Empire Notes

April 30, 2:30 pm EST. The pictures of Iraqi prisoners abused and demeaned by their grinning American captors are making their way around the Arab world. The results are unsurprising. Check out this freeper thread; even some right-wingers are having trouble rationalizing this one away.

Some parts of this are still not being reported in the U.S. media (or not very much). Check this out from the Guardian:

Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, speaking for central command, told the Guardian: "One contractor was originally included with six soldiers, accused for his treatment of the prisoners, but we had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him."

She did not specify the accusation facing the contractor, but according to several sources with detailed knowledge of the case, he raped an Iraqi inmate in his mid-teens.

Col Morgenthaler said the charges against the six soldiers included "indecent acts, for ordering detainees to publicly masturbate; maltreatment, for non-physical abuse, piling inmates into nude pyramids and taking pictures of them nude; battery, for shoving and stepping on detainees; dereliction of duty; and conspiracy to maltreat detainees".

One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt Chip Frederick is accused of posing in a photograph sitting on top of a detainee, committing an indecent act and with assault for striking detainees - and ordering detainees to strike each other.

George Bush defended his "Mission Accomplished" speech one year ago during a courageous appearance on an aircraft carrier by saying,

A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier saying we had achieved an important objective, accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein.

And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq.

Except in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

A Soccer Stadium Turned into a Mass Grave in Fallujah (Source: BBC)
I'm not trying to imply that the United States has done this on anything like the scale Saddam Hussein did. After all, it's only had a year -- Saddam had 35. And Saddam had the full support of the United States for his worst atrocities (war on Iran, Anfal campaign against the Kurds, suppression of the 1991 uprising); the poor United States has hardly any support at all.

Permalink

April 29, 10:20 pm EST. I've managed to find a few of the other pictures that 60 Minutes II broadcast. They're not getting displayed as much as they should. So here they are.

Pictures replaced by links to save bandwidth

Iraqi man hooded and told would be electrocuted if fell from box by American soldiers

Naked hooded Iraqi men forced to simulate fellation

Iraqi men stripped naked and formed into a human pyramid

Grinning Americans with naked Iraqi men in degrading postures

Woman with cigarette taunting naked Iraqi prisoners with bags over their heads

Permalink

April 29, 12:30 pm EST. This morning I was on MSNBC News in a "debate" about the shocking (but not surprising if you had been talking to Iraqis) degradation and abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison committed by U.S. personnel.

This included taking numerous pictures of American soldiers posing with naked Iraqi prisoners placed in degrading postures, an Iraqi prisoner with a hood over his head and wires attached to him (see above;  thanks to Unfairwitness), and much more. If you missed the 60 Minutes II segment last night, when you click on the link above, you'll see a link to streaming video of part of the segment, including some pictures. You have to see it for yourselves.

The official reaction is clear. Here's the reaction from Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the same guy who said "95 percent" of the Iraqi casualties in Fallujah were fighters without going to a hospital or looking at a cemetery in the town:

"So what would I tell the people of Iraq? This is wrong. This is reprehensible. But this is not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here," adds Kimmitt. "I'd say the same thing to the American people... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few."

Iraqis, who have seen for themselves the conduct of American soldiers, will never believe this.

One of the abusive soldiers, Chip Frederick, sent home these messages over the months that he was posted at Abu Ghraib:

"Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' "

"They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception."

"We help getting them to talk with the way we handle them. ... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours."

This suggests pretty clearly that torture and degrading punishment are part of standard policy, because they help to make prisoners break under interrogation.

The debate was framed as one over whether the soldiers should be punished. This shows something seriously wrong with the political culture to start with. There's obviously no excuse for these acts, even if the soldiers were ordered to perform them. The question should simply be how high up the chain of command the investigation goes and how broadly in other prison facilities.

I've got to run now, but in a few hours I'll post some examples of standard operating procedure for American soldiers in Iraq and the prevailing culture of impunity.

Permalink

April 28, 11:30 am EST. John Negroponte, the designated future U.S. ambassador to Iraq, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. He started off by saying Iraq would have "a lot more sovereignty than they have right now." When questioned in detail about what that meant for the U.S. military,

Negroponte said the U.S. military "is going to have the freedom to act in their self-defense, and they're going to be free to operate in Iraq as they best see fit." What's more, he said, Iraqi military forces will "come under the unified command" of the U.S.-led multinational force.

Afterward, according to the Post, "Negroponte emphasized that the interim government will not need law-making authority."

All of this bears out precisely the claims made in an article in the Times back on March 26, "The Occupation: U.S. Officials Fashion Legal Basis to Keep Force in Iraq."

Let's sum up the transfer of sovereignty. The United States keeps 14 military bases, at least 130,000 troops. It also keeps control of the new Iraqi military (which is to be under the command of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez). It keeps control of the purse-strings. UN Security Council Resolution 1483 gives the United States (the "coalition") total control over Iraq's oil revenue -- it goes into a bank account labeled the Iraq Development Fund administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

So, the new sovereign government of Iraq will have a military controlled by a foreign power, will be occupied by a foreign military, will have no revenues, and "will not need law-making authority." An interesting definition of sovereignty.

It should be fairly clear what this sham is all about. Once they claim hard enough the government is sovereign, then, without needing to make laws, it can sign binding contracts with foreign corporations. And, just by the way, Bush can claim before the elections that he's created a sovereign government in Iraq.

Permalink

April 28, 11:20 am EST. The PIPA/KN poll I cited earlier also shows that 57% of Amerians believe that Saddam was giving substantial support to al-Qaeda.

A reader who wrote to me, a self-described conservative who confesses to being uneasy with America’s new imperial ventures, says that 9/11 is what makes him support the war on Iraq. He’s read more than many conservatives and is aware that there’s no evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda, but he’s just sure Saddam was aiding, abetting, and harboring them anyway.

And even people who scoff at these claimed links, like Thomas Friedman, talk about the war on Iraq as a necessary part of fighting Islamic fundamentalist terrorism regionally and globally.

It’s all quite amazing to me. Of course, Saddam and al-Qaeda were clearly not working together. But actually, it goes far beyond that.

Saddam actively suppressed the formation of such groups and made sure they could not operate in Iraq.

He was not “militantly secularist,” as even Juan Cole, who should know better, says. Even in its original form, Ba’athism was hardly militantly secularist; and Ba’athism in Iraq lost any meaningful political core in the early 1980;s. Saddam gutted the party’s independence, privatized huge swaths of industry in 1982, started using very overtly Islamist rhetoric in the war against Iran (like for example constant references to Qadissiyah the sight of the great battle where Muslim armies beat Iranian forces and started the Islamization of Iran). After the Gulf War, his rhetoric got ore and more religious, he started building gigantic mosques, and the whole country fell back on religion as a stabilizing force.

But that’s not the point. Saddam tolerated no threats to his power, which was based in part on the construction of him as the savior of the nation. Any ideology, like Islamism, that asserted in a political way that there was a higher power would be anathema. And, of course, any political ideology independent of him.

So he suppressed Salafists (Isalmic fundamentalists, including Wahhabis) brutally. People were imprisoned, tortured, even killed just on suspicion.

Furthermore, wherever the elusive Zarqawi and his ilk were before the war, it was nearly impossible for them to operate in Iraq (except in northern Iraq, which was under a separate government). Just the nature of a repressive totalitarian police state makes it difficult or impossible for groups like that to get very far or do much. The regime change, which has ushered in near anarchy in Iraq, freed “Zarqawi” to commit a phenomenal series of terrorist attacks.

So even if you believe wholeheartedly in a brutal, direct military logic of a “war on terrorism,” even from a narrow military point of view attacking the one country where the threat is totally suppressed and opening it for that threat is absolutely insane. Even the most hard-core bigots who think that the United States has to fight a war on Islam should realize this.

Permalink

April 27, 5:00 pm EST. I'm in Denver to do a talk, so haven't had a chance to post on unfolding events today. The violence that has already erupted in Fallujah -- devastating assaults using the fearsome AC-130 Spectre gunship -- does not augur well.

U.S. propaganda activities directed at the Iraqis remain laughable. Check this out:

Earlier in the day, U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets in the city of 200,000 people, calling on insurgents to surrender.

"Surrender, you are surrounded," the leaflets said. "If you are a terrorist, beware, because your last day was yesterday. In order to spare your life end your actions and surrender to coalition forces now. We are coming to arrest you."

Well, of course, the vast majority are not terrorists but simply people defending their city from a military assault. But none of them think of themselves as terrorists, any more than George Bush or Ariel Sharon thinks of himself as a war criminal. That's not the way human beings work. It's as if they've kept up their barrage of propaganda so long they can't understand others might see the world a different way.

Permalink

April 26, 7:45 am EST. My jaw dropped when I read a description of the new Iraqi flag. White with a blue crescent, two blue bars and one yellow bar. My first reaction, like that of every Iraqi, was that, with the exception of the yellow bar, these are the colors of the Israeli flag. Perfectly nice colors and from an aesthetic point of view nicer than the red white and blue, the French tricolor or the hideous Union Jack, but the symbolism is just too over the top.

A quote from the Post article linked above (which also has a graphic of the flag):

"When I saw it in the newspaper, I felt very sad," said Muthana Khalil, 50, a supermarket owner in Saadoun, a commercial area in central Baghdad. "The flags of other Arab countries are red and green and black. Why did they put in these colors that are the same as Israel? Why was the public opinion not consulted?"

It's understandable that Kurds, threatened by pan-Arabism, would want a break from the Arab color scheme. But surely there were other colors?

I also don't understand another part of the symbolism. The crescent is for Islam, the blue bars for the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the yellow bar for the Kurds. Either the Arabs have been left out or there's at least an implication that Kurds are not Muslims.

Permalink

April 26, 8:00 pm EST. I'm still in the process of sifting through my notes from Iraq and will be writing more in the next few weeks. Right now, a thought about Saddam's palaces.

After the Gulf War, Saddam went on a mad building spree, erecting palaces and mosques of fantastic proportions. A 1999 State Department report claimed that he had built 48 palaces (likely meaning 48 buildings within a much smaller number of palace complexes). The largest mosque in Baghdad, Umm al-Ma'arek (Mother of Battles) was completed in 2002, and I have seen the barely-started skeleton of the massive Saddam mosque, that was to be bigger than any outside Mecca and Medina. From whatever I could see, although huge and opulent, they were not exactly models of artistic grace or architectural innovation.

