Crime confirmed

Iraq: The second batch of U.S. military documents released by Wikileaks blows the lid off U.S. complicity in war crimes in Iraq.

THE second tranche of United States military documents put out by Wikileaks provides further confirmation of American war crimes in Iraq. The 400,000 documents released by the whistleblower organisation provide clinching evidence that the U.S. administration has been aware of the widespread killings of innocent civilians in Iraq, despite official claims to the contrary. They also reveal that thousands of Iraqis were routinely tortured in full view of the U.S. occupation forces.

Julian Assange, the moving force behind Wikileaks, said at a press conference in London on October 23 that the released documents revealed the truth about the war in Iraq. The attack on the truth by war starts long before the war starts and continues long after the war ends, Assange said. He gave instances of earlier wars, such as the Vietnam War. That war was precipitated on the basis of a huge lie the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident. Assange said that by releasing the American military's Iraq war logs, his group hoped to correct some of the attacks on the truth that occurred before the war, during the war and which has continued since the Iraqi war officially ended.

Senior Obama administration officials have kept on repeating that Assange has blood on his hands for allegedly imperilling the lives of American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, however, had to admit that Wikileaks had so far not let out classified information of the kind that could have endangered the lives of American servicemen. All the same, Assange has been turned into a public enemy by the Obama administration and put on the U.S. government's official watch list. His personal computer and papers went missing recently after he checked in for a flight.

Countries like Sweden, from which he operated freely until recently, are now cold-shouldering him under pressure from Washington. He has been under constant surveillance and many of his associates have started leaving the group, unable to take the pressure. Wikileaks' funding has been adversely affected as donors have been threatened by the U.S. administration. But the international community has generally applauded the courageous endeavour undertaken by Wikileaks.

The release of the Iraq war documents has been described as the greatest leak in the history of the American military. The documents, which are basically eyewitness accounts of American soldiers from the field of action, are written from their perspective. The logs mention civilian deaths occurring in American and insurgent attacks on 34,000 different occasions.

The latest documents released by Wikileaks reveal 15,000 more Iraqi civilian deaths between 2004 and 2008 than were previously accounted for. This has raised the official Iraqi toll during the occupation to 122,000 dead. Many of those killed were civilians trying to navigate roadblocks set up by the U.S. forces on busy roads. The documents reveal that a particular U.S. helicopter gunship was involved in more than one instance of targeting civilians who were trying to surrender.

Earlier this year, Wikileaks showed footage of an Apache gunship targeting two journalists from Reuters and civilians who had rushed to help them. Private military contractors, such as the notorious Blackwater Group, hired by the Americans were responsible for many of the horrific incidents involving civilians. The Wikileaks documents give several instances of these contractors, hailing from different parts of the world, running amok and targeting civilians. Many of the cases were hushed up or not even reported.

The U.S. Central Command website continues to insist that only 65,185 civilians and 13,754 members of the Iraqi security services were killed between 2004 and 2008. Estimates of those killed, compiled by independent sources, put the casualties at between 100,000 and a million. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had stated that up to 151,000 people had been killed in Iraq until 2008 as a result of the violence triggered by the American occupation. The British science journal Lancet quotes a figure of 650,000 people killed in the conflict. The number of Iraqis killed as a result of the American occupation, according to experts, is far higher than even what the Wikileaks logs reveal.

The documents also conclusively show that the American occupation forces turned a blind eye to hundreds of cases of reported torture, rape and abuse of civilians by the Iraqi troops they had trained and armed. The leaked logs reveal that there were more than a thousand instances of torture that the American military was aware of. As recently as December 2009, the Americans were given a video showing Iraqi troops executing a blindfolded prisoner. The report named one of the Iraqi officers involved in the extra-judicial killing, but the U.S. authorities took no action. The recently released documents record American military officials as saying that no investigation is necessary and passing the file back to the Iraqi Ministry concerned.

Excuse for not acting

The Pentagon said in a statement in October that when reports of Iraqi abuses were received it routinely notified the Iraqi authorities concerned. A high-level Pentagon directive had barred the U.S. forces from investigating. The instruction not to investigate was handed down in May 2006. The order stated tersely: Provided that the U.S. military forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted unless directed by HHQ. Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, told the American media that the Wikileaks logs provided official evidence that there was a cover-up of crimes, either by turning suspects over or torturing them directly.

The U.S. administration conveniently hid behind the facade of international law as Iraq became a sovereign country in 2004 after a puppet government was installed in Baghdad. The U.S. argued that it had no control over Iraq's armed forces and, therefore, no legal power to order them to investigate cases involving torture. It conveniently chose to forget that it had trained, armed and financed the new Iraqi army. The U.S., according to many observers, knowingly violated the U.N. Convention against Torture. The Convention, which the U.S. ratified in 1994, forbids the transfer of detainees to other countries where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture. The U.S. has transferred thousands of prisoners to Iraqi jails despite being aware of the fact that they could be subjected to torture. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that the U.S. has an obligation to investigate the handing over of prisoners to Iraqi prison authorities so that they could be tortured and killed. He said that this was necessary not only to ensure that the perpetrators were brought to justice but also to provide the victims with adequate remedy and reparation.

