Abstract
The following article examines evidence that
the 'Salvador Option' for Iraq has been ongoing for some time and
attempts to say what such an option will mean. It pays particular
attention to the
role of the Special Police Commandos, considering both the background
of their US liaisons and their deployment in Iraq. The article also
looks at the evidence for death-squad style massacres in Iraq and draws
attention
to the almost complete absence of investigation. As such, the article
represents an initial effort to compile and examine some of these mass
killings and is intended to spur others into further looking at the
evidence.
Finally, the article turns away from the notion that sectarianism is a
sufficient explanation for the violence in Iraq, locating it
structurally at the hands of the state as part of the ongoing economic
subjugation of
Iraq.
Mounting evidence indicates that the 'Salvador Option’ mooted for Iraq is already proceeding at full throttle
On 8 January this year, Newsweek published an
article that claimed the US government was considering a 'Salvador
Option’ to combat the insurgency in Iraq (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
).
The Salvador Option is a reference to the military assistance programme
of the 1980s, initiated under Jimmy Carter and subsequently pursued by
the Reagan administration, in which the US trained and materially
supported the Salvadoran military in its counter-insurgency campaign
against popularly supported FMLN guerrillas. The Newsweek article was
widely cited in the mainstream media but the allegations were rapidly
dismissed
by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Though the reports mentioned
human-rights violations, they generally made little of the fact that it
was the very units that US military advisors had instructed that were
frequently responsible for the most unspeakable crimes* and that there
was at times a clear correlation between fresh bouts of training and
subsequent atrocities (see Noam Chomsky, 'The Crucifixion of El
Salvador’, http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-02.html
).
In an earlier interview on 10 January, retired
General Wayne Downing, former head of all US special operations forces,
took a very different line, stating that US-backed special units had
been 'conducting
strikes’ against leaders of the so-called insurgency since March 2003 (cited in 'Phoenix Rising in Iraq’ by Stephen Shalom, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7227
).
However, Downing was careful to say that implementing a Salvadoran
strategy would add an extra 'type’ of unit to the occupation’s arsenal.
What neither the press, Donald Rumsfeld, nor General Downing
pointed out was that the Salvador Option was already well underway in
Iraq, and far more literally than might have been imagined.
According to an article recently published in
New York Times Magazine, in September 2004 Counsellor to the US
Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to work
with a new
elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police
Commandos, formed under the operational control of Iraq’s Interior
Ministry ('The Way of the Commandos’, Peter Maass, http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/TheWay_of_the_Commandos.html
).
From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the
US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, where he was responsible for
developing special operating forces at brigade level during the height
of the
conflict. These forces, composed of the most brutal soldiers available,
replicated the kind of small-unit operations with which Steele was
familiar from his service in Vietnam. Rather than focusing on seizing
terrain,
their role was to attack 'insurgent’ leadership, their supporters,
sources of supply and base camps. In the case of the 4th Brigade, such
tactics ensured that a 20-man force was able to account for 60% of the
total
casualties inflicted by the unit (Manwaring, El Salvador at War,
1988, p 306-8). In military circles it was the use of such tactics that
made the difference in ultimately defeating the guerrillas; for others,
such
as the Catholic priest Daniel Santiago, the presence of people like
Steele contributed to another sort of difference:
People are not just killed by death squads in
El Salvador – they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on
pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by
the
Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into
their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National
Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their
faces. It is not
enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the
flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch. (Cited
by Chomsky, op cit.)
The Police Commandos are in large part the
brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a
former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the
Ministry of
the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia’s notorious
cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a
paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed
itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia’s paramilitary death squads (http://cocaine.org/colombia/pablo-escobar.html
; http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/040105isac.htm
).
Like Colombia’s death squads, Iraq’s Police
Commandos deliberately cultivate a frightening paramilitary image.
During raids they wear balaclavas and black leather gloves and openly
intimidate
and brutalize suspects, even in the presence of foreign journalists
(see the report by Peter Maass’s). Significantly, many of the
Commandos, including their leader, are Sunni Muslims.
Evidence of Massacres
In the last few weeks, with the discovery of
several mass graves in and around Baghdad, evidence of multiple
extra-judicial killings has started to become much more visible, but,
in fact, even a
cursory review of such archives as the one compiled by Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.net
/) reveals that mass executions have been taking place commonly
in Iraq over at least the last six months. What is particularly
striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the
Police Commandos
became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they
have been deployed.
The clearest correlation is in Mosul, where the Police Commandos began operating in late October (http://www.strykernews.com/archives/2004/10/29/special_iraqi_police_commandos_continue_operations.html
).