This was a common propaganda point used by supporters of the sanctions -- they claim the sanctions are causing harm, but really the harm is caused by Saddam building palaces. And, in fact, the building of the palaces and mosques was absolutely indefensible -- even Iraqis who have a good word for Saddam (and there are more every day) think he went a bit nuts with this. To use this to support the sanctions was turning logic on its head. Opponents of the sanctions didn't do it on the basis of claiming Saddam was a nice guy. In the 1980's, without external control, fighting a war with Iran, Saddam drove Iraq deeply into debt to keep up nearly free provision of health care and other services. In the 1990's, free from fiscal accountability because he could blame the external controls imposed under the sanctions, he built palaces and mosques. Thus, the sanctions made his treatment of the public worse.

But anyway, what has happened to the palaces now? One of them has become the headquarters of the CPA -- the "Green Zone." Another at Abu Ghraib is a giant detention camp. And so one. The United States has moved into all of Saddam's palaces.

Surely, had they wished to show the slightest concern for Iraqi public opinion, had they wished to make any effort to get people to believe that this was about democracy for Iraqis and not about control for the United States, they could have opened up some of these palaces to the Iraqi people. Under Saddam, they were off limits to ordinary people; now, they still are. They could have opened some of them and said, "Look, Saddam made these for himself with the wealth of the Iraqi people. Now we have come and given them to you who paid for them."

Instead, with their narrow pragmatism and complete disregard for actual Iraqis, they moved in and took over and helped cement in Iraqis' minds the idea that they are simply the replacements for Saddam (this is something almost any Iraqi will say).

Permalink

April 26, 9:00 am EST. Austin, Texas -- I'm back. A concept I'm going to have to grapple with for a while.

Apparently, Marine commanders, in consultation with the White House, have decided for now not to undertake an all-out offensive against Fallujah. Instead, they will conduct "patrols" along with Iraqi security forces (read "human shields"). Mark Kimmitt says efforts have shifted to a "political track."

At the same time, there is a resurgence of the language of de-escalation regarding Najaf, Kimmitt saying there are no "timelines" for the apprehension of Moqtada al-Sadr.

For the most part, over the past five weeks, the administration has acted as if the use of force is the ultimate political panacea, as long as you have enough of it. In doing so, it has escalated what would have been a very containable series of episodes into the first full-blown crisis for the occupation.

Within that period, there have been stretches of a few days where slightly more conciliatory language was used. In hindsight, each of those occasions looks like temporizing while they hope that various Iraqi intermediaries could resolve the situation. In Fallujah, the Hizb-il-Islami (Party of Islam), which holds a seat on the Governing Council but has (or has gained) some legitimacy among the resistance in al-Anbar province, has been an explicit intermediary. In Najaf, less explicitly, it's been elements of the Shi'a religious hierarcy, many of which are not happy about al-Sadr's ascendance.

In each case, the idea for the United States has been the same -- negotiations should get the other side to surrender and the main concession from the United States will be that, if they do surrender, they won't be bombarded. Which is another way of saying that the negotiations are not about coming to a mutually satisfactory solution but simply to have the United States win without even having to fight.

When a few days of this goes nowhere (as with the mujaheddin in Fallujah, who were happy to turn in old and unusable weapons, but not the ones they use for defense of the town), the bellicosity gets ramped up again. In Najaf, they're being more careful because of the special significance of the city to Shi'a, but the outline of the story is not so different.

So, the question is, is this just another round of temporizing or does it represent an understanding by the administration that another bout of massive force in Fallujah will make it even harder for them to rule Iraq? Given the fact that they propose to do completely meaningless "patrols" as a show of force, my money is on the first option. But it's still too early to say.

Permalink

April 25, 7:10 am EST. Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- Things are looking very bad for Fallujah. The various mujaheddin factions, who may have agreed to a truce just so that the siege of Fallujah would be partially lifted and the road to the hospital opened, obviously had no intention of handing over all their weapons (or even just the "heavy" ones). That demand by the Americans was basically the demand to win the battle without fighting it.

Since Fallujah will not capitulate, apparently, Bush and his advisers decide this weekend whether to bombard the hell out of it. Here's a fascinating quote from the Times article:

"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."

It should be clear to anyone with basic knowledge of the situation and with no ideological axe to grind who the few thousand people terrorizing the city are. They're the ones that have assaulted it with tanks, AC-130 gunships, F-16's, and snipers, not the ones who have been defending it from assault.

Based on everything that's happened so far, the mindless desire for revenge and for showing military supremacy will triumph and the attack will be launched. As Bush said, "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers." This is the kind of nonsense every colonial army has put out against its opponents -- as Henry Liu points out in the Asia Times, the British general at the battle of Bunker Hill, Thomas Cage, called the American rebels thugs and tax evaders.

Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Ghafur Samarra'i, during Friday prayers at a prominent Baghdad mosque, said, "We will not allow the shedding of Iraqi blood. If you strike again, the whole of Iraq, from north to south, from east to west, will become Fallujah," a sentiment virtually every Iraqi I've spoken with would agree with.

A bad moon is rising. Since Bush is so fond of the Bible (it was apparently his favorite book as a child), he should read that part about sowing the wind.

It would be nice if this time there were protests before the assault instead of after.

Permalink

April 25, 7:00 am EST. Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- I just finished reading the results of the new Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks poll. I don't have time to go into all of them at the moment, but on the subject introduced before of whether the facts make any difference to people's perceptions ...

The pollsters conclude that Americans "grossly underestimate" the number of civilians killed in the war on Iraq. The ones polled had an average estimate of 800, whereas attempts by organizations from the Associated Press (3200) to MedAct (7350) to Iraq Body Count (7356) were rather higher (the Iraq Body Count project uses the novel approach of taking all corroborated news reports of deaths and adding them up). Actually, this is not so bad comparatively -- Americans generally estimate about 100,000 Vietnamese killed in the Vietnam War, not the roughly 3 million that modern historians estimate.

Outside of the antiwar movement, there is no furor about civilian deaths in Iraq (remember Howard Dean's statement back in the fall that "There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war" -- as if Iraqis aren't even people). There isn't even attention to the fact that White House/Pentagon claims that these wars are justified in part because the killing of innocents is outweighed by positive results cannot be justified when they simultaneously make such a point of not estimating how many innocents are killed.

The estimated over 600 killed in Fallujah weigh heavily on the minds of Iraqis and others in the world. It's time for people in the United States to start paying more attention as well (BTW, the poll concluded that, controlling for other factors, perceptions of the number of civilian deaths did not affect support for the war).

Permalink

April 25, 5:25 am EST. Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- Thanks to all the people who wrote in to tell me not to let the right wing get me down. And I guess I forgot to mention that supportive messages tremendously outnumber the insulting ones. But I didn't write to complain about the hate mail. That's what one expects when engaging in public on the most contentious issues of the day. And I didn't write just to point out the problems of the right wing. Popular consciousness and how it is formed is an extremely important topic to reckon with. The problem with the idiotic propaganda I mentioned is not just that the right wing makes sure it goes far and wide but that many ordinary non-ideological Americans find themselves persuaded by it.

Permalink

April 24,10:20 am EST. Amman, Jordan -- Lots of things to comment on in the next few days -- so many, it's hard to know where to start. So let's start with something frivolous -- only it isn't really.

My reporting from Iraq has brought me to the attention of a fair number of rightwingers, many of whom write to me. Their comments bring up many interesting issues -- not about matters of fact, but about the right wing. A lot of them write asking who I am, what's my agenda. The basic idea seems to be this: if somebody reports what's actually going on, criticizes the conduct of the war or the policies of the administration, then that person is antiwar or anti-Bush, therefore must be writing just to serve their agenda, therefore has no credibility. The actual arguments they make are irrelevant. It's a lovely self-consistent system that has already torpedoed even the testimony of ultra-hawk Richard Clarke about Bush administration negligence pre-9/11.

A lot of them ask about my nationality, of course -- the basic tribalism that is such a defining feature of Americanness, except on the liberal fringes. Some of them seem to believe that, with my non-European name, there is something terribly shady about the fact that I don't have my nationality at the top of the site in 60-point flashing letters.

Others like to write in to tell me how horrible my "friends" the Fallujah mujahideen are. Or, of course, about how I am a Saddam apologist -- tough to do if they just stick to what I've actually said or written as opposed to what they've imagined.

Then there are those who write to tell me all the things I should know about Iraq -- although they have no idea what they're talking about. That's a subject for several posts. I'll get back to it.

But it's interesting that the average American knows so little about these matters and yet has such firm opinions. Here's an extreme example, sent to me by one of my right-wing fans. It's a "letter from a soldier." You can read the whole thing here. But here are some claims putatively made by Ray Reynolds, SFC, of the Iowa National Guard:

-Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.
-Over 400,000 kids have up to date immunizations.
-Over 1500 schools have been renovated and ridded of the weapons that were stored there so education can occur.
-The port of Umm Qasr was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from ships faster.
-School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.
-The country had it's first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.
-The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.
-100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed compared to 35% before the war.
-Elections are taking place in every major city and city councils are in place.
-Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.
-Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.
-Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.
-Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with US soldiers.
-Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.
-Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.
-An interim constitution has been signed.
-Girls are allowed to attend school for the first time ever in Iraq.
-Text books that don't mention Saddam are in the schools for the first time in 30 years.

Of course, anyone can have fun with this. Girls could, of course, attend school in Iraq before the war (the person who sent this to me knew this one and must have removed the "for the first time" part -- or someone in the chain that sent it to him did). Every major city in Iraq had sewer and water lines before the war -- as does every major city. Iraqis knew how to wash their hands before the Americans came. Some of them even knew how to do brain surgery, which requires extensive hand-washing. Telephones were working before the war; now, many aren't. There's no way a soldier could know of his own knowledge that "100%" of hospitals in the whole country are fully staffed and open, or that 35% were before. Either he made it up or someone fed it to him. In any case, I imagine that thd 35% is not even close to being accurate -- if anything, it's more likely that hospitals are closed now, because of security problems or deliberate actions by the coalition. Plenty of kids had up-to-date immunizations under Saddam. An Iraqi history textbook that doesn't mention Saddam is leaving out a hell of a lot. RTI, the North Carolina company that is bringing "democracy" to Iraq, often prefers to appoint councils rather than having them elected. And so on.

Anyway, it doesn't take much to realize that this is an obvious fabrication, whether or not Ray Reynolds wrote it, and also that it is extreme nonsense. It reminds me of the 11 soldiers who "wrote" identical letters to the editor about how great things are in Iraq.

