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Living under the
bombs
By Dahr Jamail
One of the least reported aspects of the
US occupation of Iraq is the oftentimes
indiscriminate use of air power by the US
military. The Western mainstream media have
generally failed to attend to the F-16 warplanes
dropping their payloads of 500-, 1,000- and
2,000-pound bombs on Iraqi cities - or to the
results of these attacks. While some of the bombs
and missiles fall on resistance fighters, the
majority of the casualties are civilian - mothers,
children, the elderly, and other unarmed
civilians.
"Coalition troops and Iraqi
security forces may be responsible for up to 60%
of conflict-related civilian deaths in Iraq - far
more than are killed by insurgents, confidential
records obtained by the BBC's Panorama
program reveal." As the British Broadcasting Corp
reported recently, these numbers were compiled by
Iraq's Ministry of Health, in part because of the
refusal of the George W Bush and Tony Blair
administrations to do so. In the case of Fallujah,
where the US military estimated that 2,000 people
were killed during the recent assault on the city,
at least 1,200 of the dead are believed to have
been non-combatant civilians.
"Some of my
friends in Fallujah, their homes were attacked by
airplanes so they left, and nobody's found them
since," said Mehdi Abdulla in a refugee camp in
Baghdad. His own home was bombed to rubble by US
warplanes during the assault on Fallujah in
November - and in Iraq today, his experience is
far from unique.
All any reporter has to do
is cock an ear or look up to catch the planes
roaring over Baghdad en route to bombing missions
over Mosul, Fallujah and other trouble spots on a
weekly - sometimes even daily basis. It is simply
impossible to travel the streets of Baghdad
without seeing several Apache or Black Hawk
helicopters buzzing the rooftops. Their rumbling
blades are so close to the ground and so powerful
that they leave wailing car alarms in their wake
as they pass over any neighborhood.
With
their ground troops stretched thin and growing
haggard - 30% of them, after all, are already on
their second tour of duty in the brutal occupation
of Iraq - US military commanders appear to be
relying more than ever on air power to give
themselves an edge. The November assault on
Fallujah did not even begin until warplanes had,
on a near-daily basis, dropped 500-1,000-pound
(227-454-kilogram) bombs on suspected resistance
targets in the besieged city. During that period,
fighter jets ripped through the air over Baghdad
for nights on end, heading out on mission after
mission to drop their payloads on Fallujah.
"Air power remains the single greatest
asymmetrical advantage the United States has over
its foes," writes Thomas Searle, a military
defense analyst with the Airpower Research
Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base in the US
state of Alabama. "To make air power truly
effective against guerrillas in that war, we
cannot wait for the joint force commander or the
ground component commander to tell us what to do.
Rather, we must aggressively develop and employ
air power's counter-guerrilla capabilities."
"Aggressively employ air power's
capabilities" - indeed they have.
'Even
the chickens and sheep are frightened'
"The
first day of Ramadan we went to the prayers and,
just as the imam said Allahu Akbar ('God is
great'), the jets began to arrive." Abu Hammad was
remembering the early stages of the November
Fallujah campaign. "They came continuously through
the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah. It
did not stop even for a moment."
The
35-year-old merchant is now a refugee living in a
tent on the campus of the University of Baghdad
along with more than 900 other homeless Fallujans.
"If the American forces did not find a target to
bomb," he said, "they used sound bombs just to
terrorize the people and children. The city stayed
in fear; I cannot give you a picture of how
panicked everyone was." As he spoke in a strained
voice, his body began to tremble with the
memories, "In the morning, I found Fallujah empty,
as if nobody lived in it. It felt as though
Fallujah had already been bombed to the ground. As
if nothing were left."
When Abu says
"nothing", he means it. It is now estimated that
75% of the homes and buildings in the city were
destroyed either by warplanes, helicopters or
artillery barrages; most of the remaining 25%
sustained at least some damage as well.
"Even the telephone exchange in Fallujah
has been flattened," he added between quickening
breaths because, as he remembers, as he makes the
effort to explain, his rage grows. "Nothing works
in Fallujah now!"
Several men standing
with Abu, all of whom were refugees like him,
nodded in agreement while staring off toward the
setting sun to the west, the direction where their
city once stood.
Throughout much of urban
Iraq, people tell stories of being terrorized by
US air power, which is often loosed on heavily
populated neighborhoods that have, in effect, been
declared the bombing equivalents of free-fire
zones.
