More on the Fallujah Siege
Brian B | 25.04.2004 17:59
Repost of various articles on Fallujah siege and war crimes including closure of hospitals in Falluja and Najaf.
Published on Monday, April 19.
by Rahul Mahajan
NOTE: Doctors from four hospitals in Baghdad were interviewed in
compiling this report; all asked that their names be left out.
Baghdad, Iraq -- “Why do you keep asking about the closing of the Fallujah hospital?” my Iraqi translator asks in exasperation. I explain that this is big news, and it hasn’t really been reported in English. He looks at me, incredulous; all Iraqis know about it.
When the United States began the siege of Fallujah, it targeted civilians in several ways. The power station was bombed; perhaps even more important, the bridge across the Euphrates was closed. Fallujah’s main hospital stands on the western bank of the river; almost the entirety of the town is on the east side. Although the hospital was not technically closed, no doctor who actually believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in an empty hospital while people are dying in droves on the other bank of the river. So the doctors shut down the hospital, took the limited supplies and equipment they could carry, and started working at a small three-room outpatient clinic, doing operations on the ground and losing patients because of the inadequacy of the setup. This event was not reported in English until April 14, when the bridge was reopened.
In Najaf, the Spanish-language “Plus Ultra” garrison closed the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital roughly a week ago (as of yesterday, it remained closed). With 200 doctors, the hospital (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital) is one of the most important in Iraq. Troops entered and gave the doctors two hours to leave, allowing them to take only personal items -- no medical equipment. The reason given was that the hospital overlooks the Plus Ultra’s base, and that the roof could be used by resistance snipers. Al-Arabiya has also reported that in Qaim, a small town near the Syrian border where fighting recently broke out, that the hospital had been closed, with American snipers positioned atop nearby buildings.
The United States has also impeded the operation of hospitals in other ways. Although the first Western reports of U.S. snipers shooting at ambulances (see
http://www.empirenotes.org/fallujah.html) caused something of a furor, two days ago at a press conference the Iraqi Minister of Health, Khudair Abbas, confirmed that U.S. forces had shot at ambulances not just in Fallujah but also in Sadr City, the sprawling slum in East Baghdad. He condemned the acts and said he had asked for an explanation from his superiors, the Governing Council and Paul Bremer.
There are also persistent claims that after an outbreak of hostilities American soldiers visit hospitals asking for information about the wounded, with the intent of removing potential resistance members and interrogating them. Nomaan Hospital in Aadhamiyah and Yarmouk Hospital in Yarmouk (both areas of Baghdad) got visits from U.S. forces in the first days after the fighting in Fallujah started -- the lion’s share of evacuated wounded from Fallujah were taken to those two hospitals. Doctors generally resist being turned into informants for the occupation; one doctor actually told me that he has many times discharged people straight from the emergency room, with inadequate time to recuperate, just to keep them out of military custody. As he said, “They are my countrymen. How can I hold them for the Americans?”
While the American media talks of the great restraint and “pinpoint precision” of the American attack, over 700 people, at least half of them civilians, have been killed in Fallujah. And, according to the Ministry of Health, in the last two weeks, at least 290 were killed in other cities, over 30 of them children. Many of those who died because of the hospital closures will never be added in to the final tally of the “liberation.”
By any reasonable standard, these hospital closings (and, of course, the shooting at ambulances) are war crimes. However afraid the Plus Ultra garrison may have been of attack from the rooftops, they didn’t have to close the hospital; they could simply have screened entrants. In the case of Fallujah, it’s clear that one of the reasons the mujahideen were willing to talk about ceasefire was to get the hospital open again; in effect, the United States was holding civilians (indirectly) hostage for military ends.
After an earlier article about attacks on ambulances, many people wrote to ask why U.S. forces would do this -- it conflicted with the image they wanted to have of the U.S. military. Were they just trying to massacre civilians? And, if so, why?
In fact, it’s fairly simple: the United States has its military goals and simply does not care how many Iraqi civilians have to be killed in order to maximize the military efficiency of their operations. A senior British army commander recently criticized the Americans for viewing the Iraqis as Untermenschen -- a lower order of human being. He also said the average soldier views all Iraqis as enemies or potential enemies. That is precisely the case. I have heard the same thing from dozens of people here -- “They don’t care what happens to Iraqis.”
