Insurgency and counterinsurgency in South Baghdad. Abu Ghraib
Second message of the Spanish Delegation of CEOSI in Iraq
Spanish Delegation in Iraq, 22nd April, 2005
IraqSolidaridad (www.nodo50.org/iraq), 24 de abril de 2005
Trasnlated into English by Lola Oliván

"The arc of brutality and provocation of the US troops in Abu Ghraib town goes from killing a boy of 12 years old, dead some days ago by the shots of a military vehicle while crossing the highway with a gas cylinder, to the dead of a dog during a house searching; after receiving two shots and be finished off in the head, the soldier showed up his thumb in front of the family with satisfaction".
In south west of Abu Ghraib there is a wide agriculture and cattle area which beauty of irrigated green countries and palm trees, dispersed houses and animals strongly contrasts with the dusty plain in which the endless four corners of the prison expands. The heartrending view is that of an open war in the highways network to access to the capital, a scenario of burnt vehicles in the berm, of holes blacked by the explosions, and road surfaces devastated by the US armored tanks to avoid ambushes.
This unforeseen area, closed to the foreign presence is called Zaidan, and its rural calmness and beauty is deceptive. 30% of the Resistance operations in the capital are launched from here, including the mortar and missile attacks against the international airport, no far away. That’s way the US troops have occupied 40 houses in a wide radio in order to guarantee the control of the zone: the outraged neighbors explain to the Delegation "the US troops have simply enter in the chosen country houses, have obliged the families to lodge in a single room and have taken the rest of the houses locating snipers in the roofs". At night, while having dinner in Baghdad near the Tigris river, an old Iraqi friend would confirm us that this is a practice that is being applied by the US Army in other places, at least, in the center of Iraq: in Eufrates, in al-Ambar province and in south Baghdad, in the Latifiyeh and Mahmudiyeh corridors, both of them areas of intense combats.
The US troops have organized a deployment and self protective system consisting of setting up several coordinated operative centers in the rural area, each one of them protected by a circle of houses separated between each by some hundreds meters. The presence of the occupiers in the chosen houses is obvious when crossing by car near them: warning of prohibited access, parked cars and flamboyant antennas in the terraces. On the contrary, one can hardly perceive their presence in the houses where three or four soldiers are hidden. The neighbors inform the Delegation on which houses are occupied.

Provocations and killings

The indignation of the people living in this area close to Abu Ghraib is immense. The homonym town of the infamous prison is located 35 Km. south of Baghdad.
We are received in a house 500 meters far away of the prison, in the other side of the highway hardly used by Iraqi cars but constantly crossed by US military vehicles. This building of one floor from which porch can be seen the vigilance towers of the prison and the Mosque of the town, serves for the familiars of prisoners to be at night if they come form other provinces before starting the queue at 8.00 am to try to see their relatives or getting the confirmation by the occupiers that they are there. The building belongs to ad-Dari family which patriarch, Daher Jamis ad-Dari is the tribal sheij of Zawbaa. The porch we are has the marks of the shootings the US soldiers launch from time to time.
Several relatives of prisoners and neighbors narrate to us the drama suffered because of the violence of US troops who have incremented the collective punishment measures against the habitants of the town. The black Apache helicopters fly over the neighborhood permanently and their sound hinders to listen the voice of our interlocutors, all of them farmers dressed with clear 'alabeyyas and covered by red or white headscarf.
Ahmad Mubarak tell us that he has lost two brothers, one during the fall of Baghdad two years ago and the other by a shot of a US soldier in al-Mansur neighborhood in December, 2003. Few weeks later, on 13 January, US troops assaulted his house in Abu Ghraib detaining all the men, more than ten. All of them were released except the minor of them, 12 years old, that would be detained for seven days. The lawyer Aman Sweidan, that centers her professional activity in searching and defending detained women, showed us in her house in Baghdad last Wednesday the pictures and documents of Iraqi minors imprisoned in US detention centers, a frequent practice by the occupiers.
Awad Azoiba told us that two of her nephews, 24 years all, were detained in an operation carried out by the US in February 2004. On of them was liberated in Camp Bucca, near Um Qasr Port, in Basora region. The family does not have news on the other. Azobai has lost a third nephew, a father of four children, while the military assault to his home.
Abderrahman ad-Dari pays attention to Javier Couso presentation [on his brother José, a Spanish journalist killed by the US troops in Baghdad while reporting with his camera from Palestine Hotel on 8th April 2003]. He offers to Javier a masbaha at the end of the meeting; he has also lost a brother by US shoots. In the same place where we were sitting, his brother Abdesarrak was coming back home and when living his car he got the impact of a bullet shot from the prison.
The arc of brutality and provocation of the US troops in Abu Ghraib town goes from killing a boy of 12 years old, dead some days ago by the shots of a military vehicle while crossing the highway with a gas cylinder, to the dead of a dog during a house searching; after receiving two shots and be finished off in the head, the soldier showed up his thumb in front of the family with satisfaction.

The highway, a mousetrap

Coming back to Baghdad, an attack of the Resistance against a US convoy made up of two vehicles of the National Guard and another five used by the US special corps and mercenaries makes the highway becoming a mousetrap for the Iraqis. The vehicles are yet stopped in files, some of them with marks of fire from machine guns and grenades. Eight Apache helicopters fly over the place while several Abrams tanks close the way in the highway in three points; as it is usual, other armored vehicles stay on the network. Iraqi cars, trucks and vans hardly cross the way without pushing trying to reach alternative routes: all of them know that the US soldiers shot indiscriminately after an attack and the best is to get far as soon as possible. This is the only relation the occupiers and Iraqis have here: to avoid each other frightened.
In one of this lateral roads, near an abandoned and almost destroyed installation, a piece in the wall says in Arabic: "Do not dump rubble: martyrs buried". This is one of the common graves of the liberators.
At night, the bombers flies over Baghdad have been constant.

Trasnlated into English by Lola Oliván

Thanks to Lola Oliván