Anti-US Gov Protests increased in Iraq, Ethnic fights provoked by alliance

posted by nmb on Wednesday April 16, @02:23AM

NY Times picks up the story on anger at the looting, Pakistan Daily Times reports of Military Officials sabotaging journalists to film Anti-US protests

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/international/worldspecial/16BAGH.html

Now Free to Protest, Iraqis Complain About Americans
By IAN FISHER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 15 ?

"...Protests against the American forces here are rising by the day as Iraqis exercise their new right to complain ? something that often landed them in prison or worse during President Saddam Hussein's rule.

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But no one here is in the mood to note that paradox, as Iraqis confront with greater clarity their complicated reactions to the week-old American military presence here: anger at the looting; frustration at the ongoing lack of everything from electricity to a firm sense of order; fear of long-term United States military occupation.

"Down, down U.S.A. ? don't stay, go away!" chanted Ahmed Osman, 30, a teacher among the several hundred Iraqis protesting today in front of the Palestine Hotel downtown, which the marines are both guarding and using as their headquarters to recruit civil servants to reconstruct Iraq's central authority. "Bush is the same as Saddam," he said.

The protest was small compared with the 20,000 who marched today in Nasiriya against the American presence in Iraq, but it was the largest such demonstration in Baghdad yet, prompting the marines to seal off the hotel, and the Sheraton next door, for several hours and to beef up security.

There is no sense that these complaints ? in which ordinary Iraqis have begun insistently buttonholing any Westerner who wanders by ? are degenerating into violence or an unwillingness to cooperate with the Americans.

But individual protest has almost reached a fever pitch, as scores of Iraqis around the city asked reporters if it was true that Mr. Hussein was now in the United States (the evidence: that Baghdad fell so quickly, a deal must have been struck). They are also, in greater numbers, beginning to blame American soldiers for the looting that has stripped the nation's property bare, from desk chairs to ancient Sumerian artifacts..."

Pak Daily Times/AFP reports on Sabotage against Journalists

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_16-4-2003_pg7_12

"...Some 200-300 Iraqis gathered on Tuesday outside the Palestine Hotel, where the US marines have set up an operations base, for a third straight day of protests against the US occupation.

Visibly angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest, moving reporters and cameras about 30 metres from the barbed-wired entrance to the hotel. ?We want you to pull back to the back of the hotel because they (the Iraqis) are only performing because the media are here,? said a marine colonel who wore the name Zarcone but would not give his first name or title...

?We want the American and British forces to go. They have freed us from Saddam and their job is finished,? said Ihsan Mohammad, an official with the regional federation of engineers. ?If they intend to occupy us, we will oppose that. We ask them to leave us free to decide our future and not to impose people on us.? ?AFP

KurdMedia reports on Turkish media manipulation

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=3730

16 April 2003: Turkish media, mainly controlled by the Turkish Generals, since after the Gulf War 1991 have been active in pumping up racial hatred between communities and cultural groups in Iraq, but now they have changed their approach.

Up to now Turkish media were involved in condemning Kurds and looking down to Kurdish language, culture and history, but this approach has proven to be ineffective as Kurds becoming an influential force in the Middle East and also in the West. Turkey tries a different approach: condemning other communities (Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, etc) in Iraq in another way.

For example in a cheaply produced news item Turkish Daily News states a headline, "Turcomans, the Most Educated Community of Iraq".

Then quoting one of Ankara?s? puppet in Aydin Beyatli who gained freedom only under Kurdish rule, TDN stays, "80 percent of Iraqi teachers were of Turcoman."

US admits Mosul-Protest killings

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2951789.stm

"...A US commander has admitted that American troops did shoot and kill a number of Iraqis during a protest in the northern city of Mosul.

Brigadier-General Vince Brooks said US marines and special forces soldiers fired at demonstrators on Tuesday after they came under attack from people shooting guns and throwing rocks.

"Fire was indeed delivered from coalition forces, it was lethal fire and some Iraqis were killed as a result, we think the number is in the order of seven and we think there were some wounded as well," he said.

A BBC correspondent in the city says Mosul is extremely tense - and latest reports from there say at least three people have been killed and several others wounded by gunfire..."

Robert Fisk: For the people on the streets, this is not liberation but a new colonial oppression

...there is also something dangerous and deeply disturbing about the crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives. For they are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses. I followed one after its passengers had set the Ministry of Trade on fire and it sped out of town.

The official US line on all this is that the looting is revenge, an explanation that is growing very thin and that the fires are started by "remnants of Saddam's regime", the same "criminal elements", no doubt, who feature in the marines' curfew orders. But people in Baghdad don't believe Saddam's former supporters are starting these fires. And neither do I.

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=397925

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