This is from a Swedish Newspaper
> Dagens Nyheter, April 11
>
> "USA instigated looting!"
> MALMO  Khaled Bayomi looks a bit surprised when the US officer on TV
> bemoans the lack of resources to stop the looting in Bagdad. ""I happened
> to be there right when the US troops started encouraging people to start
> looting."
>
> Khaled Bayomi traveled from Malmo to Bagdad as a human shield and arrived
> the same day the fighting started.  He can tell many stories about this,
> but what is most inetresting is his testimony about the wave of looting.
>
> "I had been to visit some friends who live in a run-down neighborhood just
> past Haifa Avenue on the left bank of the Tigris.  It was April 8 and the
> battles were so intense that I couldn't get to the other side of the
> river. In the afternoon it suddenly got quiet and four US tanks were
> stationed on the outskirts of the slum area. From the tanks was heard
> eager shouting in Arabic, asking people to approach.
>
> "During the morning anyone who tried to go out in the street would be shot
> at. But in this peculiar silence after all the shooting, people finally
> got curious. After 45 minutes the first Bagdad residents started coming
> out. Then the soldiers shot the two Sudanese guards posted outside a local
> administration buliding on the other side of Haifa Avenue.
>
> "I was standing just 300 meters from where the guards were murdered.  Then
> they shot at the doors to the buliding and the Arabic translators in the
> tanks encouraged people to help themselves inside the building.   The
> rumor spread fast and the building was emptied. A little later the tanks
> crushed the door to the Justice Department, in the neighboring building,
> and the looting continued there.
>
> "I stood in a large crowd who saw it as i did. They did not participate in
> the looting but didn't dare intervene. Many had tears in their eyes from
> shame. The next morning the looting spread to the Museum of Modern Art,
> 500 meters further north. There were also two crowds there, one looting,
> the other looking on in disgust."
>
> So you are saying that it was the US troops that initiated the looting?
> "Absolutely. The absence of scenes of joy caused the US troops to be in
> need of images of Iraqis who in different ways show their hatred for
> Saddam's regime."
>
> But the Bagdad residents did tear down a big statue of Saddam?
> "Did they? It was a US tank that did it, right next to the hotel where all
> the journalists are staying. Up until lunchtime on April 9 I never saw a
> single destroyed Saddam image. If people were into tearing down statues
> they could have torn down a bunch of the small ones, with no help from US
> tanks. Had this been a political uprising the population would have
> toppled statues first and then looted."
>
> Back in Sweden Khaled Bayomi is a doctoral student at the University of
> Lund where he has for the last ten years been lecturing and researching
> about the conflicts in the Middle East. he is well aware of both the
> conflicts and the propaganda war.
>
> Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?
> "He isn't gone. He has dissolved his army into small, small groups.  That
> is why there was no major battle. As far as the state, one might say that
> Saddam dissolved it already in 1992 and Iraq has been ruled by a parallel
> tribal structure which is crucial. When the U.S. initiated the war, Saddam
> completely abandoned the state and now relies entirely on the tribal
> structure. That is why he conceded the cities without a fight.
>
> Now the U.S. has to do everything on its own because there is no political
> force from within that wants to challenge the exisiting structure.  The
> two who came from outside were immediately lynched."  Khaled Bayomi is
> referring to what happened to General Nazar al-Khazraji, who had fled from
> Denmark, and the Shiite Muslim leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei.  They were
> chopped up by swords and stabbed by a furious mob in Najaf, because they
> were seen as American marionettes. According to the Danish newspaper BT,
> al-Khazraji was brought from Denmark to Iraq by the CIA.
>
> "Now we have an occupation force in place that has not indicated how long
> it will stay, has given no timeplan for civilian rule and no date for
> free elections. All that awaits us now is complete chaos."
>
>

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