Iraqi Communist Salam Ali talks to the Morning Star about the challenges ahead and his party's strategy

Click on this link to read this interview, which many activists in the anti-war struggle may find offensive. A comprehensive analysis of relations between the Iraqi Communist Party - which supported Saddam Husssein's coup until he assassinated its leaders, and is now part of America's puppet "governing council" -- is in preparation. Meanwhile, comments from readers are welcome.
Click HERE to read the full interview.  ¶ 9:33 AM

  Fellujah - another eye-witness report from Donna Mulhearn
On arrival in Fallujah we drove through the deserted streets straight to the clinic where our friends had helped out a few days before.

It was a small neighbourhood clinic that had been transformed into a makeshift hospital after the main hospital in Fallujah was bombed and closed by the US military.

The staff adapted admirably to the influx of wounded that were continually delivered in the backs of cars, vans and pick-ups – extra beds were wheeled in and cans of soft drink were emptied from the ‘coke’ machine so it could be used to cool bags of blood.

But the clinic had no disinfectant, no anaesthetic, and other vital equipment required for the type of surgery the horrific wounds demanded. And as a form of collective punishment all electricity to Falluja had been cut for days. The clinic had a generator, but when the petrol ran out the Doctors had to continue surgery using the glow from cigarette lighters, candles and torches.

We spoke to the Doctors – they were exhausted, and looked defeated as they told us the stories of their recent cases – a ten-year-old boy with a bullet wound to the head, a grandmother with an abdominal bullet wound – both the victims of U.S snipers, young men with severe burns, limbs blown off and so on. But each time a new patient arrived the Doctors quickly got up, put on a new set of surgical gloves and got to work.

Many had worked for 24 hours straight, others surviving on only a few hours sleep for days at a time. They didn’t complain. They are the heroes of Fallujah.

We talked about how we could help. In the last mission a few days earlier, our friends had been successful in negotiating with soldiers in getting wounded people off the street and evacuating families from areas of cross-fire.

The Doctors asked if we could accompany an ambulance packed with food and medical supplies across town to a hospital that had been cut off. It was in the US controlled section of the town so it was not able to receive aid because of constant sniper fire.

The Doctors figured our foreign nationality could make a difference in negotiating the safe passage of the ambulance with the soldiers.

It might seem a strange and unnecessary mission to help an ambulance drive from one place to another – anywhere else in the world it’s a basic thing, but this is Fallujah and this is war and nothing is as it should be, despite guarantees laid out in the Geneva Convention.

The last time an ambulance went to this part of town it was shot at by US troops. I know this because two of my friends were in the ambulance at the time, trying to reach a pregnant woman who had gone into pre-mature labor. They didn’t reach her, but the bullet holes in the ambulance are a testament to the fact they tried.

So we packed the ambulance with supplies and got in the back

With me were three other foreigners: Jo, Dave and Beth – two British, an American and an Aussie, a good representation of young people from the “Coalition of the Willing” trying to counter-balance the military intervention of our countries with loving intervention. We donned bright blue surgical gowns and held our passports in our hands. A couple of medical staff were with us, as well as the drivers in the front.

We drove slowly through the parts of Fallujah controlled by Iraqi fighters then stopped in a side-street that faced a main road. We could not go any further because the main road was under watch and control of US snipers. They had developed a habit of shooting at anything that moved.

So we parked the ambulance in the side street and the four of us got out with the task of approaching the American soldiers, communicating with them and getting permission for the ambulance to continue to the hospital.

The area was completely quiet. The silence was unnerving.

We prepared the loudspeaker, put our hands in the air and held our passports high. Before we ventured onto the main road we called out a message from the side street.

“Hello? American soldiers! We are a group of international aid workers. We are unarmed. We are asking permission to transport an ambulance full of medical supplies to the hospital. Can you hear us?”

The reply was just a chilling silence.

We repeated the message. Silence again.

We looked at each other. Perhaps the soldiers were too far away to hear us? We had to walk onto the main road and take the risk that we would be clearly visible as unarmed civilians, and approach the soldiers with our hands in the air.

I took a deep breath and for a split-second thought that this was probably the most dangerous thing I had ever done in my life.

As I exhaled, my heart gave me strength: I looked at the others and could tell we were all thinking the same thing: “If I don’t do this, then who will?” Their courage inspired me as we all stepped out on the road together.

We walked slowly with our arms raised in the air. My eyes scanned the tops of the buildings for snipers. We didn’t know where they were set up so we walked in the direction of the hospital.

We repeated the message over and over again on the loudspeaker, in the silence it would have been heard for hundreds of metres. It echoed eerily throughout the neighbourhood.

I turned my head briefly and just in time. In the distance I saw two white flashes, then the loud bang of gunshots and the ugly realisation that they were shooting into our backs.

It all happened so fast: ducking, hearing the whizz of the bullets above our heads, diving for cover off the side of the road against a wall.

We huddled there for a moment behind a bush, then someone cried: “Let’s go”. We crawled along the ground, at one stage I was walking low with my back hunched. In the scramble I fell. My hands broke my fall onto sharp gravel on the rough ground. I felt the sting of pain and could see the blood, but I had no time to stop and check what happened.

We ended up in someone’s back yard then made our way back to the ambulances by jumping fences and going through gates.

My hands were covered with blood, my left foot cut and my passport was stained red, leaving an ever-constant reminder of the episode.

We re-grouped, but we didn’t want to give up. Now we knew where the soldiers were, we could walk towards them. We decided to go out again.

Same drill: we called out the message first, then stepped out onto the road, this time facing the direction the gunfire had come from.

“Hello! American soldiers. We are foreign aid workers- British, Australian, American. We are not armed. We are asking permission to transport an ambulance on this road.”

My injured hand was shaking as I held my passport now damp with my blood. I tried to work out what I was feeling: fear, anger, determination. I still don’t know.

We had only repeated the message twice and walked a few metres when our answer came.

Two more bullets. By this stage I think I entered a state of shock. I had been shot at, not once, but twice by American soldiers after politely asking permission to transport aid to a hospital.

I guess the answer was ‘No’.

Jo got angry. We all did. We stepped back to the corner but Jo continued on the loud speaker.

‘Do you know it is against the Geneva Convention to fire at unarmed civilians and at ambulances?” she cried.

“How would you feel if your sister was trapped in a hospital under siege without food or water?”

We took the loudspeaker from her.

“May your trigger finger be plagued with warts,” she continued under her breath.

We bundled in the back of the ambulance. It was a handy place to be with deep cuts and grazes on my hand. I bowed my head as someone tended to my wounds.

We headed back to the clinic. My head was spinning. I felt angry, I felt frustrated, my hands were aching. But strangely enough my spirit was in-tact. I had just walked with my hands in the air like a vulnerable lamb into the face of armed soldiers, yet this non-violent action and my complete and utter faith that the ‘rightness’ of the mission would protect me had been immensely empowering.

