Baghdad Looting *Started* and *Encouraged* by US Troops

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () RealMeasures dyndns org>
Organization: Real Measures
Reply-To: seth.johnson () RealMeasures dyndns org
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 00:30:14 -0400
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: Baghdad Looting *Started* and *Encouraged* by US Troops


Dave:

Thought you'd find this article of interest.

Seth Johnson


Original:
> http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1435&a=129852

Translation:
> http://truthout.org/docs_03/041603D.shtml


US Troops Encouraged Ransacking

By Ole Rothenborg
Dagens Nyheter

Thursday 11 April 2003


This is a translation of an article from April 11 from Dagens Nyheter,
Sweden's largest newspaper, based in Stockholm. The article was written by
Ole Rothenborg and translated by Joe Valasek. Khaled Bayomi, has taught and
researched on Middle Eastern conflicts for ten years at the University of
Lund where he is also working on his doctorate. He has given his permission
for this interview to be widely disseminated.

Khaled Bayomi looks surprised when the American officer on TV complains that
they don't have the resources to stop the plundering in Baghdad. "I happened
to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the
plundering."

Khaled Bayomi traveled from Europe to Baghdad to be a human shield and
arrived on the same day that the war began. About this he can tell many
stories but the most interesting is certainly his eyewitness account of the
wave of plundering.

"I had gone to see some friends who live near a dilapidated area just past
Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris. It was the 8th of April and the
fighting was so intense that I was unable to return to the other side of the
river. In the afternoon it became perfectly quiet and four American tanks
took places on the edge of the slum area. The soldiers shot two Sudanese
guards who stood at their posts outside a local administration building on
the other side of Haifa Avenue. Then they blasted apart the doors to the
building and from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to
come close to them. "

"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road had been shot.
But in the strange silence after all the shooting, people gradually became
curious. After 45 minutes, the first Baghdad citizens dared to come out.
Arab interpreters in the tanks told the people to go and take what they
wanted in the building."

"The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was standing only
300 yards from there when the guards were murdered. Afterwards the tank
crushed the entrance to the Justice Department, which was in a neighboring
building, and the plundering continued there".

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not
partake in the plundering but dared not to interfere. Many had tears of
shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the Modern
Museum, which lies a quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds
there, one that plundered and one with watched with disgust."

"Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the plundering?'

"Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American troops
needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways demonstrated hatred for
Saddam's regime."

"The people pulled down a large statue of Saddam?"

"Did they? It was an American tank that did that, right beside the hotel
where all the journalists stay. Until lunchtime on April 9, I did not see
one destroyed Saddam portrait. If people had wanted to pull down statues
they could have taken down some of the small ones without any help from
American tanks. If it had been a political upheaval, the people would have
pulled down statues first and then plundered."

"Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?"

"He's not gone. He has broken his army down into very small groups. That's
why there hasn't been a large battle. About the official state, you could
say that Saddam dissolved that already in 1992 and he's built a parallel
tribal structure that is totally decisive in Iraq. When the US began the
war, Saddam abandoned the state completely and now depends on the tribal
structure. That was why he abandoned the large cities without a fight."

"Now the US is compelled to do everything themselves because there's no
political body within the country which will challenge the existing
structure. The two who came in from outside the country were annihilated at
once. (The reference here is to General Nazar al-Khazraji, who returned from
Denmark and the Shiite Muslim leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.) They were cut
to pieces with swords and knives by a furious crowd in Najaf because they
were thought to be American puppets. According to the Danish newspaper BT,
al-Khazraji was brought from Denmark to Iraq by the CIA."

"Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq that has not said how long
it intends to remain, has not given any plan for civilian rule and no date
for general elections. Enormous chaos is now to be expected."

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