But the point is, you can find bulletin boards and discussion lists where people are eating this pathetic thing up. The extreme ignorance so many people have feeds their credulity. This in turn helps make so many completely impervious to new facts and analysis. And am I way off, or does the number of such seem to be growing every year?

Permalink

April 23, 12:10 pm EST. Amman, Jordan -- The Washington Post has an article confirming, just by the way, that all the hype about foreign fighters in Fallujah was just silly nonsense -- "By most accounts, foreigners fighting in Fallujah number only in the dozens." And, of course, according to a Fallujah resident, "They entered three days after these events started."

So, clearly, the vast majority of fighters were Iraqis, and it was the people of Fallujah who started the resistance -- just as I and others who observed those events said. And the New York Times has an article confirming the near-universality of anger against the Americans because of Fallujah. The merchants of Karrada Khwarij interviewed in the article, like Ghazi Saleh of Karrada Dakhel, whom I wrote about earlier, are the last people to express any kind of extremist views.

Permalink

April 23, 12:02 pm EST. Amman, Jordan -- Thinking about the killings in Basra and az-Zubayr, where the death toll has either risen to 74 or lowered to 50 (and includes 20 children). Some followers of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra demonstrated against them and a representative of his blamed the attacks on the British. This, by the way, is not surprising -- the story is that it was a similar claim (except about Americans instead of British) that prompted the closing of al-Hawza, al-Sadr's newspaper. And, indeed, it's a very common belief in Iraq that these large terrorist attacks are done by the American forces. I see no reason to believe it myself, but it does show the esteem in which the American forces are held.

The Guardian has a story claiming that, on the basis of a suspect apprehended while running away from one of the bombing sites in az-Zubayr, that these attacks were not the work of foreign terrorists (al-Qaeda, Zarqawi, "Zarqawi," etc. -- it still amazes me that Zarqawi's having a leg amputated in Baghdad was one of the smoking guns that required a U.S. war on Iraq, but now they're not sure whether he has one or two legs -- but I digress), but rather of "local Iraqis incensed by the deaths of hundreds of fellow Sunnis killed in Falluja by US troops."

Well, none of us are going to know the truth for some time, but this really stinks of black propaganda being put out by the "coalition." First of all, ever since this latest phase started, the theme song for every Iraqi has been Sunni-Shi'a unity. Even if you took an extremely cynical view and said it was all rhetorical, why upset it right now when both groups have the same enemy? Personally, I think it's a little more than rhetorical -- it hasn't erased the deep problems between communities, but the fact that the poor of the Shi'a slums gave from their very meager resources to send aid to Fallujah certainly has an effect on people and does help to draw them together.

In fact, the only dissenting note in recent weeks was a purported communication from Zarqawi on April 6 in which he explicitly denounced the Shi'i.

Second, starting in the fall, there were many attacks targeting Iraqi police as "collaborators" with the occupying forces. There were even attacks on cleaning women and laundry women as "collaborators." It's almost unimaginable to me, by the way, that the latter were done by any sort of normal indigenous Iraqi resistance faction -- in the macho culture of the country, such an attack would be seen as entirely cowardly and absurdly stupid. But anyway, I talked with Shi'a sympathizers of Moqtada's Jaish-il-Mehdi (Mehdi Army) in Shuala, Thawra, Kadhimiyah, and other places, and also with sympathizers of the Falluja mujaheddin. None of them had anything particularly bad to say about the Iraqi police. Some middle class people will tell you the IP are a bunch of thieves, but in the context of the occupation, none of these militants I spoke with saw them as a target -- especially right now.

The response was always the same -- "They are Iraqis." They weren't a problem -- the Americans, who shoot indiscriminately, kill civilians, put Fallujah under siege, were the problem. Of course, I can't speak for all the mujaheddin factions in Fallujah or the Sunni in az-Zubayr, but it seems to me very unlikely that anyone who wanted to take revenge for Fallujah would see any Iraqi Arabs as the appropriate target. This is especially the case when, according to Major General Martin Dempsey, 10% of Iraqi security forces have gone over to the "enemy" (also known as the Iraqi people) and 40% have refused to show up for work.

So, this is all speculation, but if I had to guess I'd say it's "Zarqawi" (by which I mean the same group that has done so many other indiscriminate bombing attacks) but that someone in the "coalition" decided it wouldn't hurt to try to frame someone else and break down the very fragile feeling of unity that has been emerging.

Permalink

April 23, 10:15 am EST. Amman, Jordan -- If I've done this correctly, here's one of my pictures of the statue in Firdaus Square. See for yourself if it's the ugliest thing on the planet -- although it's even worse up close.

Permalink

April 23, 5:30 am EST. Amman, Jordan -- I'm going to continue writing up my Iraq observations, but am also catching up on other commentary. So bear with me if I comment on things that are a few days old. Mordechai Vanunu is at long last free from prison. Daniel Ellsberg, another person who leaked state secrets because it was the right thing to do, wrote a nice piece about it in the Los Angeles Times. Not only was Vanunu's treatment extremely brutal and punitive, his apprehension was done in blatant violation of international law -- he was lured to Rome by Mossad, where he was beaten, drugged, and kidnapped.

The New York Times covered Vanunu's release, of course, but somehow did not see fit to mention his call to have Mohammed el-Baradei, chief of the IAEA, inspect Israel. Of course, since Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the call was rhetorical, but still newsworthy, one might have thought.

BTW, at the request of several readers, I've added permalinks for all
April posts and will gradually go back and add them for previous posts as well. I was meaning to do it when I got back, ...

Permalink

April 22, 3:55 pm EST. Amman, Jordan -- Thanks so much to the thousands of people who visited Empire Notes, wrote to me with support, information, and questions, and who gave so generously to help me continue my work.

My three-week trip to Iraq is over. I'm spending a few days in Amman, partly just to decompress. While in Iraq, I kept it together and stayed focused on what I was doing, but now a delayed emotional reaction has set in.

I have several anecdotes from my final day in Iraq (a couple of which are below)-- and also a wealth of impressions and testimony that has not been fully written up. I will continue dishing those up as well as writing about the news of the day.

Permalink

April 22, 3:55 pm EST. Amman, Jordan -- Leaving Iraq 1. Before we go to the airport, I tell the driver I'd like to take a picture of the statue in Firdaus Square. I want to be able to show people back home the ugliest thing in all of Iraq. He is skeptical about whether I will be able to -- there is a permanent U.S. military detachment, complete with a big tank, guarding the Palestine Hotel and the Sheraton.

I approach the statue that has replaced Saddam Hussein's and take several pictures. There are two old men sitting at the base; I wave to them and they wave back. Then, not satisfied with the fact that I have almost no pictures from my trip (on the trip to fallujah, I did the digital equivalent of keeping the lens cap cover on), I suddenly take leave of my senses. With my mind already wandering past Iraq, I forget that my body is still planted very firmly in Iraq. I swivel around to take a picture of the tank. Suddenly the men at the base of the statue erupt, jumping up and gesticulating wildly. I suddenly come back to my senses. the most dangerous thing you can do in Iraq is take a picture of an American soldier with a big gun pointed at you. If they don't think you're shooting at them, they're likely to think you're a journalist, which is even more dangerous. In front of the "Green Zone," where the CPA headquarters are, there's a sign that says, "No photography." But nobody needs the sign; everyone knows.

Permalink

April 22, 3:55 pm EST.Amman, Jordan -- Leaving Iraq 2. I'm flying out of Baghdad International Airport. When I came in, I flew to Amman and took a car to Baghdad, but even then we were lucky to get through without incident. Later, it became impossible to get past Fallujah on the western highway. For months, the airport had no regular passenger flights, because of intermittent mortar fire. Now, the airport has been made usable by the simple expedient of blocking off the road about five kilometers from the airport and allowing only authorized vehicles past that point. Royal Jordanian has taken advantage of this situation by charging a king's ransom for a one-way flight to Amman. But better that than being held hostage.

The road out to the airport is not safe. There are guerrillas in Abu Ghraib attacking U.S. supply lines and there are also American troops, even twitchier there than most places. As we set out on the stretch leading to the final checkpoint, my driver utters the "Bismillah" three times.

I end up having to wait for half an hour in a parking lot before the airport shuttle leaves. I strike up a conversation with two Gurkhas from Nepal who are here working for the oddly-named Custer Battles. This is a U.S.-based company that provides airport security, although it seems that its main expertise is in providing counter-terrorism security for water treatment infrastructure.

The Gurkhas don't make anything like the huge salaries you hear about Americans and Europeans making. They don't like being here. One tells me that he has been here since September of last year and in that whole time has only seen this arid, wasted stretch between the checkpoint and the airport; he hasn't even been in to Baghdad. I ask them what they think of the Americans. One says, "They are very rough." The other one says, "Rough and tough."

In India, Gurkhas are legendary for their remorseless efficiency. They were the primary contingent in the group of soldiers, commanded by Brigadier General Harry Dyer, who opened fire on a peaceful crowd in Amritsar in 1919, killing 379 (the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre, a pivotal event in the history of the Indian freedom movement). But you hear the same story from them as you do from the British and from the Iraqis: the Americans are in a class by themselves when it comes to the use of unnecessary force.

Permalink

April 21, 01:20 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- One of my translators, Harb, has good news. His cousin was just released from Abu Ghraib prison, after nine months in custody.

He had been taken at roughly the same time as Sa'adoun Hammadi, speaker of the Iraqi parliament under Saddam. Harb's cousin was not part of the Ba'ath; he had been involved in a roadside argument and the Americans just took everyone and stuck them in the festering hole that is Abu Ghraib prison.

For nine months, he was held without charge. The Americans have made no provision for detainees, most of whom have done no more than this man, to contact their families or the outside world in general. But human solidarity finds ways to outsmart the workings of any police state; prisoners who are freed carry in their heads messages and contact information for as many families of other prisoners as they can remember. Under Saddam, political prisoners did the same thing.

Based on his personal observation, Harb's cousin estimates that 15,000 are held in Abu Ghraib alone. Nobody knows the exact number of detainees in Iraq, but 20,000 is as good an estimate as any.

Most of them had, I have little doubt, never picked up a gun against the Americans (there's no way to ascertain this directly, but considering the circumstances of detention stories, it seems very likely). How many will once they get out?

