Category: Iraq 2003 thru June 2005

I can’t add much to what everyone is learning, thinking, and feeling these days about Fallujah.
I just note that the current massive incursion of foreign (that is, US) fighters into the city is a tragedy and a travesty against all the norms of reason and international law.
The Guardian, citing NPR, is reporting some large-scale desertions among the Iraqi forces who were supposed to be “spearheading”, or at least accompanying, the US assailants:

One Iraqi battalion shrunk from over 500 men to 170 over the past two weeks – with 255 members quitting over the weekend, the [NPR] correspondent said.

That was a correspondent “embedded” with the US military who got and reported that story. Good for her (or him).
Juan Cole reports that the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party that has been in the interim government so far, is now threatening to quit it. Also, Moqtada Sadr’s people and the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars have both called on the members of the “Iraqi” forces to desert rather than join the operation against Fallujah.
If the “Iraqi” forces have indeed now lost two-thirds of that battalion– and who knows what has happened with other battalions?– it strikes me that once again, as already happened in April and July, the US-Allawist insistence on pushing forward with a militaristic assault has resulted in setting back the project to (re-)constitute a new national force, as well as to (re-)constitute a new national political order.
It is quite possible that the only people left in the “Iraqi” battalions after the big desertions, are Kurds. What will that do for inter-ethnic entente in the country, I wonder?
… It seems clear to me that the timing of the assault has been calibrated to fall between last week’s US elections and the opening November 22 of the “Iraqi reconstruction conference” in Sharm al-Sheikh. I guess the Americans wanted to have the worst of the assault all over and “mopped up” before the conference opens.
But who on earth knows what will happen between now and then? Violence will always beget more violence.
Timing-wise, the synchronicity between these extremely tragic affairs in Iraq and Arafat’s long demise in Paris is also very significant…

Continue reading “Fallujah: the new world “order””

I saw this clip on the Beeb last night and have just found the story on their website. It’s the one where a US Marines Colonel called Gareth Brandl says:

“The marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy…
“But the enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we’re going to destroy him.”

That, you might think, is bad enough, as an indicator of how the Marines preparing to assault Fallujah are being motivated by their officers.
What seems to me almost as disturbing is the degree to which BBC reporter Paul Wood, newly embedded with Brandl’s unit, has lost the objectivity and humanitarianism that is essential for good reporting of any difficult conflict. In particular, despite the really unpleasant content of the quote above, Wood describes Brandl glowingly as, “a charismatic young officer.”
Wood also reports that the “deputy commanding general, Denis Hajlik” gave the newly embedded journalists the following very crude description of the startegy the Marines would pursue, going into the city: “We’re gonna whack ’em.”
But then the Beebman immediately gives us his own little commentary, assuring us that, “This is not bloodlust.”
I can’t figure out what is happening here. Is it the psychodynamics of embedment, which are designed by the military to persuade the embedded journos to adopt the hosting forces’ own view of the world? Or is it the BBC, having gotten a bloody nose from Blair over the whole Andrew Gilligan affair, now kowtowing more than ever to provide a view of the war that will back up Blair’s insane posture in support of it?
Maybe a bit of both.
Well, I wonder how, in years to come, Hajlik, Brandl– and Wood– will all look back at the role they played in this bizarre, hate-fueled campaign to “destroy a city in order to ‘save’ it”…

I’m sitting here in Beirut sifting a zillion things in my mind… One is regret that I haven’t mustered the courage to do what I had hoped to do while I’ve been here, which was to go to Iraq… braving a certain degree of risk, it is true… and doing some firsthand reporting from there.
In the end the degree of risk looked just too great. Or, am I getting old and flabby? Did I lose my nerve? Well, I’m sure you don’t want to hear me maundering on about my personal woes.
Anyway, I have good news for you. Dahr Jamail, a good reporter who looks from his pic to be 25 years younger than me, has just taken the plunge and gone back to Iraq. So now, the rest of us can all live out my earlier, fear-quashed hopes vicariously, through Dahr.
Here is an excerpt from the first post he put on his blog after getting back there, Friday:

Continue reading “Dahr Jamail returns to Iraq”

We can be pretty sure that a jubilant Prez Bush, his mandate strengthened, will continue the war-to-the-finish against Fallujah. (Read Riverbend’s views of this here.)
How will the “decisive” phase of this assault be waged? Or, how is it already being waged?
Daniel O’Huiginn of the Cambridge (UK)-based Campaign Against the Sanctions in Iraq, has been tracking the BBC monitoring reports of the means the US forces used in their assaults on Tel Afar and Samara in recent weeks. These provide many worrying precedents as to what may happen in Fallujah.
Especially regarding the strong possibility that the US forces may cut off the water to the city, in clear contravention of the laws of war.
Here’s how Dan sums up his reading of the BBC-monitored media clips:

