Operation Arrowhead Ripper is underway in Iraq

A huge US offensive codenamed “Operation Arrowhead Ripper” is underway in the Iraqi city of Baqubah, as part of extensive American operations aimed at suppressing freedom fighters and Mujahideen groups in Baghdad and areas to the north and south of the capital.

US invaders and occupants, backed by armoured vehicles, artillery, helicopter gunships and warplanes, have sealed off the city of 300,000. The action recalls the murderous November 2004 assault on Fallujah in which much of the population fled and large sections of the town were levelled.

 

The number of US deaths has risen sharply as troops have been ordered into more aggressive actions throughout Iraq. A further 10 invaders were killed on Saturday-seven in three separate roadside bombings in Baghdad and Tikrit. A total of 32 have died in the past six days and 80 so far this month. And US puppets continue to cry.

 

No reports have been released of Iraqi civilian casualties, which are certain to be far higher. US invaders have trapped the entire population of the city. 8,000 American invaders backed by 2,000 Iraqi munafiqs are sweeping through Baqubah, arbitrarily detaining people, destroying and levelling any building regarded as a potential threat by their wicked minds.

 

While the designation of all anti-occupation fighters as Al Qaeda extremists suits the Bush administration’s propaganda purposes at home, it bears no relation to reality. Sunni Mujahideen groups last year proclaimed Baqubah the capital of the “Islamic State of Iraq” but the group known as “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” is just one of a number of Sunni groups involved.

 

US kuffar terrorists are turning Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province to the north-east of Baghdad, into a giant prison camp. As the operation got underway last week, leaflets were dropped on the city ordering all residents to remain inside their homes. The New York Times reported that the invaders intended to “fingerprint and take biometric data from every resident who seems to be a potential fighter”. Under conditions where survey after survey has revealed that the majority of the Iraqi population is hostile to the US occupation and supportive of Mujahideen, that means everyone is suspect.

 

According to Stars and Stripes on June 22, US troops were ordered last Tuesday to detain all Iraqi men they encountered. A US company from the First Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment detained four teenage boys, cuffing their hands with plastic flex and took them away for interrogation. The father of the two of the boys pleaded with the troops to tell him what would happen with them. He begged the invaders not to hand his sons over to Iraqi munafiqs, fearing that Shiite militiamen who dominate the security forces might kill them.

 

Puppet journalists dutifully repeated official propaganda that the operation was about winning “hearts and minds” and “bonding” the Iraqi forces with the local population. But it was difficult to disguise the widely felt distrust, fear, resentment and hostility to Iraqi munafiqs and American kafir invaders alike. The New York Times on Friday reported a conversation between a US captain and a resident which “soon turned into a debate on the Americans’ conduct in Iraq”.

 

The 50-year-old Iraqi angrily criticised bloody US occupants for gunning down a man for no reason, a claim the captain denied. He also made clear that he regarded the Iraqi munafiqs as even worse-mostly Shiites.

 

American invaders went into Baqubah in mid-March but only managed to “pacify” two eastern neighbourhoods. The latest offensive, which began last Tuesday, is focussed on west Baqubah. “In Khatoon, the southernmost section of the operations area, the US occupants conducted earth-shaking bombing runs and house-to-house searches for two days, punctuated by occasional gunfights”.

 

Kafir commander Mick Bednarek told the media on weekend: “It is house to house, block to block, street to street, sewer to sewer-and it’s also cars, vans-we’re searching every one of them.” He claimed that US invaders controlled about 60 percent of the city and had killed 60 to 100 fighters.

 

A recent report from Fallujah provided a glimpse of what a “pacified” Baqubah will be like. Much of the city remains in ruins. Little compensation or assistance has been provided to the residents, who are again under martial law, including a curfew from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m.

 

Muhammad Aydan, a 42-year-old father, told the IRIN news agency: “We are living like prisoners, lacking assistance at all levels. Aid support, which last year was always here, can’t be seen anymore. We depend solely on ourselves, drinking dirty water even though we know our children are getting sick from it. Power supply is less than two hours a day in some areas of Fallujah and sometimes we have to go three days without a shower to save water.”

 

In Baqubah, residents are already complaining of receiving no water or electricity since the start of Operation Arrowhead Ripper. Insisting that Baqubah is a Sunni stronghold, the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has provided little in the way of assistance and services to the city on the pretext that it would fall into the hands of Al Qaeda.

 

In what it terms “the Battle of the Baghdad belts,” the US invaders are conducting operations in other areas of Diyala to the north of the capital, the Arab Jabour area in the south, various safe havens to the west and northwest and in the Baghdad districts of Adhamiya, Rashid and Mansour.

 

What a US kafir commander is describing is not the suppression of isolated groups of insurgents, but a colonial-style war of repression against an innocent population. As they rampage through cities like Baqubah, the US invaders are creating fresh reserves of hostility and opposition to the illegitimate American occupation of the country.