http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1435&a=129852
"USA Encouraged Ransacking"
This is a translation of an article from April 11 from Dagens
Nyheter, Sweden’s largest newspaper, based in Stockholm. The
article was written by Ole Rothenborg and translated by Joe
Valasek. Khaled Bayomi, has taught and researched on Middle
Eastern conflicts for ten years at the University of Lund where
he is also working on his doctorate. He has given his permission
for this interview to be widely disseminated.
Khaled Bayomi looks surprised when the American officer on TV
complains that they don’t have the resources to stop the
plundering in Baghdad. "I happened to be right there just as the
American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering."
Khaled Bayomi traveled from Europe to Baghdad to be a human
shield and arrived on the same day that the war began. About
this he can tell many stories but the most interesting is
certainly his eyewitness account of the wave of plundering.
"I had gone to see some friends who live near a dilapidated area
just past Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris. It was
the 8th of April and the fighting was so intense that I was
unable to return to the other side of the river. In the
afternoon it became perfectly quiet and four American tanks took
places on the edge of the slum area. The soldiers shot two
Sudanese guards who stood at their posts outside a local
administration building on the other side of Haifa Avenue. Then
they blasted apart the doors to the building and from the tanks
came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to
them. "
"The entire morning, everyone who had tried to cross the road
had been shot. But in the strange silence after all the
shooting, people gradually became curious. After 45 minutes, the
first Baghdad citizens dared to come out. Arab interpreters in
the tanks told the people to go and take what they wanted in the
building."
"The word spread quickly and the building was ransacked. I was
standing only 300 yards from there when the guards were
murdered. Afterwards the tank crushed the entrance to the
Justice Department, which was in a neighboring building, and the
plundering continued there".
"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them.
They did not partake in the plundering but dared not to
interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next
morning the plundering spread to the Modern Museum, which lies a
quarter mile farther north. There were also two crowds there,
one that plundered and one with watched with disgust."
"Are you saying that it was US troops who initiated the
plundering?’
"Absolutely. The lack of jubilant scenes meant that the American
troops needed pictures of Iraqis who in different ways
demonstrated hatred for Saddam’s regime."
"The people pulled down a large statue of Saddam?"
"Did they? It was an American tank that did that, right beside
the hotel where all the journalists stay. Until lunchtime on
April 9, I did not see one destroyed Saddam portrait. If people
had wanted to pull down statues they could have taken down some
of the small ones without any help from American tanks. If it
had been a political upheaval, the people would have pulled down
statues first and then plundered."
"Isn’t it good that Saddam is gone?"
"He’s not gone. He has broken his army down into very small
groups. That’s why there hasn’t been a large battle. About the
official state, you could say that Saddam dissolved that already
in 1992 and he’s built a parallel tribal structure that is
totally decisive in Iraq. When the US began the war, Saddam
abandoned the state completely and now depends on the tribal
structure. That was why he abandoned the large cities without a
fight."
"Now the US is compelled to do everything themselves because
there’s no political body within the country which will
challenge the existing structure. The two who came in from
outside the country were annihilated at once. (The reference
here is to General Nazar al-Khazraji, who returned from Denmark
and the Shiite Muslim leader, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.) They were
cut to pieces with swords and knives by a furious crowd in Najaf
because they were thought to be American puppets. According to
the Danish newspaper BT, al-Khazraji was brought from Denmark to
Iraq by the CIA."
"Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq that has not
said how long it intends to remain, has not given any plan for
civilian rule and no date for general elections. Enormous chaos
is now to be expected."