Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Due articoli sulla "liberta'" in Iraq

Se c'e qualcuno che sta comparando tutto questo alla "democrazia",
avrei un
ponte da vendergli.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2093154/entry/2093160/
Dispatches From Iraq
From: Wendell Steavenson
Subject: The U.S. Army Goes to High School
Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003, at 1:13 PM PT 
Ibrahim Ahmed Hakmet is 16, a cocky, engagingly arrogant kid; slim,
with close-cropped hair, a little acne on his temples, and a tendency
to giggle at me, because apparently I remind him of his aunt.
A few days after Saddam's capture, he was arrested by the Americans.
About a hundred soldiers in armored Humvees and tanks surrounded the
Amriyeh High School (a school for boys aged between 16 and 19). With
the Iraqi police in attendance, they went from classroom to classroom
matching faces to photographs and names to a list. They were looking
for boys who had been at a pro-Saddam demonstration the day before.
"It's against the law," explained Lt. Col. Leopoldo Quintas, commander
of the 2-70 "Old Ironsides" Armored Battalion, which carried out the
operation. "And they were displaying pictures of Saddam."
Continue Article 
"It's subversive," added his public affairs officer.
Ibrahim said he was the first to be caught because he was on his way
out of school to get a doctor's note; it was midmorning, and he was
the only student on the front entrance path.
"An American officer shouted at me: 'Sit down! Sit down!' and
indicated that I should kneel, pointing with his gun. Then he said,
'Get up!' I didn't understand what he wanted me to do, so I put my
hands on the wall. He kicked me twice on the leg. He was very big. He
checked me roughly, even behind my ears, and threw my English and
Arabic books away. He cuffed my hands with wire, roughly. He sprained
my wrist. And later, when he was taking the wire off, he cut me when
he was cutting it with a knife."
Ibrahim and several other detained boys (Ibrahim says nine or 10, the
Americans say five or six) were put in the back of a truck. The truck
broke down and had to be towed by a tank. An outraged crowd had
gathered: parents, passers-by, kids from neighborhood schools,
shouting and yelling.
Ibrahim was rather enamored of his adventure.
"We were laughing," he said, all tough and unconcerned, wearing his
bandaged wrist like a trophy and using a single crutch to support the
leg he said was kicked and beaten with a stick. "We knew we hadn't
done anything. One of the Americans said in Arabic, 'Incheb!' Shut
up!" Ibrahim was full of himself, laughing at the Americans to their
faces, getting beaten for his defiance, and then asking for more. "The
more I laughed, the more he hit me. It shows what kind of a weak man
he was to hit a boy," he sneered.
The Americans, in their efforts at zero tolerance, intimidation,
containment, detentions, night arrests, and operations to arrest
high-school kids, provoke only frustration, outrage, and distrust.
"The soldiers went through my class," said Mr. Karim, the math
teacher, " 'What is your name? What is your name?' The children were
afraid."
"They had no right, no right to come!" Mr. Hamza, the Arabic teacher,
was indignant. "Is this American democracy?"
The headmaster, Mr. Fadhil, said he was angry. The boys in the school
were angry with him. He had not protected them against the Americans;
he had invited the Americans to arrest them. Spray-painted on the wall
of the school were slogans: "Saddam's High School!" "Down Down USA!"
and "Down With the Informer Principal Fadhil!" They were quickly
painted over.
"Do you think Mr. Fadhil can keep his job after this unpleasantness?"
I asked.
Ibrahim hid his mouth behind his hand and giggled at such a silly
question. "Oh we want him to stay! He's in our pocket now! Who else
will pass us this year?"
Ibrahim does not go to school very regularly. He says he has observed
that those with an education and those without end up earning the same
amount. He has been learning English for five years and cannot speak a
word, except to understand some of what the American soldiers shouted
at him. School, for him, is more of a place to hang out with friends
than an institution of discipline and educational standards. The
Amriyeh High School is newly painted and has some old computers. The
classrooms are very bare: cheap wooden desks, benches, blackboard, and
chalk. The Americans have been refurbishing schools, but it's often
just a paint job. It's the state of lassitude and corruption that is
the problem. Pay the teachers-a few bribes, threats, whatever-and they
will pass you. Ibrahim shrugged, "The principal is a moody guy.
