are Sunni
mosques. AMS leaders are now enemy number one for US occupation forces as
well as the Shi'ite-dominated government. Through continuous arrests
of its members and the raids against mosques all over the Sunni areas of the
country, including their headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad, the AMS
has often expressed feelings of persecution. On the other hand, the
occupation forces have been supportive of clerics who took part in the
political structure that the US coalition created in Iraq. These include
Shi'ite clerics and political leaders like current Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki of the Dawa Party. Maliki has called AMS leader Dr. Harith al-Dhari
a "terrorist leader" and a murderer. Many Sunnis who are more
secular also feel persecuted by the occupation. "I am not a follower of
al-Dhari or any other leader," Prof. Malik al-Rawi of the National
Institute for Scientific Research of Baghdad told IPS. "In fact most
Sunnis do not literally follow any leader for religious reasons. Yet after we
found Americans targeting our religious symbols, we had to stand together
around the man who did not sell us to the occupation." Dr. Rawi, avowedly a secular
Sunni, told IPS that the number of Iraqis who believe the occupation is
waging a "religious war" increased dramatically after the 2004
attacks on Fallujah. "Those sieges, along
with all the events that followed in Samarra, al-Qa'im, Haditha and now
Siniya have led people to think of the crusades," he added.
"Americans do hate us for some reason and we do not find any reason but
religion." It is not just Sunni Iraqis
who claim that their mosques are not respected by occupation forces. The
mostly Shi'ite city of Najaf was exposed to massive US military assaults
during August 2004. Many attacks came dangerously close to the sacred Imam
Ali shrine, damaging its outer walls. Other US raids on Shi'ite
mosques in Baghdad have infuriated Iraq's Shi'ite population. Some Iraqi analysts say the
perceived religious conflict seems to have expanded as the occupation has
progressed. "The world must be
aware that this US administration is pushing the situation to the black hole
of a new religious conflict by giving the green light to their soldiers to
attack mosques and arrest clerics whenever they feel like it," Kassim
Jabbar, an Iraqi political analyst from Baghdad University told IPS. "Even people with the
highest education standards are wondering why US leaders have not restricted
attacks upon religious symbols in our country." Ali al-Fadhily is our
Baghdad correspondent. Dahr Jamail is our specialist writer who has spent
eight months reporting from inside Iraq and has been covering the Middle East
for several years. (c) 2007 Dahr Jamail. All
images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and
international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches
on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to
the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. External link: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=11893 |