Doug Lorimer
On May 1, a video was released to the international media in which Douglas Wood, an 63-year-old Australian citizen and US resident, announced he had been captured by an Iraqi resistance group. Pleading for his life, Wood appealed on the video to US President George Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard to order coalition forces out of Iraq.
A statement issued by Wood's captors with the video said it had been released to coincide with the presence in Iraq of Australian defence minister Robert Hill, who was visiting some of the 450 Australian troops who are being deployed to southeastern Iraqi province of Muthanna. It is believed that Wood was taken prisoner only a few days before the video was released.
"My captors are fiercely patriotic. They believe in a strong, united Iraq looking after its own destiny", Wood said on the videotape.
Responsibility for Wood's capture was taken by the Shura (Consultative) Council of the Mujahideen of Iraq, which had been the umbrella organisation of the Iraqi resistance fighters in Fallujah prior to the US military's assault on the city last November. Around 6000 people were killed in that attack, and the city reduced to rubble.
The US-led occupation coalition has posted a reward of US$50,000 for the information leading to the capture of Sheik Abdullah al Janabi, the Sunni cleric who heads the Shura Council of the Mujahideen.
Speaking on ABC Radio National's May 2 PM program, Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, said that the Shura Council of the Mujahideen had been responsible for taking hostage a number of foreign civilians. "On one occasion they kidnapped three Jordanians and a Sudanese national. That was in June last year." All four were released after the companies they worked for announced they would withdraw from Iraq.
Continuing, Williams said: "In September they claimed responsibility for downing a Marine Corps drone, which was flying over the area, and then also in September they released a Turkish hostage, a fellow named Ayatullah Gezmen."
Gezmen, a 43-year-old translator for the Turkish Bilimtur transport company, was held captive in Fallujah for 52 days before being released. Shortly before his release, Bilimtur announced it was withdrawing from Iraq.
Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, around 200 foreigner civilians have been taken hostage, and at least 33 have been executed. Twenty remain in captivity. Wood is the fourth Australian taken hostage in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Australian Shiite cleric Sheik Mohammed Naji and an unidentified contractor were taken hostage last September, and journalist John Martinkus was taken in October. All were released unharmed.
The May 3 Sydney Morning Herald reported that Wood, who has lived in the US since 1992, had worked as an engineer for the giant Bechtel construction firm for 25 years before starting his own construction company.
On the video, Wood said he came to Iraq almost a year ago to work on "reconstruction projects with the American military". The accompanying statement by the Iraqi resistance fighters said Wood had confessed to having carried out "dirty acts on our soil".
An May 3 Age article by freelance journalist Ilya Gridneff explained that Wood, whom Gridneff had met in the Sheraton in Iraq last year, was unapologetic about being in the war-torn country to make money. "He made no bones about his intentions in the postwar nation. He talked openly about his experiences as a contractor who could liaise and oversee numerous building projects organised by the Coalition Provisional Authority in its distribution of tenders and contracts."
According to the SMH, Wood's company won two contracts from the US occupation authority — one to renovate buildings inside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone and another to build a US military camp outside Fallujah.
On May 2, Nick Warner, deputy secretary of Canberra's foreign affairs department, was appointed to lead a six-member "hostage response team" picked from the highest ranks of the military and Australian Federal Police.
Howard declared on May 2 that his government would not negotiate with Wood's captors, whom he, of course, dubbed "terrorists". The next day, however, Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York that his government was prepared to negotiate with Wood's captors, but would not pay any ransom or end its participation in the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Whatever happens to Wood, Canberra's continued support for the US-led occupation of the oil-rich Persian Gulf country will put other Australian lives at risk in Iraq. Those most directly at risk are 450 Australian combat troops presently being deployed to
Muthanna province to partially replace 1600 Dutch occupation troops withdrawn from Iraq a few months ago.
On April 19, Hadi al Amiri, the provincial secretary of the Badr Corps, the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main parties in the Iraqi puppet regime, told ABC correspondent Mark Colvin that Australian troops should be pulling out of Iraq, not setting up camp in Muthanna.
Four days later, Sheik Muhnad al Garayi, a local representative of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's anti-occupation movement, told Australian journalists that Canberra's troops were not welcome in Iraq.
"We want all the forces to get out of Iraq, not new forces to come in", Muhnad said. "Our message to all of the occupation forces is to leave Iraq as soon as possible. But now they are sending Australians here. It is comprehensible to us. I would like to ask the Australian people 'what is the reason for your troops to come over here?' We have our own police, our militia. We are from this moment looking at the Australians as occupying troops."
From Green Left Weekly, May 11, 2005.
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