GSDF report details tense Iraq security situation

April 24, 2018

Tokyo (Jiji Press)--Japan's Defense Ministry released Monday a report that detailed a tense encounter between Ground Self-Defense Force troops and a crowd of supporters of an anti-US Iraqi Shiite cleric in Rumaitha, Iraq, in 2005.

The report on the so-called Rumaitha incident, which occurred on the morning of Dec. 4 that year, was drawn up by GSDF troops separately from their daily activity logs.

"We faced security guards at a point-blank range," the report said, adding that two to three armed people were looking at GSDF troops from some distance.

One of the daily activity logs disclosed by the ministry on April 16 this year said that the GSDF troops had the encounter with the supporters of anti-US cleric Muqtada Sadr near Samawah during preparations for a ceremony to mark the completion of a care facility, and that there was damage to GSDF vehicles.

The day's log also said that details of the incident were reported separately. The ministry did not disclose the separate report until Monday.

The ministry last week published some 15,000 pages of daily logs, more than one year after denying their existence. The GSDF troops were based in Samawah, southern Iraq, during their postwar reconstruction mission between 2004 and 2006 under a special law.

The report stated that the encounter lasted about five minutes and that there were two or three armed people just outside the crowd.

The report also said the GSDF troops experienced hostile acts such as damage to 12 GSDF vehicles and that some 50 people, apparently Sadr supporters, staged a protest during the ceremony.

A redacted section of the report indicated that a GSDF team was put on standby but was not sent into action. An informed source said the team was a quick-response force rushed to the scene in the event of emergencies such as those involving the use of weapons and causing casualties to the GSDF.

The activities of the GSDF troops in Iraq were limited to noncombat areas under the law. The logs and the separate report may provide clues to whether this rule was observed.

Also on Monday, the ministry announced the discovery of additional GSDF daily logs covering 34 days of activities in Iraq. As a result, the total number of days covered by the recently disclosed Iraq logs reached 469. Jiji Press