05.05.2004

Tip of the iceberg

The US-UK-led invasion of Iraq, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by the publicity-conscious US military, was billed as a war of liberation. Of course there was that tricky business with those weapons of mass destruction, but that was retrospectively downplayed and has now been quietly swept under the carpet. Instead advocates of military action attempted to portray the invasion in humanitarian terms: the war would liberate the people of Iraq from the oppressive yoke of the brutal and murderous dictator, Saddam Hussein. Much was made of the need to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Iraqi people, demonstrating that the coalition had come to free them and to usher in a new golden age of liberal democracy under the benign tutelage of imperialism.

The attempt to transform Iraq into a subservient neo-colonial state, grateful to those heroic forces of liberation, has suffered a series of setbacks. Most pertinently, military resistance to the occupation has increased, leading to bloody reprisals by coalition forces. Away from the war-torn and rubble-strewn streets of Iraq’s cities, however, a new front has opened up in the battle for ‘hearts and minds’. Over the last week a series of photographs have been released depicting Iraqi captives being tortured and humiliated by their US and UK captors.

Allegations of human rights abuses perpetrated by the occupation forces have been made throughout the conflict. However, while previous reports have gone largely unnoticed, the shocking impact of the pictures has had a profound effect. The controversy began on April 29, when a US television channel, CBS News, broadcast photographs taken by soldiers at Abu Ghraib military prison in Baghdad, used by the former regime to ‘disappear’ troublesome citizens. The images show laughing US soldiers posing for the camera while Iraqi prisoners who have been hooded, bound and stripped are humiliated and abused. Other photographs show a prisoner standing on a box with electrodes attached to his genitals; two detainees being forced to simulate oral sex; and a tangle of naked prisoners in a heap while smug soldiers stand nearby. The photographs came to light as a result of a military inquiry completed in February and dealing with incidents from the end of last year. Seventeen soldiers were suspended, six of whom now face court martial.

The outrage in the US was echoed over here on May 1, when the Daily Mirror printed photographs showing British soldiers torturing and humiliating an Iraqi captive. They are pointing a rifle at his head, kicking him and urinating on him. However, although there is no doubt cast on the authenticity of the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, various military ‘experts’ have alleged that the Mirror photographs are fakes. They claim inconsistencies, suggest that the soldiers are wearing the wrong kind of hat, using the wrong rifle, the boots are laced incorrectly, the uniforms look too pristine, and so on. The Mirror, and its anonymous sources, two soldiers in the Queens Lancashire Regiment, remain adamant that the photographs are genuine.

On both sides of the Atlantic the official response to the alleged abuse of prisoners has been remarkably similar. Politicians, military spokespeople and journalists have all expressed their horror and outrage, and then very quickly stressed that any crimes that have taken place were committed by a rogue element within the armed forces and that these reprehensible individuals would be swiftly dealt with.

George Bush has promised that all who are responsible “will be taken care of”. The UK armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, said the “appalling” photographs “besmirch the good name of the armed forces”, and Roger Goodwin, speaking on behalf of the Queens Lancashire Regiment, declared: “There is no place in our regiment for individuals capable of such appalling and sickening behaviour.” The Mirror itself blustered: “We can be proud of the job the army is doing in Iraq. It must not be spoiled by a few rogue soldiers.” These responses are no doubt calculated to reduce anger both at home and abroad but, while they may persuade many in Britain and America of the moral fibre of the military, they will have a harder task to dampen the already incendiary sense of anti-imperialist hostility in the Middle East.

Unfortunately for the powers-that-be, further allegations are surfacing, suggesting that the abuse cannot merely be attributed to the actions of “a few rogue soldiers”, but rather that it is indicative of an endemic system of brutality on the part of the army of occupation. Brigadier General Janice Karpinski, one of the 17 soldiers suspended as a result of the investigation into Abu Ghraib, and formerly in charge of US prisons in Iraq, has claimed that the guards being blamed for the atrocities were under the direct control of CIA operatives. The initial report on Abu Ghraib also apportioned blame to US intelligence operatives, and yet the only soldiers who face court martial are reservist military police. One of those, Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick, supports Karpinski’s claim. Frederick has said that military intelligence told him that he was doing a “great job” in helping them to get the prisoners “to talk”. The US army’s own report found that military intelligence used the guards to “soften up” prisoners mentally and physically prior to interrogation.

Amnesty International has claimed that Abu Ghraib is not an isolated incident and that it has received accounts of similar brutality taking place elsewhere in Iraq. Chillingly in that context, Amnesty also states that 13,000 Iraqi men, women and children have been imprisoned by the coalition in 16 prisons across the country. An investigation into the death of a Ba’ath Party official in custody in Nassiriya in June 2003 heard from a US marine reservist that “it was common practice to kick and punch prisoners who did not cooperate and even some who did”.

It must not be imagined that British soldiers are innocent of similar crimes, despite national chauvinist claims that they are more disciplined and behave more humanely than the Americans. The Guardian revealed that 10 British soldiers are under internal investigation for abusing Iraqi prisoners, and frankly that is likely to be the tip of the iceberg, with many more incidents quietly hushed up. Because photographs of these particular incidents have been widely released, they cannot be ignored, but there are likely to be many, many more incidents that have not come to the public’s attention, nor are they likely to. The fact is that, certainly in the case of Abu Ghraib, US soldiers took these photographs because they were complacent about their actions and had no thought of being punished; otherwise there would have been no question of photographic evidence of their crimes. In fact, the Mirror has also alleged that photographs of similar abuses are regularly swapped amongst service personnel.

Although the US and UK authorities present such atrocities as aberrations carried out by an undisciplined minority, the responsibility for them goes much higher. Politicians and the secret services in Washington and London wanted to see results in Iraq; they wanted to capture Saddam Hussein and his ruling coterie, they wanted weapons of mass destruction and they wanted information on ‘terrorists’. In emphasising how important it was that the armed forces got results, they are demonstrating their willingness to turn a blind eye to how such results are obtained. While they are more than happy to congratulate themselves on the valuable information that has been wrung out of prisoners, they are quick to disavow responsibility when the actual methods are revealed.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq the US and UK armed forces were assured that they would be welcomed with open arms by the grateful Iraqi population. Instead they found themselves in a foreign country where sizeable elements of the population are hostile to the occupation, and resisting it with force. Undoubtedly this has led to many among the coalition forces feeling bewildered and betrayed. As a family friend of Lynndie England, who appeared in the photographs of Abu Ghraib, said of the Iraqis, “We went out there to help the jackasses and they start blowing us up.”

Of course, coalition soldiers were lied to when they were told they were going to help the population. Their sense of betrayal has led to at least some of them lashing out at the Iraqi people around them, people they now fear and hate. This bloody imperialist war has cost too many lives and has dehumanised too many of those involved in it. If there was ever any doubt of it, these atrocities confirm that imperialism’s battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people has been lost, and that the occupation must be immediately ended.