We didn’t deliver the supplies, just a clear message to the military:

“We are not afraid. We will not be intimidated by your weapons.

“If we have to confront your violence to help people who are suffering then we will. We will do it without using violence.

“We will keep trying.”

Your pilgrim
Donna

PS: Some people have asked: “how can you be sure it was American soldiers who shot at you?”. The answer is that the area we were in was under the control of US soldiers for at least five days. Iraqi fighters did not have had access to the area the shots came from.

PPS: Thanks to everyone who has sent me messages of support and letters to Howard and Downer. Sorry if other people cannot get e-mails through to me – if you’re frustrated, try this address: donnainbaghdad@yahoo.com.au

PPPS: “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with our soul-force.” Dr Martin Luther King Jnr   ¶ 9:57 AM

  The Chinese occupation

The Chinese occupation
A satire, by Karl Dallas

The question is:
Are the Chinese incompetent, not having a plan to deal with the chaos resulting from their occupation of Britain?
Or is the chaos part of their plan, ensuring them a perpetual foothold in Europe?
One thing is certain:
Wherever their "peace-keeping" forces have landed with their God-given role of bringing people's democracy,
the result has been less peace, less democracy.

They came here because they feared our weapons of mass destruction.
Well, of course we did have WMDs.
They helped us develop them.
They gave us the missiles installed in our nuclear submarines.
Their germ-warfare experts exchanged information with our scientists at Porton Down.
They never expressed anxiety about WMDs during the eight years of our war with France,
when a million died on either side.
They even gave us the technology we used in the battle for Cardiff,
and when we were accused of gassing our own people,
when the Welsh had risen up against us,
demanding independence,
they said it was probably the French who used gas in that battle.

After the war,
when we tried to reassert our control over the Channel Islands,
their ambassador told Tony Blair they had no problem with that.
But when we moved to control all the North Sea oil,
they suddenly changed their minds.
That was when their attitude changed towards us and our WMDs.

We were driven out of the Channel Islands.
We were forced to destroy our biological and chemical weapons, though they kept their own.
They sent inspectors to make sure we did destroy them,
but we discovered their "inspectors" were actually sending reports to the Chinese secret service
so we kicked them out.

We were blockaded,
and thousands of our children died of starvation.
They declared Wales to be a no-fly zone
and they sent bombing missions there almost every night,
terrorising the people who had looked to them for support.

Meanwhile,
they had been sorting out the problems of Switzerland.
The German, French and Italian people of that mountain country had lived in peace together for centuries.
But external forces began to provoke the break-up of its federal structure.
First, individual cantons were encouraged to declare themselves independent.
Those cantons still remaining within the Swiss state were riven for the first time by ethnic tensions.
The Zürich government tried to enforce order,
but ethnic minorities appealed to the world for help.

Led by the Chinese,
bombers attacked Swiss cities for seventy-eight days.
Then they sent in a peace-keeping force,
but instead of getting better,
the violence got worse.
Switzerland became a major channel for drugs coming over the Alps into Europe.

Then came the attack upon the Gate of Heavenly Peace.
For many years,
the Chinese had occupied Tibet,
and it was said that the pilots of the planes were Tibetans,
trained by Britain.
Three thousand people died on that day,
and it was truly terrible.

But many questions remained.
Why, for instance,
did Chinese MIGs not shoot down the planes
once they had been hi-jacked
and diverted from their flight-path?
Instead of finding an answer to these questions,
they attacked Spain.

Why Spain?
Yes, it had been unstable for years.
First, it had a sort of socialist government,
but the Russians got involved
so the church declared a Crusade against them.
The Chinese supplied them with weapons.
Then a more militant church took power,
taking the country back into the Middle Ages.
The Jesuits started training missionaries to be sent out into the world,
including China.
The Beijing hijacking was blamed on them.

And what did it have to do with us?
The Spanish denounced us as heretics.
Tony Blair was excommunicated.
Nevertheless, the Chinese claimed we had trained the hijackers.
They claimed our rockets could hit Beijing within 45 minutes.
But we had destroyed them all,
and they knew this.
We had a few battlefield rockets,
but these were old and hardly a threat to anyone.
Nevertheless,
they attacked us,
and within a few weeks they had installed a Governing Council in Westminster.

They resumed the search for WMDs,
but they didn't find any.
Then they said Tony Blair was a tyrant
and he was a threat to world peace.
They said we needed regime change,
and we'd be glad to see him go.
Well we knew Tony Blair was a bastard,
a lying control freak,
but at least he was our bastard,
our lying control freak,
not a convicted fraudster like the exile they wanted to put into power over us.

If the Chinese had left us alone
to manage our own affairs,
we'd have got rid of him long ago.
And anyway,
since their president was unelected,
what right had they to talk?

They hunted our former prime minister down
and imprisoned him.
There was talk of a trial,
but Blair knew too much about them
to ever be allowed to take the stand.

They had promised to liberate the Catholics,
because there was still discrimination against them.
For instance, our King couldn't marry one.
But things had changed a lot since the days of Guy Fawkes,
and Catholics and Protestants had lived in peace for many hundreds of years,
except in Northern Ireland,
where Chinese presidents kept claiming Irish ancestry.
If they expected to be welcomed on the streets of Belfast,
they soon had to think again.

Before the invasion,
Tony Blair had handed out automatic weapons to anyone who could pull a trigger,
and those weapons started appearing on the streets.
Pretty soon,
more Chinese had died after their victory
than were killed in the actual shooting war.
Before they came,
you could walk the streets at night without fear,
but now nowhere was safe.
They had promised to pull out,
but suddenly they were talking about sending more and more troops, supposedly to bring peace.

The chaos is getting worse,
just as it had in Switzerland,
just as it had in Spain.
Is this incompetence,
or part of the plan?
Either way,
we wish they'd just go home,
so we could enjoy our chicken chow mein in peace.
Because until they go,
things can only get worse.
  ¶ 12:04 PM

  ‘SUBMIT OR DIE': The siege of Fallujah and beyond.

A Voices in the Wilderness UK briefing
13th April 2004

Roughly 800 Iraqis have been killed in the latest escalation of US/UK repression and killing in Iraq. In the first of series of emergency updates voices uk looks at what’s likely to happen next and the mind-set of some of the US soldiers fighting in Iraq.

A PROLONGED CAMPAIGN OR NEGOTIATIONS?
Though a fragile – and incomplete - ‘cease-fire’ is apparently still in place in Fallujah (AP, 12 April) on Sunday the New York Times reported that, ‘American commanders are preparing for a prolonged campaign to quell the twin uprisings in Iraq … retaking the cities around Baghdad, if necessary block by block against an entrenched Sunni foe’ and conducting ‘a series of short, sharp, local strikes at small, elusive bands of Shiite militia in southern cities, continuing until the militia was wiped out’ (11 April).

