Uneasy relationship fraught with distrust

BAGHDAD: When a hail of bullets hit the car in which Jinan Adnan and her family were riding, she followed her maternal instincts — and paid with her life. Adnan, 37, used her body to shield her three children in the back seat. Her husband and the children survived. She was mortally wounded. Because American soldiers had been in a firefight nearby around the time, it remains unclear if a US bullet killed her, though her husband, Aref Taha, says he saw four American soldiers firing in the car’s direction. “That’s what Americans do, isn’t that so?” Taha said. “They do this all the time in Iraq.” Taha said he did not lodge a complaint with the US military, which had no comment on the alleged incident. It is not clear why American soldiers would fire at a car carrying a family, although similar incidents have taken place when cars failed to stop at checkpoints. The four American soldiers moments earlier had checked the family’s car for weapons, Taha said.

But even if it can’t be proved that an American bullet killed Adnan, it’s the kind of heartbreaking incident that Iraqis routinely blame on US soldiers. Accounts of events such as the November 9 shooting of the Taha family have spread through mosques, coffee shops and markets of this crisis-ridden nation, fuelling anger and stoking the insurgency. The credibility Iraqis give to such accounts stems in part from the humiliation felt by many because of the US military presence in Iraq despite the formal end to the occupation on June 28. Many of the stories amount to little more than hearsay or are grossly exaggerated. But some are credible, and they have contributed to an image of American troops as trigger-happy, fond of excessive force and acting with little regard for Iraqi lives. The recent video of a US Marine shooting a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque has added to the furore. “They are criminals,” Zaid, Adnan’s 15-year-old son, said of the Americans on Friday. His father said he cannot find words to describe his rage at the loss of his wife of 16 years.

Making matters worse, US troops surrounded the cemetery in Mahmoudiya, an insurgent-heavy area south of Baghdad, while his wife was being buried on November 10. Anmar Faleh, who attended the funeral, said the Americans told the 1,000 mourners that they surrounded the cemetery because they believed insurgents killed in a gunfight the previous day were being buried. The US military has investigated virtually every case of unlawful killing or gross abuse by its soldiers in Iraq. Some of these investigations have led to trials and convictions. But Iraqis remain bitter. Killings are not the only cause of discontent. Other acts that provoke rage include raids of private homes, the detention of women and the perceived humiliation of men in front of women and children. The recent US military campaign to retake the Sunni city of Fallujah has given rise to an entirely new set of dangerous accusations. Residents who fled Fallujah this week speak of US soldiers defacing mosques, destroying minarets to deny insurgents their use as firing positions and causing widespread devastation. US military commanders say their men operate under difficult circumstances in a country where they don’t speak the language, don’t share the Islamic faith of most of its people and face the constant threat of attack.

Individual American soldiers complain that the rules governing when they can shoot are too restrictive and almost guarantee the insurgents the first shot. Despite the growing insurgent threat, the US military has not stopped making overtures to the local population, distributing toys and school supplies to children and funding thousands of small and medium development projects. “What you have is scared young men and women with the potential to strike hard when faced with any perceived threat,” said Marc Garlasco, a former Iraq analyst at the Pentagon who’s now with Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights group. Garlasco blames some of the unlawful killings of Iraqis by American soldiers on cultural differences as well as the difficulties of identifying threats in populated areas. Adding to the fear and suspicion are methods used by the insurgents: booby-trapping corpses, pretending to surrender and then opening fire and ramming checkpoints with explosives-laden cars or suicide bombers.

Nicole Choueiry, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, says the human rights group has not detected a pattern of such killings by US soldiers, but blames “recklessness” by the Americans for those that come to the attention of the London-based group. Frank Schaeffer, the American author of the recently published book Voices from the Front: Letters Home From America’s Military Family, says US soldiers in Iraq often long for a meaning for their mission and are eager to do good for Iraqis. “At the least sign of being appreciated by ordinary people in Iraq they are so happy,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, Germany’s Finance Minister Hans Eichel said yesterday that he and US Treasury Secretary John Snow had agreed on a proposal to write off as much as 80 percent of Iraq’s debt, capping a US push for debt forgiveness. Eichel said the agreement “created the basis on which the forgiveness of Iraqi debt can be settled mutually in the Paris Club,” a group of creditor nations owed about US$42 billion (euro32 billion) by Iraq.

“We agreed that there should be a write-off of debts in several stages amounting to 80 percent in total,” Eichel told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of finance officials from the Group of 20 industrial and developing countries. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder later stressed that “there is no final outcome — there are discussions, particularly with France,” which opposed last year’s US-led war in Iraq and has been calling for a lower level of debt relief. Still, the German-US agreement was being discussed by the Paris Club and “our expectation is that it will be accepted,” said Eichel’s spokesman, Joerg Mueller. Eichel said 30 percent of Iraq’s debt would be written off immediately, another 30 percent in a second stage “tied to a programme of the International Monetary Fund” and a further 20 percent “linked to the success of this programme.” “Within this framework, the necessary decisions can now be taken in the Paris Club,” Eichel said.