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"US Forces Encourage Looting"

By Ole Rothenborg

Translated article from Sweden's largest circulation daily,
Dagens Nyheter, Saturday April 11, 2003


Malmoe. Khaled Bayomi looks a bit surprised when he looks at the
American officer on TV regret that they don't have any resources to
stop the looting in Baghdad. 

- I happened to be there just as the US forces told people to
commence looting. 


Khaled Bayomi departed from Malmoe to Baghdad, as a human shield, and
arrived on the same day the fighting begun. About this he can tell us
plenty and for a long time, but the most interesting part of his
story is his witness-account about the great surge of looting now
taking place.  

- I had visited a few friends that live in a worn-down area just
beyond the Haifa Avenue, on the west bank of the Tigris River. It was
April 8 and the fighting was so heavy I couldn't make it over to the
other side of the river. On the afternoon it became perfectly quit,
and four American tanks pulled up in position on the outskirts of the
slum area. From these tanks we heard anxious calls in Arabic, which
told the population to come closer. 

- During the morning everybody that tried to cross the streets had
been fired upon. But during this strange silence people eventually
became curious. After three-quarters of an hour the first Baghdad
citizens dared to come forward. At that moment the US solders shot
two Sudanese guards, who were posted in front of a local
administrative building, on the other side of the Haifa Avenue.  

- I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered. Then
they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic
translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the
building. Rumors spread rapidly and the house was cleaned out.
Moments later tanks broke down the doors to the Justice Department,
residing in the neighboring building, and looting was carried on to
there.  

- I was standing in a big crowd of civilians that saw all this
together with me. They did not take any part in the looting, but were
to afraid to take any action against it. Many of them had tears of
shame in their eyes. The next morning looting spread to the Museum of
Modern Art, which lies another 500 meters to the north. There was
also two crowds in place, one that was looting and another one that
disgracefully saw it happen.  


Do you mean to say that it was the US troops that initiated the
looting? 

- Absolutely. The lack of scenes of joy had the US forces in need of
images on Iraqi's who in different ways demonstrated their disgust
with Saddam's regime. 


But people in Baghdad tore down a big statue of Saddam? 

- They did? It was a US tank that did this, close to the hotel where
all the journalists live. Until noon on the 9th of April, I didn't
see a single torn picture of Saddam anywhere. If people had wanted to
turn over statues they could have gone for some of the many smaller
ones, without the help of an American tank. Had this been a political
uproar then people would have turned over statues first and looted
afterwards.  

Back home in Sweden Khaled Bayomi is PhD student at the University of
Lund, where he since ten years teaches and researches about conflicts
in the Middle East. He is very well informed about the conflicts, as
well as he is on the propaganda war. 


Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?

- He is not gone. He has dissolved his army in tiny, tiny groups.
This is why there never was any big battle. Saddam dissolved Iraq as
a state already in 1992 and have shad a parallel tribal structure
going, which since then has been altogether decisive for the country.
When USA begun the war Saddam completely abandoned the state, and now
depends on this tribal structure. This is why he left the big cities
without any battle.  

- Now USA are forced to do everything themselves, because there is no
political force from within that would challenge the structure in
place. The two challengers who came in from the outside were
immediately lynched.  


Khaled Bayomi refers to what happened to general Nazar al-Khazraji,
who escaped from Denmark, and Shia-muslim leader Abdul Majid al-
Khoei, who both where chopped to pieces by a raging crowd in Najaf,
because they where perceived to be American marionettes. According to
Danish newspaper BT, al-Khazraji was picked up by the CIA in Denmark
and then brought to Iraq. 

- Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq, that has not said
how long they will stay, not brought forward any time-plan for
civilian rule and no date for general elections. Now awaits only a
big chaos.  

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2914.htm

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