Sometimes you can give him some chocolates and he is all right. Other
times he wants a million Iraqi dinars."
Amriyeh is a suburb with Sunni Triangle sensibilities, where a lot of
families from Ramadi and Tikrit settled. It's also an area in which
Saddam distributed land to Mukhabarat (intelligence) officers.
"These are their sons," explained Mr. Hamza, the Arabic teacher.
"This was a real country to be proud of," said Ibrahim. "I am Iraqi.
They are humiliating every Iraqi when they humiliate Saddam. Even if
Hitler came here he would not fill our eyes [make us proud] as much as
Saddam did." Ibrahim has read about Hitler.
When the Americans arrested him and his school friends, they took them
to their base nearby (a former Republican Guard barracks) and held
them in what Ibrahim described as "a cage," and what the colonel
called "a temporary holding facility," although he wouldn't let me see
it "for security reasons."
The soldiers let them out to use the washroom and to be questioned.
They were fed chicken and macaroni and chocolate bars for lunch.
Ibrahim said it was pretty good.
"They are civil in a way," Ibrahim said. "They are afraid of the
situation here, and that's why they behave badly." But he is not
intimidated by them. His family has seen plenty of American injustice.
His father (something to do with the former government, though exactly
what Ibrahim wouldn't say) has been detained three times, his uncle
twice. His cousin was shot in the leg at an American checkpoint when
he didn't understand what the soldier was shouting. His grandmother
had three and a half kilos of gold and an heirloom diamond necklace
taken during a nighttime raid on her house. All run-of-the-mill,
unverifiable stories of the kind I have heard many times.
"A foreigner will always be the weaker one." observed Ibrahim. "This
is my country: They came by force they will leave by force."
The Americans questioned Ibrahim and the others and determined that
they were just schoolboys protesting; there had been no particular
resistance involvement.
"I would have preferred not to have done it," said Lt. Col. Quintas,
while acknowledging that the operation at the school had been
undertaken on his initiative, "But they need to understand that they
are not allowed to do this and that there are consequences."
The boys were released that evening and driven home. Ibrahim said that
was the only time he was scared-he was worried the Humvee he was being
taken in might get hit by the resistance.
They rang the doorbell. His father came out.
"It was funny," said Ibrahim. "He didn't know if they were going to
return me or take him!"
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http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk12272003.html
"A Heavy Dose of Fear, Violence and Money"
Iraq Through the American Looking Glass
By ROBERT FISK
 The Independent
Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week,
a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of
the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the
guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to
"instill fear" in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working
for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten
her daughters and grand-daughters into believing that she was being
arrested.
A battalion commander in the same area put the point even more baldly.
"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for
projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to
help them," he said. He was speaking from a village that his men had
surrounded with barbed wire, upon which was a sign, stating: "This
fence is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or
you will be shot."
Try to explain that this treatment--and these words--offend the very
basic humanity of the people whom the Americans claimed they came to
"liberate" and you are met in Baghdad with the same explanation: that
a very small "remnant" of "diehards"--loyal to the now-captured Saddam
Hussein, etc, etc--have to be separated from the civilians whom they
are "intimidating".
To point out that the intimidation is largely coming from the American
occupation force--to the horror of the British in southern Iraq who
fear, understandably, that Iraqi revenge will be visited upon them as
it was on the Italians and the Spanish--is useless.
Instead, we are told that American troops are winning those famous
hearts and minds with the spirit of Christmas. There was a grim
example of this--and the inherent racism that pervades even reporting
of such events--on the Associated Press wire agency just this week.
Describing how an American soldier in a Santa Claus hat was giving out
stuffed animals to children, reporter Jason Keyser wrote that one
11-year- old child "looked puzzled, then smiled" as the soldier gave
him a small, stuffed goat. Then the report continued: "Others in the
crowd of mostly Muslims grabbed greedily at the box," adding the
soldier's remark that: "They don't know how to handle generosity."
I don't doubt the soldier's wish to do good. But what is one to make
of the "mostly Muslims" who "grabbed greedily" at the gifts? Or the
soldier's insensitive remarks about generosity? Iraqi newspapers have
been front--paging a Christmas card produced by US troops in Baghdad:
"1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Wishes you a very Merry Christmas!" it
says.
