HOME	Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus

By Hamza Mustafa

April 29, 2005

Original Article (English)

It has been two years since U.S. troops occupied Baghdad, putting an end to the rule of one of the worst dictators in our history. But this does not give them carte blanche to kill, humiliate and imprison at whim.

The troops are said to be here in order to preserve security. And in gratitude for their efforts, our government and official organs call them "multi-national forces" instead of occupation forces.

But maintaining security does not mean killing innocent Iraqis, humiliating ordinary citizens and beating up senior officials.

Many citizens are killed because they fail to read what is in the mind of the U.S. GI who is guarding a post in the country.

There is a gulf between the occupation troops and ordinary Iraqis. One of them is the language barrier.

Do our occupiers realize that there is a great difference in body language between English and Arabic? Don’t they know -- or perhaps do not want to know or pretend not to -- that more up to 70% of the population is illiterate, with no ability to ready their signs written in Arabic.

We are supposed to be a country with sovereignty – the evidence being our parliament and newly elected government.

But a member of our parliament was insulted, humiliated and beaten by U.S. troops. And the most our sovereign government and parliament could do was to ask for an apology.

In our own country, we could be beaten and killed by foreign troops -- on our own soil!

The compensation we get is an "apology" from the U.S. Embassy, which still occupies the palace where our president should be sitting.

I believe the Embassy’s main task is now the issuing of these apologies.

The number of Iraqis killed by erroneous U.S. fire, humiliated at checkpoints, beaten during U.S. sweeps and imprisoned by mistake is too many to count.