[A-List] Iraq: Shia hostility to "liberators"

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Qom dispatch
The lost rebellion

Southern Iraq's Shias are being urged to rise up against Saddam. But Dan De
Luce hears how the US failed them in their hour of need 12 years ago
Guardian Online
Wednesday April 2, 2003

The column of Iraqi army soldiers looked exhausted and broken. They were in
retreat, making their way north from a humiliating rout in Kuwait.

"Even the Republican Guard was demoralised. They were holding two fingers
down, signalling defeat," said Sayed Nour Battat, recalling the closing days
of the 1991 Gulf in his home town of Basra.

"The soldiers were desperately looking for something to eat. They offered
their weapons in exchange for civilian clothes," Battat said. "Suddenly,
there were a huge number of guns in ordinary people's hands. With those
weapons, we had the power to change things. "

Sensing Saddam Hussein was losing his grip, the Shia Moslems of southern
Iraq seized their moment in 1991 in an "intifada" that erupted across
southern cities in a spasm of violence and chaos.

Twelve years after that failed rebellion, Britain and the United States are
hoping for Shias in Iraq to rise up again. But the scars from the last
attempt run deep, and Shia exiles say they will never forgive Washington and
its allies for standing by while Baghdad exacted merciless revenge.

Speaking in the ancient holy city of Qom in Iran, where many Iraqi veterans
of the uprising have settled, Battat and other exiles recalled the day that
Saddam Hussein's regime looked on the verge of collapse.

In Basra, armed with the Kalishnikovs they got from hungry soldiers in
retreat, Shias took to the streets. "The anger had been boiling for years
and years and it finally exploded. Everyone came out on the street. There
were about 30,000 people," Battat said.

The crowd stormed the Baath party headquarters. "That was an ominous place
for us. That's where the secret police would interrogate and torture people.
I was afraid just to look at that building."

After a gun battle in which at least four Baath party officials were killed,
the people of Basra took back control of their city. "I was so happy,
because that building was such a symbol of terror."

On the radio, Battat and his family heard the leader of the most powerful
country in the world, President George H.W. Bush, call for a revolt against
Baghdad: "There's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the
Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to
force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside, and to comply with the
United Nations resolutions and then rejoin the family of peace-loving
nations."

Believing they had the support of the victorious US-led forces, the people
of Basra held a meeting to discuss how to run the city. Elsewhere, Shias
were attacking Baath party officials and freeing prisoners as rampant
looting broke out amid rumours of atrocities against Baghdad collaborators.

Like other army conscripts, Abu Abdin deserted his military police unit when
he heard rumours of an uprising and travelled back to his family in
Nasiriya.

"My brother and I were walking in the city centre and some of our friends
came up to us and told us that we're going to fight the regime," Abdin said.
"We were fighting for freedom. Just freedom." The battle for Nasiriya's
police station and army intelligence offices lasted two days. Abdin's
16-year old brother was killed in the fighting. "I travelled to Najaf to
bury my brother and I saw that the uprising was gaining momentum there as
well."

After he returned to Nasiriya, Iraqi Republican Guard and security forces
soon launched a massive counter-attack. Assuming Baghdad's air force was
grounded by the US-led coalition, the rebelling Shias were stunned when they
saw Saddam's helicopter gunships flying towards them.

"We managed to shoot one down but we were outgunned. Those helicopters were
too much for us because we only had rifles and rocket-propelled grenades,"
said one veteran of the Badr Corps who fought north of Basra. "We weren't
expecting help from the Americans but they helped Saddam's regime by letting
him use his helicopters."

About three miles outside of Nasiriya, US and allied forces had seized
control of a military airport. "That air strip was in the Americans' hands
but they just watched what was happening and didn't do anything," said Abu
Ahmad Sharifi, who joined the uprising in Nasiriya.

Iraqi army T-72 tanks and helicopters blasted Basra and Nasiriya and other
cities, forcing the collapse of the improvised militia that had briefly
seized 14 of 18 provinces. "With such heavy shelling from the Iraqi army, we
couldn't hold the city any longer," Sharifi said.

Thousands of men from Nasiriya fled in the direction of the air strip held
by US troops. "The Americans had blocked the road with a checkpoint and
thousands of us were disarmed. They made us hand over our rifles. We tried
to tell them what was happening.

"We cannot forget what the Americans did, they took away our weapons and
left us to be slaughtered like lambs."

Overwhelmed by tanks and helicopters and threatened by a potential chemical
weapons attack, tens of thousands of Shias rushed to the border in panic,
knowing they faced lethal reprisals if they stayed behind. Some did not make
it out.

"My nephew was executed in Nasiriya for taking part," said Sharifi. Other
Iraqi Shias recount how Baath party agents systematically killed anyone
suspected of participating in the uprising or related to those who did. In
Basra and Nasiriya, some victims were placed in a ring of car tyres and
burnt to death, they said.

"My uncle saw corpses on the streets of Basra four days after the
executions," Battat said. "There were many people who are still missing."

After the uprising in Nasiriya, Abdul Abdin was arrested for having deserted
his army unit. "I was imprisoned for a month. When I came out, I saw a
corpse that had been left in the street and was half-eaten by dogs. This was
what they did to show what happens to anyone who rebels."

At least 30,000 died in the uprising, according to the most conservative
estimates. The legacy of the failed uprising and its bloody aftermath casts
a long shadow over today's "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and the post-Saddam
peace it envisages. Those who took part in the uprising are contemptuous of
the governments now encouraging them to rebel once again.

"The Americans didn't want to help us because we are Shias," said Abudi.
"Why are you inquiring about this now 12 years after it happened? Who
brought Saddam to power?"