DUBAI, Jan 13, (Agencies): In the Arab world, footage showing American forces urinating on dead Taleban insurgents was for many a bitter reminder of what they fear — that US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not just about fighting Muslims, but about humiliating them.
“If they had urinated on us, it would have been better than what they did to us,” said Abu Mostafa, 85, who spent six months in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2005. “The US assaulted me by beating and torturing me psychologically.”
“Killing combatants in battle is one thing but degrading the value of human beings like this is something else,” said Archimandrite Qais Sadiq, president of the Ecumenical Studies Centre of Amman.
The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage US Marine Corps combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” Another makes a lewd joke.
The images reinforced a sense in the Muslim world that US military campaigns in Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq from 2003, were — far from bringing peace and democracy — an opportunity to assert US power over Muslim populations.
“Many other ugly crimes will take place in the countries that US forces enter, and no one can stop them,” said 37-year-old Iraqi farmer Raheem al-Zaidi, who was also held at Abu Ghraib, where US soldiers were photographed abusing Iraqi detainees.
The United States has condemned the behaviour shown in the video and promised to investigate.
“I have seen the footage, and I find the behaviour depicted in it utterly deplorable,” US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. “Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent.”
Yet the release of the video was expected to reinforce a view that President Barack Obama, who had promised to try to improve relations with the Muslim world, was no better than his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Zaki Bani Rushaid, a leader in Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, the country’s main opposition group, said: “Obama has made positive gestures to the Islamic world but in reality ... like in Guantanamo, the administration has not fulfilled its promises and failed in winning hearts and minds.”
“The mistakes committed by prior US administrations that have lost them support among Muslims are being repeated.”
Sadiq, at Amman’s Ecumenical Studies Centre, said that although Obama had promised openness toward the Islamic world, “Islamophobia and the practice of painting others as terrorists have only grown”.
The video footage is likely to be exploited by al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups whose propaganda plays up a narrative of Muslim populations oppressed first by European colonial powers and then by the United States.
Users in forums on Islamist websites said the behaviour of the US soldiers would increase their resolve.
“These are the morals of depraved American soldiers. They are hateful Crusaders,” wrote a user named Mu’tazz on one website. “Our martyrs are worth more than America and all those who live there.”
For Abdullah al-Haj, an activist in Yemen, where democracy protesters blame Washington for protecting President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the incident added to his dislike of the US policies.
“What the American soldiers have done is not surprising. They have done worse things in Iraq. Every day they prove that what we hear about the ‘civilised values’ is a lie,” he said.
The Obama administration has tried to draw a line under the policies of the previous US government that prosecuted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars which Obama often said had damaged America’s image around the world.
US troops largely withdrew from Iraq in December, though they leave behind a country hit by worsening sectarian violence, and Washington says it will remove most combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning, strongly denounced on Friday an online video of US soldiers urinating on the corpses of militants in Afghanistan.
Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the head of the Cairo-based institution, slammed it as “a hideous act which goes against all humanitarian principles and international laws” in comments to Egypt’s official MENA news agency.
“It is a blatant violation of the sanctity of the dead,” Tayyeb said.
The online video showed four US soldiers urinating on three bloodied corpses, and one of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed, saying: “Have a great day, buddy,” referring to one of the dead.
The video prompted condemnation from Washington and a Pentagon probe.
The soldiers in the video could face a court-martial for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the Geneva Conventions, which provide that the remains of enemy fighters be treated with dignity.