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The recent killing of two U.S. soldiers by their Iraqi colleague has raised disturbing questions about U.S. military relations with the Iraqis they work with.
On Dec. 26, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on U.S. soldiers accompanying him during a joint military patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He killed the U.S. captain and another sergeant, and wounded three others, including an Iraqi interpreter.
Conflicting versions of the killing have arisen. Col. Hazim al-Juboory, uncle of the attacker Kaissar Saady al-Juboory, told IPS that his nephew at first watched the U.S. soldiers beat up an Iraqi woman. When he asked them to stop, they refused, so he opened fire.
"Kaissar is a professional soldier who revolted against the Americans when they dragged a woman by her hair in a brutal way," Col. Juboory said. "He is a tribal man, and an Arab with honor who would not accept such behavior. He killed his captain and sergeant knowing that he would be executed."
Others gave IPS a similar account. "I was there when the American captain and his soldiers raided a neighborhood and started shouting at women to tell them where some men they wanted were," a resident of Mosul, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS on phone. "The women told them they did not know, and their men did not do anything wrong, and started crying in fear."
The witness said the U.S. captain began to shout at his soldiers and the women, and his men then started to grab the women and pull them by their hair.
"The soldier we knew later to be Kaissar shouted at the Americans, 'No, no,' but the captain shouted back at the Iraqi soldier," the witness told IPS. "Then the Iraqi soldier shouted, 'Let go of the women, you sons of bitches,' and started shooting at them." The soldier, he said, then ran off.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni organization, issued a statement saying the Iraqi soldier had shot the U.S. soldiers after he saw them beat up a pregnant woman.
"His blood rose and he asked the occupying soldiers to stop beating the woman," they said in the statement. "Their answer through the translator was: 'We will do what we want.' So he opened fire on them."
The story was first reported on al-Rafidain satellite channel. That started Iraqis from all over the country talking about "the hero" who sacrificed his life for Iraqi honor.
The U.S. and Iraqi military told a different version of the story.
An Iraqi general told reporters that Kaissar carried out the attack because he had links to "Sunni Arab insurgent groups."
"Soldier Kaissar Saady worked for insurgent groups who pushed him to learn army movements and warn his comrades about them," a captain of the second Iraqi army division told IPS. "There are so many like him in the army and now within the so-called Awakening forces (militias funded by the U.S. military)."
