Irak 162

'Ersatz Apocalypto: Slaughter and Spin in the Battle for Najaf
By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t UK Correspondent
Tuesday 06 February 2007

I. Rashomon in Babylon

It has been cast as a ferocious battle against a mighty opponent: a fanatical "apocalyptic cult" storming the holy city of Najaf with hundreds of warriors led by a self-proclaimed Islamic Messiah, their frenzy quelled only at the last moment by a massive intervention of American firepower. But, as with so much else in the blood-soaked annals of the Bush administration's disastrous Babylonian Conquest, it appears this neat story masks a far grimmer, grubbier truth: a mass slaughter of civilians, caught in the toxic fog of hair-trigger tension, sectarian hatred and violent political ambition unleashed by the US invasion.
The January 28 clash in Najaf was, the New York Times proclaimed, the greatest one-day battle in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad in 2003. Some 200-400 "cultists" were killed by Iraqi troops and the American air and ground forces that came to their rescue when the apocalyptics - whose ranks included Baathists and al-Qaeda terrorists - nearly overran the Iraqi government troops, according to the NYT and other Western media.
The "bizarre" and "extraordinary" attack by the obscure but massively armed "Soldiers of Heaven" Shiite splinter group was an attempt to kill the leading clerics in the sacred city, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of millions of Iraqi Shiites, we were told. This massacre would supposedly usher in the reign of the Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah figure whom many Shiites believe is coming to redeem - and judge - the world. For hours on end, the outgunned and ill-trained Iraqi government soldiers held off the swarming zealots until American planes began bombing raids on the cult's entrenched positions in the groves outside Najaf and US troops marched in to bolster the flagging locals.
It was indeed a rousing tale of carnage, courage and fearsome zeal, fit for one of Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodbaths. Yet, in the days following the attack, it has became increasingly apparent that the story being presented in the Western media - based largely on accounts from Iraqi government officials and the Pentagon - has about as much historical accuracy as Gibson's ersatz epics.
So what happened in Najaf? It is, of course, hard to see anything clearly through the natural confusions of a nation in chaos and the deliberate manipulations of the powerful and their sycophants, but there are independent Iraqi sources - nonsectarian, nonaligned, democratic - who have been providing eyewitness accounts and analyses of stories in the wide-ranging Iraqi press, which is almost entirely ignored by the Western media. One of these, the blog "Healing Iraq" - written by "Zayed," an Iraqi professional who spent his childhood in Britain - has led the way in unpacking the Najaf firestorm.
To be fair, it's no wonder that Western accounts of the fighting were confused, as they relied on "bizarre" and "extraordinary" - and wildly varying - accounts from officials of the Bush-backed Iraqi government. For example, one of the primary sources for the New York Times's story of the battle - which no Western reporters were allowed to witness - was Abdul Hussein Abtan, the deputy governor of Najaf province, and a member of one of the Iranian-backed, armed sectarian factions that George W. Bush has empowered in Baghdad: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). During a press conference aired on Al-Iraqiya television, Abtan first claimed that the "foreign-funded" cult was led by a Lebanese, then later said its leader was an Iraqi. As Zayed notes, none of the journalists present questioned the contradiction.
In his latest report, Zayed details the bewildering array of versions offered up by factions connected with the Iraqi government. Followers of controversial cleric Moqtada al-Sadr first identified the Najaf "attackers" as members of the cult. The Sadrists, buttressed by spokesmen in the Iraqi Health Ministry, which they control, also asserted that the group was planning to kidnap, not kill, Sistani, Sadr and other top Shiite clerics. It was also the Sadrists who claimed that the attackers were working with al-Qaeda and Saddam loyalists, "and that they received logistical and monetary backing from Saudi Arabia." They said the sect's leader was an Iraqi named Dhiaa' Abdul Zahra Kadhim.
Meanwhile, SCIRI members, buttressed by the Najaf provincial government, which they control, said that more than 1,000 terrorists were killed in the battle, and that some 200 "brainwashed women and children" were detained and "removed to another place," presumably for deprogramming. SCIRI officials differed on the number of terrorists captured in the battle; one said 50, another said 16, and yet another said "hundreds" were detained. It was SCIRI that advanced the notion that the attack aimed to kill the clerics, not capture them. Various SCIRI officials said the cult's leader was a) the aforesaid, unnamed Lebanese national; b) Dhiaa' Abdul Zahra Kadhim, as in the Sadrist account; c) a renegade Sadrist named Ahmed Kadhim Al-Gar'awi Al-Basri ; d) another renegade Sadrist named Ahmed Hassan al-Yamani; e) a self-proclaimed messiah named Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talib.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020607R.shtml