** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **


This is our Guernica

/Ruined, cordoned Falluja is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality/

Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail
Wednesday April 27, 2005
*The Guardian*

Robert Zoellick is the archetypal US government insider, a man with a
brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or war
front. Sliding effortlessly between ivy league academia, the US treasury
and corporate boardrooms (including an advisory post with the scandalous
Enron), his latest position is the number-two slot at the state department.

Yet this ultimate "man of the suites" did something earlier this month
that put the prime minister and the foreign secretary to shame. On their
numerous visits to Iraq, neither has ever dared to go outside the
heavily fortified green zones of Baghdad and Basra to see life as Iraqis
have to live it. They come home after photo opportunities, briefings and
pep talks with British troops and claim to know what is going on in the
country they invaded, when in fact they have seen almost nothing.

Zoellick, by contrast, on his first trip to Iraq, asked to see Falluja.
Remember Falluja? A city of some 300,000, which was alleged to be the
stronghold of armed resistance to the occupation.

Two US attempts were made to destroy this symbol of defiance last year.
The first, in April, fizzled out after Iraqi politicians, including many
who supported the invasion of their country, condemned the use of air
strikes to terrorise an entire city. The Americans called off the
attack, but not before hundreds of families had fled and more than 600
people had been killed.

Six months later the Americans tried again. This time Washington's
allies had been talked to in advance. Consistent US propaganda about the
presence in Falluja of a top al-Qaida figure, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was
used to create a climate of acquiescence in the US-appointed Iraqi
government. Shia leaders were told that bringing Falluja under control
was the only way to prevent a Sunni-inspired civil war.

Blair was invited to share responsibility by sending British troops to
block escape routes from Falluja and prevent supplies entering once the
siege began.

Warnings of the onslaught prompted the vast majority of Falluja's
300,000 people to flee. The city was then declared a free-fire zone on
the grounds that the only people left behind must be "terrorists".

Three weeks after the attack was launched last November, the Americans
claimed victory. They say they killed about 1,300 people; one week into
the siege, a BBC reporter put the unofficial death toll at 2,000. But
details of what happened and who the dead were remain obscure. Were many
unarmed civilians, as Baghdad-based human rights groups report? Even if
they were trying to defend their homes by fighting the Americans, does
that make them "terrorists"?

Journalists "embedded" with US forces filmed atrocities, including the
killing of a wounded prisoner, but no reporter could get anything like a
full picture. Since the siege ended, tight US restric tions - as well as
the danger of hostage-taking that prevents reporters from travelling in
most parts of Iraq - have put the devastated city virtually off limits.

In this context Zoellick's trip, which was covered by a small group of
US journalists, was illuminating. The deputy secretary of state had to
travel to this "liberated" city in a Black Hawk helicopter flying low
over palm trees to avoid being shot down. He wore a flak jacket under
his suit even though Falluja's streets were largely deserted. His convoy
of eight armoured vehicles went "so quickly past an open-air bakery
reopened with a US-provided micro-loan that workers tossing dough could
be glanced only in the blink of an eye," as the Washington Post
reported. "Blasted husks of buildings still line block after block," the
journalist added.

Meeting hand-picked Iraqis in a US base, Zoellick was bombarded with
complaints about the pace of US reconstruction aid and frequent
intimidation of citizens by American soldiers. Although a state
department factsheet claimed 95% of residents had water in their homes,
Falluja's mayor said it was contaminated by sewage and unsafe.

Other glimpses of life in Falluja come from Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of
the city's compensation commission, who reports that 36,000 homes were
destroyed in the US onslaught, along with 8,400 shops. Sixty nurseries
and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.

Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a
quarter of the city's residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents
on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help
the sick because of the US cordon around the city.

Burhan Fasa'a, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Company,
reported during the siege that dead family members were buried in their
gardens because people could not leave their homes. Refugees told one of
us that civilians carrying white flags were gunned down by American
soldiers. Corpses were tied to US tanks and paraded around like trophies.

Justin Alexander, a volunteer for Christian Peacemaker Teams, recently
found hundreds living in tents in the grounds of their homes, or in a
single patched-up room. A strict system of identity cards blocks access
to anyone whose papers give a birthplace outside Falluja, so long-term
residents born elsewhere cannot go home. "Fallujans feel the remnants of
their city have been turned into a giant prison," he reports.

Many complain that soldiers of the Iraqi national guard, the fledgling
new army, loot shops during the night-time curfew and detain people in
order to take a bribe for their release. They are suspected of being
members of the Badr Brigade, a Shia militia that wants revenge against
Sunnis.

One thing is certain: the attack on Falluja has done nothing to still
the insurgency against the US-British occupation nor produced the death
of al-Zarqawi - any more than the invasion of Afghanistan achieved the
capture or death of Osama bin Laden. Thousands of bereaved and homeless
Falluja families have a new reason to hate the US and its allies.

At least Zoellick went to see. He gave no hint of the impression that
the trip left him with, but is too smart not to have understood
something of the reality. The lesson ought not to be lost on Blair and
Straw. Every time the prime minister claims it is time to "move on" from
the issue of the war's legality and rejoice at Iraq's transformation
since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the answer must be: "Remember
Falluja." When the foreign secretary next visits Iraq, he should put on
a flak jacket and tour the city that Britain had a share in destroying.

