RAMADI, Iraq, 23 August 2005 — Despite repeated offensives US troops still do not hold control of parts of northwestern Iraq and militants all but govern some towns, dispensing summary justice with public executions, residents say. “There are no US forces, no Iraqi army or police,” said an Iraqi reporter who works for Reuters in the region. He visited the town of Haditha some days after a US operation this month and did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.
“Three days ago, three people were executed on Haqlaniya bridge after being accused of being spies,” he said, citing residents of Haditha with whom he keeps in contact and referring to a bridge that connects the town with another across a river. The Euphrates Valley area, a conduit for small numbers of foreign radicals entering Iraq from Syria, is effectively closed to outside observers by threats of violence and local journalists also work in fear of intimidation and worse.
However, a reporter for Reuters and other Iraqi correspondents in Anbar province, which covers much of western Iraq, provided accounts similar to a detailed report on conditions in Haditha in Britain’s Guardian newspaper yesterday by a journalist who spent time there.
The US military, which has conducted several offensives against insurgents near Haditha, most recently Operation Quick Strike which ended Aug. 10, did not immediately respond to a request for information about the current security situation. Local people said substantial parts of a 120km stretch between the towns of Haditha and Qaim on the Euphrates are now run by fighters loyal to Jordanian Al-Qaeda figure Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and other groups fighting US forces.
In Haditha, a town of about 90,000, and Qaim, a smaller town close to the Syrian border, forms of Islamic court have been set up and guerrillas mete out punishments such as execution or beating with cables, residents said. “Some people who are brought here we treat for torture wounds,” said a doctor at Haditha’s hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.
“We have many bodies that are brought in that have just been thrown in the street after being tortured. Sometimes the militants come in and drag out people who have survived assassination and kill them,” he said. “We can do nothing.” Video discs distributed in towns across Anbar, including the regional capital Ramadi, show torture sequences. In one, a suspected police spy has string tied tight around his penis before he is forced to drink two liters of liquid.
Music and Western-style dress have been banned in both Haditha and Qaim, residents say, and women are forced to cover up with veils. Barbers are forbidden from cutting hair in Western styles. Anyone breaking the rules, which recall Taleban edicts in Afghanistan, is lashed with cables.
Sheikh Thafir Al-Aani, the imam of the main mosque in Qaim, said Zarqawi’s group had widespread control. “They are trying to create an Islamic caliphate,” he said. “They prevent people from cutting their hair and punish those who wear Western clothes.” Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group headed by Zarqawi, is said by local people to have appointed some of its members to local government posts. They collect salaries, the distribution of which is still controlled by the provincial government.
US forces have bases near Haditha and Qaim, and the Iraqi army also has forces throughout the area, but residents said they seldom ventured into the towns unless attacked. Fourteen US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Haditha this month in one of the deadliest attacks of the war.
In towns throughout Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, which stretches to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Zarqawi’s group has distributed leaflets claiming to have control of Haditha, Qaim and the towns in between. In Ramadi, leaflets distributed at the university warn women to veil their faces or face punishment.