But the illustration is of Saddam Hussein in his scruffy beard just
after his capture, with a Santa hat superimposed on top of his head.
Funny enough for us, no doubt--I can't personally think of a better
fall-guy for St Nicholas--but a clear insult to Sunni Arabs who,
however much they may loathe the beast of Baghdad, will see in this
card a deliberate attempt to humiliate Muslim Iraqis. It is for Iraqis
to demean their ex-president--not their American occupiers.
It's almost as if the occupying powers want to look through Alice's
looking glass. This week, we had the odd statement by British General
Graeme Lamb that Saddam could be compared to the Emperor Caligula. Now
the good general was probably relying on Suetonius's Twelve Caesars
for his views on Caligula. But if anything, the Roman was a good deal
more insane than Saddam and even more heedless of human life.
The crazy Uday Hussein, son of Saddam, might have been a more
appropriate parallel. But what was all this supposed to achieve? A
serious war crimes trial--preferably outside Iraq and far from the
country's contaminated judiciary--is the way to define the nature of
Saddam's repulsive regime.
All references to the ex-dictator as Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun or
Caligula--like all suggestions that Tony Blair or George Bush are
Winston Churchill--are infantile. And again, they will appear
insulting to the Sunni Muslims of Iraq, the one community which the
Americans should be desperate to placate, since it is the Sunnis who
are primarily resisting the occupation.
But the looking-glass effect seems to have taken hold of US pro-consul
Paul Bremer's entire authority. Like President George Bush, Bremer has
now taken to repeating the absurdity that the greater the West's
success in Iraq, the more frequent will be the attacks on American
troops.
"I personally feel that we'll actually have more violence in the next
six months," he said a couple of week ago, "and the violence will be
precisely because of the fact that we're building momentum toward
success." In other words, the better things become, the worse they're
going to get. And the greater the violence, the better we're doing in
Iraq.
I wouldn't worry about this nonsense so much if it wasn't mirrored on
the ground in Iraq. Take the US claim--now regarded as an
absurdity--that they killed "54 insurgents" in Samara a month ago. The
truth is that they killed at least eight civilians and there's not a
smidgen of evidence that they killed anyone else. But still they
insist on sticking to the story of their great victory.
Last week, they pushed out a similar version of the same story. This
time there were 11 dead "insurgents" in Samara. But when The
Independent investigated, it could only find records of four dead
civilians and a lot of wounded. None of the wounded--presumably
"insurgents" if the Americans believe their own story--had been
visited in hospital by US forces who might, if they didn't question
them, at least have apologised.
An even more peculiar habit has now manifest itself among spokesmen
for the occupation authorities. When a tank drove over a prominent
Shiite Muslim cleric in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City three weeks
ago, they claimed this was a "traffic accident", as if driving an M1A1
Abrams tank over a car and a robed prelate is the kind of thing that
can happen on any downtown street.
A few days later, after a truck-bomber crashed into a car and killed
17 civilians, the occupation lads churned out the same rubbish again.
It was, they said, a "traffic accident" involving a petrol tanker. But
there was no tanker attached to the lorry.
The first American troops on the scene found the grenades intended to
detonate the bomb and the victims were all blasted to bits--not
burned, as they would have been if the petrol tanker had simply caught
fire. Those of us who reached the scene shortly after the slaughter
could still smell the explosives. But it was a "traffic accident".
Only yesterday we had an equally bizarre event. Jets, C-130 aircraft
mounted with chain guns, and heavy artillery were all reported to be
striking "guerrilla bases" in Operation Iron Hammer south of Baghdad.
But investigation proved that the targets were empty fields and that
some of the heavy guns were firing blank rounds as part of an
artillery maintenance routine.
So let's get this right. Insurgents are civilians. Truck bombs and
tanks that crush civilians are traffic accidents. And the "liberated"
civilians who live in villages surrounded by razor wire should endure
"a heavy dose of fear and violence" to keep them on the straight and
narrow.
Somewhere along the way, they will probably be told about democracy as
well.

 By ROBERT FISK
E se lo dice lui...
-Stefano