The government keeps hoping Iraq will go away as an election issue. It
stubbornly refuses to do so. Voters are not only angry that the war was
illegal, illegitimate and unnecessary. The treatment inflicted on Iraqis
since the invasion by the US and Britain is equally important.

In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton
murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the
Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument
to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to
handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will
always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

· Jonathan Steele is the Guardian's senior foreign correspondent; Dahr
Jamail is a freelance American journalist.


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More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

Zoellick's reports on his Fallujah visit was not as detailed as the Media reports http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0504/S00225.htm.

The WP report is similar to Jamail's report
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Apr13.html

In Fallujah, U.S. Envoy Greeted by Complaints
Local Leaders Decry Pace of RebuildingBy Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 14, 2005; Page A18

FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 13 -- Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick paid a surprise visit Wednesday to this former insurgent stronghold to view the pace of reconstruction and meet with local officials. He was greeted with an earful of complaints.

Zoellick is the most senior U.S. official to venture inside the city since it was retaken by U.S. and Iraqi forces in November, and his trip appeared intended to demonstrate that normality was returning to what was once a symbol of the Sunni Muslim resistance.

Yet Zoellick, who wore body armor under his suit jacket, was told by military commanders that he could not leave his armored Humvee because of security concerns during the lightning tour of the shattered downtown. His heavily armored motorcade briefly paused so that he and others could gaze at a revived water treatment plant -- within view of the bridge over the Euphrates River where the charred bodies of American civilian contractors were hung after they were ambushed a year ago. The motorcade then moved so quickly past an open-air bakery reopened with a U.S.-provided micro-loan that workers tossing dough could be glanced only in the blink of an eye.

Cafes and stores were open in the central area, but blasted husks of buildings still line block after block of large sections of the city. Children playing in the rubble waved as the motorcade roared past uprooted palm trees, burned-out vehicles, pools of brackish water and piles of garbage. Patrols moved carefully down streets looking for hidden explosive devices.

A one-hour session with the city's recently elected leaders was held downtown in a heavily guarded Marine enclave, in a sweltering room with windows covered with sandbags. At first, Zoellick heard words of praise for the U.S. intervention. But as he prodded the officials to air their concerns, a torrent of complaints poured out, focusing on such issues as the slow pace of reconstruction aid, frequent intimidation of citizens by American soldiers and the inability to buy fresh produce because of military checkpoints.

State Department fact sheets on Fallujah say that 95 percent of its residents have water available in their homes and that $40 million is being spent to overhaul water plants. But when Zoellick asked Khlaid Jumaly, chairman of the city council, if most people have safe drinking water, the answer suggested they did not.

"The drinking water is not really safe for health," Jumaly, who had a long salt-and-pepper beard and wore a white turban, replied though an interpreter. "The whole sewer system is in very bad shape."

Zoellick said he had just seen the rebuilt water treatment plant and wondered whether that would ease the problem. Jumaly said the repairs were insufficient and even damaging. "The people who are working on the sewer are not very clear about what they are doing," he said.

At one point, the council vice chairman, Ibrahim Mohammed Jassam, implored: "We ask of you, please, that you get involved in the situation of the Fallujah people. You guys did this with your own blood, risked your life, for this situation."

Zoellick acknowledged later that some of the images in Fallujah were troubling. "When you travel the country, you look at the rubble and you look at the devastation, you know there is a long way to go," he told reporters traveling with him. "And when you are putting on vests for security, you know that there is still danger out there."

But Zoellick said he enjoyed the give-and-take with Fallujah leaders: "To me that was a sign that democracy was at work. I got a sense of their overall spirit, that they were trying to make something of it."

Zoellick was the second senior U.S. official to make an unannounced visit to Iraq in as many days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was in Baghdad on Tuesday to meet with Iraq's new leaders, and Zoellick flew to the Iraqi capital after his trip to Fallujah for meetings with top Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talabani and the incoming prime minister, Ibrahim Jafari. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has not yet come to Iraq, in part because top spots in the country's transitional government have only recently been filled.

Zoellick and his entourage arrived in Baghdad early Wednesday and then boarded two Black Hawk helicopters for Fallujah, skimming the tops of palm trees and electrical wires to thwart possible snipers or surface-to-air missiles. Then the officials moved into eight armored vehicles, mostly Humvees, for the tour of the city.

His unannounced visit to Iraq came during a week when he was focusing on the conflicts in Sudan. Zoellick told reporters that he was making the trip because the recent naming of an Iraqi government had signaled "a process of political transition, the formation of Iraqi democracy."

A State Department team led by Richard H. Jones, the senior coordinator for Iraq, came recently and submitted recommendations on how to adjust U.S. policy. Zoellick has been given responsibility for shepherding the approval of those recommendations by President Bush's senior advisers, though several officials said the proposals did not represent any major shift in direction.

One focus of the policy review is whether to revise the priorities in the allocation of more than $18 billion earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction. Zoellick said the administration also wanted to draw its European allies and the Japanese more deeply into the reconstruction efforts.

"What I hope to do in coming weeks," Zoellick said, is "try to lay the groundwork for some more in-depth cooperation, particularly with our European partners, on the reconstruction and economic support side." He said that once the Americans get a feel for the top four or five reconstruction priorities, the administration will work to coordinate with the Europeans and the Japanese so "we can kind of share the load here."