wildfirejo

2005-05-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

Julia Guest's film about some of my time in Iraq is now finished and available. It's called A Letter to the Prime Minister (12 Certificate - no nudity, mild language, "some moderate injury" (eg. bodies destroyed by bombs)) and it includes footage from our work documenting civilian casualties during the invasion, from the circus and Falluja, among other things. You can order it or find out more by clicking here.

2005-02-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

People have been writing to ask what they can do to help the Iraqi people. By now you’ve either broken all your new year resolutions, in which case it’s time to try again, or you’ve kept them all, in which case you’re on a roll and may as well make some more. Either that or you never made any and it’s time you did. Helpful as ever, I offer some suggestions. Take this as How to Stop Wars, How to Protect the Environment, How to Take Action on Human Rights, Trade, Debt, whatever’s bothering you – it’s all the same at the roots.

1. Join a co-op. Getting your food through a food co-op is cheaper and also breaks down the supermarkets’ dominion over your food supply, farmers’ conditions of work and trade and town planning. Living in a housing co-op means you no longer pour your wages away in rent, slave to a mortgage or fret constantly about being evicted from a squat. Using your labour in a workers’ co-op means you control your own work and working conditions, rather than being under the orders – and often exploitation – of a boss. You and your co-owner-directors decide what the company does so you can’t be forced to make something unethical or trade on unfair terms with other workers. You challenge the stranglehold of the multinationals (who encourage, fuel and profit from wars) and make yourself happier and healthier at the same time. Info on how to do it and where to access finance: www.ica.coop

2. Plan some protest action for the G8 summit in Gleneagles, July 6th (but then join a co-op because we won’t really change anything till we seize control of the economy). www.schnews.co.uk and www.dissent.org.uk or for international info and co-ordination, e mail international-g82005-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

3. Adopt an arms dealer, military base or dodgy multinational in your neighbourhood and plague it (and then join a co-op so you can take the power away from the military-industrial capitalist economy which sustains them). Among the top war profiteers in Iraq are Aegis (1), Bechtel (3), Halliburton (7). More on war profiteers on www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk and www.corpwatch.org Arms trade info on www.caat.org.uk

4. Boycott Coca Cola because they’re murdering trade unionists and opponents in Colombia, India and elsewhere and funding Bush and his wars. Stick anti Coca Cola stickers telling the truth about them on every single vending machine you pass. www.mtcp.co.uk (Mark Thomas’s website) and www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk for the Coke workers’ call to boycott and the names of some of the workers murdered by Coke in recent years.

5. Transfer your electricity supply to Good Energy (formerly Unit E) or other green energy supplier so you don’t buy nuclear. It costs a little bit more because renewable sources don’t get any of the massive subsidies poured into nuclear power. www.ethicaljunction.org and www.greenenergy.org.uk

6. Transfer your phone provision to the Phone Co-op because it’s a good deal and almost all the other Telecommunications Companies are huge and unpleasant multinationals (lots of which are ‘investing’ in Iraq) and for all the reasons above. www.thephone.coop

7. Investigate the possibility of running any cars you use on bio-diesel. It doesn’t create the harmful emissions that oil does and uses either waste cooking oil or the whole of cereal plants which are normally only grown for the grain. Despite George Monbiot’s ill thought out nonsense in the Guardian, it is a really useful and practical solution to a lot of the oil-use problems. www.biodiesel.org

8. Alternatively or as well, join a car club or co-op if you need to use a car, so you use it less, don’t have to take up parking space and promote common ownership instead of private buying of more and more stuff.

9. Get on your bank’s case about what and who they invest in. if it’s arms dealers, dictators or sweat shops, and if you can’t remove your custom to the Co-op Bank (and tell your old bank why), then bother them relentlessly till they stop it. www.mindbranch.com/listing/product/R310-0154.htm and www.ethicalconsumer.org

10. Get on politicians’ cases to drop all the debts of poor countries – if the countries hit by the Tsunami on Boxing Day hadn’t been so poor, chances are they’d’ve had an early warning system already, which might’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives. If the Maldives hadn’t mined so much of its coral reef to provide hotels for tourists it might’ve had a bit more protection. Yes, this disaster was caused by events beyond our control but we’re working on creating a load more environmental catastrophes and debt and poverty accelerate the causes and worsen the effects. And remember that more people die of starvation every year than were killed in the tsunami. They die because the global system denies them a right to food and healthcare. We’ve got to respond to man-made disasters as well as the ones that aren’t our fault. www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk and www.data.org and www.jubileeiraq.org

11. Go vegan or vegetarian. There’s no other single thing you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. You use less water, less land and less fossil fuels and create less of every major greenhouse gas and most air, water and soil pollutants, lessen your personal impact on the rainforests and soil erosion generally. During the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, food was still being exported from there to feed farm animals in the UK and Europe. Your decision to switch from animal- to plant-based eating would immediately free up hundreds of litres of water and several acres of farmland. www.viva.org.uk

12. Write a letter to a prisoner. People are in jail for protest actions all over the world and they need letters to keep their spirits up. It can just be a postcard saying hello or a letter about you or almost anything, just so they know they’re not forgotten. It doesn’t have to be an obvious protest – people are in jail for all kinds of reasons to do with poverty and illness, not just badness and greed – in fact the baddest and greediest people are mostly running the country and the big corporations and not in jail at all, but I digress. www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

13. Impeach Tony Blair. Adam Price MP (with a little help from a few activists who had been there) had articles of impeachment drawn up against Blair for his actions in Iraq. Some MPs have signed up to it from various parties but not Labour – not even the anti-war Labour MPs. Anyone in the UK, or with friends, relations, etc in the UK can write to their MP and ask them to sign up. MPs assume that for every letter they get, another 300 people felt the same but didn’t bother to write, so your one letter counts for 301 votes, and so does the letter from every other person you persuade to write. Find out more about the case against Blair on www.impeachblair.org or just Google ‘impeach Blair’ Also www.peacerights.com and www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk

14. Do more dancing. It’s organic, fair trade, emission free and it makes you happy.

That’ll do for February.

2005-02-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

Read this and then do something...

www.globalresearch.ca
Centre for Research on Globalisation
Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation

The Ultimate War Crime: Breaking the Agricultural Cycle
Edited by Iman Khaduri, http://abutamam.blogspot.com/ January 2005
www.globalresearch.ca 25 January 2005
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the record: “U.S. declares Iraqis can not save their own seeds”
"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve ."

"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'. The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"

Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."

Iraqis Can't Save Seed January 19, 2005

The original article on this topic: Iraqi farmers aren't celebrating October 15, 2004

As per an Iraqi proverb, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when the Iraqis will shred Bremer’s Laws, soak them in water and offer the glass to Bremer to drink.

Monsanto has got many, many offices all over the world. Take your friends and you mischief and mayhem and pay them a visit. They've got to stop privatising food, not just in Iraq but everywhere. We've got to stop them doing it.

2005-01-27T04:43:00.000-08:00

A Brief Guide to the Iraqi Elections

1. Iraqis are voting not for a party or an individual but for a list.
• There are a very few individuals and parties standing as such but the majority are part of lists. There is, for example, a ‘main Shia list’ and several other Shia lists, some Kurdish lists, and so on.
• The lists contain, between them, over 7000 candidates, many of whom are not even named for security reasons.
• That means people are more or less compelled to vote not according to the credibility or policies of a person or party but for an ethic group, a national group or a religious faction.

2. Iraqi people have no opportunity to elect their president or prime minister.
• The elections will create a 275 member National Assembly which will select a 3 member presidency council, which in turn will select a prime minister. It’s assumed, but nowhere stated in the ‘transitional law’ that these selections would come from among the 275 elected members.

3. None of the elected members of the National Assembly will represent a locality.
• Former US viceroy Paul Bremer decided the entire country should be a single constituency so the electoral system creates a national proportional representation.
• Anyone who gets a 275th of the vote will get a seat, regardless of how many others are elected from their city or province.
• The system creates a likelihood of over-representation at the national level for groups which turn out in high numbers. For example, in Kurdistan, where security is much better and people are more in favour of the elections, far more people are likely to vote, giving the Kurds greater representation than their numbers warrant. Of course, they were unrepresented, to all intents and purposes, for decades (thanks to Winston Churchill and all who followed him) but the solution isn’t to simply shift the inequalities.

4. Large areas of the country are not expected to be able to vote.
• Interim leader Ayad Allawi stated that there are 4 provinces where the security situation militates against voting – he didn’t mention that they include Baghdad, and up to half of the population.
• The people of Falluja have not been registered to vote or given voting cards.
• A lot of Iraqis believe that a lot of the attacks and unrest have been orchestrated by the occupying forces using covert operations, stock-in-trade of both the interim prime-minister Allawi and the current US viceroy (‘Ambassador’) John Negroponte. The areas where security ‘militates against voting’ are those where voters can’t be relied on to vote for someone ‘unpalatable’.
• There’s been intimidation in some areas – Felicity Arbuthnot reported a case of a family visited by their local shopkeeper who asked for their ration book ‘for safekeeping’. Ration books are needed as ID for voters and the family refused. Later the shopkeeper came back in tears – he’d been threatened, on his family’s lives, to collect all the ration books.

5. The rules for polling and who can or can’t be a candidate were set, essentially, by the US.
• Rules were set by the Independent Iraqi Electoral Commission, or some similar arrangement of those words. The group, bar one or perhaps two members, were appointed by Paul Bremer, before handing over “power” in June.
• The Commission has absolute power to bar any candidate or organisation. It has banned a number of candidates but is so secretive that nobody knows who has been forbidden or for what reason. There’s been no due process, no establishing a case against a candidate before barring.
• Candidates and organisations taking part have to swear allegiance to Bremer's law
• One of the bars is “moral turpitude”. That in itself is not unusual- many countries don’t allow a person with certain convictions, for example, from standing. The bar does not, though, apply to either Ahmed Chalabi, a US appointee to the interim government who has been convicted (in his absence) of massive fraud, or Ayad Allawi, US-appointed interim prime minister, who was a covert CIA operative commanding bombings including a school bus and a cinema in Iraq during Saddam’s rule.

6. Expat voters are expected to decide the result.
• A huge number of people living outside Iraq will be allowed to vote. There are 3 polling stations in the UK, several in the US and others in fourteen countries around the world. Contacting of expats to invite them to register appears to have been selective.
• The UN opposed the expat vote as highly vulnerable to fraud but the election planners chose not to listen.
• Because expat voters don’t face the security risks of Iraqis in-country, a higher proportion of those eligible are expected to turn out.
• It’s a bit unclear exactly what are the criteria for being allowed to vote but it appears to be possible even for people who have never lived in Iraq but whose parents did.

7. Certain parties and individuals have also been funded by the US.
• The International Republican Institute, an organisation linked to the US Republican party has been funding certain groups in their campaigning, giving a massive advantage.
• It is also believed to be organising the exit polls.
• It orchestrated, among other things, the coup in Venezuela.

8. Whoever wins, the occupation will go on.
• The US has built enormous bases in Iraq which it has no intention of withdrawing from.
• The US has already spent more than $100,000,000,000 on the war in Iraq – that’s a hundred thousand million to most of us, a billion to the US. Bush is requesting another 80 thousand million dollars to carry on.
• US officials, mainly remaining anonymous, have made it abundantly clear that the elections are free only within the parameters set by the US government. The US is prepared to ‘tolerate’ a limited form of theocracy, according to one.
• Iraqi candidates are aware that there are ‘red lines’ as an unnamed Shia official put it – the election winners will not be at liberty to set any policy they choose.

9. The new government is already bound.
• The next plebiscite (on a permanent constitution) has to be held under Bremer's law too: any three of the eighteen governorates can veto the constitution, even if the constitution wins 90% of the total vote.
• It was unlawful for Bremer or the occupying powers to enact any laws, because an occupier is not allowed to change the laws of the country seized. Nevertheless, Bremer ruled, and the interim governing council signed into law, that everything in Iraq is to be privatised, open to 100% foreign ownership or at least foreign leasehold for forty years. That includes resources, amenities and public services.
• Because of the lack of security, little has yet been sold off but the law, though illegitimate, is expressed as binding on future governments.
• Iraq is the most indebted country in the world in terms of its debt to export ratio. Saddam’s wars built up massive debts, now at $180 billion. Western countries and the IMF were happy too carry on funding Saddam with loans and to sell him weapons, including the chemical weapons and related hardware to attack the Kurds. Added to that are compensation claims ($30 bn) from the invasion of Kuwait, mainly ‘owed’ to incredibly wealthy oil companies and such like. Now, with the constant addition of compound interest throughout the sanctions, when Iraq was unable to pay off any debts at all, the debt is immense.
• The Paris Club and others have agreed to a package of debt relief which is linked to a programme of ‘structural adjustment’ whereby Iraq has to follow Argentina, Romania and others into disastrous policies of global capitalism. 30% of debt relief is unconditional, 30% depends on adopting a ‘standard IMF policy’ and 20% hangs on a three year review of implementation of the IMF policy. Iraq hasn’t got any bargaining power to resist.
• Two of the IMF’s conditions are the ‘opening up’ (read cheap sell off to Bush’s pals) of the Iraqi oil industry and the rollback of the food ration, currently the only major social welfare programme, presumably because it means people with no money get stuff free instead of paying for it. The leading candidates have agreed to all this – that’s why they got the money to become leading candidates.
• The debts left over after the promised, but conditional, relief are still more than enough to keep Iraq in servitude for many, many decades to come.

10. Iraq has no free press.
• Allawi and co issued a rule that the press have to publish versions of events which put the government’s point of view.
• Press ‘disrespect’ to Allawi is banned.
• Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and an unknown number of smaller outlets have been banned already for refusing to conform.

11. The Iraqi people fought for this election.
• Last year, Iraqi people held massive demonstrations for elections. Other demonstrations had been fired on by coalition troops so it’s no exaggeration to say people risked their lives for elections.
• It was only when they realised they faced unrest from thousands and thousands of ordinary people, including the ethnic and geographical groups which had been quiet till then, that the occupying powers backed down and started working on ways to distort the election and turn it to their advantage.
• Opposition is nation-wide to the distortions imposed on the election. Thousands of anti-occupation activists are being arrested across Iraq (under martial law).
• Though the preferable option, clearly, must be an end to the occupation, there were demands from the Iraqi National Foundation Congress – a far more representative group than the interim government, never mind the electoral commissioners, that would have made the elections substantially more fair:
1. That the elections are supervised by a commission of figures with known credentials of impartiality and integrity, internationally and in the Arab and Islamic world.
2. That this commission supervises all the local committees in all phases of the elections.
3. That essential changes are made to the still anonymous Permanent Election Commission¹ appointed by the American ex-governor contrary to any criteria of transparency and integrity. As a minimum:
a. to include a representative from each competing list
b. to include a number of Iraqi active and veteran judges with known integrity
c. to remove the right to arbitrarily bar any candidate in the election except through
legal process of incrimination.
4. That measures are taken to ensure safe and fair conduct of elections in all cities and country towns as follows:
a. an immediate halt to all military operations against towns and neighbourhood.
b. withdrawal of all occupation forces from all towns and neighbourhoods at least
one month before election date.
c. release of all political prisoners regardless o their political affiliation especially
those not specifically charged.

…with thanks to Dahr Jamail, Ewa Jasiewicz, Gabriel Carlyle from Voices in the Wilderness and countless friends in Iraq for helping me make sense of it all.

2004-12-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

This is a reply from Naomi Klein to the US acting ambassador who wrote to the UK Guardian newspaper in response to one of Naomi's columns, in which she accused the US of eliminating witnesses in Falluja. I'm forwarding it because it's important and also accords with what we saw in Falluja in April. Two unembedded French journalists we met - the only unembedded foreign journalists who were there - were taken prisoner by the US troops and held, blindfolded and filmed with their own camera equipment to prevent them continuing to record what was happening in Falluja.

You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is...
In Iraq, the US does eliminate those who dare to count the dead

by Naomi Klein
Saturday December 4, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5078311-103390,00.htmlThe Guardian

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson,
On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking
strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence
read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering
to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone -
doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of
particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian
either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave
accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve
themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter
extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have
no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you
requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome
killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with US
troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for
the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across the country,
triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This
information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA Today reported on
April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were gathered from four main
clinics around the city and from Falluja general hospital". 2) Arab TV
journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of dead, it was al-Jazeera
and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those statistics. With unembedded
camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed footage of mutilated women and
children throughout Iraq and the Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The
reports of high civilian casualties coming from journalists and doctors were
seized upon by prominent clerics in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons
condemning the attack, turning their congregants against US forces and
igniting the uprising that forced US troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during
last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For
instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York
Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of
propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks.
When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of
civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of
defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and
inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja -
but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors,
journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties
last time around.

Eliminating doctors
The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm
Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under
military control. The New York Times reported that "the hospital was
selected as an early target because the American military believed that it
was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties", noting that "this time
around, the American military intends to fight its own information war,
countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent
weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers
"stole the mobile phones" at the hospital - preventing doctors from
communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days
earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as
a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working
in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and
35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja
general hospital "had told a US general the location of the downtown
makeshift medical centre" before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was
the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr
Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single surgeon
in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on
entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the
al-Zaharawi hospital.

Eliminating journalists
The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from
reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who
had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been
eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been
banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an
unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US
forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's
detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the
International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility
that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of
intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central
Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on
staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft
bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub.
Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location
to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso,
of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US
soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges
that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel
and that they committed a war crime.

Eliminating clerics
Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of the
clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in Falluja. On
November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme Association
for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated Press,
"Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch a civil
disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the attack on
Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces stormed a
prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing three people
and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another opponent of the
Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that "US troops also
raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The report described
the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja offensive". Two Shia
clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent
weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out against the Falluja attack".

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command.
The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the
bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists
who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence
is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a
variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and
overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are
waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has
claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

·Additional research by Aaron Maté

www.nologo.org

Please also sign Naomi and Avi's petition in support of the Zanon factory workers in Patagonia - they took over their factory when Argentina went bankrupt, refused to stop working and became a workers' co-operative, believing that the machinery belongs to the people because of the massive subsidies paid to the factory owner out of taxpayers' money. Now the federal forces are threatening to illegally evict the workers and sieze the machinery.

2004-11-30T07:05:00.000-08:00

Please see:
http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6#for news of Iraqi farmers being prevented from saving
seeds and forced to use genetically modified seeds
bought at huge cost from US / multinational
corporations.

Also:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/11/301892.html
for a report on the dropping of charges against two UK
activists for disrupting the Iraq Procurement
conference in London earlier this year, on the basis
that it was plunder and illegal. The prosecution
accepted their not-guilty pleas after they stated that
they would contest the legality of the event they
disrupted.

Also this from Ewa Jasiewicz from Falluja contacts:

Fallujah News

Breaking News from Fallujah

Over half of Fallujah still un-pacified by Occupation
Forces. Aid Convoy
Fired Upon. Chemical warfare used against civilians.
Villages and towns
surrounding Fallujah under siege. 14-year-old boys
being arrested. House
to house fighting and house to house searches.
Witnesses fleeing
Fallujah report that Red Cresecents estimation of 170
families still
holding out in US Occupied areas in Fallujah is
inaccurate they
estimate it as up to 3 times higher. Ramadi on Fire.

This is news gathered from a UK contact working for a
small relief
organisation based in Baghdad. He has been in regular
contact with
relief staff on the ground in Iraq who for the past
two weeks since
November 10th - have been trying to get convoys of aid
into Fallujah but
have been prevented from doing so by Occupation
Forces. The first time
they tried to get a convoy in was June. The convoy was
halted and in
effect stolen, confiscated, by Iraqi soldiers under
the command of
Occupation Forces. The Iraqi soldiers confiscated
medical supplies
penicillin, syringes, consumables, bandages, plastic
gloves, and
sanitary equipment. No reason given by individual
Iraqi soldiers was We
need it more than they do these are the exact words
used. The soldier
then announced that the goods would be taken in the
name of the Ministry
of Health. The incident happened on the road between
Baghdad and
Fallujah.

The most recent Convoy was attacked by Occupation
Forces on Wednesday
24th November. It was part of 3 trucks laden with aid.
It contained
blankets, water, medical supplies, cooking gas, and
basic foodstuffs
such as rice, flour, sugar, salt etc. Troops fired on
the truck hitting
it 6 times. Noone was injured but the convoy was
forced to turn back.
There was no dialogue with the soldiers.

The NGO trying to carry out this work cannot be named
for security
reasons. Staff report a climate of fear where speaking
out about
occupation violations can result in targeting,
censorship and possible
shut-down of operations by the neo-Baathist Alawi
government. Staff have
been processing and supporting families fleeing
Fallujah and have been
listening to their stories.

There is a need for these stories and testimonies to
be heard but those
involved do not want their names revealed for fear of
retaliation. Such
constraints make journalistic reporting difficult.
Confirmation of
sources is hampered by a lack of personal access to
Fallujah and Baghdad
and the situation on the ground. Reliance on
testimonies through third
parties is also problematic yet this is the best that
can be done under
the circumstances. The news below is corroborated by
similar reports in
the Arabic and mainstream media.

Here are examples of reports from Fallujah as conveyed
to Iraqi relief
staff in Baghdad:

Hay Julan residents of the Hay Julan area who were
able to flee
Fallujah described an apple smelling chemical with
which they were
exposed to before the main onslaught into Fallujah.
There was a break of
about half a day between the presence of the
gas/chemical and when the
main assault started. The chemical created open wounds
on the skin which
were very hard to treat. After a while all exposed
areas on the skin
were cracked and bleeding. People came out of Fallujah
with these
injuries. They described smoke, a sweet smell and when
they were exposed
to the smoke, they coughed up blood and had cracked
bleeding skin. Most
of these families were hiding. When they smelled the
gas they thought
this was a gas attack and fled their homes and made
their way through
small backroads unoccupied by Occupation Forces. This
happened at the
beginning of the attack on Fallujah around 2 weeks
ago.

There were many families who left young people to
guard their homes 18
years old and younger, teenagers, people of not
fighting age who they
thought would be too young to be targeted by troops. A
common theme
running through each family grouping which fled
Fallujah is that they
elected one or two people to stay behind and look
after their houses.

One woman said she wanted to commit suicide as shed
left her son there
and her home was no longer there. A lot of families
said they could not
understand the figure of 170 families being put
forward by the Red
Crescent Society (Arabic medical relief agency). Their
estimation was
3-4 times larger. They were aware of a significant
number of families
left behind. The explanation offered by them was that
they must have
fled to another part of Fallujah or been killed.

The families said they were prevented from returning
to Fallujah to pick
up dead bodies of relatives. One family which had had
their home shelled
went to Saqlaawiya which is a village just outside of
Fallujah.
Saqlaawiya and Ameriyaht Fallujah (1700 families from
Fallujah are
living there in tents, provided by aid organisations)
are under siege by
Occupation Forces. This is where families are able to
go. In the
beginning of the invasion of Fallujah, there was a
missile attack on
Saqlaawiya. Noone knows what happened in the aftermath
of this. A group
of Saqlaawiya families have been trying to return to
pick up their dead
but have been prevented.

The main areas housing recent refugees (many of the
initial refugees
went to Baghdad) are: Saqlaawiya, Baquba, Ameriat
Fallujah, and Heed and
this is where the information is coming from.

Latest News

Conveyed today through the NGO contact in the UK:

There are systematic arrests by Occupation Troops of
boys aged 14-years
and upwards are taking place in Heed, Baquba,
Ahmeriyat Fallujah,
Saqlaawiya and Ramadi. House to house searches.

Ahdemeeya in Baghdad is a no-go zone. Pitched battles
are taking place
between the resistance and occupation forces. British
troops are
carrying out house-to-house searches in properties
along the Euphrates
River edging towards Baghdad.

Statement from NGO co-ordinator in UK after contact
with Baghdad office:

The situation is more volatile than previously
assessed. An Iraqi
journalist was trying to take pictures of our convoy.
A car pulled up, a
civilian car from Fallujah, and accused the journalist
of being a spy.
The driver pulled out a gun and pointed it at the
journalist and accused
him of working for the Iraqi Mokhabarat (Intelligence
services) and
threatened to shoot him dead. This happened in the
vicinity of Fallujah.
Had it not been for intervention from those
accompanying the aid agency,
the situation could have escalated.

Every day we are trying to send convoys into Fallujah
but we are being
blocked by occupation troops. The psychology of the
situation is very
dangerous. There is a ruthlessness and blind reaction
by people to
perceived threats, as the incident with the journalist
shows us. People
have lost their familes, their loved ones, their
homes. There is a lot
of psychological damage and instability.

Our co-ordinator has said that it is not safe to talk
to the media about
what is happening. (People are afraid of being accused
of scaremongering
and fomenting or inciting violence against the
government or coalition
troops which is an offence under Bremers Order on
prohibited media
activity
http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20030610_20030610_CPAPNOTICE_Responsible_Media.html.pdf)

The number of families which got out in the last few
days is 2-3 times
greater than previously estimated from all areas. At
first we had 150
families come out from Fallujah to Heed. Now we have
seen over 1000
families come to the Heed and Ameriyaht area. Now they
cannot leave
these areas. Americans control the whole area. Aid has
definitely been
let into Ameriyaht. But it has been limited in Baquba
and Ramadi. The
situation is a crisis.

The Americans have been allowing families out of
Fallujah. But there are
170 families remaining in the area controlled by the
Americans which is
only about 45% of Fallujah. This means that most of
Fallujah is still in
the hands of the resistance. Under US control are the
Al Wahde, Julan
and Hay Sinai areas in the North of Fallujah. But
there is still
sporadic fighting in these areas and all over the
place. The fighting
never stops. Guerilla fighters move from house to
house, they never
stop. And there are areas within these areas which are
still changing
hands. There was fighting in the Julan area today this
morning. All the
main roads are not safe. Water and electricity in the
city is still cut.
It is a bonus if people can move and survive.
Resistance fighters are
moving in and out quickly of areas as they know that
if the military
identifies those areas it will bomb them from the air.
They keep moving.
They can escape as they know every inch of the city.
This is the tactic.
Almost every house in Al Wahde, Julan and Hay SinaI
has been searched.

There are families trapped in the desert close to
Fallujah without
anything. They have no tents, nothing, they are just
in the bare desert,
these families are seen from Convoys trying to deliver
aid. If you stop
or leave roads already known then there is fear of
being targeted by US
snipers. The situation is not secure for vehicles to
break away from
Convoys to come out and deal with them as they are too
close to Fallujah
and this means people coming to them are perceived as
a security threat
to the Americans. There are 10s of families there but
there are no
specific numbers. We have managed to help families in
other parts of the
desert, further away from Fallujah itself.

This was put together by Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist
journalist with 9
months experience living in Occupied Iraq

For further news from the ground in Iraq see:
http://blog.newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches/

2004-11-25T05:29:00.000-08:00

For Immediate Release:
Friday November 19th 2004

Press Conference with Naomi Klein:
‘Now we’re taking you to court!’ - Protestors insist on trial as government and ‘plunder promoter’ drop charges

In what is believed to be a politically motivated decision, the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped charges of ‘Aggravated Trespass’ against two female protesters who demonstrated inside an Iraq privatisation conference last April.

Ewa Jasiewicz, activist Jounalist had recently returned from 9 months solidarity work with trade unionists, families, refugees and women’s groups in Iraq. Pennie Quinton is an Indymedia activist and journalist.

The Crown stated that ‘there is not enough evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction’.

Ewa and Pennie have been charged with intending to disrupt a “lawful activity” when they entered the Iraq Procurement Conference, unfurled banners, and addressed the delegates as collaborators in the daily massacres in Iraq. Their actions caused the conference venue to be evacuated and all activity to be suspended.

Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist and author of No Logo, had been scheduled to give evidence at the trial. She will take part in a press conference alongside the defendants and their lawyer at The National Union of Journalists, 308 Grays Inn Road, WC1, 4pm this Tuesday 24th November.

Pennie and Ewa are claiming their right to trial under Section 23 of the Prosecution of Offenses Act 1985. This means they are in effect, taking the government and event organisers Windrush Communications to court. Prosecution witnesses from Windrush have refused to attend the trial. They will now be witnessed-summoned. Windrush have failed to disclose evidence, in violation of repeated court orders, to reveal invitations, attendees, order of business and contracts procured, relating to the event. They will now be ordered to submit again.

The defence will continue to argue that the meeting was not a lawful event as it was facilitating acts in breach of the Iraq constitution - illegal under the Hague Regulations of 1907 and Geneva Conventions 1949. Britain and the US are signatories to both the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions.

In a leaked memo dated March 26th 2003, UK Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith advised Prime Minister Blair that in his view, 'the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorised under international law'. (Source: Guardian, 7 November 2003, “Pillage is forbidden: Why the privatisation of Iraq is illegal“ Aaron Mate).

This case will be the first time the legality of the pillage of Iraq is challenged in court. The defendants hope the court will rule that the conference was unlawful as occupying forces must comply with international law.

Ewa and Pennie regard the prosecution’s climb-down as a victory and a total vindication of the validity and necessity of their actions and legal argument.

They state: ‘The decision undertaken by Windrush Communications to back down when faced with the legal consequences of their actions – in our belief, aiding and abetting pillage in Iraq in contravention of international law – is an open door to other activists to take further action to expose the ‘unlawful’ activity of companies and event organisers like Windrush’.

For information, contact the former defendants –
Ewa Jasiewicz at freelanceATmailworks.org or 07749 421 576
Pennie Quinton at pennieqATyahoo.com.

Related Information:

Iraq business deals may be invalid, law experts warn (Source: Thomas Catán, Financial Times September 30th 2003)

The US-led provisional authority in Iraq may be breaking international law by selling state assets, experts have warned, raising the prospect that contracts signed now by foreign investors could be scrapped by a future Iraqi government.

International businesspeople attending a conference in London October 2003 heard that some orders issued by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) may be in breach of the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

"Is what they are doing legitimate, is it legal?” asked Juliet Blanch, a partner at the London-based international law firm Norton Rose. "Most [experts] believe that their actions are not legal", she said. "There would be no requirement for a new government to ratify their [actions]."

International law obliges occupying powers to respect laws already in force in a country "unless absolutely prevented" from doing so.

According to international law experts, that throws doubt on the legality of the CPA's September 19 order opening the Iraqi economy to foreign investment. In what amounted to a blueprint for transforming Iraq into a market economy, Order 39 permitted full foreign ownership of a wide range of state-owned Iraqi assets, barring natural resources such as oil.

Background

1 - Windrush Communications organised the Iraq Procurement Conference, bringing together:

“Over 200 companies and organisations from around the world … to discuss the wide range of economic opportunities available. The event was open to interested businesses and organisations from all countries, immediately following the awarding of up to $18.4 billion in contracts from the US Congress and prior to the handover from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the new Iraqi government on 30 June.” (Source: http://www.iraqprocurement.com)

1- On the Iraq Procurement Conference, Jasiewicz says-

The decisions which set the living standards and possibilities for generations to come; The decisions which determine who will starve and who will survive and who will live and who will die, are not made on the battlefield by people in uniform, they are made by people in suits behind closed doors, in soft-carpeted hotels and function rooms. They are made in private and demand absolute silence. They are made by the powerful and remorseless. They are made by those who legitimise theft, excuse crimes against humanity, and seal the fate of an entire country’s future with a pen’s stroke. There are made in events like Iraq Procurement 2004.

You make history, when you do business – Barbara Kruger

3- Relevant Links:

http://www.iraqprocurement.com/ - website of the Iraq Procurement Conference

http://www.cpa-iraq.org - website of the Occupation Administration - Orders can be found in the Documents section. Of particular relevance are Orders 30 and 39 plus Orders on Taxation Strategy

http://www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk/ - Up-to-date info and analysis on the continuing occupation and traumatisation of Iraq

http://www.workersliberty.org/files/Occupied_Basra_19.pdf - Ewa Jasiewicz's 3 month research report on workers struggle in British Occupied Basra

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=2180 SOC Workers Throw Out KBR, Reconstruct Their workplaces Autonomously article by Ewa Jasiewicz

http://www.labournet.net/world/0312/Iraq3.html - Iraqi Workers Threaten General Strike, Armed resistance - article by Ewa Jasiewicz

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/283668.html - Basra Braces Itself for Industrial Shut-Down - article by Ewa Jasiewicz on Electricity Sector workers threatening strike action

http://www.kclabor.org/occupied_basra_electricity_worke.htm - Update on Electricity Workers Strike article by Ewa Jasiewicz

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/02/09/2722630 - Umm Qasr workers wrestle with the prospect of forming a union. There is now a trade union at Umm Qasr! International Longshore and Warehouse Union members, employed by SSA Marine (formerly known as Stevedoring Services of America), the company which has been responsible for Umm Qasr since the occupation began sent a letter of solidarity and encouragement to the workers at the key Port. It is thought this helped workers gain the confidence and build on the already existing desire to form a union.

2004-10-19T04:59:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to British Troops Serving in Iraq

The US has asked the British government to send you north to free up forces for another offensive against Falluja. I’m writing to ask you to refuse any orders to deploy to Baghdad or other areas currently under US control.

I was an ambulance volunteer in Falluja during the April siege. I went because my friend Salam, a doctor, said US troops were stopping medical supplies getting in, cut off water, food, electricity and had closed down the main hospital and controlled the road to the smaller one with snipers.

Salam was evacuated with bullet wounds; a missile from a US plane destroyed the ambulance in front of his. He and his crew were under fire, pinned inside the vehicle while their colleagues burned in the other one. He thought the marines wouldn’t shoot us because we’d look like their brothers and sisters. He was right: in daylight we moved medical supplies, evacuated people from the second hospital and homes in the firing line, picked up sick and injured people.

We went to bring two sick women from a house in US territory. Outside a man of about 60 was lying face down in the road, shot through the back. You don’t need me to tell you what it looks or smells like when a man’s chest isn’t inside his body any more.

We could see the lines of marines along the tops of the houses. Only when we got there did the family dare to come out, the sons screaming that he was unarmed, he just went out to get the car to take his wife to the clinic. The daughters whispered, “Baba, baba” [Daddy] as we walked them to safety.

Our clinic received countless sniper casualties, the US’s preferred method of controlling its areas: a small boy, trousers wet, shot in the head; an old woman carrying a white flag; a young woman shot in the jaw, all attempting to flee their homes in US territory. Aircraft pounded the town with missiles and cluster bombs. I think they denied using cluster bombs but there’s no mistaking the rhythmic sound of them exploding.

As it got dark we were asked to pick up a woman in premature labour in a US-held area, giving birth without light, water or medical attention. We were not visibly foreign any more and my ambulance, clearly marked as such in English with flashing lights and siren, was fired on by US marine snipers. We never got to her. I don’t know what happened to her.

Cars packed with families queued at the edge of town. Marines were firing at the cars. Troops inside the town had been threatening people to leave by sunset or they would be killed. As we left we were taken prisoner by Iraqi gunmen, afraid that we were spies. They, like the fighters near the clinic, were local men, fighting for their homes and families. If there are foreign fighters (other than US soldiers) in Falluja now it is because that space was created for them by the last attack. Another will only attract more.

An unnamed US official promises a “very bloody and nasty” fight within what another official indicated would be “the next few days” (Washington Post, Sat 16/10/04). Throwaway platitudes like “War is hell” are not good enough. There are choices. The choice to be complicit, to free up US troops to repeat that attack must be consciously made. Each one of you has to decide whether you accept that role.

I get quite a few e-mails from soldiers, US and British, who are angry at what’s happening. They, and you, didn’t risk your lives to go and make things worse.

In April, when Falluja was attacked, there were uprisings across the country, in Shia and Sunni areas alike. In Shuala, Baghdad, there was fighting all around the squatter camp where hundreds of homeless people are living. Even Iraqi organisations couldn’t help them and throughout April they got no aid supplies at all.

Even in Thawra, where US troops once had something like a welcome, there was fighting in the streets, in Najaf, in Nasariya, in dozens of towns and villages that never became news. Another attack on Falluja emphatically won’t make the country safer for elections.

British troops in Baghdad will sustain higher casualties than in the south, will take the brunt of the uprisings caused by US misjudgment and brutality. The UK government will not be there for you or your families when you are killed, maimed or poisoned by depleted uranium weapons.

Please, don’t go. Please don’t make yourselves complicit with the atrocities which will undoubtedly be committed against ordinary Iraqi people in Falluja. Please don’t put yourself closer to harm for the sake of an ill-advised attack that will only make things worse.

Yours,

Jo Wilding

2004-10-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

October 13th 2004
Clowns to Kurdistan

We made a load of plans for the Boomchucka Clowns to go back to Iraq this autumn, compiled an info sheet for people who wanted to join the circus, planned for some fundraising, made a list of useful stuff and people to blag it off, agreed who was going to do what.

And then Ghareeb was dead; Ghareeb who took me to Falluja, who took countless foreigners to the places he thought we could make a difference, Ghareeb with the fiery temper that drove me nuts, who sometimes liked to exaggerate, who always loved to gossip – Ewa used to say a big bird told her everything, Ghareeb whose cigarette end lit the way through the pitch dark streets of Falluja, who drove the ambulance that was shot at with us in it, who I called Azzam in the stories from there, who doesn’t need a disguise any more, who seemed to know everyone, who’d fled his native Palestine after working for freedom there, making his home in Iraq instead, is dead.

Surely someone so big couldn’t die, but it seems like bullets don’t discriminate. He was driving with the convoy that included foreign journalists and activists and Italian Red Cross workers in late August. Enzo, a Red Cross volunteer, freelance journalist and blogger, was kidnapped and killed. Even though I spoke to him on the phone only a couple of weeks before and he was fine, all it took was a bullet and now he’s dead.

And then the two Simonas, Mahnoaz and Dr Raad were kidnapped, seized in broad daylight by unmasked, smart, well-fed men, apparently working on some kind of covert operation rather than the usual chaotic opportunistic roadside bandit episodes, and we knew there was no way the clowns could go back as planned.

The current Iraqi government, under Ayad Allawi, is aping the last in terms of information control. Foreigners are to be kept away, their interactions controlled. Visas are coming back into use not to protect national security but to filter the opinions of those admitted. Journalists who write the wrong thing are shut down or threatened and NGO workers who consistently make sure medical supplies get through sieges to the populations of Falluja and Najaf are to be forced out.

Allawi was a Baathist, turned CIA operative sent back to Iraq to destabilise the Saddam government with covert bombing campaigns that included a cinema and a school bus. He hasn’t changed. My friend Abeer, one of the Baghdad University girls, wrote me a desperate e mail. Confined to her home, she begged me to call the embassy and find out if, having been born in the UK while her mother was a student here, she can come and live here.

Even Zaid, the King of post-occupation optimism, e mailed today to tell me things are very bad. Zainab, his sister, got married two weeks ago, he’s got a job with a newspaper, Mimi is in pre-school. They carry on as best they can. Farah we haven’t heard from and can’t reach.

Waleed is out and safe. He got a scholarship to Canada, as did Majid. For months the Canadian embassy in Jordan refused him a visa, for months until he missed the start of term and we all bombarded them with phone calls and e mails. The objection was primarily that he’d been in a metal band. I’m sorry. A teenage boy band might be a bit noisy, might even be slightly bizarre when it can only play in a bingo club with streamers on the ceiling but it’s not a threat to anyone’s national security or public order.

He says Canada is quiet. It feels all the time like it must be the calm before the storm but the storm keeps on not coming. There’s water everywhere and loads of animals. Waleed isn’t keen on little animals. He’s worried about waking up one morning to find that a raccoon’s peed on his desk.

Layla says the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq is getting a lot of threats from political Islamist groups. The squatter camp at Shuala – the one the circus went to a lot, where we built the drain and still hope we can build a school – is in the middle of a lot of fighting, helicopter gunships and tanks from the US side, Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers from the resistance.

So the clowns are not going back to Baghdad and the south but we will be despatching two, maybe three, to Iraqi Kurdistan in early November. Anyone who’s been reading a while might remember the villages near Erbil and the refugee camps of Iranian and Turkish Kurds, the deaf boy at Maxmur who had never heard music in his life till he felt the sound of Luis’s didgeridoo. Things are not as desperate in Kurdistan as elsewhere in Iraq but they still suffered a lot under sanctions and Saddam and we still found a lot of kids and adults who needed to remember what it felt like to play and laugh.

The plan, initially, is that Peat and Luis will go there for a month, perform, teach and identify projects and solidarity work the circus can usefully do. It might end up going on for longer, as it did last time, if the results are positive and it’s – relatively speaking – safe to work there, both for them and the local people who work with them.

If anyone wants to help – yes, it’s time for the blag – what we want is as many parachutes as we can get for parachute games, ideally so they can leave a few in appropriate places with instructions translated into Kurdish, as well as some magic tricks and such like. Peat tells me it’s £66 a parachute. They’ll travel in through Turkey and it’s relatively cheap to get there – about £180 per person for a one month return flight, more by train. The cost of living in the Kurdish area is pretty low and the main expense over there will be paying translators and drivers.

We also want them to be able to identify and fund small scale projects created by local people – like the drain in Shuala – which allow people to empower themselves and improve their own living conditions. If possible they’ll also train some local folk to teach circus skills and look into setting up a youth centre or two through other organisations which can give the kids a chance to play all year, not just in Boomchucka season. OK, it’s possible that this is all going to take longer than a month.

I won’t be going this time, sadly. I’m in university now, for a year. I’m studying to be a barrister and rally really enjoying it, really appreciating being alive in a gorgeous autumn and having the chance to be a student. It’s fully full-time though, which is why you’ve heard nothing from me in a while and, typical student, when you do I want money, but the circus last time around was incredible so please be part of it this time. Check out some of the pictures and stories on www.circus2Iraq.org if you missed it.

Speaking Dates:

October 16th – at the SchNews conference, Camden Centre, near Kings Cross station

November 5th – Peace Party in Bristol, fundraiser for Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq and Union of the Unemployed in Iraq. I’m talking about 9pm. Not sure of venue.

November 18th – London, evening. Not sure of the venue and time yet.

December 5th – Iraq Occupation Focus one-day conference, London

2004-08-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

August 24th, 7pm I'll be speaking at the weekly meeting at the International Action Centre, 39 W 14th St rm 206.

