Life In
Falluja Is A Horror Story
By Eric Ruder
& Dahr Jamail
01 April, 2005
Socialist
Worker
DAHR JAMAIL
spent eight months working as an independent journalist in Iraq. As
one of the few journalists not embedded with U.S. forces,
his reports earned a reputation for being an uncompromising look at
life under occupation.
Currently, Jamail
is back in the U.S. on a speaking tour that will take him to several
West Coast cities. He spoke to Socialist Workers ERIC RUDER
about the destruction unleashed on Iraq by the U.S. during two years
of occupation.
YOUR REPORTS have given a radically different view of whats
going on in Iraq compared to the other media. Can you talk about what
you saw?
I HAD done a little bit of journalism before, not a whole lot, and I
was watching the discrepancies in reporting between the mainstream here
in the U.S., and independent journalists, the alternative media and
the foreign media. I grew more and more disturbed by this huge discrepancy,
and so I decided to head over to Iraq to report on it myself. My first
trip was in November 2003.
I was in Falluja
during the April siege last year for a couple of days, and then I went
back in May several times to report on what happened. But I didnt
go in November, because the military cordoned off the city and maintains
that cordon to this day. Theyre not letting any journalists in
there. Ive been getting information by interviewing refugees,
or through some of my colleagues who have been in and out of the city
several times.
Life there is horrendous.
At least 65 percent of the buildings have been bombed to the ground,
and whats left has been severely damaged. Theres no water,
no electricity and, of course, no jobs. And when people go back into
the city, they have to get a retina scan and get fingerprinted, and
then theyre issued an ID card.
Then they go inside
to find whats left of their homes, and in a really horrible situation
in which the military remains in total control of the town. There are
snipers everywhere, and the ambulances arent able really to run--theyre
still being targeted by the military. The one remaining hospital--Falluja
General Hospital--is barely functioning, because people have to go through
checkpoints to get there.
Life in Falluja
is really a horror story. Most of the citys residents are refugees
and will continue to be refugees for quite some time. Theyre scattered
in small towns on the outskirts of Falluja, as well as Baghdad and other
cities. The last estimate I heard was about 25,000--maybe a little bit
more than that--had returned back to a city that once had a population
of 350,000.
WHEN THE U.S.
announced its assault on Falluja, it claimed its goal was to root out
the resistance. Can you talk about the strategic goal that the U.S.
set for itself and also whether it succeeded?
I BASICALLY heard
two reasons for going in and doing what they did to Falluja: what you
mentioned, as well as another primary goal--providing security
and stability for the January 30 elections.
What happened was
that most of the fighters in the city left even before the siege began--even
the military admitted to that. So of the roughly 3,000 people killed,
the vast majority were civilians. Falluja was declared a free-fire
zone for the military, meaning that they were not distinguishing between
civilians and fighters, which is, of course, a violation of international
law in a city where there might be civilians.
As far as accomplishing
this goal of rooting out fighters and/or providing security
and stability for the January 30 election, we can see that neither
have been accomplished.
They have effectively
spread the resistance further around the country. We have another sort
of mini-Falluja situation in Ramadi, where rather than sectioning
off the entire city and doing what they did to Falluja, theyre
doing it neighborhood by neighborhood. In essence, any fighters who
are there are moving to a different neighborhood when one is being hit,
and then moving back when the military goes to another neighborhood.
Theyre going
to have to employ the same strategy in Samarra, in Baquba, in Bayji,
in Mosul and even in parts of Baghdad. Its a strategy that the
U.S. military has been using since almost the beginning of the occupation--using
very heavy-handed tactics to fight the resistance. But by doing so,
theyre just spreading the resistance to other areas around the
city or the country, and essentially creating more resistance.
WHEN YOU say
the U.S. is spreading the resistance, is that because actual individuals
go to other cities and start recruiting and organizing there? Or, is
it because the horrors that the U.S. has caused have angered people
who then join the resistance?
ITS BOTH.
Most fighters know when the U.S. is going to launch a new offensive,
so they take off. Its a guerrilla war. Some of the basics of guerrilla
warfare are that you dont attack when youre expected to
attack, and you do attack when youre not expected. Theyre
not going to try to go toe to toe with the U.S. military, so they take
off.
Plus, if you and
I are brothers, and were living in a predominantly tribal culture
like Iraq, and someone kills you, if I dont go avenge your death,
then I dishonor the family. In that way, when we look at the fact that
well over 100,000 Iraqis are estimated to have died during the occupation--the
vast majority of them at the hands of occupation forces--its a
simple matter of doing the math to figure out how many people are in
the resistance.
LAST WEEK, there
was triumphant talk by U.S. officials of an assault on an insurgent
camp led by Iraqi ground forces with U.S. air support. Do you think
this is a new turn in the occupation?
NO, ACTUALLY I think
its an old propaganda tactic being used by the military in Iraq,
and being trumpeted by the media here in the U.S. Were already
seeing massive discrepancies in the reporting on this situation.
