ah yes, the great "liberators"

THE ROVING EYE
The mean streets of Baghdad
By Pepe Escobar

BAGHDAD - Ahmad, a 23-year-old Jordanian student, stepped out of his apartment in Haifa Street this past Saturday morning to hail a taxi, but he was confronted by a US checkpoint. "Move your ass from here," a GI ordered him. "Don't talk to me like that. I'm not your slave," answered Ahmad. "Aren't you? taunted the GI. Ahmad rose to the bait and answered back, so the outcome was inevitable. He was arrested.

Ahmad was kept in a Hummer for two hours, and then taken to the main building at Baghdad (former Saddam) International Airport. A translator said to him, "Are you crazy? Never talk to these people, whatever they say to you." Ahmad finally managed to show the translator his Jordanian identity card. The Americans were not convinced. "What are you doing in Iraq? Are you a fedayeen [paramilitary]?" Ahmad replied that he was a student, and showed his university papers. The Americans said these might be fake.

Ahmad was then taken to a big hall inside the airport crammed with about 400 people. "They look like killers, or probably looters," Ahmad thought to himself. The "killers" then began talking behind his back: "He looks like a fedayeen. There's no future for him." Ahmad remembered that many foreign fedayeen - especially in Basra and Najaf - had been killed by Iraqis.

Then a soldier arrived in the hall and read a list of 10 names: these people were taken away. After a few hours, an Iraqi soldier came to talk to Ahmad. "You're lucky they [other detainees] didn't hurt you. Because they don't care. You're Jordanian, you have no family here. If they kill you, who cares about you?" Ahmad argued that he was not carrying his passport because there's no security in the city, and muggings are rife. The Iraqi soldier went out to plead Ahmad's case to the US commander. He came back half an hour later: "You can go. But don't do this again. And if you see an American tank or vehicle driving in the street, don't go near them."

Ahmad's experience is positively mild compared with what happens daily to others in Baghdad - and he managed to get away just because he is a foreigner. A curfew in the capital starts every night at 11. But in many places everything has stopped by as early as 2 in the afternoon because there's no security in the city.

Last month, Nudir, a young engineer, was arrested with two friends in a BMW because GIs found a revolver in the glove compartment: practically every Iraqi carries a gun for self-defense. Nudir says he was beaten up by the soldiers and then spent 16 days in Camp Cropper, the prison inside the airport grounds that Ahmad was lucky not to see.

US repression is relentless. Red Cross officials confirm that more than 20,000 people have been arrested in Baghdad in the past few months. Most come and go - but there's no way to keep tabs on all the cases: there are no functioning courts and judges. Amnesty International has already denounced cases of "torture", and an unknown number of Iraqi civilians have been gunned down by US search patrols. The bunkered-down Coalition Provisional Authority simply refuses to mention how many Iraqi civilians are being shot or killed every day - either victims of crime or victims of US repression. Like the Iraqi interpreter killed by an American soldier in the front seat of a car occupied by Pietro Cordone, the Italian diplomat who is the official adviser to the new Iraqi Ministry of Culture. Baghdadis take for granted that American soldiers are now free to shoot civilians in any Iraqi civilian vehicle if they look even remotely suspicious.