August 25th, St Marks Church, E 10th St. and 2nd Ave, New York city, Call to Mutiny / Clamour magazine launch. 7pm $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away for lack of funds). I'm not actually speaking at this but Daivd Martine will be showing the new "A Short Film From Falluja" about our 2 trips there during the siege and I'll be there.

August 26th, NYC, Iraq War Crimes Tribunal: People Judge Bush, Martin Luther King Auditorium on 65th and Amsterdam, near Lincoln Centre - 3pm-9pm FFI: www.peoplejudgebush.org

August 27th, Making Peace conference, Albany, NY state. Thre's a bus going from there to the Republican National Convention on Sunday morning early.

ALSO: from Jenny Gaiawyn, who was with me in Falluja -

Through the Eyes of the Young - An exhibition of art and photography on the lives of youths in Palestine and Iraq [including a picture by one of the Falluja refugee kids]

Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre 16th August - 6th September talk by Jenny Gaiawyn on the 15th August at 12:30-1:30 in the Edinburgh Friends Meeting House contact jenpalestine@yahoo.ie

2004-08-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

This is an unedited e mail from my friend and ex-neighbour Helen Williams, who's still in Baghdad. The boy-soldier she refers to, from Falluja, is the same one I wrote about in my reports from there in April. The district, Shuala, where the fighting is, is where the squatter camp is that we worked in and where we helped build a drain.

Hi Bagdad 7 August 2004

I am furious. Ali, one of the boys, just came to visit and have some lunch
with us. He is 18 and had problems in the 'Big Boys' House in Adhimaya and
left there and ended up back on the streets. When he was back on the
streets he used to come and see us most days - sometimes twice a day for
some food, a shower etc. He often leaves his sack of cans with us which he
collects from off the streets - he gets 500 dinar (20 pence) a kilo. He
leaves them with us so that they do not get stolen when he is sleeping -
usually up on Karamana roundabout in Kerrada. He is a really nice boy -
shy, mild mannered and polite and totally honest about his use of drugs.
We encourage this honesty by telling the boys that we are not judging them
or that we are not going to think they are bad just because they sniff
some thinner. In this way we can monitor how much they are using - if we
do not shout at them or judge, they tell us. Ali was using thinner about
twice a week (when he become depressed) and arten tablets about once a
week. When he told us, about, 10 days ago that he wanted to move back with
his mother and 8 year old little brother to a new home in Shula, Bagdad,
we were overjoyed for him. His parents are divorced and were living
separately in Sadr City -he found getting on with either side difficult
and this is how he originally ended up on the streets.
He came to see us the morning he left to go to his mum. He had a shower,
some nice new clothes (we washed his old ones so he could take them with
him), breakfast and we gave him a package of food items to take to his mum
- things like tins of beans, fruit, nuts, bread and crisps for his little
brother. And we made sure that he had no thinner on him to take to his
mum's.
Today Ali came to visit us. He is looking fantastic - clean, happy, off
thinner and said he was pleased to be living with his mum and young
brother. His brother is going to school, Ali is still collecting cans, but
now in Shula, to raise some money and his mother sews for a living. They
are renting a small house with one bedroom, a sitting room, kitchen and
bathroom. Doesn't this sound like a beautiful success story - well, it is
- even if it only lasts for a month or two it is something, a chance for a
better life.
But all is not well. Ali wanted to leave us before 3 pm. Why? Shula is
coming under attack from the Americans. Last night no one slept in Shula
as the Mahdi Army resisted an onslaught from American rockets and
helicopter gunships. Ali told us how two minibuses and one 25 seater bus
(like the ones we have here in Kerrada) were hit yesterday by American
rockets - luckily none of the buses had passengers, but all three drivers
died - these were separate incidents. Ali reported that there were many
casualties - mainly civilian, though there were 5 or 6 definite dead from
the Mahdi Army. He said his mum was okay, but his little brother was so
scared and cried and cried all night. He knows of three American soldiers
being killed. The Mahdi Army have set up checkpoints into Shula and will
close down the area at 4 pm. This is when they expect to receive
reinforcements and more weapons and it is also the time when the Americans
do their 'shift change'. Ali is expecting a big battle, lots of death and
destruction and lots of problems. He wanted to get home by 4 pm, otherwise
the Mahdi Army won't let him in and he needs to be with his mum and
brother to look after them. We asked Ali about the Shula, which is
situated past Khadimaya to the north-west of Bagdad. He said it was a big
district with a mixture of Shia and Sunni Muslims, but mainly Shia. At
first it was just the Shia fighting, but now the Sunni men have joined in.
There is staunch support for Moqtada Al Sadr - his photos are everywhere.
Have you heard about Shula in the news? No.
And here is our poor Ali trying to make a new life, while the Americans
terrorise the area - but it is not big enough news for TV - you just need
to know the big things that go on.

And did you know that the Public Security (secret service) Centre near New
Bagdad was bombed - No? And did you know that yesterday, the Ministries of
Oil, Sport and Youth came under attack form the Resistance - No.

Over the past few days, since the church bombings, there have been many
many more bombs in Bagdad. Many of them have been closer and louder than
before. We had one a few nights ago at around midnight, followed by a gun
battle (we could hear reply fire). Then five mortars were heard, probably
towards the Green Zone. Then two mornings running there were huge
explosions at around 6.45 am - the 'morning bombs' don't usually go off
that early, they are usually between 7.45 am and 9.30 am.
Then last night, at about 11 pm, there was a big bomb not far away and
this was followed by the definite sound of a rocket attack, also close by
- we didn't know what was being hit though. At midnight there were 3 more
explosions. One was huge and extremely close. I have told you before how
Iraqis don't even look around if there are bombs going off, unless they
are close. Well, all of these, initiated a response - people looking and
stopping what they were doing. The last one in particular got our whole
street up and about. People were on their roofs and balconies looking out.
The Baker Boys went to see, one of them went off on his push bike. Wassim,
opposite us, went on the roof and told us it was in the next street. And
indeed it was. We don't know why, but a bomb hit an air-conditioning unit
shop in that street. Maybe it went off there by mistake. Maybe it was just
to drive more terror into the mainly Christian community in that street.
As so often is the case - we just don't know. The felafel shop in that
street lost its glass front in the blast. The brothers who run it are
really nice men, Christians, who used to do all the felafel sandwiches for
us when we first started to feed the boys when they were on the street,
back in November 2003.
These bombs were not reported on TV - not on BBC, Al Jazeera or Al Arabia
- although Al Jazeera did report that the rocket we heard had hit the
Sheraton Hotel - about 800 metres away.
Al Jazeera were also the only station to report that the recent upsurge in
resistance has also been occurring in Kut (the Ukranian army base was hit
by 28 rockets!), Amara, Nasyriah and Samawa.
But you have been told about an Irish woman winning $32 million on lottery
and the Russian film industry taking off.
There seems to be a concerted effort to take Iraq off the news. Indeed, I
heard an American Republican Party woman on the radio the other day saying
that Iraq was old news, that is it not headlines anymore. Well, while
Moqtada and his men make that virtually impossible and churches coming
under attack have to be reported, there is still a huge swathe of goings
on, deaths, bombs and so on that are not being reported. I know that, to
me, Iraq is the centre of the world, but can you imagine a bomb or a gun
going off not being reported on if it happened in America or Britain. No -
well that's what's going on here.

You have all heard that it has been 'kicking off' in Basra, Nagaf and Sadr
City. I went to Sadr City on Monday with 3 of my translator's friends -
all guards at the Sheraton/Palestine Hotel complex and all supporters, in
name at least, of Moqtada Al Sadr. In the taxi on the way, the driver was
playing a music tape of a woman singing for Saddam. In the song she was
asking Saddam why he left 'us' and who did he leave 'us' to? She was
imploring Bashar Assad, the President of Syria, to help Iraq. And she was
detailing the mess that Bagdad and Iraq has beome in the melancholic
lyrics. I donned my chadoor for the outing, just to be on the safe side -
little wonder, but Westerners are not entirely trusted in Sadr City. I
felt safe enough though, after all, I was with 4 young men, 3 of whom
lived there. Only one car bothered me a bit as it slowed down and stopped
for a better look. Moqtada Al Sadr picures adorned EVERY home. Children
played in the streets in a scene of peace and tranquility - in safety and
in great numbers. Sadr City is a place of children and little ones at
that. There are far far more children than adults living in this poor
neighbourhood - I am sure that they beat the Iraqi average of 46% of the
population being aged 15 years and younger. Here it seemed as though at
least 50% were under 10 years. And it is this scene of peace, tranquility
and little children playing in the streets that America is now
pulverising. These are the people that welcomed the 'liberation' brought
to them by America - these were the people most glad to see the back of
Saddam Hussein. And now these are the people that resist the most fiercely
- they want an end to the occupation and they want America out of their
neighbourhood. There is no question of who is to blame for the recent
fighting in these areas - let's face it, if the Americans were not around,
who would the Mahdi Army attack and fire their RPGs at?
Anyway, in Sadr City, we visited the family home of one of Wejdy's
friends, Ali. This home also had plenty of snaps of Moqtada. I met two of
Ali's tiny little neices and then I met his new, two month old, nephew -
his name was Moqtada. We discussed many things over our meal of rice and
beans - from music to the current situation in Iraq. We were talking about
how children are being effected by the occupation and we mentioned the 11
year old Mujahdeen fighter we had met in Fallujah. Ali said "That's
nothing, a few streets away from here is an 8 year old boy. During the
last attack from the Americans, he got an RPG and fired it at a humvee and
blew it up, then he was shot at and injured, but he is still alive".
Then we left Ali's home and once again walked through the peaceful dusty
streets full of children playing to get our taxi home.

Incidentally, I heard a report about the 11 year old Mujahdeen fighter in
Fallujah from a man who actually witnessed the boy's bravery and skill.
there were two American snipers placed one each end of the road on which
the hospital/clinic we visited was situated. In the darkness, this child
rolled his body across the road from one kerb to the other. He called out
to a man on the side of the road, under the cover of a building, to throw
something white out into the middle of the road. This was done and the
American sniper shot at it revealing his position to the boy who then shot
at him and in the same movement he rolled back across the street to the
other side, just in case the sniper fired at him. No return fire came and
our 11 year old then took night vision binoculars into the middle of the
street and could see the American's snipers body slumped over a wall -
dead. My friend told me that the boy then left and went down the road - he
heard that he used the same procedure there and attacked and shot at
another American sniper.
What future is there for these poor children, whether fighting or not? I
hear, time and time again, how children are frightened now, were
frightened in the war and how some are not going to school and how others
now have temper tantrums, suffer from nightmares or how they have become
withdrawn and silent. This is a country where almost half the popluation
are under 16 years of age. I attended a lecture about this at around
Christmas time. The lecturer estimated that half of the children in this
country are suffering from PTSD, and there are no trained child
psychiatrists or counsellors to deal with this enormous problem. Add to
this the high levels of unemployment, the continuing security problems,
the ongoing violence and the lack of electricity, clean water and petrol
and you have a country that is not years, but decades from recovery.

And all this goes unreported in the news. What is actually happening here
is simply not as important as what MIGHT happen in Britain. Heathrow MIGHT
come under attack, but it has not happened yet and no one has been killed
by a 'terrorist' there. But people are being killed and people are
suffering daily here. But do you need to know about things that are
actually happening? No.

In the days following the bomb attacks on the churches, I have spoken with
many Christians in the neighbourhood. At least 3 families we know, who
usually attend church on a Sunday, had had something else to do on this
day and, thankfully, they had not gone to church. One shopkeeper told me
that the Christians will be too afraid to worship now and that many will
want to leave Iraq.
We heard how one vicar, on hearing about the attacks, got his congregation
out of the church and to safety in great haste - although his church did
not then come under attack. And another vicar in another church which was
bombed, tried to keep the panicking worshippers inside in relative safety,
but away from the glass windows.
The day after the bombs, rumours were rife in Kerrada - 5 more bombs had
been discovered and diffused in churches in the area, and also a roadside
bomb had been found and diffused in Kerrada.
And we consider this a safe area!!

BAD ATTITUDES
I can give you two first hand accounts of why the occupation is detested
and why the Coalition Forces and the Western Companies are despised.

One day last week, we were returning from Allawi bus station in a taxi
when we passed the Ministry of Interior next to Assassins Gate. We ended
up behind two white Land Cruisers as we crossed over the Republic Bridge
over the beautiful Tigris River. The second Land Cruiser, that is the one
in front of us, had its hatchback door open. A pivate security mercenary
was sitting in the back pointing his gun out ready for attack. Likewise a
mercenary sitting in the passenger seat - pointing his gun sideways. On
Saduun Street we came a little too close to them and the gun man in the
back indicated to our taxi dirver to slow down and back off. This our taxi
driver did and the gun man stuck his thumb up in thanks. I commented on
how these people behaved towards the local population when it was not even
their country. The taxi dirver said "What can we do, we have no
authority?" Mind you,when the Land Cruisers turned off to go down to Abu
Newas Street and the Palestine Hotel, he hooted cheekily at them and we
made signs to them. The mercenary looked stunned!!

Last night my translator and I were walking down Kerrada main street when
a humvee passed us going the other way. My translator made his usual
cheeky, rude gesture at them and we carried on our way. A minute or so
later he was roughly grabbed on his shoulder and pulled around by a mad
little jumped-up American soldier who obviously could not control his
temper. I intervened and shouted at the soldier to stop and get away right
now. He released his grip, but carried on shouting. I explained to him
that since America had 'freed' this country, Iraqis were entiltled to make
their feelings known towards their occupiers in a peaceful manner. After
all, isn't that what democracy and free speech are all about? Well, not
according to this idiot. Free speech is only allowed if you are saying
nice things! His friend turned up then - the first soldier had literally
got the humvee driver to stop and had jumped out in temper and had run
over to us. Then along came his sergeant. Now, he was nice. A huge
towering, 6'6'' black guy with a very pleasant way about him. He was
furious with the crazy soldier, who still could not control himself, and
he was also angry with their Iraqi translator. Their translator was busy
lip servicing the Americans saying that they got rid of Saddam and Iraqis
owe them - no wonder so many translators working with Americans are
targetted!
Anyway, the nice sergeant explained that they couldn't have Iraqis making
cheeky signs at them - if they let one do it, next time there will be
ten!! I said that it was better to have rude gestures than bullets and he
agreed. He really started on the idiot soldier then, who had still not
calmed down and we had a nice chat in all them mayhem!! I said that the
actions of this soldier did nothing to win the 'hearts and minds' of the
Iraqis and I explained that he had put all of them in great danger by
jumping out of the humvee in this way and coming down onto the street
where they were now surrounded by Iraqis. I mentioned Abu Gharib and the
sergeant tutted and said "Look Americans put up with this shit in our
prisons in America all the time". I pointed out that America was supposed
to be the shining example of democracy, freedom and fairness - and things
like this just showed the USA Army's true colours. He agreed. In fact, he
agreed with most of what I said and I with him - in the end I actually
took a big risk and shook his hand in front of the assembled onlookers. I
wished him safety and I wished the idiot soldier a long stay in Iraq. I
think I shook his hand because he admitted to me tht he had not agreed
with the war and certainly did not agree with the way things were going in
Iraq right now. He had such a kind face and dealt with the situation so
well, that I really felt for him. But in the idiot soldier, I could see
all the reasons why the American Army are hated here. His was the face of
the abusive soldiers in Abu Gharib, his was the face of the lost temper
which fires at a car load of civilains and his was the face of the soldier
that murdered Shafaq's dad and blew away Abdul Azziz's leg, and his was
the face of the murdering snipers that kill 10 year old boys in Fallujah.
I saw the hatred and temper in his eyes - the hatred and temper that
exists in so many soldiers here.
During this exchange a big crowd of onllookers had gathered. AbuWalid (a
man I was going to rent an appartment off, but didn't in the end) joined
in with us and was shouting at the soldiers' translator. After it was all
over, we turned and walked away through the crowd to grins and 'thumbs up'
signs - coy and secret signs of appreciation - many Iraqis are as
frightened of American soldiers as they were of Saddam's secret police.

We all know the reasons why America doesn't pull out of the disaster that
is Iraq. But if they did, there would be no roadside bombs, no Mahdi Army
Resistance in Nagaf, Sadr City, Basra etc and probably no kidnappings. I
wish they would go and give it a try - after all things can't get much
worse than they are now. Or can they?

**************************************

I wrote the above report on Saturday afternoon. That evening we had lots
of visitors - one of them was a poor lady accompanied by her 2 children
from further up our street. She was asking me for help to pay her rent and
to buy food (more about this in a future report). We promised to visit her
tomorrow as it was now around 10 pm. She thanked us and left. As she went
down our appartment stairs, there was a huge bang, which echoed through
the sky, followed by another. Mustafa, her 8 year old son, clung to her
chadoor, keeping in behind her, crying out "Come on, let's hurry, we're
coming under attack!" He was absolutely terrified. I knew children were
frightened by the bombs and bangs, but here I actually witnessed it -
Mustafa was actually trying to hide in his mum's chadoor and biting his
fingers while he did so.
(When we viisited her the next day, we found he small living quarters
within a big house without glass in the windows - her home is further up
the street than our appartment ie nearer the church and it also faces the
church - so there was no chance that the windows would keep their glass in
the blast from the church bomb - I wondered how poor little Mustafa coped
when that bomb went off.)
5 minutes later, Qusay, one of the Baker Boys, called around. We talked
about his family in Nasyria - who he sees for 10 days every 20 days, as I
explained before. We also discussed how he felt about the Mahdi Army. He,
like Hasan across the street, said he backed the resistance, but would
noly fight if Sistani gave the call. And he felt that there were better
ways for the government to deal with Nagaf, other than getting the US
military to attack the resistance and population of Nagaf.
He, like me, is also angry at the lack of press coverage about the truth
in Iraq. He told us how a small earthquake had occurred in Nasyria at 1 am
last night. Although no one died, there were many injuries and many ruined
and damaged houses. It is believed that the earthquake happened because of
natural gas created by the oil underground. He had spoken to his wife
earlier today on the telephone. His family were fine after the earthquake
and after the recent resistance from the Mahdi Army which took place in
the city.
We were about to sit on our balcony with him, as there was no electricity
to run the fans and the appartment was so hot, when there was yet another
loud bang, followed by another, then another. Qusay decided that he was
too scared to sit out there - the Baker Boys sleep on the roof of the
bakery and, after the church bomb, they had discovered shrapnel on the
roof - shrapnel had travelled that far.

Indeed, the man in the exchange/telephone shop opposite us and next to the
fruit and veg shop, found a cross shaped wheel spanner in the yard of his
house after the bomb. He lives on our street up nearer the church. One of
the crosses of the spanner had become embedded in one of the tiles in the
floor of his yard. I dread to think of the injuries if that had hit a
person.

Anyway, about 12 of these really loud bangs occurred and people were
looking out and fussing. We heard the air raid sirens go off in the Green
Zone and saw plumes of smoke up in the night sky above Kerrada. And then
we realised what the loud bangs were. They were from mortars or rockets
being fired at the Green Zone across the river from the top of the taller
buildings around us in Kerrada. This was why the bangs were so loud - the
booms from each one fired were terrific.
Later Al Jazeera, banned but not silenced from reporting the truth from
within Iraq (so they must be doing something right), said that 10 rockets
had hit the Green Zone.
The next day, a friend visiting us, told us how he had seen lorry loads of
rubble being removed from the Green Zone.
And again that night, another 10 or 11 rockets or mortars were fired from
Kerrada and the sirens went off again in the Green Zone. We went out on
the street, as did many of our neighbours, to listen and watch. Everyone
seemed pretty happy and were saying 'ba'ad', meaning 'more', as we waited
for more to go off. The Baker Boys, Wassim, the cleaning lady - it seemed
as if everyone was out.
We heard reports of how rockets had hit Saduun Street and how others had
hit the checkpoints at the Palestine Hotel - thankfully no injuries - we
have many friends living and working in that area.
Talk was of Mahdi Army fighters climbing the stairs of tall buildings,
such as the appartment blocks around here, in the darkness. From the roof
of the building, the fighter would fire off as many as he could and then
slip away into the night, possibly to another building. This seems
feasible, the bangs were coming from all around us, and, although not an
expert in such matters, I would estimate that all were launched within a
kilometre or so from us.

Last night, with another appartment full of visitors, another 6 or 7
mortars or rockets took off and the sirens went off again. We decided that
it was a clever tactic of the Mahdi Army. There are no 'on the ground'
fighters in Kerrada, so the military cannot really attack the area. By day
Kerrada continues as always - you would never guess that at night the area
has been used a a launchpad for attacks on the Green Zone.
And the BBC is busy report that 'lawless' Sadr City is where the attacks
are being launched from. Popycock!! The Mahdi Army could never hit the
Green Zone from Sadr City and they would not even try - what utter
rubbish! And we certainly would not hear the bangs or see plumes of smoke
from here - Sadr City is around 10 kilometres away.
Each night we have heard much more gun fire and more gun battles with
return fire than usual - although it is very difficult to say exactly
where it is coming from.

Yesterday Ali (with the smile) visited us. We were so happy. We had not
seen him for 3 or 4 weeks and we have been so worried about him. We did go
looking for him, but to no avail. Tha day after we last saw him, he was
due to come back and get some new clothes. He did not come. Instead, he
had bumped into some old friends who were living in the House of Mercy
Childrens' Home in Al Rashad in Bagdad and he went there with them and
stayed there. He has his own room, cupboards and lots of clothes and is
being fed well. This we can see for ourselves - he has honestly grown
taller and, apart from a nice big black eye he had got from crashing into
the goalpost while playing football, he looked wonderful. He now worked
collecting scarp aluminium by day and the sheikh at the Chidrens' Home
collects and saves the money he earns for him and any other child that
works. There seems to be more freedom, trust and responsibility for their
own actions given to the children here than in Al Wazerya and it seems to
suit our Ali well. He could not stop smiling and he wanted nothing, just
to see us - he had been to see us several times before, but we had been
out. It was fantastic to see him.
We asked him how things were in Al Rashad. Ali told us how the House of
Mercy was situated next to a US Army Base in Al Rashad. The Mahdi Army was
attacking this base nightly with RPGs, mortars and AK47's. Then the
Americans would set off flares which stay in the sky lighting up the area
for 5 minutes in order to be able to see the Mahdi Army fighters so that
they could counter attack. When the flares die, the Mahdi Army attack
again and so it goes on and on. Ali said that all the children in the
House of Mercy were terrified and were unable to sleep at all.
Howza (Islamic Pressure Group) run this childrens' Home and in order to
register to live there, a child must first go to Sadr's (Moqtada's
deceased father's) office in Sadr City. Ali had been to the office
yesterday for something else and had seen 2 US tanks destroyed and burnt
out from fighting with the Mahdi Army the night before.

When we heard about the curfew in Sadr City, my translator became very
concerned about his friends who live there. Some of them work as guards at
the Paelstine/Sheraton complex and we wondered how they would be able to
leave and return from work if the area was under curfew. Indeed, many of
the guards that protect US/coalition interests in Bagdad, are Shia and
live in Sadr City. Would these places end up with no guards? So last night
Wejdy rang Ali to check if he and other friends were okay. Yes,
thankfully, they were - the fighting has not yet reached their area of
Sadr City - the area we visited last Monday. And they had not experienced
any trouble leaving Sadr City to get to work. As the boys spoke, there was
a bang from Kerrada as a rocket was fired off. A second later, Wejdy could
hear commotion and shouting from Ali's end of the phone. The checkpoints
at the Palestine/Sheraton had come under attack - the rocket we had heard
leave had hit the first checkpoint on Abu Newas Street which protects the
rear of the Bagdad Hotel - casualties so far unknown.
We are very concerned about the safety and well-being of our friends
during this trying time. Although they work as guards for the coaltion,
they fully support Moqtada Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

And we are also concerned about the reports of Iraqi Police and ICDC (Iraq
Civil Defence Corps) being used in the front line against the Resistance
in Nagaf, Sadr City and other places. Is this America trying to create
tension, strife and civil war - not between Sunni and Shia (that didn't
work), but between the Resistance and government/coalition employees?

Today we bought some fruit and vegetables, and in yet another example of
how the ordinary Iraqi suffers, we found that the recent upsurge in
Resistance has caused prices to rise. Tomatoes, eggplants, onions, grapes
and water melons had all gone up in price (and that's just what we
checked). Tomatoes and water melons had almost doubled in price from 10 p
a kilo to nearly 20 p a kilo. This is because 'Jamila', the main
wholesaler for all the food in Bagdad, situated in Sadr City, has had to
shut down due to the fighting. The shopkeepers are now having to travel
out of Bagdad to Mahmoudya or Yusefia for example (30 and 40 kilometres
away respectively) to obtain their wares. The travel and time costs are
then passed onto the customer, just as the taxi drivers have to charge
more when they end up sitting in a petrol queue for one day a week instead
of earning money working.

Where will all this end, I don't know? But I feel certain that if America
pulled out and went home, the situation would be sure to improve. A Muslim
peacekeeping force may work here, but NOT if it works under or with the
Americans. If they do this they will become America's canon fodder - just
as the Iraqi men in the Iraqi Police and ICDC are now.

And how much of this do you get in the news? You tell me!

All for now
Helen Williams
Living amoungst Iraqis in Bagdad,
From Newport, South Wales.

2004-08-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

August 13th
The News From Iraq

It repeats itself: the main hospital has been closed down by US troops and is being used for military operations, ambulances are being prevented, again by US troops, from moving around the town, which is being pounded from the air while the US and the Iraqi militias, disparate armed groups, fight in the streets and US soldiers drive around with loudspeakers, ordering civilians to leave or be killed.

It could be Falluja in April; this time it’s Najaf. I hear that Kut has been bombed, the hospitals reporting massive casualties which the US says were fighters, the locals say were mostly civilians. I hear nothing about Nasariya, Samawa, although I know that when Najaf kicks off, my friends in the other southern towns just have to lock their doors and wait.

Then the kidnappings. I hate it when my mates become the news. This morning the radio woke me up with the news that James has been kidnapped in Basra. Armed men went to the hotel, went through the books to find out his room number, shot him, dragged him out and have threatened to kill him if the US doesn’t withdraw from Najaf in 24 hours.

Of course they know, all too well, that the US command doesn’t care about life – they wouldn’t have been attacking civilians in Iraq for the last 14 years and a week if they cared about life. Of course, James is only one in a ceaseless flood of civilians caught up in the violence of this occupation, the invasion and the sanctions; he’s only one of dozens that I know personally, but there’s something about hearing your mate’s voice on the radio, hearing the terror in his voice, when the last time you heard it was over a narghila in your apartment in Baghdad, hearing the media commentators pontificating about him in the past tense, remembering what it felt like for me when I had four other people with me and when our captors were so gentle and polite.

The latest news is that the kidnappers have released him at the request of Moqtada Al-Sadr. He thanked them for their kind treatment of him once they found out he was a journalist and criticised the occupiers for creating the situation in the first place. It emphasises again that, even when loyal to the same cleric, all groups are not under any unified command. The Iraqi resistance is mainly a conglomeration of different armed groups acting independently, most – no doubt – with their own hierarchy and with some of the same aims, but emphatically without any centralised control structure.

Bombings and hijackings along the roads from Baghdad to the south are common now for Iraqis and foreigners alike and kidnapping risk is seen as too high for any of the NGOs’ foreign staff to work in the south. About 20-25 ex-pat NGO workers are still in Baghdad, keeping a low profile, travelling only in unmarked vehicles but managing to keep their projects going.

A friend explained that, "Everyone in the towns knows us so rumour spreads quickly when a foreigner is back. The locals who know us see it as a sign of hope and that things are getting better but the militia see it as an easy target."

She says lots of the NGOs have pulled out completely because they don’t trust their local staff. "Donors are desperate to find people who can still operate projects by remote (not from within Iraq). They are sending emails asking for new proposals all the time. In some ways this is good but seems completely out of sync with the needs and the lack of money in Africa for example who has many more starving dying children than here.

"It also makes you wonder about the donors motives when they are desperate to give away money but not before we sign a waiver of any liability to them for staff injured in the field. Complicated stuff. Highly political even if we try hard to be neutral.

"Since being here three months ago Baghdad seems a bit quieter because many of the shops have been closed and many of the houses have huge walls built around them for protection. Businesses are still open and there are plenty of traffic jams (more due to road blocks and re-routing of traffic away from target buildings) but still life as normal, or as normal as the Iraqis are used to for the last 25 years.

"The streets are definitely cleaner though and a lot of work and purchasing of resources has finally happened for the ministries and government departments - more since the hand over two months ago than in the six months before that it seems. People are saying that civil servants’ wages have gone up but then the food rations are reducing so again the poor miss out on both counts.

"As a foreigner I get a different reception to three months ago. People are welcoming and nice when they know who I am and what I do but very sceptical and distant on first appearances. My interpreter spoke of abuse he has received while working with foreigners, from Iraqis asking 'how he can work with those Americans to ruin our country'.

"It seems that the difference between Coalition Forces and NGOs is not at all known by the majority of people. I must say that my utmost respect goes to those staff who continue to work for NGOs and especially to the Iraqi police who are the biggest targets of all, but still go to work each day and stand in the firing line with very little protection. They are the committed new Iraqi generation in my eyes."

Military and political interference with aid and humanitarian efforts have caused huge problems for NGOs in Iraq and Afghanistan and has been responsible for the deaths of several aid workers. Medicins Sans Frontieres pulled out of Afghanistan recently after the US military issued letters to the local population saying they would be denied humanitarian aid if they didn’t comply with military demands. Apart from being illegal it reinforces the idea that NGOs are working for and part of the military and the occupation. The mercenary ‘security’ companies make it worse by calling themselves NGOs when they’re doing military missions.

It repeats itself: as the invasion ended and the occupation began, the president of Medicins Sans Frontieres USA testified to the House of whichever-it-was on the disastrous consequences of that same deliberate linkage in Afghanistan, while my friend Ibrahim and his MSF colleague Francois were being held prisoner by the old Iraqi government.

It repeats itself: the new leader, Ayad Allawi has closed down Al Jazeera’s Baghdad office to see whether they can be bullied into compliance before full expulsion. He’s reinstated the death penalty for sedition as well as murder. The Sydney Morning Herald carried credible reports of Allawi personally shooting dead unarmed suspects in custody. Last year’s anti-Saddam freedom fighters are this year’s ‘insurgents’, whatever insurging involves, and the US’s appointees, Salim and Ahmed Chalabi, among many others, turn out to be corrupt.

Allawi is not seen as a strong leader, does not have broad support and is not able to unite Iraqis. The apparent unity of opposition to the occupation which has arisen in the last half year or so obscures differences which some commentators think are likely to be manifested after elections when all the main groups are, inevitably, disappointed with their respective shares of power.

It repeats itself, only bigger: the devastation faced by Iraqis is reflected in the sickness of returning troops. Of one unit returning from Iraq, almost half have already got malignant tumours, double the already-appalling figures for returnees from the 1991 Gulf War.

Check out www.iraqoccupationfocus.org for loads of good stuff on Iraq.

2004-08-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

ALSO: from Jenny Gaiawyn, who was with me in Falluja -

Through the Eyes of the Young - An exhibition of art and photography on the lives of youths in Palestine and Iraq [including a picture by one of the Falluja refugee kids]

Glasgow Friend's Meeting House 8th August - 14th August talk by Jenny Gaiawyn on the 11th at 7:30pm

Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre 16th August - 6th September talk by Jenny Gaiawyn on the 15th August at 12:30-1:30 in the Edinburgh Friends Meeting House contact jenpalestine AT yahoo.ie

2004-08-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

Some new talk dates for the UK and US (now amended to show the right month, oops) - the Islamic Cultural Fayre in Bristol on Sunday should be really good and it's a chance to check out what Action Time Vision are doing - they're a wicked new cinema co-op in Bristol. There's not much about them on the web, just a little bit here ( http://www.bitcoop.co.uk/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=7&MMN_position=21:21 )so you'd better come and see them instead.

August 8th 3pm in the Action Time Vision cinema space, Islamic Cultural Fayre, Eastville Park, Bristol, UK

August 14th TBC at Edinburgh Solidarity meeting at Edinburgh Festival

August 25th, St Marks Church, New York city somewhere, Call to Mutiny magazine launch.

August 26th, People's Tribunal on Iraq in New York City - details asap.

August 28-29 Albany NY - details asap as well.

2004-08-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

Organising the UK and US Labour Movements Against War and Occupation
Public Meeting with US Labor Against the War
Co-Convenor Gene Bruskin
Welcomed by Greg Tucker, RMT, National Train Crew Secretary
Thursday 5th August, 7pm
Friends Meeting House
173 Euston Road, London NW1 (opposite Euston Station)
Entrance Free/Donation £2
All welcome

US Labor Against the War has played a key role in promoting opposition to war and occupation among US trades unionists. USLAW has more than 80affiliated national and local unions, regional labour bodies and alliedlabour organisations representing more than three million US workers.

On 13 July the California Federation of Labor, representing more thantwo million members, voted overwhelmingly to "demand an immediate end tothe US occupation of Iraq" and to affiliate to USLAW.

On 25 June, theannual convention of the 1.4 million member American Federation ofState, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) called on Bush to "bringour troops home from Iraq now" by near unanimous vote.

On 22 June, the1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU)unanimously passed a resolution backing USLAW. Gene Bruskin's visit offers people in Britain a unique chance to learnabout anti-war opposition within US trades unions. Gene will also talkabout USLAW's efforts to support Iraqi trade unions.

The meeting, organised by Iraq Occupation Focus, will be a chance toforge closer links between British and US trade unionists who oppose thecontinuing war and occupation in Iraq. There will also be a slide show by US Labour journalist and photographerDavid Bacon on USLAW's fact-finding mission to Iraq and a video speech from Stewart Acuff, National Organising Director AFL-CIO, on supportingworkers rights in Iraq.

Gene is visiting the UK from August 4-7 in order to meet with anti-wartrade union leaders and activists and to build links between US and UKtrades unionists opposed to the ongoing war and occupation in Iraq.

www.uslaboragainstwar.org

2004-07-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

July 19th
Kurds in Turkey
I have received a couple of e mails now from a friend about the situation of the Kurds in Turkey. As I’m sure people are aware, Turkey has long disregarded the Kurds’ basic rights with the tacit and practical support of NATO allies. I’m going to forward the information from my friend to this list. At the end of this message is a call for action, towards stopping the isolation and abuse of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan.

I met thousands of Kurdish refugees from Turkey when we took the circus to Maxmur refugee camp near Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. People there explained to us that, though the European Union has taken a role in requiring the Turkish government to enact human rights reforms in order to join the EU, the reforms are only paper. Despite laws permitting use of the Kurdish language in public places, for example, in practice it is usually prevented and is never allowed at critical times.

To the call for letter writing I would add a call for protests against the arms trade. Wherever you are, there will be a company nearby linked to the sale of weapons to Turkey (see www.caat.org for loads of arms trade info). Five people outside with placards (or custard pies) is a good start. Also Turkish embassies and any kind of government building relating to the US or UK governments, the European Union or any NATO related facilities.
Everything that happened to the Iraqi Kurds under Saddam is still happening to the Turkish Kurds and there’s an enormous need for the people of the world to act.

International InitiativeFreedom for Ocalan – Peace in KurdistanP.O. Box 100511, D-50445 KoelnTelephone: +49 221 130 15 59Fax: +49 221 139 30 71E-Mail: info@freedom-for-ocalan.comUrl: www.freedom-for-ocalan.com
Cologne, 16 July 2004
Urgent Appeal Since June 9 2004 Abdullah Öcalan has not been allowed to receive visits from his lawyers and family. Officially it is claimed that the boat, which is used for the journey to the prison island, Imrali, has broken down and must be repaired. The fact that there are many alternative ways of travelling makes the reason given not very convincing, and this has caused serious worries.
Since his illegal abduction to Turkey on February 15 1999 the leader of the Kurdish people has been held prisoner in isolation under the most dehumanising circumstances. He is the only prisoner in the fortified building. The prison island has been declared a military zone, which means that it falls under the jurisdiction of the crisis management staff, which is only answerable to the Turkish prime minister. Time and again visits by lawyers and family members are prevent for differing reasons, and the right to communication with the outside world is denied. The six years of isolation detention have seriously affected the health of the Kurdish leader. Turkey has refused to allow a visit by an independent medical commission.
The measures taken against Öcalan are in breach of international law. They are not in line with the European Convention on Human Rights. The demand made by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the European Council, to abandon the isolation measures taken against Öcalan has been ignored by the Turkish government. On the contrary, the restrictions were tightened even further. The aim of the deprivation of the senses used against Öcalan is to destroy him mentally and physically. This amounts to an execution in instalments. As a candidate member of the European Union, Turkey has a duty to uphold the Copenhagen criteria, including among others upholding compulsory human rights standards. The European institutions responsible for the expansion of the EU view this situation in silence. The Turkish institutions involved see this silence as approval of their current course of action. Despite all these problems Abdullah Öcalan is continuing to strife for a democratic solution of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and the democratisation of the Middle East region as a whole. He had and still has a big role in the search for a peaceful solution. The use of isolation detention against him shows that the Turkish government’s aim is to find a solution to the problem while shutting out the Kurdish side. In this way they want to establish a solution, which only serves the interests of the Turkish state. The law reforms, which were brought in under pressure from the EU, appear to be of only cosmetic nature. Because of this: · International ad hoc delegation to Imrali · Immediately lift the isolation detention of Abdullah Öcalan!

UN Special Rapporteur on TortureC/o Office of the High Commissioner for Human RightsUnited Nations Office in GenevaCH- 1211 Geneva 10SwitzerlandEmail: urgent-action@ohchr.org OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human RightsMr. Sirpa RAUTIOAleje Ujazdowskie 1900-557 Warsaw / POLANDTel: 0048 22 52006 00 Fax. 0048 22 520 06 05Email: Sirpa.Rautio@odihr.plInternational Bar Association 271 Regent StreetLondon W1B 2AQTel: +44 (0)20 7629 1206Fax: +44 (0)20 7409 0456E-mail: member@int-bar.orgPhysicians for Human Rights100 Boylston StreetSuite 702 Boston, MA 02116 USA Tel: (617) 695-0041Fax: (617) 695-0307email: phrusa@phrusa.org Human Rights First333 Seventh Avenue,13th FloorNew York, NY 10001-5004Tel: (212) 845 52 00Fax: (212) 845 52 99Email: communicatiosn@humanrights.orgThe International Network of Medicines du Mond62, rue Marcadet75018 Paris / FranceTel: 0033 1 44 92 14 15Fax : 00 33 1 44 92 14 55 Email : bearoux@medecinsdumonde.netMedecins Sans Frontieres MSF International Office Rue de la Tourelle, 39 –Brussels - BelgiumPhone: +32-2-280-1881 Fax: +32-2-280-0173Human Rights Watch Rue Van Campenhout 15, 1000 Brussels, Belgium Tel: 32 (2) 732-2009Fax: 32 (2) 732-0471hrwatcheu@skynet.be

First signatories of the International Initiative: Máiréad Maguire (Nobel Price Award, Northern Ireland), Dario Fo (Director, Writer, Actor, Nobel Literature Price Award, Italy), Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Nobel Literature Price Award, Argentine), Jose Ramos-Horta (Peace Nobel Price Award, East-Timor), José Saramago (Nobel Literature Price Award, Portugal), Danielle Mitterrand (President, Donation France Liberté, France), Ramsey Clark (Lawyer, former Attorney General, USA), Uri Avnery (Former Member of Knesset, Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), Israel), Prof. Dr. Noam Chomsky (Linguist, Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), Alain Lipietz (Member of the European Parliament, France), Pedro Marset Carpos (Member of the European Parliament, Spain), Mrs. Jean Lambert (Member of the European Parliament, GB), Lord Avebury (Chairman, Parliamentary Human Rights Group, House of Lords, GB), Harry Cohen (Member of Parliament, Labour Party, GB), Cynog Dafis (Member of Parliament, Plaid Cymru, GB), Lord Raymond Hylton (House of Lords, GB), Lord Rea (House of Lords, Great Britain), Walid Jumblat (President, Socialist Progressive Party, Lebanon), Rudi Vis (Member of Parliament, Labour Party, GB), Paul Flynn (Member of Parliament, Labour Party, Great Britain), Máiréad Keane (Director, International Department, Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland), Domenico Gallo (Lawyer, former senator (CI), member of Magistratura Democratica, Italy), Livio Pepino (Lawyer, President of Magistratura Democratica, Italy), Xabier Arzalluz (President, PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), Tony Benn (Member of Parliament, Labour Party, GB), Giovanni Palombarini (Lawyer, former president of Magistratura Democratica, Italy), Heidi Ambrosch (Vice-president and Women Speaker, Communist Party of Austria), Mag. Walter Baier (President, Communist Party of Austria), Giana Nanini (Artist, Italy), Geraldine Chaplin (Actress, Madrid, Spain), Dietrich Kittner, (Humorist, Writer, Cabarettist, Germany), David MacDowall, (Writer, GB), Alice Walker, (Writer, USA), Franca Rame, (Actress, Director, Writer, Italy), Prof. Dr. Jean Ziegler (Member of the Swiss National Council, Publisher, Switzerland), Dr. Diether Dehm (Vice President, PDS, Germany), Prof. Dr. Angela Davis (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), Prof. Dr. Luigi Ferraioli (Philosophy and Law Professor, Italy), Prof. Dr. Uwe Jens Heuer (Law Professor, Berlin, Germany), Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dieter Narr (Comittee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Germany), Prof. Dr. Werner Ruf (International Law Professor, Kassel University, Germany), Prof. Dr. Norman Paech (International Law Professor, Hamburg School of Economy and Politics, Germany), Prof. Dr. Gerhard Stuby (International Law Professor, Bremen University, Germany), Prof. Dr. h.c. Ronald Mönch (Chair of Bremen Highschool, Germany), Prof. Dr. Elmar Altvater (President, International Lelio Basso Donation for the rights of the peoples, Germany), Prof. Dr. Helmut Dahmer (Sociology Professor, Darmstadt Technical University, Germany), Prof. Jürgen Waller (Chair of School of Arts, Bremen, Germany), Christine Blower (Former President, National Union of Teachers (NUT), Great Britain), Ken Cameron (General Secretary, Fire Brigades Union (FBU), GB), Josep Lluis Carod Rouira (President ERC, Barcelona, Spain), Michael Feeny (Adviser of Cardinal Hume in refugee affaires, GB), Gareth Peirce (Lawyer, Great Britain Frances Webber, Barrister, GB), Norbert Mattes (Information Project Near und Middle East, Germany), Yayla Mönch-Buçak (Oldenburg University, Germany), Dr. Mamoud Osman (Kurdish Politician, Great Britain), Jutta Bauer (Book Illustrator, Germany), Günther Schwarberg (Journalist, Germany), Hans Branscheidt (medico international / Appell von Hannover), Germany Rolf Becker (Actor, IG Medien (Media Union), Germany)

2004-07-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

July 18th

The Butler Report and the One-Legged Child

So the Butler Report came out. This, for the benefit of those who may have missed it, is the report of the committee convened to decide whether the Prime Minister, the intelligence services, the Joint Intelligence Committee or anyone else lied about the evidence relating to Iraq’s alleged weapons which were, in case anyone forgot, the alleged reason for the all-too-real bombardment and invasion of Iraq.