However also on Sunday - in what the LA Times described as ‘a significant tactical shift’ - US officials announced that they were ‘seeking “political” solutions to pacify [Fallujah]’ and disband firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ’s militia ‘[a]s guerrillas appeared to extend their influence closer to [Baghdad] … shooting down an Apache helicopter about 3 miles from Baghdad's airport and cutting off communications between military posts on a key road leading west from the city’ (12 April). At the same time ‘additional U.S. forces have been maneuvering into place, and the military has warned it will launch an all-out assault on Fallujah if talks there between pro-U.S. Iraqi politicians and city officials … fall through’ (AP, 12 April).

OR BOTH?
Noting that, ‘not a single American journalist has investigated the links between the Israeli army's “rules of engagement” - so blithely handed over to US forces on Sharon's orders - and the behaviour of the US military in Iraq,’ veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reminds us that, ‘[i]n besieging cities - when they were taking casualties or the number of civilians killed was becoming too shameful to sustain - the Israeli army would call a “unilateral suspension of offensive operations”. They did this 11 times after they surrounded Beirut in 1982’ (Independent, 11 April). It is possible that this is what we are seeing right now: on Monday the top US commander in the Middle East ‘called for at least two more brigades – up to 10,000 troops – to be sent to help quell the upheaval – and the most senior US general in Iraq declared that ‘the mission of US forces is to kill of capture Moqtada al-Sadr’ (Guardian, 13 April).

However even if negotiations ‘succeed’ they are likely to provide only a temporary reprieve. According to the New York Times, ‘Pentagon policy makers and military officers … are worried that without a successful political process … the current military operations to restore order [sic] throughout restive Sunni and Shiite cities may have to be repeated in months to c ome’ (12 April). “[U]nless the political side keeps up, we’ll have to do it again after July 1 [when ‘sovereignty’ is nominally being transferred to an Iraqi Interim Government] and maybe in September and again next year and again and again,” a military officer told the paper. However, since the US continues to pursue what the Financial Times’s Middle East editor correctly identified as its ‘desire to control Iraq’s political transition while making it appear that it is driven by Iraqis’ (17 Jan) the prospects of ‘a successful political process’ are, to put it mildly, bleak.

‘SUBMIT OR DIE’According to the Washington Post US marines are ‘eager to plunge back into the fray’ in Fallujah. Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, who commands the 5th Marine Battalion there told the paper that ‘Given the virulent nature of the enemy, the prospect of some city father walking in and getting Joe Jihadi to give himself up is pretty slim … That’s fine, because they’ll get whipped up, come out fighting again and get mowed down ... Their only choices are to submit or die’ (11 April).

To be sure, the men, women and children of Fallujah do appear to have been ‘mowed down’ in large numbers. On Sunday the director of the town’s general hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, estimated – on the basis of figures gathered from four clinics around the city as well as the hospital itself - that more than 600 people had been killed and that ‘the vast majority of the dead were women, children and the elderly’ (Guardian, 12 April).

SNIPERS: 'TRAINED TO BE PRECISE'
Lt. Col. Byrne denies this, stating that, ‘95% of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting.’ Indeed, according to Lt. Col. Byrne, ‘the marines are trained to be precise in their firepower … [and are] very good at what they do’ (Guardian, 12 April).

Those who have managed to flee the city have been able to give some examples of this precision. For example, Mohammed Hadi, who told the Telegraph that, ‘US marines snipers had taken up position in the minarets of a local mosque and shot dead his neighbour.’ “He was just on his way to buy tomatoes,” he told the paper. And 17-year-old Hassan Monem, who claimed that two of his friends ‘were shot as they stood in my yard.’

Likewise, Ali, 28, who had managed to escape with part of his family, related how “one man in an Opel drove his wife and children to the bridge so they would walk over. As he drove back to town, an American sniper killed him” (Guardian, 12 April). Meanwhile US author Rahul Majahan, who managed to get into Fallujah during the ‘ceasefire’, found ‘[a]n ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest’ and ‘another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield’. (EmpireNotes.org weblog, 12 April entry)

‘CHANGE THE CHANNEL’
The US has come up with a novel method for dealing with the PR problems associated with killing large numbers of Iraqis civilians. Asked on Sunday, what he would tell Iraqis about televised images “of Americans and coalition soldiers killing innocent civilians,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq answered “Change the channel.”’ (NYT, 12 April).

“[S]tations … showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources,” he asserted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it does not appear to be working.

‘NOW EVERYONE BELONGS TO THE RESISTANCE’
According to Johnathan Steele, ‘[h]undreds of families have driven out of Falluja over the last two days … The stories they tell have a common theme:
how the Americans used to be good when they first arrived in Falluja, how arrogance and in sensitivity gradually alienated people, and how now under the pressure of so many deaths almost everyone supports the resistance, the mojahedin.’ (Guardian, 12 April).

One such, Adnan Abid, a 35-year-old taxi driver from Fallujah, explained to the Telegraph that “I used to believe it was a good thing the Americans came to Iraq. Now I have lost all hope until the occupation ends” (12 April). His wife, Hakima, added “There was little resistance in Fallujah before this week …Now everyone belongs to the resistance.” Outside a Fallujah school 16-year-old Soran Karim told the New York Times that ‘killing Americans was not just a good thing’: “It is the best thing. They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people” (11 April).

‘MINI-FALLUJAHS FOR MONTHS’
‘Falluja captured the world’s headlines,’ the Guardian’s Johnathan Steele notes ‘but all over the Sunni areas there have been mini-Fallujas for months. US troops respond to attacks with artillery fire and air strikes, clumsy house-to-house searches, and mass arrests. In the process they create more enemies and provoke a desire for revenge.

“We have even lost our right to get undressed for bed," a businessman in the town of Muqdadiya,” told him ‘recount[ing] how American troops had burst into his home after dark, handcuffed him in his night clothes in front of his terrified wife and children, and taken him away … His ordeal was short compared with the torture he suffered … under Saddam … but he said it left a deeper wound. “Under Saddam they summoned you to the security police headquarters, and that was where the torture began. They didn't humiliate you in sight of your family,” he explained.’ (Guardian, 12 April).

Abdul Razak al-Muaimy, a 32-year-old laborer, told the New York Times that American soldiers had humiliated him in front of his children: “They searched my house. They kicked my Koran. They speak to me so poorly in front of my children. It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me.” (11 April).

