- BAGHDAD -- Dr. Talib Abdul
Jabar Al Sayeed was asleep at home with 11 relatives, he said, when U.S.
troops surrounded his house, stormed his gate and began firing.
-
- At least three dozen American soldiers blazed away for
more than 60 minutes in the early morning hours of July 31, the
British-trained
physician recounted recently, pointing to the hundreds of bullet holes
that still mark his stately home.
-
- "I shouted at them with all my strength to stop
shooting," said Al Sayeed, 62. "I will open the door. Please
give me a chance."
-
- Eventually, Al Sayeed said, the commanding officer told
him he was sorry: They had raided the wrong house. But not before a soldier
burst in and struck Al Sayeed with a rifle butt, knocking him down. The
soldier kicked him in the ribs - an X-ray later showed they were cracked
- and others bound his hands with plastic cuffs as his wife and young
nieces
cowered in the next room. They also took his three grown sons in for
questioning,
and they remain in a military jail in the south of Iraq.
-
- Three weeks after they were first asked about it,
military
spokesmen said they were unable to track down details of the incident,
so it's unknown whether the military disputes Al Sayeed's account.
-
- But his story is one of dozens of tales that angry Iraqis
tell of sometimes tragic errors by U.S. troops. Iraqis and international
observers say the American military's tactics - sometimes directing
overwhelming
force at houses filled with women and children - have resulted in the
detentions
of hundreds of innocent people and the deaths of others, although how many
is unknown.
-
- They say the military does little to document the raids
or the mistakes, and that the mistaken raids and civilian deaths are
creating
new enemies as fast as the old ones are eliminated.
-
- Military officials acknowledge that there have been
mistakes,
but say that raids, arrests and accidental deaths of civilians, while
regrettable,
are the harsh realities of guerrilla war.
-
- They note that U.S. troops are facing the most difficult
sort of military task imaginable: trying to stamp out a determined enemy
who blends in with the local population.
-
- Coalition soldiers have been hit with an average of 12
guerrilla attacks per day. Snipers fire at them from buildings, grenades
are dropped on them from overpasses and their Humvees explode in sheets
of fire after running over hidden mines.
-
- Seventy coalition soldiers have been killed by hostile
fire since May 1, when the conventional war ended. Dozens of Iraqi
civilians
died in car bomb attacks on the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations
compound
and a mosque in Najaf.
-
- "My soldiers are operating in a low-intensity
conflict
environment," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in
Iraq. "And they're getting attacked every day - at service stations
. . . in hospitals, on the road - and of course, they're going to be
prepared
to defend themselves and fight."
-
- Added Lt. Col. Guy Shields, the outgoing chief military
spokesman in Iraq: "We know that some innocent civilians have been
killed, and each one of those is a tragedy."
-
- In one sense, Al Sayeed was lucky. He and his family
survived.
-
- U.S.-led coalition troops have shot and killed at least
49 and possibly as many as 72 civilian noncombatants since the conventional
war ended, according to a Knight Ridder review of reports first compiled
by Iraq Body Count, a London research group that calls U.S. troops
"occupiers"
and bases its estimates on published or broadcast reports by news agencies
and human rights groups.
-
- The U.S. military says it doesn't count civilian
deaths.
-
- Asked about the issue at a recent news conference, L.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said, "The loss of life
is a tragedy for anyone involved, but the numbers are really very
low."
-
- When questioned about the basis for that assertion,
Bremer
acknowledged that he couldn't say how many civilians coalition troops had
killed.
-
- For many Iraqis, it's a painful irony: As American
civilian
officials try to teach them about democratic values and respect for human
rights, heavily armed U.S. soldiers storm into their homes, arrest people
and kill some of them by mistake, all without public accountability or
judicial review.
-
- "It is the same scenario every day," said Eman
Ahmed Khammas, the director of Occupation Watch, a Baghdad-based advocacy
group. "The number of civilian casualties is increasing. But there
are no statistics."
-
- Over the past few months, a number of incidents have
become public:
-
- - U.S. troops killed an 18-year-old woman when they
tossed
a grenade into a house during a raid Sept. 1 in Mahmudiya, south of
Baghdad.
-
- - A Reuters journalist was shot and killed near a Baghdad
prison Aug. 17 after U.S. troops mistook his television camera for a
grenade
launcher.
-
- - Two uniformed Iraqi policemen were shot and killed
Aug. 9 while pursuing criminals in Baghdad.
-
- - Five people, including an 8-year-old girl and three
of her family members, were gunned down Aug. 7 when they ran into an
unmarked
U.S. checkpoint during an evening raid in Baghdad's Slakh
neighborhood.
-
- - A mother of six was shot and killed Aug. 1 in Baghdad
after the family car broke down near where U.S. troops were
attacked.
-
- - Five people were shot and killed July 28 when they
ran into poorly marked roadblocks during a raid in Baghdad's Mansour
district.
-
- In all those cases, military officials said they'd
concluded
that soldiers were acting within the rules of engagement, which authorize
a soldier to fire when he feels his life is threatened. Still, officials
said concerns about the spate of deaths at traffic checkpoints had prompted
them to compensate some of the victims' families.