Not too complex a brief, one might suggest. Still, to make sure that only the finest minds were applied to the task, Tony Blair himself handpicked the committee. I’m sure that, as with the Hutton Report on whether the government, the BBC, the deceased’s immediate superiors, the tooth fairy or anyone else bore any responsibility for the death of weapons expert David Kelly, someone will send me an explanation of who Lord Butler is and how close and cosy are his ties to the Prime Minister.

In the meantime, consider this. Ann Taylor was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, appointed by the PM to hold the security services to governmental account. As such she was the only person outside of the Joint Intelligence Committee invited to comment on the September dossier of ‘evidence’ on Iraq’s weapons.

She made a number of suggestions on strengthening the language, making the evidence appear more solid, suggestions which were incorporated into the final document. Ann Taylor was also appointed, by Tony Blair, to the Butler Committee, to consider who lied and misled whom.

According to the Independent, on Friday, Ann Taylor was on one side of an argument over how critical the report ought to be. Evidently learning the lessons from her previous experience, she insisted that the report should be toned down, should be less critical of her party leader, Tony Blair.

Hello?

You might have thought, given the number of lawyers inhabiting the Houses of Parliament, that someone would have pointed out the fundamental principle of justice, that no person shall be the judge in her own case. You might have thought that would preclude Tony Blair selecting the committee himself, let alone his picking the person who wrote the story to decide whether it was any good or not.

Predictably enough, the report says Tony Blair didn’t lie. The government ‘has been cleared’ of deliberately misleading anyone. But only by Lord Butler. Preview copies of the report went to the three main parties, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories but not to the smaller parties nor to independents, who got copies at the same time as the press. As my Iraqi friends used to say, with heavy sarcasm, ‘This is the freedom.’

As it happened, I had lunch in the House of Commons the day before. Amid lime green corridors, over coffee in the House of Lords, my friend-on-the-inside and I quietly conspired and plotted.

The dinner lady remarked apologetically that it was a bit like school meals. But the members were all a-chatter with ‘breaking up’ at the end of next week, which is exactly what schools do at the end of each term. The overwhelming majority of the catering and cleaning staff were black or other ethnic minority groups while the majority of the ones in suits were white.

Women in big hats decorated the terrace, on their way to the Royal Garden Party. You don’t often see Blair out on the terrace, according to my friend on the inside. You see Jack Straw about from time to time. He uses the gym as well, so you see him in there. And the Attorney General, what’s his name? Somebody Goldsmith? He always looks at you when you pass as if he’s waiting for something bad to happen, always looks beleaguered.

The way out is currently filled with a walk through exhibition called ‘House to Home’, asking how to bring the Houses of Parliament closer to the homes of the people, how to bring the government closer to the governed. There were little tents where you could stick up post it notes saying what you thought ought to be done. As if the government cared what the public thought.

It’s a bit like the Prime Minister handpicking a committee to decide whether he and they lied. It’s asking how to bring government closer to the people while in the same building they’re centralising everything, taking all the real decisions away from local government, privatising public services so that people have no right any more to elect the people who make those decisions.

I saw Ahrar again in London, the Iraqi journalist who was held prisoner with us in Falluja, for the first time since the Imam dropped us back from there. She started telling the story to the assembled group of Iraqis, most of them members or relations of the Iraqi Women’s League. Her family were violently angry with her for having been there. She lost her job but got a better one, in television. She started to sing, for the first time since Falluja.

She came to the UK accompanying a girl called Zeynab. Zeynab is eleven, from Basra in the south of Iraq. Seventeen members of her family, all but her father, were killed by a coalition bomb dropped on their house during the invasion. She swings on crutches, one leg of her jeans hanging empty. She had a fitting for a prosthetic leg in the morning. "It was beautiful," she said, her face full of glee.

Because of the chaos there are no agencies or organisations in Iraq now making prosthetic limbs, though Iraqi doctors are among the most advanced in the world in plastic surgery after the carnage of the war with Iran. It’s not practical to bring any number of kids to the UK for treatment and the hope is that we can set something up in Jordan or somewhere else close by. I’ll let you know when you can help with that.
Meanwhile, please protest loudly and disruptively against the ongoing manufacture and sale of cluster bombs, the continuing occupation of Iraq and creation of conditions which make it impossible for NGOs to clean up the mess and repair the maimed children and the lies of our governments.

2004-07-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

June 17th
Flagstaff

“If a school takes even a single dollar of Federal funding they’re obliged to hand over all of their confidential information to the State, for the military recruiters. By the time the kids leave high school they’ve had 50 to 60 phone calls at home from the recruiters, visits, cold calls from them at home, a mailbox full of glossy brochures, as well as careers advice from them.”

It’s part of a programme called ‘No Child Left Behind’. Or No Child Left Alive, if anyone was ever honest about these things. Susanne said recruiters have even been known to take kids on ski-ing trips to seduce them into the army. Veterans for Peace had a table at the talk, full of leaflets about recruitment issues. The recruiters frequently promise work-related training and money for college to kids without many opportunities in those departments.

The veterans say the training you receive in the military rarely translates into useful qualifications for civilian jobs. On average in 31 months of active duty a service person receives 1.78 moths – less than 8 weeks – of job training. 12% of male and 6% of female veterans make any use of the skills they gained in the military in their subsequent civilian jobs and more than 50,000 unemployed veterans are waiting for re-training. On average, veterans earn 85 cents per hour or $1700 a year less than non-veterans of comparable socio-economic status.

They say the money for college often depends on a series of conditions and the real funding is rarely forthcoming. Less than a third of recruits ever get any money for college and colleges can reduce their financial aid to students by the amount of the army scholarship so there’s no net gain at all. Even among those who pay a non-refundable deposit into the Montgomery G.I. Bill scheme, two thirds get no money at all, not even the amount that was deducted from their pay, and the programme made a profit of $720 million in its first 10 years, to 1995.

They say once you find out that the options you wanted aren’t going to be available to you after all, it’s too late to get out except with a dishonourable discharge which wipes out any pensions and healthcare you might have been entitled to and makes it hard to get anywhere in civilian life afterwards.

They say that pensions, benefits and healthcare are being dismantled leaving lots of them destitute. Around a third of homeless people in the US are military veterans. Two thirds of army families are living on food stamps or other public aid. It’s common for the Veterans’ Administration to refuse health claims arising out of military service, relating to depleted uranium, to Agent Orange and to radiation sickness for example.

Dick Cheney, more truthful than the military recruiters, which is a fairly damning indictment of the latter, declared that the military is “to fight and win wars… It’s not a jobs program.” Quite.

They also point out the comparative costs: the price of a blanket is roughly the same as that of a hand grenade. And it reminded me of the mourning tent in the entrance of the squatter camp at Shuala where Circus2Iraq used to go, the mourning tent for a two month old baby girl who, as Abu Ahmed put it, “died of the cold.” But there was no shortage of gunships to send to Shuala during the nation-wide uprisings in April.

Cheney, with all his shares in Halliburton, which has profited so handsomely from overcharging US taxpayers for meals it never served to soldiers and for petrol driven in from neighbouring countries, might also have said that the purpose of invading a country is “to make a lot of money for my company… It’s not a humanitarian programme.” Only he never did. In fact he said more or less the opposite.

The local Veterans for Peace group is trying to counteract some of the military influence in schools by getting vets into schools to talk about the truth of life in the army, the recruiters’ promises and war. The front row was filled with young Native American students.

Recruitment is not yet at such a stage in the UK but war video games, the economic draft, misleading TV ads and military access to schools are on the rise and need to be fought, by vets, teaching unions and all of us and by creating more alternatives, more co-ops, more training, more free education, more compelling non-party-based resistance movements that empower people to be part of something that’s ‘bigger than the individual’ but at the same time belongs to us.

Susanne, who started telling us about all this, used to teach public speaking at the University of Amsterdam to members of the International Relations course, students from 55 countries who would go home and run radio and TV. She’s married to a Dutchman who was part of the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation. He’d been, among other things, part of the camera group.

Water has been a continuing theme in what I’ve written from the south west. Flagstaff was no different. In a canyon we met a park ranger called Merl who was busy re-routing the trail away from the golf course, funded by the course’s operators who had got tired of things been thrown onto the course by walkers. It sucks up the water, Merl said, and by way of demonstration the sprinklers sprung into action among the cacti and the dust-dry rocks and ground.

“It sucks up the water and it’s ugly, but Conservancy tried to buy the land for $17 million and the tribal leaders said it was worth $30 million. Well, Conservancy couldn’t afford that, so the golf course people bought it.”

Past secoros, the tall cacti with upheld arms, past mobile phone masts that looked a little similar, Brenda told us about the many, many uninvestigated killings of Native Americans in the area. One was campaigning vociferously against the uranium mining in the area until he was found dead in his car with no apparent cause. Another was looking into some local corruption. He was murdered.

Brenda was looking into pollution problems from crop spraying flights and was threatened, told to stop, told to go and ask another would-be detective what would happen. He – I’ll call him A - told her he was campaigning against the crop sprayers. His neighbour was working in A’s garden and was shot dead, mistaken for A. Apparently the campaign was drawing attention to ‘Black Ops’ flights out of the air strip, flying weapons, drugs, people and so on to places the US was covertly supplying.

A local radio journalist got irate at us because it says somewhere on my website: “The media are lying to you.” A TV crew came down to the talk and did a piece from the angle that we were telling stuff you wouldn’t hear on the news, that the mainstream media in Iraq wasn’t getting out enough to tell the truth about what’s going on there.

Let me explain. The media are lying to us. They lie by printing misinformed or misleading stories or writing captions which deliberately misinterpret what a picture shows, as in a lot of the anti-capitalist protests where non-violent demonstrators have been attacked by police..

They lie by simply quoting the government and military spokespeople without investigation, as in the New York Times and many others on the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

They lie by trivialising or over simplifying, as with the environmental protests, especially the road protests: a real and common sense debate over the merits of road building? No, let’s just talk about lifestyles and hairstyles on a road protest camp.

They lie by filling their space with celebrity crap and neglecting to tell people that they’re being shafted by the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Paris Club, the Carlisle Group and all the rest of them.

They lie by exclusion, simply not telling stories that don’t fit with their editorial line and in Bristol, where all the local newspapers, free sheets, entertainment and listings mags and commercial radio licences are owned by the same Northcliffe Group, that’s a pretty comprehensive lie.

They lie by telling us there’s nothing we can do, that things are the way they are because it’s the only way they can be and they lie because they’re all owned by the people who benefit the most from the status quo.

And Laurel, either you’re part of that and you’re lying too and you know it or else you’re not part of that, you’re part of the ‘alternative’ and you know that the rest of them are lying. If the cap fits, wear it. If not, keep fighting.

2004-07-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

June 14th
Phoenix

Victor has been a lawyer for 25 years, mostly in criminal defence. His was the case that established that Native American prisoners have the right to refuse to have their hair cut in jail.

In the US, lawyers can only practise in the state in which they passed their bar exam. You can study at home for another state’s bar qualification but there’s no process of apprenticeship as there is in the UK. Once you pass the bar you can start advertising and practising. The purely market-based system of entry to law colleges means there are more lawyers than there is demand (or people who can afford their services). Hence, Victor explained, the preponderance of adverts for class action lawsuits in the US. An excess of lawyers produces an excess of cases.

The pay for a public defender is good enough, Victor said – the equivalent of a lawyer paid for by legal aid in the UK. It’s just that judges will rarely approve the funding for finding and calling expert defence witnesses, whereas the state is able to access experts for the prosecution.

There’s a strong systemic tilt in favour of the prosecution, Victor said. The judge won’t be responsible for hearing the appeal so, once he's made the judgement, it’s out of his hands. But a conviction makes almost everyone happy: the police, the prosecution, the victim or victim’s family; even the jury feel like they’ve done something useful.

Victor came from Boston, moved to Phoenix 35 years ago: “And I should’ve left 34 years ago,” he muttered with apparently characteristic grumpiness. A factory worker, he spent his nights spraying stencil graffiti against the Vietnam war. Eventually arrested, he was charged with something to do with unauthorised advertising. He went to the university law library, defended himself on the basis that the legislation invoked was intended to prevent – as you might assume – unauthorised commercial advertising, not political expression.

“Case dismissed,” the judge said. “Now go to law school.” And he did.

Driving into Phoenix a man called David pointed out a river-shaped lake. Dammed three times higher up its course, the Salt River is now a dry bed on most of its course through the city. Water supplies for the population have to be piped in from elsewhere and a small stretch of the river has been reflooded with water imported from the Colorado River. Abruptly the river-lake ends, reverting to a deep stony ditch, a monument to stupidity.

In a similar arse-backwards scheme, ‘President’ Bush came to Phoenix to promote his housing plan, a plot to take money out of low income housing projects and divert it into loans for wealthier people. David teaches political science at the University of Phoenix and had his students research the details and implications of the policy. “They held a press conference, caused quite a stir and somewhat undermined Bush’s visit,” David said, but he added that most of the students take a generally pragmatic view of the course, just wanting to graduate, not necessarily to explore.

At the talk, a man whose name I don’t know came and asked me where I got my accent. At home, I said. It’s pretty much bog-standard non-specific southern England.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought maybe Iraq had once been a British colony and all the Iraqis speak like that and you picked it up from them.”

“No, I actually am English and Iraq was a part of the British empire for a while but the Iraqis speak Arabic, not English.”

“Oh,” he said again. “Well, my wife is a speech therapist. She can teach you to talk with a Hollywood accent if you like.”

From time to time I make a fool of myself and / or confuse everyone by assuming that Americans are being sarcastic when they’re not.

Dahr’s e mail said that, in the first 13 days of June, there were 16 car bombs in Iraq. The Deputy Finance Minister and a high ranking Ministry of Education were killed, as was a geography professor, yet another in the killing spree against academics since the occupation started.

2004-07-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

House OKs Pre-emptive U.S. Attack Against Iran
by Trish Schuh 15 May 2004
http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/93431

Undeterred by the results of pre-emptive war in Iraq, the House of
Representatives passed a non-binding resolution May 6 authorizing
pre-emptive military strikes against Iran. The vote was 376-3.
Undeterred by the results of pre-emptive war in Iraq, the House of
Representatives passed a non-binding resolution May 6 authorizing
pre-emptive military strikes against Iran. The vote was 376-3.

³It [Iran] has engaged in a systematic campaign of deception and
manipulation to hide its true intentions and keep its large scale nuclear
efforts a secret,² said Dan Burton (R-Indiana).

The resolution urges nations that have signed the Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (See P. 13) to ³use any and all
appropriate means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons.² It also demands that the European Union, Asian nations, and Russia
cease future commercial and energy trade with the Islamic Republic. Russia
is the main contractor for Iran¹s nuclear grid.

House members said the legislation is in line with the Bush Doctrine of
preventive war, and creates a legal framework for later sanctions and
³military options² against Iranian nuclear sites. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)
and Pete Stark (D-Calif.) both condemned the bill, noting its similarity to
the law that permitted a preemptive war on Iraq.

The bills¹ adoption capped a year of anti-Iranian efforts in Congress.

A U.S. plan for military action against Iran has been complete since May
2003, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Under the plan, the U.S. would
strike the Arak, Natanz, Isfahan and Bushehr installations with precision
missiles launched from Iraq as well as Iran¹s northern neighbors, Georgia
and Azerbaijan.

British and American intelligence and special forces units have been put on
alert for an Iran conflict within 12 months, according to British news
sources. Also. the Israeli newspaper Ha¹aretz recently revealed that a
special Mossad unit has been activated to draw up ³Osirik II² (a reference
to the 1981 Israeli bombing raids that destroyed the Osirak nuclear complex
near Baghdad).

Mossad chief Meir Dagan declared Iranian nuclear capability to be the
greatest threat ever faced by Israel. In December 2003, he informed the
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that an operation to
annihilate Iran¹s facilities had been finalized.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also announced that ³under no
circumstances would Israel tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession,²
warning that by the end of 2004 Iran¹s atomic development would
have reached ³the point of no return.²

In response, former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said, ³If
Israel committed such an error, we would give it a slap it would never
forget- not only now but for all its history.²

2004-07-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

June 6th
Albuquerque

There are more than 2000 weapons of mass destruction at Kirtland, near Albuquerque, New Mexico: the world’s biggest nuclear weapons stockpile. The University of California, which operates the Los Alamos nuclear research lab and the Lawrence Livermore lab on behalf of the US government, is the biggest nuclear weapons contractor in the world, though the University of Texas is among those bidding to take it over.

Greg Mello is the driving force behind the Los Alamos Study Group which has monitored the base and its accidents, manoeuvrings and dastardly schemes for years. Over beers in Albuquerque, he and Darwin, a University of California student and LASG intern, not the white-bearded evolutionist, told us everything, although some of it I promised not to put on my weblog.

The Los Alamos base is 73% nuclear, the rest being dedicated to CIA – it is the centre of the plan to seize Pakistan’s nuclear warheads should a non-US-friendly entity take power in that country, intelligence and non-proliferation. That’s non-proliferation in the sense of preventing other countries getting nuclear weapons, in case you were confused, not in the sense of seeking to reduce the US’s own nuclear arsenal and looking for other means of security.

On the contrary, a Bill is going through the Senate to decide whether to build new, smaller nuclear weapons which will bury themselves in the earth before detonating. The idea is that they destroy underground targets and the radiation is contained, but the politicians and scientists concerned were forced to admit that the radiation would not be effectively contained and the missiles would not go as deep as first claimed because they can only bury themselves so far before detonating themselves. The maximum possible penetration so far is three metres.

The Nuclear Position Review concluded that smaller nuclear weapons would be taken more seriously because they are more useable. Half the size of the 30 Kiloton warheads built during the cold war, the new petite version would be merely the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima: practically handbag size, if your handbag happens to be massively swollen by all the wealth you’ve been gathering by mugging the rest of the world at nuke point.

It’s true, of course, that a 30KT nuclear warhead is impractical in today’s warfare where the ‘enemies’ are often scattered through sprawling slums which the attacker aims to take control of. A study ordered by the US government on possible nuclear targets in Vietnam concluded that the only viable targets in the country were the US’s own bases. The guerrillas were scattered and moveable. Nuking the city of Hanoi would draw China into the conflict and China might respond by nuking the US bases.

The study was carried out by the JASONs, a group of ageing science professors collected up annually by the Department of Defence to study stupid questions related to the infliction of extreme violence. The name is thought to derive from either the legend of the Golden Fleece or the initials of the months from July to November. The group was de-funded in 1999 because it was essentially useless but the Department of Defence stepped in to resuscitate them. The DoD, Greg said, confuses political problems with military ones. “That’s why they’re losing Iraq, because they try to apply military solutions to political problems.”

Los Alamos is the US counterpart to Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire in the UK, which is also planning to build The New Generation of smaller nuclear weapons. Los Alamos gave one facility to Aldermaston in exchange for another from the UK lab. The slope at Aldermaston was even bulldozed to make it identical to the one at Los Alamos so they wouldn’t have to change any of the internal specifications. If only the world could always be so easily bulldozed to fit the requirements of the military.

Of course the new-fangled nukes likely to come out of Aldermaston and Los Alamos would need to be tested: it’s inconceivable that they would be deployed without. That means abandonment of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with all the disastrous implications that the Treaty was designed to prevent.

Greg explained how grassroots groups are being suppressed: The Clinton people are into big foundations. They want groups to be aligned with the Democratic Party policy. They focus on electability, ‘crackpot realism’, rather than real moral thought and demands for things the Democrats wouldn’t deliver if elected. Groups with no utility or pliability to the Democratic agenda are obstructed and defunded.

“They try to co-opt groups around the Capitol Hill realpolitik du jour by bringing them together around issues involving a third of one per cent of the nuclear budget. Or for example they’d have all the groups promote a small plant as better than a big one, effectively destroying opposition to it, but then a small plant wouldn’t be enough so you end up with both.”

It’s hard to know exactly who’s involved, Greg said, which led us onto the science of Social Network Analysis. Darwin explained it: for whatever purpose, business deals, finding a specific individual, destroying an organisation, there is always some key player or players. Identifying that person and affecting them in the requisite way will lead to the goal.

In the search for Saddam, the Key Player Program was used to analyse the web of every person Saddam knew and had contact with. Two people were identified, caught and pressured and, sure enough, they led to Saddam. Yes, they still lied about when they found him, claiming that it happened in December, when their own video footage showed dates on the trees, proving that it was at least a couple of months earlier, but that was how it happened.

The advantage of non-hierarchical organisation is that groups can’t be broken in that way. British soldiers in the Second World War were usually not told what their missions were, presumably so if any were captured they couldn’t give any information, but if the commander was killed the mission was over. The Germans did the opposite. Yet another reason to abandon hierarchies and re-organise.

The talk was in the Albuquerque Peace and Justice Centre. These, David explained, were what kept the peace movement going between the Vietnam and anti-nuclear protests of the 1970s and early 80s until the recent revival. The trouble is, he said, they can be a bit po-faced and dour. They’re like the counterpart to the party-and-politics scene, where a lot of people have got the party side happening but forgotten about the politics.

In fairness there might not be much time for politics. As well as more nuclear weapons than anywhere else in the world, New Mexico also has sweat shops and the death penalty to deal with. As well as clothing factory sweatshops, where low paid, often underage and always non-unionised workers suffer poor and unsafe working conditions for long hours, there are ‘sweatshops without walls’ such as New Mexico’s chilli farms. Taco Bell, by the way, use sweat labour and there are calls for boycotts and direct action.

The New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty points out that no person has ever been executed who had enough money to hire their own lawyer. Poor, unskilled, mentally ill or retarded and minority defendants are a lot more likely to be sentenced to death than another person for a similar crime. Police chiefs don’t believe that the death penalty is effective in reducing crime and New Mexico families of murder victims have set up a local branch of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation.

From an economic point of view, death penalty trials cost more: repealing the death penalty would save between $1-2.5 million per year just in the New Mexico Public Defender Department, vaguely equivalent to the Legal Aid system in the UK. The Coalition says that since 1972 at least 101 innocent people have been released from death rows in the US.

The trees were dying along the roadside from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. The bark beetles are killing them, Greg explained, because they’ve got no sap to repair the damage, because of the drought. The drought is made worse by the misuse of water supplies and a lot of the land is on the brink of desertification because of the drought and overgrazing.

The nuclear labs and especially the proposed new ‘Modern Pit Facility’ are only making the water situation worse: already the Rio Grande is polluted with nuclear waste and the population of Albuquerque will soon have nothing else but that to source drinking water from. The Rocky Flats plant used to make the plutonium ‘pits’or cores for nuclear weapons but was shut down because of serious health and environmental problems. If building goes ahead the Department of Energy will have to buy extra water rights, depleting the public supply even further.

The reason the new factory is needed is because the US could suddenly lose half of it’s nuclear stockpile overnight to the ageing of the pits. These 10,000 weapons plus 12,000 spare pits are made of plutonium 239, which has a half life of 24,000 years. That means it take s 24,000 years to decay to half its potency. The Department of Energy had to admit in 1996 that ageing effects had never occurred in pits up to 30 years old.

Answers on a postcard please: if you can see the need for another 500 pits per year, let me know. If not, tell Bush, Blair, the University of California, Lockheed Martin, Serco and so on, enough is enough.

2004-06-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

There's loads to write about the tour in the USA and all the people I've met, but not much time to get it all onto a computer. Meanwhile I thought I'd share this:

> You are a lying,full of shit,coward and a hypocrite,like all ugly Brits
> and the simple reason why I hate all u Brit-shit.If u yellow faggots are
> so "humane and peacefull" why didnt u cry like bitches when Saddam killed
> 250,000?Are u a sore loser?You know your kind was good and
> shit-stomped,not only in Iraq but also in Afghan.U know u faggots are
> finished and you're suitably scared.Even Khaddafy's shitting his asshole
> Arab diapers.Too bad our good ole'Marines are shooting u faggots in the
> back in Falluja.Well,u cunts should know that what goes around comes back
> 'round.I knew Scott Helvenston,u fuck-pig,(he's 1 of the prvt.security men
> that was mutilated there)and his family's cheering at the sight of u
> suffering,murdered faggots.There's only 1 problem.I dont believe u.I know
> u lie about "civillian casualties" in Falluja.You limeys invented tabloid
> journalism,then invaded nations like Irelan,USA and even Iraq.Why the fuck
> was'nt the British left whining against that shit?If u cant win
> a war,why not try to pretend to be a victim instead of a predator,which
> is what any Arab faggot or leftie Euro- asshole is.U faggots lie all the
> time.Iraqi shit were denying US troops were IN Iraq last yr when we were
> at the gates of Baghdad.Everything Arabs and left-wing westerners say is
> a lie.U camel cock-suckers ONLY know how to lie.U cant do anything else.U
> certainly cant win a war.Not a cold one or a hot one.If Bush really IS
> the liar u say he is,u should love him,cause u bitches love every other
> lying,thieving mass murderer.Why not the Yankee kind?Afraid your
> socialist/fascist/Islamic "revolution" is dying of ass cancer?Looks to me
> like it is.Why dont u ugly,repulsive,loathesome English
> losers(inbred?)learn to brush your teeth?(inbred?)
>

Dear Greg,

Thankyou so much for your insightful and interesting comments. Please accept my apologies for my misguided belief that what I witnessed were people and ambulances being shot dead by marines in Falluja. Thanks to your careful explanations I now realise I was also wrong when I believed that George Bush had lied, along with Tony Blair. I now realise that bombing a nation to get rid of a dictator that my country and yours supported, funded and armed, shaking his hand in friendship while blocking international condemnation of his gassing of the Kurds using the helicopters we had sold him was entirely the right choice. I further realise that the social and economic chaos which were inflicted by the war are a great benefit to the Iraqi people, who are merely being ungrateful when they whine about this, as they were when they consistently grumbled about the sanctions which starved them while strengthening Saddam. I am most grateful for your help in revealing the truth to me and, having finally seen the light, I shall now go shopping for a toothbrush to clean my inbred teeth and go home happy.

Thankyou, with all my heart,

Jo

2004-06-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

June 6th, 7pm, Albuquerque, New Mexico - Peace and Justice Centre, Harvard NW

June 7th, 7pm, Santa Fe, New Mexico - Cloud Cliff Cafe

June 8th, 6:30, Taos, New Mexico - Chamisa Mesa High School.

June 10th,7pm, Salida, Colorado - Bongo Billy Cafe, Sackett St.

June 11th, 7:30pm, Cristol Chemistry Building, University of Boulder, Colorado

June 12th, 7pm, Barbecue Woof Cafe, 333 E Colfax, Denver, Colorado

June 14th, 7pm, Tempe Friends Meeting House, Phoenix, Arizona

June 16th, Flagstaff, Arizona

July 3rd, 3:30-5pm, Ideas for Freedom workshop, Highgate Newton Community Centre, 25 Bertram St, London N19 (10 mins walk from Archway Tube)

Sept 26th - Labour Against the War Fringe meeting at Labour Party conference, Brighton

2004-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

May 27th
Honey Buckets

You can find Honey Buckets all over Washington State and beyond, not sweet-smelling receptacles of goodness but foul stinking pits of raw human waste with a note on the side specifying that they are designed for use by up to ten persons for a working week and if overused they are liable to overflow.

I say this, of course, with tongue in cheek, but if a Portaloo (or Porta-Potty, as Andy assured me they are known in North America) can be called a Honey Bucket without any apparent controversy then why should not an invasion and occupation which kills civilians and replaces the ruling Baathists with ruling ex-Baathists be called a liberation or the devastation of Falluja a ‘pacification’?

A young woman gave us directions to Fairhaven Campus and bowed. The administration at West Washington University in Bellingham tried to shut down the teachers’ union but found itself unable to do so because international as well as state laws protected the union, which was fighting, among other things, lack of funding and the drop in lecturers’ pay to less than it was a decade ago in real terms.

The Global Forums lecture series is organised outside of the normal lecture programme to allow students access to speakers from a variety of disciplines. The campus itself is multi-disciplinary, a display on the wall showing the final project of a young woman who spent a few weeks working in India with a farmers’ group, looking at the effects of the global agricultural and biotechnology industries’ efforts to control them.

One of the things I talk about is what people can do next, how they can support Iraqi people and some constructive actions generally towards global justice and human rights. On my list of useful actions is “Get rid of Bush.” Then I have to confess that I’m not sure what the alternative is. Kerry wants to send more troops to Iraq and is little better, if at all, on health, the environment, education, anything else that serves the majority of US citizens. The big difference is that, like Clinton, Kerry would shaft the US public with infinitely more charm than Bush so that most would not notice until it was too late.

There was a woman there who’s been investing enormous energy in voter registration and motivation, trying to make sure that people get out, vote for Kerry and oust Bush. She was demoralised, she said, to think that Kerry was not the answer, that it wouldn’t solve anything, that she couldn’t go home and have a rest safe in the knowledge that Bush was gone if only she could do enough to help get him voted out. She felt like giving up.

No. No no no no no. Though Bush’s re-election would seem to the rest of the world like a vote of approval, politics doesn’t begin or end with the presidential election. The citizens of the US need to be out on the streets for the Republican National Convention and for the Democratic National Convention. They need to be out on the streets the day after the election demonstrating against the unjust policies of whichever candidate gets his hands on power.

They need to know that there is not going to come a point where they can go home and forget about struggling for justice because there’s already legislation in process to reinstitute the draft, which no one’s going to talk much about until after the election but the country cannot maintain recruitment rates at the level it needs unless it starts conscripting, even with the ‘economic draft’ already in place whereby the lack of civilian jobs and the expense of higher education and health insurance forces so many into the military already.

They need to know that if they go home and wait for things to improve, they will find their savings worthless, their jobs disappearing, their schools closed, their houses repossessed. Al called it the most ‘Class War’ election in history: Yale class of 67 versus Yale class of 69. I might have the years wrong, but you know what he means.

From Bellingham we went back south a bit to Olympia, where they’re fighting the plan for a nuclear submarine to dock in the port. As you drive through, you can see where the really huge ships are, the place the submarine would dock. It’s right in town. There’s been massive local opposition to it, including many of the city council members, of whom the most active and vocal have been receiving death threats and other harassment. At the council meetings, the locals said, all those from Olympia itself were against the sub docking; those in favour were all from elsewhere.

The IOW Union dockworkers threatened to shut down the port for the entire time the sub was there and the military, fearing protests, withdrew the plan, but the locals say it isn’t won yet. A couple of other councillors have tabled a counter motion in favour of the sub docking there. Meanwhile there are moves to make Olympia a nuclear free city, like Manchester, in the UK, and a few other cities around the world, and the navy has been asked to rename the submarine something other than the USS Olympia. The nearby town of Lacey has apparently offered up its name in exchange.

We talked first in the South Puget Sound Community College. The community colleges offer two year courses, whereas the university programmes last four years and cost much more. It’s possible, although not easy, to transfer to a university later. David teaches a couple of courses, including one on Social Problems, things like criminology. For him, teaching political and social issues to a hundred people each quarter who have never heard anything like it is more productive in terms of awareness raising than anything else he’s ever done.

Eugene spent 28 years in the army, retiring recently in order to avoid taking part in a war in Iraq that he didn’t agree with. He served in Somalia, the Balkans, dozens of other places around the world. Like most people, he said, he joined because he was poor and there were not many other options available to him. In the former Yugoslavia he described being transported by bus across Hungary and into the conflict zone. They would travel into villages, deposit food and leave under fire, not able to stop and make sure it was safely distributed, immensely frustrated because their mission was never quite clear and there wasn’t the support, the equipment, the communications to enable them to do it properly.

Nick’s brother is in Iraq in the army, a truck driver based at ‘Camp Anaconda’, the base at Balad, a small town in Anbar province which is sealed off with razor wire and a fierce curfew. All his brother’s letters said was that he just wanted to come home, Nick said, asking us about Balad, where it was, what it was like. Their mum was against the war and ignores the news because it’s the only way she can deal with having her boy over there. Their dad went the other way, wholeheartedly supporting the war.

Nick’s best friend has just finished basic training. He doesn’t agree with the war either, Nick said, but is resigned to the fact that he’s going to have to go there. He joined the army because he couldn’t see any other options, no way into college, no jobs. The army recruiters promise money for college: Frank Davis, the soldier on the checkpoint going into Baghdad airport when I left, said the same. He was training to be a paramedic and needed money for that. Often, it seems, the actual money is elusive, depending on a series of obstacles, but it’s hard to get out once you’re in, even if the promises don’t come true.

The local brewery in Tomwater, the town next to Olympia, was bought by the multinational Miller corporation which immediately threatened to close it down with the loss of 400 jobs unless the local authority gave $12 million for a new water processing plant. Over a barrel, so to speak, the authority obliged but three years later Miller, having also bought the Portland and Seattle breweries, closed Tomwater and put the premises up for sale subject to an undertaking not to brew beer.

Briefly there was the possibility of a water bottling enterprise taking over, which would have provided forty jobs, but even that was scuppered when the company expressed an interest in starting brewing operations a few years down the line. The brewing equipment is all there, perfect for an employee take-over, Argentina style, though the sale condition would mean it would have to be squatted, a guerrilla brewery.

“Those politics are not here,” Nick said. I don’t suppose for a moment that Miller was in cahoots with the US military and it’s recruitment battalion when it destroyed the local industry but it might as well have been and it demonstrates yet again the inextricable connection between the military and the economy, how the same practices that destroy social well being and the environment also fuel military recruitment and wanton war-making.

So if there’s anyone out there who drinks Miller’s beer, I suggest they stop, and if there’s anyone who lives near a Miller brewery or office HQ, I suggest they go and leave a little message on the walls expressing disapproval, on behalf of the unemployed brewers of Tomwater, Seattle and Portland.

Back in the college, Heather explained that the authorities tried to ban their group, Brick, and cancel its funding because of a court ruling on balance. Brick focuses on one side of the political spectrum because it’s that kind of club, just as the Conservative Club on campus focuses on the other side. Overall, on the campus, there’s a balance. But the college interpreted the ruling to mean the individual clubs had to call on speakers from opposing political ideologies.

“The college always errs on the side of suppressing free speech rather than protecting it. Their first reaction to anything is to try and shut stuff down,” Heather explained. The reason it was irritating her so much was that the college was now discussing closing down the Christian Club, in response to an Attorney General’s ruling that a student elsewhere in the country couldn’t use his federal aid funding to pay for study in some kind of Christian institution. They interpreted it to mean that no funds at all could be given to anything Christian and nothing Christian could be allowed to exist on campus.

It reminded me of the struggle at the University of the West of England when I was studying there part time and the Students’ Union banned all mention of the war and any events relating to the war. It passed a motion declaring the Union, as an institution, neutral in the matter of the war on Afghanistan and interpreted that to mean that no one could discuss the war, or any war, on university premises.

The students had to get officers elected to minor roles on the Union committee, like Disability Officer, in order to overturn the ban on the Stop the War society and prevent posters being taken down all over campus. If Unions and universities won’t defend free speech, who will?

Some of the students and lecturers are going to the National Governors’ Association meeting which is coming up. A lot of the health and education programmes operate at state rather than federal level so the place protesters can make a difference, or try to, is in the faces of the state governors.

Meanwhile it was announced that a State of Emergency has been declared across five counties in the state of Georgia for a month surrounding the G8 meeting. The restrictions have been announced two weeks ahead of the meeting, to prevent protests outside the meeting.

A terror warning has been put out about a seven man Al-Qaeda cell which is alleged to be on the loose inside the USA, perhaps in preparation for the Republican Convention in August, to justify even more protest-suppressing measures and frighten away the people who maybe don’t normally go to protests but felt moved to go to this one.

The New York Times has apologised for it’s failure to question the claims made by the US government on weapons of mass destruction in the time before the invasion of Iraq. It’s only the second time anyone I’ve asked can remember the NYT apologising for anything like that, the first being its reporting on a man who was wrongly accused of something.

They apologised for simply reprinting the claims of the White House lot without seeking to verify the claims, which doesn’t mean it won’t happen again, most likely means they desperately need to restore some kind of credibility but at least, I suppose, underlines the effects of a super-acquiescent media for those who hadn’t noticed it.

At the end of the second talk, in Orca Books, an ordinary bookshop which gives a lot of space to independent and radical books and to talks by their writers, I told a story specific to Olympia, the home town of Rachel Corrie, the young woman murdered by an Israeli military bulldozer in March 2003 while she was trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah.

I was in Iraq when she was killed and dedicated that day’s dispatch to her. A friend in England was reading selected, non-political parts of my writing to the kids she taught in a secure unit for young people with severe emotional problems such as advanced eating disorders or repeated suicide attempts. One of the girls wrote her a letter a while later, having moved on into another place, saying that was what turned her around, realising that there was someone who had travelled miles from home and died for something really important, while she was trying to kill herself for nothing at all.

The point is that you never know: Rachel couldn’t have known that her going to Palestine would inspire a young woman she’d never met to live; I didn’t know when I wrote about it and my friend didn’t guess when she read it out. You don’t know the effects your actions and words are going to have and often you don’t find out afterwards, so you just have to throw yourself in and do what you think is right without trying to add up the results and despair if they don’t seem big enough. That’s what I think anyway.

Outside, there was a woman called Elizabeth who had decided to run for president. Her reasoning was this: Elizabeth is the name of the Queen of England. The Queen’s dad was called George. George was also the name of the former president, Washington. She and George were both the oldest of five children. Her uncle and his son both had the middle name Blair, as in Tony. Her best friend’s name was Linton, which was suspiciously similar to Clinton.

It was, therefore, only logical and my favourite conspiracy theory of all time. It makes at least as much sense as calling a portable toilet a Honey Bucket.

2004-06-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

May 25th
The Man Who Wouldn’t Fight

“Anyone would have inhibitions about taking someone’s life, but there are a variety of ways that we’re indoctrinated and desensitised. The esprit de corps, the sense of pride they instil in us and each other, sometimes it seems like some sort of monastic brotherhood or cult. You learn unwavering devotion to each other. When we’re fighting it’s not for the cause or country. It’s for each other, for the person to your right and your left.

“That was the hardest thing, leaving my friends, people from my unit, having them go without me, dedicated, hard working people whose values are being exploited by the US government.” He left when his unit was sent to Iraq, having spent two years applying for conscientious objector status. He applied before his unit was sent to Afghanistan, requesting a transfer to a non-combat role. It was deliberately mishandled, the authorities claiming they had never received it but later giving the papers back to him in a package with a further application and advice to drop the matter.

Jeremy Hinzman was one of two US soldiers who left the army and applied for political asylum in Canada on the grounds of refusal of his conscientious objector status. A baker for four years after high school, he felt his life lacked structure and focus and wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. The military was great for that, he said. “I thought I’d be spreading freedom, democracy and apple pie recipes.”

But dehumanisation of the people in future warzones begins from the start of basic training. “It’s easy to get one person to shoot another. In the first week we shoot at black circles, learn how to aim, how to breathe, and the next week there are shoulders added and then torsos and then they become pop up targets, but all the time they’re targets, not people, and shooting them is a reflex.

“You do stuff till you’re blue in the face, till you’re sick of it and then you don’t question it. When you’re training they have you chanting while you run, things like, “Training to kill, kill we will,” or “Ooh ah I wanna kill somebody” or the sergeant shouts, “What makes the grass grow?” and you shout, “Blood blood blood.” If you don’t yell loud enough then you get to strengthen your upper body. I can still do a lot of push ups.” The point, as well as the rhythm, was emphasised by his foot involuntarily starting to stamp with the chants.

He said that even as he was doing the shouting he started to realise that he didn’t want to kill anybody, “that I’d made a really bad career decision.” Still he’s grateful for the time he spent in the military, for the insights it gave him into the way the US operates throughout the world. He spent two years after basic training in the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, determined to make the best of his situation, getting promoted until he was about to move on a stage, go into a new stage of training that felt like a point of no return.

It was then that he first applied for reclassification to a non combat role wanting, in his words, the best of both worlds – to stay with his friends but not have to fight. “September 11th had woken me up. People were asking why would they want to attack the US and I did some research and I didn’t have to look too far for the pattern of abuse. I read that the US doesn’t have friends or allies, it has interests and it didn’t have any interests in Rwanda.

“I never condoned terrorism but the actions of the US created it and I realised I was being used as a pawn. The violence was perpetuating itself and the only way I could stop it personally was to take myself out of the equation. The attack on Iraq was being proposed while I was in Afghanistan. I vowed to myself, my wife and my son that I wouldn’t take part.” He applied again for conscientious objector status and was again refused without a hearing.

“With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to refuse then to wear the uniform but I didn’t until my unit was sent to Iraq. These five-yearly wars are advertisements for new weapons systems. They gained approval by exploiting people’s fears and the events of September 11th but if it was about weapons they’d be better off dynamiting their own borders and blowing themselves up. Wolfowitz even said that the difference between Iraq and North Korea is that Iraq sits on a sea of oil and North Korea doesn’t. It’s not always true that soldiers don’t think.

“People are responsible for the way a country lives. It’s destiny is up to the people. We have to create our own freedom. My life is not that special but it’s not expendable either for someone else’s business venture or to line their pockets. Maybe people will think I should have done what the army always says and ‘suck it up and move on’ but history is made up of individual decisions. Even if no one would ever have prosecuted me for anything, I would have been prosecuting myself for the rest of my life.”