PICKED UP FOR 'WEARING BLACK’
Similar stories abound. Thus David Blair notes the ‘gleams of loathing’
lighting up the eyes of two Iraqis, who had been found, unarmed in Central Baghdad and were now ‘squatting in the dust their hands tied by plastic restraints’ (Telegraph, 10 April). “We picked up these guys for wearing black,” explained one soldier from the 1st Armoured Division. “All of Sadr's guys wear black. It's like a Viet Cong thing.” ‘Gunmen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi'ite leader, do indeed wear black,’ Blair notes ‘But so do Shi'ite pilgrims - and hundreds of thousands are now converging on … Najaf and Karbala for the Shi'ite festival of Arba'een. Saddam Hussein's regime … rounded up pilgrims around the time of Arba'een by the simple expedient of arresting men in black.’

Plus ca change.

‘NOT CONCERNED ABOUT ... IRAQI LOSS OF LIFE’
In an e-mail quoted in the New York Times, Maj Gen James N. Hattis, commander of the First Marine Division, states that “We will always be humanitarian in our efforts. We will fight him on our terms. May God help them when we’re done with them” (11 April).

Others are less sanguine about the US approach. For example, a senior UK army officer, who has told the Sunday Telegraph that “when US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area … They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are’, ‘they view [Iraqis] as untermenschen [the Nazi expression for “sub-humans”]. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful’ (11 April).

Based on ‘statements on individual incidents by the US military, Iraqi police and hospital officials’ Associated Press estimates that ‘about 880 Iraqis [have been] killed around the country’ over the past week (AP, 12
April) whilst the Independent on Sunday estimates the Iraqi civilian death toll for the period 4-10 April at 541, with over 1370 civilians injured (11 April). By contrast US military deaths were placed at 36, and non-US military deaths at 16.

ACT NOW
Last October Kofi Annan observed that ‘as long as there’s an occupation, the resistance will grow’ (IHT, 15 Oct). ‘[US] commanders say they have no doubt they can achieve [military success], given their force’s superior strength and enough support from Washington and the American people’ (NYT, 11 April). We can and must deprive the US (and the British) Government of that support for without an end to the US/UK military occupation the future for Iraq’s people looks grim indeed.

Contact your MP now.

Voices UK has been campaigning on UK policy towards Iraq, in solidarity with the Iraqi people, since February 1998. For more information, to receive further updates or to join our free mailing list please contact: voices in
the wilderness uk, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX. Tel. 0845 458 2564
(local rate call) E-mail: voices@voicesuk.org Web: www.voicesuk.org

[A PDF version of this briefing, to print and distribute, will be available shortly on the Voices web-site: www.voicesuk.org

********************************************
TAKE ACTION!

Demos. have already taken place in London (see eg.
http://www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/emergency.htm) and in over fifty towns and cities across the US (http://www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/emergency.htm#answer).
Please let us know of any forthcoming actions in your area in addition to the ones below.

The Stop the War Coalition has called an Emergency Lobby 10 Downing
Street: GIVE IRAQ BACK TO THE IRAQIS!Saturday 17 April, 12-2pm, outside 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, Central London. Tubes: Westminster, Charing X.
Called by Stop the War Coalition. Supported by CND and the Muslim Association of Britain.
www.stopwar.org.uk

The Edinburgh Stop the War Coalition has also called an emergency demo.
for next Saturday:

Stop the Massacres in Falluja, End the US & British occupation of Iraq, Bring the British Soldiers Home with the Spanish.
Saturday April 17th 12.00 noon, Parliament Square, Edinburgh http://www.edinburghstw.org.uk

Contact your MP.
Even if she/he is completely useless you need to contact them in order to 'shake the tree' so that public outrage can filter up the system.

** You can find an alphabetical list of MPs, including (where they have
them) their web-sites, e-mails etc... on-line at:
http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alms.cfm

** If you know your postcode you can also fax your MP on-line using http://www.faxyourmp.org

** If you want to leave a message for Jack Straw, the main switchboard # at the Foreign Office for general enquiries is 020 7008 1500.

** You can fax the Prime Minister on 020 7925 0918 or send him an e-mail via http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page821.asp. Alternatively you can write to him at 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA

** You can phone the Defence Attache's Office at the US embassy by calling
(0207) 894 0745, fax it on 020 7894-0726 or e-mail WereszczynskaAM@state.gov. According to the Embassy's web-site
(http://www.usembassy.org.uk/dao/index.html) the DAO 'performs representational functions on behalf of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretaries of the Military Services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chiefs of the U.S. Military Services and the Commander of European Command. The Defense & Naval Attaché at the American Embassy, London is Captain David L. Wirt, USN.'

** Contact the MoD: a list of contacts is available on-line at http://www.mod.uk/contacts/index.html. You can write to them at Ministerial Correspondence Unit, Ministry of Defence, Room 220, Old War Office, Whitehall, London SW1A 2EU or e-mail them at public@ministers.mod.uk (including your postal address).

Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Disobedience.

* Use the internet resources that are out there to organise your own action eg. http://www.j-n-v.org/pledge/activists.htm and http://www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/.

* Keep your ear to the ground and take part in actions organised by others eg. http://www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/events.html, www.stopwar.org.uk, www.schnews.org.uk and www.indymedia.org.uk.
  ¶ 11:41 AM

  Falluja: No respite from the Violence

No respite from the Violence
by Dahr Jamail | Posted April 12, 2004 at 08:28 PM Baghdad time
http://blog.newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches/archives/000164.html

Baghdad--When we returned from Falluja yesterday I felt like I could let my guard down somewhat. For in Baghdad, at least compared to Falluja, there have always been pockets of relative calm. The apartment where I’m staying is supposedly one of those.

We got news from Christian Peace Team (CPT) that most of the NGO’s left in Iraq are either pulling out completely, or leaving a skeleton crew.

There is also talk of supposed organizing of a UN airlift in the works to fly folks out. But at the same time, there is also talk of the airport closing due to security problems.

In addition, the road to the airport is extremely dangerous because there are many attacks there daily. The other side of the equation is even more horrendous--the main road to Amman is closed at Falluja--still passable by taking side roads around the closed highway. But we’ve heard reports that foreigners are being pulled from cars, shot, and left there by various militia.

I’m currently strongly considering leaving…but it is so volatile that what the safest option may be is changing on an hourly basis. For right now, I just bought some groceries and am holing up in my apartment with my friends.

A few days ago Firdos Square--where the infamous pulling down of Saddam’s statue occurred after the invasion--was closed and blockaded by the American military. I stood atop my apartment listening to a speaker on a Humvee blaring instructions that anyone who approached the area would be shot on sight. This is freedom.

Apparently the U.S. is prepared to take these measures to prevent another demonstration from occurring there.

We’re using dark humor to lighten the extremely tense mood here--joking about what we can do if one of us is kidnapped. Jo promises to let any kidnappers know how that I just completed a humanitarian mission to Falluja. I will most certainly tell them she founded an NGO that entertains Iraqi children with a traveling circus, as well as works to aid them.