I think we can say pretty conclusively that:
a) water went off in Tall Afar and Samarra during the recent attacks on
them. [doesn’t seem to be much on Fallujah yet, despite the Washington
Post claiming the water was turned off there a couple of weeks ago]
b) this is being discussed by Iraqi politicians, and is giving yet more
ammunion to their complaints about coalition behaviour (this is useful in
lobbying: most politicians want the coalition to be seen to be liked)
The aspect I’m still uncertain about (though it seems the best
explanation) is
c) there is an intentional US policy of denying water to civilians as part
of military action.

Dan has provided long extracts from these clippings which provide, as he notes, ” much more than we’re getting reported in the US and UK”.
I haven’t had time to go through what he provided and edit or even reformat it at all, so I’ll just upload it here. It makes sobering reading. (Remember that Brits write their dates Day/Month/Year.)
I hope the folks in the big international human-rights groups are working on this issue of the laws of war.

AP’s Christopher Chester has a really clear “Q&A” presentation of the facts around the looting of the explosives from Al-Qaqaa.
He goes thru the following facts:
— that the IAEA monitoring team had previously gathered all or most of such potentially nuclear-trigger-able high explosives from Iraq in Al-Qaqaa, for easier monitoring, and had checked and renewed the seals on the bunkers containing them on March 15, 2003, shortly before they were ordered to leave when Bush issued his ultimatum for the war;
— that twice in early April, huge US military convoys had stopped at Al-Qaqaa to regroup or whatever as they made their way toward Baghdad. One of these had people in it who searched (unsuccessfully) for chemical weapons, but neither of them had anyone who showed any interest in the massive high-explosive cache — though information about its location and importance was easily available from the IAEA should the US have been interested.
Then, this:

Q. Did the Americans observe [at Al-Qaqaa] that any looting had taken place?
A. The unit that arrived April 3 reported some looting, and a spokesman for the brigade that arrived April 10 says looters were at the site. A month later, on May 8, a visiting American team found the plant heavily looted and several looters in the area, an Army official said Wednesday.
Al-Qaqaa is a large installation with more than 80 buildings that could house weapons, and it’s unclear when and over how long a period of time the extremely heavy material was carted away.
___
Q. Did U.S. troops ever search the facility for the high explosives?
A. It appears that the first time U.S. troops searched specifically for high explosives was on May 27, 2003, after a purported request by the U.N. nuclear agency on May 3. The troops found that the seals had been broken. It’s not known whether they did a further accounting of the materials themselves.
___
Q. If the Americans found the seals broken, did they inform the nuclear agency?
A. It doesn’t seem so. The nuclear agency says it first learned of the disappearance of the explosives from the Iraqi government on Oct. 10, 2004. The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the nuclear agency that the high explosives were not where they were supposed to be.
___
Q. Why didn’t U.S. troops make an effort earlier than May 27, 2003 to account for the explosives?
A. Troop commanders have said they had no orders to search for high explosives

Veteran Iraqi blog-meistress Riverbend has had three good posts (out of three– a great record, Riv!) so far in October. Thank God she’s back, even if only intermittently.
The most recent one is a strong appeal to American voters not to inflict another four years of Bush rule on her country (or indeed, on ours).
The one before that is a great disquisition on the recourse to valium during a war.
Here is one great excerpt:

Continue reading “Riverbend in October”

Did I tell you that Bill and I have both been focusing a little on our Arabic-language
skills while we’ve been here in Beirut?  Yesterday, we worked through
the lead article in al-Hayat, which gave some interesting reports
of what was in some Friday sermons the day before.  I thought it was
pretty interesting, so I’ve typed out my rendering of the first half of the
article. Here it is:

Headline: A political-sectarian split in Iraq 100 days
before the elections; The Shiites threaten anyone who abstains from
voting with the fire of “hell” and the Sunnis see voting under the shadow
of occupation as “a sin”

Baghdad– al-Hayat, AFP, Reuters– With the approach of the date of the Iraqi
elections, which has been determined to be 100 days hence, the Friday sermons
in the mosques of Iraq yesterday displayed a sharp split between Iraqis concerning
them, along political and sectarian lines. At the same time that the
sermons of the Shiite imams showed an enthusiasm for participation
that reached the degree of threatening anyone who abstains from voting with
“entry into hell”, the sermons of the Sunnis were divided between those who
called for a boycott because the voting under the shadow of occupation is
“sinful” and those who urged a “negotiating” position [that urges participation
in] voting in return for conditions, among them removing from the city of
Fallujah the military option.

