Medea Benjamin back from Baghdad--"Iraqis sense they’ve lost their country

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Medea Benjamin back from Baghdad:
"Iraqis sense they’ve lost their country"

September 12, 2003 | Page 2

MEDEA BENJAMIN is a cofounder of Global Exchange and a leading antiwar activist. In June and July, she led a delegation to Iraq to establish an Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad to monitor the U.S.-run military occupation and the activities of foreign corporations. The center is providing reports through its Web site www.occupationwatch.org. After returning from Baghdad, Medea talked to Socialist Worker's LEE SUSTAR about conditions in Iraq under U.S. rule.

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COULD YOU describe what you saw in Iraq?

I THINK a lot of us have read about colonialism in other eras, and you see it with your own eyes today. I suppose there are similarities with the occupation of Palestine, but this is even more raw in many ways, because you see troops everywhere, and you see tanks everywhere. You see patrols moving down the street. You see sandbags and barbed wire, and the physical presence of 150,000 troops is pretty overwhelming.

And U.S. occupying forces have taken over the very sites that Saddam Hussein was known for in such a negative way--the presidential palaces. The largest presidential palace is the home of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. And many of the troops are stationed there as well.

So it really is just an overwhelming sense of intimidation. There are roadblocks all over the place where the U.S. troops barricade certain streets or bridges. One day, they’re open, and the next day, they’re closed. You have 18- or 19- or 20-year-olds barking orders in English to Iraqis, "Get out! Do this! Do that!" Oftentimes, Iraqis don’t understand and get shot at.

You have the daily humiliation that Iraqis feel when they are being told what to do by young foreigners who don’t speak their language and don’t know their culture. You have women being frisked by male soldiers on the street. You have U.S. soldiers breaking down doors of homes in the middle of the night and going into bedrooms.

This kind of thing is just unacceptable in any culture, but particularly in Muslim culture. So you just have the daily humiliation--and this sense of many Iraqis that they’ve lost their country.

SO VIOLENCE is now an everyday occurrence in Iraq.

WHEN WE arrived in Iraq at the end of June, we went to a military briefing, and they said there were 13 attacks a day on U.S. soldiers. When we went to a briefing two weeks later, we were told there were 25 attacks on U.S. soldiers, and they were more sophisticated.

Because of the increased attacks on American soldiers, the American soldiers have increased their attacks against Iraqis. You hear about the death tolls in Iraq, but you don’t hear what’s happening to the Iraqi civilians.

And it’s not just death tolls. It’s people being picked up off the streets or out of their homes or out of their workplaces--not charged with anything, thrown into jails or prisons, and sometimes there are allegations of torture. There’s no access to lawyers, and family members don’t know where their loved ones are. This kind of gross violation of the Geneva Convention and human rights is happening on a daily basis.

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http://www.socialistworker.org/2003-2/467/467_02_Medea.shtml

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1. And we're the good guys

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