An Iraqi policeman who knows some nearby flat-mates has given a few of the folks here a ride to the internet café before. He just stopped in to ask if we would like a ride today. He also used the opportunity to tell us Sadr’s Medhi militia is planning on targeting this area tomorrow and the next day for kidnappings. Guess what my plans are for the next couple of days? Good thing I just bought groceries. We are joking (morbidly) about hiding in the water tanks on the roof. We’ll move soon most likely, we’re just trying to find the best option.

But it is odd here--this area has consistently felt like the hole in the donut--the bustling street nearby is full of lights, traffic and shoppers each night, children playing in the street in the evenings.

However, even now many of the stores are closed, and traffic is notably lighter. Even many of the Iraqis themselves are afraid, for nobody really has any idea what might happen next. For this is worse than a war, due to its randomness. There are so many groups battling against the US occupation and targeting foreigners…it seems like a closer comparison than Vietnam would be Beirut.

Solutions? One thing that remains glaringly apparent today is that Falluja has become another rallying point for the resistance. While most media in the U.S. (and many other Western countries) are failing to report the Iraqi side of the story there, everyone here knows it’s turned into a full-on massacre, and people are extremely angry. This and the entire debacle of how the Americans have handled the situation with Muqtada Sadr, have together brought rivers of volunteers into the already growing resistance to the occupation.

Thus, if the U.S. doesn’t pull out of Falluja, the situation is only sure to worsen. God help us if/when they launch a full on incursion into the city, including increased air strikes. When will whoever is making these unbelievably stupid strategic decisions for the military here wake up?

I would also like to comment on the insane disparity I see in the reporting from CNN and some of the other mainstream media. I’ve watched several of them on the television, and last night CNN had the gall to say that the ceasefire was holding in Falluja, aside from some Iraqi snipers firing at the Americans there. NPR, NY Times, and several others have reporters embedded with the military there as well.

This is difficult for me to see, particularly after being there yesterday and seeing an ambulance with 3 bullet holes in the driver’s side of the windshield. Seeing slain women and children, elderly, unarmed people. All killed and/or wounded by the American snipers. How can the media report this when they don’t even have a correspondent in Falluja? Why are they failing so completely to report the Iraqi side of the story? How much more obvious can it be that they are only parroting the U.S. military lies concerning the situation?

So Americans are killing unarmed Iraqis in Falluja (and elsewhere) because they have the wrong colored skin. And now many Iraqi resistance fighters are responding in kind--killing or kidnapping any foreigner they find.

Several of our Iraqi friends and interpreters now have told us they have received death threats for working with us. Everyone is afraid, and more and more people are simply staying at home. Fighting rages rampantly throughout the country, aside from Kurdistan. What hope for the future do Iraqis have? All of my Iraqi friends are simply holding on day to day.

Yesterday George Bush said he knew what we were doing in Iraq was right.

Mr. Bush, does this include massacring unarmed women, children and elderly in Falluja right now? When you say you believe the soldiers in Iraq are acting brilliantly, does this include the snipers shooting ambulances with blaring sirens and flashing lights? Does this include dragging the entire country into a bloody chaos that is worsening by the hour?

In the last week there have been over 600 Iraqis slain in Falluja alone, with thousands more wounded. In this same week over 62 U.S. troops killed, and most certainly hundreds more wounded.
  ¶ 11:23 AM

  Donna Mulhearn (Human Shield): I'm Going to Fallujah
April 13 04 I'm Going to Fallujah

We were having a talk in my living room the other night about the chaos in Iraq. The kidnappings, the bloodshed in Fallujah, the darkness across the country. We talked about what on earth we could do - a bunch of foreigners who’d come to Iraq to work on various projects, but now confined to our apartment because of the ‘kidnap’ scare. It was Easter Saturday and there was a TV show on in the background about the ‘mystery’ of Jesus. We were all a bit amused by the tacky presentation from CNN.

“Mystery?” the non-religious Joanna quipped, “Jesus lives in heaven!” “Well, actually he doesn’t,” I said with a smile, feeling no need to explain the comment any further. “Mmm, so where could he be?” … she mused cheekily. Before I had the chance to respond, she answered herself.

‘Perhaps he’s in Fallujah?”

Everybody laughed out loud. I smiled to myself. “In fact he’s in Fallujah waiting for us!” she continued. “He’s there all on his own thinking – ‘where on earth are those people from Baghdad?'"

Everybody laughed again. And I smiled again, not at the ridiculous nature of the comment, but at the profound reality of it. Earlier in the night we’d discussed the possibility of going into Fallujah to do whatever we could to help the desperate situation there. To act as human shields, bringing in aid, accompanying ambulances, helping civilians get out safely etc etc. With hundreds of civilians lying dead on the streets from sniper fire, the theory was that our white skins and western passports would protect us and allow us to do practical work that desperately needed to be done. Work that the Iraqis are killed doing.

We had a friend who offered to get us in via backroads and he knew the local militia. This would be our protection.
My heart lifted at the thought of going in to express solidarity with the people there, who must be feeling so angry and betrayed. And to go to join Jesus, who was waiting for me. But it would a dangerous mission and our safety was in no way guaranteed. Confirmation for my decision came at church that night thanks to the little children. They came wearing lovely decorations on their heads, holding candles, singing songs with little dances. The mass was called “Celebration of the Light.” ‘Light of Christ. Light in the darkness.” The children sang in their tiny, but confident voices as they circled the church in a procession holding candles. “Light of hope. Light of the world. Light of Peace. Living Jesus. Light of Life, true light for our lives.”

I looked down at my little candle and with tears in my eyes, reflected on an e-mail I received from a friend the same day with a beautiful message: “keep steady and trust that the smallest light is always more potent that the darkest night.”

I remembered the quote I gave to an Australian newspaper five months ago when they asked me why on earth would I go somewhere as dark and scary as Iraq. ‘If it’s dark somewhere go and turn a bloody light on!” was my off-the-cuff reply back then.

So I’ve decided to go to Falluja. I’m going today (Tuesday). They say the cease-fire is on shaky ground. Some, who have been in Fallujah these past days say it’s non-existent. That the city is still pounded by missiles, mortars and snipers day and night.

So I’ll go in and see, to hopefully shed a little light, bring a message of peace, share some humanity and come back to tell the story. I’ll report back soon. Insha’allah. I know some of you will think this is crazy, but please send me your support and prayers. It is your faith and positive energy that will allow us to do this work safely.

Please someone tell Prime Minister John Howard to keep his mouth shut! His hard-line comments been reported extensively on Iraqi TV here and have inflamed many people which may put me into danger. Please, Mr. Howard put a sock in it! Please no one tell me Mum what I‘m doing. Please don’t send large messages or attachments in the next few days because I will not have access to e-mail to clear my in-box.

