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November 26, 2004
'Unusual Weapons' Used in Fallujah
Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (IPS) - The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report.
”Poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS. ”They used everything -- tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground.”
Hammad is from the Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred. Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.
”They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. ”Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”
He said pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects. ”People suffered so much from these,” he said.
Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.
”Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. ”Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.”
Kassem Mohammed Ahmed who escaped from Fallujah a little over a week ago told IPS he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in the city.
”I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” he said. ”This happened so many times.”
Abdul Razaq Ismail who escaped from Fallujah two weeks back said soldiers had used tanks to pull bodies to the soccer stadium to be buried. ”I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers,” he said. ”The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”
Abu Hammad said he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. ”The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore,” he said. ”Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot..”
Hammad said he had seen elderly women carrying white flags shot by U.S. soldiers. ”Even the wounded people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.”
Another Fallujah resident Khalil (40) told IPS he saw civilians shot as they held up makeshift white flags. ”They shot women and old men in the streets,” he said. ”Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies...Fallujah is suffering too much, it is almost gone now.”
Refugees had moved to another kind of misery now, he said. ”It's a disaster living here at this camp,” Khalil said. ”We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes.”
Spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad Abdel Hamid Salim told IPS that none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah, and that the military had said it would be at least two more weeks before any refugees would be allowed back into the city.
”There is still heavy fighting in Fallujah,” said Salim. ”And the Americans won't let us in so we can help people.”
In many camps around Fallujah and throughout Baghdad, refugees are living without enough food, clothing and shelter. Relief groups estimate there are at least 15,000 refugee families in temporary shelters outside Fallujah.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2004
Occupier of a Prime Minister's Chair
Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Nov 23 (IPS) - The prime minister is following in the footsteps of the last president. The rule of Ayad Allawi, the U.S. appointed interim prime minister of Iraq, is now more in the style of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein than a leader of a supposedly democratic state.
Most Iraqis had celebrated the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein. But under what has developed into a brutal and bloody occupation people are turning against the interim prime minister as they turned against Saddam.
One of Allawi's earliest moves after his appointment was to form a new version of the feared secret police in Iraq. The Economist reported that Allawi's rivals accused him of ”recruiting former torturers to man a new apparatus of oppression.”
In July Paul McGeogh of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that two eyewitnesses saw Allawi execute six people at the security centre in the al-Amadiyah district of Baghdad. The men had been detained for allegedly attacking U.S. forces two weeks before the handover of power.
The appointed interim prime minister has instituted martial law, threatened to detain journalists, and banned the Arab channel al-Jazeera from reporting within Iraq. Allawi's minister of justice has brought back the death penalty and spoken of chopping off the hands and heads of those described as insurgents.
Now comes the siege of Fallujah. At a refugee camp in Baghdad filled with families from the besieged city, anger erupts at the mention of Allawi's name.
”Ayad Allawi says we are his family,” said Mohammad Ali, a 53-year-old refugee wounded by U.S. bombs in his home in Fallujah. ”Can you attack your family, Allawi? Do you attack your own family, Allawi?”
Allawi is a traitor to the people of Iraq, said Dr. Um Mohammed who works at a hospital in Baghdad. ”He is an American puppet who enjoys the killing of Iraqis.” A trader in central Baghdad Abdel Hakim Abdulla said Allawi has ”never made a decision that benefits Iraqis.”
Anger is building up against Allawi also over the role he played before he was appointed interim prime minister. He is the man many hold responsible for providing fraudulent intelligence that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.
His now discredited statements to U.S. intelligence that Saddam Hussein had links to the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11 were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. This had shaken his credibility amongst Iraqis from the beginning.
The right-wing Daily Telegraph of London published a ”newly discovered” document from Allawi Dec. 14 last year. Allawi, who was then a member of the Iraqi Governing Council stated that the mastermind of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks Mohammad Atta had been trained in Iraq with support from Saddam Hussein.
This fraudulent information was cited by U.S. intelligence as compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein had contacts with al-Qaeda. It was cited as justification for the failing occupation of Iraq.
A second part of the memo also believed to have been provided by Allawi alleged shipment of uranium from Niger to Iraq. This is another claim that has been proved false.
