Muslim Chaplain Slams Heavy-Handed US Tactics in Iraq

“The better you act, the safer this area will be. If nothing else you'll not give a reason for someone who is neutral to go and join the insurgents,” Captain Abdullah Hulwe, a Syrian-born Sunni, told The Telegraph Sunday, February13 , in his first full interview since he arrived in Iraq a year ago.

He cited several examples of unnecessary harassment and ill-treatment of Iraqis by fellow US soldiers.

“We've never had any problem with women so we should not search and harass them.”

Hulwe further added: “If a man is head of house you don't let him lose face in front of his family. There is no need for swearing and hollering and frightening the children.”

Several residents in the Iraqi city of Ramadi have told IslamOnline.net that the unabated resistance in the western Baghdad city was a direct result (see http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/04/article02.shtml ) of the barbarian practices of the US occupation forces.

“Imagine how an Iraqi man feels when he sees a foreigner touching his sister,” Qassem Hasnawi, a young Iraqi, once said describing the situation in Fallujah. (see http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-06/06/article10.shtml )

Act Like Guests

Hulwe, who joined the US Army as a mechanic, urged his fellow US army soldiers to act like true guests, regretting failure to shift from war-fighting mentality.

“If you're saying you're a guest you have to behave like a guest. There is no need to cuss people out.”

He also criticized another routine practice by the American troops.

“You don't force people off the road when you are driving,” said the American army’s Muslim chaplain.

Hulwe, 42 , told the paper that he was struggling to “educate” soldiers to respect Muslims, admitting that US troops had made many mistakes and were only slowly learning how to put things right.

Indiscriminate Detentions

The Muslim chaplain was particularly furious about indiscriminate detention of Iraqis on a tip off from one person, who might well have a personal grudge to settle.

“Just because one source says this guy's bad, we used to arrest a guy,” he regretted.

Hulwe said one of his most satisfying moments was being able to free a young man who had been wrongfully imprisoned by US forces.

“The Kurds had arrested him and got a confession saying he was a Saudi working for Al-Qaeda,” he recalled.

“In fact, it turned out he was an Iraqi and his father had been murdered by Saddam Hussein's regime.”

Hulwe added that after checking paperwork supplied by the family he was able to convince military lawyers that the Iraqi should be freed.

After this incident he pressed for arrest procedures to be changed and accusations now need to be verified from “two different sources”.

Discrimination at Home

The US army chaplain lamented that his own family had been mistreated after the9 /11.

He said his hijab-donned wife was searched every time she entered the base in Texas where he was stationed.

“The soldier stopping her said he was only searching every15 th car,” Hulwe said.

“I said, 'That's baloney. Are you telling me my wife is unlucky every time?'”

A recent nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University, showed that at least 44 percent of the Americans backs curbing Muslims’ civil rights and monitoring their places of worship.

A May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded that Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the US have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the9 / 11attacks.

http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-02/13/article04.shtml