This little prayer was also sent to me and also helped to confirm what we’re doing.
St Teresa’s Prayer

Christ has no body now but mine,
No hands, no feet on earth but mine
Christ has no body now but mine.
Let me be Christ, let me shine.
Mine are the eyes, with which he looks,
Looks with love upon the world.
Mine are the feet, with which he walks,
Walks to do good in this world.
Mine are the hands, with which he works,
Works for peace here in this world.
Mine is the voice, with which he speaks,
Speaks his message to this world.
Mine is the face with which he smiles,
Smiles a welcome to this world.
Mine is the heart, with which he loves,
Loves all people in this world.

Your pilgrim Donna
  ¶ 11:16 AM

  Falluja: another eyewitness report April 11th
Falluja

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.

He said aid vehicles and the media were being turned away. He said there was some medical aid that needed to go in and there was a better chance of it getting there with foreigners, westerners, to get through the american checkpoints. The rest of the way was secured with the armed groups who control the roads we’d travel on. We’d take in the medical supplies, see what else we could do to help and then use the bus to bring out people who needed to leave.

I’ll spare you the whole decision making process, all the questions we all asked ourselves and each other, and you can spare me the accusations of madness, but what it came down to was this: if I don’t do it, who will? Either way, we arrive in one piece.

We pile the stuff in the corridor and the boxes are torn open straightaway, the blankets most welcomed.
It’s not a hospital at all but a clinic, a private doctor’s surgery treating people free since air strikes destroyed the town’s main hospital. Another has been improvised in a car garage. There’s no anaesthetic. The blood bags are in a drinks fridge and the doctors warm them up under the hot tap in an unhygienic toilet.

Screaming women come in, praying, slapping their chests and faces. Ummi, my mother, one cries. I hold her until Maki, a consultant and acting director of the clinic, brings me to the bed where a child of about ten is lying with a bullet wound to the head. A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed. A US sniper hit them and their grandmother as they left their home to flee Falluja.

The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up the flame of a cigarette lighter for the doctor to carry on operating by. The electricity to the town has been cut off for days and when the generator runs out of petrol they just have to manage till it comes back on. Dave quickly donates his torch. The children are not going to live.

“Come,” says Maki and ushers me alone into a room where an old woman has just had an abdominal bullet wound stitched up. Another in her leg is being dressed, the bed under her foot soaked with blood, a white flag still clutched in her hand and the same story: I was leaving my home to go to Baghdad when I was hit by a US sniper. Some of the town is held by US marines, other parts by the local fighters. Their homes are in the US controlled area and they are adamant that the snipers were US marines.

Snipers are causing not just carnage but also the paralysis of the ambulance and evacuation services.
The biggest hospital after the main one was bombed is in US territory and cut off from the clinic by snipers. The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because no one can go to collect them without being shot.

Some said we were mad to come to Iraq; quite a few said we were completely insane to come to Falluja and now there are people telling me that getting in the back of the pick up to go past the snipers and get sick and injured people is the craziest thing they’ve ever seen. I know, though, that if we don’t, no one will.

He’s holding a white flag with a red crescent on; I don’t know his name. The men we pass wave us on when the driver explains where we’re going. The silence is ferocious in the no man’s land between the pick up at the edge of the Mujahedin territory, which has just gone from our sight around the last corner and the marines’ line beyond the next wall; no birds, no music, no indication that anyone is still living until a gate opens opposite and a woman comes out, points.

We edge along to the hole in the wall where we can see the car, spent mortar shells around it. The feet are visible, crossed, in the gutter. I think he’s dead already. The snipers are visible too, two of them on the corner of the building. As yet I think they can’t see us so we need to let them know we’re there.

“Hello,” I bellow at the top of my voice. “Can you hear me?” They must. They’re about 30 metres from us, maybe less, and it’s so still you could hear the flies buzzing at fifty paces. I repeat myself a few times, still without reply, so decide to explain myself a bit more.

“We are a medical team. We want to remove this wounded man. Is it OK for us to come out and get him? Can you give us a signal that it’s OK?”

I’m sure they can hear me but they’re still not responding. Maybe they didn’t understand it all, so I say the same again. Dave yells too in his US accent. I yell again. Finally I think I hear a shout back. Not sure, I call again.

“Hello.”

“Yeah.”

“Can we come out and get him?”

“Yeah,”

Slowly, our hands up, we go out. The black cloud that rises to greet us carries with it a hot, sour smell.
Solidified, his legs are heavy. I leave them to Rana and Dave, our guide lifting under his hips. The Kalashnikov is attached by sticky blood to is hair and hand and we don’t want it with us so I put my foot on it as I pick up his shoulders and his blood falls out through the hole in his back. We heave him into the pick up as best we can and try to outrun the flies.

I suppose he was wearing flip flops because he’s barefoot now, no more than 20 years old, in imitation Nike pants and a blue and black striped football shirt with a big 28 on the back. As the orderlies form the clinic pull the young fighter off the pick up, yellow fluid pours from his mouth and they flip him over, face up, the way into the clinic clearing in front of them, straight up the ramp into the makeshift morgue.

We wash the blood off our hands and get in the ambulance. There are people trapped in the other hospital who need to go to Baghdad. Siren screaming, lights flashing, we huddle on the floor of the ambulance, passports and ID cards held out the windows. We pack it with people, one with his chest taped together and a drip, one on a stretcher, legs jerking violently so I have to hold them down as we wheel him out, lifting him over steps.

The hospital is better able to treat them than the clinic but hasn’t got enough of anything to sort them out properly and the only way to get them to Baghdad on our bus, which means they have to go to the clinic.
We’re crammed on the floor of the ambulance in case it’s shot at. Nisareen, a woman doctor about my age, can’t stop a few tears once we’re out.

The doctor rushes out to meet me: “Can you go to fetch a lady, she is pregnant and she is delivering the baby too soon?”

Azzam is driving, Ahmed in the middle directing him and me by the window, the visible foreigner, the passport. Something scatters across my hand, simultaneous with the crashing of a bullet through the ambulance, some plastic part dislodged, flying through the window.

We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings.

Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it’s hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance I start singing. What else do you do when someone’s shooting at you? A tyre bursts with an enormous noise and a jerk of the vehicle.

I’m outraged. We’re trying to get to a woman who’s giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you’re shooting at us. How dare you?

How dare you?

Azzam grabs the gear stick and gets the ambulance into reverse, another tyre bursting as we go over the ridge in the centre of the road , the sots still coming as we flee around the corner. I carry on singing. The wheels are scraping, burst rubber burning on the road.

The men run for a stretcher as we arrive and I shake my head. They spot the new bullet holes and run to see if we’re OK. Is there any other way to get to her, I want to know. La, maaku tarieq. There is no other way.
They say we did the right thing. They say they’ve fixed the ambulance four times already and they’ll fix it again but the radiator’s gone and the wheels are buckled and se’s still at home in the dark giving birth alone. I let her down.