Allawi was reported by the International Herald Tribune to have said that Saddam Hussein had stashed billions of dollars in banks around the world. No evidence of these billions has emerged.
Allawi again was said again to have provided the 'intelligence' in a British government dossier that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be made operational in 45 minutes, according to a report in the New York Times May 29 this year. This 'intelligence' has been acknowledged to be false.
Allawi, a Shia Muslim, was ”unanimously nominated” to the post of interim prime minister May 28 by the U.S.-appointed former Iraqi Governing Council.
Adam Daifallah wrote in the New York Sun that Allawi heads a group comprising primarily former Baathist associates of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein and ”has received funding from the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency of the United States) and has unsuccessfully worked with American intelligence for years to oust Saddam through coup attempts.”
Born in Baghdad in 1946 into a well-known business family, Allawi became a member of the Baath party after it rose to power. He left Iraq in 1971 to go to university in London, and did not return to his home country until just after the U.S.-led invasion last year. (END/2004)
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2004
Iraqi Critics Speak Out on Occupation, Elections
by Dahr Jamail, The NewStandard
On questions about the future of Iraq, the voices marginalized most in the Western press are those of Iraqis outside elite political circles. Dahr Jamail asks important questions of important people: the Iraqi public.
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1248
(Also see: "Critics Weigh in On Alternative US-Iraq Policies" by Saadia Iqbal)
Baghdad, Nov 20 - While debate continues in the United States about how best to manage the occupation and nation building of Iraq, the ideas of Iraqis on the matter of what is to happen in their country have been all but completely muted in the West.
Iraqis tend to favor free elections without American influence and setting a timetable for military withdrawal as part of the solution to the bloody quagmire their country has become under foreign control.
Obviously, the ongoing occupation and heightening resistance to it are a major focus for all Iraqis. "What I said during Saddam's time I say now, that this is a political issue and not a military issue," said Dr. Wamidh Omar Nadhmi, a senior political scientist at Baghdad University and a long-time secular activist.
Nadhmi was an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein's government, and he sees ominous parallels today. Accepting the risks of standing up against Ba'athist rule in the 1990s, he and other dissidents offered a solution. "We raised these slogans: Political dialogue, national reconciliation, and transformation to democracy," he said during a recent interview at his home in Baghdad. "And now I find myself repeating the same solutions."
The professor is also the official spokesman for the Iraqi National Foundation Congress, a council of intellectuals, community leaders and clerics whose goal is to create an alliance of political parties that work for the betterment of Iraq. The group boasts a diverse membership that includes prominent Shi'ite leaders and Muslim scholars. Also participating are Christian, Turkmen and Kurdish Iraqis and even pre-Saddam era Ba'athists.
"We suggested to the occupation forces and Iraqi government four requirements for an Iraqi election: an international committee of oversight; an immediate ceasefire because we cannot have elections under bombardment and rockets; [the] withdrawal of American troops from the major cities one month before the election…" Nadhmi paused before adding the fourth requirement: "We even gave this international committee the right to delete any name from the list of people running for office if they didn't like it."
Instead of accepting the suggestions of his council, which Nadhmi described as prerequisites for a free and democratic election, the interim government declared martial law.
"How can we have a free election under martial law?" he asked. "Instead of a ceasefire, they attack Fallujah. Are they sure that the aftermath will not be bloodier than Fallujah? The martial law is one of the nails in the coffin of this regime. The last pretext for democracy here is now buried. Their declaration of martial law is a declaration of political bankruptcy."
At the end of October, the Iraqi National Foundation Congress called for a boycott of the January elections.
Another professor at Baghdad University, Dr. Genan Hammed, believes the solution is for the US to withdraw completely from Iraq. "The Americans should go back from where they came from," she said during a telephone interview. "Get the Iraqi [armed] forces to come back to rule the country, that is the only solution."
In addition, Hammed said she does not believe elections are feasible in the current climate, especially because political parties were manipulated by the former US-run Coalition Provisional Authority such that certain, favored parties have dominated others. "This is just not the right time for elections," Hammed said. "The Sunnis don't have parties, the Kurdish claim to have a majority, everyone is foggy."
Other Iraqi political activists believe the alternative solution for Iraq is similar to that which many pundits and analysts in the West have been discussing since the early days of the occupation.
