War Of Terrorism: The Countryside Murders
By Mike Ferner
t r u t h o u t | Correspondent in Iraq
Friday 20 February 2004
http://truthout.org/docs_04/022004A.shtmlAuthor's Note | While writing the essay, "Terror by Another Name," I realized that we apply this most potent term in the American political vocabulary very unevenly. We define terrorism as tactics used against us, but deny that it applies to our own actions taken to purposely and unmistakably instill terror. Our denial is compounded daily when the U.S. government promotes and the media report news from a "War on Terrorism." Our "War of Terrorism" deserves its due.ABU HISHMA, IRAQ -- This is the farm village that Cliff Kindy, leader of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), refers to as the "razor wire place." It's actually a small town, around half of which the U.S. Army has unrolled concertina razor wire, and completed the effect with a checkpoint and curfew. Six CPT members are returning for an update from the residents on the latest U.S. raids and detentions.
On the 30-mile trip from Baghdad, the city falls away as we drive into open countryside. Approaching Abu Hishma, we pass a small house about 150 feet from the road that is now a pile of rubble. Our interpreter, Sattar, said the house was destroyed because "it was too close to the road and coalition forces destroy it."
With a minivan stuffed full of westerners, we arrive 10 minutes before the 5pm curfew, wondering if we'll be allowed to pass the checkpoint into the district cordoned off by the wire. Just before reaching the gate, our driver spots his brother, coming in from the fields in a pickup. They exchange a few words and we follow his brother closely through the checkpoint staffed by the ICDC, the Iraq Civil Defense Corps. They look into the van briefly, smile, and wave us through.
Inside the wire, kids of all ages spill into the narrow streets from all directions, smiling, laughing, and waving joyfully. The streets are all dirt, barely more than lanes, some still quite muddy from rains several days ago. The minivan bounces along, perilously close to the edge of the ditch to let vehicles coming towards us pass. There is really nothing resembling a berm, and the kids back up on mere inches of muddy lane to let us by, still laughing and waving. Some shout "Saddam, Saddam" but it's not clear how much of the shouting is a political statement and how much is kids being kids for a rare carload of westerners. Each time we turn a corner it appears we're about to run over a youngster, or at least knock one into the ditch, but somehow, just as Baghdad drivers avoid accidents in the most impossible situations, the children remain unscathed.
(snip)
Just then, we witnessed what looked like another H & I incident. Two helicopters flew low over the village, circled, and fired machine gun bursts into an open pasture a couple hundred meters away. "They do it just to scare us," one villager shrugged, or as a former Iraqi soldier later told me, "we used to call it 'showing the teeth.'"
Muhnna Azazzal resumed his narrative. Ten days after the October double murder, U.S. troops arrested Yasseen. Soldiers had been attacked in the vicinity, Azazzal explained, and Yasseen was a prime suspect, having just lost two family members to Army shootings. Three months later, the farmer from Abu Hishma still sits in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, still denied visitors. Azazzal, his uncle, said he later heard from released detainees that Yasseen was accused of "terrorist acts."
A rooster crows in the Taha farmyard. Chickens scratch in a small, neatly-fenced grass front yard. Three helicopter gunships roar overhead. In the dirt side yard are two red heifers, an earthen oven, a mud brick outhouse and piles of stacked brush. Several small Holstein dairy cows graze in a narrow, rich pasture just beyond the lane. Yasseen's uncle, Muhnna says with equal parts hurt, disappointment and anger in his voice, "soldiers that do these kinds of things don't deserve to be called Americans." Two more helicopters roar in from another direction. They circle a few hundred meters to the west and go on their way.
...more...
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