Malcolm Lagauche, August 2 – 4, 2008
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| Nobody laughs at Baghdad Bob any more |
Saturday-Monday, August 2-4, 2008
When I began to work at Radio Netherlands in its English section in 1981 as a broadcaster/interviewer/news writer, I received training from a master, Hans Kramer. He quickly turned my American delivery into a more international style.
His tips on interviewing have lasted with me for almost three decades: never ask a question that can be answered by “yes,” or “no:” never make a statement, only ask questions: except for your first and last questions, never have any written down: and others.
When he discussed news writing, he stressed the virtues of brevity and accuracy. Then he stated, “And never use the word ‘terrorist.’ One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”
At the time, I rarely wrote news that would border on this issue, but the statement remained with me. Today, however, the word “terrorist” is bandied about with frequency: mostly in the wrong context.
In Iraq, a resistance is in full swing. The resistance is being conducted against an occupying force, therefore, every time the word “terrorist” is used by U.S. administration officials, or by Iraqi stooges, the word is in error.
Some news agencies have softened the word by calling the resistance an “insurgency.” Again, this is false. An insurgency is an uprising against a legal entity. The current Iraqi government is illegal and those in the real government have been murdered or are in prison. Therefore, the resistance fighters in Iraq are definitely not part of an insurgency.
Let’s look at occupied France of World War II. The resistance was trying to make things difficult for the German occupiers. After the war, they were considered heroes by the U.S. who, to this day, have not failed to consistently remind France that it was American troops who helped liberate the country as well.
If we use the same logic, how can the U.S. be considered liberators of Iraq? In reality, they are the same occupiers as were the Germans of France in World War II. The only difference is that Germany did not destroy as much of France as the U.S. has in Iraq.
Therefore, the Iraqi resistance fighters are the heroes. They are trying to oust an occupying force.
The U.S. media have things backwards because they use the same terminology as the administration. They mention the “bad guys” when discussing the resistance and most U.S. citizens have fallen in line. A simple method of portraying the truth is by merely reversing the words of “bad guys” to “good guys.” This 180-degree change would then be indicative of a more truthful look at current Iraq.
Iraq has been resisting since 1991, but it was not until U.S. troops were on its soil that the resistance took on its current form. The first Gulf War killed about 250,000 Iraqis, but the killing did not stop with the 1991 cease-fire. From March 1991 to March 2003, about two million Iraqis were given a premature grave because of the illegal embargo placed on it.
Most people do not remember the bogus “no-fly zones” set up by the U.S. During the embargo years, about 850 Iraqis were killed by the antics of U.S. pilots flying over Iraq, with a few thousand more injured.
During the those years, a few proclamations were floated to the Iraqi government. One, in particular, said that if Saddam Hussein signed the document, the embargo would be lifted and he would be re-packaged by the U.S. as a man of peace, similar to the transition of Col. Ghadaffi from a terrorist to a “good Arab.”
The document called for Iraq to hand over its oil production to the U.S. and allow a few huge U.S. military bases to be constructed in the country. Saddam and associates refused to sign. In mentioning this approach to him, as well as other occurrences in Iraq at the time, Saddam Hussein stated, “Iraq has been put in a situation in which it has to choose between sacrifice and slavery.”
Today’s Iraq is in the same quandary. Some collaborators have chosen slavery. They do not realize that by cooperating with the U.S. occupier, the country’s fate has been sealed for decades.
The resistance has taken the sacrifice route. The members have sacrificed their own careers and family ties to ensure that Iraq does not fall into total slavery.
When Saddam Hussein stated that “the mother of all battles has begun” on January 17, 1991, he was ridiculed. He knew his military would not be able to fare well against the U.S., but it was a stance that someone had to take in fighting imperialism. He also knew that this was only the beginning of a long struggle that could last for years or decades.
From January 17, 1991, to April 9, 2003, Iraq resisted, but not in a way that was greatly visible. It lost many people with little loss of life for the opposition.
On April 8, 2003, the Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Sahaff was giving his daily report to the world. He was known as Baghdad Bob and held a worldwide audience because of his colorful statements in English and Arabic.
Sahaff was telling the audience how the U.S. troops were going to be bogged down in Iraq. One reporter shouted, “Look, the Americans are already in Baghdad.” Sahaff turned around to see a U.S. tank about 200 meters in the distance. He took the microphone and said:
Do not be hasty because your disappointments will be huge … You will reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq, except for disgrace and defeat … We will embroil them, confuse them, and keep them in the quagmire … They cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them. They are the ones who will find themselves under siege.
He walked away, never again to be seen in public.
For the next few months, websites sprung up laughing at Sahaff and his last statement in particular. T-shirts and coffee mugs were made mocking his statement.
Sahaff went to the U.S. authorities and they laughed at him, not taking him prisoner. This, in essence, was a statement meaning, “You’re not even worth capturing.”
A few months later, while being interviewed in the U.A.E., where he relocated, a reporter asked Sahaff about his last statement. At the time, the resistance was in its formative stages, but not as active as today. Sahaff refused to take back the statement and said, “Let history speak about this matter.”
Today, the resistance is solid and every day we read or hear about another plan to placate the Iraqis. Plans change, but the effectiveness of the resistance does not.
Today, when one looks back at Sahaff’s statement, nobody seems to be laughing anymore.