The documents also throw further light on the U.S. role in fomenting the sectarian divide. During the early years of the occupation, Washington had thrown its weight behind the Shia parties and had stood aside as they waged a virtual pogrom against the Sunnis in cities like Baghdad. But then the U.S. army changed tactic midway to undercut Al Qaeda, which had succeeded in taking the battle to the occupation forces in central Iraq. The Americans lured Sunni tribal chiefs and fighters aligned to Abu Musah al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), to form the Awakening Council. The Americans re-employed elements from Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards and created the Wolf Brigade. The documents mention the role of the Wolf Brigade in brutally extracting confessions from prisoners handed over by the Americans. The Brigade was trained by an American army officer who had previously worked in El Salvador to teach brutal counter-insurgency tactics to the army there during the bloody civil war that had gripped the country.

The American occupation forces succeeded in their short-term goal of diminishing the AQM as a serious military threat by allowing Awakening Council fighters to indulge in sectarian killings of their own. The leaked war records also serve to remind people that it was the American occupation of Iraq that gave Al Qaeda an opportunity to set up base in Iraq. Al Qaeda bases were non-existent there during Saddam Hussein's time. Before invading Iraq, the Bush administration had alleged that the secular government of Saddam Hussein had helped Al Qaeda plan the September 11 attacks.

The Iraq war logs provide new details about the bloody battle of Samarra in April 2004 as the occupation forces tried to dislodge the resistance. They detail the use of massive air power to subdue the resistance. The city was pummelled into submission. Reporters who had covered the fighting recall that among the hundreds of casualties, many were women and children. The U.S. has not admitted to any civilian casualties. Other Iraqi towns like Falluja were also reduced to rubble. The Americans have not given any details about civilian casualties in Falluja either. The international group Iraq Body Count has said that more than 1,200 Iraqi civilians perished as the U.S. regained control of Falluja. The war logs detail how 146 deaths were reported on a single day (October 17, 2006) from different parts of Iraq. The deaths were a result of clashes between the insurgents and the occupation forces, suicide bombings, targeted killings and beheadings. The incidents of that one day highlighted the mess the Americans had got the country into.

The war logs also contain chatter about alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq's internal affairs. U.S. officials have been crying hoarse for years now that the Iranians have been training and supplying arms to various Iraqi groups. The Americans had said way back in 2007, without providing any evidence, that the Iranians were helping Shia militants in southern Iraq. The Wikileaks logs only refer to doubts and surmises about Iranian activities in Iraq.

As the veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk has noted, Iranian military material dating back from the Iran-Iraq war can be found all over Iraq. He points out that most of the attacks against the occupation forces were carried out by Sunni militants who had no love lost for the government in Teheran.

International human rights groups have called on the Obama administration to investigate the reports that the U.S. forces systematically tortured and abused Iraqi detainees. They have also demanded that the Iraqi government prosecute officials responsible for gross human rights violations. A special army unit acting under the direct supervision of the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is said to be involved in targeting political rivals. Al-Maliki alleged that the Wikileaks expose was timed to derail his chances of retaining the top job. Al-Maliki is continuing as Prime Minster after the parliamentary elections returned a hung verdict.

Tariq Aziz sentenced to death

A few days after the release of the Wikileaks logs, Iraq's highest court, the Iraqi High Tribunal, passed the sentence of death on Tariq Aziz, Iraq's long-serving Foreign Minister under Saddam Hussein. The 74-year-old Aziz was held responsible for wilful killing, torture and disappearance of persons. The main accusation against Aziz was that he had specifically targeted members of Al-Maliki's Dawa Party, which at the time was waging a struggle backed by the U.S. and Iran to overthrow the government. Aziz was not known to be involved in internal security issues. He was the man entrusted by Saddam to do diplomatic trouble-shooting on behalf of the Iraqi government. Aziz had tried desperately to avert the Iraq war by meeting with world leaders, including the Pope. He had repeatedly emphasised that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Aziz's lawyer told the media that the timing of the court's decision was meant to divert the attention of the Iraqi people from the crimes that occurred in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam, as revealed in the Wikileaks expose. Aziz has steadfastly refused to give evidence against Saddam and has continued to refer to the late leader, who was executed on the orders of the same court, as the President. The Assyrian Church in Iraq as well as the Vatican have urged the Iraqi authorities to commute his sentence and release him. Aziz is a Christian. After the Americans entered Iraq, the country's Christian minority has been targeted by militant Sunni and Shia groups. Some episodes involving the targeting of Christians, especially kidnapping for ransom, have been revealed in the Wikileaks logs.

The U.S. government should also investigate whether its forces have breached international law by transferring thousands of detainees from U.S. to Iraqi custody despite the clear risk of torture, a statement from the Human Rights Watch said British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that Wikipedia's contention that it had uncovered more than 15,000 new civilian deaths was extremely serious and needed to be investigated. Anything that suggests that basic rules of war and conflict and of engagement have been broken or that torture has been in any way condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked into, he said.