Permalink

April 21, 01:15 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- A few thoughts on the connection between the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of Hamas and the events of the last few weeks. Juan Cole has claimed several times that this was the trigger for both what's happening in Fallujah and what's happened with Syed al-Sadr and the Mehdi Army, citing the fact that both in Fallujah and in al-Sadr's strongholds people have been seen carrying pictures of Yassin and there have been communiques from groups naming themselves after Yassin.

From what I've seen and heard here, it doesn't really ring true to me.I should start by saying that, of course, for all Arabs and increasingly for Muslims in non-Arab countries, Palestine has an incredible resonance and there are times that they seem more focused on what's happening there than what's happening in their own countries. In Iraq, if anything, this trend is more extreme because of at least 15 years of intense state propaganda about the subject. Even without any of it, of course, the feeling against the unjust occupation of Palestine would be strong here, but Saddam did his best to whip it to a fever pitch. And it's true that major clerics in Iraq, as elsewhere, condemned the assassination. In particular, Syed Sistani did. And undoubtedly, it added somewhat to people's outrage.

But I haven't talked to a single Iraqi who brought up Yassin unprompted. When I ask, people condemn the killing, but nobody sees fit to mention it otherwise. As I've written before, in Fallujah it is a simple cycle of revenge, initiated by the United States in a massacre last April; the proximate cause of the Blackwater incident was a rampage by Marines the previous week in which at least seven civilians were killed. After Blackwater, it was just the decision of the U.S. military command to exact collective punishment. People under siege, attacked with 2000-pound bombs from F-16's, attacked by AC-130 Spectre gunships, and M-1 Abrams tanks, as well as by the ubiquitous snipers, don't need the assassination of some foreign figure to get themselves worked up to resist. Similarly, the flareup with al-Sadr was precipitated by the closing of his newspaper, followed by the killing of several Sadr supporters in peaceful demonstrations against the closing.

People carry lots of pictures. Among the Shi'a, you see pictures of various ayatollahs -- Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, Sistani, Muhammad Bakir al-Hakim -- and of Moqtada. There is also a glorification of what they call martyrs -- Palestinians killed by Israelis, Iraqis killed by Americans. Carrying pictures of Yassin or naming some small mujaheddin faction after him are just expressions of solidarity, expressions that he is a martyr.

Permalink

April 21, 01:09 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- The CPA's propaganda in Iraq is laughable. I've written several times about al-Iraqiya, the state TV station, and al-Hurra, the satellite station (the latter actually apparently showed reruns of old American movies while al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera were showing 200,000 Gazans assembled for Sheikh Yassin's funeral). There are also the recruiting posters. There's one of an Iraqi policeman wearing a beret, holding out his hand -- it looks much more like he's about to haul you in than that he's inviting you to join the IP. These posters are generally the subject of derision. In Aadhamiyah, a stronghold of resistance in Baghdad, the recruiting posters are always covered with black spray paint. There's one in a central square there that has now been replaced and painted over four times in the past couple of months.

Firdaus square is also testament to the CPA's ineptitude. On April 9, 2003, the whole world was saturated with images of Firdaus square, and the American tank-retriever pulling down Saddam's statue while a small crowd of Iraqis cheered. Well, you'd think it would be a no-brainer to put up something grand in its place. Maybe a statue of a proud, handsome Iraqi couple striding off into a glorious future, with a plaque saying that Americans are glad to have had the opportunity to help Iraq realize its glorious destiny. Also with water fountains perpetually fountaining, verdant greenery, and so on.

But no. On top of the marble column where Saddam's statue stood, someone put up the most hideous monstrosity I've ever seen. A green statue, not green because of paint but because it's like brass that's been out in the air for 1000 years, with a face that is not recognizable as anything human. It's supposed to be some kind of "goddess of liberty," but it looks like nothing in any of the worlds. For the rest, the square is untended. The twin pools in front of and on either side of the main column have the fetid stink of stagnant water, and are full of garbage. Posters and graffiti are everywhere, and it all looks horrible. There is an old man who every morning cleans up the trash from the bushes, but he's likely doing it on his own and anyway he's not up to the task.

Of course, this way there's more of a ring of truth. Firdaus square now is the perfect symbol of the occupation the way it actually is, not the way George Bush always claims it is.

Permalink

April 20, 2:01 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Listen to my Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman or read the transcript. (For streaming audio help click here.)

Permalink

April 20, 10:30 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Here's a message, reproduced verbatim, from a recent admirer:

I am writing regarding your coverage of the Falluja fighting against the iraqi terrorists. First of all, from your name one can tell you are a Hindu. I hope you are not a fucking paki. So remember that these same terrorists killed tens of thousands of people in India to convert them to islam, that filthy religion. You need to learn about your own history first, before defending these savage fucking arabs.

Anyway, about Falluja: low-lives like you make me sick. To suggest that the US forces are committing atrocities against these savage animals is beyond the pale of reason. Worst is your hypocracy: you enjoy all the comforts of the West, and even use the social benefit system shamelessly, then you travel to Iraq and "report" on the "mujahedeen". Do even know what that word means? These are terrorists who hate the West because the main values represented by the US and Europe are that of Reason, and Civilization, and Beauty. Of course, savages oppose that. And thus, forgo any value that one would allot to their lives.

If you like the "mujahedeen" so much, why don't you live with them, instead of catching the next flight to London, or New York, and coming back "home", after you have done your "reporting". The US and British are evil, but you don't mind that welfare cheque, and free health care, and a civilized nation do you? Get a life you fucking paki!

In addition to his ignorance about everything else, our friend is obviously not exactly aware of the functioning of the famed American welfare state. I couldn't get a welfare check if I tried, and, as for "free health care," I know of one occasion on which I've been the recipient. A doctor in Fallujah bandaged my ankle. No waiting, no request to take off your clothes and lie around freezing, and no charge. He did look a little bemused; he'd been working four days with virtually no sleep treating burns, shrapnel, and gunshot wounds.

This message is actually highly instructive. It indicates something of tremendous importance that is easy to miss if you concern yourself only with the nuanced rhetoric of official and semi-official communiques. I saw another example of it just now, speaking as a guest on a typical commercial radio show in a typical American town. It shows up again in the attitude of the Marines in the field right now. And it comes out also in a British officer's recent criticism of the attitudes of American soldiers.

So what is it that I'm building up to? Well, the Bush administration can talk about their "forward strategy for freedom," democratizing the Middle East, liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and people like me can tear it down and refute it. But we should remember that that rhetoric is all for a small group of people.

For lots of Americans, it's very simple: "they" are the enemy. Arab savages attacked us on 9/11, so we need to teach the bastards a lesson. No other analysis is needed; no other information will be allowed into the picture. When I spoke just now on radio about U.S. war crimes, I was told by a retired military man that "many" of the Iraqis are just animals who need to be beaten down or exterminated (and, of course, that I am "unamerican") -- he also says he is reading the Koran, on the "know your enemy" principle. Another man, a Vietnam veteran, asked me why I was "wasting time" talking about the crimes committed by his and my government.

Some of the British officer's words:

They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.

The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."

It remains only to be said that, judging by the reactions of so many civilians back home, the troops come here with that attitude; it gets hardened by their experiences here, but it exists beforehand.

It's amazing that these are the same people who talk about "liberating" Iraq. They may believe their own propaganda, they may hold these two mutually conflicting beliefs -- that anything the United States does is justified because "they" are the enemy and that the United States is liberating Iraq -- but how can they possibly believe anyone in the Middle East will believe it?

Permalink

April 20, 9:00 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- A few days ago, I met my first Iraqi who is a gung-ho supporter of the occupation. He is a Kurd, working as a translator for a reporter with whom I had dinner. He was clearly sympathetic when I recounted to her my experience of Fallujah, my evaluation of it as a relatively indiscriminate collective punishment of a town, and when I told her that the mainstream reporters in Iraq were not covering the most important stories -- like demanding an accounting of the spending of Iraq's oil revenues (and the smaller amount disbursed because of the congressional allocation).

But then he had to say his piece. He told me, "I do not call it occupation. I call it liberation. Do you know why? Because my country was occupied for 35 years by Saddam. We were constantly afraid. Nobody could speak his mind." This was the first time I've hear an Iraqi say "liberation" without a sneer in it.

I had sympathy for what he was saying; the punishment Saddam meted out to the Kurds in the late 1980's and again in 1991 was horrifically brutal (although what he did in the south in 1991 was likely even worse).

Interestingly, he was completely aware of the fact that these killings were done with the full aid and support of the United States, that while Kurds were dying of poison gas in Halabja, the State Department tried to cover up the crime by claiming Iran was behind the attack, even though it knew better. Later, the U.S. Army War College even issued a report blaming Iran for the attack (what the proponents of the Iranian hypothesis, including some on the left, never seem to want to address is that Halabja involved the killing of maybe 5000 people out of the 100-200,000 killed in the Anfal campaign and one chemical attack out of dozens).

When I asked him whether he thought that the wellbeing of Iraqis was a U.S. goal, he smiled and shook his head, but said, "I don't care what their intentions are. The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Back before the war, the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq was used frequently for propaganda, by people who wanted to claim that the deaths in Iraq were due to Saddam's government and not due to the sanctions. Now, it is used again, although not quite as much.

It's very true that in northern Iraq there is very little resentment of the occupation. That's for a very simple reason. There was no regime change in northern Iraq and there's very little occupation. Ever since the Gulf War, the two main parties, the KDP and PUK, have been running northern Iraq (the governorates of Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyeh). That hasn't changed; they're still running the show. There are U.S. military bases, but in general U.S. forces don't patrol in the towns. Local order is kept by the peshmerga. There's a functioning government; the same one that there was before the war. So, naturally, if there's hardly a noticeable occupation, there's not a lot of resentment against it.

Permalink

April 19, 9:25 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've just posted my latest article, Report from Baghdad -- Hospital Closings and U.S. War Crimes.

Permalink

April 19, 9:55 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- A reader suggests that I link to a map of Iraq so that people can locate for themselves the places I'm writing about.

Permalink

April 19, 8:35 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I see a lot more construction in Iraq than I did when I was here in January. Then, it was astonishing -- a city full of bombed-out buildings, but virtually nothing being built. I didn't see more than two buildings with construction crews on them as I criss-crossed the city. Things are recovering a bit. I've seen maybe a dozen being constructed on this trip. It's still not like the level you'd expect in a typical, non-bombed Third World city like New Delhi or Manila, but it is at least noticeable now.