Nervous, before the talk, he whispered that he was “a horrible speaker” and began his talk with an apology that it had been a long time since high school speech class. He didn’t need to worry. Of course, everyone likes to be told what they want to hear and the government’s soldiers coming over to the side of peace would always be assured a welcome, but that understates the enormous courage it took for him to leave, to refuse not only the assignment but also the life he’d been living.

I know that it’s also frightening to go, especially with increasing numbers of deaths and injuries, but the Abu Ghraib prison photos and revolutions all over the world through history show that mutiny of soldiers against unjust orders and outrageous exploitation are vital to reining in governments which think it’s legitimate to dominate through with military power.

Recruitment starts in high school with glossy brochures, recruiters like car salesman cold calling to lists of students without a ticket into university, he explained, with an underclass maintained for precisely that purpose. Someone asked about the draft. The draft hasn’t been active since the Vietnam war but young men are still required to register for it. Failing to register with the Selective Service System means ineligibility for federal student aid , federal job training or civil service employment from the post office to the parks service and in some states you can’t get into state colleges.

Theoretically you can also be jailed for five years and fined up to a quarter of a million dollars but no one has been prosecuted since 1986 because public trials kept reducing registration rates. People still receive letters first reminding then threatening them to register, within the month either side of their 18th birthday, finally telling them their names have been given to the Department of Justice. Danny, a 20 year old community college student we met in Seattle, refused to register and had to have his mum vouch for his identity to get into college. Some colleges have an aid fund specially for those ineligible for federal aid for refusing the SSS registration.

If not registered by their 26th birthday, men are permanently barred from registering and from all the federal aid and employment but the SSS Board is obliged to accept registration cards any time until that birthday, so a lot of men resist the draft by illegally waiting until just before turning 26 to register.

Jeremy’s answer was that US policy is to be able to fight two full-on wars at the same time in two different parts of the world. Already they are using the reservists and National Guard who signed up to mend dams and rescue people from floods, not to fight wars, presenting a problem with retaining personnel. Already, and for some time, the politicians have been saying they need to send more troops and, from their point of view, they do. The draft, Jeremy said, is inevitable.

A local business man, an Iraqi, recently went home. He saw his mother for the first time in 38 years, paid his last respects at the grave of his father, killed by Saddam, was reunited with the cousins he grew up with. “He hugged me and kissed me and cried when he saw me and then cursed me when I asked who he was, but that tells you about the physical separation. I remembered him as he was and now he is older.”

Riadh Musli was fiercely opposed to the war in spite of all that. “I feel very strongly about the suffering of people in Iraq and they were intimidated before and they are intimidated now.” Most of all he’s passionate about the unity of the Iraqi people: ”When I was young and during the diaspora we never thought about Shia or Sunni and Kurd or Arab. We identified ourselves as Iraqis. I am Shia and four of my sisters are married to Sunni men. We trade together. There are those in the Governing Council who reject the Arab identity and would detach us from the rest of Arabia.”

In between the two, I talked about Falluja and the circus and the squatter camps and what’s happening for my friends, especially my women friends, in Iraq and afterwards we swapped e mails because there wasn’t enough time to chat, to delve into each other’s reasons and experiences, I who went, because I cared about Iraqi people and he who didn’t, for precisely the same reason.

The others went to the premiere of Naomi Klein’s new film about Argentina and the devastating effects of economic liberalisation, the country’s bankruptcy and the takeover of factories by workers whose families were facing starvation because of the job losses, getting the factories working again and running them independently.

Canadian film makers are struggling with the National Film Board which, though it gives some grant funding, demands a lot of control over the rights and somehow manages to have itself paid back twice over.

So the Iraqis struggle for the right to self determination and for day to day survival, the Argentinians against the ruinous effects of neo-liberalism and the World Trade Organisation; Jeremy struggles for the right not to go to war against his conscience and Canadian film makers fight against the increasing narrowness of the media, against the free-market constriction of the range of information which reaches the public domain.

The day before, we were in Seattle, in Richard Hugo House a community centre for writers (www.hugohouse.org). The poet Hugo wrote that “Writing is a way of saying you and the world have a chance.” The house is a place for people to write, to record their own stories and history, to express and to encourage more people to read, write, publish and publicise writing and art from many more people, outside the commercial sphere which restricts what gets seen.

It also houses the Zine Archives and Publishing Project. Zines, (pronounced Zeens) for those who don’t know, are small scale amateur-made magazines, including a lot of radical and political writing which has no other outlet than self publishing. There are over 7000 in the archive, including comics. It was the main way for activists to publish their ideas and analyses before the days of internet and weblogs.

There are loads of kids’ programmes there and displays of their poems, collages and illustrated books decorate the walls. “My Frog That’s Still Alive”, “How Bossy Is A Sister?” and “Managing the Wild Thing – How to Look After Your Child” were my favourites of the latter.

Of the former, I liked this: The War, by Paul Nguyen, grade 3 (about 8-9 years old):

“My dad went to the war because he was brave.
He fought in the war because he was strong.
Though he was short,
his heart was very tall.
His smile shines like the stars in the sky.
He hates the war because
they didn’t get freedom.
His smell is made out of the smoke of bombs.
My father’s sound is of explosions of war.
His hands are small and slender.”

Seattle is the place where, on November 30th 1999, the World Trade Organisation’s meeting was closed down for a day by huge protests. We were joined by Agent Apple, author of a new book, “Pie Any Means Necessary” from the Biotic Baking Brigade which advocates pie-ing the powerful, like arms dealers, biotech company directors, politicians who start wars and others whose misdemeanours are ignored by the mainstream media until their faces are covered with custard.

Not to say it’s the only way or that it’s enough on its own, Apple says, but protest with humour, ridiculing the people who abuse human rights and the environment and have legal impunity because they run the law, is more life affirming and joyful than ‘po-faced protest’.

Stories, resistance and pies are ways of saying you and the world have a chance.

2004-06-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Latest on the tour dates for New Mexico and Colorado, more to come, plus Arizona:

June 6th, daytime, Los Alamos, New Mexico

June 6th, 7pm, Albuquerque, New Mexico - Peace and Justice Centre, Harvard NW

June 7th, 7pm, Santa Fe, New Mexico - Cloud Cliff Cafe

June 8th, 6:30pm, Taos, New Mexico - Chamisa Mesa High School.

June 10th, evening, Salida, Colorado.

2004-05-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

My new phone number: 773 860 4684

Spam / Viruses / Attachments
It seems there’s been another bogus posting of a viral attachment to the list. I want to apologise for these. I’ve now barred attachments from the list so it shouldn't happen again and just to reiterate, I never send attachments on the list so if you do receive a message through the list that has an attachment, it’s not from me and please delete it.

I was assuming the first ‘Encrypted Document’ was just random spam from someone who knew how to get the message to appear to come from me, but I’ve since been told that the attachment contained photos which make me think it might be deliberate targeting. So again I want to apologise for any inconvenience or cyber-disease caused. If it is deliberate it’s from someone who doesn’t like the truth being told and if it’s not then I expect they’ll grow out of it.

May 22nd
California

The newspaper at Birmingham airport said civilians have been killed in Nasariya. I thought of Maha and Kenaan and got on the plane. The immigration officer at Los Angeles didn’t flick through my passport to notice all the pre-war Iraq visas, being more concerned about the saxophone I was carrying. I promised on my honour that I wouldn’t be playing any professional concerts, confiding reassuringly that I’d only been playing for three days and knew a grand total of seven notes. Apparently looking more like the illegal worker type than a terrorist I was allowed in without further questions.

LA is enormous and the way around is by a mass of six lane highways with an inordinate number of signs, giving directions, radio frequencies for congestion information, religious and moral advice and invitations to Adopt A Highway. Unlike the more common adoptees such as children, dolphins and large mammals, which require either a lifetime of parenthood or a standing order at the bank, highway adoption apparently demands a commitment to litter clearance. Taxes apparently don’t cover removal of roadside rubbish.

The first talk was in a community centre and radical bookshop called Flor y Canto in a Latin American part of town. Run by volunteers, it’s got meeting space, a little kitchen and a row of four computers where Latino kids were surfing the internet. That part of the city had signs in Spanish or dual Spanish and English and murals to “Libertad, pobre, solidaridad”.

There is also a big Iranian population in LA, one man who left Tehran in the 1970s because of repression, lived in the UK for a couple of years and then moved to the US, who wanted to know about what had happened to women since the invasion of Iraq because his sense, like mine, was that their oppression, in the name of fundamentalism, had got worse and their rights were going unprotected. The Iranians know better than anyone what that’s like.

But back in LA, there was talk of the prosecution of Greenpeace for the actions of its members in Florida. The activists themselves have already been tried for boarding and putting up a banner on a logging ship which was bringing illegally felled rainforest timber into the US, which still accepts the wood.

Later the Attorney General John Ashcroft decided to take the organisation to court as well, for the actions of its members, making unprecedented use of a law a couple of centuries old intended to prevent brothel owners or their representatives boarding ships and luring poor innocent sailors into their houses of ill-repute.

If the prosecution succeeds in twisting that law to prevent political protest, it will also be a step on the way towards closing down Greenpeace and other non-profit organisations whose members are involved with protest, by continually summonsing and fining the groups. It’s a way of suppressing activist organisations without the controversy of announcing a ban.

And another thing: pharmacies are allowed to refuse to fulfil prescriptions for the birth control pill or the emergency contraception pill, even if the woman can’t get it from anywhere else.

Hummingbirds live around the hill behind the house we stayed in. From the top, one side was all twinkles of light, the other – Downtown LA – was blotted out by smog. Petrol has just gone up to $2.50 a gallon because of the oil price rises: a Black Hawk helicopter flaps its rotors in Iraq and the car economy in the US stays exactly the same because there’s no real public transport system in LA. Still, it costs more than that for a litre in Britain.

Lost, in the morning, we stopped behind a white car with both its front doors open. The woman inside was reading a book, signs in her back windscreen asking for work. She lived in the car at the side of the road, eschewing a quieter spot in favour of one where her job request and any possible attacks against her were more likely to be seen. It’s not uncommon, apparently, for people to live in their cars in LA, a stepping stone between becoming homeless and living on the street.

In the end we got directions from lurid lycra man, who was thrilled about our destination: “Dude! I live on that street. OK, trip out – you go down that way…” There’s a whole array of different churches I’ve never seen anywhere else, the Ark of Refuge, the Fundamentalist Trinitarian.

Another thing I’ve never seen is the array of community radio stations. KPFA’s studio in San Francisco’s East Bay was built by listener donations and there’s a pledge drive going on now which enables the station to stay independent of advertisers and means it’s able to carry much more radical content, much more political content.

After 1945 and the end of the war, a percentage of the available bandwidth was set aside for public radio. A lot of the stations are becoming commercialised but there are still community radio stations in a lot of towns which, again, are able to serve a much wider spectrum of interests because they’re not dependent on advertising revenue, with a show called Rocking the Boat on Santa Cruz radio and another called Pissed As Hell airing in Chicago (that’s ‘pissed’ as in angry, not as in drunk).

We talked in City College, San Francisco, a community college, and in a Filipino community centre in the East Bay, among some sculptures inspired by the artist’s visit, fully suited and masked, to Chernobyl, where empty fairgrounds, houses and streets waited in silence. A wheelchair bound metal suit with giant eyes and a gas mask sat in the middle of the room like a robot, its claustrophobic innards the only liveable space in the toxic world the nuclear mishap left behind.

We talked at the Long Haul Info Shop in Berkeley, the name referring to the commitment required to make real social change, the understanding that a few demonstrations won’t be enough. Berkeley is home to one of the most prestigious and conservative universities in the country. Slater and Julie were there, friends I haven’t seen since we were playing football in the park on a scorching day in October in Bristol, Julie who used to sustain me with beautiful e mails about sparkling snow and maple syrup in Vermont in the winter.

We talked in Santa Cruz, stopping at a wild and gorgeous beach on the way, and to a packed lecture theatre in New College in San Fransisco. With us were Eddie Yuen, who co-edited the book “Confronting Capitalism” and Rebecca Solnit, who wrote “Hope in the Dark” about all the victories of the global justice movement, more than most of us have noticed or remembered. It’s easy to forget how much has changed, that once seemed impossible: the end of slavery took time, as did the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, civil rights and everything else that was ever worth achieving.

Meanwhile there was a demonstration of three hundred people in Houston, Texas, against Halliburton, the Dick Cheney offshoot which is taking vast amounts of money through contracts in Iraq and overcharging the US government for services in Iraq. It was unprecedented to see so many Texans out for a demonstration like that.

Coming soon in San Francisco there will be a huge meeting of Biotechnology industry delegates, working on the next phase of foisting genetically modified crops on the world. So the Bay Area talks also included a bit of explanation about that, what the biotech industry means for most of the world. 25 thousand people a day die of hunger.

These same companies and organisations, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, forced so many people off their land and now they claim their products and their free trade and privatisation policies are the answer to world hunger, neglecting to mention that there is already enough food.

Through loans and arms sales they create debt. Through debt they enforce privatisation of public services, external control of natural resources and abandonment of subsistence growing in favour of cash crop production and an economy dependent on international markets. The hunger, displacement and devastation which result are a means of creating a pool of cheap labour. In Iraq the agricultural economy and cash crop production are less central than elsewhere but the themes and the perpetrators are the same.

The We Are Everywhere tour is about all of that and the resistance to it from all over the world. The book consists of stories from the uprisings in Mexico, India, Nigeria, of farmers burning Monsanto crops, women in Bolivia confronting police who were preventing them getting access to water, South Africans in the poorest areas reconnecting people cut off from basic amenities because electricity and water are human rights. It’s about telling the stories that are not part of the news, of ordinary people’s history, which is much more inspiring than the mainstream version.

The murder rate is more than a hundred a year in Oakland and in some other districts of San Francisco, Rob told me. Do you mean I’m in more danger here than I was in Iraq? No, he said. You’re white and you’re staying in an OK area. But the local newspaper was talking about the murder of a young black woman who was about to go to law school and her father’s agony, blaming himself for not moving the family to a safer district.

Vietnam is still everywhere, maybe even more so than Iraq. The bridge across the Sacramento River is called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge – not that anyone has yet apologised to the bereaved families for sending those thousands of boys to their deaths there and the poster wall which peacefully coexists with the luxury apartments at what used to be the Mission Police Station. The political art of the day is pasted there: a famous picture of the chief of Saigon’s US appointed and maintained police force executing a suspect in the street.

The chief’s head is in clear focus, encased in a television screen, the rest of it pixelated outside that. “If Vietnam were now, this is what you would see,” it said. The Vietnam war came at a time when small cameras and video technology were newly available and yet real images and opinions were coming out because the soldiers did not expect to be criticised for killing civilians and celebrating. Now the military authorities are much more cautious , much more aware of public relations and so more controlling. Along with the censorship comes self-censorship, by editors and by journalists who know what their editors want.

In California the Humvees are black and shiny, instead of beige and dusty, driven by middle aged rich white men, perhaps towing a boat, instead of a poor black teenager trying to dodge an as-yet invisible roadside bomb and I wonder if, instead of telling those kids they were going to free a population and protect their own country, the government had confessed that it was about protecting the privilege of the fat-ass fools in power, with the ancillary bonus of dumping the recently-inconvenient Saddam, if they’d admitted that arms and legs and lives were to be lost not to eradicate the Baath party but to change its leader and its name, then instead of blast walls proliferating all over Iraq there might have been walls around the gated estates of the company execs torn down all over the USA.

2004-05-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

I found this on Faiza's blog - it reflected what Jeremy Hinzman, one of the former US soldiers who refused to go to Iraq. said last night - I'll blog about that when I've got a spare minute and a computer.

The Marine's tale: 'We killed 30 civilians in six weeks. I felt we were
committing genocide'

By Natasha Saulnier

23 May 2004 "The Independent" --- During 12 years in the US Marines,
including three years putting new recruits through boot camp, Staff Sergeant
Jimmy Massey hardly questioned his role. But what he saw in Iraq changed
that.

"In a month and a half my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians," Mr
Massey said. He saw bodies being desecrated and robbed, and wounded
civilians being dumped by the roadside without medical treatment. After he
told his commanding officer that he felt "we were committing genocide", he
was called a "wimp".

Mr Massey, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and depression, left
the Marines in November. Back home in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina,
he says the cause of the uprising in Iraq is that "we killed a lot of
innocent people".

His 7th Marine Weapons Company, armed with machine guns and missiles, was
one of the first into the country in March last year. "We would take over
villages and control checkpoints," he said. "My men and I would fire warning
shots at oncoming vehicles. But, if they didn't stop, we didn't have any
qualms about loading them up."

The Marines were told that Iraqis were filling ambulances with explosives,
and that soldiers were dressed as civilians, but after pouring fire into
vehicles and hearing no explosions, they started to doubt the truth of these
claims.

"Iraqi military compounds had nothing in them, except for dismantled tanks,
equipment that was barely functioning, and barracks that looked like ghost
towns," Mr Massey said.

The incident that haunts him most took place early in April, near an Iraqi
military compound five miles from Baghdad's airport. "There were
approximately 10 demonstrators near a tank," he said. "We heard a shot in
the distance and we started shooting at them. They all died except for one.
We left the bodies there.

"We noticed that there were some RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] about 200
metres away from them - they might have come from the military compound. The
demonstrators had the ability to fire at us or at the tank, but they didn't.
The survivor was hiding behind a column about 150 metres away from us. I
pointed at him and waved my weapon to tell him to get away. Half of his foot
had been cut off. He went away dragging his foot. We were all laughing and
cheering.

"Then an 18-wheeler [truck] came speeding around. We shot at it. One of the
guys jumped out. He was on fire. The driver was dead. Then a Toyota Corolla
came. We killed the driver, the other guy came out with his hands up. We
shot him too.
"A gunny from Lima Company came running and said to us: 'Hey, you just shot
that guy, but he had his hands up.' My unit, my commander and me were
relieved of our command for the rest of the day. Not more than five minutes
later, the Lima Company took up our position and shot a car with one woman
and two children. They all died."

The next day the platoon guarded a checkpoint at Baghdad Stadium. "A red Kia
Spectra sped toward us at about 45mph. We fired a warning volley above it
but the car kept coming. Then we aimed at the car and fired with full force.
The Kia came to a stop right in front of me, three of the four men shot
dead, the fourth wounded and covered in blood. We called the medics, but he
died before they arrived. That day we killed three more civilians in the
same circumstances. I talked to my captain afterwards and told him: 'It's a
bad day.' He said: 'No, it's a good day.'"

Mr Massey watched as badly injured Iraqis were repeatedly "tossed on the
side of the road without calling medics". His reaction to the event that
triggered the recent siege of Fallujah - the sight of the blackened,
mutilated bodies of four American private security men - was that "we did
the same thing to them".

Iraqis, he said, "would see us debase their dead all the time. We would be
messing around with charred bodies, kicking them out of the vehicles and
sticking cigarettes in their mouths. I also saw vehicles drive over them. It
was our job to look into the pockets of dead Iraqis to gather intelligence.
However, time and time again, I saw Marines steal gold chains, watches and
wallets full of money."

Several members of his platoon expressed concern that so many civilians were
being killed, but Mr Massey says he told them: "We've got a job to do."
Finally, however, he voiced his own doubts to his commanding officer. "I
told him I felt like we were committing genocide in Iraq, that we were doing
harm to a culture. He said nothing and walked away. I knew my career was
over." Later, he says, his superior poured abuse on him, saying, "You're a
poor leader. You're faking it. You're a conscientious objector, you're a
wimp."

After being sent back to the US, Mr Massey was offered a desk job. "I had
seven years until retirement from the Marine Corps, but I told them I didn't
want their money any more," he said. The Marines' slogan - "No better
friend, no worse enemy" - now embitters the former sergeant, who says
remorse keeps him awake at night.

"One day we would go into a city and set up roadblocks where civilian
casualties would take place, and then the next morning we would undertake a
humanitarian mission," he said. "How do we expect people who've seen their
brothers and mothers killed to turn around and welcome us with open arms?"

2004-05-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

I received this briefing on Iraq's debt and what the recent resolutions on 'forgiving the debt' are really all about. It's the first posting to a new list and I won't post future ones but you can subscribe if you're interested. It's important information.

Assalaamu alaykum ya asdeqa,

This is a new list providing occassional news summaries relating to Saddam’s $160bn+ of debt & reparations, and updates on the Jubilee Iraq campaign working to eliminate them.

As the July transition approaches this issue is becoming increasingly urgent. You have been added to this list because (a) you have signed the Jubilee Iraq petition or (b) we have had some contact with you over the last year. If you do not want to receive these mailings (about 2-4 a month) then please use the link at the end of the email to unsubscribe, and we apologise for the inconvinience.

UN draft resolution – key points on debt & reparations

Paragraph 17: "the privileges and immunities provided in [1483] shall not apply with respect to any claim arising out of an obligation entered into by Iraq after 30 June 2004;" JI says: This revision may mean that, following a Paris Club restructuring of Saddam's debt after 30th June, the creditors may be able to sieze Iraqi oil to meet their debt payment claims. This is potentially very dangerous for Iraq.

Paragraph 18: "Welcomes the commitment of creditors, including those of the Paris Club, to identify ways to reduce substantially Iraq's sovereign debt… recognizes that the Interim Government of Iraq has the authority to conclude and implement such agreements as may be necessary in this regard." JI says: This is what we have been warning about for over six months - the transitional government will be bullied by creditors into signing a binding agreement with the Paris Club, forcing the future elected government to repay a large part of Saddam's odious debt and submit to economic conditions set by the IMF in return for recieving partial debt "forgiveness".

Paragraph 20: "Calls upon all Member States to take appropriate steps within their respective legal systems to stay for a period of 12 months from 30 June 2004 all legal and other similar proceedings before their courts or other tribunals involving claims by or against the State of Iraq." JI says: It is unclear where the UNCC reparations claims would be covered by this. If they are then this is a positive development. The Resolution does not include a reduction in reparations payments (currently 5% of all oil revenue) as requested by Hamid al-Bayati last week. The UNCC is actually meeting on 1 July to aware more reparations, and Jubilee Iraq will be gathering Iraqis from across Europe in Geneva to protest as we did in March.

French say only 50% reduction

French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated: "If we departed from the rules of the Paris Club, what would we say to those countries that did not have the same conditions. 50% [reduction for Iraq] is the Paris Club rule." The G8 summit June 8-10 in Sea Island, Georgia will cover this issue as it did last year. The IMF is expected to produce a long awaited report on the amounts of non-Paris Club debt and a debt “sustainability” analysis before the summit. There has been some speculation in the press that the US favours an 80-90% reduction, however Jubilee Iraq has had no credible confirmation of this and is highly doubtful. Our understanding is that the debate in the Paris Club is for reduction in the range 50-66%, an insufficient amount which also will leave Iraq paying more in debt than health+education, ignore the culpability of creditors in financing Saddam and will require Iraq to submit to IMF conditionality such as rapid privatisation.

Private creditors organise against Iraq

Two separate initiatives have been launched recently to lobby for the interests of private creditors who are making claims against Iraq. One involves UK-based accountants BDO Stoy Hayward and US investment bank Turan Corporation, the other Debt brokerage Exotix and investment bank GML International. The creditors, both sovereign and private are organising. Iraqis need to organise too and unite strongly around a common position which rejects Saddam’s odious debt and the reparations.

See www.jubileeiraq.org for full news updated daily.

Key documents

Saddam's Odious debts - 2 page summary handout, April 2004 (Word)

Slides - Overview of Saddam’s debts for Berlin conference (March 04, powerpoint doc)

Assessing US policy on Saddam’s debts (March 04, web or word doc)

Paying for the Executioner's Bullets: Iraqi views (Nov 03, web or pdf)

Take Action

Write to your finance minister and/or local representative demanding that all claims against Iraq are dropped as soon as a soverign government is in place, or submitted to a fair and transparent arbitration tribunal. Tell us about the responses you get.

Ma’asalama,

Justin Alexander & the Jubilee Iraq team

2004-05-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

After the west coast tour I’d like to go to Arizona
then across to Louisiana and perhaps Florida if
there’s time, those being swing states. If anyone’s
able to organise talks there, please get in touch. If
you’re able to raise some travel expenses I can also
bring David to show his film footage from Iraq and
Falluja.

2004-05-16T04:49:00.000-07:00

May 10th
A Message from Ma’ali

“You are going back to England? Could you please tell Tony Blair we’ve had enough of his bombs?” I promised Ma’ali I’d pass her message on.

She and Manal and Nihad and Dalia all came to say goodbye, in the girls’ housing at Baghdad University, and Farah came to give me the book list for her project. She’s writing a thesis on the political discourse of the Iraq debates between Tony Blair and Ian Duncan Smith. I know, I know, why would you want to subject yourself to that, but she’s fascinated by their use of words to play around with the facts and people’s beliefs.

The trouble is, and it’s the trouble for a lot of students, that they can’t get the books and the journals. I would rather, of course, wave a wand and rehabilitate their libraries and give them much more comprehensive access to subscription web resources, but my wand batteries are flat so…

If anyone thinks they can get access to journals and books and British library resources which can be either photocopied, scanned and e mailed or sent in with someone who’s heading that way, let me know and I’ll send you the list. If anyone has remote access to sites like Lexis, and is willing to share their password with Farah, that would also be very helpful.

Farah also said her favourite band is Blue. This is because, in their videos, they are naked and her parents, because they’re just pop videos, let her watch them.

In the end I haven’t created as many twinnings as I hoped to. This month just gone and the next one I planned to spend following up all the contacts we made through the circus with schools, youth centres, disabled kids’ homes and so on, and that’s not been possible in the current situation, but I’ve got all the contacts that will make it possible to get them sorted over the next few months.

The humanitarian flight out of Baghdad International Airport is run by a non-profit organisation flying aid, sick people and NGO workers in and out of conflict zones. The pilots are South African, the aeroplane second hand from Qantas Link with a recorded safety announcement in Australian, the window seat and the aisle seat one and the same, with in-flight refreshments in a cold box by the door.

Nada, an Iraqi doctor working for the International Medical Corps, was leaving to Jordan for some training. She’d never flown before and the corkscrew take-off, climbing to fifteen thousand feet while still over the airfield to stay out of rocket propelled grenade range, unsettled her stomach a bit.

Waleed was in Jordan, keeping his head down for a couple of weeks after getting death threats. He didn’t know if it was because he worked for the BBC, because he said something derogatory about Saddam or because of some grudge. He was making use of the time away, working on a documentary about heavy metal across the Arab world and its relationship to devil worship.

Faris Daraneh saved me from falling apart when I rediscovered the merits of a kind, obliging travel agent over a cold, unreasonable, heartless computer. I sat next to a Welsh smuggler and father-to-be on the plane, coming back from his holidays. Salih picked me up at Heathrow airport, bought me falafels and played Basra folk music all the way into London so I wouldn’t feel homesick. People trudged about looking miserable, not realising that I’d just left behind a load of people who, not all but many of them, would give almost anything to be here, not tat they’d necessarily be any happier than those people if they were.

It feels good to walk down the road unnoticed and unshouted at and to not be invited to share intimate relations with three quarters of the men on the street. It feels good not to worry about bombs, random shooting and kidnapping and horrible to know that, for all my Iraqi friends, that’s still an everyday issue and there’s no going home and getting away from it all.

I’m going to the US to do some talks about Iraq. The dates up to the end of May are below; more information from www.weareeverywhere.org and then I think I’ll be at the 5th Grassroots Organising Conference on Iraq, in Indiana, and watch this space for whatever’s happening after that.

Amnesty International have just published a report on killings of civilians in Basra and Amara, the British controlled parts of Iraq, including those by UK forces and those by armed groups and individuals: see www.amnesty.org

I expect I’ll carry on writing from the US but I just want to thank everyone who’s been reading, everyone who’s helped make twinning links happen, given me support, sent e mails that I haven’t replied to personally, helped me financially, said prayers, made spells, meditated or otherwise sent me protection.

This is not the time to forget the Iraqi people. This is not the time to give up the struggle for peace and justice.

May 18
Los Angeles, CA- 7:30pm Flor y Canto - 3706 N. Figueroa Ave-
in North East LA -
www.florycanto.org
May 19
Santa Cruz, CA
May 20
San Francisco, CA- Anarchist Library at City College 11:30-2pm
May 21
Berkeley, CA 8:30pm - Long Haul Infoshop 3124 Shattuck Ave. at Woolsey
May 22
San Francisco, CA - 4:30pm - New College
May 24
Seattle, WA - Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave with Biotic Baking Brigade sponsored by Left Bank Books
May 25
Vancouver, BC- Spartacus Book Store benefit
May 26
Bellingham, WA - 12-1:30pm World Issues Forum - Fairhaven Auditorium, Western Washington University, 6 pm potluck - 7pm show - Alternatives Library at EcoBell, 1515 "I" St.
May 27
Olympia South Puget Sound Comm.College, noon, bookstore, then an unconfirmed evening event in downtown Oly.
May 29 Portland, OR - Liberty Hall - Black Cross medic gathering
May 28
May 28-31 (date to be confirmed soon) Port Angeles, WA at the Juan de Fuca Festival
May 29
Portland, OR Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy St.
To contact the editorial collective e-mail:
info@weareeverywhere.org

2004-05-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

May 9th
Neo-Baathism

“The US fought the people of Falluja because it said they were Saddamis. Now they are letting the real Saddamis have their old jobs back. For a year we have been told there are no jobs, but suddenly there are 6000 jobs for Baathis.” Saleh was one of a few thousand men at a demonstration that went from Kahromana Square to Firdos Square against the re-employment of all but the highest-ranking former Baathists.

“The Governing Council decided this without consulting the people. Now the Baathis will be representing us. They started killing people before. They never did good things before. It is impossible. There are not enough jobs. They have to give the chance to new people.” Taalib was a politician in the Daawa Party, forced out by the Baathists.

Mehdi was employed by the Ministry of Information, fired along with 50 other workers because he did not join the Baath Party. “Now they are bringing the Baathis back we will face the same problem.” The same is true for teachers. Hassan graduated in 1991 and applied for a job as a teacher but was refused because he was not a Baath Party member.

“The employees who humiliated us are now Ministry of Education employees. After the war they said all the politicians and teachers and others would get our old jobs back but none of us did,” Hassan said.

The decision is only a public announcement and a larger scale advancement of a policy which has gone on since the US took over in Iraq. Adil went to apply for a job in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when it reopened after the war and found the same Baathi still there on reception, refusing to let him in, telling him no, there were no jobs there for him.

Neo-Baathism, the process of slipping the old party back into power, was predictable. When the US and UK talked about De-Baathification they hinted at a massive operation but appeared to plan for much less. The regime figureheads were to be changed, its loyalties, but not its power base. The people were expecting more, especially the ones who lost people to the Baathists.

Adil’s daughter was pushed down the stairs when the Baathis raided his house to look for his brother and the head injury is still causing her problems. He was carrying a set of papers, black and white pictures of men murdered. One cousin died during torture. One was in a high position and was killed by them. His brothers were killed. In all thirteen of his relatives were killed for being Daawa Party members. He was not a member but was nonetheless sacked from his job as an engineer in the Electricity Ministry because of his brothers’ affiliations.

Likewise Hadi found himself pointed at in the street as a child: “There’s the boy whose brother was in the Daawa Party.” His brother was arrested in 1981, an engineer, and his body was brought to the family ten months later. For twenty years Hadi was pointed at. “Now they are trying to bring it back,” he said. Worse, Fadhil’s wife was arrested and spent seven years in jail while he was in exile in Iran, where he spent 25 years altogether. He said he came from Iran and got her out of jail with bribes.

“Why put the criminals back into power?” Jassim demanded. “You have to give rights first to the victims and their families.”

The difficulty is, as with all such regimes, that the majority of the qualified, experienced people, the people who know the workings of the ministries, were members of the Baath Party. As the men explained, you could lose your job for refusing to join the Party, teacher, engineer, journalist. Even students, even children, especially those in orphanages, faced coercion to join the Party.

Yasser was adamant that all of them, every person who joined the Party, were criminals, no matter if they only joined to get or keep a job. Not one of them, for him, ought to be given a job now. Who would teach the children, when all the teachers had to be Party members? People from the Daawa Party and other parties, he said. But they’re not qualified. It didn’t matter: better to have an unqualified person teaching the children than a qualified criminal, better anyone than a Baathi.

There’s something in that, of course. The choice in the end is a difficult one. In some former communist countries everyone who had been a member of the party was sacked. The teachers and so on were young graduates, inexperienced but quick to learn and although the transition was painful, it created a clean break from the past. The young graduates do not pick up the bad practices and corruption that have become second nature to the old ones; the old policies are not maintained by default or by habit.

But where is the justice for people who might argue that they sacrificed their personal beliefs in order to be of use, to teach children or to keep public services going by working in the ministries, putting their education and skills to use and seeing Party membership as a necessary evil, a means to a socially useful end? Should a line be drawn by age: those who were less than eighteen or less than twenty-one might be seen as redeemable?

If they are not sacked, where is the justice for the ones whose jobs were taken away all those years ago. I make no claim to have an answer. The promise of De-Baathification was held out, the promise of exorcism, and it would have caused hardship to some people who did not seem to deserve it and it would have brought healing and restoration, maybe retribution, to some people who lost those same jobs years ago.

Of course, the former Baathis who are now re-employed were not there to tell me their stories. The men there were all like Abdelhassan, sacked from the Ministry of Housing for not joining the party, fighting for ten years to get his job back and now watching it going back to the former Baathi. The men there were saying nothing had changed.

2004-05-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

May 8th
English Lessons

A loud scraping noise and a jolt announced the arrival of the other car in the back driver side of ours. It was gentle, as collisions go, and the deformity of the bumper was quickly rectified but the debate over whose mother had been a canine looked like taking a bit longer to settle, so we paid the driver and found another who, admittedly, didn’t know the way but at least he was moving.

The highway towards the university is partly on a flyover which affords a perfect view of the layers of smog that envelop the city. For a lot of the way the road was quiet, which is not common. “I hope there’s not another Fatwa,” Anna said, referring to the order not long ago from Al-Sadr that students should not go into university.

The young women were all immaculately dressed, not a hair astray between them, let alone an eyebrow, black lines around their eyes, lips painted. This is the only place they get to meet up with their friends, the most likely place to meet a future husband, so apparently it’s worth getting up at stupid o’clock and making the kind of effort I and my friends only used to make for a big night out. I’m sure the wearing of hijabs on campus is less down to conservatism or religious belief than the only way out of hours of tortuous hair styling.

Anna teaches English conversation to the final year students at Baghdad University, who wanted to talk to someone with a British accent and I wanted to talk to them about university twinning links. Because it’s all over the news here the same as everywhere else and because I introduced myself as a clown and trainee lawyer, the topic of conversation moved quickly onto the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

The other students muttered, “Shame,” as Mohammed mentioned it. “There is a contradiction,” someone said, “between what they do and what they say they will do.” Heba said her neighbour’s house had been raided one night and three men, the father and two sons, were taken away. That was seven months ago; two have been freed and one is still detained. The reason given for their arrest, according to Heba, was “talking loudly against the Americans”.

Lots of the students nodded at her account. Mugher’s house was raided too, on false information, he said: someone told the Americans that there were guns in their house. Most of them had heard of the Geneva Conventions, although few knew anything about what they were, and wanted to know how one went about acquiring any rights under them. Ahmed explained the Conventions as, “Some informations about the rights of presidents,” an indication, perhaps, of how limited their use has been in Iraq.

I explained about the different Conventions, the essence of the protections they contain and the problem of enforcement, that there is no court which can uphold them against a powerful country, particularly one which chooses to exempt itself from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Of course, the prisoners in Abu Ghraib are not all classified as Prisoners of War because most were not taken in anything resembling a combat situation.

A young woman called Hana said it’s because they are Muslim. She listed Bosnia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya as places where Muslims are abused either by or with the complicity of the US and UK. Someone else pointed out that the people of Central America have also suffered abuse and torture at the hands of the CIA, along with plenty of other non-Muslim countries.

The belief that religious bigotry is behind all of this runs deep, but we moved on to how power corrupts: power in the hands of prison guards, in the hands of a single and unassailable national leader or in the hands of one all-powerful country. Anna’s family is from Maryland, where several of the guards that have so far been exposed are from. Some of them worked in the big prison there before going to Iraq with the Reserves. She said people are wondering, if this goes on in an Iraqi prison, whether the same thing isn’t happening in Maryland too.

The worst thing, though, the students agreed, was the arrest of women. They said the same as I have heard from a lot of other places, that women are often arrested if the wanted man can’t be found, just like Saddam used to do. Lamia explained, “The families send messages to the women inside the jails to tell them to kill themselves, or not to come home, because they are a disgrace to the family.”

I asked why but she was embarrassed to tell me. Why, if they’re wrongly arrested, is it any shame on her or her family?

“Because they think it is certain that bad things have been done to them in prison,” Haythem said.

“They expect that the woman was raped in the prison and that is a disgrace to the family because they were unfaithful to the husband or they are not virgins anymore. It’s not if it was her fault, but it will be her disgrace,” Mohammed said. The other students looked away. This, more than anything, was too horrible to talk about.

Anna had to tell them about their final test, next week. There was one a couple of weeks ago, accompanied by a fine array of excuses for not turning up. “There was a bomb at the end of my street,” “The highway was blocked by the Americans” and “It was my wedding” were my personal favourites.

Shayma said her new husband heard of her by reputation and came to ask the family for her hand in marriage. The family agreed and the couple met, just once before getting engaged. The engagement lasted eight months and they were married a couple of weeks ago, a couple of weeks before her university finals.

All the girls said they want to get married. “Of course.” It’s not even seen as optional. It’s like asking whether they want to graduate. “Your family will choose your husband,” Beyda explained. “It could be someone you chose, who went to your family to ask them. You have the chance to say no to the man they suggest, but you don’t want to risk that no one else will want you.”

I’ve heard similar things from other women: one friend was married at nineteen to a man she had ‘a little affection’ for and her sister at 27 to a man she didn’t love at all, each of them fearing that if they passed up this chance they might not get another. After a small conference the girls thought perhaps about half of the marriages were happy. Once you were married, though, you couldn’t go out to work. There are, of course, married women who work, but they said it would be expected of them that they stay at home.

The university is not obviously filled with radicalism and student politics. Like most people in Iraq, students have been pounded with politics for enough years to want to avoid them. But still you can see the boundaries of society being pushed on and around the campus. There were young women in knee length skirts and figure hugging clothes that you rarely see elsewhere, perhaps a reflection of the relative safety of the campuses, though a lot of them were still wearing hijabs, and young men and women are able to meet and talk in a way that’s unusual outside.

Equally, though, there were women in full abayas, hijabs and black gloves, with their normal clothes underneath. There was no electricity in all the time I was in the university, which meant no fans and certainly no air conditioning. Papers and files flapped back and forth like giant butterfly wings. Exams must be unbearable in this.

At the end there was a birthday party. Taif, a student on the MA course, won’t be 23 until July, but she wouldn’t be able to invite both male and female friends to her house for a party. This, the end of the academic year, was as close to her birthday as she could celebrate with the whole group. Even in the university Taif stands out, with curly reddish brown hair, a bright yellow patterned skirt, short sleeves and loud, rapid speech in accented but excellent English.

It said “Westlife” on the classroom door, probably the most popular band among young Iraqis, along with Backstreet Boys and N-Sync. Interestingly, the same was true last February, Iraqi youth being apparently less fickle than their British counterparts.

I left laden with e mail addresses, Mohammed requesting that I arrange for Iraqi teachers to come to England to learn because “they don’t know anything.” Ali caught up with me to say, “Some of the students in this class are Shia and some are Sunni and they are sorry that the old regime has gone because they are criminals. Believe me.” Finally Asmaa took my hand and said, “Please, when you go, tell people all that you’ve seen here. Tell them everything that’s happening to us.”

2004-05-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

Please note that the e mail address wildthing@burntmail.com will stop working VERY soon and use wildthing@riseup.net instead.

May 6th
Bombs and Goodbyes

I’ve moved down the street. This has mainly advantages but one notable disadvantage in that I’m a couple of hundred metres closer to “The Green Zone”, as in “They’re bombing the…” The Green Zone, for those who have never needed to know, is the heavily fortified bit which most of the decision makers and foreign workers in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) never leave because of a theory that it’s somehow more dangerous to be on the streets of Baghdad than walled into the most heavily attacked part of it.

Sure enough, first thing in the morning there was a car bomb just outside it. Another advantage of the new apartment is that there’s a generator right outside my window, powering a roaring air conditioner. The Fourteenth of July Bridge provides access from Abu Nawas Street, across the Tigris, and soldiers manning the checkpoint approach the cars waiting to cross. It seems the soldier came as usual to look in the car before it reached the checkpoint and the driver detonated it, killing himself, the soldier and six other Iraqis.

In Falluja they are still finding bodies, bodies in the rubble of the houses crushed by aerial bombing by the US in Al-Julan, Hay Askeri and Shuhada, bodies buried in gardens, bodies being brought to the football fields turned into cemeteries. There are some very tiny graves. There are people still missing. The 600-deaths estimate put out by most of the media seems on the low side.

If the killings of four US mercenaries were the reason for the attack on Falluja then the ratio is at least 150 Iraqis to one American, maybe 250. From the other side, the Iraqi side, the resistance side, the Iraqi life is worth more. If the killings of eighteen Fallujans shortly before the killings of the mercenaries were the spark for the latter then one American life is worth just four and a half Iraqis, a little less than the six-to-one of the car bombing.

There is, of course, a difference between armed self-defence when your town is being invaded, like Falluja, and setting off bombs in the street but in the end it comes down to this: there has been enough killing. There has been too much killing.

The US military says it will begin patrols through the town again on May 10th. The many people of Falluja that I’ve talked to say they can never accept US troops on their streets again after all they’ve done. They say the Mujahedin are still there, are waiting, will kill them if they try to re-enter the town. Perhaps the US command is hoping that, having gone home after so long away, people will have lost their will to go through it all again and will beg their sons and brothers and fathers not to fight anymore, leaving the troops an unhindered passage back into the town.

