- Interview with Eric Ruder, Socialist Worker Magazine
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- 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.
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- 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
Worker's ERIC RUDER about the destruction unleashed on Iraq by the U.S.
during two years of occupation.
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- ER-YOUR REPORTS have given a radically different view
of what's going on in Iraq compared to the other media. Can you talk about
what you saw?
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- DJ-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.
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- 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 didn't go in November, because the military cordoned
off the city and maintains that cordon to this day. They're not letting
any journalists in there. I've been getting information by interviewing
refugees, or through some of my colleagues who have been in and out of
the city several times.
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- Life there is horrendous. At least 65 percent of the
buildings have been bombed to the ground, and what's left has been severely
damaged. There's 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 they're issued an ID card.
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- Then they go inside to find what's 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 aren't
able really to run--they're 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.
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- Life in Falluja is really a horror story. Most of the
city's residents are refugees and will continue to be refugees for quite
some time. They're 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.
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- ER-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?
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- DJ-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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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, they're 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.
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- They're going to have to employ the same strategy in
Samarra, in Baquba, in Bayji, in Mosul and even in parts of Baghdad. It's
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, they're just spreading the resistance to other areas around
the city or the country, and essentially creating more resistance.
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- ER-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?
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- DJ-IT'S BOTH. Most fighters know when the U.S. is going
to launch a new offensive, so they take off. It's a guerrilla war. Some
of the basics of guerrilla warfare are that you don't attack when you're
expected to attack, and you do attack when you're not expected. They're
not going to try to go toe to toe with the U.S. military, so they take
off.
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- Plus, if you and I are brothers, and we're living in
a predominantly tribal culture like Iraq, and someone kills you, if I don't
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--it's a simple matter of doing the math to figure out how many people
are in the resistance.
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- ER-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?
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- DJ-NO, ACTUALLY I think it's an old propaganda tactic
being used by the military in Iraq, and being trumpeted by the media here
in the U.S. We're already seeing massive discrepancies in the reporting
on this situation.
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- It's 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- There's much confusion, and it's 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.
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- ER-MEANWHILE, ONE of the things missing from the U.S.
media is reporting on the increasingly frequent bombing of Iraq by the
U.S.
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- DJ-THAT'S 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.
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- For example, in Falluja, it's pretty safe to say that
a large percentage of the estimated 3,000 people killed there were killed
by U.S. warplanes. I can't 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.
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- This is without a doubt the leading cause of the civilian
casualties. They think that they're bombing fighters, and they think that
by doing this, they're sending a message that if you continue to resist
the occupation, you will be bombed, and anyone around you will be bombed.
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- It's 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, it's the case that when these bombs drop, it's civilians who
are caught in them, not the fighters.
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- 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,
there's 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.
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- 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 wasn't the case.
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- ER-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.
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- DJ-WE CERTAINLY can't say that there's democracy in Iraq
just because there's 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 isn't happening.
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- If we're 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.
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- 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. There's a gasoline crisis in Iraq,
something that never existed before. People are struggling every day just
to get by.
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- On just about every level you would measure it, things
are worse now in Iraq than they were prior to the invasion. It's two years
into the occupation, and there's certainly been enough time for the U.S.
to get its act together and try to provide some of these things.
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- People ask me, "What are the success stories,"
or "What good has come of it?" I've 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 I'm just quoting Iraqis
here--in every other aspect, things on the ground there have gotten worse
since the invasion.
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- ER-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?
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- DJ-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. We've never had
a civil war."
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- 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 wouldn't even tell me.
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- 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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- More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
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- (c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
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