|
|
|
By Adel Darwish The regime of Saddam Hussein is tightening his grip on the country and defusing the possibility of a military coup by purging the army and executing officers who question orders, according to Source in south Iraq. On Friday and Saturday, while the United States and Britain air strike was on the way, the Regime executed several officers, many of them are Shia, in the southern command. Five officers were also executed in the Baghdad garrison after being suspected of breaking the old British rule of banning army units from leaving the Barracks at night. The executions in the southern city of Amarah, was ordered by Saddam's cousin, former Defence Minister Ali Hassan Al-Majid, who was famed for burning the orchards of Kurdistan and was appointed governor of Kuwait during the seven months occupation of the emirate. General Al-Majid ordered the execution of at least half a dozen officers immediately after he took control of the predominantly Shia southern region. His appointment as part of a reorganization ordered by President Saddam who divided Iraq into four military districts Wednesday as he knew that a US and British air strikes was hours away. The reorganization, Iraqi sources say, was a precautionary measure to thwart possible uprisings by the Shia in the south who have access to good supply of arms from Iran where their leaders are based. The southern Shia provinces have long been trouble spots for Saddam's government. Some Shia armed groups periodically fire at party officials on the road from Baghdad to the southern port of Basra. There has been at least two dozen incidents this year including kidnapping two party officials who were later found dead this year leading to sever reprisals from Saddam's security forces against villages as the guerrilla flee into the marshland near the Iranian borders. Foreign envoys in the Iraqi capital Baghdad are advised by the regime and by their diplomatic missions to avoid driving along the route after dark. Only a few days after the cease-fire in the 1991 Gulf War, a rebellion started when a T55 tank commander returning from Kuwait fired his gun at a giant portrait of Saddam in the central square of Basra. The uprising, which was called for by the then US president George Bush, included all 14 provinces in the Shia south as well as Kurdish north, but were brutally put down. The allies did not interfere as the Kurds and the Shia were made to believe. In the North Saddam used his helicopters in the no fly zone - which was permitted under the cease fire terms-, while in the south there were reports that some 80 Republican Guards tanks passed through American check points to put down the Shia rebellion in Basra. Among those executed on last Friday was the commander of the 11th Mechanized Division in the southern city of Aramaic who objected to arrangements made by General al-Majid to counter Shia in case they rebelled again. He was not identified but believed to be from the same clan as Al-Majid and Saddam. '' This is counter productive sir and we only going to harvest trouble,'' the colonel is reported to have argued when he was order by General Al-Majid to set up road blocks outside villages effectively putting the residents under siege. '' I have been trained to deter the enemy not to fight my own people,'' he argued sharply when General Al-Majid accused him of cowardice. He was executed on Friday by a firing squad. Several other officers close to the commander were also executed on the same day by a firing squad in front of other officers. Other sources said that five other officers in the aerated military camp on the outskirts of Baghdad were executed on Friday and Saturday. [[Andrew get the BBC spelling names here please for consistency]] Hammed elbowed, Mussed Hussein Mohammed Hassan and two officers from Saddam's own Clan: Saddam Tamer el-Takriti and Colonel Sa'doun Jabber Hussein, whose father, General Jabber Hussein was entrusted by Saddam to the post of Iraqi military spokesman during the Iran Iraq war. aerated garrison. The officers were under suspicion they tried to move their units outside the camp. There has been an old Administrative order, imposed by the British in the 1920s when they ruled Iraq, that no officer from the Baghdad garrison is allowed to move any more than his own driver and body guard outside the barracks, and no more than four officers, or any armed military vehicles were allowed together by night on the streets of Baghdad. This rule was only broken once on the night of 13/14 July 1958 when General Abdel-Karim Quasi, who was trusted by the palace and the British, was permitted to drive with some of his officers through Baghdad to reach the Amman highway. He staged the infamous bloody coup that killed most of the royal family and the pro British Prime Minister Nor Pasha Assad, and ransacked the British embassy setting Iraq on the current course of history. General Quasi was killed by the Baath military coup in 1963 and his dead body was displayed on television with the young Saddam standing guard next to it. President Saddam, who vowed that his coup of 1968 would be the last; is ruthlessly imposing the old British rules on his army. The 16 February 2001 raid *. Arabs have different priorities *. The View from Britain * American policy on Iraq in disarray * Iraq official statement on 16 Feb. 2001 raid Saddam, the popular dictator among Arabs. *.The Godfather of Baghdad, how Saddam acts out the famous film Further information: Iraqi Mission in the UN. British Ministry of Defence The pentagon |