There’s already been a massacre in Falluja, a living town turned into a desert of humanity where to step outside to look for food and water or to flee for safety was to risk death from a US gunman on top of the next building, where young men died fighting, in uniforms and in tracksuit pants and trainers. With every death, the journey back gets longer. There doesn’t need to be any more.

Meanwhile we’ve been trying to get into Najaf and Kerbala, where Sattar is setting up field hospitals to help deal with the sick and the expected and actual casualties. He’s a civil engineer, now running a driving company since the sanctions and the Baathists combined to eradicate the possibility of work that he was qualified for. During the war, while looking for some neighbours in the hospitals, he realised that hundreds of people needed help and volunteered. In Najaf the troops closed down the main hospital, which houses almost two thirds of the 950 or so beds the city has.

The extra difficulty in Najaf – apart from the obvious one of US troops preparing to attack the city - is the increasing number of factions involved. The various leaders are starting to publicly express disagreement and people in the town, dependent on the pilgrim trade for their income, are none too impressed with the economic effects of the stand off. Again every step, every fracture created, is one bit further from peace.

That all this is going on makes it hard to leave, that and the fact that I love this place and quite a few of the people in it, but I’m going to, in a few days, as I knew I’d have to one day. It’s impossible to get the Boomchucka Bus going at the moment – because of the security problems and the heat, not as a result of any kind of engine problems – and it’s already hotter than the hottest summer day in Britain and I’m too tired to want to do anything.

I went to say goodbye to the boys. Six months ago they were filthy, glue addicted, violent, with no self-esteem at all, living on the streets around Abu Nawas and Baba Sherji, the ones who were rejected by all the new orphanages setting up because of their anti-social behaviour or who couldn’t settle in one and returned to the streets. Nahoko used to wash their clothes and feed them. Donna and Uzma and some others came and set up a shelter for them in a basement which provided a stepping stone for most of them to move on into long term accommodation in an orphanage run by the Kurdish Children’s Fund.

Now Aakan is back with his mum and has been for a few weeks. Maybe he’ll end up back at the house for a few more spells, respite or space or something, but they’re working on it. A few of the older ones have got jobs a few hours a week and seven are going to school, including Ahmed and Laith, who Imad and I used to play counting games with on Abu Nawas, when they weren’t dazed on solvents. You couldn’t have imagined them going to school then, or when the circus first worked with them in January.

Nothing’s changed at Mother Teresa’s orphanage. Yasser and Omar and Alaa pick up more and more English each time I see them: Alaa’s most-used words seem to be, “What are you doing?” You could set up a balloon animal factory in their room and none of them would get tired of it. Omar likes trying to pump them up but hasn’t quite got the strength or co-ordination to push the air in. Ilyas is still singing “Oh Donna” over and over again. Probably we ought to have taught her another song for the sake of variety. Some Australian doctors are going to give Noor some prosthetic limbs.

I know there are issues about Mother T herself but the nuns and volunteers there are good people and it’s the best place I’ve seen here for disabled kids. They asked us if we can get some child-sized exercise bikes. Most of the kids can’t walk and there’s no way for them to get any exercise. Not being the engineering type, I thought we could just get a small bike and put it on a stand instead of wheels. Alas it’s not quite so simple because the front wheel needs some resistance, so we’re going to show the diagram to the welders next door and see what they can do.

A few things have changed at the camp at Shuala. There’s been no aid at all for a month, partly because most of what was available went to Falluja and partly because most of the international organisations had to pull out for security reasons. There are no jobs for the same reasons – the security problems and the fighting. Even we are afraid to go out, they said, even the Iraqis. Wasn’t I afraid to go out?

The women scolded me for staying away so long, asked where I’d been. “The children miss you. They’re always shouting ‘Boomchucka’ and asking when you’re coming.” I apologised, from under a heap of children but still it was good for the soul of a very tired clown.

Aala explained, unprompted, about Falluja as the kids played with the drawing things I brought, Abdullah covered in felt tip ink. The old Iraqi flag features a lot in kids’ pictures lately, since the new flag was introduced, Shia and Sunni alike. These are the ones I’ll miss most, the tribe of girls and Abdullah and Abbas who have become more and more bold and boisterous over the months, rediscovered the clowns within themselves, and Marwa, the beautiful, clever one, now twelve, who wants to be a doctor but hasn’t been to school for over a year.

Abu Ahmed has been ousted as representative of the camp and Abu Bassim elected to replace him. Beyda rolled her eyes as Abu Ahmed explained the conspiracy behind his removal and, when he was gone, everyone else explained the conspiracy for which he was removed. Mistrust is virulent. Both the conspiracies and the conspiracy theories are products partly of the love of intrigue combined with a lack of other entertainment and partly of the sores of years of living with surveillance and corruption.

Between them they’ve raised the money to run some more electricity cables from the nearby pylons into the camp and Saida wanted to know if I could bring them fans to keep the mosquitoes off at night. Of course I couldn’t, but I did say I’d try to find an aid agency that could, and one that could pay for her operation as well as carrying on looking for one that could provide a doctor and build the school.

We gossiped. Beyda grumbled, understandably, about her husband’s preference for his other wife. “He only comes to me to say hello and then he goes to her. I’ve only got one daughter.” But her sister Fadma, who got married in January, is pregnant now, due in November. Fadma was engaged for five years before she and Ali could afford to get married.

Ali was called up to the army when he was eighteen, as usual. He and his friends turned up for training but weren’t given proper uniforms, food or wages. The money wasn’t enough to support the two young nieces and other family members he was responsible for supporting, so after his first month he paid off an officer to give him false papers and cover for him and didn’t return from leave.

“I carried on working, using the false papers, until I was caught at a checkpoint and I was put in prison for a year in Kirkuk, where my unit was based. When I was released I was returned to my unit and I did the same again but after that whenever I was caught I paid a bribe to the police who caught me, so I didn’t go back to jail again. When the war happened all that was over, but Bush has betrayed us again.”

2004-05-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

May 5th
The Not-Quite News About Prisons

The thing about prison is that you’re locked away. No one can see you unless they’re let in or you’re let out. Suddenly – and I am relieved that the world knows about it at last – the abuse of prisoners in Iraq has become partly visible. The Photos made news in a way that countless Iraqi people’s stories did not.

The Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) has been taking statements and testimonies from released detainees and their relatives for months – www.cpt.org – as has an awesome Italian woman called Paola Gasparoli and there are several Iraqi human rights organisations working on individual cases. And yes, they do also work on cases relating to the old government.

The pictures which have been published cause outrage and rightly so but they are the tip of the iceberg.

Women are often detained because their husbands are wanted. There have been many reports of them being kept naked. There have also been a lot of women detained because they were prostitutes used by high-ranking officials of the old leadership. A woman human rights worker from one of the major organisations working on detainee issues disappeared into a US prison for two months.

It is known that many women have been detained, including over a dozen bank clerks, to force them to pay for the discrepancy between the genuine currency handed in and that given out in the January changeover. They were told to pay out new currency for all notes handed in, even suspect ones, because there was no way of verifying which were real. But to be imprisoned is deeply shameful for a woman, mainly because it is assumed that she will have been raped, so most are unwilling to talk about what happened, even confidentially and there is as a result very little information about women detainees.

One prisoner told CPT about hearing rumours of a mass grave under the prison. He said that he and fellow prisoners dug under their tent and found recently dead bodies a few feet down. There were stories, independently back up by various former detainees, of demonstrations against conditions in the camp being brutally suppressed by soldiers and another man reported one incident where the prisoners were shouting “Freedom” and soldiers opened fire, killing four men and injuring three.

There are reports in the cases known to me, to CPT and to the local human rights organisations of the following:

Extrajudicial executions during a raid which turned out to be on the wrong house.
Violent arrests of children from their school.
A prisoner having his toenail being pried off by guards.
Prisoners being forced to swallow liquid.
Psychological torture: being left blindfolded in an open air passage, wit a tank driving towards them so they thought they would be run over and killed.
A minor reported having his buttocks held apart by soldiers who were kicking his anus.

The following appear routinely throughout the statements of detainees and their families:

Beating and kicking of prisoners and of residents during house raids; soldiers and guard treading on backs and heads
Guns being pointed at children or held to their heads during raids.
Denial of water
Denial of food or very low quantities and poor quality of food, sometimes including pork which is forbidden for Muslims.
Denial of blankets, shade or air conditioning.
Excessive chemicals being added to water so it is dangerous to drink.
Denial of washing and toilet facilities, both within the prison camps and during long road transfers.
Hands being tied behind the back for prolonged periods, including when this prevents the prisoners from drinking water.
Hands being tied so tightly that the arms swell.
Denial of medical attention or being taken to a military ‘doctor’ who kicks and otherwise abuses or else ignores and refuses to examine the prisoner.
Overcrowding of tents so that there is not enough room to lie down to sleep.
Prisoners being forced to kneel or squat all day and to remain in the sun all day in temperatures of up to 120 degrees F.
Detention of minors.
Individuals being kept for their entire detention in only underwear or nightwear, having been refused the chance to get dressed when arrested at night, sometimes suffering severe sunburn as a result.
Severe verbal abuse.
Theft of money and jewellery by US soldiers during the raid.
Failure to return documentation, IDs, passports and other personal property that was with the prisoner when detained.
Use of Kuwaiti military as translators and prison guards, who are apparently particularly aggressive with Iraqi detainees, believing that they are taking revenge for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Additionally there is no provision for detainees to be given access to legal advice or representation. From arrest, it can take weeks even to be processed. There is limited provision for family visits and relatives have to wait at prison gates with the tag number of the prisoner. Most are told to return in several weeks or months.

It may be impossible for the family to find out the tag number, because names are transliterated into English and stored in a computer. There is no standardised transliteration system for Arabic into English and a tiny difference in the spelling of a name could make it impossible to trace the prisoner, leaving the family uncertain which jail the person is in or even whether he is still alive and lost in the system somewhere.

There is a huge amount of evidence that US forces are acting on false information and ‘malicious tips’ which they do not bother to investigate or verify before carrying out raids and arrests. Accusations include harbouring wanted members of the old regime who had in fact already been arrested, being a member of the Fedayeen or trafficking weapons, with one man who had been repeatedly tortured by the Baathists being jailed for being a Baathist.

The fact that the ‘information’ is false is evidenced by the fact that so many are released without any charges or evidence being brought against them. Of 63 former or current detainees interviewed by CPT members, not one was convicted of anything. Unfortunately, because the review board meets so irregularly, it can take many months before the release without charge is effected.

Mass arrests also occur, with soldiers seizing every man in a given area after an incident, which may have involved only one or two individuals, or during a raid. In some cases the raid has been on the wrong house and the soldiers have admitted the mistake but nonetheless arrested the young men in the house.

The detentions often mean the loss of the family’s only earner and also the only driver, so that children can’t get to school, and in some cases loss of the family home if they can’t pay the rent. There are indications that some families have managed to retrieve individuals from the prisons by way of bribes to people working with the coalition forces. Others say they would gladly pay if they could find someone reliable to give money to. Depression is ubiquitous among the prisoners and some families report severe behavioural changes following release.

This information relates to US prisons. I’m sorry that I haven’t got any for the British troops in the south. There are one or two local human rights groups down there but fewer international activists and fewer journalists. The pressure needs to be kept up so the detainees don’t just disappear again. The governments involved have to be pressed for more information and to take responsibility for and control of their troops.

Lawyers acting for the US soldiers charged are claiming that it was a system wide problem and their clients are not responsible because they weren’t given clear guidelines. Do you really need a guideline to know you’re not meant to beat, kick and sexually abuse a prisoner? But their individual guilt shouldn’t be used to absolve those higher up the system of theirs.

The commanders are responsible, right to the top of the military, right to the political leadership, the ministers and secretaries of state whose job it was to provide clear rules, supervision, protections, to know what was going on and to get rid of individuals responsible. They won’t take that responsibility of their own accord. It’s left to us to persuade them.

2004-05-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

A Letter from the Pentagon and Ray

A letter was forwarded to me from some people asking what I thought. It’s a letter from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq, complaining about the “very poor job” the media has made of “covering everything that has happened.” It proceeds to give a “list of the things that has happened in Iraq recently” and asks recipients to pass it on to their friends so they “can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy.”

It’s strongly reminiscent of an e mail that went round a few months ago with the subject line, “The Good News”, containing excerpts from a speech by Rumsfeld or Powell or one of those, each sentence beginning with, “Since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1st…” followed by some benefit that had supposedly accrued to the Iraqi people in the aftermath of that event.

It’s also strongly reminiscent of the “letters” that started going around soon after that declaration, which were forwarded over the internet and published on the front pages of local newspapers in the signatories’ home towns, that were later exposed as having been commissioned, often written, by commanding officers. In many cases the soldier concerned had only signed the bottom of a standard letter.

That’s not to say this medic didn’t write the letter himself to accompany the Pentagon’s list of good things. I don’t know. But at the end he challenges “anyone, anywhere, to dispute me on these facts.” Alright then. I will. I’ll start with the stuff about schools, because I’ve been spending a bit of time in schools with the circus and the twinning project.

Firstly this:

>* Girls are allowed to attend school.

Yes. Girls are allowed to attend school. And the point is what? Girls were also allowed to attend school before the war, and college and university. Young women studied for masters degrees and PhDs and went on into good jobs. For sure, in some rural areas, girls left school early and still do – a cultural issue which isn’t going to be quickly changed, but in the cities and towns, girls have been going to school for decades. The statement is not false: I would not challenge Ray on the fact that girls are allowed to go to school, but it seems intended to imply that this is something new since the war and that appears to me dishonest.

>* School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.

I don’t have official figures but the teachers in the schools I spent time in said that a lot of children, especially girls, have dropped out of school since the war because of the security problems with both the journey to school and the schools themselves. Poverty and the need for the children to contribute to the family’s income and psychological problems associated with trauma and stress are also raising the drop out rate according to several head teachers around the country.

I don’t know which “levels before the war” Ray is referring to. Perhaps he means the day before the war, when the schools closed down and just a few kids went to say goodbye to each other, not knowing how long it would be before they could go back. Education was free and compulsory before the war, but since the sanctions were imposed, that was not the reality as children started to drop out because of poverty.

An Iraqi friend and his English wife once described to me the changes in Iraq from the nationalisation of the oil industry which funded the social programmes like education as well as the war wit Iran and the building of Saddam’s palaces, when children started wearing shoes and going to school, stopped begging on the streets, up to the sanctions, where the children stopped going to school and started begging, barefoot, on the streets again.

Still I would like to see the evidence that says school attendance is up, let alone by such an enormous proportion, from any genuine level before the war.

>* Over 1,500 schools have been renovated and rid of the weapons stored there so education can occur.
Is there any evidence that there were weapons stored in those schools?

The renovation of schools has been one of the big abuses of Iraqi “reconstruction money”. A lot of contracts have gone to Bechtel, a multinational company linked to the US government. It takes contracts commonly in the region of $75,000 and immediately subcontracts for two thirds or three quarters of that price, creaming off a few thousand dollars for no work whatsoever. The sub contractor then subcontracts again and the work is eventually done for a fraction of the money, often poorly.

A friend in Nasariya explained that at a local school the new fence fell down, injuring two girls, soon after the “renovation”, which mainly consisted of painting the walls, with poor quality paint and brushes so there were bristles stuck to the walls.

Among the schools I worked in with the circus there was barely one with windows intact, working toilets and plumbing, adequate classroom furniture and so on. A lot of them were in poor areas where the help would be most needed but where it has been least given.
>* Textbooks that don't mention Saddam are in the schools for the first
time in 30 years.

The new curriculum has not yet been written. There was an intention to reprint the old text books with the Saddam pictures removed and a few offending pages taken out but there were problems with the awarding of the contracts and in fact most of the contracts were never awarded. Consequently teachers all over the country are still using the remaining old textbooks, with the Saddam pictures and unwanted pages torn out. There are not enough text books to go around so the kids are sharing between too many and there are no other teaching materials, at least in the many schools I’ve been in, so all the teachers can do is lecture the children.
> >* The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from
ships faster.

… by SSA Marine, formerly Stevedoring Services of America, yet another US company brought in to do work which could be given to Iraqi companies. The company has a terrible record on labour rights and that’s been reflected in the experience of Iraqis working at the port, with the management making strenuous efforts to keep out the press and international organisations and suppressing unionisation among the dock workers in breach of international labour law and uman rights conventions.

> >* 100% of the hospitals are open and fully staffed, compared to 35% before the war.

I’m sorry but this is just not true. I’ve no idea what proportion of hospitals were open before the war. Many were not fully staffed, because under the sanctions there was too little cash in the economy to pay public sector workers.

Many hospitals are still short of qualified nurses because most of the nurses prior to the 1991 war were foreigners, who left before that war and didn’t return because under the sanctions they couldn’t earn a proper wage.

Hospitals are operating without enough cleaners, sometimes one cleaner for two floors, so the patients’ relatives are helping to clean the floors and jobs like disinfecting the curtains don’t get done at all.

There aren’t enough senior doctors so in a lot of hospitals, junior doctors are working without proper supervision, having to contact seniors by telephone for advice and opinions, which have to be delivered without actual contact with the patient.

As well, doctors are having to rely on international aid agencies to provide them with a lot of the medicines they need because the Ministry of Health and the US administration is failing to adequately supply them with medicines and equipment.

In addition, in areas of conflict, US and other troops have been closing down civilian hospitals. This happened in Sadr City / Thawra, in Falluja, in Najaf. I got a message yesterday that the main hospital in Najaf has been closed down by US troops, from one of the doctors down there, who said the main hospital has 600 beds, and all the rest of Najaf’s hospitals have a combined total of 350. I can’t explain this. Even if they claim they fear the hospital will be used by fighters, they cannot legally or morally close down the civilian hospital.

In addition to this apparent collective punishment through the hospitals, US soldiers have been shooting at civilian ambulances. There are many many testimonies from doctors who were working in ambulances that this happened and I know it to be true because it also happened to me when I was working in an ambulance.

> >* Students are taught field sanitation and hand washing techniques to prevent the spread of germs.
> >* Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations.

I’m not clear what the Pentagon and Ray are trying to imply here. I’m sure the students are taught about health issues and given vaccinations, but these things happened before the war as well. Unicef had a huge immunisation programme running before the war, going door to door, centred on the public health centres. They use this unclear phrasing wich states what the current situation is but gives no indication as to what change this represents from life in the months and years before the war, never mind before the sanctions. It also gives no indication of who is making the improvement if any is claimed: who is vaccinating the children? The Ministry of Health, or international aid agencies?

> >* Sewer and water lines are installed in every major city.

Again, it’s not clear how this has changed. Prior to the sanctions, sewer and water systems were commonplace. Many of the pipes were damaged in the 1991 war and couldn’t be replaced for years because the pipes were put on hold by the sanctions committee of the Security Council, lest the sewage pipes should be turned into the fabled “supergun”. Pardon me, but there’s only one thing you can fire out of a sewage pipe.

Not far from where I live, there is a lake of sewage in the street. This doesn’t go away even when it hasn’t rained for weeks, but when it does rain, sewage flows in the street all over the place. I couldn’t comment with any confidence on the comparative capacity now and at the undefined period ‘before the war’ as below…

> >Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.
>* The country now receives 2 times the electrical power it did before the war.

…but I can say with certainty that the electricity is still erratic and has been for the last 6 months since I got back here. It’s hot now and the power is on for two or three hours at a time, off as much as it is on, cut without warning and with no real pattern that enables us to plan things around the lights and air conditioning. When we haven’t got electricity, some of the time we don’t have running water either.

A big part of the problem is that the power plants were built by French and Russian companies and their control as now been handed to US companies which are not allowed to buy replacement parts from those countries, as a punishment for their refusal to join in the war. That alone hampers the efficiency of the power generators. It seems the agenda is to sow that the current plants can’t be repaired and that US companies will have to be contracted to build new ones.

See Dahr Jamail’s report on Bechtel and water issues on Public Citizen, a Washington based website or get the link from the start of his blog, via www.newstandardnews.net

> >* Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever

Oh yes. The telephones. A lot of the landline network is still not functioning after all the exchanges were bombed during the war. Phones were allowed and common before the war, but mobiles and satellite phones were not. The mobile phone network now exists, although it’s hopeless: it’s frequently impossible to make or receive calls, sometimes for hours on end. A lot of international calls just never get through at all. The cost of phones and lines are out of range for most Iraqis and credit can only be bought in dollars, not Iraqi Dinars.

The Iraqnas only work in Baghdad, not even on the outskirts and the phones on the southern networks only work in their respective areas, so if you travel around the country you either can’t use your phone or you have to have another one for the other network. Within each area there’s a monopoly, so there’s no way to have a phone if you want to boycott the overpriced and incompetent network you’re on.
> >* 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.

Around forty percent of the new army has quit, deserted, refused to fight or taken action against the US, according to one of the US army’s own spokespeople. I wouldn’t dispute the number of ICD police, but “securing the country” is an interesting way to describe what they’re doing. That’s not to question their commitment, but the country is a very long way from “secure”. The Iraqi Police in my experience are very friendly, polite people who drive around in fours and fives in pick ups and avoid trouble whenever they can because they haven’t got adequate back up.

Another big security problem is the impossibility of telling a genuine checkpoint from a fake one. The Iraqi police, ICDC and army haven't been properly equipped so that although the IPs all wear the same blue shirts and armbands, they’re often out in jeans and trainers. Likewise the ICDC wear combat uniforms and whatever shoes they choose. One of the main ways international aid agencies are advised to tell a fake checkpoint is by the uniforms – it’s easy enough to fake an armband, but standardised boots, ideally imported and difficult to get in-country, are much harder to copy or steal. This has been the cause of a lot of thefts.

>* An interim constitution has been signed.

The constitution, the Governing Council, the new flag are almost universally unpopular, the latter viewed as a superficial irrelevance when so many needs remain unfulfilled. The Governing Council are seen as puppets, “here for the prizes,” corrupt, a criminal, in Chalabi’s case, even among people who don’t oppose the occupation per se.

As well, people are beginning to realise that “power” is not to be handed over to them at the end of June, so the Pentagon and Ray are on thin ice when they try to flag things like the interim constitution as a political achievement. Many Iraqi people are concerned that the form of federalism now created (rather than the idea of federalism itself) exacerbates divisions and sets up problems for the future.

> >* Elections are taking place in every major city, and city councils are in place.

But the fact remains that the bodies elected are largely without power and will continue to be so even after the “power handover”. Ask most people what they want, what they need, and it’s not elections but security. The CPA funds certain activities and one of their favourites is “democratisation”. To this end they’ve opened several Women’s Centres which teach democratisation, i.e. they tell women why it’s important for them to vote. They’ve found little favour among the Iraqi women because it’s just not a priority.

>* The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.

Hooray!!

To quote someone I met, returning to his home in Falluja after several weeks seeking refuge in Baghdad from the fighting, “Let them take our oil. Let them take it and go and leave us in peace. Just let us live in peace.”

Ray concludes by telling readers not to believe for a second that these people don’t want US troops here. I’m unclear which people he’s referring to. Don’t believe for a second that there’s a unanimous Iraqi opinion. But a significant development, I think it’s fair to call it an ongoing trend, is the alienation of those who were and should be the US’s main Iraqi allies, those who were most brutalised by Saddam. The killing of civilians in Sadr City / Thawra, the frequent house raids, the closure of the hospital have turned the area, which at least to some extent welcomed the US troops, into “the black zone”.

Ray says he has met many, many Iraqi people who want the troops there. I have met many, many who don’t and a few who do and a whole spectrum in between. Part of the problem that has been created by the US administration here is that decisions are made by people who don’t walk the streets of Iraq. The majority of the foreigners working in the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) don’t leave the boundaries of the “Green Zone”. Many of those making the policy in the education sector have never visited an Iraqi school, for instance.

I’ve had e mails from soldiers serving in Iraq who never get to leave their bases or the Green Zone, who read my writing for information about what’s happening beyond their bases, and fair play to them for wanting to know, because there are others who are not interested at all. I had another e mail, very similar to this one, a few months ago, with a little introduction from whoever forwarded the e mail to whoever forwarded it to me, saying “This guy seems to have a pretty good handle on things…” and proceeded to quote meaningless figures about electricity generation that contributed nothing at all to the reader’s understanding how ow life was for ordinary Iraqis.

Finally Ray says he is “very disgusted by the way this period of rebuilding has been portrayed” in the media. Of course we would all like to see our own view on things put forward, me included. We would all like to be told what we want to hear. But I’ll tell you a story that illustrates a bit how the media works here.

Just after I came back from Falluja I was invited by a friend who works with CNN to come out with them for something. They’d been more or less cooped up in their hotel / bureau for weeks. Their only reports from Falluja were coming from reporters embedded with the military, so their footage was literally from the point of view of the US soldiers, usually shot over one of their shoulders. Fair enough, it was hard to get into Falluja and their stringers in the town had fled with their families or were otherwise indisposed – maybe pinned in their homes like the rest of the civilians left in the town.

So we interviewed the man from the Red Crescent and then headed out to meet some families who had fled Falluja and were squatting a half-completed building. On the way through Shuala, within sight of the long term squatter camp that the circus worked in regularly, there was a burnt out military vehicle at the roadside. It had been there a while. It wasn’t smoking, had been comprehensively stripped, probably happened during the fighting in Shuala before my first trip to Falluja, more than a week earlier.

Still the security man ordered the driver to turn the car around and go back to the Red Crescent. They weren’t staying there. Why not, I asked. Wasn’t that enough for me, he demanded. The burnt out vehicle hadn’t even registered with me, just part of the scenery, an every day sight. What was it going to do? Jump up and chase us? I suppose that’s why he’s CNN’s security adviser and I’m not – one of the reasons anyway. So we went back to the Red Crescent and nothing happened in Iraq that day, not in the media anyway.

I know, I know, it’s different if you’re a multinational corporation with insurance premiums to pay and pension obligations and if you’re making decisions on safety on someone else’s behalf and I know, because I cuddled his friends for hours, that CNN have already lost someone in this conflict. But another Iraqi friend who works for the BBC has been frustrated that the correspondents were barely leaving their compound, waiting for Reuters to come back and tell them where the explosion was.

That’s before you even start on that dread dictator, The News Agenda. During the war, the first house bombed was a big story, the second a bit of a story and the third and the fiftieth and the hundred-and-eighth unreported and unseen. It’s the same now. As soon as something becomes commonplace, it’s not news, however appalling.

Only now, when the world has seen The Photos, do the big networks want to hear about the thousands of stories the Christian Peace Team and others have recorded from former detainees who were abused and tortured by US prison staff in Abu Ghraib and the airport, though those stories have been publicly available for months. Likewise there were dozens of doctors coming out of Falluja with stories like mine about US soldiers shooting at their ambulances but it was only when a white English woman told the story that it became ‘news’.

So yeah, like you, Ray, I’ve got some issues with the way the situation in Iraq has been reported, with the unquestioning acceptance of the US government and Pentagon line by most of the US media and the acquiescence of too much of the UK media in the equivalent British government versions of events.

And Ray, if you want to discuss the situation of ordinary people in Iraq, I’m happy to talk about that with you.

2004-05-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

May 2nd
Going Home

There is life, again, on the streets of Falluja. There are hugs, there are greetings, there are children watching the town refill from gateways that look out onto the roads where we ran and rode with stretchers and bodies and terrified families. Boys waved at each other across rooves that have been, for the last month, the preserve of snipers. The patchwork of territories and no man’s lands is home again.

On the outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday afternoon a US army fuel tanker was burning furiously and at the checkpoint on the main highway beside the Hay Askeri [Military Quarter] district of Falluja, US soldiers were turning away an exhausted looking family crammed into a Kia, a small Chinese made minibus. Thus far you might not notice anything has changed. Their orders, in the last couple of minutes, were not to let the press in either. Gunfire sounded. They said there were still snipers over there, indicating the buildings of Hay Askeri, couldn’t say whether theirs or the Mujahedin’s.

The Iraqi soldiers wearing armbands of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were new though, in camouflage uniforms and assorted shoes. Part of the security problem in the last year has been that the Coalition hasn’t properly equipped the Iraqi Police and army. It’s common to see the police in blue shirts, IP arm bands and their ordinary jeans and trainers, which makes it hard to tell a genuine checkpoint from an Ali Baba one.

The checkpoint was, apparently arbitrarily, only letting through 200 families in a day, of around 8000 thought to have left, so the thin dusty back roads that were our way in and out during the fighting were the main route for the returners. Saad came through earlier in the day to check that it was safe. There was no fighting on Friday or Saturday and no checkpoints this way, he said.

Seventeen family members were travelling back together in a pick up. They left 26 days ago, on the fourth day of fighting, because of the air strikes. They stayed, crowded, with relatives in Abu Ghraib. They turned off the road onto a dusty track beside the river, two men and a woman in the front, another man in the back holding up a white cloth, thirteen year old Hussein leaning on the bare pole behind the cab. One of the boys held his arms in the air in celebration as we drove into Falluja.

Everyone raised a hand in greeting to the ICDC guards who waved us straight through a checkpoint. Everyone raised a hand also to the Mujahedin fighters in ones, twos and little clusters around the town, their faces still cloth covered, Kalashnikovs still at hand, walking in and out of houses, one holding up the Iraqi flag, one in a black balaclava guarding a corner.

They are waiting, Saad said. “They will shoot the Americans if they come back. We will not accept their patrols. We blame only the Americans for what happened. The fighting in Falluja was because they were shooting civilians. Let them have our oil, we don’t care, but let us live in peace. This is only people from Falluja fighting, not foreigners, because of the tribes. If the Americans kill a father or a brother then the tribes want revenge, but we don’t let strangers in.”

A car flashed its lights, slowed down, passed bags of food to the people in the pick up, offered another to us. Women, men, small children stood by a shop, its shutters open, food on sale in scales and bags. As the pick up slowed down the kids jumped out, ran in through the gate as if to check, then dashed back out to fetch me. Hussein and Betul wanted me to see their garden, a small green space with slender trees growing up poles. They pointed out where flowers had been in the spring, asked for their photo taken, two brothers and two sisters, all dwarves.

Hussein’s best friend and next door neighbour had been back a couple of hours, a tall thin boy with dark smudges of malnutrition under his eyes. They shook hands, Hussein bouncing with excitement, Ali looking nervous and exhausted. Their dad showed us the hole in the ground that they’d had to use as a well after the electricity was cut to the whole town, early on, as collective punishment.

Abdulbakr’s house was just around the corner, a pile of refilled plastic water bottles in the corner of a room whose floor was covered with pebbles. A trench runs through the hallway because there’s no drain, a couple of blankets spread out beside it. The back of the house is open, steps leading up to the roof. It wasn’t damaged by the bombing, they said: “We were already poor, without them attacking us.”

The last drop off was a few streets away, the children running across the road to reunite with the other part of the family who got back earlier in the day, having stayed with a different set of relatives, cuddling the baby, reorienting, seeing that things are still where they were, Safa’a wiping her eyes on her abaya amid her laughter, embracing her own children and everyone else’s. You have to come back, she insists, when we’ve straightened things out.

Before we left they gave us a list of phone numbers for the rest of the extended family still in Baghdad, so we could call them when we got back to town and tell them it’s safe to go home. The fuel tanker was still burning as we drove back at sunset and still this morning, as aid vehicles and families flowed towards the checkpoint.

Again the seemingly arbitrary limit of two hundred families a day was in place, a family comprising up to 25 individuals. All but the driver, women with infants and invalids were required to walk through the checkpoint, to be frisked with a wand while the vehicle was checked with mirrors on the underside. Lots of them left a month ago, just as the fighting started, and have moved between relatives ever since.

Almost as many were leaving as coming in, driving out to fetch the family members still outside. Nazar was going to fetch five surviving relatives from hospital, his mother Zahra and his one year old nephew Sejad killed by a missile that landed among them, fired from a US plane as they tried to flee their home, walking to find a vehicle.

A local man, Salam, with a small minibus had already brought back his own family and started ferrying others back in. He’d brought two families from Baghdad this morning, was returning for more, hadn’t heard that only two hundred would be allowed through in the day. It would take him another couple of hours to get back so he’d have to go in the back way.

He stayed in farms around the town through the fighting; his own house was fine but there are many, he said, whose houses have been destroyed in Hay Julan, Hay Shuhada and Hay Askeri. It’s not a happy home coming for everyone. Maki at the clinic said there are still people missing, who haven’t yet turned up either living or dead, and the casualty figures from the different clinics, hospitals and mosques have yet to be collated, several hundred, at least, who can never come home.

2004-05-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

April 30th
Where Have All the Women Gone?

Zaid’s sister Zainab got engaged today. Everyone was exhausted from dancing all afternoon at the party but it was the first time we’d seen each other in months so no one was too tired to dance some more. Tying sashes around my hips and their own, they moved the rug to create a dance floor under the ceiling fan.

You generally see the women in anything from long loose clothes, with or without a hijab, to a full on tent, gliding along like a black phantom with even their faces covered, but the underwear stalls in the market can be taken as fair warning of what might lie beneath.

The tassels of the sashes flicked wildly back and forth with the movement of their hips, their heads back, shoulders quivering, swaying down to the ground where they kneel facing each other shaking their busts, wiggling everything there is to wiggle, sensuous, sexual, energetic, whether the music is Arabic or western.

They do a clicking thing with the fingers, palms together, clamped by the thumbs, fingers outstretched, the first finger of the right hand making a loud clicking against the knuckle of the first finger on the left. There’s another rhythm, holding one hand above the other, clicking the fingers on one hand then the other then clapping the palm of the top hand against the closed fist of the lower hand so it makes a sound like a horse galloping.

Asmaa has been looking for work but can’t find any. She used to teach computing before Bibo, the younger child, was born, first in a public college then, after she had Mimi, in private lessons. Now there’s no work to be had; women, especially, struggle to find jobs because the sanctions and then the war have extinguished so many jobs. It’s boring and frustrating to be at home all day, especially for someone like Asmaa with good qualifications, not going out because there’s nowhere to go if you’re unemployed and it’s not safe to wander about.

“We do all the work of the house and then we chat on the internet and we download music and dance and we watch TV.” They know they’re among the luckier ones to be able to afford the internet in their house. I had to laugh at myself, watching TV with them, music videos on the Arabic channels, again a mixture of western and Arabic singers, gorgeous women in tiny clothes gyrating. Since the recent foreigner-kidnapping spate, we’ve all been disappearing under mountains of clothes, hijabs – the head covering, jubas – the long coats and abayas - the loose black cloaks.

When we were held in Falluja some of the guards were of the belief that even the most innocuous music could encourage dangerous sexual feelings in women. It was “haram” – sinful. We invented the term “haramovision” for all the raunchy dancing on TV when we got back. Asmaa and her sisters in law raucously told rude jokes, talked openly about sex. Like my friend Sabriya, their favourite channels are the sex channels, which they watch for both entertainment and ideas. “Iraqi women love the sex channels,” they both said.

Even Sabriya’s tiny house – a single bed in a square cabin of metal, a wooden extension built on to it and an outdoor kitchen and toilet – still has a TV. For those who can’t go out it’s a breathing tube to the world outside. Women have not completely disappeared: you still see them in the markets, on the buses, working in the banks, begging in the traffic queues. You still see them inside the universities. In Karrada you still see them, a few of them, dressed up and shopping.

But as Asmaa said, there is nowhere to go. The coffee shops are the preserve of men. The streets are dangerous. The shops are just depressing if you haven’t got any money to spend. There are no cinemas. There are few places where women can meet and just share gossip and company.

In the Sufi mosque at Friday prayers the women greeted each other with hugs and hundreds of kisses, whispering eagerly at the back while the kids frisked about, until a woman in a huge white outfit, the Prayer Police, came past to tell them to face the front, be quiet, keep their children under control. When she’d gone the chatter would start again.

Lines of women prayed, standing, bowing, kneeling, a young girl praying next to her mum, a smaller one going through some of the motions but mostly trying to balance on her head in some semblance of the bow from a kneeling position. A tiny, curly headed girl in a white frilly dress danced about, tumbled over one of the grown ups.

The Prayer Prefect came through the hall spraying rosewater on all the women’s faces, her own face now joyous, the severity gone, stopping to plant kisses on some of the foreheads, including ours, so the room smelled of roses and the breeze from the four fans on each pillar cooled our skin where it was wet and not swathed in abaya.

The imam’s voice was piped through from the men’s part of the mosque next door, asking for strength for the people of Falluja, calling on them not to give in to the Americans. Everyone moved to the front to stand close together for the final prayer and then the real business began of exchanging the week’s news. Men gathered outside waiting for wives and sisters and in-laws who were queuing for the return of their shoes, reluctant to cut short the only social occasion of the week.

Leaving the room, some of the women pulled down face coverings so that only their eyes were exposed, even the space between the eyes concealed behind a spur of fabric. Sabriya told us that in her neighbourhood the most heavily covered women are often the most promiscuous. Apparently there is a way of having intimate relations without, biologically speaking, losing one’s virginity.

And then they were gone, hidden away for another week and I went on to the tent camp because I promised to go back and play games again with the kids from Falluja. There are 97 families living there now and the overflow who can’t be squeezed in are staying in a school nearby. There’s a cooking tent now, so they’re not reliant on local people to provide food. The toilets are built and a water tank is working. The kids’ tent is due to go up tomorrow.

One of the children from the camp was killed yesterday along with another child from the neighbourhood. They were playing near the camp when they were apparently caught in crossfire between Iraqis and Americans, gunfire, mortar fire: no one seemed quite sure. Either way the trauma, the boredom, the constant closeness of death was all too evident on the kids faces as they greeted us with uproarious glee.

They were too manic even for a fairly raucous game like Cat and Mouse, so we played a lot of parachute football, made plenty of chances to just dance about shouting under the billowing rosy glow of the parachute and yelled “Boomchucka” a lot. The relief of having the children diverted for a while was all over the women’s faces, sitting in the tents. Some of the children still shrink from the helicopters, others rage at them as they thunder over, shaking the ground, churning the air.

The men came out to play as well, one or two recognising us from the mosque and the clinic in Falluja. Someone forwarded me a column from a UK newspaper sneering at the idea of a circus in Iraq at a time like this. Sorry, but you’re wrong. Play is what these people need, not just the children.

2004-04-30T00:35:00.000-07:00

April 28th
Thawra

Israa’s mother, her sisters, sisters-in-law and cousins heard an explosion about eleven in the morning and another about three in the afternoon. They hear a couple every day, just in their small area of Thawra, or Sadr City. The second one, the afternoon one, went through Israa’s bedroom ceiling.

“I was in my house,” Israa’s husband said. It was around three on Saturday April 24th. His friend came to visit, so he was sitting with him in the visitors’ room, Nuredin and Huda, the older two children, playing in the same room while Israa lay down with the youngest child, Abdullah.

“I went to ask her if she would make tea for us but she said she was too tired, so I went back to my friend. After a wile I heard a horrible explosion. My friend went out to see what had happened. I thought our house was OK because nothing happened to the room I was in. My friend said don’t come out, stay in the house. I pushed past him. I tried to go out but there were people coming up the stairs towards me saying the explosion is in your apartment.

“I opened the door to the bedroom and saw light coming in through the ceiling but it was full of smoke and dust. I couldn’t see anything. I was trying to feel my way, to touch something, calling Israa, Israa. I found her body with her belly open and her bowels outside. I went out of the room and told my friend she was not there.

“Two of my friends went in and took the little one from her arms. She was still cuddling him. I couldn’t believe something bad had happened to the person I loved. I said if my son was fine then my wife was too. I kept telling myself I didn’t see her body. I gave Abdullah to my friend and then went to check on the other two kids, still in the room I was in before. They were very frightened.

“When I came out I heard one of my friends telling another that Israa was dead. I can’t remember anything else until I woke up with the kids beside me and people crying all around. I can still hear the explosion in my ears. I didn’t see the mortar but I’m sure it was the Americans. They came to the house later and took away the shell pieces. They couldn’t say it wasn’t them that fired it.

“They told the owner of the house they will pay compensation if they prove it’s an American shell. But what could they have been aiming at? In my neighbourhood there is a hospital, a school, houses, an electricity plant. Do they want to attack those? I believe it was the Americans who fired it, but even if it wasn’t them, it’s because of them. Even if someone else fired it, it’s still because of the occupation.”

Nuredin, at six the oldest of the three kids, lay in his dad’s lap chewing a plastic ruler. Abdullah just cried and cried in the next room with the women. “No one can comfort him,” his grandma said. “He needs his mother. The children will stay with Israa’s family; their dad stays sometimes with her family, sometimes with his. Israa was thirty, working in a nearby tax office.

“What am I going to tell my children when they grow up and ask what happened to their mother? That she died defending her country? She died asleep in her bed.”

From the roof of the house, you can see the monument to the Unknown Soldier, two blue halves of an egg shape, which has been taken over as a US base. The owner of the house said all the neighbours who saw it happen told him the mortar came from that direction.

The other explosion that Israa’s sisters heard was around the corner, a mortar hitting the pavement outside the front of another residential house, killing a grandfather and a little girl, an hour or so after the explosion in the Chicken Market which killed twelve, maybe fourteen people and injured at least 35 more. The stories, the individual families, the overall numbers are important in themselves, as a record of what is happening to ordinary Iraqis now.

But there is also this: Thawra is described by the western media as a “slum city”, home to between two and a half and four million Shia people, mainly poor, densely crowded and bullied ferociously by Saddam. A dozen men gathered in the room to tell us about the death of the child and the old man. Mohammed told me how they welcomed the Americans when they first arrived. “I gave them cigarettes. We thought anything would be better. Even Saddam at his worst was better than the Americans.”

Another son pulled shrapnel from his pocket. It filled the houses, shattered all the glass, killed three people and injured ten. Jassim was a 58 year old builder. He was unwell and walking in the street because it was supposed to be good for his health. Six year old Zainab was walking to the shop to buy eggs with her three year old sister Noor and their grandma, Thanwa, both of whom were injured when Zainab was killed.

“All we know is it was a US mortar,” Faisal said. “It had the markings on the shell pieces. We don’t know which direction it came from. It was calm and quiet that day. They bombed to try to provoke us so then they can kill us. There are no foreign fighters here. We don’t accept strangers here. They raid houses saying they’re looking for foreign fighters.

