posted June 18, 2005 11:01 AM
Saddam is going to be tried on charges that date back to bush sr's support for him throughout the 80's when he killed with mass executions...and from the 91 uprising that bush sr directly called upon the iraqi people to perform...the largest mass graves uncovered so far came from this 91 uprising.....this report was written over a year later....when bush sr and his secretary of defense dick cheney were still in office allowing saddam to continue with his cheat and retreat tactics......
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ENDLESS TORMENT
The 1991 Uprising in Iraq And Its Aftermath
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/Iraq926.htm
Copyright June 1992 by Human Rights Watch
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 92-72351
ISBN 1-56432-069-3
Summary
Saddam Hussein's record of brutally suppressing even mild dissent is well-known. When the March 1991 uprising confronted his regime with the most serious internal challenge it had ever faced, government forces responded with atrocities on a predictably massive scale. The human rights repercussions continue to be felt throughout the country.
In their attempts to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians by firing indiscriminately into residential areas; executing young people on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects, especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack unarmed civilians as they fled the cities.
One year later, the fate of thousands of Kurds and Shi'a who were seized during the suppression of the uprising remains unknown. While many are believed to be in detention, the government has provided little information about their location and legal status.
The rebels also committed gross abuses during the uprising, summarily executing suspected members of the security forces, including many who were in custody. Middle East Watch also condemns these abuses, though we note that they were not so systematic and sustained as those committed by the government.
The revelations began during the very first days of the revolt and have continued since. When rebels seized government buildings, they freed prisoners and captured huge amounts of documentary evidence of past abuses. Later, the flight of refugees beyond the reach of Saddam made it possible for an unprecedented number of Iraqis to speak publicly about past abuses. Since then, continuing rebel control over much of northeastern Iraq has enabled Kurds and foreigners to travel extensively through the Kurdish countryside for the first time since the Baghdad regime depopulated and sealed it off.[13]
Human rights workers are only beginning to sift through the mounds of documents, videotapes and material evidence captured from Iraqi security agencies.[14] Forensic experts are examining several mass graves that may finally provide answers to the fate of tens of thousands C Kurdish sources estimate the number at 182,000 C of Kurds who disappeared during the late 1980s in the so-called Anfal Operation, Saddam's campaign to depopulate the Kurdish countryside.[15]
The refugees interviewed for this report provided ample testimony about past abuses. It was difficult to find a Kurd who had not lost one or more relatives during the Anfal. In the refugee camps in Iran, MEW also encountered survivors of the 1988 chemical gas attack on the border town of Halabja in which 5,000 persons are thought to have died. Many had fled from repression before, and a 35-year-old accountant interviewed by MEW was surely not the only three-time refugee: he fled in 1975 during clashes between Baghdad and Mullah Mustapha Barzani's pesh merga (Kurdish rebels), in 1988 when Iraqi jets dropped chemical gas on Halabja, and again in 1991 after the defeat of the uprising in Suleimaniyya.
The 1991 uprising was the most serious internal challenge Saddam Hussein has had to face during his twelve years in power. Every major city in the north and south of the country except Mosul fell into the hands of rebels and their sympathizers. Iraqi soldiers, confronted with a popular uprising immediately after being routed in the Gulf war, deserted or defected by the thousands. The survival of the regime was very much in doubt for about two weeks until loyalist troops, led by the elite Republican Guard, began finally to extinguish the insurrection city by city. By the time it was over, thousands of civilians and government forces had been killed[74] and countless atrocities had been committed by both sides.
Once the loyalist troops regrouped and mounted their counteroffensive, only massive foreign assistance or intervention could have saved the ill-equipped and inexperienced rebels. With little more than Kalashnikovs, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and a few captured tanks and artillery pieces, the Shi'a and Kurdish rebels were almost defenseless against helicopter gunships and indiscriminate mortar and artillery barrages. They had few anti-tank weapons and even fewer surface-to-air missiles.
The civilian toll was high throughout the country. Thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery cannons and helicopters; and later, when security forces rolled into a city and executed persons on the streets, in homes and in hospitals. The violence was heaviest in the south, where a smaller portion of the local population had fled than in Kurdish areas, owing partly to the danger of escaping through the south's flat, exposed terrain. Those who remained in the south were at the mercy of advancing government troops, who went through neighborhoods, summarily executing hundreds of young men and rounding up thousands of others.[78]
Iraqi authorities have long encouraged soldiers to keep goods they seize during their operations. Officers tell their subordinates, "The heads of the people are for me, their property, for you," ("Ru'ous al-nas ilayya, wa'amwaalihum ilayka") according to a 22-year-old Kurd from Sayyid Saddiq. Whether apocryphal or not, this motto seemed to have inspired soldiers in much of post-uprising Iraq. Their plundering of stores and homes was likened by several refugees to the looting of Kuwaiti private property by Iraqi soldiers during the early days of the occupation of that country.[88]
U.S. Policy: "You Broke Saddam's Leg and Told Us To Break His Head"[91]
With bewilderment and bitterness, many of the refugees asked MEW interviewers why the U.S. administration failed to support the uprising after having incited Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. The answer remains a matter of speculation. The contradictions of U.S. policy may have reflected a lack of sufficient concern for the consequences of the call to rebel; it may have been due to miscalculation; or it may be attributable to a preoccupation with political considerations unrelated to the well-being of the residents of Iraq. Whatever the reasons, the Bush Administration contributed to the making of a tragedy that left thousands of civilians massacred by Saddam's troops and nearly two million forced to flee their homes.