Although this relatively indiscriminate killing of civilians may serve American military ends -- keeping the ratio of enemy dead to American soldiers dead as high as possible -- in terms of political ends, it is a disaster. It is very difficult to explain to an Iraqi that a man fighting from his own town with a Kalashnikov or RPG launcher is a “coward” and a “war criminal” (because, apparently, he should go out into the desert and wait to be annihilated from the sky) but that someone dropping 2000- pound bombs on residential areas or shooting at ambulances because they may have guns in them (even though they usually don’t) is a hero and is following the laws of war.
When I was here in January, there was a pervasive atmosphere of discontent, frustration, and anger with the occupation. But most people were still just trying to ride it out, stay patient, and hope that things improved. The wanton brutality of the occupation has at long last put an end to that patience.
Before, the occupation might have succeeded -- not in building real democracy, which was never the goal, but in cementing U.S. control of Iraq. It cannot succeed now. The resistance in Fallujah will be beaten down, with the commission of more war crimes; if the United States invades Najaf, it will be able to win militarily there as well. But from now on, no military victory will make Iraqis stop resisting.
Rahul Mahajan is publisher of Empire Notes. He was in Fallujah recently and is currently writing and blogging from Baghdad. His latest book, “Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond,” covers U.S. policy on Iraq, deceptions about weapons of mass destruction, the plans of the neoconservatives, and the face of the new Bush imperial policies. He can be reached at
rahul@empirenotes.org.
http://www.empirenotes.org/hospitals.html
by Rahul Mahajan
NOTE: Doctors from four hospitals in Baghdad were interviewed in
compiling this report; all asked that their names be left out.
Baghdad, Iraq -- “Why do you keep asking about the closing of the Fallujah hospital?” my Iraqi translator asks in exasperation. I explain that this is big news, and it hasn’t really been reported in English. He looks at me, incredulous; all Iraqis know about it.
When the United States began the siege of Fallujah, it targeted civilians in several ways. The power station was bombed; perhaps even more important, the bridge across the Euphrates was closed. Fallujah’s main hospital stands on the western bank of the river; almost the entirety of the town is on the east side. Although the hospital was not technically closed, no doctor who actually believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in an empty hospital while people are dying in droves on the other bank of the river. So the doctors shut down the hospital, took the limited supplies and equipment they could carry, and started working at a small three-room outpatient clinic, doing operations on the ground and losing patients because of the inadequacy of the setup. This event was not reported in English until April 14, when the bridge was reopened.
In Najaf, the Spanish-language “Plus Ultra” garrison closed the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital roughly a week ago (as of yesterday, it remained closed). With 200 doctors, the hospital (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital) is one of the most important in Iraq. Troops entered and gave the doctors two hours to leave, allowing them to take only personal items -- no medical equipment. The reason given was that the hospital overlooks the Plus Ultra’s base, and that the roof could be used by resistance snipers. Al-Arabiya has also reported that in Qaim, a small town near the Syrian border where fighting recently broke out, that the hospital had been closed, with American snipers positioned atop nearby buildings.
The United States has also impeded the operation of hospitals in other ways. Although the first Western reports of U.S. snipers shooting at ambulances (see
http://www.empirenotes.org/fallujah.html) caused something of a furor, two days ago at a press conference the Iraqi Minister of Health, Khudair Abbas, confirmed that U.S. forces had shot at ambulances not just in Fallujah but also in Sadr City, the sprawling slum in East Baghdad. He condemned the acts and said he had asked for an explanation from his superiors, the Governing Council and Paul Bremer. There are also persistent claims that after an outbreak of hostilities American soldiers visit hospitals asking for information about the wounded, with the intent of removing potential resistance members and interrogating them. Nomaan Hospital in Aadhamiyah and Yarmouk Hospital in Yarmouk (both areas of Baghdad) got visits from U.S. forces in the first days after the fighting in Fallujah started -- the lion’s share of evacuated wounded from Fallujah were taken to those two hospitals. Doctors generally resist being turned into informants for the occupation; one doctor actually told me that he has many times discharged people straight from the emergency room, with inadequate time to recuperate, just to keep them out of military custody. As he said, “They are my countrymen. How can I hold them for the Americans?”
While the American media talks of the great restraint and “pinpoint precision” of the American attack, over 700 people, at least half of them civilians, have been killed in Fallujah. And, according to the Ministry of Health, in the last two weeks, at least 290 were killed in other cities, over 30 of them children. Many of those who died because of the hospital closures will never be added in to the final tally of the “liberation.”
By any reasonable standard, these hospital closings (and, of course, the shooting at ambulances) are war crimes. However afraid the Plus Ultra garrison may have been of attack from the rooftops, they didn’t have to close the hospital; they could simply have screened entrants. In the case of Fallujah, it’s clear that one of the reasons the mujahideen were willing to talk about ceasefire was to get the hospital open again; in effect, the United States was holding civilians (indirectly) hostage for military ends.