“All this trouble is because they closed a newspaper, because it exposed the truth about Bremer. Why didn’t they close the newspapers that exposed the scandal about Bill Clinton and Monica? We didn’t do anything to them. They drive through here on patrols all the time and there haven’t been any attacks from us because we are waiting for orders from Najaf.”

A vehement debate broke out over Sistani and Al-Sadr, over whose orders were to be followed. “Why do you differentiate between Sistani and Al-Sadr?” one demanded. “They are the same,” another insisted. They differed a bit over whether there were differences; they also differed over whether the Americans were unequivocally worse than Saddam. The latter, in his time, closed more newspapers, for example.

Still they were unanimous in wanting the Americans to leave now. “Immediately,” Hussein said. “They didn’t do anything for us. They only invaded. They only brought terrorism.” They talked about the impossibility of sleeping with helicopters constantly overhead, about the nightly house raids and arrests of young men, about the frequent explosions, mortars falling close to the hospital.

Kerim wanted us to see his mother in the hospital. We didn’t have the proper permission to go in but the Facilities Protection Service guards who had seen all the bodies come in didn’t much care for the sensitivities of the Ministry of Health and its procedures. An old man was sweeping the floor with a palm branch as the guard told us about a mortar hitting the neighbourhood next to the hospital at 5am the day before yesterday.

Thanwa pointed through her abaya at the places where shrapnel had pierced her body. Kerim’s cousin was lying nearby. In front of the house when the mortar hit, he had serious internal injuries, part of his bowel severed. “Most of the women in here were hurt in the chicken market explosion,” she said. The Souk Ad-Dejaj actually sells scrap metal rather than birds.

“It was only a mortar,” Saad the security guard explained, but they heard the explosion from the hospital. People buy refilled gas canisters from flatbed vehicles or horse drawn carts which traipse around the city, the drivers hooting or banging a stick on a canister to advertise their arrival. The mortar hit one of those. “They found the driver’s head on the roof of the market.”

People are adamant that they didn’t hear any shooting before the explosion. Mayada Radhi was washing clothes at home, opposite the market, when she heard the explosion. Shell fragments blasted through the door. She went outside to look for her two children, didn’t find them and came back indoors and then saw the blood on her own body, felt the pain and passed out. Hamid, her brother-in-law, was woken up by the explosion, a boy in a football shirt and baseball cap, and came out of the house to see pieces of bodies lying in the street.

Five of the family were killed last year in a bombing in the southern town of Kut: only her mother and a brother and sister survived. The hole in the road, the pitted walls of the buildings, the strainer-like front of the lorry standing in the middle of the market place, the dried blood spatters tell a story which rated a mention on the main networks but little more. In the epic traffic jam surrounding the entire Karrada area, a man with a patched up face and a towel around his shoulders in a pick up indicated that he’d been hurt by an explosion. We opened the windows and he told us he was injured at the Chicken Market.

This is what’s become of the bit of town that welcomed the Americans.

The temperature hit 40 degrees Celsius (that’s 105 F for those among you who think that way). It’s almost too hot to do anything, certainly too hot to sleep when there’s no electricity, sometimes no water either. That and the traffic jam meant we didn’t make it to the kids at the camp. Late, maybe half past eleven, Rana phoned to say there were loads of soldiers around her house; she thought they were going back to the hospital next door to arrest more of the patients.

For the first time all day the air coming through the windows was cool, the streets deserted but for the dog packs scavenging, so at last you could drive through the city. Still when we got there the soldiers were gone and there was no one to watch us change the wheel on the taxi, push start it again and traipse home.

2004-04-27T02:59:00.000-07:00

These are the Falluja stories in Arabic - thankyou, thankyou, Mohammed, you're a very good man.

الفلوجة
11 ابريل 2004
جو ويلدينج

شاحنات و دبابات و ناقلات نفط تحترق في الطريق السريع شرقي الفلوجة. تيار من الصبية و الرجال يندفع ذهاباً و إياباً إلى لوري لم يحترق كلية مجردينه من كل ما فيه . سلكنا الطرق الخلفية التي تمر عبر أبو غريب ، بينما كانت نهى و أحرار تغنيان بالعربية. مررنا بالعديد من العربات المحملة بالكثير من البشر و القليل من الممتلكات سالكة الطريق المعاكس ، ثم عبرنا بجوار استراحة الطريق الفقيرة و ألقى الصبية هناك بالطعام خلال النوافذ إلى داخل الحافلة من أجلنا و من أجل من لا زالوا محاصرين ، هناك ، داخل الفلوجة.

تبعت الحافلة عربة يقودها ابن أخ أحد الشيوخ المحليين و بجواره دليل صاحب اتصالات مع المجاهدين قام بترتيب مرورنا معهم.كنت موجودة على هذه الحافلة لأن أحد الصحفيين الذين أعرفهم زارني في الحادية عشر مساء ليخبرني بأن الأوضاع يائسة في الفلوجة ، و أنه قام بإخراج أطفال بأطراف ممزقة منها ، و أن الجنود الامريكيين يجوبون البلدة مخبرين الجميع أن عليهم المغادرة قبل الغسق أو التعرض للقتل ، و لكن حينها ، عندما فر الناس حاملين أياً كان ما استطاعوا حمله ، أوقفهم الأمريكيون عند نقاط التفتيش على أطراف المدينة دون أن يسمحوا لهم بالخروج ، و هكذا ظلوا محاصرين يشاهدون غروب الشمس.

قال الصحفي أن العربات و أجهزة الإعلام يرفض السماح لها بالدخول. و قال أن هناك مساعدات طبية يجب أن تدخل و أن هناك فرصة أفضل لعبورها الحواجز الأمريكية إذا كان هناك أجانب غربيون على متن الحافلة. بقية الطريق كان مؤمناً بواسطة المجموعات المسلحة التي تسيطر على المنطقة. سندخل المساعدات الطبية و نرى ما الذي يمكننا أن نفعله لمساعدة الناس هناك ثم نستخدم الحافلة لإخراج من يحتاجون الخروج.

سأوفر عليكم وصف كيف اتخذت القرار ، و كل الأسئلة التي سألناها أنفسنا و بعضنا الآخر ، و يمكنكم أن توفروا اتهاماتكم لي بالجنون. و لكن ما خطر ببالي في تلك اللحظة كان : إذا لم أقم بهذا ، فمن سيقوم به ؟ أياً كان فإننا نصل- هناك- سالمين.

حملنا الصناديق إلى الردهة فتم فتحها على الفور و رحبوا جداً بالبطاطين . لم تكن مستشفى على الإطلاق بل عيادة جراح خاصة تعالج الناس مجاناً منذ أن دمر القصف مستشفى المدينة الرئيسي. و تم استحداث عيادة أخرى في جراج للسيارات. كانت أكياس الدم مخزنة في برادات حفظ المشروبات و يقوم الأطباء بتسخينها تحت صنبور للمياه الساخنة في حمام غير معقم.

دخلت نسوة صارخات ، يدعون ، و يلطمن وجوههن و صدورهن. " أمي" تصرخ إحداهن. احتضنتها حتى جذبني مكي – طبيب استشاري و مدير العيادة – إلى جوار سرير يرقد عليه طفل في حوالي العاشرة من عمره مصاب برصاصة في رأسه. في السرير المجاور يرقد طفل أصغر يعاني من نفس الإصابة . أصابهما قناص أمريكي هما و جدتهما عندما غادروا منزلهم ليتركوا الفلوجة.

انقطعت الكهرباء ، فتوقفت المراوح عن الدوران و خلال الهدوء الذي حل فجأة قرب شخص ما شعلة قداحة سجائر من الجراح ليواصل إجراء العملية على ضوئها. تم قطع الكهرباء عن المدينة منذ أيام و عندما ينفذ البنزين من مولدات الكهرباء يجب عليهم في العيادة أن يتدبروا أمورهم حتى تعود المولدات للعمل. أهداهم ديف مصباحه اليدوي . لن ينجو الطفلان.

قال مكي لي " تعالي" و قادني إلى غرفة تم فيها للتو خياطة جرح ناري في بطن الجدة العجوز. ساعتها كان يتم إجراء الغيار لجرح آخر في ساقها . كان الفراش تحتها غارقاً في الدماء ، و كانت يدها لا تزال قابضة على علم أبيض و سمعت نفس القصة : "غادرت منزلي لأذهب إلى بغداد عندما أصابني قناص أمريكي." بعض أجزاء المدينة يسيطر عليها المارينز و البعض الآخر يسيطر عليه المقاتلون المحليون. يقع منزلهم في المنطقة التي يسيطر عليها الأمريكيون و هم مصممون على أن القناصة كانوا أمريكيين.

لا يقتصر الأمر على تسبب القناصة في مجازر بل إنهم مسؤولون أيضاً عن إصابة خدمات الإسعاف و الإجلاء بالشلل ، فأكبر مستشفى متبقية بعد قصف الأمريكيين للمستشفى الرئيسية تقع في المنطقة التي يسيطر عليها الأمريكيون و لا يمكن الوصول إليها من العيادة بسبب القناصة. تم إصلاح عربة الإسعاف أربع مرات بعد تعرضها لإطلاق النار ، و الجثث ممددة في الشوارع لأنه لا يوجد من يستطيع أن يذهب لرفعها دون أن يتعرض لإطلاق النار.

قال البعض أننا مصابون بالجنون لمجيئنا للعراق و أكثر قليلاً قالوا أننا مجنونون كلية لمجيئنا للفلوجة و الآن يقولون لي أن الركوب في مؤخرة العربة النصف نقل و العبور أمام القناصة لإحضار المرضى و المصابين هو أكثر الأشياء التي رأوها في حياتهم جنوناً .أعرف ذلك ، و لكن ، إذا لم نفعل ذلك فلا يوجد من سيقوم به.

كان يحمل علماً أبيضاً مرسوم عيه هلال أحمر ، لم أعرف اسمه. لوح لنا الرجال الذين مررنا بهم عندما شرح لهم السائق مهمتنا. كان الصمت موحشاً في أرض اللاأحد الفاصلة بين منطقة المجاهدين و التي تقع خلف التقاطع حيث توقفت عربتنا النصف نقل و منطقة المارينز التي تبدأ من خلف الجدار المواجه لنا. : لا طيور ، و لا موسيقى ، و لا إشارة تدل على أن هناك شخصاً لا زال على قيد الحياة ، حتى انفتحت بوابة في مواجهتنا و خرجت منها امرأة و أشارت لنا.

تقدمنا ببطء و حذر تجاه الفتحة في الجدار حيث رأينا عربة محاطة بقذائف الهاون المستعملة. كان هناك قدمان ظاهرتان، متقاطعتين و في حالة سيئة. كان القناصة ظاهرين أيضاً ، حيث رأينا اثنين منهم فوق أحد المباني . و لكنني لم أعتقد أنهم قد رأونا بعد و لذلك كان من الضروري أن نعلمهم بوجودنا.

صرخت بأعلى صوتي : "هالو ، هل تستطيعون سماعي؟". لا بد أنهم سمعوني ، فلم يكونوا يبعدون عنا سوى ثلاثين متر ، و كان باستطاعتنا أن نسمع طنين الذباب الذي يبعد خمسين خطوة. كررت ندائي عدة مرات دون أن أسمع أيس إجابة .و لذلك قررت أن أوضح الأمر بصورة أكبر.

" نحن فريق طبي . نريد أن ننقل هذا الرجل المصاب. هل يمكننا أن نخرج و نحضره؟ هل يمكنك أن تعطينا إشارة أن بإمكاننا القيام بذلك؟"

كنت واثقة من أنهم سمعوني و لكنهم لم يجيبوا. ربما لم يفهموا ما أقول ، و لذلك كررت ما قلته مرة أخرى. ردده ديف أيضاً بلهجته الأمريكية ، و رددته مرة أخرى ، و أخيراً بدا لي أنني سمعت رداً، و لأنني كنت غير واثقة سألت مجدداً:
"هالو؟"
"نعم"
" هل يمكننا أن نخرج و نحضره؟"
"نعم"

خرجنا ببطء و أيدينا مرفوعة في الهواء. حملت السحابة السوداء التي تصاعدت لتحيينا رائحة مرة و ساخنة. كانت ساقاه ثقيلتين عندما حاولت حملهما معاً فتركتهما لرنا و ديف ، في حين رفعه دليلنا من وسطه. كان الكلاشينكوف ملتصقاً بدم متجلط بشعره و يده و لم أرد أن نحمله معنا و لذلك وضعت قدمي عليه و رفعته من كتفيه ، عندها سال دمه من فتحة في ظهره . أسرعنا بحمله إلى العربة النصف نقل محاولين أن نسبق الذباب.

أعتقد أنه كان يرتدي شبشباً لأنه كان حافي القدمين ساعتها. لم يبد عليه أنه يبلغ أكثر من عشرين عاماً ، و كان يرتدي سروال نايك رياضي مقلد و فانلة كرة قدم بخطوط طولية زرقاء و سوداء و رقم 28 مكتوباً بخط كبير على الظهر. سحب المعاونون في العيادة المقاتل الشاب من العربة فانسكب سائل أصفر من فمه فقلبوه ليرقد على ظهره و اندفعوا به مباشرة باتجاه المقبرة المؤقتة في حين أفسح الجميع الطريق أمامهم إلى العيادة.

غسلنا أيدينا من آثار الدماء و ركبنا عربة الإسعاف. كان هناك أشخاص عالقون في المستشفى الآخر بحاجة للذهاب إلى بغداد. بسرينة صارخة و أنوار موقدة احتشدنا معاً على أرضية عربة الإسعاف مخرجين جوازات سفرنا و بطاقات هويتنا خارج النافذة. هناك ، ملأنا العربة بالناس ، أحدهم بأنبوب مركب في صدره و آخر على نقالة و قدماه تنتفضان بعنف فاضطررت للإمساك بهما بينما كنا ننقله إلى العربة و نرفعه عبر السلالم.

للمستشفى قدرة أفضل على معالجة الحالات من العيادة و لكن هناك نقصاً كبيراً في الإمكانيات بالمستشفى و الطريقة الوحيدة لنقلهم إلى بغداد هي حافلتنا مما يعني أن عليهم الذهاب إلى العيادة. تجمعنا سوية في أرضية العربة لاحتمال إطلاق النار علينا. كانت الطبيبة نسرين التي تماثلني في العمر عاجزة عن منع دموعها من أن تسيل عندما خرجنا.

اندفع طبيب إلى الخارج و سألني : " هل بإمكانك احضار سيدة ، إنها حامل و تضع طفلها قبل التمام؟"

كان عزام يقود العربة ، و أحمد في المنتصف يوجهه، و أجلس انا إلى جوار النافذة : الأجنبي الظاهر ، جواز السفر.سقط شيئ في يدي في نفس الوقت الذي سمعت فيه صوت رصاصة تصيب عربة الإسعاف ، و انفصل جزء بلاستيكي منها و سقط من النافذة.

توقفنا و أطفأنا السرينة و أبقينا الضوء الأزرق . انتظرنا مراقبين سيلويت الرجال الذين يرتدون ملابس المارينز فوق أسطح المباني. أتت طلقات أخرى ، فانخفضنا إلى أقصى قدر ممكن و استطعت أن ارى أضواء حمراء صغيرة تنطلق بالقرب من النافذة قريبة من رأسي. البعض منها ربما أصاب العربة، من الصعب التأكد. شرعت في الغناء. ما الذي يمكنك أن تفعله سوى ذلك عندما يطلق شخص ما النار عليك؟ انفجر إطار في صوت مدوي و ارتجت العربة.

شعرت بالغضب. نحن نحاول أن نصل إلى امرأة في حالة وضع دون أي رعاية طبية و دون كهرباء في مدينة تحت الحصار ، في عربة من الواضح أنها عربة إسعاف ، و أنتم تطلقون النار علينا ، كيف تجرؤون؟
كيف تجرؤون؟

أمسك عزام بالجير و جعل العربة تسير إلى الخلف . انفجر إطار آخر عندما كنا نعبر الحاجز في منتصف الشارع ، و استمر الرصاص في الانهمار و نحن نهرب عبر التقاطع. واصلت الغناء. تمزقت الإطارات نتيجة الإحتكاك و احترق المطاط الممزق.

أسرع الرجال باحضار نقالة عندما وصلنا و هززت رأسي. رأوا ثقوب الرصاص الجديدة فأسرعوا ليروا إن كنا على ما يرام. هل هناك طريق آخر للوصول إلى المرأة الحامل؟ أريد أن أعرف." لا ، ماكو طريج". قالوا أننا فعلنا الصواب و أنهم قد أصلحوا عربة الإسعاف أربع مرات حتى الآن و سيصلحونها مرة أخرى و لكن الرادياتور دمر و الإطارات ملتوية.... لكنها لا زالت في منزلها وحيدة تضع طفلها في الظلام.....لقد خذلتها.

لم نستطع الذهاب مرة أخرى ، فلا توجد عربة إسعاف بالإضافة إلى أن حلول الظلام يعني أن وجوهنا الأجنبية لن تكون قادرة على حماية من سيذهبون معنا أو من سنلتقطهم. قال مكي مدير المكان أنه كره صدام و لكنه الآن يكره الأمريكيين اكثر.

خلعنا الأردية الطبية الزرقاء و دوت انفجارات في السماء خلف المبنى المواجه لنا. بعد دقائق معدودة ظهرت عربة مسرعة . استطعت ان أسمعه يصرخ قبل أن أرى أنه لا يوجد جلد متبق على جسده. بالتأكيد لا يوجد ما يستطيعون فعله ، سيموت من الجفاف في غضون أيام.

حملوا رجلاً آخر من العربة إلى النقالة ، و قالوا :قنابل عنقودية ، و لكنني لست متأكدة إذا ما كانوا يعنون شخصاً واحداً أم كلا الشخصين. شرعنا في المشي باتجاه منزل السيد ياسر ، منتظرين عند كل تقاطع أن يفحص أحد الشارع قبل أن نعبر. سقطت كرة من اللهب من طائرة ثم انفصلت إلى كرات أصغر من الأضواء البيضاء اللامعة. خطر ببالي أنها قنابل عنقودية لأنني كنت أفكر فيها ، و لكنها سرعان ما اختفت. لم تكن سوى شعلات مغنسيوم لامعة جداً و لكنها تدوم لوقت قصير ، معطية صورة مضيئة للمدينة من الأعلى.

طلب منا ياسر أن نقدم انفسنا ، أخبرته أنني اتدرب لأكون محامية. سألني رجل آخر إذا ما كنت أعرف شيئاً عن القانون الدولي ، فقد كانوا يريدون أن يعرفوا قوانين جرائم الحرب و ما الذي يشكل جريمة حرب . أخبرته أنني أعرف عدداً من بنود اتفاقية جنيف ، و أنني سأحضر المزيد من المعلومات في المرة القادمة و يمكننا أن نجد من يشرحها لهم بالعربية.

طرحنا مسألة نايوكو عليهم ، و لكن لم تكن لمجموعة المقاتلين هذه أي علاقة بمن اختطفوا اليابانيين، و لكن و خلال شكرهم لنا على ما فعلناه هذا المساء حدثناهم عن الأشياء التي قامت بها نايوكو لأطفال الشوارع و مقدار حبهم لها. لم يستطيعوا أن يعدونا بشيئ و لكنهم قالوا أنهم سيحاولون أن يعرفوا أين هي ليقنعوا الخاطفين بإطلاق سراحها. لم أعتقد أن هذا سيؤدي إلى أي نتيجة فهم مشغولون بخوضهم حرباً في الفلوجة و لا علاقة تربطهم بالمجموعة الأخرى ، و لكن لن تضير المحاولة شيئاً.

كانت الطائرات تحلق فوقنا طوال الليل ، و لذلك في لحظات غفوي القليلة اعتقدت أنني مسافرة على طائرة في رحلة عابرة للقارات. كان هناك صوت عميق مستمر لطائرات استطلاع دون طيار ، تغطيه الأصوات العنيفة للطائرات المقاتلة و الخفقات المميزة لطائرات الهليكوبتر. و يقطع كل ذلك بين حين و آخر أصوات الإنفجارات.

في الصباح صنعت بالونات على شكل كلاب و فيلة و زراف للطفل عبدالله الذي ينادونه عبودي و الذي كان بادي الضيق من ضجيج الطائرات و الإنفجارات. أنفخ فقاعات بفمي فيتبعها بعينيه. و أخيراً ، أخيراً ، نجحت في رسم ابتسامة على شفتيه.، كما ضحك التوءمان أيضاً. كانا في الثالثة عشر من عمرهما و كان أحدهما سائق عربة إسعاف و كلاهما كما قيل لي يجيد استخدام الكلاشينكوف.

كان الإرهاق بادياً على وجوه الأطباء في ذلك الصباح ، فلم ينم أي منهم أكثر من ساعتين في اليوم لمدة أسبوع ، بل إن أحدهم قد نام ثمان ساعات فقط في الأسبوع الماضي كله مفوتاً حضور جنازة أخيه و عمته لأنهم كانوا يحتاجونه في المستشفى.

قال جاسم : " لا نستطيع مساعدة الموتى ، لا بد من أقلق على الجرحى."

ذهبنا من جديد : رنا و ديف و أنا ، هذه المرة في عربة نصف نقل. كان هناك مرضى بالقرب من خطوط المارينز يجب إجلاءهم. لا يجرؤ أحد على الخروج من منزله هناك لأن المارينز متمركزون فوق أسطح البيوت و يطلقون النار على أي شيئ يتحرك. جلب لنا سعد علماً أبيض و أخبرنا بأن لا نقلق لأنه قد رتب الأمور مع المجاهدين الذين لن يطلقوا النار علينا ، ودعا لنا سعد بالسلامة ، هذا الطفل ذو العينين البنيتين اللامعتين الذي يبلغ أحد عشر عاماً من العمر و يغطي وجهه بكوفية و يحمل كلاشينكوف يكاد يماثله في الطول ، دعا لنا بالسلامة.

هتفنا للجنود مرة أخرى عندما وصلنا حاملين العلم الأبيض الذي رش عليه هلال أحمر. ظهر اثنان منهم من المبنى لتغطية ذلك الجانب. غمغمغمت رنا : " الله أكبر ، من فضلكم لا تطلقوا النار عليهما"

هبطنا من العربة و أخبرناهم أننا نريد إجلاء مرضى من هذه البيوت ، فطلبوا من رنا أن تحضر العائلة الموجودة في المنزل الذي يتمركزون على سطحه. ثلاثة عشر امرأة و طفل كانوا هناك ، محتجزين في غرفة واحدة من دون طعام و لا ماء ليوم كامل.

قال أعلاهما رتبة " سنقوم بالدخول لإخلاء هذه البيوت سريعاً"
-" ما الذي يعنيه الدخول لإخلاء البيوت؟"
-" سندخل كل بيت منها لنبحث عن أسلحة." نظر لساعته دون أن يقدر –بالتأكيد- على إخباري بموعد عمليتهم ، و لكن سيكون هناك غارات جوية لدعمهم ، ثم قال " إذا كان عليكم أن تقوموا بهذا ، فعليكم أن تسرعوا."

ذهبنا في البداية إلى الشارع الجانبي الذي جئنا من أجله. كان هناك رجل يرتدي دشداشة بيضاء ،وجهه إلى الأسفل و كانت هناك بقعة حمراء صغيرة على ظهره. ركضنا باتجاهه و مرة أخرى وصل الذباب إليه قبلنا. حمله ديف من كتفه و حملته من ركبتيه و بينما كنا ننقله إلى المحفة دخلت يد ديف في ثقب في صدره ، ثقب رصاصة اخترقت ظهره باتقان مفجرة قلبه خارج صدره.

لم يكن يحمل سلاحاً. و بمجرد وصولنا خرج ولداه باكيين صارخين : " لقد كان غير مسلح ، كل ما فعله هو أن خرج من البوابة فأطلقوا النار عليه." لم يجرأ أحدهما على الخروج من ساعتها . لم يجرآ على الاقتراب من جسد والدهما . ظلا خائفين مرعوبين مضطرين أن يخرقوا التقاليد التي تحث على سرعة دفن الموتى. لم يعرفا أننا قادمون و لذاك ليس وارداً أن يكون أحدهما قد خرج لأخذ السلاح ثم عاد تاركاً جثة والده.

كان غير مسلح و في الخامسة و الخمسين من عمره و أطلقوا عليه النار في ظهره.

غطينا وجهه و حملناه إلى العربة النصف نقل ، فلم نجد ما نغطي به جسده. ساعدنا بعدها المرأة المريضة في الخروج من منزلها و أحاطت بها بناتها الصغيرات اللاتي كن يضمنن إليهن حقائب قماشية و همسن :"بابا ، بابا". مرتجفات ،تركننا نتقدمهن ، فرفعنا أيدينا و قدناهن إلى العربة النصف نقل مغطين وجوههن حتى لا يرونه ، حتى لا يرون الرجل السمين الميت متصلب الظهر.

بدا ساعتها أن البيوت تفيض بالناس فتلفظهم خارجها ، رجال و نساء و أطفال خرجوا على أمل أن نتمكن من اصطحابهم بعيداً عن خط النار ، ثم سألونا في قلق إذا كان باستطاعتهم جميعاً المجيئ أم أن النساء و الأطفال فقط يمكنهم القيام بذلك. ذهبنا لنسأل فأخبرنا جندي المارينز الشاب أن الرجال في سن القتال لا يسمح لهم بالمغادرة. " ما هو سن القتال؟" ، أي شخص عمره أقل من خمسة و أربعين عاماً ، و دون حد أدنى.

روعتني فكرة أن يبقى هؤلاء الرجال محاصرين في مدينة على وشك أن تدمر. ليسوا جميعاً مقاتلين و ليسوا جمسعاً مسلحين. سيحدث لهم ما سيحدث بعيداً عن أنظار العالم و بعيداً عن عيون أجهزة الإعلام لأن معظم أجهزة الإعلام في الفلوجة إما مرافقة للمارينز أو لم يتم السماح لها بدخول المدينة فظلت عند أطرافها ، و قبل أن نعود لنخبر الأهالي برد جنود المارينز دوى انفجاران فتفرقت حشود الأهالي هاربة من الشارع الجانبي إلى بيوتها.

كانت رنا لا تزال تساعد الجنود في إجلاء العائلة التي تقطن المنزل الذي يحتله المارينز. لم تعد العربة النصف نقل بعد ، و ظلت العائلات مختبئة خلف جدران بيوتها و انتظرنا لأنه لا يوجد شيئ آخر يمكننا أن نفعله. انتظرنا في أرض اللاأحد و كان المارينز يراقبوننا عبر المناظير المعظمة ، و ربما كان المجاهدون يراقبوننا أيضاً.

كان لدي منديل سحري في جيبي و لذا و بينما كنت جالسة منكمشة مثل ليمونة ، دون أن أكون قادرة على الحركة و أصوات الرصاص و الانفجارات في كل مكان ، أخذت في جعل المنديل يظهر و يختفي ، يظهر و يختفي. من الأفضل على ما أعتقد أن تبدو غير مبال و لا تشكل أي نوع من أنواع التهديد ، فتتجنب أن تبعث القلق في نفس شخص ما لدرجة أن يطلق النار عليك. تأخرت رنا جداً ، لا بد من أن نذهب لنطلب منها أن تسرع ، و عندما عادت كان في مجموعتها رجل شاب نجحت في اقناع الجنود بتركه يغادر هو الآخر.

أراد رجل أن نستخدم سيارة الشرطة الخاصة به لنقل المزيد من الأشخاص : عدد من النسوة العجائز اللاتي لا يقدرن على المشي و أصغر الأطفال. كان هناك باب ناقص في عربة الشرطة ، و من كان ليكون متأكداً مما إذا كانت هذه عربة شرطة حقاً ، أم أنه تم الإستيلاء عليها و انتهى بها المطاف هنا؟ لا يهم حقيقة طالما أنها ستساعدنا في اخراج المزيد من الأشخاص بصورة أسرع. أخيراً ، خرجوا جميعاً من بيوتهم في حذر محتشدين بجوار الجدار و تبعونا رافعين أيديهم مثلنا ، و مشوا عبر الشارع محتضنين أطفالهم الرضع وحقائبهم، و بعضهم البعض.

عادت العربة النصف نقل فملأناها بأكبر عدد ممكن من الناس و هنا ظهرت عربة الإسعاف من مكان ما. لوح لي شاب من مدخل ما تبقى مما كان منزلاً . كان نصفه الأعلى عارياً و تحيط بذراعه اليمنى ضمادة مشبعة بالدماء، و كان على الأرجح مقاتلاً و لكن هذا لا يشكل أي فارق طالما كان شخصاً مصاباً و غير مسلح.

احضار الموتى ليس ضرورياً فكما قال جاسم: الموتى لا يحتاجون مساعدة ، و لكن إذا كان من السهل احضارهم فسنقوم به . كنا على اتفاق مع الجنود و كانت عربة الإسعاف موجودة هنا ، و لذلك أسرعنا لنحضر الجثث ، فمن المهم في الإسلام أن تدفن الجثث في أسرع وقت ممكن.

تبعتنا عربة الإسعاف ، فبدأ الجنود في الصياح بالإنجليزية طالبين منها التوقف و مصوبين أسلحتهم نحوها لأنها كانت تتحرك بسرعة. صرخنا جميعاً و أشرنا لها أن تتوقف ، و مر وقت بدا لي أبدياً حتى رآنا السائق و سمعنا. لقد توقف. توقف قبل أن يشرعوا في إطلاق النار. وضعنا الجثث على المحفات و عدونا لنكدسهم في مؤخرة عربة الإسعاف، و اندست رنا مع الشاب المصاب في المقعد الأمامي و جلست القرفصاء أنا و ديف في الخلف بجوار الجثث. قال ديف أنه أصيب بالحساسية في طفولته و فقد تقريباً حاسة الشم. تمنيت بأثر رجعي أن أكون قد حصلت على حساسية في طفولتي و دسست رأسي خارج النافذة.

كان على الحافلة أن تغادر، حاملة المصابين إلى بغداد و منهم الرجل المحترق و امرأة مصابة في فكها و كتفها برصاص قناص و آخرون غيرهما . قالت رنا أنها ستبقى للمساعدة. و لم نتردد انا و ديف : " سنبقى نحن أيضاً" ، ( إذا لم أقم بذلك فمن سيقوم به؟) قد أصبح فجأة شعاراً لي. كما أنني عرفت الآن بعد الحادث الأخير عدد الأشخاص و النساء و الأطفال الذين لازالوا في منازلهم إما لأنهم لا يملكون مكاناً آخر ليذهبوا إليه أو لأنهم خائفون من أن يخطوا خارج منازلهم أو لأن البقاء كان خيارهم.

قال عزام أن علينا أن نغادر لأنه لا يملك اتصالات مع كل المجموعات المسلحة ، و لأن هناك العديد من الأشياء التي يتعين القيام بها ، فلا بد من نقل هؤلاء الأشخاص إلى بغداد في أسرع وقت ممكن . أما إذا تعرضنا للقتل أو الاختطاف فإن هذا لن يتسبب سوى في المزيد من المشاكل، و لذلك فإن أفضل خيار هو أن نركب الحافلة و نغادر و نعود معه إلى الفلوجة في مرة أخرى.

كان مؤلماً للغاية أن تركب الحافلة في ذات اللحظة التي يطلب فيها منك طبيب أن تذهب لإجلاء المزيد من الأشخاص. كرهت فكرة أن مسعفاً يمكنه أن ينتقل بواسطة عربة الإسعاف في حين أعجز أنا عن ذلك ، لمجرد أنني أبدو كأخت للقناص أو واحدة من رفيقاته. لكن هذه هي الحال دائماً ، بالأمس و اليوم و الغد. شعرت بأنني خائنة لمغادرتي و لكنني لم امتلك خياراً آخر. هناك حرب جارية هنا الآن و كغريبة لا بد لي من أنفذ ما يطلب مني ، لمرة وحيدة أضطر إلى ذلك.

كان جاسم خائفاً و ظل ينبه محمد و يحاول جذبه بعيداً عن مقعد السائق حتى و الحافلة تسير. رقدت المرأة المصابة بطلق ناري على المقعد الخلفي ، و الرجل صاحب الحروق أمامها حيث كنا نقوم بتهويته بقطع من الورق المقوى فيما تتأرجح أنابيبه الوريدية التي علقت في سقف الحافلة. كان الجو حاراً ، فلا شك في أن الظروف كانت غير محتملة بالنسبة له.

دخل سعد الحافلة ليتمنى لنا رحلة موفقة ، و صافح ديف ثم صافحني ، فاحتفظت بيده بين يدي و قلت له :"دير بالك"، و حقيقة لم يكن هناك شيئ آخر أكثر غباءاً أقوله لأحد أفراد المجاهدين لم يدخل سني مراهقته بعد فيما يحمل في يده الأخرى مدفع كلاشينكوف. التقت نظراتنا قثبتت عينيّ في عينيه. كانت عيناه مليئتين باللهب ....و الخوف.

ألا أستطيع أن آخذه بعيداً؟ ألا أستطيع أن آخذه إلى مكان يمكنه فيه أن يكون طفلاً؟ ألا أستطيع أن أصنع له بالونة على شكل زرافة و أعطيه أقلاماً ملونة و أخبره ألا ينسى أن يغسل أسنانه؟ ألا أستطيع أن أجد ذلك الذي وضع بندقية بين يدي هذا الصبي الصغير؟ ألا أستطيع أن أخبر شخصاً ما أي تأثير يتركه مثل هذا الأمر على طفل؟ هل عليّ أن أتركه هنا محاطاً برجال مدججين بالسلاح و العديد منهم ليس في جانبه ؟ بالطبع ، عليّ فعل ذلك ، عليّ أن أتركه هنا مثل كل الأطفال المجندين في كل مكان.

كانت رحلة العودة مرهقة ، حيث كادت الحافلة أن تنغرس في حفرة في الرمال . كان الناس يهربون مستخدمين أي شيئ- حتى تكدساً على ظهر تراكتور- فكانت هناك صفوف من العربات و الحافلات و العربات النصف نقل تعبر بركابها إلى الملجأ المبهم : بغداد ، و كانت هناك صفوف من عربات تحمل رجالاً عائدين للمدينة - بعد أن اطمئنوا إلى وصول عائلاتهم لبر الأمان- إما للقتال أو لإجلاء المزيد من الأشخاص. تجاهل جاسم سائقنا عزام ابنه و سلك طريقاً آخر فوجدنا فجأة أننا لا نتبع سيارة الدليل و أننا في طريق تسيطر عليه جماعة مسلحة اخرى غير الجماعة التي تعرفنا.

لوحت جماعة من الرجال بأسلحتها لتوقف الحافلة. بصورة ما بدا أنهم يؤمنون أن هناك جنوداً أمريكيين على متن الحافلة – و كأنهم سيكونون فيها عوضاً عن الدبابات و طائرات الهليكوبتر- و من عربات أخرى خرج الركاب هاتفين:"صحافة أمريكي". هتف أحد ركابنا من النافذة: " أنا من الفلوجة" ، فهرع الرجال المسلحون ليتاكدوا من صحة ذلك فرأوا أن هناك مرضى و مصابين و مسنين عراقيين. استرخوا بعدها و أشاروا لنا بالمرور.

توقفنا في أبو غريب و بدلنا مقاعدنا لنجعل الأجانب في المقدمة و العراقيين في الخلف و خلعنا أغطية الرأس لنبدو غربيين أكثر. كان الجنود الأمريكيين في غاية السعادة لرؤية غربيين لدرجة أنهم لم يهتموا كثيراً بالعراقيين معنا ، و فتشوا الحافلة و الرجال و لم يفتشوا النساء لأنه لم يكن معهم مجندات . ظل محمد يسألني إن كانت الأمور ستكون على ما يرام ، فقلت له : " الملايكة ويانا" ، فضحك.

وصلنا بغداد فقمنا بتوصيلهم إلى المستشفيات. بكت نهى و هم يأخذون الرجل المحترق و هو يأن و يتأوه و ينشج. أحاطتني بذراعيها و طلبت مني أن أكون صديقتها ، فأنا أشعرها بانها أقل وحدة ...أقل عزلة.

في القنوات الفضائية قالوا أن الهدنة لا زالت مستمرة في الفلوجة و قال جورج بوش لقواته في أحد الفصح :"أعرف أننا نقوم بالأمر الصحيح في العراق". هل إطلاق النار على ظهور الرجال العزل أمام منزل عائلتهم امر صحيح؟ هل إطلاق النار على الجدات اللاتي يحملن أعلاماً بيضاء أمر صحيح؟ هل إطلاق الرصاص على عربات الإسعاف أمر صحيح؟

حسناً يا جورج، أنا أيضاً أعرف. أعرف كيف يمكن أن تقمع أناساً لدرجة لا يتبقى فيها لديهم ما يخسرونه. أعرف كيف يبدو إجراء عملية دون تخدير لأن المستشفيات مدمرة أو معرضة لرصاص القناصة و المدينة تحت الحصار والمساعدات تفشل في الدخول. أعرف أيضاً صوت الرصاص الذي يعبر بجوار راسك على الرغم من أنك داخل عربة إسعاف. أعرف كيف يبدو رجل لم يعد صدره بداخله و أعرف رائحة ذلك ايضاً ، و أعرف كيف يبدو الأمر عندما تخرج زوجته مع أطفاله من منزله.

إنها لجريمة و عار علينا جميعاً.

جو ويلدينج محامية تحت التمرين و كاتبة و ناشطة سلام في التاسعة و العشرين من العمر من بريستول في بريطانيا. متواجدة في العراق منذ نوفمبر 2003. تعمل مع برنامج circus2Iraq كمهرجة، يهدف البرنامج إلى الترفيه عن الأطفال الذين عانوا من ويلات الحرب بتقديمه عروضاً في مختلف أنحاء العراق.

الفلوجة 2
17 ابريل 2004

كان الرقيب تارتنر من الفرقة الأولى المدرعة مستثاراً، و كانت أولى كلماته لنا :" تراجعوا و إلا قتلتكم."

قال ليي أننا صحفيون فنظر الرقيب إلى عربتنا في ازدراء و قال: " و تركبون قطعة الخراء هذه؟؟"

أخبره ليي أن هذا يقلل من احتمالات تعرضنا للإختطاف ، و لكن فجأة ظن الرقيب أنه تعرف على ليي كمراسل لذلك التلفزيون الذي يبث من ألمانيا فهو يشاهد البي بي سي و يرى ليي على الشاشة طوال الوقت. ثم أضاف " رائع ، هل يمكنني الحصول على توقيعك؟"

خربش ليي شيئاً ما إذ لم يكن يعرف من كان من المفترض أن يكون، و لكنه كان سعيداً لأننا سنتمكن من عبور نقطة التفتيش التي لم تسماح بالدخول لأي من العربات التي سبقتنا. واصل الرقيب تارتنر حديثه :" يا جماعة عليكم أن تكونوا حذرين في الفلوجة. فنحن نقتل العديد من هؤلاء الأشخاص." ، ثم عندما لاحظ أن التقدير لم يرتسم على وجوهنا عند سماعنا ذلك أضاف:"حسناً ، إنهم يقتلوننا أيضاً. أنا أحب الفلوجة. لقد قتلت كمية من أولاد العاهرة هؤلاء."

تمنيت حقيقة أن يكون الرقيب تارتنر مجرد كاريكاتير أو صورة نمطية، و لكن كل هذه العبارات منقولة نصاً. كنا نحرك أحجبتنا على رؤوسنا في الشمس الحارقة ، عندما قال : "ليس عليكن ارتداء هذه الأشياء بعد اليوم ، لقد تم تحريركن." فذكرت له أن المزيد و المزيد من النساء يرتدين الحجاب اليوم نتيجة تعرضهن لإعتداءات متزايدة.

اقتربت قافلة معونات طبية تحمل أعلام الهلال الأحمر من نقطة التفتيش ، فتردد تارتنر ، ثم وضح لنا :" إننا لا نحب أن نشجعهم." ، بعدها انحلت عقدة لسانه لفرحته بأن يجد من يبادله الحديث:" يا إلهي، إنه أمر جيد أن تجد من يتحدث الإنجليزية . حسناً ، باستثناء مستر و بليز و واي."

سأله شخص ما : "ألا يوجد لديكم مترجمون؟" فأشار الرقيب تارتنر بمدفعه تجاه العربة التي تقود القافلة و قال: " لدي أفضل مترجم في العالم".

سمح لعربة واحدة بأن تدخل معنا و رفض السماح للبقية. كان هناك الكثير من المساعدات – طعام و مياه و أدوية- تم إدخالها إلى الفلوجة من الطرق الخلفية موجودة في العيادة و المسجد عند وصولنا هذه المرة ،. تم بذل مجهودات كبيرة لإغاثة الناس هناك. لكن المستشفى تقع في الجزء الذي يسيطر عليه الأمريكيون و هي مقطوعة عن العيادة بسبب القناصة ، لذلك كانوا عاجزين عن إدخال أي مساعدات إليها أو إخراج المصابين منها.

ملأنا عربة الإسعاف بالمطهرات و المحاقن و الضمادات و الطعام و المياه ثم انطلقنا مجهزين هذه المرة بمكبر صوت. توقفنا عند أحد المنحنيات و غادرنا العربة. كانت المستشفى على مبعدة منا إلى اليمين ، و إلى يسارنا كان هناك المارينز. مشينا نحن الأربعة باتجاه المستشفى . كنا نرتدي أردية طبية زرقاء فضفاضة و أيدينا مرفوعة في الهواء معلنين أننا فريق إغاثة يحاول إيصال المساعدات إلى المستشفى.

لم يكن هناك رد فمشينا ببطء تجاه المستشفى. كنا نحتاج عربة الإسعاف معنا لأن المساعدات كانت أكثر من أن نتمكن من حملها ، و لذلك أعلنا أننا سنحضر العربة معنا و أننا سنمشي و ستتبعنا العربة. برزت مقدمة عربة الإسعاف إلى الشارع ، جديدة و براقة ، جيئ بها عوضاً عن العربات التي دمرتها نيران القناصة.

شقت رصاصات الهواء و سمعنا صوت إطلاق رصاصتين ثم أزيزاً قريباً منا جداً. ارتدت عربة الإسعاف إلى الشارع الجانبي و كأنها قطعة مطاط و هرعنا جميعاً إلى باحة المنزل الذي يقع في الزاوية ، ثم غادرناه من الباب الجانبي لنكون بجانب العربة مرة أخرى.