In mid-November it was reported that insurgents were conducting an
offensive and had managed to drive most of the (regular) police from
the city. There followed what was described as a joint
counter-offensive
by US forces and Police Commandos. The Police Commandos conducted raids
inside the old quarter starting on 16 November in which dozens of
suspects were arrested. During one such raid on a mosque and a tea
shop,
detainees, blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs,
were seen being taken away by commandos (http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html
). In the weeks and months that followed over 150 bodies appeared (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4105009.stm
), often in batches and frequently having obviously been executed, usually with a bullet to the head (eg. http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/iraq/?id=12147
).
The victims are repeatedly stated to have
belonged mostly to the security forces, with 'insurgents’ blamed for
conducting a campaign of intimidation. Yet, most of the bodies were
dressed in
civilian clothes with little in the way of identification. In the few
instances in which positive identifications have been reported, these
are based on flimsy evidence. For instance, in the case of nine victims
described as soldiers that had been shot in the head, a US army
lieutenant simply stated that a 'unit recently moved to one of the US
bases’ had 'some guys missing’ (http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqi-soldiers-found-murdered-in-Mosul/2004/11/21/1100972263000.html
);
photographs of the victims showed them wearing civilian clothes. A
blatant case of disinformation regards a group of 31 bodies
'discovered’ by the Police Commandos in March 2005 scattered around a
cemetery
in western Mosul. The bodies, described by an Interior Ministry
spokesman as belonging to civilians, police officers and army soldiers,
were said to have been the victims of a single policeman, Shoqayer
Fareed Sheet, who
confessed to these and numerous other killings on a special television
show conceived by founder of the Police Commandos Adnan Thavit, called
Terrorism in the Hands of Justice (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23448-2005Mar10.html
).
Not only does this programme break every conceivable moral and legal
standard, but it is notorious for parading obviously tortured detainees
who are often forced to confess to being homosexuals or paedophiles
as well as murderers. (
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:OkQ0b9q9QbkJ:uniraq.org/documents/ArabicRegionalNews22
March2005.doc+quds+press&hl=en&client=safari)
Given the extreme paucity of evidence, the lack
of secure identification and the disinformation put out by the Interior
Ministry, there is at least a strong possibility that many, if not all,
of
the extra-judicial killings in Mosul have been carried out by the
Police Commandos.
Police Commandos Directly Accused
A similar, thought less complete pattern is
emerging in other areas where the Commandos have been operating,
notably Samarra, where bodies were recently found in nearby Lake
Tharthar (http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=41936
). However, the strongest case is currently starting to emerge in
Baghdad, where a wave of killings over the last few weeks has resulted
in accusations being made directly against the state security forces
and
specifically against the Police Commandos. The accusations revolve
around three distinct massacres. On 5 May a shallow mass grave was
discovered in the Kasra-Wa-Atash industrial area containing 14 bodies.
The victims,
all young men, had been blindfolded, their hands tied behind their
backs and they had been executed with shots to the head. The bodies
also revealed such torture marks as broken skulls, burning, beatings
and right
eyeballs removed. In this case family members were able to identify the
bodies; the victims were Sunni farmers on their way to market.
According to Phil Shiner of the British-based Public Interest Lawyers,
the men had
been arrested when Iraqi security forces raided the vegetable market (http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1488096,00.html
, http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=760368
).
Less than two weeks later on 15 May, 15 more
bodies were discovered at two sites in western Baghdad. Eight of the
victims were found In the Al-Shaab area, while a further seven were
discovered
behind a mosque in Ore district (http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=733276
).
According to the Chicago Tribune, 'some had been blindfolded, most were
found with their hands bound and all had been shot in the head’ (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl
).
The Association of Muslim Scholars quickly responded to the wave of
killings, accusing soldiers and Interior Ministry commandos of having
'arrested imams and the guardians of some mosques, tortured and killed
them, then got rid of their bodies in a garbage dump in the Shaab
district’ (http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=238784&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
). 'This is state terrorism by the Ministry of Interior’ said Hareth al-Dhari, secretary general of the Association (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/47613c82-c804-11d9-9765-00000e2511c8.html
).
Whilst al-Dhari also blamed the Badr brigades associated with the
ruling Shia coalition, the emphasis of his denunciation was quickly
shifted in the mainstream press to reinforce only this aspect of the
accusation and the notion of sectarian tit-for-tat violence (eg http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4569103.stm
). The Iraqi government’s riposte to the Association’s accusations was
predictably insidious, with the new defence minister blaming terrorists
wearing military uniforms (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505170030may17,0,3795261.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-utl
).
