By Barry Healy
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) news site in reporting on the February 7 assassination of Iraqi military leader, Abu Baqir al-Saadi in Baghdad, described him as the leader of a “militant group.” This reflects official United States (US) rhetoric about their enemies in the Middle East.
Al-Saadi led Kataib Hezbollah, which the US has accused of killing three of its soldiers in a drone attack on January 28. The US soldiers were stationed on the border of Jordan and Syria as part of the ongoing illegal US occupation of Syrian territory.
According to the ABC, “Iraq and Syria have seen almost daily tit-for-tat attacks between Iran-backed armed groups and US forces stationed in the Middle East since the Israel-Gaza war began in October.” It is reported that there have been 160 attacks in Iraq alone.
The manner in which the ABC reporting is framed obscures a great deal about the US military presence in the Middle East and presents a picture that dangerously reverses reality.
The “militant group”, Kataib Hezbollah is actually a legal component of the armed forces of Iraq. By contrast US forces in Iraq are there against the expressed desires of the Iraqi parliament, articulated in its 2020 resolution.
Following the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq the country was largely powerless in the face of the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In 2014, when ISIL spectacularly captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria, instituting a terror regime, Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for citizens to form militias.
Kataib Hezbollah is one of these Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMFs), which are officially integrated into the defence force structure of Iraq. Some of these PMFs, including Kataib Hezbollah, besides Iraqi government funding also receive backing from Iran.
A number of Iraqi PMFs appear to be active in the loose Islamic Resistance in Iraq network, which has carried out a number of attacks on US and Israeli targets since October 18, 2023. US bases spread throughout Iraq and Syria have been targeted.
Solidarity with the Palestinians facing the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza has fuelled these attacks.
After the three US personnel were killed and some 40 were injured on January 28, US president Biden blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq”. He promised retaliation, which has now been enacted.
White House National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby said on January 29: “We do not seek another war.”
However, the Iraqi News Agency on February 8 quoted the spokesman for the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces, Special Forces Major General Yahya Rasoul, as saying that the international coalition has become a factor of instability for Iraq, indicating that it threatens to drag it into the circle of conflict.
Rasoul said (machine translation): “The American forces repeatedly, irresponsibly, commit everything that would undermine the understandings and the start of bilateral dialogue, as they carried out a clear-cut assassination operation, by directing an air strike in the middle of a residential neighbourhood…in a way that does not care about the lives of civilians and international laws.”
He said that the US-led coalition “threatens civil peace, violates Iraqi sovereignty, belittles and risks the lives of people and our people.” Even more dangerously, he said, “the international coalition completely exceeds the reasons and purposes for which it was created on our land.”
He stressed that “this path pushes the Iraqi government, more than ever before, to end the mission of this coalition, which has become a factor of instability for Iraq,” noting that it “threatens to drag it into the circle of conflict.”
Most ominously, he said that “our armed forces cannot help but carry out their constitutional duties and tasks, which require preserving the security of Iraqis and the land of Iraq from all threats.”
Major General Tahseen Al-Khafaji, who heads the Iraqi Security Media Cell also condemned the US action in a statement reported by the Iraqi News Agency.
“This targeting is a clear aggression and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and dragging the region into dangerous repercussions,” he said. “We also hold the US and the coalition forces responsible for the repercussions of these dangerous actions that threaten the security and safety of the country and a clear damage of all talks that are taking place between both sides.”
It is difficult to see how the US can avoid a region-wide war if it continues to illegally occupy a large part of Syria, maintains troops in Iraq against the wishes of the population and the Iraqi government, carries out bombing regimes in Yemen and supports Israeli genocide against the Palestinians on their own land.
If the ABC continues to frame its reporting in such a misleading manner it will help drag Australia behind the US into the quagmire.
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