IRAQ: ISIL or US-backed Death Squads?

[Oscar]

Why Iraqis May See ISIL as Lesser Evil Compared To U.S.-Backed Death Squads

[ http://www.alternet.org/world/why-iraqi ... 27543&t=19 ]

AlterNet / By Nicholas JS Davies November 20, 2014

(* * * * Numerous LINKS at URL above )

Ten years of U.S. efforts to impose a brutal military solution in Iraq have only brought more death, destruction and chaos to its people.

The mostly Sunni Arab population of western and northern Iraq is faced with a diabolical choice between the brutal rule of IS and the even more murderous rule of their own government. Their life and death predicament is the direct result of past and present U.S. policy in Iraq.

In 2004, the U.S. responded to resistance in Iraq with a "divide and rule" strategy that relied heavily on recruiting, training and deploying Special Police commandos to detain, torture and summarily execute tens of thousands of young men and boys in areas that resist the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of their country. At its peak in 2006, this genocidal campaign delivered over 1,600 corpses per month to the morgue in Baghdad.

The killing wound down along with U.S. combat operations in 2008, but leaders of the Badr Brigade militia retained control of the Interior Ministry and their campaign of detention, torture and extrajudicial execution continued, albeit on a smaller scale. As Iraq's political crisis has exploded in the last year or two, the Interior Ministry has relaunched its death squads with a vengeance, leaving Iraqis in a large swathe of the country caught between IS and the death squads. After all they have suffered for the past 12 years, it is a rational choice for them to see IS as the lesser evil.

The U.S. role in the recruitment, training and deployment of these Interior Ministry forces was shrouded in secrecy and disinformation. But a great deal is known, and there are three chapters on America's "dirty war" in Iraq in my book, Blood On Our Hands, the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Within six months of the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, the CIA warned that the occupation faced growing resistance from many sectors of Iraqi society. It also warned that armed resistance in the center of the country could spread to Shia majority areas, implying that only a "divide and rule" strategy could preempt the emergence of a unified national resistance movement.

At the time of that CIA report, U.S. forces were being hit by 35 attacks per day and only 400 Americans had so far died in Iraq. Over the next three years, resistance grew to 150 attacks per day, and 4,488 U.S. troops have now been killed in Iraq, including 2 in 2014. But U.S. leaders were caught in a trap of their own making. Having conquered and occupied Iraq, they were not about to allow indigenous constituencies in Iraq to claim the right to govern their own country and snatch away the fruits of their victory. The U.S. and its Kurdish and formerly exiled Iraqi allies were determined to retain control of politics in Iraq and to silence anyone who challenged their legitimacy, and this remains the case today.

MORE:

[ http://www.alternet.org/world/why-iraqi ... 27543&t=19 ]