After an earlier article about attacks on ambulances, many people wrote to ask why U.S. forces would do this -- it conflicted with the image they wanted to have of the U.S. military. Were they just trying to massacre civilians? And, if so, why?
In fact, it’s fairly simple: the United States has its military goals and simply does not care how many Iraqi civilians have to be killed in order to maximize the military efficiency of their operations. A senior British army commander recently criticized the Americans for viewing the Iraqis as Untermenschen -- a lower order of human being. He also said the average soldier views all Iraqis as enemies or potential enemies. That is precisely the case. I have heard the same thing from dozens of people here -- “They don’t care what happens to Iraqis.”
Although this relatively indiscriminate killing of civilians may serve American military ends -- keeping the ratio of enemy dead to American soldiers dead as high as possible -- in terms of political ends, it is a disaster. It is very difficult to explain to an Iraqi that a man fighting from his own town with a Kalashnikov or RPG launcher is a “coward” and a “war criminal” (because, apparently, he should go out into the desert and wait to be annihilated from the sky) but that someone dropping 2000- pound bombs on residential areas or shooting at ambulances because they may have guns in them (even though they usually don’t) is a hero and is following the laws of war.
When I was here in January, there was a pervasive atmosphere of discontent, frustration, and anger with the occupation. But most people were still just trying to ride it out, stay patient, and hope that things improved. The wanton brutality of the occupation has at long last put an end to that patience.
Before, the occupation might have succeeded -- not in building real democracy, which was never the goal, but in cementing U.S. control of Iraq. It cannot succeed now. The resistance in Fallujah will be beaten down, with the commission of more war crimes; if the United States invades Najaf, it will be able to win militarily there as well. But from now on, no military victory will make Iraqis stop resisting.
Rahul Mahajan is publisher of Empire Notes. He was in Fallujah recently and is currently writing and blogging from Baghdad. His latest book, “Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond,” covers U.S. policy on Iraq, deceptions about weapons of mass destruction, the plans of the neoconservatives, and the face of the new Bush imperial policies. He can be reached at
rahul@empirenotes.org. http://www.empirenotes.org/hospitals.html
Brian B
e-mail:
brian@brianb.u-net.com
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Cluster Bombs and Harrassment of Patients in Falluja
25.04.2004 18:10
Baghdad Doctors Reporting Cluster Bombs in Falluja, Harrassment of Patients by Troops (April 19, 2004)
by Dahr Jamail | Posted April 19, 2004
"Another doctor at Noman Hospital, who asked to remain anonymous, stated that he saw the U.S. military dropping cluster bombs on the Al-Dora area last December, "I've seen it all with my own eyes. The U.S. later removed the unexploded bombs by soldiers picking up the bomblets and putting them in their helmets.""
"He also believes that cluster bombs are currently being used in Falluja, based on reports from field doctors presently working there, as well as statements taken from wounded civilians of Falluja."
"...many of the Falluja victims he had treated had been shot with ‘dum-dum bullets', which are hollow point bullets that are designed to inflict maximum internal damage. These are also referred to as ‘expanding bullets.'"
Full article:
Brian B
Jo Wilding - Falluja Nightmares
25.04.2004 18:21
Meeting some of the refugees who have fled Falluja.
“This is my honeymoon,” Heba said, in the crowded corridor of bomb shelter number 24 in the Al- Ameriya district of Baghdad. Married just under a month, she fled Falluja with her extended family. “There were bombs all the time. We couldn’t sleep. Even if you fell asleep, nightmares woke you up. We just gathered the whole family in one room and waited.
“It is better here than in Falluja. We hear bombs but they are far away and not so many. But there is no water in here: we have to go outside for water for drinking, cooking and washing ourselves and our clothes and we buy ice. There is no fridge, no fans, no air conditioning, no generator and only one stove for us all. We have to go to the garden for a toilet and that’s a problem at night. Everyone has diarrhoea from the ice that we bought.
“Now I am a bride but I couldn’t bring any of my clothes.” As if there would be any privacy anyway, the 88 members of 18 families piled on mattresses in the long narrow passage from the door to the kitchen at the end, from where a stream of tea and sweet sesame biscuits is flowing, part of the commemoration of Heba’s uncle.
He died 7 days ago, the day after they arrived in Baghdad. Heba’s dad Rabiia said his brother died of sadness. Because all the family’s identity documents were in Falluja, they were unable to get the body from the hospital. Rabiia met some friends, doctors who worked in the hospital, and they were able to help him get the body back after a day.