"The solution is for the Americans to announce their failure and hand everything to the General Assembly of the UN and not to the Security [Council]," said Dr. Abdul Kareem Hani, who was Iraq's minister of social affairs under Saddam Hussein. Hani said he prefers the General Assembly have authority because it is "under less American hegemony" than the Security Council, over which the US has veto power. "There is of course large American influence on all the world's affairs, but at least there is a little less in the Assembly," he said.
Hani believes the only solution is a UN-appointed interim government -- one not aligned with the United States. He cautions that any elections carried out according to the "Bremer laws," instituted by former American occupation chief Paul Bremer, will be a dismal failure.
"We all believe the Bremer laws have no legal basis, neither here nor anywhere else," he said from his home in Baghdad. "According to the Geneva Conventions and the Hague, the occupying force has no authority to change the laws of the occupied country."
The Hague regulations of 1907, which the US ratified, as well as the US Army's Law of Land Warfare, state that the alteration of an occupied country's laws is illegal.
"They know this yet they have issued all these laws which are against the good of the people of the country," Hani concluded. "They are creating more problems every day. What is happening now in Fallujah and all around the country are proof that they do not want to solve the problems -- they are keen to produce more problems."
Of course, Iraqis generally believe settling the tumultuous security situation is paramount; it must be resolved before any real political progress can be made in Iraq.
Ahmed Mahmoud, a 33-year-old unemployed resident of Baghdad, said, "I think the security problem stems from the open borders." He felt the US military should stay out of the cities in Iraq and allow Iraqis to handle their own security. "If the Americans say the security is bad because of the [terrorists from neighboring countries], then let them go stop them at the borders," he added.
Many Iraqis believe that a different approach on the part of the US occupiers would have made a major difference. "The US military here is winning all the battles," said Dr. Nadhmi, "but they are losing the war because they have brought a puppet regime."
Nadhmi paused, then added, "Any [Iraqi leader] who would respect himself, and thus be respected by the people, would not accept to become a puppet for the Americans or any other foreign power."
Salman Obeidy, a 55-year-old unemployed carpenter, believes he could have done a better job than the US's envoys, administrators, generals and ambassadors. "Give me the money the Americans spent to bomb Fallujah," he said, "I will solve the problem with that money by using it to help Iraqis. They are fighting because they see the Americans as occupiers rather than someone who came to help them."
If the crux of the problem is truly that simple, and a possible solution has been so close to the US's grasp, the political fallout from the ongoing invasion of Fallujah cannot be overstated with regard to its effect on the elections scheduled for January 27, 2005.
Tuesday, November 9 saw the first political casualty from the siege of Fallujah, when the Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political force in Iraq, withdrew from the Iraqi interim government. "We are protesting the attack on Fallujah and the injustice that is inflicted on the innocent people of the city," Muhsin Abd Al-Hamid, head of the Party, told Aljazeera. "We cannot be part of this attack."
The next day, the influential Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) called upon people to boycott the national elections.
Dr. Harith Al-Dhari, the secretary general of the AMS, defended the prerogative of Iraqis to legally resist the occupation of their country. "We have said we support the resistance since the occupation of this country began," he said Tuesday. "This is our right as Iraqis. Therefore, we don't need a fatwa [clerical order] on this issue, as this matter is clear."
Also on November 10, Ayad Al-Azi, spokesman for the Islamic Party of Iraq announced that his party had withdrawn completely from the interim government, and that they were strongly considering a boycott of the elections.
On November 13, the spokesman for Muqtada Al-Sadr, Ali Smasm, announced that they will also boycott the January polls.
Prior to this announcement, during a phone interview, Ahmed Al-Bideri, spokesman for the office of Muqtada Al-Sadr in Sadr City, Baghdad, had hinted that Al-Sadr's support for the electoral process was at an end. "We were trying to decide who to support in the elections because we don't want to separate our power over different issues," Al-Bideri said at the time. He had added that the Sadrist movement hoped to work toward changing the elections so that they would be fair and transparent.
"The Americans must review their entire Iraq policy and come to wise decisions," said Dr. Nadhmi. "There is nothing wrong with ideology unless it blinds you from seeing reality."
© 2004 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)