04Dec03-CSM-US, Iraqis continue to differ over what happened in Samarra
At first glance, it looked like a significant victory for US troops in Iraq. Insurgents launched a surprise attack Sunday against a heavily armed US convoy delivering new Iraqi currency to banks in Samarra, north of Baghdad. After a wild firefight, the largest since US President George Bush declared "major combat" over last May, the US said its soldiers had killed 54 Iraqis, most of them insurgents, and had dealt a major blow to those trying to undermine the occupation coalition.
But in the days that have followed these initial reports, the US military's version of events in Samarra has been heavily challenged. Local civilians, and even some US soldiers, now say that only eight people were killed, and most of them were civilians, including an elderly Iranian woman and a child who were on a pilgrimage. The US media was criticized for the way it relied solely on the US military for initial reports. While Washington has stuck to its official version, intelligence experts are saying it is another case of the US winning the skirmish, but losing a battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis.
One of the main reasons for the discrepancies is the lack of bodies found after the fight. US military spokesmen have repeatedly said that the surviving insurgents immediately took away most of their comrades' bodies. But media reports have cast doubt on the "mathematics" used by the US. Agence France-Presse points out, that according to US Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, a total of 60 fighters, divided into two groups, attacked two military convoys in the town. Another four fighters in a BMW attacked a separate engineering convoy.
If the US troops killed 46, as it was announced in earlier reports, and captured 11 of them, only three of the survivors would have been left to pick up the corpses, which is impossible, pure and simple. On the figures given by US Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, the calculus becomes even hazier –: with 54 killed, 22 wounded and one captured, 13 fighters remain unaccounted for.
Middle East Online quotes a "spokesman for the insurgency" who says eight people were killed, and only two of those were insurgents. The spokeman also told a French journalist that only 12 people took part, not the 64 or more spoken of by the Americans. "When the convoy entered the town, four groups of three people each took up position to attack it," he said.
Another version of the battle comes from Soldiers for the Truth, a website run by Col. David Hackworth, a much decorated Vietnam veteran, now a commentator and columnist. (Mr. Hackworth has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq.) Hackworth regularly receives e-mail from soldiers in Iraq which often contradict official version of events. Hackworth said he received one such e-mail from a "combat leader" in the Samarra battle, who writes "Hack, most of the casualties were civilians, not insurgents or criminals as being reported."
During the ambushes the tanks, brads and armored humvees hosed down houses, buildings, and cars while using reflexive fire against the attackers ... The belief in superior firepower as a counter-insurgency tactic is then extended down to the average Iraqi, with the hope that the Iraqis will not support the guerillas and turn them in to coalition forces, knowing we will blow the hell out of their homes or towns if they don't. Of course in too many cases, if the insurgents bait us and goad us into leveling buildings and homes, the people inside will then hate us (even if they did not before) and we have created more recruits for the guerillas.
The BBC reports that US troops used "enormously powerful weapons" in the battle, including 50 mm cannons mounted on Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and 120 mm tank rounds from the Abrams tanks. "Used in a densely populated urban area, built with flimsy mud-bricks, it is almost inconceivable that people well out of sight of the gunners were not also injured in the battle."
The US military said Tuesday battles like the one in Samarra would win "the hearts and minds" of ordinary Iraqis. "Attacks, in our view, are attacks against freedom-loving Iraqis that want to move on with life, versus those that are trying to drag them back to something akin to the former regime," Colonel Fred Rudesheim, US military overseer in Samarra. But as the Independent reports, seemingly confirming the observation made by the US 'combat leader' who e-mail Hackworth above, this view is not completely supported by the residents of Samarra, even those who cheered when the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown.
Dr. Mohammed Badie [the vice-president of Tikrit University] called the fedayeen "terrorists". But, as he stood in his partially wrecked bullet-pocked front room [in Samarra], he appeared close to despair. "All the people here are fed up and angry," he said. They want the Americans out of town ... They [the Americans] have to respect our feelings and traditions and customs, but we see the opposite. There is something here that is hidden from the American public. They call it 'Tha'ar' - revenge. That means that if anyone kills your friend, or your brother, you have to avenge it by killing an American soldier."
Time reports that in pursuing the insurgents, US troops "are frequently guilty of excesses" that are turning ordinary Iraqis into foes, and are often condemned by organizations like Amnesty International as "smacking of collective punishment."The Christian Science Monitor reports a similar reaction against US tactics after a raid Tuesday in northern Iraq.
"Before the Americans came, we heard a lot about their respect for human rights," says Khalid Mustafa Akbar, at a mourning tent for his three brothers who were shot dead while driving their pickup by a US patrol outside Tikrit last week. "But then we found it is only talk."
Hi Pakistan, a news website in Pakistan, reports the repeated questions about what happened in Samarra have "irked" the US military. "We have no reason to believe that these were inaccurate figures," said Gen. Kimmit, the US Army's deputy director of operations, in response to repeated questions from journalists about the reported death toll. "We stand by these numbers that were reported by the soldiers involved."
A new poll conducted by Oxford Research International for Oxford University and the BBC shows that Iraqis believe the best thing that happened over the past year was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But at the same time, they believe the worse thing that happened was the war, bombings and defeat. Over the next 12 months, they want peace and stability and a better life in material terms; what they feared most is insecurity, chaos, and civil war.
csmonitor.com |