He sent two of his sons back to Falluja with their families yesterday and they phoned him at seven in the evening to tell him not to try to come back. Things are worse than before. They are trying to get back out of Falluja but all the roads are closed. His nephew tried to get back into Falluja today with his family but likewise found all the roads closed. “Now everyone in Falluja is in prison.”
Their story is the same as thousands of others. Faris Mohammed, secretary general of the Iraqi Red Crescent, believes that about 65% of the 300,000 population of Falluja have left their homes in the recent fighting. Of these 200,000 displaced people, most are staying with extended family in Baghdad or elsewhere or have been given shelter by strangers with space to spare. About 200 families are homeless.
“We left because of the bombs.,” Rabiia explained. “The kids were frightened, crying all night. We left on April 9th. Lots of our relatives had cars but there were problems getting fuel. We got all eighteen families together and then waited at the checkpoint. The Americans made us wait hours in the sun to exhaust us. The children were crying with hunger. Then the Americans changed the route we had to take and made us travel by a long side road.
We all arrived at different times – some slept in the cars at the checkpoint and arrived in Baghdad the next morning. They would only let through one young man as the driver with each car and only if there was no old man. Some of the families here couldn’t get their young men through so they had to come by the river. There was no fuel, no water, no generators, no hospitals there, so families couldn’t live.”
His youngest son Mustafa is eleven and wakes up crying every night, saying there’s going to be a bomb. Miluuk says it’s not just their son: all the kids are having nightmares. Her brother-in- law’s child as started sleep walking, asking to go back to his house. Two of Miluuk’s daughters, Zainab and Maha, have decided to quit school. Maha has developed a blood pressure problem and a stomach microbe that was caused by the bad water.
A nurse called Hadil from Falluja visited them and gave them a list of medicines they need, a couple of injections for one of the women who’s pregnant, some medication for stomach ulcers. He runs a pharmacy but has already donated all the medicines he had. Rabiia asked the Red Crescent for help but as yet they’ve had nothing. He built a toilet with his own money but there’s not much left.
Miluuk’s sister Sabriya teaches disabled people in the Shuala area. She never got married because of all the wars. “Wars eat your youth. When I was in college we made a census, boys and girls. There were about half girls and half boys but now there are maybe ten times as many girls.
“I can’t explain to you. I feel hopeless. I don’t know what the future will bring. I thought life would change, things would settle down, this war would be the last for Iraq. They said they came to give peace and human rights but now we’re figuring out that that’s not true. They don’t understand Iraq so they make problems that lead to conflict. They said they would rebuild but they’re destroying. Clean water and electricity would be enough.”
The story is the same wherever you go. The women feel depressed, the children are distressed, people are trying to get back into Falluja and finding the roads closed; those still inside Falluja are trying to get out and finding the same obstacle.
Two men, two women and eight kids sat in one of the white tents of the new Iraqi Red Crescent camp set up for families fleeing Falluja. Forty families have registered but these two are the only residents so far because there’s no sanitation. Unicef promised to provide it, according to Qasim Lefteh, the manager of the camp, but have so far failed to show up and sort it out. Meanwhile they’ve got permission to use the toilets in the school next door to the football fields they’re living on.
Fifty eight members of the extended family left after aerial bombing killed several of their neighbours. “Two of my relatives died and I buried them by my own hands,” Adil explained. “There is no way to the hospital so even if they are not killed, injured people are treated at home and there are no medicines so they die.
“Even if the ambulances tried to come, the Americans tried to shoot them. I saw the Americans shoot at a man and e stayed there from morning till night and no one could help him. the Americans shot at the ambulance. I could see them. They were on the tops of the buildings.
“Many times it happened. Whenever we saw ambulances the Americans shot at them. They even took over a minaret. They shot a family of women and children going to the market and killed them. A family of 25 people were killed when the Americans bombed their house. We saw a fighter plane firing rockets at their house.”
Their house was in the Shahid district which was heavily bombed. The government hospital is in the same district and was not destroyed, as some reports indicated, but closed down by the American troops. There was a lot of bombing when they left and the aid which had come into the town couldn’t be distributed. As they drove out they could see rockets being fired.
The kids were listless. Thirteen year old Sara kept giving me shy smiles and when the grown ups had gone, she came and sat with me, asked why. “Why did the Americans destroy our homes? This is not their country. Why did they invade our town? They made us homeless, to wander from house to house asking for help. Bombing went on all day and night and people sent cars from Bagdad to get the people who needed to leave.” Her brother Hadil is only four but has already learned to hate Americans after he was playing with a toy gun in the street and the troops raided and searched their home. Sara was full of fury.