Its similar
to a situation I reported on back in December 2003, which happened in
Samarra, where the U.S. military claimed that they were attacked by
a large contingent of resistance and killed 48. Then, magically, the
number went up overnight to 54.
I went up to Samarra
myself to report on that. I interviewed doctors at the hospital. I went
to the morgue. I interviewed civilians at the scene. Everyone said that
eight people were killed, and they were all civilians. It was simply
a propaganda smokescreen spewed out by the military to try to cover
up the fact that they made a mistake, they were attacked and they killed
some civilians.
Already, with the
situation you just discussed, Reuters initially reported that Iraqi
government commandos attacked an isolated camp 100 miles north of Baghdad.
But there have been discrepancies in different reports coming from the
military, from Reuters, from the Associated Press, Agence France Presse,
which dispute where this took place, when exactly this took place, and
how many people were killed.
Theres much
confusion, and its going to take some time to get to the actual
truth of it. But it does look pretty clear already that the truth will
be quite a bit different than the initial report released by the military.
MEANWHILE, ONE
of the things missing from the U.S. media is reporting on the increasingly
frequent bombing of Iraq by the U.S.
THATS A very
important point. It definitely is one of the most underreported things
in Iraq. Daily, there are many, many air missions being flown, and huge
amounts of bombs being dropped. In fact, the vast majority of Iraqi
civilians killed have died as a result of U.S. warplanes dropping bombs.
For example, in
Falluja, its pretty safe to say that a large percentage of the
estimated 3,000 people killed there were killed by U.S. warplanes. I
cant tell you how many reports I heard from refugees discussing
how entire houses, entire blocks of houses, were bombed to the ground
by U.S. warplanes. Even to this day, bodies lay under the rubble of
houses because of this.
This is without
a doubt the leading cause of the civilian casualties. They think that
theyre bombing fighters, and they think that by doing this, theyre
sending a message that if you continue to resist the occupation, you
will be bombed, and anyone around you will be bombed.
Its a form
of collective punishment, and it is definitely intended to send a clear
message that if you mess with the U.S. military, you and anyone around
you is going to be blown out of existence. More often than not, its
the case that when these bombs drop, its civilians who are caught
in them, not the fighters.
For example, several
people reported to me that the way the U.S. military was getting its
intelligence on where to bomb in Falluja prior to the siege of the city
in November was that any Iraqi could literally go up to the U.S. base
outside of Falluja and say, Yes, in this house, theres a
fighter. They were paid between $100 and $500, and then that house
was bombed. So this was a method that many people used to settle old
scores and make some cash.
On the flip side,
of course, sometimes, they were right. Sometimes, there were fighters
there, and they would be killed. But more often than not, as you can
imagine, that wasnt the case.
THE BUSH administration
says the Iraqi elections show that democracy is on the march,
and that this is justification enough for the invasion and occupation.
WE CERTAINLY cant
say that theres democracy in Iraq just because theres been
an election, or something resembling an election. An election does not
mean democracy. Democracy means the will of the people is being carried
out by the government that they voted into place. And so far in Iraq,
that isnt happening.
If were going
to measure success in Iraq, I think we could measure it by how many
promises of the Bush administration have come to reality on the ground.
Promises like bringing Iraqis jobs and a better life. Letting them rebuild
their country. And letting them have a truly representative government--a
government of their choosing.
None of this has
happened. Electricity remains far below prewar levels. The amount of
oil being pumped out remains far below prewar levels. Security is an
abomination. Theres a gasoline crisis in Iraq, something that
never existed before. People are struggling every day just to get by.
On just about every
level you would measure it, things are worse now in Iraq than they were
prior to the invasion. Its two years into the occupation, and
theres certainly been enough time for the U.S. to get its act
together and try to provide some of these things.
People ask me, What
are the success stories, or What good has come of it?
Ive heard Iraqis say that the only thing good that has come from
the invasion is the fact that Saddam Hussein has been removed. But aside
from that--and Im just quoting Iraqis here--in every other aspect,
things on the ground there have gotten worse since the invasion.
ONE FEATURE of
mainstream media coverage has been the idea that there is a deep-seated
antagonism in Iraq between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Do you think Iraq
is moving toward civil war?
THERE IS definitely
an over-focus in the Western media about this threat of civil war between
the Shia and the Sunni. There are some politicians and some religious
leaders in Iraq who think it is definitely a possibility, but most other
people--and certainly the common people I interviewed--said, No,
this is really not a threat. Weve never had a civil war.
In fact, when I
would ask people if they were Shia or Sunni, the most common response
was, I am Muslim, and I am Iraqi, and they wouldnt
even tell me.
Another thing to
keep in mind is that Iraq is primarily a tribal culture. Many of these
tribes are half-Shia and half-Sunni, and so many marriages are [between]
Shia and Sunni. When I would ask them what they thought of the potential
for civil war, people would joke with me, Oh, civil war? That
means I would have to attack my wife? They laughed at it.
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