هذه المرة لم نمش باتجاه المستشفى بل باتجاه المارينز و بدون عربة إسعاف. مشينا ببطء شديد مزودين بمكبر الصوت صائحين من خلاله أننا لسنا مسلحين و أننا فريق إغاثة و أننا نحاول إيصال امدادات إلى المستشفى.

أطلقوا رصاصتين آخرتين باتجاهنا ، فشعرت بالغضب ، و من خلف الجدار الذي احتمينا خلفه أخبرتهم أن ما يقومون به يخرق بنود اتفاقية جنيف." كيف كنت ستشعر لو أن أختك كانت في تلك المستشفى و لا يمكن علاجها لأن رجلاً ما مزوداً ببندقية لا يسمح للإمدادات الطبية بالدخول." جذبني ديفيد بعيداً قبل أن أدعو عليهم بأن يحل على أصابعهم التي تضغط الأزندة طاعون من الدمامل.

و لأن هذا الأمر هو أكثر الأمور أهمية أضعنا بقية الساعات المتبقية من ضوء النهار– الثمين- محاولين أن نجد مسؤولاً ما لكي نتفاهم معه. بحلول الظلام كنت لا أزال غاضبة و لم تكن المطهرات قد وصلت إلى المستشفى بعد. دخلنا إلى المنزل الذي يقع خلف العيادة فأصابتني الرائحة بالاختناق. أثارت رائحة الدماء المتجلطة و الجثث المتعفنة ذكرى تعود لبضعة أيام مضت عندما جلست في مؤخرة عربة إسعاف مع جثث كريهة الرائحة و مع الذباب.

في المساء بدأ القصف الجوي ، فوقفنا خارجاً نشاهد الانفجارات و ألسنة اللهب. لم يخطر ببال أحد أن وقف إطلاق النار النظري كان سارياً. أحضر شخص ما بقايا صاروخ مفككاً إلى قطع من المعدن و الأسلاك و محتوياً على خزان للوقود ، و عرضها على قطعة قماش على الرصيف بجوار العيادة فبدت ككائن فضائي غريب، و حدق فيها الجميع و لكن متفادين الإقتراب منها.

أتى شخص ما ليعطينا تقريراً: أسقط المجاهدون طائرة هليكوبتر و قتلوا خمسة عشر من جنود العدو ، و خلال حرب الشوارع التي جرت هذا المساء قتل اثنا عشر جندياً أمريكياً ، كما قتل ستمائة آخرين في هجوم على قاعدتهم ، و لكنه لم يستطع اخبارنا كيف و أين و متى حدث هذا الهجوم. أضاف الرجل أن الآلاف من جثث الجنود الأمريكيين دفنت بالقرب من الرطبة شرق الفلوجة. دائماً ما اعتقدت أن الولايات المتحدة تقوم بالتقليل من عدد ضحاياها كلما كانت قادرة على ذلك ، و لكنني شككت بأن هناك مبالغة في الأرقام التي أسمعها هذه المرة. همس شخص ما بأن هذا الرجل هو ابن عم "علي الكوميدي " وزير الإعلام العراقي السابق. لم يكن هذا صحيحاً و لكن لابد أنه كان قريبه بصورة ما ! (المترجم: علي الكوميدي comical Ali هو اللقب الساخر الذي أطلق على محمد سعيد الصحاف ، و ذلك لقربه من لفظ chemical Ali علي الكيماوي ، اللقب الذي أطلق على علي حسن المجيد ابن عم صدام المسؤول عن استخدام الأسلحة الكيماوية ضد الأكراد).

استمر ضجيج الطائرات و الانفجارات طوال الليل. انتفضت مستيقظة من نومي المتقطع و أنا على ثقة بأن الصواريخ تطلق من حديقة المنزل الذي ننام داخله. استمر وابل النيران رناناً و عميقاً و ذا إيقاع ثابت ، فأصابني اارعب و توقعت أن أسمع انفجاراً قادماً من السماء ليسكت مطلق الصواريخ. لم أستطع أن أظل جالسة أنتظر فخرجت و عندها اطمأننت إلى أن من يطلق الصواريخ يبعد على الأقل عدة شوارع عن منزلنا.

خف الضجيج و كأن الإنشاد الذي تصاعد من المسجد قد قام بتهدئته. قال شخص ما أنه نداء لإيقاف إطلاق النار. لا أعرف إن كان هذا صحيحاً ، ففي كل مرة أسمع إنشاداً مختلفاً من مئذنة المسجد أتساءل عما يعنيه ، و عما إذا كان نداء للصلاة أو نداء لحمل السلاح أو شيئاً آخر، أو ربما كان مجرد شخص ينشد نشيداً ليساعد المدينة على النوم.

في الصباح و في أحد المساجد – ككل شيئ آخر- بدأت مفاوضات وقف إطلاق النار من جديد . قال الناس أنه لثمانية أيام قاتل الجيش الأمريكي من أجل السيطرة على المدينة التي يقطنها 350.000 نسمة ، و الآن لا زال المسلحون موجودين في الشوارع و لذلك يتفاوضون حول شروط وقف إطلاق النار.

وصلت جثة إلى المستشفى مصابة بجرح في ساقها و لكنها كانت مذبوحة. قال الرجال أن القتيل كان يرقد مصاباً في الشارع فجاء المارينز و قطعوا نحره. ظهرت بعدها عربة نصف نقل مسرعة تحمل رجلاً فقد معظم ذراعه و لم يتبق سوى جزء ممزق ينز دماً. نزف حتى الموت.

سمح لصحفيين فرنسيين بدخول المدينة ، و تحت حماية المسجد و من أجلهما لفت الجثة من قمة رأسها إلى أخمص قدميها بالضمادات و حملت إلى شاحنة بدون أبواب خلفية حيث قادها صبيان بعيداً، وكان أحدهما يدعى عودة و هو أحد التوأمين اللذين التقينا بهما في زيارتنا السابقة. قبل وقت قصير من ذلك جاؤوا بفتاة صغيرة ترتدي إيشارباً منقطاً و تي شيرت وردي اللون و فوقه سترة صوفية مزررة بلا أكمام و في يدها المغطاة بقفازات كان هناك كلاشينكوف.

كانت نظيفة للغاية و في غاية الرقة كما كان هندامها حسناً ، و بعد التقاط الصورة لها ، حملها احد الرجال - والدها على ما أعتقد- بعيداً. اعتقدت و تمنيت أن تكون مجرد طفلة يظهرونها في الصور و ألا تكون مشتركة حقيقة في القتال. لم تكن أصغر من ذلك الفتى – سعد – الذي رأيته في المرة السابقة و الذي أعرف أنه يشترك فعلاً في القتال و إن تمنيت ألا يكون مشتركاً فيه.

و فيما كنا ننتظر تبادلنا الحديث مع شيخ المسجد. قال أن المستشفيات سجلت 1200 ضحية ، و ما بين 500 إلى 600 قتيل في الأيام الخمسة الأولى من القتال و 86 طفلاً قتيلاً في الأيام الثلاث الأولى من القتال ، و أنه لا يعرف عدد الذين قتلوا أو أصيبوا في المناطق التي يسيطر عليها الأمريكيون، و أن امرأة قاربت تمام حملها قتلت بصاروخ أمريكي و لكن تم انقاذ طفلها الذي لم تلده ، و لكنه أصبح يتيماً منذ لحظة ولادته.

" أهالي الفلوجة يحبون السلام و لكن بعد أن هاجمنا الأمريكيون ، فقد فقد الأمريكيون كل صديق لهم هنا. كان لدينا عدد محدود من الضباط و الجنود المدربون من الجيش القديم ، و الآن فإن الجميع يجاهدون قدر استطاعتهم. لا يشترك جميع الرجال في القتال: فالبعض غادروا مع عائلاتهم ، و البعض يعمل في العيادة أو يقوم بإدخال المساعدات أو يشترك في وفود التفاوض.نحن مستعدون للقتال حتى آخر لحظة ، حتى و إن استغرق الأمر مائة عام."

قال أن البيانات الرسمية تقول أن المارينز يسيطرون على 25% من المدينة:" و هذا مكون من أجزاء صغيرة ، أجزاء يسيطرون عليها في الشمال الشرقي و أجزاء أخرى في الجنوب الشرقي و الجزء المحيط بمدخل المدينة الذي يسيطر عليه القناصة و الآليات الخفيفة." قال الشيخ أن الوحدة الجديدة بين السنة و الشيعة تسعده:"الفلوجة هي العراق و العراق هو الفلوجة. لقد جاءتنا وفود من جميع محافظات العراق لإيصال مساعدات و لإظهار تضامنها معنا."

بدأ وقف إطلاق النار في التاسعة صباحاً ، فأخذ سائقوا العربات في تفريغ المعونات من المخزن المواجه للمسجد إلى عرباتهم ليقوموا بتوزيعها في مختلف أنحاء المدينة. كان فتح الطريق إلى المستشفى أحد شروط الاتفاق ، و لذلك شعرنا بأنه لم تعد هناك حاجة حقيقية لوجودنا ، كما أننا بدأنا نشعر بأن هناك برامج لجماعات مختلفة يتم تنفيذها و أننا يمكن أن نعلق بسهولة وسط صراعات سياسية تخص أناساً آخرين ، و لذلك قررنا أن نرحل.

عند طرف المدينة يوجد مفترق طرق يقود إلى طريق مرصوف يلتف حول آخر البيوت و طريق آخر يمضي إلى قلب الصحراء. كان المارينز يسيطرون على الطريق الأخير ، و قاموا بإطلاق طلقة تحذيرية عندما خرج سائقنا ليتفاوض معهم بشأن مرورنا ، أما الطريق الأول فيسيطر عليه المجاهدون ، المتوارون عن الأنظار حتى الآن. فجأة ، حاصر تبادل إطلاق النار العربة. انتقل ديفيد خافضاً رأسه إلى مقعد السائق و قام بالرجوع للخلف ليبعدنا عن خط النار و لكن المكان الوحيد الذي كان من الممكن أن نرجع إليه كان خطوط المجاهدين. دخل أحد المقاتلين العربة وجلس على المقعد المجاور للسائق و قام بتوجيهنا.

تساءلت بيلي :"نحن رهائن ، أليس كذلك؟".

"كلا" و أخبرتها أن الأمور ستكون على ما يرام ، واثقة من أنهم يقومون بإبعادنا عن مكان كان من الممكن أن نتعرض فيه للأذى و حسب. سألنا المقاتل من أي بلد نكون ، فقالت دونا انها أسترالية و قالت بيلي أنها بريطانية.

"الله أكبر ! أهلاً و سهلاً !" لم يفهم الآخرون ما قال ، و لكن حتى من دون ترجمة كان المعنى واضحاً. قالت بيلي : " أعتقد أنه قال أنه حصل على أثمن رهينتين في العالم."

غادرنا العربة شاعرين بالارهاق و كان هناك رجل يرتدي كوفية يصوب مدفع آر بي جي محشواً تجاهها. أحضروا عربة جيب فركبتها ملاحظة أن السائق يضع قنبلة يدوية بين ساقيه. كنت واثقة من أنه ينوي استخدامها ضد الأمريكيين و ليس ضدنا ، و لكن كان واضحاً أنه لا يوجد مجال أمامنا للاعتراض.

و لكن مع ذلك ، فحتى تركنا الطريق المؤدي إلى المسجد و توقفنا عند منزل ، و حتى تم تفتيش ديفيد و بقية الرجال ، و حتى خلعوا كوفياتهم ليستخدموها في تقييد أيدي الرجال خلف ظهورهم ، كنت قد بدأت فقط في تقبل فكرة أنني أصبحت رهينة.

ساعتها تبحث عن طرق للهروب. . تتساءل عما إذا كانوا سيقتلونك أم سيضعون مطالب للإفراج عنك و عما إذا كانوا سيأذونك. تنتظر السكاكين و المدافع و كاميرا الفيديو. تقول لنفسك أن الأمور ستكون على ما يرام. تفكر في عائلتك و في اكتشاف والدتك أنك تعرضت للإختطاف. تقرر أنك ستكون قوياً ، لأنه لا يوجد شيئ آخر يمكنك ان تفعله غير ذلك. تقاوم فكرة أن حياتك لم تعد بين يديك ، و أنه لا يمكنك التحكم فيما سوف يحدث. تلتفت إلى افضل صديقاتك لتخبرها أنك تحبها ، من كل قلبك.

بعدها وضعوا كلاً منا في عربة ، فتمنيت أن ينقلونا إلى نفس المكان. حاولت دون جدوى أن أعرف إلى أين نذهب و أن أتذكر بعض العلامات المميزة للطريق الذي نسلكه. لكنني في الواقع لا أملك حس اتجاه على الإطلاق ، و أعجز عن تمييز اليمين من اليسار حتى عندما أكون في أحسن حالاتي. لم يكن هناك في الشوارع سوى مقاتلين و لا يوجد مكان للإختباء.

تم تسليمنا أنا و دونا و بيلي و أحرار و ديفيد إلى منزل آخر. كانت هناك وسائد على الأرض مستندة إلى جدران الغرفة التي دخلناها و كان هناك أيضاً فراش في طرف الغرفة بجانب خزانة لحفظ الأواني. جلس رجل طويل وقور يرتدي كوفية بنية و بدأ في استجواب دونا سائلاً إياها عن اسمها و بلدها و مهنتها و ما الذي تفعله في العراق و لماذا جاءت إلى الفلوجة.

قرر الرجل أن يفصل بيننا فطلب من الآخرين أن ينقلوني أنا و ديفيد و بيلي إلى غرفة أخرى . هناك قام شاب يرتدي سروال جينز واسعاً جداً على جسده النحيل و قميصاً و حذاء رياضياً ويغطي وجهه كله عدا عينيه بحراستنا. لم يبد عليه أنه تجاوز العشرين من عمره و كان متوتراً قليلاً و لكن هدوءنا نجح في تهدئته. بعد مضي فترة من الوقت قرر ألا يسمح لنا بتبادل الحديث مع بعضنا البعض فأشار لنا أن نصمت.

لم تكن بيلي على ما يرام ، حيث كانت مريضة و حرارتها مرتفعة ، فرقدت على الوسائد متوسدة ذراعها. أحضر المقاتل مخدة و رفع رأسها بلطف ليضعها تحته ، و أزال كل الأشياء الموجودة على الوسائد ليتمكن من تغطيتها ببطانية. أحضر آخر ملاءة قطنية و رفع البطانية و غطاها بالملاءة ثم أعاد تغطيتها بالبطانية. المجاهدون يقومون بتغطيتها!

حل الدور علي ليقوموا باستجوابي. شعرت بأن الأمور ستكون على ما يرام ، فسأخبره بالحقيقة. أراد أن يعرف الأشياء ذاتها : من أين أنا و ماذا أفعل في العراق و ماذا أفعل في الفلوجة. حكيت له عن السيرك و عن رحلات عربة الإسعاف و عن تعرضنا لنيران القناصة. سألني بعدها عن رأي الشعب البريطاني في الحرب. لم اعرف ما هي بالضبط الإجابة الصحيحة على مثل هذ السؤال. فقلت أنني لا أعرف نتائج آخر استطلاعات الرأي العام و أنا أحاول أن أجد إجابة تجعله يعتقد أنه ليس من المفيد الاحتفاظ بي كرهينة.

سألني إذا كان الشعب حقاً يعارض الاحتلال فكيف يمكن للحكومة أن تواصل القيام به؟ كان مهتماً حقيقةًً و ساخراً أيضاً: هل هناك شك أن المحررين العظام ديموقراطيون و يحكمون وفقاً لإرادة الشعب؟ و قبل أن أسمعه النسخة المطولة من رأي جو في دستور المملكة المتحدة ، بدأ في سؤالي عن بيلي. كنت أعرف بماذا ستجيب و لذلك كان الأمر سهلاً ، و لكنني تفاديت الإجابة على أسئلته عندما سألني عن ديفيد و تمنيت ألا يضغط علي. قلت أنني لا أعرفه جيداً لأنني لم أكن أعرف إذا ما كان ديفيد سيود أن يخبرهم أنه صحفي أم لا.قلت للرجل أن هذه هي أول مرة ألتقي فيها بديفيد و أنني أعرف فقط أن كنيته مارتينيز.

شكرني و بهذا انتهى الاستجواب. كان الدور على ديفيد من بعدي. تحدثت أنا و دونا و بيلي بصوت خافت حول الاستجواب دون ممانعة من الشاب الذي يقوم بحراستنا. تساءل شخص ما إذا كنا نرغب في شرب الشاي ، فتصاعدت بعدها قهقهات من المطبخ . ربما كان الشابان يتخيلان ما سيقوله رفاقهما إذا ما رأوهما على هذه الحال: ملثمين و مسلحين بالكلاشينكوف و يقومان بإعداد الشاي لمجموعة من النساء.

انتهى استجواب ديفيد سريعاً. و عندما عدت من الحمام الخارجي – مفتشة بعيني أثناء ذلك عن طريق للهرب أعرف جيداً أنه غير موجود- كان الجميع قد انتقلوا إلى الحجرة الرئيسية و كان الشاي جاهزاً. أحضروا بعدها حقيبة بيلي و قاموا بتفتيشها فعثروا على كاميرا و مسجل صغير. شاهد الرجل الصور المخزنة على الكاميرا : صورة للصاروخ أمام العيادة ، و قليل من الصور من بغداد ، ثم استمع للحوار مع الشيخ على المسجل الصغير.

كانت كاميرا دونا تحتوي على صور مماثلة للصاروخ و أخرى لأطفال الشوارع و البعض داخل شقتنا. أما شريط الفيديو الموجود في كاميرا الفيديو فيعرض افتتاح مركز شباب جديد في منطقة الدورة ، داعماً شهادة دونا بأنها مديرة منظمة تنشأ مشروعات من أجل الأطفال. أما الشريط الآخر فقد كان تسجيلاً لأحد عروض سيرك بومشاكا ، داعماً شهادتي أنني أعمل مهرجة في السيرك.

لم يحضروا حقيبتي او حقيبة ديفيد مما جعلني أشعر بالارتياح إذ كنت أخاف أن يوجد داخل أي منهما شيئ ما يستفزهم. بصورة خاصة ، فكرت أنه من الأفضل ألا يلاحظوا أي جواز سفر لأنهم حينها قد يفتشون عن جوازات سفر بقيتنا ، و يوجد في جواز سفر بيلي ختم إسرائيلي. صحيح أنها حصلت عليه عندما ذهبت للمساعدة في فلسطين ، و لكن الأفضل ألا نثير أي شكوك لديهم.

كانت أحرار عند انتهاء استجوابها على وشك أن تصاب بالهيستيريا ، فقد كانت خائفة من رد فعل أهلها على مبيتها خارج المنزل الليلة الماضية أكثر من خوفها من الرجال المسلحين الذين يحتجزوننا. احتضناها و قمنا بتهدئتها قدر استطاعتنا و قلنا لها أننا سنخبر عائلتها أنها لم تكن غلطتها. كانت المشكلة هي أنه عندما غادرنا بغداد كان الوقت متأخراً بما لا يسمح لها بأن تعود لمنزلها في نفس اليوم و الآن فهي تخشى أنها ستضطر إلى مبيت ليلة أخرى خارج البيت.

شرعت في الغناء بصوت خافت ، دون أن أكون واثقة مما إذا كان ذلك مسموحاً به أم لا. شاركني الآخرون في غناء المقاطع التي يحفظونها ، و بنهاية الأغنية جفت دموع أحرار و قالت لنا :"واصلوا" ، و لذا واصلنا غناء أغنية تلو الأخرى ، حتى ارتفع صوت الأذان و كان من غير المهذب أن نغني في نفس الوقت.

شرعت أحرار في البكاء من جديد فقالت دونا محاولة طمأنتها :" إن إيماني قوي بالله." فقالت أحرار نائحة :" نعم ، و لكنك لا تعرفين ماما."

قبل الحرب و قبل أن آتي إلى الفلوجة فكرت دائماً أنه من المستحيل أن تعرف ماذا سيكون شعورك عندما تتعرض لإطلاق نار. لم أكن لأتخيل أيضاً رد فعلي على هذا الموقف غير المتوقع ، وعلى هؤلاء الرجال المسلحين الملثمين ، و على الخوف ، و على الشك.

أخبرونا عدة مرات أن لا نخاف :" نحن مسلمون ، لن نقوم بإيذائكم."، و تخبرني غريزتي أن الأمور ستكون على ما يرام ، و علىالرغم من ذلك لا زال عقلي يتساءل عما إذا كانوا سيطلقون النار علينا بعد أن يوقفونا أمام جدار أم أنهم سيفتحون النار على كل الغرفة ، و عما إذا كانوا سيقتلونا واحداً تلو الآخر أم أنهم سيقتلونا معاً ، و عما إذا كانوا سيوفرون الطلقات و يقومون بذبحنا ، و عن المدة التي تشعر فيها بالألم بعد إطلاق النار عليك و عما إذا كانت الأمور تنتهي سريعاً أم أن هناك صدى متبقياً من الألم الناتج عن اختراق المعدن لجسدك يظل يتردد بعد وفاتك.

لم أكن أحتاج مثل هذه الأفكار في مثل ذلك الوقت فطردتها بعيداً عن رأسي. كنت أعرف أن الآخرين يفكرون في نفس الأشياء : ماذا سيكون تأثير هذا على والدتي؟ ما الذي سيحدث ؟ بماذا سوف نشعر في تلك اللحظة ؟ لم يكن من الإنصاف أن أخبرهم بمخاوفي و لذا لم يكن هناك شيئ أفعله سوى أن أجلس هناك مصابة بالقلق ، و لم يكن هناك شيئ نفعله جميعاً سوى أن ننتظر لنرى ما ستسفر عنه الأمور و أن نبقى قريبين من بعضنا.

لكن ما قلته لنفسي كان : لا أستطيع أن أغير مسار الأمور الآن و إذا ما صوبوا بندقية إلى رأسي أو وضعوا سكيناً على رقبتي و عرفت أنها آخر لحظة في حياتي و لا يوجد شيئ يمكنني فعله لتغيير ذلك ، فأنا مصممة على ألا أتوسل أو أرتجف لأنني أعرف أن مجيئي إلى الفلوجة كان أمراً صحيحاً و أن محاولتي إجلاء الناس و إيصال المساعدات إلى المستشفيات و موتي أثناء القيام بذلك ليس مثالياً و لكنه صحيح.

أحضروا حقائبنا فجعلت منديلاً سحرياً يختفي. لم يثر هذا الأمر إعجاب الرجل الجديد الذي يقوم بحراستنا. إنه سحر أسود و حرام و تحد لله. أوبس! أريته سر الخدعة آملة أن يعفو عني! ثم صنعت زرافة من البالونات لأطفاله الذين نقلهم إلى بر الأمان في بغداد.

"لقد قتل أخي و ابن أخي و ابن أختي ، أما أخي الآخر فمسجون في أبوغريب ، و أنا آخر من تبقى. هل تتخيلين ذلك؟ و صباح اليوم قتل أفضل أصدقائي . كان مصاباً بجرح في ساقه فجاء الأمريكيون و قطعوا نحره."

لقد كان هذا من جاء إلى المستشفى هذا الصباح! ياللعنة! هل هناك سبب يجعلهم لا يقتلوننا؟

لكن اليوم يمضي و نستمر في التنفس و النوم و التحدث. أحضروا طعاماً لنا و اعتذروا لأنهم لم يحضروا المزيد منه ، و وعدونا مرة أخرى بأنهم لن يؤوذونا. حل الظلام و من خلف شباك مغطى جزئياً بأجولة الرمل أشعلوا مصباح كيروسين. أخذت حرارة الغرفة في الارتفاع و لذلك شعرنا بالارتياح عندما ساقونا إلى العربة لننتقل مرة أخرى ، على الرغم من أن التغيير قد يبدو خطيراً في مثل هذه الأحوال.

كان المنزل الجديد ضخماً و مزوداً بالكهرباء. قادوا النسوة الأربع إلى غرفة أما ديفيد فكان عليه أن يبقى في الغرفة الرئيسية مع الرجال. كان هذا أكثر شيئ أثار خوفه طوال الأمر كله : أن ينفصل عنا. خلعنا الأحجبة التي ظللنا نرتديها طوال اليوم. طرق أحد الرجال الباب ثم قال – و هو ينظر إلى الأرض- أنهم تأكدوا من كل شيئ و أننا – إن شاء الله – سنعود إلى بغداد في الصباح ، و أنهم لا يمكن أن يتركونا نرحل الآن لأننا سنتعرض للاختطاف بواسطة مجموعة أخرى.

أطعمونا و أحضروا لنا شاياً و بطاطين ، و قمنا باختلاق حجج و أعذار مختلفة لنطل على الغرفة الرئيسية لنطمئن على ديفيد ، محضرين له نصف برتقالة أو قطعة شيكولاتة، حتى يعرف أننا لا نزال نفكر فيه. كان ديفيد في حال أضعف منا لأننا يمكن أن نتحدث و نغني و نضحك معاً. كل المؤشرات كانت تدل على أنهم لن يقوموا بإيذاء النساء أما ديفيد فلم يكن متأكداً من عدم تعرضه لذلك.

طوال اليل كانت هناك ضجة لما بدا كشبكة صرف صحي ضخمة في مكان ما قرب البيت : سلسلة متعاقبة ذات إيقاع قابت من الإنفجارات التي تبدو كصوت صرير هائل ، كان هذا صوت القنابل العنقودية. أمسكت أنا و بيلي بيدي بعضنا البعض طوال الليل لأنه يمكننا القيام بذلك. في الصباح كنت لا أزال أشعر بالشك ، فقد قالوا لنا أنهم سيطلقون سراحنا بعد صلاة الفجر و كانت الشمس قد أشرقت منذ وقت طويل. ربما قالوا لنا هذا فقط ليبقونا هادئين و صامتين.

و لكنهم أطلقوا سراحنا فعلاً ، فقد أخذونا إلى أحد الأئمة المحليين الذي قال أنه سيعيدنا إلى بيوتنا. على أطراف الفلوجة كان هناك طابور طويل من العربات و بعضها قد استدار بالفعل عائداً من نقطة التفتيش. قال الركاب أن الجنود الأمريكيين أطلقوا عليهم النار عندما اقتربوا. غادرنا العربة و خلعنا الأحجبة و بدانا الحكاية ذاتها من البداية مرة أخرى : مكبر صوت و أيد مرفوعة و المشي خلال متاهة الأسمنت و الأسلاك و الصياح بأننا فريق دولي من متطوعي الإسعاف يحاول مغادرة الفلوجة و أننا غير مسلحين و من فضلكم لا تطلقوا علينا النار.

في النهاية استطعنا أن نرى الجنود و في التهاية أنزلوا أسلحتهم و أخبرونا أن ننزل أيدينا المرفوعة و أنهم لن يطلقوا النار علينا. قال أحد الجنود : " يالسوئي"- و أعتقد أن هذا ما يقال باللهجة الأمريكية للتعبير عن إدراك المرء لخطئه- " لن نطلق المزيد من الرصاصات التحذيرية". اخبرناهم أننا نستقل عربتين و سألناهم عن بقية العربات ، فوافقوا على السماح بعبور الأطفال و النساء و الرجال المسنين. كانت المشكلة هي أن معظم النساء لا يجدن القيادة و لذا لا يمكنهن المغادرة إذا لم يقد ازواجهن العربات. أقنعناهم بالسماح لذكر واحد بالمغادرة في كل سيارة طالما كان هناك عائلة معه ، ختى و إن كان في "سن القتال".

كانوا خائفين في الفلوجة من أنه إذا غادر معظم الأطفال و النساء فسيتم تدمير المدينة كلياً و يقتل جميع من فيها بواسطة قصف جوي مكثف أو سلاح حراري أو شيئ من هذا القبيل. حاولت أحرار أن توضح لهم أن الرجال الذين يحاولون المغادرة هم الرجال الذين لا يودون أن يقاتلوا.

قال جندي المارينز:" أوه ، نحن نود أن نبقيهم هنا . هناك مقاتلون يدخلون الفلوجة من كل أنحاء العراق و نود أن نبقيهم جميعاً في الداخل حتى نقتلهم كلهم بصورة أسهل".

لكن هؤلاء هم السكان المحليون الذين يريدون أن يغادروا و لا يودون أن يشتركوا في القتال. لا يهمهم الأمر، و هكذا حصلنا على أاكثر ما نستطبع منهم و أخبرنا حشود اللاجئين القلقة بنتائج المفاوضات و غادرنا تاركين إماماً محلياً آخر ليلعب دور الوسيط. كان الطريق الذي قطعته قافلتنا الصغيرة هادئاً حتى رأينا حاجزاً آخر. تحدث الإمام مع بعض الأهالي ثم أخبر أحرار أنه حاجز أمريكي. خلعنا الأحجبة من جديد و غادرنا العربة من أجل جولة أخرى.

في الصمت المشبع بالحرارة المرهقة كان هناك بعض أصوات لإطلاق نار ، و لكن لم نسمع أي رد على صيحاتنا. رأينا الغبار يتصاعد من بيت بعيد فتساءلنا عما إذا كنا نخطو داخلين أرضاً تشهد معركة. التكتيك الوحيد الذي يسمح لك بأن تتجه إلى خطوط المارينز هو أن تصيح بالانجليزية و أن تحاول أن تبدو أجنبياً قدر استطاعتك، و لكن هذا التكتيك قد يكون خطراً إذا لم تكن الخطوط واضحة. نستمر في الصياح سائلينهم أن يلوحوا لنا إذا كانوا قد سمعونا ، و لكن دون أي رد.

قال ديفيد:"لحظة ، هل هؤلاء مارينز أم مجاهدون؟"
ياللعنة! قل لنا من فضلك أننا لا نتجه إلى خطوط المجاهدين! ترددنا ، فربما كان من الأفضل أن نعود إلى العربة لنحضر الإمام بدلاً منا.
"لا ! أعتقد أن الأمور على ما يرام ، أعتقد أنهم مارينز."
" قرر أيهما و أخبرنا!" و كأنه كان يمتلك معلومات أكثر منا!

بدأ الرجال في الإشارة لنا ، ملوحين بأيديهم ، و مشيرين إلى يسارهم – يميننا- بأن نذهب إلى الجسر. كانت تلك الإشارة التي انتظرناها - و لكن هذا لا يعني أنهم ليسوا مجموعة أخرى من الخاطفين - و أخيراً صاح أحدهم . كانوا من "البيريهات الخضر"(القوات الخاصة الأمريكية) و كان هذا هو السبب في أنهم لم يبدوا كالمارينز الذين اعتدنا عليهم. عدت أنا وبيلي تجاه العربات لنشير لهم أن يأتوا. لم نكن نريد أن نمشي المسافة الطويلة التي تفصلنا عنهم مرة أخرى ، و لكن مرة تلو مرة تلو مرة لم تتحرك العربات ، على الرغم من تلويحنا لهم و صراخي في مكبر الصوت أن يأتوا. أخيراً تحركوا فأسرعنا بالعودة لنحتمي بالشجيرات المحيطة بالجسر.

سألنا أحد الجنود :" هل أنم مجانين؟؟"، علي بأن أعترف بأنني شعرت ساعتها بأنني اقرب ما كنت للجنون منذ قيامي بتلك الرحلة إلىالمجهول فيما قذائف الهاون تنطلق من قواعدها . أخبرني الجندي ألا أقلق لأنها قذائف مطلقة. بالطبع أشعرتني فكرة أنها مطلقة و ليست مستقبلة بنوع من الارتياح و لكن بدا لي أن تلك القذائف تمثل دعوة من نوع ما ، و كأنها تحمل عبارة ( برجاء سرعة الرد).

بعد أن تركناهم غادرتنا السيارة الثانية في القافلة ، فاحتضن ديفيد السائق بقوة كأن السائق قد أعاده إلى الحياة بعد مماته ، ثم ركب في عربتنا. لازال علينا عبور أبو غريب و الشعلة و أشياء أخرى لا يعلمها سوى الله قبل أن نصل إلى منازلنا. طلبت أحرار منا التوقف لتهاتف عائلتها من كابينة في الشارع في منتصف حي الشعلة . أطالت في مكالمتها جداً و ظهر الفزع على الإمام ، فعربته الممتلئة بالأجانب تقف منتظرة فقط أن ينتبه إليهم أحد. كنا مرهقين و بدأنا في فقدان أعصابنا فجررناها إلى العربة و هربنا.

لم نشعر بأننا قد نجونا و عدنا إلى منزلنا إلا عندما خطت أقدامنا أرض شقتنا. كنا نصيح و نتحدث و نروي لبعضنا ما حدث و نضحك على تلك اللحظات السريالية و نحتضن بعضنا البعض و نخرج جوازات سفرنا من حيث خبأناها في ملابسنا الداخلية.

قالت بيلي:"إننا نضحك الآن ، و لكن كانت هناك لحظات......"

قالوا في الأخبار أنه قد تم الإفراج عن نايوكو و الرهينتين اليابانتين الآخرتين ، و أن واتانابي المصور الصحفي الذي ذهب معنا إلى السماوة عندما قدمنا عرض السيرك هناك قد اختفى هو و زميل له.

لقد أخذونا لأننا كنا أجانب نتصرف بصورة مشبوهة في وسط حربهم. عندما عرفوا ما نقوم به تركونا نرحل. في طريق خروجنا نجحنا في فتح نقاط التفتيش أمام الناس مما مكنهم من الخروج من الفلوجة إلى بر الأمان. إذا كان هذا هو كل ما قمنا به فأعتقد أن الأمر يستحق. لكن و في لحظة هادئة تالية همست شاكرة الملائكة الشقية التي تحرس المهرجين و متطوعي الإسعاف.

اللاجئون
21 ابريل 2004

قالت لي هبة:" هذا هو شهر عسلي" . كنا في أحد الأروقة المزدحمة في ملجأ الغارات رقم 24 في حي العامرية في بغداد. تزوجت هبة منذ أقل من شهر ثم اضطرت أن تترك الفلوجة مع عائلتها الممتدة ." كان هناك قنابل طوال الوقت، و لم نستطع أن ننام ، و حتى إن تمكنا من النوم فإن الكوابيس كانت توقظنا ، فلم نستطع إلا أن نجمع العائلة كلها في غرفة واحدة و ننتظر."

"الأوضاع هنا أفضل من الفلوجة. صحيح أننا نسمع القنابل و لكنها بعيدة عنا و ليست كثيرة العدد كالفلوجة. لكن لا يوجد مياه ، لذلك نضطر إلى الخروج و شراء الثلج ونستخدمه في الشرب و في الطبخ و في تنظيف أنفسنا و في غسل ملابسنا . ليس هناك ثلاجات و لا مراوح و لا أجهزة تكييف و لا مولدات كهرباء و لا يوجد سوى موقد واحد لنا جميعاً. يجب علينا أن نخرج إلى الحديقة لقضاء حاجتنا و هذا يشكل مشكلة أثناء الليل ، و كلنا نعاني من الإسهال بسبب الثلج الذي قمنا بشرائه."

"أنا الآن عروس و لكنني لم أجلب أياً من ثيابي" و كأنها كانت ستتمتع بأي نوع من الخصوصية اللازمة لإرتدائها بوجود ثمان و ثمانين فرداً من ثمانية عشرة عائلة مكدسين فوق المراتب الممتدة عبر الممر الضيق من الباب و حتى المطبخ . من المطبخ كان يتم تقديم الشاي و بسكويت بالسمسم كجزء من مراسم الحداد على عم هبة.

مات العم منذ سبعة أيام مضت في اليوم الذي وصلوا فيه بغداد. قال ربيع –والد هبة- أن شقيقه مات من الحزن. لم يستطيعوا استعادة جثمانه من المستشفى لأن كل مستنداتهم الثبوتية كانت لا تزال في الفلوجة. قابل ربيع عدداً من أصدقائه الأطباء الذين ساعدوه على استعادة الجثمان بعد يوم آخر.

أرسل ربيع بالأمس اثنين من أولاده إلى الفلوجة مع عائلاتهم ، فاتصلوا به في السابعة مساء ليخبروه ألا يحاول العودة ، و أن الأوضاع أسوء مما كانت عليه ، و أنهم يحاولون الخروج من الفلوجة لكن الطرق كلها مغلقة. حاول ابن أخ ربيع أن يعود اليوم إلى الفلوجة و لكنه لم يستطع لأن الطرق كلها مغلقة." كل من الفلوجة الآن مسجون."

تماثل قصتهم قصص ألوف غيرهم. يعتقد فارس محمد – السكرتير العام للهلال الأحمر العراقي – أن 65% من 300.000 نسمة يمثلون سكان الفلوجة قد غادروا منازلهم بعد المعارك الأخيرة. يقيم معظم المئتا ألف من المشردين مع أسرهم الممتدة في بغداد أو مدن أخرى ، أو قام غرباء يملكون بيوتاً واسعة بمنحهم مأوى ، بينما توجد حوالي مئتا أسرة بلا مأوى.

قال لي ربيع :" غادرنا بسبب القنابل فقد كان الأطفال خائفين و يبكون طوال الليل. غادرنا في التاسع من ابريل. يمتلك العديد من أقربائنا عربات و لكن كانت هناك مشكلة في الحصول على وقود. جمعنا العائلات الثمانية عشر معاً و انتظرنا عند نقطة التفتيش. جعلنا الأمريكيون ننتظر في الشمس لساعات حتى يرهقونا، و كان الأطفال يبكون من الجوع ، و بعدها جعلنا الأمريكيون نسلك طريقاً جانبياً أطول."

" وصلنا بغداد في أوقات مختلفة، فقد نام البعض داخل عرباتهم و غادروا في الصباح التالي. كانوا يسمحون بخروج شاب واحد فقط مع كل عربة و إذا كان هناك رجل كبير في العربة لا يسمحون بخروج أي شاب معها. لم تستطع بعض العائلات هنا أن تخرج أفرادها الشبان معها فاضطر هؤلاء إلى المجيئ عبر النهر. لا يوجد وقود و لا مياه و لا مولدات كهرباء و لا مستشفيات هناك و لذلك لم تستطع العائلات البقاء."

يستيقظ مصطفى - أصغر أبناء ربيع الذي يبلغ من العمر أحد عشر عاماً - كل ليلة من نومه باكياً ليقول بأن هناك قنبلة ستنفجر. قالت ملوك – زوجة ربيع – أن الأمر لا يقتصر على ابنها و أن كل الأطفال يعانون من الكوابيس ، فابن نسيبها يمشي و هو نائم مطالباً بالعودة إلى منزله ، و اثنتان من بناتها – زينب و مها - قررتا أن تتركا المدرسة ، كما أن مها بدأت تعاني من مشكلة في ضغط الدم فضلاً عن اصابتها بعدوى معوية نتيجة المياه الملوثة.

قام ممرض من الفلوجة يدعى هديل بزيارتهم و أعطاهم قائمة بأسماء الأدوية التي يحتاجونها و عدداً من الحقن لامرأة حامل و بعض الأدوية لعلاج قرحة المعدة. قال هديل أنه يدير صيدلية و لكنه قد تبرع بالفعل بكل الأدوية التي يملكها. طلب ربيع من الهلال الأحمر المساعدة و لكنهم لم يقدموا له الكثير، فقام ببناء دورة مياه من ماله الخاص الذي لم يتبق منه الكثير بعدها.

تعمل صبرية –شقيقة ملوك- معلمة للمعاقين في حي الشعلة ببغداد. لم تتزوج صبرية حتى الآن بسبب كل تلك الحروب: "التهمت الحروب شبابنا . عندما كنت في الجامعة أجرينا إحصاء فوجدنا أن أعداد البنين و البنات متساوية. أما الآن فربما كانت النساء أكثر عشر مرات من الرجال."

"لا أستطيع أن أشرح لك. أنا فاقدة للأمل. لا أعرف ما الذي يخبئه المستقبل. ظننت أن الأمور ستتغير و أن الأوضاع ستستقر و أن هذه الحرب ستكون آخر حروب العراق. لقد قالوا أنهم جاؤوا ليمنحونا السلام و حقوق الإنسان و اكتشفنا الآن أن هذا غير صحيح. إنهم لا يفهمون العراق و لذلك يرتبكون أخطاء تؤدي إلى إشتعال الصراعات. لقد قالوا أنهم سيعيدون البناء و لكنهم يقومون بالهدم. سيكون كافياً لنا أن يعطونا كهرباء و مياهاً نظيفة."

لا تنفك تسمع القصة ذاتها أينما ذهبت. النساء يشعرن بالاكتئاب ، و الأطفال متكدرون ، و الناس يحاولون العودة إلى الفلوجة فيجدون الطرق مغلقة ، و من لا يزال في الفلوجة يحاول الخروج منها فيواجه بنفس المشكلة.

كان هناك رجلان و امرأتان و ثمانية أطفال يجلسون في احدى الخيام البيضاء في المعسكر الذي أعده الهلال الأحمر العراقي للنازحين من الفلوجة. قامت أربعون عائلة بتسجيل أسمائها و لكن هاتين الأسرتين فقط هما من يقيمان في المعسكر لعدم توفر دورات مياه. قال قاسم لفتة – مدير المعسكر- أن اليونيسيف وعد بتوفير دورات المياه و لكنهم حتى الآن لم يقدموها ، أما في الوقت الراهن فقد حصلوا على تصريح بأن يستعملوا دورات المياه الموجودة في المدرسة المجاوة لملعب كرة القدم المقام عليه المعسكر.

غادر خمسة و ثمانون فرداً من أسرة سكان المعسكر الممتدة عقب مصرع عدد من جيرانهم نتيجة القصف الجوي. قال لي عادل :" مات اثنين من أقربائي و دفنتهما بيدي هاتين. لم يكن هناك طريقة للوصول إلى المستشفى ، و لذلك حتى و إن لم يقتلوا فإن المصابين كانوا يعالجون في المنزل من دون أي أدوية و لذلك كانوا يموتون. حتى إن حاولت عربات الإسعاف أن تأتي ، يطلق الأمريكيون النار عليها. شاهدت الأمريكيين يطلقون النار على رجل و بقي ملقى على الأرض من الصباح و حتى المساء دون أن يتمكن أحد من مساعدته.أطلق الأمريكيون النار على عربة الإسعاف. لقد رأيتهم. كانوا فوق أسطح المباني".

