Was USA behind Baghdad terror attacks?

 
WAS the USA behind this week's terrorist outrages in Baghdad?

That's the question now being asked by many people in Iraq, while the western media paints a picture of a sectarian civil war erupting after the pseudo-departure of American forces.

Sami Ramadani writes in The Guardian that divide-and-rule tactics remain the only viable weapon the Americans have to control or influence the Iraqi political scene.

He says: "In the rush to provide an explanation for the nihilistic violence, the same old simplistic mantra is trotted out.

"Thursday's co-ordinated, simultaneous attacks are invariably described by the media as sectarian. Few pause to ask why a 'sectarian' attack would be aimed at all sects and ethnicities equally.

"Only a handful raise the possibility that these attacks are not sectarian in motive, or a reflection of sectarian hatred on the streets, but are instead designed to create sectarian entrenchment and animosity, and ignite street conflict.

"Similarly, analysts are quick to conclude that both the power struggle within the political elite, and the explosions are the result of the withdrawal of US troops. They portray the US forces as the good Samaritan who prematurely left the scene.

"Too few examine the legacy of the occupiers' poisonous presence at the heart of Iraqi society for nearly nine years, or ask why the US has built the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad, staffed by 15,000 personnel and spies."
 
Adds Ramadani, a political refugee from Saddam's regime: "Such is the anger at the occupation that many Iraqis think the US was behind Thursday's attack. This belief is dismissed as conspiratorial, but it is widely held.

"There is a reason for this. Apart from the horrific violence committed directly by the occupation forces and Pentagon-contracted mercenaries, the US also created Iraqi secret militia, and smuggled tens of thousands of weapons and tons of explosives into Iraq through private firms in Bosnia.

"[Paul] Bremer was unable to tell a congressional committee how he spent an unaccounted-for $8.8bn dollars, but many Iraqis suspect that it was used to fund violent sectarian forces.

"Indiscriminate killings and terrorist attacks were a permanent feature of the US-led occupation, and to many ordinary Iraqis, Thursday's bloodshed is just more of the same. "

Meanwhile, some anti-imperialists also see the hand of the USA behind this week's terrorist attack in Damascus in which 55 people died.