Dahr Jamail took an unusual path to his current position as one of the few US journalists in Iraq worth paying attention to. A tour guide in Alaska in the run up to the war, he made his own way to the country in 2003, emailing dispatches back to friends and a growing number of interested parties. 3 more trips and a total of 8 months on the ground later, he is in Scotland touring his book "Beyond the Green Zone".

An engaging speaker armed with a wealth of statistics and telling anecdotes he spoke for two hours at Strathclyde University on Tuesday night.
Most of what we're told about Iraq isn't true, he argued. The US troop "surge" comprises only 20,000 (not 30,000) fresh troops, the rest are extended tours of duty. Around November 2007 there was a blitz of stories about Iraqis returning home, a PR operation eagerly lapped up by embedded journalists. 30,000 people have returned according to the UNHCR, but three quarters of them did so because they were compelled by visa or money trouble. In any event, the number of Iraqi refugeees is well over 5 million, a figure you'll struggle to find reported.

An astonishing revelation was the US's role in formenting the sectarian bloodshed now in Iraq, where in pre-war days half of registered marriages were between Sunni and Shia. The upsurge in ethnic conflict began after the appointment of John "Nicaragua Death Squads" Negroponte and his deputy to oversee coutner-insurgency operations. That was when you began to see death squads from one ethnic group targetting community leaders of the other. This spiral intensified with the attacks on holy sites and festivals, until we have the near-civil war of today.

Some of the material in Jamail's talk is (necessarily) heavy going but he sees some encouragement in the increasing resistance to the war among US soldiers. Since the military cracks down so heavily on overt dissent, cases of desertion, conscientious objection and "fragging" of unpopular officers are rare. However covert resistance, sabotage and disobedience is more widespread. Jamail speculates that it may be a factor in recent US casualty reductions. Faced with a situation where a patrol that comes under fire sees its officer promoted, so-called "Search and Avoid" missions are being undertaken. One soldier told him that they would park their tanks as far from people and buildings as possible, preferably under date palms, and remain there for the rest of the day. Every hour, they'd radio back to base: "still searching the field for weapons, sir." Another, fed-up with monitoring mobile phone conversations in a dark room, took to playing video games for the four hours.

It's not open rebellion but in the face of the war's dehumanising effects ("I hate being here and I can't go home" leads to "we delighted in treating them like shit") maybe it shows a way forward for anti-war activists as well as a coping strategy for individual soldiers.

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Tour continues:
April 9th—Dublin, Ireland
Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier St., 6:30 pm
In a debate with RTE, moderated by Pepe Escobar
Contact: dmanning (at) gmail.com

April 10th—London, England
The Old Lecture Theatre, 7:00 pm
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
 http://www.mwaw.net/2008/03/15/rally/
Contact: david.crouch10 (at) btinternet.com

April 11th—Totnes, England
Methodist Church, Fore Street, 7:30 pm
Contact: bill (at) scswebdesign.co.uk

April 12th—Taunton, England
Friend's Meeting House
3 Bath Place, Taunton, TA1 4EP
Contact: alisonchown (at) aol.com