We can’t go out again. For one thing there’s no ambulance and besides it’s dark now and that means our foreign faces can’t protect the people who go out with us or the people we pick up. Maki is the acting director of the place. He says he hated Saddam but now he hates the Americans more.

We take off the blue gowns as the sky starts exploding somewhere beyond the building opposite. Minutes later a car roars up to the clinic. I can hear him screaming before I can see that there’s no skin left on his body. He’s burnt from head to foot. For sure there’s nothing they can do. He’ll die of dehydration within a few days.

Another man is pulled from the car onto a stretcher.

Cluster bombs, they say, although it’s not clear whether they mean one or both of them. We set off walking to Mr Yasser’s house, waiting at each corner for someone to check the street before we cross. A ball of fire falls from a plane, splits into smaller balls of bright white lights. I think they’re cluster bombs, because cluster bombs are in the front of my mind, but they vanish, just magnesium flares, incredibly bright but short-lived, giving a flash picture of the town from above.

Yasser asks us all to introduce ourselves. I tell him I’m training to be a lawyer. One of the other men asks whether I know about international law. They want to know about the law on war crimes, what a war crime is.
I tell them I know some of the Geneva Conventions, that I’ll bring some information next time I come and we can get someone to explain it in Arabic.

We bring up the matter of Nayoko. This group of fighters has nothing to do with the ones who are holding the Japanese hostages, but while they’re thanking us for what we did this evening, we talk about the things Nayoko did for the street kids, how much they loved her. They can’t promise anything but that they’ll try and find out where she is and try to persuade the group to let her and the others go. I don’t suppose it will make any difference. They’re busy fighting a war in Falluja. They’re unconnected with the other group. But it can’t hurt to try.

The planes are above us all night so that as I doze I forget I’m not on a long distance flight, the constant bass note of an unmanned reconnaissance drone overlaid with the frantic thrash of jets and the dull beat of helicopters and interrupted by the explosions.

In the morning I make balloon dogs, giraffes and elephants for the little one, Abdullah, Aboudi, who’s clearly distressed by the noise of the aircraft and explosions. I blow bubbles which he follows with his eyes. Finally, finally, I score a smile. The twins, thirteen years old, laugh too, one of them an ambulance driver, both said to be handy with a Kalashnikov.

The doctors look haggard in the morning. None has slept more than a couple of hours a night for a week.
One as had only eight hours of sleep in the last seven days, missing the funerals of his brother and aunt because he was needed at the hospital.

“The dead we cannot help,” Jassim said. “I must worry about the injured.”

We go again, Dave, Rana and me, this time in a pick up. There are some sick people close to the marines’
line who need evacuating. No one dares come out of their house because the marines are on top of the buildings shooting at anything that moves. Saad fetches us a white flag and tells us not to worry, he’s checked and secured the road, no Mujahedin will fire at us, that peace is upon us, this eleven year old child, his face covered with a keffiyeh, but for is bright brown eyes, his AK47 almost as tall as he is.

We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the building, cover this side and Rana mutters, “Allahu akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.”

We jump down and tell them we need to get some sick people from the houses and they want Rana to go and bring out the family from the house whose roof they’re on. Thirteen women and children are still inside, in one room, without food and water for the last 24 hours.

“We’re going to be going through soon clearing the houses,” the senior one says.

“What does that mean, clearing the houses?”

“Going into every one searching for weapons.” He’s checking his watch, can’t tell me what will start when, of course, but there’s going to be air strikes in support. “If you’re going to do this you gotta do it soon.”

First we go down the street we were sent to. There’s a man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies ave got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I’m by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave’s hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out.

There’s no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He was unarmed. He just went out the gate and they shot him. None of them have dared come out since. No one had dared come to get his body, horrified, terrified, forced to violate the traditions of treating the body immediately. They couldn’t have known we were coming so it’s inconceivable tat anyone came out and retrieved a weapon but left the body.

He was unarmed, 55 years old, shot in the back.

We cover his face, carry him to the pick up. There’s nothing to cover his body with. The sick woman is helped out of the house, the little girls around her hugging cloth bags to their bodies, whispering, “Baba.
Baba.” Daddy. Shaking, they let us go first, hands up, around the corner, then we usher them to the cab of the pick up, shielding their heads so they can’t see him, the cuddly fat man stiff in the back.

The people seem to pour out of the houses now in the hope we can escort them safely out of the line of fire, kids, women, men, anxiously asking us whether they can all go, or only the women and children. We go to ask. The young marine tells us that men of fighting age can’t leave. What’s fighting age, I want to know.

He contemplates. Anything under forty five. No lower limit.

It appals me that all those men would be trapped in a city which is about to be destroyed. Not all of them are fighters, not all are armed. It’s going to happen out of the view of the world, out of sight of the media, because most of the media in Falluja is embedded with the marines or turned away at the outskirts. Before we can pass the message on, two explosions scatter the crowd in the side street back into their houses.

Rana’s with the marines evacuating the family from the house they’re occupying. The pick up isn’t back yet.
The families are hiding behind their walls. We wait, because there’s nothing else we can do. We wait in no man’s land. The marines, at least, are watching us through binoculars; maybe the local fighters are too.

I’ve got a disappearing hanky in my pocket so while I’m sitting like a lemon, nowhere to go, gunfire and explosions aplenty all around, I make the hanky disappear, reappear, disappear. It’s always best, I think, to seem completely unthreatening and completely unconcerned, so no one worries about you enough to shoot. We can’t wait too long though. Rana’s been gone ages. We have to go and get her to hurry. There’s a young man in the group. She’s talked them into letting him leave too.

A man wants to use his police car to carry some of the people, a couple of elderly ones who can’t walk far, the smallest children. It’s missing a door. Who knows if he was really a police car or the car was reappropriated and just ended up there? It didn’t matter if it got more people out faster. They creep from their houses, huddle by the wall, follow us out, their hands up too, and walk up the street clutching babies, bags, each other.

The pick up gets back and we shovel as many onto it as we can as an ambulance arrives from somewhere. A young man waves from the doorway of what’s left of a house, his upper body bare, a blood soaked bandage around his arm, probably a fighter but it makes no difference once someone is wounded and unarmed. Getting the dead isn’t essential. Like the doctor said, the dead don’t need help, but if it’s easy enough then we will. Since we’re already OK with the soldiers and the ambulance is here, we run down to fetch them in. It’s important in Islam to bury the body straightaway.

The ambulance follows us down. The soldiers start shouting in English at us for it to stop, pointing guns. It’s moving fast. We’re all yelling, signalling for it to stop but it seems to take forever for the driver to hear and see us. It stops. It stops, before they open fire. We haul them onto the stretchers and run, shove them in the back. Rana squeezes in the front with the wounded man and Dave and I crouch in the back beside the bodies. He says he had allergies as a kid and hasn’t got much sense of smell. I wish, retrospectively, for childhood allergies, and stick my head out the window.