It took a while to score a smile out of any of the little ones. When the others went off to look at some of the aid that had been given, I started clowning them, blowing bubbles and making balloon animals. Hadil and Hamoudie sat wide eyed for a couple of minutes, edging closer, and Mustafa, little and in green. Hamoudie popped one first, his face transforming as the soap splattered on his face. The adults faces relaxed into smiles too when they came back and saw the kids dancing in the middle of clouds of shiny bubbles.
“If they open the roads we will go back,” said Eman, Sara’s mum. “Life here is miserable. The Red Crescent are nice to us but there is no work, even for the men.”
The Red Crescent has been supplying food and medicine to Falluja since April 9th but decided to set up a camp for the hundreds of people fleeing. “We chose a site in Namiya district, about 7km south of Falluja but when we arrived to start setting up, the area was already a battle zone. We withdrew another 10km to a site 17km south of Falluja but then the battle spread to there too. When we returned we found some of the tents already burnt,” Faris Mohammed explained.
“We tried to choose sites that were near the road but the problem is that sometimes in these situations the insurgents shoot at troops as they pass and the troops shoot back at the insurgents, so we decided to set the camp up in Baghdad instead, away from the borders of Falluja.”
But he was adamant that the claims made about Red Crescent ambulances being used to move weapons and insurgents are false. None of our ambulances has gone missing and we have not been using them to move weapons. During the conflict we were the only Iraqi organisation with permission to go in and out of Falluja. There were no problems from either side until Wednesday, when we had supplies coming in from Dubai. We sent them straight to Falluja but the Americans sent them back saying each vehicle had to have specific permission 24 hours in advance.”
When I got home Raed said the colour had come back to my cheeks for the first time since the Falluja trips. “I think you have been playing with children,” he said. It’s true. It did make a difference. The violence starts to pervade everything: Karlu and the other kids on our street were playing Hostages as we left in the morning, Ahmed holding one hand over Karlu’s eyes and making sawing motions at his throat with the other hand.
And the news says there’s more fighting in Falluja.
Brian B
Fallujah siege civilian death toll 271: Iraqi official
25.04.2004 18:53
Fallujah siege civilian death toll 271: Iraqi official
April 23, 2004
A total of 271 Iraqis have been killed and 793 wounded in Fallujah since US marines laid siege to Fallujah on April 5, interim health minister Khodayir Abbas has said.
"Between April 5 until Thursday [April 22] at 9:00am (local time) according to official health ministry figures, 271 people were killed and 793 wounded," Mr Abbas told AFP, adding that the casualties were "Iraqi martyrs".
During the same period, 305 Iraqis were killed and 1,261 wounded in clashes between Shiite Muslims and troops of the US-led coalition in Baghdad, central and southern Iraq, he said.
"Our sources are credible because they are based on figures given by hospitals, clinics and doctors who have to declare the number of dead and wounded in their establishments," Mr Abbas said.
The Fallujah figure contrasted with earlier reports Iraqi negotiators said they gathered from hospitals which put the death toll at 600.
The updated toll does not include scores of fatalities the US marines suffered in and around Fallujah since they sealed off the town on April 5, following the slaying of four American civilian contractors on March 31.
An uneasy "cease-fire" is in effect but US forces indicated they may take military action in the city if insurgents do not hand over their heavy weapons within days.
Some weapons were turned in on Wednesday but the US military dismissed those as a heap of "junk" that included training rounds and weapons too old and rusty to be of any use.
Despite the "truce", the two sides have engaged in a fierce battle in which the marines said they killed 36 insurgents on Wednesday.
Coalition military officials claim the uprising is instigated by about 200 "foreign fighters" holed up in Fallujah.
A spokesman for the Sunni Muslim clerics involved in the negotiations claimed US forces' compliance with the ceasefire agreement was unsatisfactory.
Muthanna Hareh Dari said on Thursday the Americans "fabricate pretexts to put pressure on the population."
Following Wednesday's fighting, US forces have halted the return to Fallujah of families displaced by the violence. The Americans had planned to allow the daily return of 50 families.
--AFP
Brian B
Picture emerges of Falluja siege
25.04.2004 19:27
Picture emerges of Falluja siege
Brian B
271
26.04.2004 11:28
Theres plenty of graves/mass graves to be excavated if we reall think people just turned their football fields into a cemetary for propaganda purposes.
Tom
Re:271
27.04.2004 08:08
Brian B
either way
27.04.2004 13:27
Tom