Al-Sayyed Ahmad al-Safi, the representative of the Shiite ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
laid stress in the Friday sermon in the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala
on “obligatory participation” in the elections and he said, “He who contravenes
that will go to hell.” He confirmed that, “We must take responsibility
and participate in an obligatory way because this is a national duty, and
not taking part would signify treason against the right of the nation.” And
Safi added that, “Participation has an obligation based in religious law
because the transgressor will enter hell.” He clarified that, “The
topic of the elections represents something truly significant for Iraqis
in terms of following their destiny.” He continued, “We must get ready to
prepare ourselves to participate strongly in them in order to realize the
hopes whose realization we’ve been awaiting a long time,” without spelling
out what these hopes were…

Continue reading “Friday sermons from Iraq”

Update of Oct. 24th: Regarding the Jarrar family’s humanitarian-aid project, you can send donations to Majid in Canada by mail. He writes on his blog that the address is: Attn. Majid Jarrar, 650 Pearson College Drive, Victoria V9C 4H7, BC, Canada. Receipts will get emailed back to you and continuing info about the project–including accounts– will be posted on Raed’s blog.

Faiza of “A Family in Baghdad” has a long, English-language version up today of posts she wrote in Arabic on October 13 and 15.
This is heartwrenching writing. I can’t even begin to make excerpts from it. She and her family are going to move house… Read about it. The whole post is worth reading.
At the end, she says:

Iraq needs an election, and anew government

Well-informed JWN frequent-commenter Shirin responded to my invitation to give us more of her impressions of the history of the insurgency in Fallujah. I thought her comment, which was posted here, was worth putting into a main post, so I’ve done that (after a light edit) right here.
Thanks, Shirin!
I just want to also note the bullying ineptitude of the Negrocontra/Allawi regime in Iraq which actually detained some key Fallujah community leaders who had exited the city to come to talk to them about terms for a possible ceasefire. The US/Allawist forces detained the negotiators from Friday through Monday.
Not surprisingly, after the negotiators– who included the city’s police chief– were released, they said they were suspending any immediate further pursuit of the ceasefire talks.
Duh! This was nearly unbelievably bad behavior by the US/Allawists, which should have been much more remarked on–by me and others–back when reports of it first surfaced over the weekend.
Whether it was political ineptitude, or just plain bullying– which could, after all, be described as the same thing–that caused that behavior, the results for both Iraqis and Americans will certainly be more death, more destruction, more wounding, more hurt and suffering all round.
I’ve been following this story in Al-Hayat over the past few days, and should really show off my re-increasing command of written Arabic by quoting from one of those stories here. Instead, I’ll just lift this quote from Today in Iraq:

Fallujah negotiator Sheik Khaled al-Jumeili said peace talks to end the standoff in Iraq’s major insurgent bastion will remain suspended as a protest against his detention by U.S. troops, who accused him of representing the militants.
“The fact is that I’m negotiating on behalf of Fallujah people

These are two separate, but very important, news items that I picked up from JWN linkees.
First this, from Juan Cole yesterday. He reports on an item from AFP/ ash-Sharq al-Awsat about Ayatollah Sistani’s spokesman Hamid al-Khaffaf, who said at a gathering at the Sadr Center in Najaf on Monday that:

— Sistani will be forming his own nationwide list of candidates to “contest” the election (against, presumably, the single list that Allawi has been proposing). Khaffaf said, “”A committee of independents has been formed, the mission of which is to help everyone be represented on a unified list that would gain the confidence of the supreme Shiite leadership.” Note the significance of announcing this at the “Sadr Center”.
— No “ideal” parliament can, Khaffaf said, be elected under the election system currently ordained for next January’s election system… (We’ve heard that criticism from Sistani/Khaffaf before).
— But Khaffaf also warned that “the grand ayatollahs would not hesitate to bring people into the streets for the sake of a good result in the elections such that the righteous win their rights.” (The direct quote there is from Juan, and maybe AFSP, though not necessarily from Khaffaf.)

The above is all news that should have been in every headline in the world today. Or yesterday. I haven’t seen it in the WaPo or the NYT.
Another headlining piece of news… This from Matt, filling in for Yankeedoodle at Today in Iraq:

U.S. Jews turning against war