Interpreters used by British Army 'hunted down' by Iraqi death squads

[rodeodance]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1990392.ece


Interpreters used by British Army 'hunted down' by Iraqi death squads
By Phil Sands in Amman
Published: 17 November 2006

Iraqi interpreters working with the British Army in Basra are being systematically hunted down and killed.

At least 21 have been kidnapped and shot in head over the past three weeks, their bodies dumped in different parts of the city. Another three are still missing. In a single mass killing, 17 interpreters were killed.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but militia groups fighting for control of the province - and opposed to the presence of foreign troops - are widely suspected.

"This is not a general threat against Iraqi security forces; interpreters are specifically being killed," an Iraqi police officer familiar with the case told The Independent by telephone from Basra. "It has been happening at a low level for the past year, but the campaign is getting worse.

"First they get letters warning them to stop co-operating with the occupation forces, then they are killed. The interpreters are the major target now. Word spreads about who is working with the British - neighbours, people in the street, police officers all see the interpreters. Their identities don't remain very secret and someone is going around trying to kill them and they're succeeding," he said.....

[Binka]

1. Could This Thing Get Any Worse? It's A Nightmare.

The never ending nightmare. Hey UK & USA get the hell out NOW!

[aquart]

2. But not our nightmare. We're safe at home.

The Iraqis have no safe home. What do we deserve for that?

[maddezmom]

3. OMG

:cry:

[EST]

4. If the US had been invaded and occupied by the USSR,

no doubt, I would have been involved in the resistance. The very first targets I would have gone after would be collaborators and translators.

I might have been overjoyed had some other power come in and totally wiped out the neo-cons, but would I then want them to hang around and become the neo-neo-cons? Absolutely not!

Since it is easy for me to see this, why are the leaders so infernally stupid?!

[hwmnbn]

6. I've started calling all chimp supporters.....

collaborators, because that is what they are. The 2000 selection was an internal coup by a group within the government (neo-cons).

The damage they've done to our country/Constitution requires justice and retribution.

[Igel]

7. I would define collaborator rather differently than some Iraqis

are.

When you hear of a dozen construction workers on a children's hospital being rounded up and executed as "collaborators", you realize the term is equivalent to "contaminated by having been exposed to a Westerner".

Rather like the S. Vietnamese killed for having given haircuts or served drinks to Americans.

Some translators do good things, even under an occupation, and few do bad things. Of course, the "resistance" is frequently too ignorant to realize this. In movies, of course, the resistance is always sanitized, if they're on "our" side.

[saigon68]

5. It's an old Resistance Principle

You KILL the Traitors, Provocateurs and Quislings.

Tried and True. (See France 1943)