Terrorists They Aren’t

We don’t like Saddam; he was a dictator. But the Americans, they handcuff us, they put us on the floor in front of our wives and children. It’s shameful for us.   - An Iraqi citizen.

At first when the Americans came, many people said: “Welcome. They are our friends.” Then most Iraqis saw how Americans kill Iraqis, day after day. They make more and more enemies here.   - An Iraqi resistance fighter to The Boston Globe.

On March 20, a US-led coalition waged war on Iraq, a war that supposedly aimed at liberating the country and freeing it from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’thist, tyrannical rule. The war resulted in the ousting of Saddam on April 9 and an utmost state of chaos and insecurity that continues until this very day. On May 1, US President George W. Bush declared the war officially over, yet the coalition forces haven’t pulled out of Iraq, and Iraq is still occupied.

In June, the Associated Press news agency (AP) released an investigation that was carried out in the period between March 20 and April 20, revealing that at least 3240 Iraqi civilians were killed during a month of war – not to mention the research conducted by Iraq Body Count, which concludes that a minimum of 7863 Iraqi civilians have died since the war started. In October, a Human Rights Watch report accused the United States military and coalition forces in Iraq – who “keep meticulous records of soldiers killed in duty, providing daily accounts to the press” – of failing to investigate Iraqi civilian deaths arising from the excessive use of force by US troops. The report confirmed 20 “legally questionable” civilian deaths in Baghdad alone between May 1 and September 30. Dozens of unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have been reportedly killed at checkpoints at the hands of American soldiers who “fire without warning.”

More, in several incidents, including in Fallujah, Baghdad and Basra, US soldiers opened fire at anti-occupation civilian Iraqi demonstrators. In the town of Fallujah, in April, between 13 and 17 civilians were shot dead and more than 70 were wounded when US soldiers occupying a local school fired on demonstrators who were protesting against the US presence in Iraq (Following this incident, Amnesty International demanded the occupation authority to investigate the death of Iraqi demonstrators in Fallujah).

In another incident, Aljazeera Satellite Channel reported that Anglo-American forces gunned down 5 Iraqi demonstrators in Baghdad and Basra on October 4. Four weeks later, AP reported that US soldiers killed two Iraqi civilians during protest. The civilians were shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is the Greatest,” and they were waving pictures of Saddam Hussein, which could explain why US soldiers didn’t hesitate to kill them. Although Iraq is now believed to be “free” (even when it is under occupation), it seems that Iraqis are not actually free to wave the pictures of their former dictatorial ruler – under whose rule they led a more secure life.

Given the aforementioned facts, and given that Iraqis are particularly characterized by a sense of dignity and pride, they continue to protest against the US presence in Iraq. They are not to stand still, watching American soldiers roam Iraq’s streets, stand at checkpoints and give or deny Iraqis – the country’s very nationals – permission to move from one place to another inside Iraq. They are not to stand still, watching Paul Bremer, US civil administrator, make decisions about the future of their country, give orders and issue decrees. And they are not to stand still, watching their houses being searched or bombed, their loved ones being detained or shot, and their wives, mothers or daughters being frisked by American soldiers. They are not to accept being strangers in their homeland. They march in Iraq’s streets, chanting “No Bush, No Saddam” and “Death to America, Death to Saddam,” and they launch vigorous guerilla attacks on coalition troops.

On the other hand, US officials and mainstream media continue to brand resistance fighters as “terrorists,” “Saddam remnants” and “Ba’th Party loyalists.” They even went as far as to call them “released criminals.”

“We will not be intimidated. We will stay the course, and we will prevail in this central front on the war on terrorism,” said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, echoing the statements of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer and other Bush administration officials. Although it is universally accepted that occupied peoples have the right to resist foreign occupation, US officials label Iraqi resistance/anti-occupation fighters as terrorists and insurgents; and on these grounds they keep cracking down on them.

What US officials never mention, and is hardly mentioned in the media, is that Iraqis’ right to resist occupation is inherent in international law:

Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 1949, (Act 1 C4), passed in 1977, declared that armed struggle can be used, as a last resort, as a method of exercising the right of self-determination.

Furthermore, “the legitimacy of struggle by the people under colonial rules to exercise their rights to self-determination and independence” was recognized in the UN General Assembly's 20th session in 1965. The assembly invited “all States to provide material and moral assistance to the national liberation movements in colonial territories.”

International law conventions make no provision for a so-called “liberating force,” and according to international law, the US forces in Iraq represent an occupying power. The 1907 Hague Convention Representing the Laws and Customs of War on Land provides a clear definition for an occupied territory, a definition that in fact applies to the case of Iraq: “Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

Thus, the US-led coalition forces are nothing but occupying forces and, by resisting the US presence in Iraq, Iraqis are in effect exercising their legal right to resist foreign occupation.

Sara Khorshid is staff writer for IslamOnline. She holds a BA in Political Science from Cairo University. You can reach her at sarakhorshid@islam-online.net.

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