The Iraqi resistance only exists to end the
occupation
The escalating attacks
are not usually aimed at civilians, but are a direct response to the brutal
actions of US-led troops
Haifa Zangana
Thursday April 12, 2007
The Guardian
In Muqdadiyah, 50 miles from Baghdad, a woman wearing a
traditional Iraqi abaya blew herself up this week in the midst of Iraqi police
recruits. This was the seventh suicide attack by a women since the
Anglo-American invasion in 2003, and an act unheard of before that. Iraqi women
are driven to despair and self-destruction by grief. Their expectations are
reduced to pleas for help to clear the bodies of the dead from the streets,
according to a report by the international committee of the Red Cross, released
yesterday. It's the same frustration that drew hundreds of thousands to
demonstrate against foreign forces in Najaf on Monday.
In the fifth year of occupation, the sectarian and ethnic divide between
politicians, parties and their warring militias has become monstrous, turning on
its creators in the Green Zone and beyond, and not sparing ordinary people. One
of the consequences is a major change in the public role of women.
During the first three years of occupation women were mostly
confined to their homes, protected by male relatives. But now that the savagery
of their circumstances has propelled many of them to the head of their
households, they are risking their lives outdoors. Since men are the main target
of US-led troops, militias and death squads, black-cloaked women are seen
queuing at prisons, government offices or morgues, in search of disappeared, or
detained, male relatives. It is women who bury the dead. Baghdad has become a
city of bereaved women. But contrary to what we are told by the occupation and
its puppet regime, this is not the only city that is subject to the brutality
that forces thousands of Iraqis to flee their country every month.
Bodies are found across the country from Mosul to Kirkuk to
Basra. They are handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-ridden, bearing signs of
torture. They are dumped at roadsides or found floating in the Tigris or
Euphrates. A friend of mine who found her brother's body in a hospital's fridge
told me how she checked his body and was relieved. "He was not tortured", she
said. "He was just shot in the head."
Occupation has left no room for any initiative independent of
the officially sanctioned political process; for a peaceful opposition or civil
society that could create networks to bridge the politically manufactured
divide. Only the mosque can fulfil this role. In the absence of the state, some
mosques provide basic services, running clinics or schools. In addition to the
call to prayer, their loudspeakers warn people of impending attacks or to appeal
for blood donors.
But these attempts to sustain a sense of community are
regularly crushed. On Tuesday, troops from the Iraqi army, supported by US
helicopters, raided a mosque in the heart of old Baghdad. The well-respected
muazzin Abu Saif and another civilian were executed in public. Local people were
outraged and attacked the troops. At the end of the day, 34 people had been
killed, including a number of women and children. As usual, the summary
execution and the massacre that followed were blamed on insurgents. The military
statement said US and Iraqi forces were continuing to "locate, identify, and
engage and kill insurgents targeting coalition and Iraqi security forces in the
area".
It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not
only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but also as a response
to the reality of the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration.
It is a response to arbitrary break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests,
detention and torture. According to the Red Cross, "the number of people
arrested or interned by the multinational forces has increased by 40% since
early 2006. The number of people held by the Iraqi authorities has also
increased significantly."
Many of the security detainees are women who have been
subjected to abuse and rape and who are often arrested as a means to force male
relatives to confess to crimes they have not committed. According to the Iraqi
MP Mohamed al-Dainey, there are 65 documented cases of women's rape in
occupation detention centres in 2006. Four women currently face execution - the
death penalty for women was outlawed in Iraq from 1965 until 2004 - for
allegedly killing security force members. These are accusations they deny and
Amnesty International has challenged.
There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for
the US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the
occupation. And to acknowlege that it consists of ordinary Iraqis, not only al-Qaida,
not just Sunnis or Shias, not those terrorists - as Tony Blair called them -
inspired by neighbouring countries such as Iran. To recognise that Iraqis are
proud, peace-loving people, and that they hate occuption, not each other. And to
understand that the main targets of the resistance are not Iraqi civilians.
According to Brookings, the independent US research institute, 75% of recorded
attacks are directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi government
forces. The average number of attacks has more than doubled in the past year to
about 185 a day. That is 1,300 a week, and more than 5,500 a month.
Another way of understanding this is that in any one hour, day
or night, there are seven or eight new attacks. Without the Iraqi people's
support, directly and indirectly, this level of resistance would not have
happened.
· Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile
who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, is the author of Women on a Journey:
Between Baghdad and London
haifa_zangana@yahoo.co.uk
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