http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-cogan020605.htm


Operation Lightning Underway
In Baghdad

By James Cogan

02 June 2005
World Socialist Website

Operation Lightning-the massive deployment of 50,000 US and Iraqi 
government troops and police into the streets of Baghdad-began on Sunday 
and is unfolding amid a virtual media blackout and a complete absence of 
critical commentary. What is taking place amounts to the re-invasion of 
Iraq's capital aimed at terrorising the population and cracking down on 
resistance groups that operate freely across large sections of the city.

There is no doubt that the operation was unveiled by the Iraqi 
government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari on the direct orders of Washington. For 
two days in May, Jaafari was involved in meetings with the top US 
commander in Iraq, General George Casey, who reportedly lectured him on 
the need to "respond with strong and decisive action" to the wave of 
bombings and killings taking place across Iraq. The meetings with Casey 
were followed by a visit to Iraq by US Secretary of State Condoleezza 
Rice on May 15, where further demands were placed on Jaafari's 
newly-installed administration.

The crackdown is being justified with references to the 434 Iraqi 
civilians who were killed and the 775 wounded in May, many in 
politically reactionary bombings that made no attempt to distinguish 
between occupation targets and ordinary people. The main Iraqi 
resistance groups condemn such bombings, which are generally blamed on 
groups connected with Al Qaeda.

The concern of the White House and the Pentagon, however, is the growing 
number of casualties that guerilla attacks are inflicting on the 
occupation forces. The US military lost 78 dead and more than 500 
wounded in May-the largest number since January. The Iraqi security 
forces also suffered heavy losses. At least 151 Iraqi police were killed 
and 325 wounded-more than double the number in April. At least 85 Iraqi 
soldiers were killed and 79 wounded.

The aim of Operation Lightning is to try and curb the insurgency by 
cutting it off from its support base among the broader population. The 
50,000 troops in the capital will throw up 675 permanent checkpoints at 
all entrances to the city and at key intersections throughout the 
suburbs. The checkpoints will be manned by soldiers of the US-created 
Iraqi Army. As they go up, each of 22 sectors the city has been divided 
into will be subjected to sweeps and house searches by Iraqi and US forces.

"Riverbend", an Iraqi woman in Baghdad, wrote in her blog on May 29: 
"It's difficult enough right now getting around Baghdad, more 
checkpoints are going to make things trickier. The plan includes 40,000 
Iraqi security forces and that is making people a little bit uneasy. 
Iraqi National Guard are not pleasant or upstanding citizens-to have 
thousands of them scattered about Baghdad stopping cars and possibly 
harassing civilians is worrying. We're also very worried about the 
possibility of raids on homes."

While little information is available, it is clear that a massive sweep 
is already underway. A spokesman for Jaafari claimed that over 500 
"arrests" had been carried out in just the first two days of the operation.

Highlighting the indiscriminate character of the arrests, one of those 
detained was Mohsen Abdel Hamid, the leader of the Sunni-based Iraqi 
Islamic Party who has been engaged over in recent months in high-level 
discussions with Iraqi government and US officials over joining the 
occupation regime. Pentagon officials told the Los Angeles Times that US 
troops operating near Hamid's house obtained "intelligence" that 
insurgents were hiding there.

In the early hours of the morning, Hamid's front door was broken down by 
an assault squad. The Sunni leader, his sons and his bodyguards were 
hooded and dragged off, and furniture throughout his house smashed 
apart. He was rapidly released once word reached higher authorities and 
the US military has declared the arrest was a mistake.

The hundreds of others being detained on similar "intelligence" will not 
be so fortunate. Thousands of Iraqis who have been caught up in US 
military dragnets over the past two years have been held for three 
months or more before being released.

In a telling indication of just how little control the occupation forces 
actually have, the operation is primarily focussed on securing the roads 
between the fortified Green Zone compound on the western banks of the 
Tigris River with the airport and Abu Ghraib prison in the western suburbs.

The Green Zone houses the US military command and the Iraqi government, 
as well as the thousands of contractors, journalists and others who have 
been drawn to the occupied country. Vehicles travelling to and from the 
zone are under constant threat of attack by insurgents or roadside 
bombs. As many as three bombs per day are detonated just on the airport 
road.

Scattered reports indicate that the scale of violence in Baghdad has 
dramatically escalated since the offensive began. Heavy clashes took 
place on Sunday in the suburb of Amariya, which borders the airport 
road. Some 50 insurgents attacked a checkpoint and an interior ministry 
detention centre, killing at least nine Iraqi government troops.

Iraqi police have been killed by car bombs and snipers in the working 
class, predominantly Sunni-populated district of Adhamiya, in Baghdad's 
north-west. The suburb has often been compared by journalists with the 
city of Fallujah, in that it is one of the centres of the Iraqi resistance.

On Tuesday, insurgents ambushed a convoy of the increasingly despised 
Iraqi police commandos, many of whom were previously special forces 
troops under Saddam Hussein's regime and are now working with the US 
military. Three commandos were killed.

Earlier in the week, suicide bombers drove car bombs into military 
convoys, checkpoints and the entrance to the Oil Ministry. Yesterday, a 
car bomb exploded at the checkpoint on the airport road guarding the 
entrance to one of the main US bases in western Baghdad. At least 15 
people were wounded.

Elsewhere in the country, insurgents are believed to have shot down a 
single-engine plane carrying US special forces, killing four and an 
Iraqi. An Italian helicopter has also been downed. All four Italian 
troops on board died in the crash.

Operation Lightning underscores the venal character of the Shiite 
fundamentalist parties that dominate Jaafari's government-Daawa and the 
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)-and the 
leading Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani.

Organised as the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the fundamentalists and 
Sistani claimed that their victory in the January 31 elections would set 
in motion the end to US occupation. The basis on which the UIA won the 
majority of votes from Iraqi Shiites was a promise for a timetable for 
the withdrawal of all foreign troops.

Instead, Jaafari's administration is now functioning as the figure-head 
for a US-directed reign of terror against Baghdad's six million 
citizens, making use of thousands of American troops as well as Iraqi 
paramilitary units that were assembled by the US military from Saddam 
Hussein's regime's special forces and Republican Guard.

		
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