Iraqi trainees under shadow of
fear By Kathleen
Ridolfo
Informants from within the Iraqi
military likely provided information to militants about the
route taken by a convoy transporting Iraqi National
Guardsmen on leave from their base last weekend, Iraqi and US
officials said this week. Militants attacked the convoy,
killing 49 guardsmen and three drivers. An adviser to
interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told the New York
Times that as many as 5% of Iraqi security forces are
composed of insurgents or sympathizers with the former
regime.
Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported last week that
Allawi has appointed several former senior Ba'athists to
top security-force positions despite the objections of
Iraq's de-Ba'athification Commission. Hundreds of
lower-level Ba'athists are also working within the
security apparatus.
The early-evening attack on
the guardsmen appears to have been well coordinated.
Militants reportedly disguised as Iraqi policemen set up
a makeshift checkpoint and stopped three buses
transporting the unarmed guardsmen, who were dressed in
civilian clothes, forcing them off their bus. They were
lined up in four rows and forced to lie down before
being shot execution-style in the back of the head. "All
of them were from the southern provinces," Interior
Ministry spokesman Colonel Adana Abd al-Rahman said of
the victims. "Most of them had their hands tied behind
their back."
Iraqi Customs and Border Police
Captain Ibrahim Aqid Siddiq told RFE/RL in an interview
from Jordan that Iraqi trainees have been asking US and
Jordanian military trainers at their base in Jordan for
one month to arrange their safe transfer back to Iraq
once their training ends this week. The military's plan
is to fly the trainees from Amman to Baghdad, but Siddiq
said that this is not sufficient, as the 240 recruits
are largely composed of Kurds and southern Arabs, who
would have to pass through volatile areas on their way
home.
Military trainers at the
base, some 15 kilometers outside Amman, have said it is
too costly to fly the Kurdish recruits to Irbil,
"because of the money they want to fly the plane full
and return back full," Siddiq said. He added that the
same response was given to recruits returning to Basra.
"They don't agree with us; they want to send them to
Baghdad, and between Baghdad and the south, there is a
place called al-Latifiyah; it's not safe, and most of
our people have been killed there," said Siddiq.
He added that military commanders also objected
to a proposal that recruits travel in private taxis
alone or in pairs back to Iraq. "They won't let us to
return back like that. They [will] take all of us, about
a hundred, and put us in a plane and return us to
Baghdad. They won't let us go as we like," said Siddiq.
Siddiq contended that Iraqi soldiers believe
that their military trainers "don't care" about their
safety. "When we came here in the beginning they sent us
[to Jordan] without any patrol, without any guards. I
don't know how we arrived here. It was very, very bad
roads."
Asked about the mood of the recruits,
Siddiq said: "All of our people here are very afraid.
Believe me, if you are here now, the speech between them
- all of them - is about the airplane and how they will
return back and if they will arrive to their homes or
not." He added that the recruits were too fearful of
losing their jobs to complain. "Today I told [the
military trainers] that if you didn't return us back to
our area, tomorrow we are not getting out from our
rooms, we are not graduating, so I don't know what the
answer will be."
Defense Minister Hazim al-Sha'lan vowed this week to
capture and punish the perpetrators of the attack. "Once we
identify and arrest the perpetrators, we will take tough
measures against them...When we arrest them, they will
receive capital punishment. It will be the first in
Iraq's modern history," Al-Sharqiyah television
reported al-Sha'lan as saying on Sunday.
The militant
group Tanzim Qa'idat Al-Jihad fi Bilad Al-Rafidayn
claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on
Sunday posted on an Islamist website. The group is
led by fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Mus'ab
al-Zarqawi, who last week pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden.
Officials have announced
the opening of an investigation into the attack, but
Defense Minister al-Sha'lan said in an interview with
al-Arabiyah television that no party would be held
responsible for the attack. "They [Iraqi soldiers]
themselves are to blame. They graduated at 1200 hours
and could have waited until the next day to enjoy a
vacation after the graduation. They, however, were
anxious to see their families soon," he said, adding
that the soldiers had traveled on a road not normally
used by the Iraqi military. "Probably some people tipped
off the hostile or criminal sides about these soldiers,"
al-Sha'lan said. "Neither the Ministry of Defense, the
camp, nor any other side, including the multinational
troops will be held responsible for this incident."
But a different sentiment came from Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi this week, who said he blames the
US-led coalition for what he calls the "major neglect"
of security duties. Allawi on Tuesday told the Iraqi
National Council, a government oversight body, that
"there was an ugly crime in which a large group of
National Guards were martyred. We believe this was the
result of major neglect by some parts of the
multinational [forces] and it reflected a determination
to harm Iraq and the Iraqi people."
He did not
say why he believed the coalition had failed.
US
military in a statement released the same day defended
themselves and said only "terrorists" should be "held
fully accountable for these heinous acts."
Allawi's comments marked the first time the
Iraqi interim prime minister had openly criticized the
US-led coalition.
Julian Lindley-French, an
analyst at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, said
that Allawi may be trying to show the Iraqi people that
he is not an American puppet. "In the run-up to the
election it's in the interest of the interim government
to blame [the] failings as much as possible on the
coalition," Lindley-French said. "I noticed that the
interim prime minister was very careful not to say the
Americans. He made it the failure of multinational
forces because he still needs to work closely with the
Americans. But at the same time, he needs politically to
create a distance between him and the multinational
coalition for political reasons in Iraq."
Meanwhile, the fate of another Western hostage
put on terrorists' death row remains uncertain, less
than 24 hours before a deadline set by his captors to
behead him. In a video made available on an Islamist
militant website, al-Zarqawi's group threatened to
execute 24-year-old Japanese hostage Shosei Koda within
48 hours unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq.
The video shows Shosei Koda kneeling in front of three
masked men and pleading for his life.
"They want
the Japanese government and [Junichiro] Koizumi, the
prime minister - they want you to withdraw the Japanese
troops from Iraq or they will cut [off] my head," Koda
said on the video.
Japanese Prime Minister
Koizumi flatly rejected the demands. "We should not
forgive or give in to terrorists," Koizumi said.
Lindley-French said that, in his opinion, making
Iraq secure is more difficult than merely being tough
with terrorists. He said the number of coalition troops
in the country needs to be increased.
"Clearly,
the coalition simply hasn't got enough troops [to cover]
the whole of Iraq," Lindley-French said. "I mean this
has been a problem throughout the operation - that there
roughly 100,000 [soldiers] short to do a full-scale
peace-making, peacekeeping operation."
He said that, by comparison, if one
looks at the number of peacekeepers in another potential
hotspot - Northern Ireland - one finds that the troops
should make 1% of the population it functions in.
Lindley-French said that means that a country like Iraq
would need about 250,000 troops - instead of the some
150,000 that are there now.
He said to win the war in Iraq the US administration
first will have to win a war in Washington and get
approval for a bigger US military presence in Iraq.
Copyright 2004, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20036.
