US forces 'fall into Saddam's trap'
By Victor Mallet in Kuwait City
Published: April 3 2003 18:52 | Last Updated: April 3 2003 22:53
By alienating and sometimes killing Iraqi civilians during the invasion of Iraq, US troops are falling into a trap laid by President Saddam Hussein, according to a prominent Iraqi dissident and humanitarian activist.
"Saddam is leading them by his tactics to shoot at civilians, to get the civilians worked up so that they support the regime," says Hussain al-Shahristani, who heads the London-based Iraqi Refugee Aid Council. "I think the Americans are very quickly falling into the trap. They have committed some very serious mistakes."
Mr Shahristani was chief scientific adviser to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, and was held in solitary confinement for 10 years after refusing to help build a nuclear weapon. He escaped in the chaos of the 1991 Gulf war.
Based temporarily in Kuwait to help deliver humanitarian aid over the border, Mr Shahristani has been watching with growing alarm the difficulties faced by his fellow Shia Muslims following the advance of US and UK forces into southern and central Iraq.
"They feel Saddam is still in control, and his forces are still shooting people," he says. "But they must also face the bullets of the other side."
Mr Shahristani says the coalition forces committed three main errors. First, they failed to surround southern Iraqi towns as soon as they arrived, allowing Mr Hussein's forces to send reinforcements dressed in civilian clothes to fight in cities such as Basra and maintain their grip on the civilian population.
Second, inhabitants of the towns supposedly secured during the invasion were left unprotected, permitting Iraqi security forces to execute those suspected of fraternising with American or British troops and reviving memories of the savage reprisals that ended the Shia uprising of 1991.
"The word has spread very quickly and brought back memories of 1991, when people were not helped [by the US] in their uprising," says Mr Shahristani.
He says he has information from inside Iraq that security agents killed about 10 people at Khidr, north of Nasiriya, who witnessed the passage through the town of US troops without resisting.
"They [the coalition forces] have been going into towns, and then leaving them completely exposed," says Mr Shahristani, whose stories of reprisals are similar to those of residents of towns such as Safwan and of US troops themselves.
The third coalition mistake, says Mr Shahristani, has been to over-react to the suicide car bombing that killed four US servicemen near Najaf last week, for example by shooting at civilian vehicles.
"Initially, the British troops showed some respect for the people and their traditions, and to an extent the Americans tried it in the first few days. But as soon as Saddam got a few people in civilian clothes to fight, the situation changed. Every civilian is a suspect. These troops cannot be allowed to keep on shooting at vehicles just because they suspect them."
However, Mr Shahristani corroborates coalition claims that Iraqi forces have posed as civilians. A witness told him of Republican Guards putting white dishdashas over their uniforms and taking buses from Ammara to Basra when the road was still open.
He now fears a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Iraq and a "very bloody battle" in Baghdad unless Mr Hussein is first killed or overthrown.
As for the aftermath, Mr Shahristani, like many Iraqis, believes the Americans are deceiving themselves if they think they can impose US military rule or run the country without the UN.
"The Iraqis have suffered so much under this regime that they cannot possibly accept another military dictatorship or even a civilian puppet government set up by the Americans," he says. "That will quickly turn into a war of resistance."
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