Doug Lorimer
In stark contrast to the endless coverage of the supposed "rescue" of Australian-born hostage Douglas Wood, most media has been silent on revelations of hundreds of Iraqi Arabs and Turkmen kidnapped by US-backed Kurdish police and militia.
The revelations are contained in a June 5 cable, written by the US embassy's regional coordinator in Kirkuk and sent to the White House, the Pentagon and the US embassy in Baghdad, and leaked to the Washington Post.
Quoting from the cable, the June 15 Post reported that the abductions — accompanied in some cases by torture and ransom demands — were part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by the two leading Kurdish parties — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) — "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner."
These two pro-US Kurdish parties control the Kirkuk city, and provincial governments and pro-US Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is the leader of the PUK. The PUK-KDP controlled peshmerga militia is the main pro-US military force in the predominantly Kurdish-inhabited northern three provinces of Iraq and provides Washington's puppet Iraqi army with its only politically reliable units.
Kirkuk is a city of 1 million inhabitants, just over a majority of whom are Kurds.
"Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint US-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of US forces", the Post reported. "The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief."
The paper also reported that the US military put the number of those abducted at about 180, but that "Arab and Turkmen politicians put the number at more than 600 and said many families feared retribution for coming forward".
However, the Wood rescue — ostensibly carried out by Iraqi forces — suits Washington's needs far more than the plight of Arabs in the north. With the latest opinion polls showing that up to 59% of US voters want some or all US troops withdrawn from Iraq, the White House and the Pentagon are seeking to present the "Iraqisation" of the US counterinsurgency war as Washington's "exit strategy".
However, a report in the June 21 Christian Science Monitor revealed that "Iraqisation" is not the real US war strategy, but only a PR exercise to fool US voters into believing Washington intends, some time in future, to end its military occupation of Iraq.
US bombing campaign
"The US military strategy in Iraq has been consistent for months now", the Boston-based daily reported. "Marine and Army operations from Najaf in the south to Fallujah in the heart of the Sunni triangle and on to Mosul in the north have ended with thousands of insurgents killed and captured and tons of enemy munitions destroyed with minimal US casualties."
As in last November's assault on the rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah, all of these US military operations have involved the use of massive firepower — the dropping of 220-kilogram bombs by F-16 fighter jets, extensive artillery barrages and use of attack helicopters.
"By any metric of tactical military success", the Monitor reported, "it's working, say analysts. US forces have strung together victory after victory...
"But if another measure of success is used — a reduction in the number and lethality of insurgent attacks — the US and the new Iraqi government are failing...
"The gap between tactical victories on the one hand, and few tangible improvements in the overall Iraqi security situation on the other, is creating a widening disagreement over whether the US is winning or losing the war in Iraq."
From Green Left Weekly, June 29, 2005.
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