[Media-watch] Occupation Watch Bulletin

[David J McKnight]

Occupation Watch Bulletin 
By Marjorie Lasky 
29 November 2004 

If you haven't visited the Occupation Watch website recently (http://www.occupationwatch.org), OW would like you to know that we are working with a few aspiring Iraqi journalists to provide views of the occupation through articles giving voice to those Iraqis who are frequently not heard. The names of our correspondents and the people who they interview are pseudonyms, and we applaud those Iraqis who have come forth to join us in this venture since reporting on the occupation can be quite dangerous.  However, our Iraqi correspondents are quite enthused about honing their journalistic and linguistic skills and having an outlet for what they consider are important stories about the occupation.  To view their articles, please visit: 
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=30 

This week's Occupation Watch bulletin differs from most of our previous bulletins.  Although we have a smattering of up-to-date articles dealing with recent events in Iraq, we seek to highlight two issues which are actually interconnected:  a call for humanitarian aid for the victims of Fallujah and an interview with Dahr Jamail, the intrepid, independent investigative journalist who is currently reporting from Iraq.

CODEPINK Women for Peace (one of the founding organizations of Occupation Watch) recently posted a call for Humanitarian Aid for Iraq on their website.  In part Code Pink's message reads: 

As we at CODEPINK were busy preparing a year-end humanitarian mission to Iraq with parents who lost ones in Iraq and on 9/11, we received this urgent message today. It is from our dear friend Dahr Jamail, an amazing American independent journalist who has been risking his life to get the true story of Fallujah to the American public. 

“I have just come from a refugee camp in Baghdad with families from Fallujah. The suffering is beyond description. It's worse than anything you've read or anything I've written so far. 

”This is a humanitarian crisis. They need medicines for their camp and the other camps immediately. We have an organization set up of doctors who can distribute the medicines and supplies. BUT WE NEED THEM NOW! THIS CANNOT WAIT!” 

Solidarity, 
Dahr 

In response, CODEPINK issued the following call: 
PLEASE HELP US GET MEDICAL AID TO THE PEOPLE OF FALLUJAH. We will send it immediately to a team of doctors who are anxiously awaiting our response. 

Here's what you can do now: 
1. DONATE NOW securely online and challenge your friends, family and co-workers to MEET or BEAT your donation. To donate online visit: http://codepink.kintera.org/helpiraqis. Send checks made out to Help Iraqis/Global Exchange to 2017 Mission St. #303 San Francisco, CA 94110. 

2. HOST a house party to raise money for humanitarian supplies, discuss the crisis in Iraq and how we are going to work more effectively to end the occupation. List your house party at www.unitedforpeace.org to make sure others in your community can attend. 

3. SPREAD the word about the humanitarian delegation. Download flyers to distribute at work, school and community centers to help raise awareness about the destruction in Iraq and to raise funds to send medical supplies.  

The entire CODEPINK Women for Peace message can be read at http://www.codepink4peace.org/National_Actions_Falluja.shtml 

If you haven't been reading Dahr Jamail's reports from Iraq and/or would like to know more about him, Newtopia Magazine has published a lengthy interview with Dahr at  
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue19/features/DahrJamail.php.  Highlights of that interview, which touches on Dahr's motivation for reporting "unembedded" from Iraq Include topics such as: 

Security 
DJ: It's tough. Working in this environment of media repression and danger is always an uphill battle. Blinking electricity, car bombs, kidnappings are the playing field. I constantly monitor my safety factor and those who work with me. I grew a beard, dress like locals, and only travel around covertly with one interpreter in a beat up car. I minimize my time on the street, while at the same time spending enough there to get the Iraqis reactions to what unfolds here each day. 

My greatest concern is the reaction of my own government. I'm reporting information that the Bush regime wants kept under wraps. I fear reprisal from both the government and military far, far more than being kidnapped or blown up by a car bomb.  

Iraqis are of course shocked and outraged by the beheadings and kidnappings of people like Margaret Hassan. So many also believe it was a CIA/Mossad plot to keep aid organizations and journalists out of Iraq in order to give the military and corporations here a free hand to continue to dis-assemble and sell of the country. 

Depicting Insurgents as Foreign Terrorists or Baathists 
DJ: This is propaganda of the worst kind. Most Iraqis refer to the Iraqi Resistance as “patriots.” Which of course most of them are-they are, especially in Fallujah, primarily composed of people who simply are resisting the occupation of their country by a foreign power. They are people who have had family members killed, detained, tortured and humiliated by the illegal occupiers of their shattered country. 

Calling them “foreign terrorists” and “Ba'athist insurgents” is simply a lie. While there are small elements of these, they are distinctly different from the Iraqi Resistance, who are now supported by, very conservatively at least 80% of the population here. 

What aren't Americans Seeing? 
DJ: The devastation. The massive suffering and devastation of the people and their country. Baghdad remains in shambles 19 months into this illegal occupation. Bombed buildings sit as insulting reminders of unbroken promises of reconstruction.  

Bullet ridden mosques with blood stained carpets inside where worshippers, unarmed, have been slaughtered by soldiers.  

Entire families living on the street. 70% unemployment with no hope of this changing. Chaotic, clogged streets of Baghdad and 5 mile long petrol lines in this oil rich country. 

Engineers and doctors, unemployed, driving their cars as a taxi to try to feed their families.  

The seething anger in the eyes of people on the streets as US patrols rumble past. 

Iraqis now cheering when another US patrol or base is attacked. Dancing on the burning US military hardware. 

Dead and maimed US soldiers. The wounded screaming and writhing in agony. Their shattered families. 

The mass graves of innocent Fallujans after the utter destruction of their city.  

Children deformed by Depleted Uranium exposure lying in shattered hospitals, suffering from lack of treatment, or even pain medications. 

Dead, rotting bodies in the streets of Fallujah of women and children being eaten by dogs and cats because the military did not allow relief teams into the city for nearly two weeks. 

Will there be a further Media Clampdown? 
DJ: ...as with repression of any kind, the more the “powers that be” attempt to muzzle independent media and the truth, the more they create a growing, powerful, diverse entity that finds new and creative ways to work here.  
For example, the closing of the Al-Jazeera office here has simply caused their journalists to go underground and decentralize, making it impossible for the government to control them. In this way, the repression naturally creates a smarter, more diverse and creative resistance in the form of increased independent reportage. 

Dahr's daily reports from Iraq can be read at http://dahrjamailiraq.com 

In regards to the occupation of Iraq, U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies are continuing their aggressive actions against insurgents--this time in the towns and villages south of Baghdad. However, according to John F. Burns, "in this area, known for its ceaseless rounds of suicide bombings and ambushes, there will be no knockout blows with tanks and bombs. Rather, as Marine commanders emphasized when 5,000 troops began the offensive this week, success will be built raid by raid, arrest by arrest, until the latticework of rebel cells in virtually every village and town is weakened and the will to sustain the insurgency is broken." 

"After Falluja, US Troops Fight a Battle Just as Important, and Just as Tough" 
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8037 

And the issue of January 30 elections finds numerous Sunni groups, concerned about the current chaos and lack of security in Iraq as well as their own possible loss of political power, calling for a delay to those elections, while most Shi'ites, including the Grand Ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, insisting on the January 30 date: 

"Iraq Parties Want Polls to be Put Off" 
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8008 

"Cleric Opposes Delay in Iraq's Vote" 
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8036 

"Shiites reject Election Delay" 
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8038 

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