-
- Capt. Mike Friel, a coalition spokesman, said the
coalition
had paid a total of $68,000 to relatives in nine wrongful-death cases since
the war began in March. A total of 74 wrongful-death claims have been
filed,
23 have been denied and the rest are still under investigation, he
said.
-
- Friel didn't respond to further inquiries seeking details
about the claims that were paid.
-
- Commanders said they also had tried in recent weeks to
be more precise and less aggressive when raiding homes and detaining
residents.
-
- The military says it has imprisoned about 5,500 people,
most of whom are held without access to lawyers or relatives.
-
- Among them are Al Sayeed's sons. They told their mother
during a recent visit that they have never been interrogated and haven't
been told what they are suspected of or when they might be released.
Military
officials didn't respond to questions about them.
-
- There is no evidence that coalition soldiers
intentionally
target innocent civilians. What critics say, in essence, is that some U.S.
soldiers are overwhelmed by the complexities of fighting a guerrilla
war.
-
- An officer of the 3rd Infantry Division, which occupied
Baghdad just after fighting some of the major battles of the war, described
the soldiers' burden in a "lessons learned" report for the army
in late April.
-
- "(They) have been asked to go from killing the enemy
to protecting and interacting, and back to killing again," he wrote.
"The constant shift in mental posture greatly complicates things for
the average soldier. The soldiers are blurred and confused about the rules
of engagement, which continues to raise questions about force protection
while at checkpoints and conducting patrols. How does the soldier know
exactly what the rule of engagement is?"
-
- He added: "Soldiers who have just conducted combat
against dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty
trusting dark skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes."
-
- The most common complaints among Iraqis and international
observers are that soldiers fire indiscriminately in crowded civilian
areas;
they frequently mount raids based on faulty information; and they set up
poorly marked checkpoints and fire without warning on cars that approach
them without stopping.
-
- Many of the worst incidents have happened in Baghdad,
which is patrolled by the 1st Armored Division, whose troops are trained
for tank battles, not police work.
-
- Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a research center for
national-security studies, points out that most U.S. troops in Iraq aren't
well trained in counterinsurgency warfare.
-
- "Some of this is inevitable," he said.
"When
you have young men and women who don't have a lot of experience, they
overreact."
-
- Sanchez expressed concern last month about what he called
the military's "iron-fisted tactics" in some of its raids. The
general said he had begun encouraging commanders to surround their target
areas first, then knock on the door and ask permission to search.
-
- But military officials said coalition soldiers still
would kick down doors and go in shooting when they thought it was
necessary.
-
- Officials declined to explain how they decide what level
of force to use when raiding a private home, except to say that it's
"based
on intelligence." But a raid can be prompted by a tip from a single
informant, and "unfortunately, there are some raids that go
awry,"
spokeswoman Spc. Nicole Thompson said recently. "Sometimes you get
a case of, you know, this guy doesn't like that guy, and he makes a phone
call."
-
- To those whose homes are raided by mistake, or whose
relatives are killed or detained for months without word of their fate,
the tactics are indistinguishable from the kind of thing that used to
happen
under Saddam Hussein.
-
- "I loved the Americans before this happened,"
Al Sayeed said. "But now I hate them. Before, I wanted all of my sons
to go to America to finish their studies. But now there is no way I will
let them go. This is the freedom they promise us? This is
democracy?"
-
- Zahra Khalid Sabry - and hundreds of her relatives,
friends
and neighbors - are asking the same questions.
-
- "They killed him in front of my eyes," Sabry
said, sobbing, on the day her male relatives brought her husband's body
back from the morgue. "I tried to kiss him but they wouldn't let
me."
-
- Her house spilled over with more than 200 mourners, who
could barely contain their fury as they told visitors what happened when
U.S. troops came crashing through their doors at 1 a.m. Aug. 11, four days
after Sanchez promised changes in tactics.
-
- Upstairs, the bullet holes were still visible in the
bedroom door, as was the crimson blood stain on the mattress. Women in
black head scarves wailed, and men stared with hard eyes.
-
- Sabry said she was in bed with her husband, Farid Abdul
Khahir, 23, after celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary. She heard
loud noises outside. Khahir, thinking the house was being attacked by
looters,
pulled his rifle from under the bed - most Iraqis have at least one firearm
in their homes - and fired out the window.
-
- Soldiers bolted up the stairs and fired at least seven
shots through the closed bedroom door, bullet holes show, hitting Khahir
in the leg and torso, Sabry said. The soldiers took him to a hospital,
where he died. The next day, other soldiers came to the house and retrieved
the bullets, relatives said.
-
- A translator with the Americans told them an informant
had fingered Khahir as an anti-coalition fighter. His relatives said he
used to be in Saddam's Fedayeen militia before the war, but quit and had
been working at odd construction jobs.
-
- "We've never done anything against the Americans,
never," said Ali Khalid,16, a cousin who was sleeping on the roof
during the raid.
-
- Military officials didn't respond to repeated requests
for comment about the incident.
-
- "Please, tell the world what happened," said
Khalid's sister, Khalid Abdul Amir. "He would have gone with them.
Why did they do this? Why?"
-
- - Ken Dilanian reports for The Philadelphia
Inquirer
-
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