Peace and Justice Post 
Ethiopia/Kenya: Account for Missing Rendition Victims
October 3, 2008Secret Detainees Interrogated by US Officials Are Still in Custody
Source: Human Rights Watch
(Washington, DC, October 1, 2008) – At least 10 victims of the 2007 Horn of Africa rendition program still languish in Ethiopian jails and the whereabouts of several others is unknown, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Several of the detained men were interrogated by US officials in Addis Ababa soon after they were secretly transferred from Kenya to Somalia, and then to Ethiopia in early 2007.
Related Material
“Why Am I Still Here?”: The 2007 Horn of Africa Renditions and the Fate of Those Still Missing
Report, October 1, 2008
Interview with Jennifer Daskal about renditions in the Horn of Africa on PRI’s The World
Web Site, October 1, 2008
Interview with Jennifer Daskal about renditions in the Horn of Africa on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show
Web Site, October 2, 2008
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The 54-page report, “‘Why Am I Still Here?’: The Horn of Africa Renditions and the Fate of the Missing,” examines the 2007 rendition operation, during which at least 90 men, women, and children fleeing the armed conflict in Somalia were unlawfully rendered from Kenya to Somalia, and then on to Ethiopia. The report documents the treatment of several men still in Ethiopian custody, as well as the previously unreported experiences of recently released detainees, several of whom described being brutally tortured.
“The dozens of people caught up in the secret Horn of Africa renditions in 2007 have suffered in silence too long,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Those governments involved – Ethiopia, Kenya and the US – need to reverse course, renounce unlawful renditions, and account for the missing.”
In late 2006, the Bush administration backed an Ethiopian military offensive that ousted the Islamist authorities from the Somali capital Mogadishu. The fighting caused thousands to flee across the border into Kenya, including some who were suspected of terrorist links.
Kenyan authorities arrested at least 150 men, women, and children from more than 18 countries – including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada – in operations near the Somali border and held them for weeks without charge in Nairobi. In January and February 2007, the Kenyan government then rendered dozens of them – with no notice to families, lawyers or the detainees themselves – on flights to Somalia, where they were handed over to the Ethiopian military. Ethiopian forces also arrested an unknown number of people in Somalia.
Those rendered were later transported to detention centers in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and other Ethiopian towns, where they effectively disappeared. Denied access to their embassies, their families, and international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the detainees were even denied phone calls home. Several have said that they were housed in solitary cells, some as small as two meters by two meters, with their hands cuffed in painful positions behind their backs and their feet bound together.
A number of prisoners were questioned by US Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Addis Ababa. From February to May 2007, Ethiopian security officers daily transported detainees – including several pregnant women – to a villa where US officials interrogated them about suspected terrorist links. At night, the Ethiopian officers returned the detainees to their cells.
“The United States says that they were investigating past and current threats of terrorism,” Daskal said. “But the repeated interrogation of rendition victims who were being held incommunicado makes Washington complicit in the abuse.”
For the most part, detainees were sent home soon after their interrogation by US agents ended. Of those known to have been interrogated by US officials, just eight Kenyans remain. (A ninth Kenyan in Addis Ababa was rendered to Ethiopia in July/August 2007, after US interrogations reportedly stopped.) These men, who have not been subjected to any interrogation since May 2007, would likely have been repatriated long ago but for the Kenyan government’s longstanding refusal to acknowledge their claims to Kenyan citizenship or to take steps to secure their release.
Human Rights Watch recently spoke by telephone to several of the Kenyans in detention in Ethiopia, many of whom complained of physical ailments and begged for someone to help get them home. Although Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga made a campaign pledge to help repatriate these detainees, little progress has been made to date. In mid-August 2008, Kenyan authorities visited these men for the first time. The officials reportedly told the detainees they would be home within a few weeks, but more than a month and a half has now passed.
“The previous Kenyan government deported its own citizens and then left them to rot in Ethiopian jails,” Daskal said. “The new Kenyan government should reverse course, bring these men home, and show that it is not following the same shameful path as the old.”
The Ethiopian government also used the rendition program for its own purposes. For years, the Ethiopian military has been trying to quell domestic Ogadeni and Oromo insurgencies that receive support from neighboring countries, such as Ethiopia’s archrival, Eritrea. The Ethiopian intervention in Somalia and the multinational rendition program provided them a convenient means to gain custody over people whom they could interrogate for suspected insurgent links. Once these individuals were in detention, Ethiopian military interrogators and guards reportedly subjected them to brutal beatings and torture.
Detainees said Ethiopian interrogators pulled out their toenails, held loaded guns to their heads, crushed their genitals, and forced them to crawl on their elbows and knees through gravel. Several reported being beaten to the point of unconsciousness.
The Human Rights Watch report calls upon the Ethiopian government to immediately release the rendition victims still in its custody or prosecute them in a court that meets basic fair trial standards. It also urges the Kenyan government to take immediate steps to secure the repatriation of Kenyan nationals still in Ethiopian custody, and the US government to withhold counterterrorism assistance from both governments until they provide a full accounting of all the missing detainees.
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Tags:brutalities, CIA and FBI agents, detention and torture, Ethiopian government, Ethiopian prisons, Human Rights Watch report, Kenya, prisoners, renditions, Somalia, US officials
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