WAR BRIEFS
No. 220, Apr. 3-9, 2003

US arms trader to run Iraq
Jay Garner, the retired US general who will oversee humanitarian relief and reconstruction in postwar Iraq, is president of an arms company that provides crucial technical support to missile systems vital to the US invasion of the country.
Garner’s business background is causing serious concerns at the United Nations and among aid agencies, who are already opposed to US administration of Iraq if it comes outside UN authority, and who say appointment of an American linked to the arms trade is the “worst case scenario” for running the country after the war.
Garner is president of Virginia-based SY Coleman, a subsidiary of defense electronics group L-3 Communications, which provides technical services and advice on the Patriot missile system being used in Iraq. Garner was involved in the system’s deployment in Israel.
SY Coleman has also worked on the Arrow missile defense system, deployed in Israel, and is involved in the US national missile defense program. Garner joined SY Technologies, taken over last year by L-3, in 1997, after leaving the US army.
Jack Tyler, a SY Coleman senior vice-president, confirmed that Garner still held his position at the company. (Observer UK)

Cook: ‘Pull out of bloody, unjust war’
Last Sunday night, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook launched a searing attack on the US and British governments for their prosecution of war on Iraq, breaking the silence since his resignation just a few days previously.
Writing for the British newspaper, The Sunday Mirror, Cook said: “I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war. I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed.”
He attacked US president George W. Bush for “sitting pretty in the comfort of Camp David” while allied forces risked death in an “unnecessary and badly planned” war. “It is easy to show you are resolute when you are not one of the guys in a sandstorm peering around for snipers,” he wrote. “Nobody should start a war on the assumption that the enemy’s army will cooperate. But that is exactly what President Bush has done.”
“There is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege,” he warned. “People go hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of a city snap. Children die. There will be a long-term legacy of hatred for the West if the Iraqi people continue to suffer from the effects of the war we started.” (Independent UK)

US moves to block UN emergency session on war
The United States, whose military attack on Iraq has been roundly condemned by the international community, is trying to silence the highest policy-making body at the United Nations: the 191-member General Assembly.
A proposal to summon an emergency session of the General Assembly to discuss Iraq has been stymied by strong opposition from Washington. The pressure has been so intense that no member state has so far taken the initiative to call for the emergency session.
In a letter to various member states, the United States has argued that the General Assembly has no voice in the current war on Iraq, and must therefore refrain from taking up the issue.
The pressure — and in some cases implicit threats — has followed discussions between US envoys and foreign ministry officials in several world capitals.
In an implied threat, the United States said that an emergency session on Iraq would be “unhelpful” and viewed as a move “directed against the United States.”
The US pressure has been particularly directed at the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest single political grouping of developing nations, which until last month was chaired by South Africa, and is currently chaired by Malaysia.
Although Malaysia has not formally requested an emergency session on behalf of NAM, the country’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has lashed out at the United States.
Hinting at US pressure on NAM, he said “the United States has no right to dictate or decide the responsibility of the United Nations, since the superpower had no respect for the world body.” (IPS)

British soldiers sent home after protesting civilian deaths
Three British soldiers in Iraq were ordered home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians.
The three soldiers — including a private and a technician — are from 16 Air Assault Brigade which is deployed in southern Iraq. Its task has been to protect oilfields.
The three soldiers face court martial and are seeking legal advice, defense sources said.
Any refusal of soldiers to obey orders is highly embarrassing to the government, with ministers becoming increasingly worried about the way the war is developing.
It is also causing concern to British military chiefs who are worried about growing evidence of civilians being killed in fighting involving American soldiers around urban areas in southern Iraq. (Guardian UK)

Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare
The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April.
If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.
Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighborhood — home to 800 Palestinian families — reducing it to dust and rubble.
Martin van Creveld’s advice to the US marines on what lessons to draw from Israel’s bloody urban battle in Jenin was precise: Forget the helicopters, invest in armored bulldozers. Van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.
The Israeli army has routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect them as they advance, a practice that has continued despite Israeli court rulings forbidding it. There was no word on whether Israeli officers had briefed American troops on this tactic.
Close to 1,000 American soldiers were sent to Israel for joint maneuvers at the beginning of the year. Some were sent to a mock Arab town in the Negev desert to draw on Israeli experience. (Guardian UK, Independent UK)

Deal to sell water fuels desperation, critics charge
The US military came up with a solution this week for the penniless people of Umm Qasr begging for water: Sell it.
Despite general mayhem at distribution points — including knife fights — the Army has struck a hasty agreement with local Iraqis to expedite distribution of water to the roughly 40,000 living here.
Under the deal, the military will provide water free to locals with access to tanker trucks, who then will be allowed to sell the water for a “reasonable” fee.
“We’re permitting them to charge a small fee for water,” said Army Col. David Bassert, an assistant commander with the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade. “This provides them with an incentive to hustle and to work.”
But with the population badly in need of water, food, and medical supplies, the arrangement drew its share of critics.
Several Iraqi-Americans originally from this region, who are working as interpreters and guides with the US military, were incensed at what they consider an attempt to jump-start a free-market economy during a crisis.
“This is bullshit,” said an Iraqi-American who asked to be identified only as Ahmed. “They are selling water and this is crazy. Nobody has any money.” (NY Daily News)

Russia slams US ‘liberation’ of Iraq
This week Russia fired a new broadside against the United States over its military action against Iraq, scorning claims its troops were “liberating” Iraqis and accusing it of defying world opinion.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said: “What the United States is doing challenges not only Iraq, but the whole world.”
“It is already becoming clear how far removed from reality are their attempts to present military action against Iraq as a triumphant march for the liberation of the Iraqi people with minimal casualties and destruction,” he told the Russian Federation Council (upper house).
He counseled Washington and London not to make unsubstantiated claims to have found caches of banned weapons in Iraq to justify their military offensive.
“If there are claims by coalition forces about discovering weapons of mass destruction... only international inspectors can make a conclusive assessment of the origin of these weapons,” he said.
“No other evaluation and final conclusion can be accepted.” (Reuters)

US forces prepare martial law for Iraq
American lawyers and legal officials in military uniform, toting weighty law books and ready to establish martial law, are traveling with US and British troops surging into Iraq.
“Any riots and we are going to put them down. We’re going to send in the infantry,” said Capt. Jim Wherry of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the army’s legal arm.
Offenders, Wherry said, could then be tried under the US Code of Military Justice, detained for post-war trials by civil authorities or face punishment meted out by the Americans under Iraqi laws. (AP)

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