Five months into a Baghdad-centred "security crackdown", US officials continue to claim that the 160,000 US troops occupying Iraq are making "progress" in reducing "sectarian violence" in the war-ravaged country. But, according to a July 26 Associated Press tally, at least 1759 Iraqis were killed in war-related violence in July — a 7% increase on the 1640 who were reported killed in June.
The tally, AP noted, "included civilians, government officials and Iraqi security forces, and [is] considered only a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual number is likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted."
The July death tally was only 50 less than the number of Iraqis AP reported had died in war-related violence in January — the month before the US occupation forces launched their "security crackdown", allegedly aimed at reducing the intra-Iraqi "sectarian violence" that US officials claim is the chief cause of Iraqi fatalities.
The July 27 AP report, however, noted that "victims of sectarian slayings were also on the rise. At least 723 bodies were found dumped across Iraq so far in July, or an average of nearly 28 a day, compared with 19 a day in June, when 563 bodies were reported found." Most of these corpses — 453 — were found in Baghdad.
The June figure for the number of unidentified corpses dumped in the streets of Baghdad was 41% higher than the January figure, according to leaked Iraqi health ministry statistics reported by the July 4 Washington Post.
Since February 2006, US officials have attributed these dumped bodies to death-squad style killings carried out by "Sunni insurgents" and the Mahdi Army militia of anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
However a human rights report released in September 2005 by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) held the US adviser-run Iraqi interior ministry's special police commando forces responsible for an organised campaign of abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings directed at suspected supporters of the Sunni-based anti-occupation resistance movement.
It reported that most of these special police commandos were recruited from the Badr militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (since renamed the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council). The SIIC is the main Shiite religious party in Washington's puppet Iraqi government.
While the September 2005 UNAMI report on the interior ministry's death squads did not examine the Pentagon's role in their creation, the units that were most frequently identified as carrying out death squad operations were recruited and trained by US officers and directed by US "advisers".
The May 1, 2005 New York Times reported that the Iraqi interior ministry's special police commando training program was directed by "retired" US Army Colonel James Steele. In the mid 1980s, Steele had commanded the US Military Advisor Group in El Salvador, training Salvadoran government forces to conduct a brutal campaign of terror against suspected supporters of the country's leftist guerrillas.
The creation of the special police commando force was initiated and promoted by the current top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, when he was in charge of training Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces (June 2004 to September 2005).
"The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared", the NYT reported, "but El Salvador, where a rightist government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost there was high — more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the rightist death squads affiliated with it.
"There are far more Americans in Iraq today — about 140,000 troops in all — than there were in El Salvador, but US soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role."
The July 29 Los Angeles Times provided a rare insight into the current functioning of Washington's Iraqi ministry of terror. Describing the ministry building as an 11-storey "Balkanized command center for the nation's police and mirror of the deadly factions that have caused the government here to grind nearly to a halt", the LA Times observed that the "very language that Americans use to describe government — ministries, departments, agencies — belies the reality here of militias that kill under cover of police uniforms and remain above the law ...
"On the second floor is Gen. Mahdi Gharrawi, a former national police commander. Last year, US and Iraqi troops found 1400 prisoners, mostly Sunnis, at a base he controlled in eastern Baghdad. Many showed signs of torture. The interior minister blocked an arrest warrant against the general this year, senior Iraqi officials confirmed.
"The third- and fifth-floor administrative departments are the domain of Prime Minister Nuri Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite group.
"The sixth, home to border enforcement and the major crimes unit, belongs to the Badr Organization militia. Its leader, deputy minister Ahmed Khafaji, is lauded by some Western officials as an efficient administrator and suspected by others of running secret prisons.
"The seventh floor is intelligence, where the Badr Organization and armed Kurdish groups struggle for control.
"The ninth floor is shared by the department's inspector general and general counsel, religious Shiites. Their offices have been at the center of efforts to purge the department's remaining Sunni employees. The counsel's predecessor, a Sunni, was killed a year ago ...
"The ministry's computer department is on the 10th floor. Two employees were arrested there in February for smuggling in explosives, according to police and US military officials. Some Iraqi and US officials say the workers intended to store bombs there. Others say they were plotting to attack the US advisors stationed directly above them on the top floor.
"Months after the arrests, it's unclear whether the detainees are Sunni insurgents or followers of Moqtada Sadr ...
"Interior minister Jawad Bolani, an independent Shiite leader who took office last summer, has attempted to repair the ministry's reputation. He has removed the heads of eight of nine national police brigades and 17 of 27 police battalions, which have been accused of killings and mass kidnappings."
Rather than examining Washington's role, via the US advisers, in running this ministry of terror, the LA Times article focused on the battle for control within the ministry's different departments between Iraqi officials recruited from the pro-US Kurdish Peshmerga militia and those recruited from the pro-SIIC Badr militia.
The article reported that, "No floor has posed more of a challenge than the seventh, which houses the intelligence division. In theory, the intelligence office should be key to tracking and combatting the insurgents who bomb Iraq's streets and marketplaces and attack US soldiers. Instead, the division has been hobbled by a power struggle between two of America's nominal allies in Iraq — the Kurds and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council.
"The fight came to a head earlier this year with a death threat against the Kurdish deputy minister in charge of intelligence, Hussein Ali Kamal. The Kurdish leader, who controls the eastern wing of the floor, was battling for control of the intelligence apparatus with his deputy, a Badr militia commander who dominates the western side.
"Several months ago, US advisors warned Kamal that his life was in danger, most probably from the Badr militia, and advised him to stay in the green zone, away from the ministry building in eastern Baghdad. He stayed out of the ministry for several weeks.
"The Shiite deputy, Basheer Wandi, better known as Engineer Ahmed, was appointed in spring of 2005. Around the same time, Shiite militias began aggressive efforts to target and kill Sunnis in Baghdad, often using police cover to detain Sunnis in secret prisons and carry out assassinations."
"Engineer Ahmed" was identified as a former Badr militia commander by SIIC leader Bayan Jabr in a November 2005 interview with the US Frontline TV program. Jabr was Iraq's interior minister from April 2005 until he was replaced by Bolani in June 2006.
"After the threat on Kamal's life, Engineer Ahmed was transferred", the LA Times reported. "But US and other Western officials ... say he is now working out of Maliki's security bureau.
"US military documents viewed by the Times show that Engineer Ahmed has had frequent contact with the prime minister. He even played a role in drawing up the current US-Iraqi security plan for Baghdad."
The "security plan" involves 40,000 US troops pushing deep into Baghdad's Sunni neighbourhoods, as well as into pro-Sadr Shiite districts, in order to set up "joint security stations" from which the interior ministry's police commandos can conduct more frequent terror raids into these neighbourhoods. It is therefore no coincidence that as the "security plan" has been implemented, the number of death squad killings in Baghdad has escalated.