The bus is going to leave, taking the injured people back to Baghdad, the man with the burns, one of the women who was shot in the jaw and shoulder by a sniper, several others. Rana says she’s staying to help. Dave and I don’t hesitate: we’re staying too.

“If I don’t do it, who will?” has become an accidental motto and I’m acutely aware after the last foray how many people, how many women and children, are still in their houses either because they’ve got nowhere to go, because they’re scared to go out of the door or because they’ve chosen to stay.

To begin with it’s agreed, then Azzam says we have to go. He hasn’t got contacts with every armed group, only with some. There are different issues to square with each one. We need to get these people back to Baghdad as quickly as we can. If we’re kidnapped or killed it will cause even more problems, so it’s better that we just get on the bus and leave and come back with him as soon as possible.

It hurts to climb onto the bus when the doctor has just asked us to go and evacuate some more people. I hate the fact that a qualified medic can’t travel in the ambulance but I can, just because I look like the sniper’s sister or one of his mates, but that’s the way it is today and the way it was yesterday and I feel like a traitor for leaving, but I can’t see where I’ve got a choice. It’s a war now and as alien as it is to me to do what I’m told, for once I’ve got to.

Jassim is scared. He harangues Mohammed constantly, tries to pull him out of the driver’s seat wile we’re moving. The woman with the gunshot wound is on the back seat, the man with the burns in front of her, being fanned with cardboard from the empty boxes, his intravenous drips swinging from the rail along the ceiling of the bus. It’s hot. It must be unbearable for him.

Saad comes onto the bus to wish us well for the journey. He shakes Dave’s hand and then mine. I hold his in both of mine and tell him “Dir balak,” take care, as if I could say anything more stupid to a pre-teen Mujahedin with an AK47 in his other hand, and our eyes meet and stay fixed, his full of fire and fear.

Can’t I take him away? Can’t I take him somewhere he can be a child? Can’t I make him a balloon giraffe and give him some drawing pens and tell him not to forget to brush his teeth? Can’t I find the person who put the rifle in the hands of that little boy? Can’t I tell someone about what that does to a child? Do I have to leave him here where there are heavily armed men all around him and lots of them are not on his side, however many sides there are in all of this? And of course I do. I do have to leave him, like child soldiers everywhere.

The way back is tense, the bus almost getting stuck in a dip in the sand, people escaping in anything, even piled on the trailer of a tractor, lines of cars and pick ups and buses ferrying people to the dubious sanctuary of Baghdad, lines of men in vehicles queuing to get back into the city having got their families to safety, either to fight or to help evacuate more people. The driver, Jassim, the father, ignores Azzam and takes a different road so that suddenly we’re not following the lead car and we’re on a road that’s controlled by a different armed group than the ones which know us.

A crowd of men waves guns to stop the bus. Somehow they apparently believe that there are American soldiers on the bus, as if they wouldn’t be in tanks or helicopters, and there are men getting out of their cars with shouts of “Sahafa Amreeki,” American journalists. The passengers shout out of the windows, “Ana min Falluja,” I am from Falluja. Gunmen run onto the bus and see that it’s true, there are sick and injured and old people, Iraqis, and then relax, wave us on.

We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we look more western. The American soldiers are so happy to see westerners they don’t mind too much about the Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the women unsearched because there are no women soldiers to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are going to be OK.

“Al-melaach wiyana, “ I tell him. The angels are with us. He laughs.

And then we’re in Baghdad, delivering them to the hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man off groaning and whimpering. She puts her arms around me and asks me to be her friend. I make her feel less isolated, she says, less alone.

And the satellite news says the cease-fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right.”

Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right? Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?

Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalise people so much that they’ve nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anaesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city’s under siege and aid isn’t getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you’re in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house.

It’s a crime and it’s a disgrace to us all.-Jo (gurneyernie@yahoo.co.uk)
  ¶ 5:23 PM

  EYEWITNESS REPORT FROM FALLUJAH: Destroying a Town in Order to Save it Report from Fallujah -- Destroying a Town in Order to Save it by Rahul Mahajan Empire Notes (http://www.empirenotes.org), 12 April 2004

Fallujah, Iraq -- Fallujah is a bit like southern California. On the edge of Iraq's western desert, it is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. Surrounded by dirt-poor villages, Fallujah is perhaps marginally better off. Much of the population is farmers. The town itself has wide streets and squat, sand-colored buildings.

We were in Fallujah during the "ceasefire." This is what we saw and heard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They conferred together about logistical questions; not once did I see the muj threatening people with their ubiquitous Kalashnikovs.

One of the mujaheddin was wearing an Iraqi police flak jacket; on questioning others who knew him, we learned that he was in fact a member of the Iraqi police.

One of our translators, Rana al-Aiouby told me, "these are simple people."

Without wanting to go along with the patronizing air of the remark, there is a strong element of truth to it. These are agricultural tribesmen with very strong religious beliefs. They are insular and don't easily trust strangers. We were safe because of the friends we had with us and because we came to help them. They are not so far different from the Pashtun of Afghanistan -- good friends and terrible enemies.

The mujaheddin are of the people in the same way that the stone-throwing shabab in the first Palestinian intifada were and the term, which means "youth," is used for them as well. I spoke to a young man, Ali, who was among the wounded we transported to Baghdad. He said he was not a muj but, when asked his opinion of them, he smiled and stuck his thumb up. Any young man who is not one of the muj today may the next day wind his aqal around his face and pick up a Kalashnikov. After this, many will.

Al-Nazzal told me that the people of Fallujah refused to resist the Americans just because Saddam told them to; indeed, the fighting for Fallujah last year was not particularly fierce. He said, "If Saddam said work, we would want to take off three days. But the Americans had to cast us as Saddam supporters. When he was captured, they said the resistance would die down, but even as it has increased, they still call us that."

Nothing could have been easier than gaining the good-will of the people of Fallujah had the Americans not been so brutal in their dealings. Tribal peoples like these have been the most easily duped by imperialists for centuries now. But now a tipping point has been reached. To Americans, "Fallujah" may still mean four mercenaries killed, with their corpses then mutilated and abused; to Iraqis, "Fallujah" means the savage collective punishment for that attack, in which over 600 Iraqis have been killed, with an estimated 200 women and over 100 children (women do not fight among the muj, so all of these are noncombatants, as are many of the men killed).

A Special Forces colonel in the Vietnam War said of the town, Ben Tre, "We had to destroy the town in order to save it, encapsulating the entire war in a single statement. The same is true in Iraq today -- Fallujah cannot be "saved" from its mujaheddin unless it is destroyed.

Rahul Mahajan is publisher of the weblog "Empire Notes" -- http://www.empirenotes.org. He was in Fallujah recently and is currently writing and blogging from Baghdad. His most recent book is "Full Spectrum
Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond." He can be reached at rahul@empirenotes.org  ¶ 2:52 PM