[R-G] Fisk: ‘Collateral Damage’ Not Much Different From Targeted Killing

[Anthony Fenton]

‘Collateral Damage’ Not Much Different From Targeted Killing
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081011_collateral_damage_not_much_different_from_targeted_killing/
Posted on Oct 11, 2008
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20081011_collateral_damage_not_much_different_from_targeted_killing/

By Robert Fisk

Editor’s note: This article was originally posted at The Independent.

All kinds of horrors flop on to my Beirut doormat. There’s The  
Independent’s mobile phone bill, a slew of blood-soaked local Lebanese  
newspapers—“Saleh Aridi’s blood consolidates [Druze] reconciliation”,  
was among the goriest of the past few days—and then there are files  
from the dark memory lane through which all Middle East history has to  
pass.

The repulsive Baath party archives of Saddam Hussein are the latest to  
find a place on my coffee table, all marked “Secret”, unpublished— 
though they formed the basis for the old man’s trial and for his  
depraved hanging by the Iraqi government more than two years ago. I  
reprint them now without excuse, for they have a bitter taste in the  
“new” Iraq and in the “new” Afghanistan about which we still fantasise  
as we send more Nato troops into Asia’s greatest military graveyard.

The documentary evidence of Saddam’s brutal inquiry into the killings  
at the Shia Muslim village of Dujail in 1982 provides frightening,  
fearful testament to the earnestness and cruelty of totalitarianism,  
the original files of Saddam’s mukhabarat security services in their  
hunt for the men who tried to assassinate the Iraqi dictator more than  
a quarter of a century ago. Saddam was then the all-powerful leader of  
a nation at war with Iran—an eight-year conflict that would cost the  
lives of more than a million Muslims on both sides—and whose most  
ruthless enemies were members of the Iranian-supported Al-Dawa Party  
(including a certain Nouri al-Maliki). Saddam’s closest allies at this  
time were the Gulf oil sheikhdoms—and the United States, which was  
sending military supplies, chemical precursors and satellite  
reconnaissance photographs to Baghdad to assist Saddam in his war  
against Iran, a nation he had invaded two years earlier.

On his passage through Dujail, Saddam’s heavily armed convoy was  
attacked by 10 villagers armed with Kalashnikov rifles. All were  
killed at the time or hunted down and murdered later. In their  
subsequent investigations, however, the mukhabarat—in this case  
operating under the ominous title of the “Regime Crimes Liaison  
office”—were able to use the system of tribe and sub-tribe in Dujail  
to tease out the names of everyone associated with the attackers.

The patriarchal lineage—wherein all males carry their father’s,  
grandfather’s, and great-grandfather’s names, sometimes back eight  
generations—enabled the secret police to trace the male line of entire  
families and thus to liquidate them all. Their womenfolk were  
tortured, many of them raped. The men were butchered. One grandfather  
lost all his sons and grandsons. His “treacherous” family line came to  
an end. The ruthlessness of Saddam’s “Crimes Liaison Office” comes  
across in their surviving reports.

We were assigned by the party to submit the names of the opposing and  
malignant members of the treacherous Al-Dawa Party ...

A comrade’s greeting. Dun Shakir to the Comrade Member of the State  
Command. Subject/Security report: Through the fact that the criminals  
from Al-Dawa Party have attacked our Great Commander the Secretariat  
of the State, the Striving Comrade Saddam Hussein, we raise the names  
of the hostile families that are against the party and revolution,  
knowing that we already raised several reports and surveys on these  
criminals whose names are below.”

And there follows a sheaf of files listing the accused families and  
their menfolk. Of the Al-Tayyar sub-tribe of the Abu Haideri tribe of  
Dujail, for example, there is a great grandfather called Abdullah with  
three children—Asad, Mohammed and Suheil—who themselves have nine  
children—Sabri, Ali, Nayif, Jasim, Hassan, Qadir, Kabsun, Yasin and  
Hani. Saddam’s secret police fell upon their sons: Ammar, Abdel Salam,  
Qasim, Sahib, Sa’ad, another Qasim (son of Qadir), Hashim, Ali, a  
second Ali (son of Yassin) and Thamir.

All of the latter were executed on Saddam’s orders. So was another of  
Jasim’s other sons—Nabil—and four more of Hassan’s sons—Hussein (who  
was indeed involved in the assassination attempt on Saddam) and Fatih  
and Salim and Mohammed and Mahmoud. Five more of their first cousins— 
Ahmed, Abdullah, Mohammed, Mahmoud and Abbas—were also done to death.  
Thus only one male issue of great-grandfather Abdullah’s entire family  
escaped Saddam’s execution squads. But these were just the male  
children of one family. Saddam’s murderers were after many more. The  
investigators at Saddam’s trial noticed one telling trait among his  
secret police officers. If they were reporting an execution, they  
would scribble their signature. If they were sending intelligence  
information, they would sign their names in full. After the fall of  
Saddam, of course, it was not difficult to match up the full names  
with the scribbled signatures.

But now I ask a question. When US troops massacre Iraqi civilians in  
Haditha because their buddy has been murdered, what is the difference  
between their revenge and that of Saddam? When a Taliban attack on  
Nato forces in Afghanistan provokes a US air strike on a village and  
leaves women and children torn to pieces in the ruins—this now seems  
the inevitable result—what is the difference between those innocent  
deaths and the destruction of the families of Abdullah’s grandchildren  
in Dujail?

Yes, I know that Saddam’s thugs selected the relatives of his enemies  
and we merely kill anyone in the area of our enemies. And yes, I grant  
you the outcome is not the same. The Iraqi dictator was hanged in  
Baghdad in 2006, cursed by his hooded Shia “Al-Dawa” executioners as  
he stood on the scaffold. For us, there will be no hangings.