" حدث هذا مرات عديدة ، ففي أي مرة نرى فيها عربة إسعاف يقوم الأمريكيون باطلاق النار عليها ، بل إنهم قد تحصنوا فوق مئذنة. كما قتلوا عائلة من النساء و الأطفال كانت ذاهبة إلى السوق. و قتلت عائلة من 25 شخصاً بعد أن قصف الأمريكيون منزلهم. شاهدنا طائرة مقاتلة تطلق صواريخها على منزلهم."

يقع منزل عائلة عادل في حي الشهيد و الذي تعرض لقصف مكثف. تقع المستشفى الحكومي في نفس الحي و لم تتعرض للتدمير – كما أشارت بعض التقارير- بل أغلقتها القوات الأمريكية. كانت هناك انفجارات عنيفة عندما غادر عادل و عائلته و لم يكن من الممكن توزيع المساعدات على المدينة بسببها ، و حتى لحظة مغادرتهم كان باستطاعتهم مشاهدة الصواريخ تنطلق.

كان الأطفال يجلسون دون كثير من النشاط . ظلت سارة التي تبلغ من العمر ثلاثة عشر عاماً تمنحني ابتسامات خجولة ، و عندما غادر الكبار اقتربت و جلست بجواري و سألتني :" لماذا دمر الأمريكيون منازلنا ؟ ليست هذه بلدهم. لماذا غزوا مدينتنا؟ لقد جعلونا مشردين ننتقل من منزل إلى آخر لنطلب المساعدة. استمرت الانفجارات طوال الوقت و أرسل الناس عربات من بغداد لتجلب من يريد المغادرة." قالت أن أخاها هديل يبلغ من العمر أربعة أعوام فقط و تعلم أن يكره الأمريكيين بعد أن كان يلعب بلعبة على شكل بندقية في الشارع فاقتحمت القوات منزلهم لتفتشه. كانت سارة في غاية الغضب.

استغرق الأمر بعض الوقت لأنتزع ابتسامة من الصغار. عندما غادر الكبار ليروا المساعدات التي يتم توزيعها ، أخذت في لعب دور المهرجة للأطفال بنفخ الفقاقيع و صنع حيوانات من البالونات لهم. جلس حمودي و هديل متسعا العينين لفترة من الوقت و هما يواصلان الاقتراب مني و معهما الطفل الأصغر منهما مصطفى الذي كان يرتدي ملابس خضراء. كان حمودي أول من أطلق ضحكة عندما تطاير رذاذ الصابون ليصيب وجهه. ابتسم الكبار أيضاً عند عودتهم و رؤيتهم صغارهم يرقصون في وسط سحابة من الفقاقيع الملونة.

قالت لي إيمان – والدة سارة- :" إذا فتحوا الطرق فسنعود، فالحياة هنا بائسة. الهلال الأحمر كان لطيفاً معنا و لكن لا يوجد عمل و لا حتى للرجال."

قام الهلال الأحمر بامداد الفلوجة بالطعام و الدواء منذ 9 ابريل ثم قرروا إقامة معسكر للسكان النازحين من الفلوجة. قال لي فارس محمد :" اخترنا موقعاً في ضاحية النمية التي تبعد سبعة كيلومترات إلى جنوب الفلوجة ، و لكن عندما وصلنا هناك للبدء في اعداد المكان كانت المنطقة قد أصبحت ساحة معركة بالفعل. تراجعنا عشرة كبلومترات أخرى إلى موقع يبعد سبعة عشر كيلومتر جنوب الفلوجة و لكن المعارك وصلت إلى هناك أيضاً ، و وجدنا بعض خيامنا قد احترقت. حاولنا بعدها أن نختار مواقع قريبة من الطريق و لكن المشكلة أن المتمردين كانوا في بعض الأحيان يهاجمون القوات أثناء عبورها الطرق فتقوم تلك القوات بالرد. لذلك قررنا في النهاية أن ننشأ المعسكر في بغداد بعيداً عن الفلوجة."

لكنه كان متأكداً من زيف التقارير التي تزعم بأن عربات الإسعاف التابعة للهلال الأحمر تم استخدامها لنقل الأسلحة. قال أن أياً من عرباتهم لم تفقد و أنهم لم يستخدموها في نقل الأسلحة. خلال المعارك كانوا الجهة الوحيدة التي يسمح لها بدخول الفلوجة أو الخروج منها ، و لم يواجهوا أي مشاكل مع أي من الجانبين حتى كان يوم الأربعاء عندما وصلتهم مساعدات من دبي فرفض الأمريكيون السماح لها بدخول الفلوجة قائلين بأن على كل عربة أن تحصل على تصريح مسبق قبل 24 ساعة من دخولها.

عندما عدت إلى المنزل قال لي رائد بأن الحمرة عادت إلى خدي للمرة الأولى منذ رحلتنا إلى الفلوجة:" أعتقد أنك كنت تلعبين مع الأطفال".
كان هذا صحيحاً فقد كان لهذا اللعب تأثير حقيقي علي. كان العنف يغمر كل شيئ: فعندما غادرت في الصباح كان كارلو يلعب مع الأطفال في شارعنا "خاطفون و رهائن" ، و كان أحمد يضع احدى يديه فوق عيني كارلو بينما يقوم بحركات ذبح بيده الأخرى على حنجرة كارلو.

و الأخبار تقول أن القتال اشتعل من جديد في الفلوجة.

2004-04-27T00:50:00.000-07:00

April 26th
Refugees (2)

Rabiia lowered his voice and informed us that two of the women are crazy. They talk all the time and their rooms are untidy. They are the mothers of widow-headed households, more refugees from Falluja. White haired under her abaya, toothless, her face lined with the contour map of her life, Fawzia’s eyes lit up at having new people to talk to. She chattered happily in Arabic to Anna who didn’t understand.

Her daughter-in-law Ikhlas is a Kurdish woman with a tiny daughter, Jwana. The strain cracked her voice as she explained that her sister Sena’s husband died two years ago and now her husband is responsible for all of them, without work and crammed into a room in a house which a local man opened up to families fleeing Falluja, near to the bomb shelter where the rest of the family are staying. There’s no kitchen there for eight kids, six women and a man. Sena too started to cry. Four of her children were with her; the fifth staying in Falluja with an uncle.

Beyda, at 18 the youngest sister, fled Falluja with them and another stayed in Falluja where her husband, only 33 years old, died a couple of days ago from a heart problem. Rabiia told us about him on the last visit: he had to be taken by boat across the Euphrates to the hospital because the roads were closed. He spent a day there and then died. His mother is sick and can’t look after herself and his father is too ill to take care of her.

Sena’s daughter Sheyma sat still white with shock, unspeaking, unsmiling, fourteen years old and utterly despairing. She’s left school. There doesn’t seem any point in it. There doesn’t seem any energy to find hope to invest in the future.

The little ones still smiled and laughed at the bubbles and balloons but when I gave them drawing things, unprompted, they started drawing aeroplanes dropping missiles on houses, some kind of structure with an Iraqi flag firing back at the aeroplane. Iraq is chaotic and dangerous and I’m glad the others left before it all got worse but I wished then that my clowns were here to turn tanks and bombs into magicians and jokers again.

Because they fled with so little, they need almost everything now. Heba and Israa sneaked me away to tell me they needed underwear and sanitary towels. Living from hand to mouth, with no work because all their jobs are in Falluja, there isn’t even enough for obvious basics. Rabiia said he’s running out of money to feed the extended family.

Ali, Heba’s new husband, was in the army for two and a half years, until the war. Waiting in the trenches, there were explosions everywhere. He’d no desire to fight anyway and when two bombs fell nearby and didn’t explode, he got in the pick up and left, took off his uniform and came to Heba’s family’s house. He was lying down when we arrived, in pain with his upper back after being hit by a car, a while ago.

Israa is 23 and a philosophy student in Baghdad university, planning to be a teacher when she’s finished. She normally stays with other family members in Baghdad during the week and the universities have reopened now after the more widespread fighting, so she’s still able to go to university, but most of the Falluja students have stopped going in protest. When she arrived she was told about the boycott and decided to join it, but like Zainab and Maha, like Shayma, a big part of the reason is not protest but exhaustion, depression, homesickness, warsickness, hopelessness.

When gossiping about our lives became too much like a counselling session, we opted for a lighter note, for something utterly insignificant, giggling about Enders’ hair, which was sticking out not unlike a clown’s ought to, except that he’s a journalist, trying to conduct a serious interview with their dad. They wanted to know who cut it. No one, apparently, for quite a while, so I said I’d do it.

There are now 24 families of Rabiia’s extended family staying in Baghdad, three of them headed by widows, totalling 121 people. One son, Ahmed Firas Ibrahim, is still trapped inside the town after he went back. Rabiia said he’s advised all the other families not to try to go back yet. The Al-Jolan district was attacked, he said: the locals were not fighting that day, when the Americans came and started raiding houses. The women were screaming and the Mujahedin came out to try and defend them.

“We had to leave our houses unguarded,” Rabiia said. “We have heard that the Americans are going into empty houses but not taking anything. We have heard that there are some people starting to steal stuff from the houses but the imams are forbidding it and punishing people who do it.”

Rabiia is no Saddam fan: “Saddam is a criminal. I used to be in prison for many years. They put me in a room where I could not see the sun. It started in 1971 and I stayed in Syria for 4 years in exile because my party, the Arab Nationalist Party, was banned. Then he excused us and we came back to Iraq but I was arrested in the mosque and jailed for 15 years for being in the party. They put electricity in my ears. I told them I no longer had contact with the party.

“There are a lot of Baathists in Falluja and a lot of Baathists everywhere in Iraq, but the people fighting in Falluja are just defending their homes and families. I was hoping for something positive from this occupation, but I used to have work, at least, and now there is none. We could throw them out with violence but the violence wouldn’t stop there, once it started. I still believe in my party and I am angry at Bremer.”

He was in the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, the ICDC, which used Shelter no 24 as a station, so he knew the building would be unlocked and he could bring the family there. He was told to go to the local assembly to register in order to get help but refuses to do it because he’s convinced that there’s a plot between the local assembly and someone from the Red Crescent to get aid and keep it for themselves.

Of another agency he says they make people stand in a line and give supplies every four days. It’s embarrassing, he says, and he won’t do it. As much as I know there is still a lot of mistrust, as much as I know that it is sometimes warranted and that there are dishonest people in power here, as much as I can empathise with his pride being wounded at having to stand in line for handouts, I also know it’s the only way the family can get any meaningful supply of aid but no matter how many times I told him it was the only way, he still repeated, “I cannot.”

The phone has been their main source of news from Falluja, getting through when they can to family and friends who are still inside, but the landline to the shelter has been cut off and now they rely on people getting out. Each day we ask them, ask the Red Crescent, ask the people in the camp; each day they say there’s been fighting, there’s been bombing, there’s no way in through the farms or there’s one way in through the farms. When the terms of the cease-fire permitted a certain number of families per day to return, people hesitated, unsure the cease-fire would hold, reluctant to drive back into the aerial bombardment.

There are 67 families now at the Iraqi Red Crescent camp, seven of them new arrivals today. The toilets are finally being built and should be finished by midday tomorrow; meanwhile the women are using the facilities in the school on one side of the camp and the men are using those in the mosque on the other.

Qusay Ali Yasseen, spokesman for the IRC, said there are a lot of kids, especially, suffering from diarrhoea, either from unclean water they had to drink on the journey or from unhygienic conditions since they arrived in Baghdad, their immune systems suppressed by trauma and shock. Chest infections are also rife among the kids because of the heat. Some of them walked for a day or two to safety.

In the middle of each day, local people arrive and unload trays, boxes and pans of food. They have taken on the responsibility of feeding the increasing numbers of homeless, Qusay said. Through the day, other locals arrived in cars to offer help. A three truck convoy flying Unicef banners unloaded boxes of parts for a water tank, a 70 foot tent for a children’s area and several crates of crayons and paper and other kids’ stuff.

For today though, and until the tent is up, there was nothing for the kids and Boomchucka lived again, yelled through the camp by small people with too much energy and nervous energy to contain. We played parachute games, blew clouds of bubbles and did a good bout of therapeutic shouting on the dusty gap between tents. The kids – proof of how little they’ve got – begged us to come back tomorrow. The trauma is still fresh with them: you can see it when the planes and helicopters scream overhead. You can see it in the desperation of their need for diversion.

Before we left they started chanting, “Zain, zain, Falluja,” [good, good, Falluja]. Kids remember things like this: who made them homeless, who killed their relatives, regardless of any later argument that it wasn’t as simple as that or it was all their parents’ fault. The news, again, says more fighting in Falluja. Some journalists rang to ask us about the new plan that the US has come up with, as if those of us here know anything about it except that they’re making war on another whole generation.

So they told us. They told us if the local fighters don’t hand over their weapons by Tuesday there’s going to be a renewed attack by the US and already the marines have moved into the Spanish base in Najaf ready to invade the city. They say they won’t enter any of the holy sites but Sadr’s a cleric so the chances are that’s where he’d be and Najaf is a minefield of holy sites, including an immense graveyard that’s a guerrilla fighter’s dream and there’s immense potential for antagonising the entire Shia population. I wonder if there's going to come a time when Iraq runs out of 'why's.

2004-04-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

April 21st
Refugees

“This is my honeymoon,” Heba said, in the crowded corridor of bomb shelter number 24 in the Al-Ameriya district of Baghdad. Married just under a month, she fled Falluja with her extended family. “There were bombs all the time. We couldn’t sleep. Even if you fell asleep, nightmares woke you up. We just gathered the whole family in one room and waited.

“It is better here than in Falluja. We hear bombs but they are far away and not so many. But there is no water in here: we have to go outside for water for drinking, cooking and washing ourselves and our clothes and we buy ice. There is no fridge, no fans, no air conditioning, no generator and only one stove for us all. We have to go to the garden for a toilet and that’s a problem at night. Everyone has diarrhoea from the ice that we bought.

“Now I am a bride but I couldn’t bring any of my clothes.” As if there would be any privacy anyway, the 88 members of 18 families piled on mattresses in the long narrow passage from the door to the kitchen at the end, from where a stream of tea and sweet sesame biscuits is flowing, part of the commemoration of Heba’s uncle.

He died 7 days ago, the day after they arrived in Baghdad. Heba’s dad Rabiia said his brother died of sadness. Because all the family’s identity documents were in Falluja, they were unable to get the body from the hospital. Rabiia met some friends, doctors who worked in the hospital, and they were able to help him get the body back after a day.

He sent two of his sons back to Falluja with their families yesterday and they phoned him at seven in the evening to tell him not to try to come back. Things are worse than before. They are trying to get back out of Falluja but all the roads are closed. His nephew tried to get back into Falluja today with his family but likewise found all the roads closed. “Now everyone in Falluja is in prison.”

Their story is the same as thousands of others. Faris Mohammed, secretary general of the Iraqi Red Crescent, believes that about 65% of the 300,000 population of Falluja have left their homes in the recent fighting. Of these 200,000 displaced people, most are staying with extended family in Baghdad or elsewhere or have been given shelter by strangers with space to spare. About 200 families are homeless.

“We left because of the bombs.,” Rabiia explained. “The kids were frightened, crying all night. We left on April 9th. Lots of our relatives had cars but there were problems getting fuel. We got all eighteen families together and then waited at the checkpoint. The Americans made us wait hours in the sun to exhaust us. The children were crying with hunger. Then the Americans changed the route we had to take and made us travel by a long side road.

We all arrived at different times – some slept in the cars at the checkpoint and arrived in Baghdad the next morning. They would only let through one young man as the driver with each car and only if there was no old man. Some of the families here couldn’t get their young men through so they had to come by the river. There was no fuel, no water, no generators, no hospitals there, so families couldn’t live.”

His youngest son Mustafa is eleven and wakes up crying every night, saying there’s going to be a bomb. Miluuk says it’s not just their son: all the kids are having nightmares. Her brother-in-law’s child as started sleep walking, asking to go back to his house. Two of Miluuk’s daughters, Zainab and Maha, have decided to quit school. Maha has developed a blood pressure problem and a stomach microbe that was caused by the bad water.

A nurse called Hadil from Falluja visited them and gave them a list of medicines they need, a couple of injections for one of the women who’s pregnant, some medication for stomach ulcers. He runs a pharmacy but has already donated all the medicines he had. Rabiia asked the Red Crescent for help but as yet they’ve had nothing. He built a toilet with his own money but there’s not much left.

Miluuk’s sister Sabriya teaches disabled people in the Shuala area. She never got married because of all the wars. “Wars eat your youth. When I was in college we made a census, boys and girls. There were about half girls and half boys but now there are maybe ten times as many girls.

“I can’t explain to you. I feel hopeless. I don’t know what the future will bring. I thought life would change, things would settle down, this war would be the last for Iraq. They said they came to give peace and human rights but now we’re figuring out that that’s not true. They don’t understand Iraq so they make problems that lead to conflict. They said they would rebuild but they’re destroying. Clean water and electricity would be enough.”

The story is the same wherever you go. The women feel depressed, the children are distressed, people are trying to get back into Falluja and finding the roads closed; those still inside Falluja are trying to get out and finding the same obstacle.

Two men, two women and eight kids sat in one of the white tents of the new Iraqi Red Crescent camp set up for families fleeing Falluja. Forty families have registered but these two are the only residents so far because there’s no sanitation. Unicef promised to provide it, according to Qasim Lefteh, the manager of the camp, but have so far failed to show up and sort it out. Meanwhile they’ve got permission to use the toilets in the school next door to the football fields they’re living on.

Fifty eight members of the extended family left after aerial bombing killed several of their neighbours. “Two of my relatives died and I buried them by my own hands,” Adil explained. “There is no way to the hospital so even if they are not killed, injured people are treated at home and there are no medicines so they die.

“Even if the ambulances tried to come, the Americans tried to shoot them. I saw the Americans shoot at a man and e stayed there from morning till night and no one could help him. the Americans shot at the ambulance. I could see them. They were on the tops of the buildings.

“Many times it happened. Whenever we saw ambulances the Americans shot at them. They even took over a minaret. They shot a family of women and children going to the market and killed them. A family of 25 people were killed when the Americans bombed their house. We saw a fighter plane firing rockets at their house.”

Their house was in the Shahid district which was heavily bombed. The government hospital is in the same district and was not destroyed, as some reports indicated, but closed down by the American troops. There was a lot of bombing when they left and the aid which had come into the town couldn’t be distributed. As they drove out they could see rockets being fired.

The kids were listless. Thirteen year old Sara kept giving me shy smiles and when the grown ups had gone, she came and sat with me, asked why. “Why did the Americans destroy our homes? This is not their country. Why did they invade our town? They made us homeless, to wander from house to house asking for help. Bombing went on all day and night and people sent cars from Bagdad to get the people who needed to leave.” Her brother Hadil is only four but has already learned to hate Americans after he was playing with a toy gun in the street and the troops raided and searched their home. Sara was full of fury.

It took a while to score a smile out of any of the little ones. When the others went off to look at some of the aid that had been given, I started clowning them, blowing bubbles and making balloon animals. Hadil and Hamoudie sat wide eyed for a couple of minutes, edging closer, and Mustafa, little and in green. Hamoudie popped one first, his face transforming as the soap splattered on his face. The adults faces relaxed into smiles too when they came back and saw the kids dancing in the middle of clouds of shiny bubbles.

“If they open the roads we will go back,” said Eman, Sara’s mum. “Life here is miserable. The Red Crescent are nice to us but there is no work, even for the men.”

The Red Crescent has been supplying food and medicine to Falluja since April 9th but decided to set up a camp for the hundreds of people fleeing. “We chose a site in Namiya district, about 7km south of Falluja but when we arrived to start setting up, the area was already a battle zone. We withdrew another 10km to a site 17km south of Falluja but then the battle spread to there too. When we returned we found some of the tents already burnt,” Faris Mohammed explained.

“We tried to choose sites that were near the road but the problem is that sometimes in these situations the insurgents shoot at troops as they pass and the troops shoot back at the insurgents, so we decided to set the camp up in Baghdad instead, away from the borders of Falluja.”

But he was adamant that the claims made about Red Crescent ambulances being used to move weapons and insurgents are false. None of our ambulances has gone missing and we have not been using them to move weapons. During the conflict we were the only Iraqi organisation with permission to go in and out of Falluja. There were no problems from either side until Wednesday, when we had supplies coming in from Dubai. We sent them straight to Falluja but the Americans sent them back saying each vehicle had to have specific permission 24 hours in advance.”

When I got home Raed said the colour had come back to my cheeks for the first time since the Falluja trips. “I think you have been playing with children,” he said. It’s true. It did make a difference. The violence starts to pervade everything: Karlu and the other kids on our street were playing Hostages as we left in the morning, Ahmed holding one hand over Karlu’s eyes and making sawing motions at his throat with the other hand.

And the news says there’s more fighting in Falluja.

2004-04-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

April 17th
Falluja (2)

Sergeant Tratner of the First Armoured Division is irritated. “Git back or you’ll git killed,” are his opening words.

Lee says we’re press and he looks with disdain at the car. “In this piece of shit?”

Makes us less of a target for kidnappers, Lee tells him. Suddenly he decides he recognises Lee from the TV. Based in Germany, he watches the BBC. He sees Lee on TV all the time. “Cool. Hey, can I have your autograph?”

Lee makes a scribble, unsure who he’s meant to be but happy to have a ticket through the checkpoint which all the cars before us have been turned back from, and Sergeant Tratner carries on. “You guys be careful in Falluja. We’re killing loads of those folks.” Detecting a lack of admiration on our part, he adds, “Well, they’re killing us too. I like Falluja. I killed a bunch of them mother fuckers.”

I wish Sergeant Tratner were a caricature, a stereotype, but these are all direct quotations. We fiddle with our hijabs in the roasting heat. “You don’t have to wear those things any more,” he says. “You’re liberated now.” He laughs. I mention that more and more women are wearing hijabs nowadays because of increasing attacks on them.

A convoy of aid vehicles flying Red Crescent flags approaches the checkpoint, hesitates. “We don’t like to encourage them,” Sergeant Tratner explains, his tongue loosened by the excitement of finding someone to talk to. “Jeez it’s good to meet someone that speaks English. Well, apart from ‘Mister’ and ‘please’ and ‘why’.”

“Haven’t you got translators?” someone asks him.

Sergeant Tratner points his rifle in the direction of the lead vehicle in the convoy. “I got the best translator in the world,” he says.

One ambulance comes through with us, the rest turn back. There are loads of supplies when we get to Falluja – food, water, medicine - at the clinic and the mosque which have come in on the back roads. The relief effort for the people there has been enormous, but the hospital is in the US held part of town, cut off from the clinic by sniper fire. They can’t get any of the relief supplies in to the hospital nor the injured people out.

We load the ambulance with disinfectant, needles, bandages, food and water and set off, equipped this time with loudspeakers, pull up to a street corner and get out. The hospital is to the right, quite a way off; the marines are to the left. Four of us in blue paper smocks walk out, hands up, calling out that we’re a relief team, trying to deliver supplies to the hospital.

There’s no response and we walk slowly towards the hospital. We need the ambulance with us because there’s more stuff than we can carry, so we call out that we’re going to bring an ambulance with us, that we’ll walk and the ambulance will follow. The nose of the ambulance edges out into the street, shiny and new, brought in to replace the ones destroyed by sniper fire.

Shots rip down the street, two bangs and a zipping noise uncomfortably close. The ambulance springs back into the side road like it’s on a piece of elastic and we dart into the yard of the corner house, out through the side gate so we’re back beside the vehicle.

This time we walk away from the hospital towards the marines, just us and the loudspeaker, no ambulance, to try and talk to them properly. Slowly, slowly, we take steps, shouting that we’re unarmed, that we’re a relief team, that we’re trying to get supplies to the hospital.

Another two shots dissuade us. I’m furious. From behind the wall I inform them that their actions are in breach of the Geneva Conventions. “How would you feel if it was your sister in that hospital unable to get treated because some man with a gun wouldn’t let the medical supplies through.” David takes me away as I’m about to call down a plague of warts on their trigger fingers.

Because it’s the most urgent thing to do, we waste the rest of the precious daylight trying to find someone in authority that we can sort it out with. As darkness starts I’m still fuming and the hospital is still without disinfectant. We go into the house behind the clinic and the smell of death chokes me: the dried blood and the putrefying flesh evoking the memory of a few days earlier, sitting in the back of an ambulance with the rotting bodies and the flies.

The aerial bombardment starts with the night and we stand outside watching the explosions and the flames. No one can quite recall whether it’s a theoretical cease-fire or not. Someone brings the remains of a rocket, unravelled into metal and wires, a fuel canister inside it, and it sits like a space alien on display on a piece of cloth on the pavement near the clinic while everyone gives it stares and a wide berth.

Someone comes round to give us a report: the Mujahedin have shot down a helicopter and killed fifteen enemy soldiers. During the evening’s street fighting twelve American soldiers have been killed. Six hundred were killed in an attack on their base but he can’t tell us how, where or when. He says thousands of US soldiers’ bodies have been dumped in the desert near Rutba, further east. I don’t doubt that the US is under reporting its casualties whenever it thinks it can get away with it but I suspect some over reporting this time. Someone whispers that he’s the cousin of ‘Comical Ali’, the old Minister of Information. It’s not true but it ought to be.

The cacophony of planes and explosions goes on through the night. I wake from my doze certain that rockets are being fired from the garden outside our room. Rhythmic, deep, resonating, the barrage goes on and the fear spreads in my belly anticipating an explosion from the air to stop the rocketer. I can’t keep still and wait for it so I go outside and realise he’s at least a couple of streets away.

The noise quietens as if soothed by a song of prayer from the mosque. Someone says that it’s a plea to stop shooting. I don’t know if it’s true, but every time I hear different songs from the minaret I wonder what it means, whether it’s a call to prayer, a call to arms, something else, maybe just someone singing the town back to sleep.

In the morning the cease-fire negotiations begin again, centred, like everything else, in one of the local mosques. For eight days, people say, the US army has fought for control of a town of 350,000 people and now, with the fighters still armed in the street, they’re trying to negotiate the terms of a cease-fire.

A body arrives at the hospital, a wound to the leg and his throat sliced open. The men say he was lying injured in the street and the marines came and slit his throat. A pick up races up and a man is pulled out with most of his arm missing, a stump with bits sticking out, pouring blood. He bleeds to death.

Two French journalists have been admitted to the town, under the protection of the mosque, and for their benefit the body is swaddled head to foot in bandages, carried to a van with no back doors and driven away by two boys including Aodeh, one of the twin boys we met on the first trip. Earlier a little girl was brought out, a polka dotted black headscarf around her face, pink T shirt under a black sleeveless cardigan with jeans, sparkly bobbles on her gloves, holding a Kalashnikov.

She was clean, her clothes were fresh and she was very cute, eleven years old, and after the photo one of the men, her father I think, took her away as if her job was done. I hope and believe she was only being used as a poster child, that she wasn’t really involved in the fighting. She’s no younger than the lad from the other day who I know is involved in the fighting, but I wish he wasn’t either.

While we wait we chat with the sheikh in the mosque. He says the hospitals have recorded 1200 casualties, between 5-600 people dead in the first five days of fighting and eighty-six children killed in the first three days of fighting. There’s no knowing how many have been hurt or killed in areas held by the US. A heavily pregnant woman was killed by a missile, her unborn child saved, the sheikh says, but already orphaned.

“Falluja people like peace but after we were attacked by the US they lost all their friends here. We had a few trained officers and soldiers from the old army, but now everyone has joined the effort. Not all of the men are fighting: some left with their families, some work in the clinics or move supplies or go in the negotiating teams. We are willing to fight until the last minute, even if it takes a hundred years.”

He says the official figure is 25% of the town controlled by the marines: “This is made up of small parts, a bit in the north east, a bit in the south east, the part around the entrance to the town, controlled with snipers and light vehicles.” The new unity between Shia and Sunni pleases him: “Falluja is Iraq and Iraq is Falluja. We received a delegation from all the governorates of Iraq to give aid and solidarity.”

The cease-fire takes effect from 9am. Those with vehicles are loading stuff from the storage building opposite the mosque and moving it around the town. The opening up of the way to the hospital is one of the terms of the deal, so we’re not really needed anymore. As well it’s starting to feel like there are different agendas being pursued that we could all too easily get caught up in, other people’s politics and power struggles, so we decide to leave.

At the corner of town is a fork, a paved road curving round in front of the last of the houses, a track leading into the desert, the latter controlled by the marines, who fire a warning shot when our driver gets out to negotiate a way through; the former by as yet invisible Mujahedin. The crossfire suddenly surrounds the car. David, head down, shifts into the driver’s seat and backs us out of there but the only place to go is into the line of Mujahedin. One of the fighters jumps into the passenger seat and directs us.

“We’re hostages, aren’t we?” Billie says.

No, it’s fine, I say, sure that they’re just directing us out of harm’s way. The man in the passenger seat asks which country we’re all from. Donna says she’s Australian. Billie says she’s British.

“Allahu akbar! Ahlan wa sahlan.” Translated, it’s more or less, God is great. I’m pleased to meet you. The others don’t know the words but the drift is clear enough: “I think he just said he’s got the two most valuable hostages in the world,” Billie paraphrases.

We get out of the car, which in any case feels a bit uncomfortable now there’s a man with a keffiyeh round his head pointing a loaded rocket launcher at it. They bring a jeep and as I climb in I can’t help noticing that the driver has a grenade between his legs. I’m sure it’s intended for the Americans, not for us, but nonetheless it’s clear there’s no room for dissent.

Still, it’s not till we turn off the road back to the mosque and stop at a house, not until David and the other men are being searched, not really until a couple of the fighters take off their keffiyehs to tie the men’s hands behind their backs, that I accept that I’m definitely a captive.

You look for ways out. You wonder whether they’re going to kill you, make demands for your release, if they’ll hurt you. You wait for the knives and the guns and the video camera. You tell yourself you’re going to be OK. You think about your family, your mum finding out you’re kidnapped. You decide you’re going to be strong, because there’s nothing else you can do. You fight the understanding that your life isn’t fully in your hands any more, that you can’t control what’s happening. You turn to your best friend next to you and tell her you love her, with all your heart.

And then I’m put in a different car from her and I can only hope they take us to the same place and try in vain to notice where we’re going, recognise some landmarks, but the truth is that I’m without any sense of direction at all and have trouble remembering left from right, even on a good day, but in any case there’s no one on the streets but fighters, nowhere to hide.

Donna, Billie, David, Ahrar and I are delivered to another house, cushions around the walls of a big room, a bed at one end of the room beside a cabinet of crockery and ornaments. A tall, dignified man in a brown keffiyeh sits and begins interviewing Donna, her name, where she’s from, what she does there, what she’s doing in Iraq, why she came to Falluja.

He decides to separate us, has the others move me, David and Billie into the next room under the guard of a man in jeans too loose for his skinny body, trainers and a shirt, his face covered except for his eyes. It’s not much to go on but I doubt he’s beyond late teens, a little nervous, calmed by our calmness. After a while he decides he shouldn’t let us talk to each other, signals for silence.

Billie’s not well, hot and sick. She lies down on the cushions, head on her arm. The fighter brings a pillow and gently lifts her head onto it, takes all the stuff off the cushions so he can fold the blanket over her. The other one brings a cotton sheet and unfolds the blanket, covers her with the sheet and then replaces the blanket around her: tucked in by the Mujahedin.

It’s my turn next for questioning. I feel OK. All I can tell him is the truth. He wants to know the same things: where I live, what I’m doing in Iraq, what I’m doing in Falluja, so I tell him about the circus, about the ambulance trips, about the snipers shooting at us. Then he asks what the British people think about the war. I’m not sure what the right answer is. I don’t know what the national opinion is these days. I try to compute what’s least likely to make him think it’s worth keeping me.

If people oppose the occupation, he says, how is it that the government could carry on and do it. He’s genuinely interested but also sarcastic: surely the great liberators must be truly democratic, truly governing by the will of the people? Instead of the extended version of Jo’s rant about the UK constitution he starts asking about Billie. I know what her answers will be so it’s easy. I dodge the issue when he moves on to David and hope he won’t press me. I don’t know him very well, I say, because I don’t know if he wants to mention that he’s also a journalist. I tell the man I’ve just met him. I just know him as Martinez.

He thanks me and we’re done. David’s next. Donna, Billie and I talk quietly about the interviews and the boy guarding us doesn’t object. Someone asks if we want chai. Warm giggles come from the kitchen; maybe the two young men imagining that their mates could see them now, masked, Kalashnikov-wielding, brewing tea for a load of women.

David’s interview is short and when I come back from the outside toilet, still alert for an escape route, as improbable as I know it is, the others are all back in the main room again and the tea is ready. Billie’s bag comes in to be fished through, a camera, a minidisc recorder. The man goes through the pictures on the camera, the missile outside the clinic and a few from Baghdad, listens to the interview with the Sheikh on the minidisc.

Donna’s camera has similar pictures of the missile, some of the street kids, some from around the flat. The tape in the video camera is from the opening of the new youth centre in Al-Daura, backing up her testimony that she’s the director of an organisation which sets up projects for kids. The other tape contains a performance by the Boomchucka Circus, backing up mine that I’m a clown.

No one brings in my bag or David’s. I think it’s best not to mention this, in case there’s anything to offend them in either of them. In particular I think it’s best they don’t notice anyone’s passport in case it encourages them to look for all our passports because Billie’s contains a stamp from Israel. It’s from when she was working in Palestine but it’s better not to spark the suspicion in the first place.

Ahrar, the questioning over, is close to hysterical. She’s more frightened of her family’s reaction to her having been out all the previous night than of the armed men holding us. We cuddle and stroke and pacify her as best we can, tell her we’ll tell her family it wasn’t her fault. The trouble was that, by the time we left Baghdad to come here, it was already too late for her to get home the same evening, and now she’s afraid it’s going to be a second night.

I quietly start singing, unsure whether that’s allowed. The others join in where they know the words. By the end of the song her sobs have stopped and her only word is, “Continue,” so we do, song after song until the prayer call begins and it’s impolite to sing at the same time.

Ahrar gets tearful again. Donna tries to comfort her. “I have a big faith in God,” she says.

“Yes, but you don’t know Mama,” Ahrar wails.

Before the war and before we came to Falluja the first time I remember feeling that it’s impossible to know how you’ll react to something like being under fire. I couldn’t have imagined either how I’d react to this, this unpredictable situation, these masked and armed men, the fear, the uncertainty. Repeatedly they tell us not to be afraid, “We are Moslems. We will not hurt you.”

Still my instinct tells me I’m going to be OK. Still my mind wanders to the question of whether they’ll shoot us against a wall or just open fire in the room, whether they’ll take us out one by one or we’ll all be killed together, whether they’ll save the bullets and cut our throats, how long it hurts for when you’re shot, if it’s instantly over or if there’s some echo of the agony of the metal ripping through your flesh after your life is gone.

I don’t need those thoughts and I push them out of my way because I know the others are going through the same thoughts: what’s this going to do to my mum? What’s going to happen? What’s it going to feel like? It wouldn’t be fair to mention it aloud so there’s be nothing to do but sit and stew with it and there’s nothing we can do about this situation but wait it out and keep our heads together.

But what I tell myself is this: I can’t change the course of this at the moment and if they do point a rifle at me or hold a knife to my throat and I know it’s the last moment of my life then for sure there’s nothing I can do then I’m determined not to beg or flinch because I was right to come to Falluja and to try to evacuate people and get supplies to the hospitals and to die for trying to do that isn’t ideal but it’s OK.

They bring our bags in and I make a hanky disappear. The guard, a different one now, is unimpressed. It’s black magic. It’s haram [sinful]. It’s an affront to Allah. Oops. I show him the secret of the trick in the hope he’ll let me off. Instead I make a balloon giraffe for his kids, who he’s taken away to the safety of Baghdad.

“My brother was killed and my brother’s son and my sister’s son. My other brother is in the prison at Abu Ghraib. I am the last one left. Can you imagine? And this morning my best friend was killed. He was wounded in the leg and lying in the street and the Americans came and cut his throat.”

That was the one who came into the hospital this morning. Oh shit. Why wouldn’t they kill us?

But the day goes by and we carry on breathing, dozing, talking. They bring food, apologise for not bringing more, promise again that they’re not going to hurt us. As it gets dark, behind the windows partly blocked by sandbags, they light a paraffin lamp. The room gets hotter and hotter and it’s a relief when they take us out to the car to move again, although change feels somehow threatening at the same time.

The new house is huge, with electricity. The four women are shown to a room and David has to stay in the main room with the men. This was his biggest fear all along, being separated from the rest of us. We take off the hijabs that we’ve kept on all day. One of the men knocks on the door and, looking at the ground, tells us they’ve checked everything and, InshaaAllah, we’ll be taken back to Baghdad in the morning. They can’t let us go now because we’ll be kidnapped by some other group.

They feed us, bring us tea, supply us with blankets and we find pretexts and excuses to nip through the main room to check on David, bringing him half an orange, a chunk of chocolate, so he knows we’re still thinking of him. He’s more vulnerable than us because we’ve got each other to laugh and sing and talk with. Everything that’s happened, although you can never be sure, says they’re not going to hurt women. David’s not so comfortable.

The night is filled with the racket of what sounds like a huge dodgy plumbing system somewhere beyond the house, a rhythmic series of explosions in quick succession like an immense grinding noise: apparently it’s the sound of cluster bombs. Billie and I hold each other’s hands all night because we can. In the morning there’s still a knot of doubt in my belly. They said they’d take us home after the morning prayers, more or less at first light, and it’s been light for ages. Maybe they just told us we’d be released to keep us calm and quiet.

But they do let us go: they take us to one of the local imams who says he will drive us home. At the edge of Falluja is a queue of vehicles, some already turning back from the checkpoint. The passengers say the US soldiers fired as they approached. We get out of the car, hijabs off, and start the whole rigmarole again, loudspeaker, hands up, through the maze of concrete and wire, shouting that we’re an international group of ambulance volunteers trying to leave Falluja, we’re unarmed and please don’t shoot us.

Eventually we can see the soldiers; eventually they lower the guns, tell us to put our hands down, they’re not going to shoot us. “My bad,” one says. Apparently it’s US slang for acknowledging your own mistake. “We’re not going to fire any more warning shots.” We tell them we’ve got two cars to bring through and ask about the rest of the cars. They agree to open up the checkpoint to women, children and old men. The trouble is, most of the women don’t drive and so can’t leave unless their husbands are allowed to drive them. We persuade them to let through cars with a male driver even if he is ‘of fighting age’ if he’s got his family with him.

The fear in Falluja is that, when most of the women and children are gone, the town is going to be destroyed and everyone killed, by massive aerial bombardment or with a thermobaric weapon or something. Ahrar tries to explain that the men who want to leave are the ones who don’t want to fight.

“Oh, we want to keep them in there,” the marine says. “There’s fighters coming from all over Iraq into Falluja and we want to keep them all in there so we can kill them all more easily.”

But these are the ones who want to get out, those of the locals who don’t want to fight. It doesn’t matter though: we’ve got all we’re going to get out of them. We tell the crowd of anxious refugees and leave another local imam as the go-between. The road is quiet but for our small convoy until another roadblock. The imam talks to some locals, tells Ahrar there are Americans ahead. Hijabs off again, we heave ourselves out of the car for another round.

In the sickly, hot silence there are a few cracks but no responses to our shouts. Dust erupts from a house a way off and we wonder if we’re walking into a battle. Shouting in English, trying to be as obviously foreign as possible is the only tactic for walking into marines’ lines but it’s a bit of a risk when the lines are not clear. We keep yelling for them to give us a wave if they can hear us. There’s no response.

“Wait a minute,” David says. “Are those marines or are they Muja?”

Oh shit. Tell us we’re not walking into a Mujahedin line. We hesitate. Maybe we need to go back to the car and get the imam to come instead.

“No, I think it’s OK. I think they’re marines.”

“Decide! Tell us!” As if he’s got any more information than the rest of us.

The men we can see start gesturing, big arm movements, pointing to their left, our right, go towards the bridge. It’s a signal, which we’ve been asking for, but it doesn’t mean they’re not another group of kidnappers. Finally one yells. They’re green berets, which is why they didn’t quite look like the marines we’d got used to. Billie and I go back towards the cars to signal for them to come. No one fancies walking the aching gap between us and them again, but for time and time and time the cars don’t move, despite our arm waving, my roaring through the megaphone. Finally they shift and we scurry back into the relative cover of the bushes around the bridge.

“Are you crazy?” asks one of the soldiers.

I feel a bit closer to insanity than I did before that walk into the unknown, I have to confess, as mortars thunder out of their encampment. He tells me not to worry, they’re outgoing. Of course there’s some comfort in this. An outgoing mortar is preferable in many ways to an incoming one, but it seems at the same time like a bit of an invitation, RSVP written all over it.

Past them, the second car leaves us. David hugs the driver like he’d just brought him back from the dead and joins us in our car. There’s still Abu Ghraib, still Shuala, still who knows what between us and home. Ahrar wants to stop and phone her mum from a roadside booth in the middle of Shuala and even the imam is looking panicky as the call drags on, his carload of foreigners just sitting waiting for someone to notice us. Exhausted and exhibiting the early symptoms of tetchiness, we drag her back to the car and escape.

It’s only when we walk through the door of our apartment that we’re sure we’re coming home, all of us yelling and talking at once, telling the story, laughing over the surreal moments, hugging each other, retrieving hidden passports from underwear.

“We’re laughing about it now,” Billie says, “but there were moments…”

On the news they say Nayoko and the other Japanese hostages have been released, that Watanabi, the Japanese photographer who hung out with us when we took the circus to Samawa, has disappeared with a colleague. They say the cease-fire is holding in Falluja. Harb comes round to tell me off, but I’m unrepentant. I still think it was the right thing to do.

They took us because we were foreigners acting strangely in the middle of their war. They found out what we were doing and let us go. On the way out we were able to open up the checkpoint which meant people were able to get out of Falluja to safety. If that was all we did it would still have been worth it. But still in a quiet moment later on I whisper a thank you to the cheeky angels who look after clowns and ambulance volunteers.