Of course, all of this is private-sector construction. Iraqis rebuilding their homes, the occasional foreign company having offices built. None of this has anything to do with the CPA and it is not funded either by the congressional allocation for reconstruction or by Iraq's oil revenues. Of course, private individuals are not going to repair somebody else's bombed building or fix the guardrails on the highways or the broken-down hospitals and schools. And there, the reconstruction is all for show. There are propaganda pictures of Marines painting schools and sawing beams and so on (as if Iraqis are incapable of carpentry) and every now and then you see a stretch of road where the concrete barriers have gotten a fresh coat of paint -- usually in a hideous lime-green shade. But anything involving the serious allocation of resources is very limited and on an absolutely shameful scale -- keep in mind that the majority of the money being given to foreign contractors for repairing power plants, etc., is Iraq's money. The part that is a "gift" from the United States is usually inflated by being reported as $18.4 billion -- not only does that include at least $2 billion for Iraqi security forces, it's spread over five years.

On the other hand, on the way to Fallujah, at a checkpoint near Abu Ghraib prison (used first by Saddam, now by the United States), we saw truckloads and truckloads of lumber and other materials being driven in vehicles that clearly belonged to the U.S. military. It was all for building detention facilities. Since 9/11, the United States has embarked on the building of a global Gulag Archipelago; Guantanamo has gotten the most attention, but the number detained in Iraq is far greater. An administration that can build prisons but not schools or hospitals in the United States can build prisons but not schools or hospitals in Iraq.

Permalink

April 19, 8:35 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've started seeing the new Iraqi army at the odd checkpoint around town. The Iraqi police have been a fixture for some time, but the "army" is new. You just have to look at them to tell that they're not part of the coalition forces. Their uniforms are cheap and shabby; they have no protective clothing worth anything. You can tell just how underfunded they are by this fact: they all carry Kalashnikovs. Most people in Iraq, whether mujaheddin or not, modify their Kalashnikovs by removing the butt of the rifle and sometimes sawing or breaking off the metal skeleton to which the butt is attached -- makes the gun lighter and more maneuverable. Many of the Iraqi army's Kalashnikovs have been so treated. They look as ancient as all the others.

The United States hasn't even equipped the army with new guns (presumably, they would have used M-16's). This is because, as any Iraqi will tell you, the new army is not supposed to be an army, but simply a thin layer of human shields for the U.S. forces.

Permalink

April 19, 8:35 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Nobody respects the Iraqi police. The problem is not, as some of the left might think offhand, that they are a super-repressive element of a police state. Not at all. The military occupation acts in some ways as a police state would. People who are even suspected of having the vaguest connnection to the resistance have no rights at all. The U.S. military has no legal restraints on what it can do. But in civil and small-scale political affairs, the military generally plays no role; that is in fact left to the police.

But the police are far too few in number and more lightly-armed than the average Iraqi. In Saddam's day, you obeyed the traffic laws because of fear of any entanglement with the police. Now, nobody does. The police are afraid to arrest actual criminals -- it's too easy for the criminals to retaliate. There is essentially no prosecution of crime, from petty theft to kidnapping and murder, and so criminals act with complete license. Far from a force able to control a country's internal affairs, the United States has created a force that cannot even control the average Iraqi motorist. This is a persistent complaint from Iraqis of all walks of life.

Permalink

April 18, 1:35 pm EST. I'm working on a very important story about hospital closings and ongoing fighting. It's a big, complex story, and I'm trying to corroborate everything before writing it all up in an article, but readers of Empire Notes get to see it first.

There are several parts to this. First is that the Minister of Health (of the U.S. appointed Governing Council) is reporting that in the last two days 290 Iraqis are have been killed -- that' excluding Fallujah. That's a huge number. Second, the minister has confirmed that U.S. forces have been shooting at ambulances. Third, it was recently reported as a detail in some news stories that the bridge to the hospital to Fallujah was re-opened -- burying the real story that access to the hospital was blocked by U.S. forces in the first place and thus residents of Fallujah could not get to the hospital during the worst of the fighting. And last, but not least, we have reports that last week the Spanish garrison had shut down the main hospital in Najaf. Let me repeat: we have reports that they had ordered closing down of the main hospital in a major city.

I'll be working to corroborate as much of this as I can in the next few days. Now the details.

At a Ministry of Health press conference on Saturday that none of the Western media was at (al-Iraqiya, the U.S. TV station, was there for the statement but left during questioning, which was the more interesting part). Khudair Abbas, Minister of Health, delivered the statement and took questions. Dahr Jamail, Pratap Chatterjee and my translator from whom I have gotten this report attended the press conference

The Minister was concerned to dispute the numbers on Fallujah -- last I saw, over 700 dead. He said the "official" count based on the Ministry's own tally (using 3 dedicated phone lines to cover the whole country) was 155 dead and 350 injured. Nobody believes this is an accurate tally, including many Marine commanders. But what's interesting is that at the same time he said, between April 5 and 17, in the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Kerbala, Hilla, and Nasiriyah (all the ones for which they had data), there had been 290 Iraqis killed and 1196 wounded. And this doesn't include known fighting in Basra, Kut, Amara, Baqubah, and, of course, Fallujah. Of the dead, 11% are children.

During the questions, when asked about shooting at ambulances, Abbas confirmed that U.S. forces shot at ambulances, not only in Fallujah and the approaches to Fallujah, but also in Sadr City. He agreed that the acts were criminal and said he has asked the IGC (Governing Council) and Bremer for an explanation.

This is a sensational confirmation, but you won't see it reported in any newspaper back home. Remember, the Iraqi Ministry of Health is part of the government the United States created and rules through its handpicked Governing Council.

It's interesting that this came up just by the by in a conference whose primary intent, according to well-informed Iraqi sources was to slam the Sunni Islamist Hizb-il-Islami (Party of Islam). Hizb-il-Islami serves on the Governing Council, but has played an independent role over Fallujah, arranging negotiations between the mujaheddin and the Americans, winning permission to get some aid through, and generally behaving, in the words of this source, "heroically." The word is that Bremer wanted to cut them down to size.

But the main story goes well beyond this. It's a story about hospital closings. Again unreported in English-language media is what happened with the main hospital in Fallujah. Fallujah is almost entirely on the eastern bank of the Euphrates; the main hospital is on the western bank. From the beginning of the assault on Fallujah, the American forces closed down the bridge; sources we interviewed said that anything that tried to cross the bridge was destroyed. Nobody could make it to the hospital, so the hospital staff voluntarily left the hospital, taking whatever supplies they could, and started treating people at what had previously been a small three-room outpatient clinic across the river (on the same side as the town). For two weeks, doctors were doing surgery on the ground because there weren't enough beds, with only the supplies and equipment they could transport, and the main hospital stood closed. You can say the Americans didn't close it on purpose, but no doctor who believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in a hospital that nobody can reach while across the river people die in droves. Call it another form of "collateral damage." I 'm told that yesterday the controls on the bridge were eased up (not eliminated) and perhaps the hospital can resume functioning shortly.

What's been done in Najaf is even worse. I have this at secondhand. Pratap Chatterjee, an award-winning journalist who works for CorpWatch and has done a lot of reporting on corporate crimes, interviewed a doctor who was posted to Najaf. The doctor was working at the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Najaf (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital). This is a major institution, with 200 doctors; often, doctors come from Baghdad for training. On April 5 or 6 soldiers from the Spanish-language garrison that was posted to Najaf came to the hospital and told doctors they were shutting it down. They gave doctors two hours to leave, allowing them only to take personal items, not medical equipment. The hospital is sort of between Najaf and Kufa, and near the military base where the garrison is posted; the reason given for the closing was "security." Imagine the havoc caused by closing the biggest hospital in a major city for a week. The death toll due to this will never be figured into the total equation of the "liberation."

There's more even than this. It's a commonplace claim that after there's been fighting American soldiers come around the hospitals asking about the wounded, for the purpose of taking and interrogating any that might be resistance. Like everything else described above, this is a clear violation of the laws of war, and doctors resist as best they can. We have confirmation from a doctor at Nomaan Hospital in Aadhamiyah and Yarmouk Hospital in Yarmouk that, a few days after the offensive on Fallujah started, American soldiers came around to both places trying to take and interrogate wounded. These were the two hospitals that took the lion's share of Fallujah casualties. One of the doctors actually told me that he has many times discharged people straight from the emergency room, with inadequate time to recuperate, just to keep them out of the Americans' custody. Of course, one you get into their custody, whether you have anything to do with resistance or not, you disappear at least for months, sometimes longer. You get no access to lawyers, to your family, no right of habeas corpus, nothing. Being taken can ruin someone's life. What I've reported here is only things that I feel confident about. There are other claims that I couldn't substantiate and am not reporting -- and some, like the closure of Fallujah's main hospital, are just common knowledge), and I'm working on getting more details.

More to come...

Permalink

April 18, 12:57 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- You hear a lot about the thieves and bandits ever since the "liberation" -- and that's certainly true to an extent. But my experience has been that your average Iraqi has no petty dishonesty of this kind.

I wrote earlier about my time in Aadhamiyah, when people were so furious about Fallujah but still took trouble to point out to me that my money was falling out of my pockets. I often leave small bills lying around in my hotel room. The dirt-poor middle-aged women who clean the hotel room -- and look remarkably like their counterparts in the United States -- never touch anything. And the amount of money is not small to them -- a $20 bill is one third of what the CPA was paying an Iraqi policeman every month, even though the job is phenomenally risky (of course, the salary was so pitiful that every policeman complained about it).

I remember, the first time I rode a "minibus", a small van with 13 passengers, while in Turkey -- and what a shock I felt when a man sitting behind me tapped my shoulder, stuck a bundle of bills in my hand, and indicated that I should pass it up towards the driver. People pay at different times, needing different amounts of change, some of which has to wait until somebody else pays with small bills, and they pass their money to complete strangers with complete faith that the right amount of change will come back to them -- and it always does.

As an American, I was very edgy about handing my money, not to the driver himself, but to a fellow passenger. It just doesn't occur to a Turk that someone else will pocket part of the money, then claim that it's his -- although it certainly occurred to me. It took me several minibus rides before I lost my natural wariness.

I confess, I sometimes left bills around deliberately in my hotel just to see what would happen (not that I'd have done anything about it).

Contrary to common perception, the poor of the world are mostly quite honest, even though they have far more justification for stealing. So I'm not saying this is exceptional behavior. I still think it's remarkable, though.

Permalink

April 17, 12:05 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- My ankle is still healing slowly from the time in Fallujah when we were running away from predator drones and what we thought were cluster bombs. I know the best treatment -- lying around for a couple of days. Unfortunately, that's just not possible here -- too much to do.

