'Rape of an entire nation'

2004-05-14 08:16

Cairo - Arabs and Muslims are still reeling from the sexual -- and often pornographic -- nature of the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, commentators said on Thursday.

The pictures were often taken in front of smiling troops, including women. In one notorious image, Private Lynndie England, a cigarette dangling from her lips, points to men's genitals.

In another she holds a leash with an Iraqi prisoner on the other end.

The images, first broadcast on US television and repeatedly shown on Arabic satellite channels and published in the region's press, have so far led to charges against seven US soldiers.

However, there is growing suspicion they may have acted at least with the acquiescence of superiors to "soften up" prisoners before questioning, knowing the shame of nudity and sex would put huge psychological pressure on them.

Islamic extremists also apparently used the abuses as an excuse to behead a young American, in video footage which has shocked the world.

Egyptian novelist Ezzat el-Qamhawi said US soldiers arrived in Iraq "with the orientalist vision of a sensual Orient before sliding into sadism."

"This orientalist concept of the Arab world is dominant (in the West). It's not the first time the humanity of Arabs is violated in this way by the Americans under the guise" of orientalism, he said.

President is lying

But when "the American president tells us that the behaviour of these soldiers does not represent American values, he is lying," Qamhawi said.

"Since the extermination of the Indians, American society has been founded on violence," he said.

Sherine Abu En-Naga, a professor of English literature at Cairo University, confessed she was very disturbed by the parade of "indignant images."

"This scandal doesn't only have to do with physical and moral torture, with humiliation. That observation is banal," she said.

"But the fact is that these images reveal a moral decay, on the part of the American authors of these terrible infamies, but also by Arabs, who are content to condemn them, nothing else," she said.

"This series of images lays bare the pretensions of the United States to instil us with values they present themselves as the guardian of."

When asked about the images, Muchira Mussa, a journalist with the government's Al Ahram daily is blunt: "What I saw is deplorable."

"The people who did this are sub-human, they pretend to initiate us into democracy, but they showed us the exact opposite.

"I felt more than disgust. I was terrified thinking they were raping not just men and women, but an entire nation," he said.

However, high school teacher Manal Mahmoud said he did not believe the Americans, "used to using bodies of men and women, especially in advertising, knew they were breaking a taboo."

"Unveiling bodies in our countries is worse than torture, it's decadence. There is more than a gulf between American morals and our own," he said.

- AFP