The Shiites in Power Accuse the US of "Organized Crime"
    Le Figaro with AFP

    Monday 27 March 2006

Argument swells in Baghdad the day after a raid conducted against Shiites that left twenty of them dead. While the American Army denies any involvement, the Governor of Baghdad announces the suspension of his cooperation with the United States. The Shiite alliance in power demands a transfer of responsibility for the maintenance of order in the country.

    The bloody raid conducted Sunday in north Baghdad against Shiites assembled in a mosque in the country's capital continues to elicit reactions. Shiite leaders, who suggest there were around twenty deaths, denounce an American bungle. The Unified Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition in power, describes that operation as a "massacre" and demands that the American government cede responsibility for the maintenance of order to the Iraqi government.

    "American forces and Iraqi Special Forces committed an odious crime when they attacked the Al-Mustapha Mosque in the Ur neighborhood," the Shiite bloc asserts in a communiqu . "It's an organized crime with serious political and security implications. It aims to incite a civil war," the Shiites insist. "To kill such a great number of the faithful of the family of the Prophet after handcuffing and torturing them is indefensible. It's an attack on the dignity of Iraqis that strips away any credibility from the slogans of freedom, democracy and pluralism flaunted by the American administration," the communiqu concludes.

    For his part, the Governor of Baghdad announced his intention of suspending all cooperation with American forces until an independent investigation is opened to determine what really happened. "We have decided today to cease all political and logistical cooperation with American forces," declared Hussein al Tahan, adding that the United States embassy and the Iraqi Defense Ministry should be associated with the investigation, but not the American military.

    As for the Minister of the Interior, he described the raid as "unjustified aggression against the faithful as they prayed in a mosque."

    US Army Denies

    Giving an account of the operation that elicited such intense reactions, including an indignant one from Jawad al-Maliki, an intimate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the American Army denied all responsibility. According to the United States, the operation was planned and executed by Iraqi Special Forces. The role of American Special Forces was limited to "advising Iraqi forces," an American Army communiqu emphasized.

    The American Army is accused of repeated foul-ups, including a recent one to the north of Baghdad and another in November to the west of Baghdad, in which civilians were killed.

    Deadly Attack Against Iraqi Recruits

    40 dead, 20 wounded. The suicide attack committed Monday morning against the American-Iraqi Tamara base, close to Mosul, is the bloodiest against recruits for the Iraqi security forces since January, when a suicide bomber killed 70 in Ramadi.

    Strengthening Iraqi security forces is at the center of both Iraqi and American authorities' policy. They see it as the best way to face the rebellion and prepare for the departure of foreign forces. But these forces and their recruitment centers are periodically targeted by the rebels, who thus seek to dissuade Iraqis from joining the ranks of the police and the army.