However, it should come as little surprise to discover that at the
beginning of May the government had announced an imminent
counter-insurgency crackdown, which they said was likely to unleash
well-trained
commandos in Baghdad and other trouble spots (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8725.htm
).
Wider Evidence of Massacres
With such accusations being made specifically
against US-trained counter-insurgency forces it is worth briefly
mentioning some of the other massacres that have occurred in Iraq over
recent months.
In October 2004 some 49 bodies were discovered on a remote road about
50km south of Baquba. The victims, who wore civilian clothes, had all
been shot in the head. The Interior Ministry announced that they were
off-duty
soldiers. Some accounts by police said the rebels were dressed in Iraqi
military uniforms, although details were far from clear (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/10/24/international0921EDT0440.DTL
; http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html
).
Similarly, in March of this year 26 bodies were
discovered at Rumana, near Qaim, close to the Syrian border. According
to the Interior Ministry, most of the victims were members of a rapid
response team. The victims had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in
the head. The bodies, which once again were dressed in civilian
clothes, were found in an area where the US army had been conducting
Operation River
Blitz, a marine-led assault on insurgents in the Euphrates River valley
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,136419,00.html
; http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/09/iraq.main/
).
To further muddy the waters, the bodies of
eight men from Sadr City were found in Yussufiah, 40km south of
Baghdad, on 9 May this year. The victims, who had been tortured, then
executed with a
bullet to the back of the neck, were found wearing army uniforms, but
relatives identified them as civilians. Army captain Ahmed Hussein
suggested that the killers wanted people to believe they had executed
soldiers (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1701988,00.html
).
There are other similar cases of mass killings,
as well as many more involving smaller numbers of bodies far too
numerous to mention. Nonetheless, it is worth emphasising the many
bodies (more
than 100) gradually being dredged up from the River Tigris, especially
around Suwayra, south of Baghdad. The bodies began to be noticed in
late February of this year, surfacing at the rate of one or two a day,
but began
to increase in frequency in April; some of the victims, who were mostly
men but included some women and children, were bound, others shot or
beheaded. In April, president Talabani claimed the victims had been
kidnapped
by insurgents in the village of Madain, but, in fact, those identified
to date hailed from a wide radius and could not be accounted for by a
single episode of kidnapping. Police in Suwayra have stated that many
of the
victims are likely to have been stopped at impromptu checkpoints by
masked men, while some Sunnis say that the victims may include people
detained by the police (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/22/MNG45CDDBQ1.DTL
).
In light of these bodies in the Tigris, it may
be significant to note a strange report on the website Jihad Unspun of
US soldiers dumping body bags from helicopters in the Diali River in
eastern
Iraq during the early hours of the morning. The writer argues that the
bags held the corpses of American soldiers or foreign mercenaries that
the army wished to conceal from public knowledge (http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=100552&list=/home.php&
). This implausible theory leaves a very large question mark over the
identity of bodies that the US army wishes to conceal and recalls the
report submitted to the Brussels Tribunal, 'Tarmiya: the Silent Agony’.
This
account contains first hand testimony from an agricultural worker who
survived an attempted execution by a team of US special forces. He and
a colleague were abducted from the farm where they worked, then taken
to a
secluded grove where their throats were cut. They were left for dead,
but miraculously, one of them survived (http://www.brusselstribunal.org
/). Whilst this account lacks corroboration and has remained
anonymous to protect the identities of those involved, it remains a
convincing description of the kind of long-range 'reconnaissance’
missions that
people like James Steele were conducting in Vietnam.
Modelling the Iraq War
Whilst much of the violence across Iraq appears
chaotic, some lines are starting to emerge that follow the pattern and
the logic of other counter-insurgency wars. In El Salvador, when the
war
finally came to an end, it became clear that the majority of its
victims had been participants in progressive social movements as well
as peasants who had been perceived as sympathising with or supporting
the guerrillas.
The object of the war was not to defeat an ideologically motivated
rebellion, it was to prevent the possibility of progressive social
change and to maintain the country within the US economic orbit in its
traditional
tributary role.
The same can be said of Colombia at present,
where the long current phase of the internal conflict in which
thousands of social activists have been murdered has butted seamlessly
with the country’s
exposure to economic liberalisation. In short, legitimate social
demands are violently suppressed in favour of allowing foreign capital
to extract super profits from Colombia’s rich natural resources and
selling off
its public assets for the same purpose. Much of the conflict takes
place within the realm of so-called 'civil society’, where progressive
leaders are excluded or eliminated, whilst those who are prepared to
throw in
their lot with predatory foreign capital are rewarded and extolled.
