US military 'turns blind eye to
killings' By Ali al-Fadhily and
Dahr Jamail
BAQUBA, Iraq - This
little-known city 50 kilometers northeast of
Baghdad is emerging as one of the fiercest hotbeds
of resistance in Iraq, with internecine violence
escalating amid widespread complaints that the US
military is deliberately turning a blind eye to
sectarian killings committed by government
security forces.
A political leader in the
city said: "The Iraqi people have complained to
everyone, but naturally no one will do anything
about it. We know who is in charge and who is
responsible and
eventually who is to be
damned. It is the government of the United States
of America."
The local leader, speaking
from his home in Baquba, said the situation in the
area was becoming dire: "The worst is the direct
participation of the national security forces in
criminal acts, and the US Army's sudden
disappearance from the scene as soon as those
murderers show up," he said. Many have been
killed, and hundreds arrested in Diyala province,
he said.
The Sunni party al-Tawafuq has
demanded a full investigation into the violence in
Baquba, and immediate release of the detained
civilians. "We are sure the arrests were made
under sectarian flags and those detainees are
innocent farmers captured on their own
plantations," the group said in a statement.
An Iraqi army colonel told reporters in
Diyala last week that that US troops had arrested
10 Iraqi soldiers suspected of sectarian killings.
However, there was no official US comment.
Iraqi member of parliament Muhammad
al-Dayni appeared on Al-Jazeera television to say
that Brigadier Shakr al-Kaabi, leader of the 5th
Division in charge of security in Diyala province,
had ordered the arrest of 400 civilians. Hundreds
of houses had been looted, he said. Dayni accused
the parties in power of supporting such acts,
referring to the Shi'ite parties in parliament.
The fighting has intensified, but Baquba
has long been a city of fierce resistance to the
occupation. Resistance groups have often
frustrated the efforts of the Multi-National
Forces (MNF) and Iraqi security forces to bring
the city under their control.
Residents of
Baquba said an Iraqi police brigadier-general had
used loudspeakers to issue dire warnings to
residents.
"We were used to hearing our
own government calling us terrorists, Saddamists
and Zarqawis before, but this man added new words
to the vocabulary like 'bastards' and expressions
of that sort," said Abu Omar, a law student at
Diyala University. "Yet we were not surprised
because we know he was just repeating what his
Green Zone [heavily fortified US/Iraqi government
headquarters in Baghdad] masters have always
said."
Mazin al-Zaidy, a resident of
Baquba, said the situation in Diyala province
could be the worst in Iraq because people of many
ethnicities live in the area. "The MNF and
militias concentrate on clearing it of the Arab
Sunnis prior to any federalism plan."
Zaidy said: "There are Kurds, Shi'as and
Sunnis who share the province, and that has to be
altered for the benefit of the first two groups."
The influence of each group changes often.
"Each day I wake up I don't know who is in control
of my city," said a religious sheikh in Baquba who
asked to be referred to as Sheikh Ahmed. "One day
it is the Americans, the next day a militia, the
next day a resistance group."
Diyala
province gets little media attention "because of
the journalists' fear of going in", said Zaidy.
The new violence has ripped apart old
traditions, he said. "The people of the province
do not understand how these powers could turn it
into a sectarian city from a wonderful 1,400 years
of community peace and intermarriages."
Meanwhile, the US military has announced
that bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time
high. The number of US soldiers killed is now
approaching the 3,000 mark.
Some analysts
believe the number of Iraqi casualties may run
into hundreds of thousands.