I talked more with my friends who were taken by the mujaheddin and held for 24 hours. Brave people, but they just, most of them, don't think it makes sense to stay. They can't do the work they came to do without an unacceptably high risk of kidnapping. One of them said, "Actually, in a way, it's worse now, waiting around the apartment, wondering. I mean, when the mujaheddin had us, we weren't worried about being kidnapped." Another told me that several of the Iraqis who work with her have been threatened. So, anyway, very few people are staying.

As for me, I'm still trying to get as much useful reporting done as possible before leaving. I came in through the Western highway but now that's probably impossible to get out through -- it's likely that you won't get past Fallujah.

Permalink

April 17, 11:40 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Karrada. Ghazi Saleh is a businessman in this relatively (and I stress the word "relatively") quiet, mostly Shi'a commercial area of Baghdad. He is a moderately prosperous man, owning a furniture shop and a business impossible before the "liberation" -- a mobile phone and telecommunications store. He had a good job working as a manager for a Greek company before the war, but still, it's the occupation that has enabled him to go into business for himself. You would think his would be the face on CPA posters all over the city.

I met Ghazi when I walked into his shop with a broken phone. He explained to me in great detail what I needed to do and then invited me to sit and chat. Like every Iraqi I've met, he was very pleased to hear that I'm of Indian origin. His face lit up and he started to tell me about an Indian restaurant they used to have in the area and tried out a few words on me (at one time, Hindi movies were popular throughout the Middle East, and so many Iraqis know how to say, "How are you?" and "I'm fine.").

But this is Iraq, and any conversation quickly turns to politics. Saleh is a very pragmatic man and, like so many Iraqis I've met, makes it a matter of pride to disavow any political affiliation. But when I ask, he tells me what he thinks very candidly. To start, he's no Saddam supporter. He says, "Saddam was a very stupid man. With all this oil wealth, why could he not do more for Iraq? He deserved what he got."

But, although he is still hopeful that things will get better, he has no good word for the occupation. He says, "In the beginning, we thought great things would happen, that the Americans would keep some of their promises. Now, they're still here, they have fixed nothing, there are no jobs, and we're tired." I ask, "Isn't the electricity improving?" He says, "Look for yourself [the power was out just then]. We get only eight to ten hours a day of power."

He motions toward a shopkeeper across the street, says, "When the Americans came, that man used to offer them juice. Now, he spits when they pass."

Saleh says, "When they liberated Kuwait, they had electricity back on in 24 hours -- they brought in big generators on ships. Why can't they do it here after 1 year?" He talks about the lack of job prospects -- unemployment is generally estimated at 50% -- and the fact that senior citizens, once guaranteed a pension, now have to demonstrate at the CP to get anything at all.

I ask him about Fallujah. I haven't found an Iraqi with a good word for the attack on Fallujah -- and, of course, the Governing Council, U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, and even British military commanders in Basra have condemned it. Saleh is no exception. And, although he is not a follower of anyone, including Moqtada al-Sadr, he says clearly, "If they try to take Moqtada, they will open the gates of hell." When I spoke to him later about the standoff in Najaf, he was very apprehensive, believing that the continuing American military buildup signalled a likely assault. I asked if at that point al-Sistani would call for jihad, and he said, "If he doesn't, nobody will listen to him anymore. He has already said that Najaf is a red line the Americans must not cross."

Permalink

April 16, 2:40 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I just found out that a friend I made on my first trip to Iraq, Barzan Ahmed, was murdered along with his wife. He was Kurdish, director of the Red Crescent from Erbil. He had kindly driven down from Amman to Baghdad with us, which we all found very helpful since we couldn't speak Arabic.

He was murdered in Erbil. In general, northern Iraq has much more law and order than the rest of the country (because the Kurdish peshmerga, not the Americans, are responsible for keeping order), but massive instability just to the south can't help causing problems in the north as well.

I spoke at length with Barzan on our trip down. He was an example of a very common phenomenon -- even those who supported the invasion never believed in the good intentions of the United States. He was happy about the war, and used the word "liberation." He characterized resistance (in January -- the situation is very different now) as terrorists. But when I asked him about U.S. intentions, he was very clear. He said, "We remember 1975" -- the first time the United States betrayed the Kurds. It had, largely through the Shah of Iran, used them to stir up trouble against the Iraqi government (under Saddam Hussein and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr), which had nationalized its oil in 1972 and signed a friendship pact with the Soviet Union. But with the signing of the 1975 Algiers accord settling the boundary between Iraq and Iran, the Shah pulled the plug and the United States abandoned the Kurds as well. When asked about this in congressional hearings, Henry Kissinger said, "Covert action shouldn't be confused with missionary work."

When I asked Barzan why the US didn't stop looting of government buildings, stealing of electrical wiring, destructions of ancient artifacts, and so much more, he mentioned the fact that they protected the Oil Ministry and said, "They only care about the oil. The rest is not their problem." And he was a partisan of the Americans.

I was in a debate on CBC's Counterspin TV program, where one of my opponents was Faisal Istrabadi, an Iraqi-American lawyer who championed the war and has been working as an advisor to Adnan Pachachi, most recently helping to draft the Interim Constitution. Probably the most interesting moment of the show was when he admitted that he didn't think the United States had any altruistic intentions toward Iraq, that he was aware of a past history of betrayal, that great powers intervene only for their selfish interests. He didn't care about that, and simply wanted somehow to try to use the United States to get something better for Iraq. Of course, I meet very few Iraqis in Baghdad who think something good can come of this, but even they think that it will come despite American intentions, not because of them.

Permalink

April 16, 10:00 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Some thoughts on freedom of speech. One of the few selling points of the occupation is that they have brought "freedom of speech" to Iraq. Now, this is not exactly true; in June of last year, Paul Bremer promulgated a press censorship law that gave nine different reasons for which a publication could be closed down, including putting out information that is "patently false and calculated to promote opposition" and promoting "civil disorder, riot, or damage to property" (you can see my article from last fall, Gunpoint Democracy in Iraq).

Al-Hawza, al-Sadr's newspaper, is definitely not the first to be closed under this law, which effectively allows for the CPA to shut down any paper it want so to shut down. And it's also true that the United States has created a state monopoly broadcast TV station, al-Iraqiya, that is almost as carefully controlled and censored as Iraqi state TV in Saddam's time. This has also been the case with the new U.S. satellite TV station, al-Hurra.

As bad as all this is, of course, it's nothing like in Saddam's time. Nobody gets his tongue torn out for speaking ill of Paul Bremer (after 1992, this was the law in Iraq for insulting Saddam). People freely express their opinions to journalists, on the street, in their homes. This was not at all the case under Saddam.

This can be presented as a great argument in favor of the American occupation. And it's certainly true that people are better off when they can express their opinions. But the reason is clear. Saddam couldn't afford to allow too much expression of opinion because political developments might then force him to change his policies or lose power. The Americans have no such problem. They rule with tanks and Apache helicopters, blissfully unconcerned with Iraqi public opinion or internal political questions. Similarly, the Palestinian Authority kept a much tighter rein on public expression of opinion than Israel had before the Oslo process started. The opinions of the Untermenschen (a term recently used by a British officer to describe how Americans here view the Iraqis) don't matter, so why not allow them to be expressed?

This reminds me of an interview I did in January with Wamidh Nadhmy, a Professor of Political Science at Baghdad University. He told me, “Under Saddam, I couldn’t speak so openly. But at times they would come to the universities and ask us our opinion and we would not be penalized for giving it honestly." For example, he said,"They asked me in the end of the 1980’s and I told them their privatization plans were bad for the economy. Saddam said 'We are a socialist party.' I said, 'You are worse than Thatcher, because she parceled the public sector into individual shares and you are selling it in large lots.” Now, Nadhmy says, "I could give my opinion, but no one would listen."

Nadhmy is no fan of Saddam and initially tried to take a conciliatory approach to the Americans. Obviously, intellectuals like him who lost political influence are not happy about that, but more widely it is true that no Iraqi now has much influence on these kinds of policies, except for guys like Chalabi on the one hand and Sistani on the other (and the latter only after he proved his power with mass demonstrations in Baghdad).

A meaningful concept of freedom of speech encompasses not just the important right to say what you want but the equally important right to help shape public policy. The average American, as far as I can tell, has about as much ability to shape policy as the average Egyptian or Syrian and considerably less than the average Argentinian or Bolivian or Venezuelan. Of course, as I said earlier, Iraqis and Palestinians, living under foreign occupation, have far less.

Permalink

April 16, 9:50 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- It's a slow day here in the Karrada district of Baghdad. Friday is the Muslims' main day of worship, so it's a bit like Sunday back in the United States. Shops close early, traffic in the streets is a lot sparser.

There's very much a feeling of the calm before the storm. There are all kinds of signs that the situation in Najaf is de-escalating, but it's not over until it's over. What initially seemed like signs that the United States was finally trying a political rather than a military solution -- the fact that Iranian clerics are in Najaf trying to broker a deal regarding al-Sadr -- turns out to have been an independent initiative. If you believe State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, the United States is actually opposed to this.

Virtually everybody is making plans to pull out. For the remainder of my time, I'm going to be covering the less dramatic but equally important stories about the occupation -- the condition of hospitals, for one thing.

So Orwellian is the United States right now that General Richard Myers actually claims that the existence of the insurgency is a sign of American success. This is the kind of big lie that stuns you for a minute and makes you have to shake your head and slap yourself several times before you can begin to refute it. I suppose the 1991 Iraqi uprising was a sign of the great success of Saddam Hussein.

Permalink

April 15, 11:45 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I wrote about my trip to Fallujah earlier. Well, some of the people with whom I went decided to go back -- once again, to try to brave sniper fire and rescue wounded people. We should keep in mind the potentially huge untold story in Fallujah -- people shot by sniper fire, lying in the streets or being dragged back into their homes, but unable to get medical care because ambulances can't get to them.

They had been a day longer than planned and we were starting to worry. In fact, we were on the verge of calling their families. They finally got in this afternoon, Baghdad time. It turns out they had been the guests of the mujaheddin for 24 hours. I talked to one; she said they were very well treated and released without incident. Once the mujaheddin were satisfied about their bona fides, there was no problem.

They had been unable to rescue anybody because the U.S. sniper fire was too hot.

