Louay Alzaher
Last month, "civilised" Britain troops revenged themselves on the police headquarters of Basra city, because the police had arrested two British commandos, disguised in traditional Iraqi dress, who had fired on Iraqi police, killing one officer. Using six tanks, in the early hours of September 19 the British Army not only destroyed the Basra central police headquarters, but also smashed all signs of Iraqi national sovereignty under their wheels.
When the two commandos were arrested on September 17, the car in which they were travelling contained explosives, remote triggering devices, a mortar, two automatic guns and a sniper gun equipped with a night-vision scope.
On September 18, British armoured personnel vehicles surrounded the police station. Angry Iraqi protesters came to the assistance of the besieged Basra police, hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at the APVs, setting two of them on fire.
Then, shortly after midnight, the British Army returned, using six tanks to demolish the police station, and release the two commandos.
The whole incident raised a number of questions: Why did the British Authority in Iraq rush to use military force to release its two undercover commandos from Iraqi police custody, rather than go through Iraqi legal channels? Why, when they were first stopped, did the undercover commandos open fire on the police, killing one officer? What was the clandestine mission that the undercover commandos were engaged in?
Did the British authorities fear that the two detained commandos would reveal to Basra police detectives that they were engaged in a clandestine operation to carry out terrorist bombings, that could later be blamed on "Al Qaeda in Iraq" or on the anti-occupation cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia?
No explanation has been given by the British authorities as why the two soldiers were disguised as Iraqi civilians and had with them equipment for terrorist bombings and assassinations.
According to the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan, spokespeople for the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Unity movement website and police statements, the two undercover British commandos were about to plant a bomb when they were discovered by two Basra police officers, supported by some Mahdi Army personnel. When the two men were questioned about their identities, they refused to show their documents to the police. And when later questioned at the police station by detectives as to what military mission they were carrying out, they replied, "Ask our officer".
Faroq Ismaal, the international relations officer of the General
Union of Oil Employees (Iraq), told Green Left Weekly that Iraqi police have many times arrested Saudi Arabian Islamic extremists, but each time US troops came and freed them.
Iraqi Sunni clerics have repeatedly accused the US-led occupation forces of being behind terrorist bombings against Shiites across Iraq, bombings that the occupation forces attribute to the "Al Qaeda in Iraq" group led by Abu Musa al Zarqawi. These accusations are now being made by leading Shiite clerics.
On September 21, for example, leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Ahmed Jawad al Khalisi told the Arabiya TV channel that the intention behind terrorist bombings against Shiites is "to push people to ask the US for protection. There is no Zarqawi. There are invaders who have brought with them terrorists and terrorism."
On October 7, Shiite cleric Sheikh Ahmed al Hasani al Baghdadi told the Italian daily La Repubblica: "There is a savage conspiracy led by the US against Iraq to discredit the Iraqi resistance... Operations that target civilians are committed by the Americans, Mossad and some others who are protected by the Americans. Zarqawi is an illusory character created by the Americans to create sectarian clashes."
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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