The strongest signal of U.S. support for a popular rebellion came toward the end of the air war, when President Bush declared on February 15; "[T]here's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside."[92] This remark was heard by Iraqis on the Voice of America.[93]
Soon after the uprising began, however, fears of a disintegrating Iraq led the Administration to distance itself from the insurgents. Officials downplayed the significance of the revolts and spelled out a policy of nonintervention in Iraq's internal affairs. On March 5, Rear Admiral Mike McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that "chaotic and spontaneous" uprisings were under way in thirteen Iraqi cities, but stated the Pentagon's view that Saddam would prevail because of the rebels' "lack of organization and leadership."[94] White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater appeared to discount the insurgents when he stated the same day, "It's not clear to us what the purpose or extent of the fighting is."[95]
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said on March 5 that "it would be very difficult for us to hold the coalition together for any particular course of action dealing with internal Iraqi politics, and I don't think, at this point, our writ extends to trying to move inside Iraq."[96] Marine Major General Martin Brandtner, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added the same day, "There is no move on the [part of] U.S. forces...to let any weapons slip through [to the rebels], or to play any role whatsoever in fomenting or assisting any side."[97] State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained on March 6: "We don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
On March 7, when the rebels in the south were in control of several cities and the revolt in the north was gathering momentum, Secretary of State James Baker was asked if the United States preferred continued Baath Party rule to an Islamic revolution in Iraq. Baker replied: "I'm not going to make a choice because I'm not sure that's what the choices are necessarily. I will say this C we do not want to see any changes in the territorial integrity of Iraq and we do not want to see other countries actively making efforts to encourage changes."
Consequently, U.S. occupation forces who were stationed only a few miles from al-Nasiriyya, Samawa and Basra did nothing to help the rebels who rose up in these cities. Soldiers watched helplessly as Iraqi troops devastated the cities, and wounded civilians fled on foot to U.S. bases nearby telling of the atrocities that were taking place. Thomas Isom, a U.S. Army lieutenant, described what he saw from his post at the edge of Samawa:
They fired at the hospital twice. We were watching them shell the train station and other small houses. This was simply designed to kill civilians or terrorize them, which it did. It did not have a military purpose, just artillery impacts on large concentrations of civilians.
An officer at the same post said of Iraq's Soviet-made H-18 helicopters that were firing rockets at Samawa residents: "We could have used our own helicopters to take them out. We could hear them come over our heads."[98]
The Administration did sternly warn Iraqi authorities on March 7 against the use of chemical weapons during the unrest,[99] but equivocated about Iraq's use of helicopter gunships against civilians. President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker stated in mid-March that helicopter gunships should not be used, but other Administration officials gave conflicting signals. In the end, the aircraft were employed with impunity to attack rebels and civilians alike, and proved instrumental in quelling the insurrection. Inquiries to Administration spokespersons about why the warnings had not been enforced met with equivocation.
The decision to permit Iraq to use helicopters in suppressing the revolt has been the subject of lively debate. Some believe that the rebels would have triumphed had helicopters been included in the Allies' cease-fire ban on flights by Iraqi aircraft. Others believe that a ban on helicopters would have merely prolonged the bloodshed without altering the outcome.
But on March 21, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams acknowledged that U.S. policy regarding the use of helicopters was not clear. While admitting that "dozens" of helicopters were being used against the rebels, Williams declined to say whether U.S. forces would fire at these aircraft. He answered affirmatively when asked: "Is our policy somewhat ambiguous?"
Deputy White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk, when asked on March 29 about Kurdish requests for U.S. attacks on the helicopters, responded as if the matter concerned only which side prevailed in the conflict, not whether the matter was one of preventing gross human rights abuses: "The issue of internal unrest in Iraq is an issue that has to be settled between the government and the people of Iraq. It's a decision for the people of Iraq to make."[106]
After Iraqi military forces crushed the uprising, the U.S. continued to stress the limits of its role in Iraq.[107] Secretary Baker, on April 7 in Turkey, condemned Saddam's "crimes against the Iraqi people," but stated "We are not prepared to go down the slippery slope of being sucked into a civil war [sic]. We cannot police what goes on inside Iraq, and we cannot be the arbiters of who shall govern Iraq....We repeatedly said that could only be done by the Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the administration moved to counter the accusation that it had encouraged the uprising that led to the humanitarian disaster. In a carefully crafted statement, State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said on April 2 that the Bush Administration had "never, ever stated as either a military or a political goal...the removal of Saddam Hussein." She said that although the United States had said that normal relations with Iraq were "next to impossible" while Saddam Hussein was in power, it did not "cal[l] on [the] Iraqi people to put their lives on the line to overthrow the current leadership."
President Bush insisted three days later,
I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shiites in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man.
The president also claimed, "I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."
These protestations rang hollow to many of the Shi'a and Kurds interviewed by MEW after the uprising who had clearly expected to receive U.S. help once they rose up against Saddam. A young Kurdish refugee in Iran told MEW, "You [the U.S.] broke Saddam's leg, and told us to break his head. And then?" He stretched out his hands and raised his eyebrows, as if to answer his own question.
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quote:
To be against removing Saddam Hussein is effectively a vote for Saddam Hussein--jwhop