Permalink

April 15, 11:15 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I'm going to come back to this when I have time, but briefly: The dominant opinion in the United States, liberal or conservative, seems to be that we can't "cut and run." Here's a survey (from April 9, but I doubt it's changed that much), saying that none of the top 20 newspapers by circulation urged U.S. withdrawal.

And I know that commentators are still using the phrase "civil war," as if to suggest that that's what's going on. It's as if there are all these violent people in Iraq causing disruptions and that's why we need the U.S. forces to "provide security" -- the latter phrase used in Bush's recent press conference.

The tiny little point that this violence was triggered by the United States, both in al-Anbar province (where Fallujah is) and with Moqtada al-Sadr, seems to be forgotten (see one of my earlier articles for this). The even more basic point that this violence is directed against the U.S. military is somehow out there in limbo as well.

At the same time as their existence in Iraq provokes violence and as their brutal methods provoke violence, U.S. forces do nothing to provide security. Kidnappings of Iraqis for ransom are rife -- nobody ever investigates. Leading academics are being killed -- ditto. People are afraid to walk the streets after 9 or 10 -- nobody does anything about this. Women are far more constricted in getting around than they used to be. The list goes on and on. The U.S. military does nothing, absolutely nothing, about these security problems.

Anyone who swallows any of this propaganda about "providing security" should spend one day talking to people in Iraq.

I'm against the occupation for what I consider to be deep-lying structural reasons that would be valid even if it were conducted more humanely (I've written on this before, but I do have to collect all my scattered thoughts here and write about it again). But I have to say, from all of my experience interviewing Iraqis, one conclusion stands out clearly: had this occupation been carried out by British, Dutch, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Spanish, everyone but the United States, the level of resentment would be far lower, as would the level of violence. It is the arrogance and brutality of the Americans here that is the primary grievance of Iraqis (and second is the negligence and the fact that nothing works).

I wrote earlier about talking to Mr. Alber at the Abu Hanifa mosque. When we asked if the Americans apologized after raiding the mosque and finding nothing, he looked at us quizzically and then said, "No. A year ago, they would apologize.  Now they don't even do that.  But we know the American apology. We know what it means." While saying this, he mimed a savagely contorted face and a man taking his foot and grinding someone else into the ground. And, believe me, he is anything but an extremist. The people at the mosque have done their best to be conciliatory to the Americans.

So a lot more has to be said about this issue. But the U.S. military is doing no good to Iraq -- unless you count taking Iraq's oil money and using a tiny fraction of it to pay corrupt contractors to paint schools for ten times the cost that Iraqis could do it for. Yes, the vast majority of the money spent on "reconstruction" (and aside from repainting I've seen precious little of it) comes from Iraq's own oil money. And it's causing huge amounts of violence. This is all hidden by the "cut and run" phraseology.

Permalink

April 15, 9:45 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've just been reading all the controversy about George Bush's endorsement of Ariel Sharon's plan and, in particular, of the Israelis retaining their major West Bank settlements.

This is a spectacularly inflammatory move. Considering the situation in Iraq right now, the timing also reeks of arrogance. It will certainly reconfirm Iraqis suspicions that the occupation of Iraq is about, as one said to me recently, "the building of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates."

It is almost as if designed to inflame the Arab world, which has already been set on fire. It is an extremely provocative move and a sign that the administration continues in its belief that it can solve all problems simply by virtue of its preponderance of force.

But it's also worth noting that it's very much in the line of past U.S. policy -- or, let's say, in a logical line of development. Commentators have much of this wrong. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, for example, says that this "overturns two generations of bipartisan American policy."

Actually, this idea is what Oslo was all about -- the only difference is that in Oslo the settlements were part of final status negotiations and in the Sharon plan this is a unilateral settlement. Given the imbalance in power between the two sides, this is hardly a difference at all. Indeed, the 1995 Oslo II accords explicitly codify this. Here's Article XVII, Clause 1a"

issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis

In other words, the plan was that Israel would retain some of the settlements. By agreeing to this, the PA was giving the illegal settlements legal status.

If what concerns you is Bush's repudiation of the right of return, just remember that for every year from 1948 through 1992, the United States voted to affirm U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (guaranteeing Palestinian refugees the right of return), but in 1993 it stopped, thus implicitly repudiating it.

The talk about this as a stunning departure is just part of the normal rhetorical and historical obfuscation that surrounds this issue. Of course, this is once again explicitly affirming that this administration sees Israeli and U.S. "strategic interests" as aligning extremely closely.

Permalink

April 15, 9:15 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've just posted my latest article -- "Report from Baghdad: Winning Hearts and Minds." It's material that I blogged about before -- the raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque.

Permalink

April 14, 11:45 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Some people who have read my eyewitness reports confirming U.S. sniping at ambulances in Fallujah have written to accuse me of "having an agenda" and therefore lying about what I saw. Others have written to accuse me of being an Iraqi or of having a non-European name and therefore lying about what I saw. They are a very small minority of those who have written, but, because a picture apparently is still worth 1000 words. And here's a closeup:
These are compressed images to make loading for this page quicker. For the big jpeg file, click here.

Permalink

April 13, 11:20 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- A short note. I'm running into lots of unexpected expenses doing this reporting. I can definitely use a little help. If you go to this page, you can find out how to help. It's not possible to carry out work like this without support from lots of people -- and all help is much appreciated.

Permalink

April 13, 10:50 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Aadhamiyah. After a day cooped up shuttling between hotel and Internet cafe yesterday, I went out again, this time to the Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiyah. I have yet to write up what I saw in full, but here's the basics.

This is a followup to the Fallujah story. I wrote earlier about the massive relief collections for Fallujah, coordinated through the moseques of Baghdad and beyond, with the mosque of Abu Hanifa in Aadhamiyah as the epicenter. We saw that on April 7, within hours of the beginning of the operation.

Later on, as we saw when we were in Fallujah, there was a massive exodus of refugees from Fallujah, many of whom were taken into people's homes in Aadhamiyah.

The U.S. military has many suspicions that mujaheddin are leaving Fallujah and that guns and fighters are being smuggled in through the relief program for Fallujah. So they paid a visit to the mosque on Sunday.

Built around the tomb of Abu Hanifa, the founder of the moderate Hanafi school of Islamist jurisprudence and one of the most important figures in the history of Sunni Islam, the mosque is 1250 years old. Although Umm al-Marek is bigger, Abu Hanifa is probably the most important Sunni mosque in Baghdad, and a site of pilgrimage for Muslims around the world.

We talked with Issam Rashid, the chief of security for the mosque. He told us the story. At 3:30 am on Sunday morning, 100 American troops raided the mosque. They were looking for weapons and mujaheddin. They started the raid the way they virtually always do -- by smashing in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummers in. The Hummers ran over and destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had already been sent to Fallujah -- over 200 tons -- but the amount remaining was considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks looking for rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three tons of supplies were destroyed. We saw for ourselves some of the remains, sacks of beans ripped apart and strewn around.

The mosque was full of people, including 90 down from Kirkuk (many with the Red Crescent). They were all pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads. Another person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good English, told us that he repeatedly said, "Please, don't break down doors. Please, don't break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the doors." (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a bakery. As he said, "Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat sugar, you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them and you were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could get 15 years in prison.)

The Americans refused to listen to Alber's pleas. We went all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham Islamic College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings ripped apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers searched for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with gunfire, then break out a panel and go up and search.

They even went and rifled through students' exam papers (in Arabic), messed up offices. An old man who is a "guard" at the mosque (actually a poor man with a large family who is slightly lame and is missing several teeth) was hit in the head with a rifle butt and then kicked when he was down -- all because he was a little slow in answering the door. He says he never carries a weapon -- the whole mosque has only three Kalashnikovs, for security, kept in the imam's room. The Americans took the ammunition there too. And, of course, they entered the mosque with their boots on.

The American commanders will say this was a necessary precaution to make sure no military goods got into Fallujah and that this was legal under the laws of war. But the Abu Hanifa mosque was not involved in this -- they found nothing. They didn't bother to ask. They didn't go to the Imam and see if they could search to mosque. And, after a year of being stationed in Aadhamiyah, they didn't know the people well enough to know there would be nothing -- even though they were told repeatedly that even the resistance in that area never fired from near the mosque because they were afraid of drawing return fire that would hit the mosque.

You can guess how many hearts and minds were won by this little operation -- the third time that the mosque has been raided since the war.

Abu Hanifa mosque has a tower that is being reconstructed. It was destroyed by the American attack during the war. It is only now being finished. Rashid told me why. He said, "After the war, the Americans came and offered money to rebuild the tower. We told them no. We will rebuild the tower with our own money. We will take no money from you. You can't just destroy this and then win our goodwill with money. This is not a game."

When I asked Rashid if we could use his full name, he said, "Why not?" It's a response we get more and more these days, from people who would have been afraid but have lost their fears through anger. Dignity is one of the few things in Iraq that is not in short supply.

Permalink

April 12, 1:20 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Some people are calling the killing in Fallujah "genocide." That's too strong a term and shouldn't be overused. They are allowing women and children to leave, for example. They haven't flattened the whole city.

Let's just call it what it is. It's an incredibly brutal collective punishment in defense of a regime, that of the occupation, that is less brutal than Saddam was but more than makes up for that with its negligence. Fewer people in the mass graves, more children dying for lack of medicine, more people being murdered on the streets or kidnapped. Hard to weigh all of the factors, but I've heard so many say, including Shi'a, that things are worse now.

And Fallujah is something further as well. The Marines are corroborating my judgment, expressed previously, that the mujaheddin of Fallujah (and we're really talking about all of al-Anbar province, which includes Ramadi), are just the men of Fallujah, not some extremist faction. They don't allow "military-age males" out of town. And check out this quote from Time Magazine:

In some neighborhoods, the Marines say, anyone they spot in the streets is considered a "bad guy." Says Marine Major Larry Kaifesh: "It is hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians. You just have to go with your gut feeling."

A colleague writes, "International aid agencies are estimating 470 while doctors in local hospitals are claiming at least 600 dead -- in a town of 200,000. If we take 500 as a reasonable estimate that's 1 in 400 -- would scale to 725,000 for the United States. I'm guessing this is the biggest concentrated slaughter of a group that's mostly civilians through direct U.S. military action since Gulf War I." It's worse than anything in Gulf War I except for the al-Amiriyah bomb shelter (oddly, al-Amriyiah is also an "anti-American" neighborhood) and the "Highway of Death" slaughter, actually.