In Iraq the war comes in two phases. The first
phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not
comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second
phase
consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing
every dissenting sector of society. Openly, this involves applying the
same sort of economic shock therapy that has done so much damage in
swathes of
the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it means intimidating,
kidnapping and murdering opposition voices.
The economic assault on Iraq is well underway.
Visible unemployment stands at around the catastrophic level of 28%,
large parts of the state sector have already been sold off and wages
have fallen
(often to less than half of their pre-war levels), thanks in part to
the introduction of thousands of cheap workers from Pakistan, India and
the Philippines. These workers are often tricked into coming and
stripped of
their passports, effectively working as slaves in order to undercut
accustomed Iraqi living standards. Reconstruction projects are given
almost exclusively to foreign (mainly US) companies, who pay a flat
rate of 15% tax
with no limits to repatriation of profits, while Iraq’s state-owned
companies are excluded (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shumway.php?articleid=3005
). In the countryside, Iraqi farmers are now obliged to buy a licence
to grow genetically modified seed and are prohibited from resowing the
seed developed by their ancestors in the cradle of civilisation (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html
).
The covert assault has also begun. Attacks on workers and trade unionists are becoming increasingly common (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000200.html
) and it is instructive that the railway workers union, in an industry
that has been slated for privatisation, seems to have been particularly
targeted, with US administrators on the ground threatening to bring in
Indian
workers (http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000117.html
). Whilst the IFTU, the dominant, state-sanctioned new trade-union
umbrella organisation, may have endorsed the occupation, the Federation
of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) has not; in any case,
ordinary
Iraqi workers will find themselves increasingly at odds with the puppet
government as they try to defend even rudimentary living standards.
Industrial action is already widespread in Iraq, though little reported
in the
mainstream press.
An even more frightening picture is emerging
within the sector of higher education, where, since the beginning of
the occupation, some 200 Iraqi academics have been murdered, while
control and
intimidation has become systematic. Many of the victims worked in the
social sciences, where overlap with progressive social movements is
unavoidable (http://www.newstatesman.com/200409060018
).
Unfortunately, in Iraq it is almost impossible
to securely attribute any of the host of assassinations and
extra-judicial killings, while the US-UK propaganda campaign has left
many all too
willing to believe in such bugbears as Al-Zarqawi (see Michel
Chossudovsky’s article 'Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?’ (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405B.html
).
What we do know, however, is that hundreds of Iraqis are being murdered
and that paramilitary hit squads of the proxy government organized by
US trainers with a fulsome pedigree in state terrorism are
increasingly being associated with them.
In the context of a country where good
information is extremely scarce, disinformation and black propaganda
are endemic and independent journalists and monitors are deliberately
eliminated, it is
vital to be able to model the situation in order to understand it and,
hopefully, be effective. There are two principle dimensions to such
modelling. In the first, Iraq has frequently been compared to Vietnam.
The
similarity is that the US has well over 100,000 soldiers on the ground.
However, the analogy is misleading in that in Iraq conflict with a
populous enemy state, as North Vietnam was, ended quickly. As a model,
El
Salvador is not wholly accurate either. In El Salvador US 'advisors’
were few in number and prohibited from taking part in combat.
Nevertheless, it is towards this model that the US is attempting to
move, hoping to
farm out the sordid business of occupation to Iraqi auxiliaries. But,
in many ways it is contemporary Colombia that offers the closest
analogy: not for the disposition of US forces, but because here the
same process of
asset-stripping, impoverishment and conquistador-like plundering is
both deeply entrenched and ongoing. It is here that is to be found that
clearest pattern for the assaults on academics, independent trade
unionists and
peasant organisations that will increasingly characterise Iraq for
those prepared to look beyond the fireworks. This is the second
dimension that any model must address, but in essence the pattern is
repeated time after
time in every imperialist so-called counter-insurgency war; for behind
each and every one lurks the reality of exploitation and class war,
and, as successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in
combating
the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading
terror through the application of extreme violence. In Iraq, the
Salvador Option may mean returning home to find your entire family
seated at table with
their own severed heads served to them and a bowl of blood for relish.
*One of the worst atrocities was committed in
December 1981 at the village of El Mozote in the department of Moraz‡n
by the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite counter-insurgency force trained by
US
advisors and regarded as one of El Salvador’s best fighting units. Over
200 men, women and children (the entire village) were systematically
tortured and murdered over the course of a day (http://www.usip.org/library/tc/doc/reports/el_salvador/tc_es_03151993_casesC.html
).
Max Fuller has worked for some years as a
member of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign in the UK and has read
extensively on US policy and Latin America. He is the author of several
reports
published in the Bulletin of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.