[Peace-discuss] What we're doing

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From the wonderful Naomi Klein, in today's Guardian/UK. --CGE]

You Asked for my Evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here It Is
In Iraq, the US Does Eliminate Those Who Dare to Count the Dead
by Naomi Klein

David T Johnson,
Acting ambassador,
US Embassy, London

Dear Mr Johnson,

On November 26, your press counselor sent a letter to the Guardian taking
strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence
read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer
bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly
eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count
the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian
either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave
accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve
themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter
extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I
have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you
requested.

In April, US forces laid siege to Falluja in retaliation for the gruesome
killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with
US troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The
reason for the withdrawal was that the siege had sparked uprisings across
the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been
killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors. USA
Today reported on April 11 that "Statistics and names of the dead were
gathered from four main clinics around the city and from Falluja general
hospital". 2) Arab TV journalists. While doctors reported the numbers of
dead, it was al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya that put a human face on those
statistics. With unembedded camera crews in Falluja, both networks beamed
footage of mutilated women and children throughout Iraq and the
Arab-speaking world. 3) Clerics. The reports of high civilian casualties
coming from journalists and doctors were seized upon by prominent clerics
in Iraq. Many delivered fiery sermons condemning the attack, turning their
congregants against US forces and igniting the uprising that forced US
troops to withdraw.

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during
last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports.
For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New
York Times last month, labeled Falluja general hospital "a center of
propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks.
When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of
civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of
defense, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and
inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja -
but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors,
journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian
casualties last time around.

Eliminating doctors The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi
soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and
placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported
that "the hospital was selected as an early target because the American
military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casual
ties", noting that "this time around, the American military intends to
fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one
of the insurgents' most potent weapons". The Los Angeles Times quoted a
doctor as saying that the soldiers "stole the mobile phones" at the
hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.

But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days
earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well
as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was
working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four
nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of
Falluja general hospital "had told a US general the location of the
downtown makeshift medical center" before it was hit.

Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was
the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr
Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: "There is not a single
surgeon in Falluja." When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was
used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control
of the al-Zaharawi hospital.

Eliminating journalists:

The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from
reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who
had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively
been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has
been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an
unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11
US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege.
Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and
the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the
possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job,"
the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of
intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central
Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted
on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US
aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq
Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of
its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José
Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters.
Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which
alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the
Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.

Eliminating clerics:

Just as doctors and journalists have been targeted, so too have many of
the clerics who have spoken out forcefully against the killings in
Falluja. On November 11, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaei, the head of the Supreme
Association for Guidance and Daawa, was arrested. According to Associated
Press, "Al-Sumaidaei has called on the country's Sunni minority to launch
a civil disobedience campaign if the Iraqi government does not halt the
attack on Falluja". On November 19, AP reported that US and Iraqi forces
stormed a prominent Sunni mosque, the Abu Hanifa, in Aadhamiya, killing
three people and arresting 40, including the chief cleric - another
opponent of the Falluja siege. On the same day, Fox News reported that "US
troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border". The
report described the arrests as "retaliation for opposing the Falluja
offensive". Two Shia clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr have also
been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, "both had spoken out
against the Falluja attack".

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central
Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on
counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead,
the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them?
In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically
silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on
hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are
waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has
claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

Additional research by Aaron Maté

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
(Picador) and, most recently, Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the
Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Picador).

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004