Republican Guard | Baby Villains

konchan

Wed, 03/06/2024 - 00:07

"The Republican Guard were the elite troops of the Iraqi army directly reporting to Hussein, unlike the paramilitary force Fedayeen Saddam, and the ordinary Iraqi Army. They were better trained, disciplined, equipped, and paid than ordinary Iraqi soldiers, receiving bonuses, new cars, and subsidized housing."¹

Between the Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War, "all the eight Republican Guard divisions involved in fighting during the Gulf War and the "Tawakalna" Division were disbanded due to losses. The remaining formations led the suppression of the 1991 uprisings in northern and southern Iraq - the Kurdish insurgency in the north and the Shi'ite uprising in the east. During these times, there were numerous accusations of the use of poison gas, rape and torture. The Hammurabi and Medina divisions surrounded Karbala with tanks and artillery and shelled the city for one week killing thousands and destroying entire neighborhoods."¹

In the 1991 Uprising, "The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels killed many Ba'athist officials and officers. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery and helicopters, and many historical and religious structures in the south were deliberately targeted under orders from Saddam Hussein. Saddam's security forces entered the cities, often using women and children as human shields, where they detained and summarily executed or "disappeared" thousands of people at random in a policy of collective responsibility. Many suspects were tortured, raped, or burned alive.

"Many of the people killed were buried in mass graves. Mass burial sites containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered between 2003 and 2006, the majority were in the South, including one believed to hold as many as 10,000 victims."²