Not genocide, but not something even the U.S. spin machine can put a good face on, except by outright lies. Which, of course, the administration would never stoop to.

To repeat what I said earlier in different words: in hindsight, people may well realize this is potentially as transformative a week for the world as was the week of 9/11. It's unravelling a bit slower and we are much more distracted with other issues. But any accommodative solution to the occupation is virtually impossible -- it wasn't just a few weeks ago. U.S. intent on staying and, therefore, it is determined to "pacify" Iraq. It is no longer possible for Iraqi politicians to preserve even the appearance of semi-legitimacy and accommodate the United States.

It's getting dark now and I am out of here.

Permalink

April 12, 1:00 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Word on the street is that the risks to foreigners are very great. I will probably not leave home in the evening any more. I will only be able to update once a day, if things go smoothly. It's even possible I'll phone in my blog updates. Going to Fallujah was very important, because literally nobody was reporting the whole story in English, but risking kidnapping day by day here is a foolish risk -- or so my colleagues have persuaded me.

Everything you've seen in the press (if you're reading very widely and carefully) about how the occupation is collapsing is true. I don't mean this to predict prematurely what the outcome is, just to say that the change I sense in public opinion seems close to irreversible.

I'm sorry I can't provide links for all this -- it just takes too much time -- but here's a little capsule review of what's going on. The Governing Council is practically in hiding. Adnan Pachachi has condemned the Fallujah operations on al-Jazeera. About 25% of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense forces are not showing up for work; some of those have joined the resistance (I wrote earlier about one IP mujahid that I saw). An entire battalion refused to go and fight in Fallujah. They have two considerations. One is just that very few Iraqis can condone the brutality and pointlessness of the Fallujah attack. The other is that they're terrified, especially of Sadr's Jaish-il-Mehdi, but also of various Sunni mujaheddin groups.

The British commander in Basra has condemned the American methods. I read somewhere that in the midst of all this, John Kerry delivered a major policy speech -- on the budget deficit. Not that that's not important, but how about you talk about that next week and talk about Iraq going up in flames this week? Oh, well, it's only 6 billion people who will be hurt by his political incompetence and lack of principle.

But I digress. The United States doesn't have enough troops to deal with Iraq in flames -- unfortunately, however, more troops would just be adding fuel to the fire.

The United States has made the occupation of Iraq into a simple revenge match. It's hard to say any longer it's about imperial policies, controlling Iraq's oil, or the rest of it -- I'm sure that's still what they want, but this is the most brainless way in the world of getting it.

As for democracy, shutting down newspapers and slaughtering civilians is not a great way to go for it. Appointing Governing Councils, imposing press censorship, detaining 10-20,000 people without charges (the interim constitution of Iraq guarantees habeas corpus -- even though Bush and Ashcroft have decided habeas corpus doesn't apply in the United States -- but of course the U.S. military forces are above the constitution), funnelling Iraq's oil money to corrupt military contractors, closing al-Hawza (Sadr's newspaper), destroying Fallujah. There's more to write about this, but the point is obvious.

And revenge is not a way to win "hearts and minds." The Iraqi people -- Fool them once, fool them, fool them, won't get fooled again. Perhaps they can be conquered now by brute force. Perhaps some leaders can be bought -- although they'll likely be too scared to stay bought. But the project of building a nice comfortable facade for the occupation and control of Iraq is burning down along with Fallujah.

Permalink

April 12, 8:00 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- I've just posted my report from Fallujah -- much like the blog entry below. I should be able to update again in several hours -- Inshallah, as we say here in Iraq.

Permalink

April 12, 7:05 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- We've heard through various NGO's that the situation here in Baghdad for foreigners has become very dicey. Bridges to Baghdad, an Italian group that has done amazing work for years to help the Iraqi people, is pulling out -- with an Italian military contingent here, they are natural targets for kidnappers. The Christian Peacemaker Teams, who also have a very well-organized operation over here, are thinking of pulling out. Royal Jordanian operates a daily flight from Baghdad to Amman -- $600 one way -- but flights are often overbooked. It's also no picnic to get out to the airport from the city center -- there's fierce fighting in Abu Ghraib, along the way, with armed men blowing up oil tankers and attacking U.S. convoys. There's some talk about an emergency evacuation of some kind. I'll try to let people know if I get a chance.

A few words about this whole kidnapping thing. It's a very unpleasant tactic. Most Iraqis I've spoken to (no names here), even if they support the resistance completely (and after Fallujah there are very few, except Kurds, who will condemn the resistance completely), are not happy about the kidnappings. Perhaps the worst is the three Japanese. One of them is an 18-year-old antiwar activist. Another is a woman who works with street children. Jo Wilding, a British activist who knows the latter, told me she used to wash their clothes for them -- not something the average Third World street child gets much of. One Iraqi woman told me she couldn't sleep after she saw the pictures of them on TV being menaced by their kidnappers. When we were in Fallujah, our contacts there were in communication with the kidnappers, and we got advance notice that they were to be freed -- and got to see a plea, in Arabic, from the Japanese antiwar movement. Now, it seems, there's no news one way or the other.

The mujaheddin are perfectly ready to use violently inhumane methods, make no doubt of it. But it's awfully difficult to explain to an Iraqi that these kidnappings are illegitimate because they target civilians (and, of course, killing anyone in your custody is wrong, soldier or civilian) but that the killing of civilians in the bombing of Fallujah (including mosques and hospitals) or sniping at ambulances is OK because it's just "collateral damage." The single most common complaint you hear is that the Americans shoot indiscriminately, killing women, children, other noncombatants. People here make a clear distinction between killing combatants and noncombatants -- they just don't think that killing noncombatants from the air is more civilized.

I read a quote from a Marine commander calling the Fallujah mujaheddin "cowards" -- don't have time to look up the link. Because they fight from civilian areas, etc., i.e. use people as "human shields." This is, of course, a standard of colonialist discourse for at least 150 years now. There are two simple reasons for this. One, the "natives" are always faced with overwhelming firepower; they're not going to come out and gather together nicely at one intersection and wait to be annihilated from the sky. Two, you're in their country; that's why they have all those civilians to "hide" behind.

I've written at length trying to deconstruct this kind of nonsense for Western audiences (see "The White Man's Burden" in my book, "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism), and show that, rather than being more humanitarian, the United States (and the West) are just generally, at least post-Vietnam, more sophisticated in their brutality. But the bottom line is this: you can posture all you want for the American people, but no Third World people is going to believe this. They'll hold on to the naive view that defending themselves in their country against a foreign occupier is good and that going to other countries to occupy them is bad, that to fight with inferior weaponry against overwhelming odds shows courage and that to bomb from the air or to use heavy armor and to kill civilians with indiscriminate strikes is cowardly.

They will commit atrocities in doing so -- the "Black Hole" of Calcutta, the kidnapping of the Japanese -- and I have no interest in defending those acts. But it was the occupiers that started the atrocities and only a damn fool would expect that a brutalized people should fight back with restraint and civilization. It's happened at times, but it's a miracle when it does.

Permalink

April 11, 2:00 pm EST. Fallujah, Iraq -- Fallujah is a bit like southern California. On the edge of Iraq's western desert, it is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. The villages on the way to Fallujah are dirt-poor; Fallujah is perhaps marginally better off. Farmers constitute a significant percentage of the population. The town itself has wide streets and squat, sand-colored buildings. The way we took in, there didn't seem to be a great deal of bomb damage.

We were in Fallujah during the "ceasefire." We had heard all kinds of horrible things about what was going on. I think the current reports say something like 500-600 people killed in Fallujah, including estimates of 200 women and over 100 children (there are no women among the mujahideen, so all of the above are noncombatants. Many of the men who were wounded also told us they were just going about their business when they got hit). Here's a little bit of what we saw and heard.

When the assault on Fallujah started, the power plant was bombed. Electricity is provided by generators and usually reserved for places with important functions. There are four hospitals currently running in Fallujah. This includes the one where we were, which was actually just a minor emergency clinic; another one of them is a car repair garage. Things were very frantic at the hopsital where we were, so we couldn't get too much translation. We depended for much of our information on Makki al-Nazzal, a lifelong Fallujah resident who works for the humanitarian NGO Intersos, and had been pressed into service as the manager of the clinic, since all doctors were busy, working around the clock with minimal sleep.

A gentle, urbane man who spoke fluent English, Al-Nazzal was beside himself with fury at the Americans' actions (when I asked him if it was all right to use his full name, he said, "It's ok. It's all ok now. Let the bastards do what they want.") With the "ceasefire," large-scale bombing was rare. The primary modes of attack were a little bit of heavy artillery and a lot of snipers.

Al-Nazzal told us about ambulances being hit by snipers, women and children being shot. Describing the horror that the siege of Fallujah had become, he said, "I have been a fool for 47 years. I used to believe in European and American civilization."

I had heard these claims at third-hand before coming into Fallujah, but was skeptical. It's very difficult to find the real story here. But this I saw for myself. An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). Another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield. There's no way this was due to panicked spraying of fire. These were deliberate shots to kill people in driving the ambulances.

The ambulances go around with red, blue, or green lights flashing and sirens blaring; in the pitch-dark of a blacked-out city there is no way they can be missed or mistaken for something else). An ambulance that some of our compatriots were going around in, trading on their whiteness to get the snipers to let them throug to pick up the wounded was also shot at while we were there.

During the course of the roughly four hours we were at that small clinic, we saw perhaps a dozen wounded brought in. Among them was a young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head. She was having a seizure and foaming at the mouth when they brought here in; doctors did not expect her to survive the night. Another likely terminal case was a young boy with massive internal bleeding. I also saw a man with extensive burns on his upper body and wounds in his thighs that might have been from a cluster bomb; there was no way to verify in the madhouse scene of wailing relatives, shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), and anger at the Americans.

Among the more laughable assertions of the Bush administration is that the mujaheddin are a small group of isolated "extremists" repudiated by the majority of Fallujah's population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, the mujaheddin don't include women or very young children (we saw an 11-year-old boy with a Kalashnikov), old men, and are not necessarily even a majority of fighting-age men. But they are of the community and fully supported by it. Many of the wounded were brought in by the muj and they stood around openly conversing with doctors and others. One of the muj was wearing an Iraqi police flak jacket; on questioning others who knew im, we learned that he was in fact a member of the Iraqi police.

One of our translators, Rana al-Aiouby told me, "these are simple people." It is true that they are agricultural tribesmen with very strong religious beliefs. They are not so far differe