"There is no limit to the American
aggression," commented a sheikh from Baquba, a
city 48 kilometers northeast of the capital. He
agreed to discuss the subject of air power only on
the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from
the US military.
"The fighter jets
regularly fly so low over our city that you can
see the pilots sitting in the cockpit," he said,
using his hand to measure the skyline and indicate
just how low he means. "The helicopters fly even
lower, so low, and aim their guns at the people
and this terrifies everyone. How can humans live
like this? Even our animals, the chickens and
sheep are frightened by this. We don't know why
they do this to us."
'My whole house
was shaking'
The terror from the air began
on the first day of the invasion in March 2003.
"On March 19 at 2am, we were sleeping," Abdulla
Mohammed, father of four children, said softly as
he sat in his modest home in Baghdad. "I woke up
with a start to the enormous blasts of the bombs.
All I could do was watch the television and see
that everything was being bombed in
Baghdad."
Near his home, a pile of concrete
blocks and twisted support beams that once was a
telephone exchange remained as an ugly reminder of
how the war started for Baghdadis. "I was so
terrified. My whole house was shaking," he
continued, "and the windows were breaking. I was
frightened that the ceiling would fall on us
because of the bombs."
Nearly two years
later, he still becomes visibly upset while
describing what it felt like to live through that
first horrific "shock and awe" onslaught from the
air. "It was unbelievable to see things in my
house jump into the air when the bombs landed.
They were just so powerful." He paused and held
his hands up in a gesture of helplessness before
he said, "Nowhere felt safe and there was nothing
we could do. People were looking for bread and
vegetables so they could survive in their homes,
but they didn't know where to go because nowhere
was safe."
Abdulla lives with his wife and
sons in central Baghdad, but at a location several
kilometers from where the heaviest bombings in the
Bush administration's shock-and-awe campaign hit.
Nevertheless, even at that distance in the heavily
populated capital, it was a nightmare. "Everyone
was so terrified. Even the guards who were on the
streets left for their homes because everything
was being destroyed," he said. "The roads were
closed because there were so many explosions.
"My family was shivering with fear," he
added, staring at the floor. "Everyone was praying
for God to keep the Americans from bombing them.
There was no water, no electricity, and all we had
were the extra supplies that we had bought
before."
Like the sheikh from Baquba,
Mohammed and his family continue to live in fear
of what US warplanes and helicopters might at any
moment unleash. "Now, there are always helicopters
hovering over my neighborhood. They are so loud
and fly so close. My sons are afraid of them. I
hear the fighter jets so often."
He
suddenly raised his hushed voice and you could
hear the note of panic deep within it. "Even last
night the fighter jets were so low over my home.
We never know if they will bomb." After pausing,
he concluded modestly, "We can only hope that they
won't."
'Even the mosques quit
announcing evening prayers ...'
There is no
way to discuss US reliance on air power in a war
now largely being fought inside heavily populated
cities without coming back to Fallujah. While an
estimated 200,000 refugees from that city continue
to live in refugee tent camps or crowded into
houses (with up to 25 families crammed under a
single roof), horrendous tales of what it was like
to live under the bombs in the besieged city are
only now beginning to emerge.
Ahmed
Abdulla, a gaunt 21-year-old Fallujan, accompanied
most of his family on their flight from the city,
navigating the perilous neighborhoods nearest the
cordon the American military had thrown around
their besieged city. On November 8, he made it to
Baghdad with his mother, his three sisters (aged
26, 20 and 18), and two younger brothers (10 and
12). His father, however, was not permitted to
leave Fallujah by the US military because he was
of "fighting age". Ahmed was only allowed to exit
the besieged city because his mother managed to
convince an American soldier that, without him,
his sisters and younger brothers would be at great
risk traveling alone. Fortunately, the soldier
understood her plea and let him through.
Ahmed's father told the family that he
would instead stay to watch over their house. "The
house is all we have, nothing else," commented
Ahmed despondently. "We have no land, no
livestock, nothing."
Recounting an odyssey
of flight typical of those of many Fallujans,
Ahmed told me his father had driven them in the
family car across winding, desert roads out the
eastern side of the city, considered the quietest
area when it came to the fighting. They stopped
the car a kilometer before the US checkpoints and
walked the rest of the way, holding up white
"flags" so the soldiers wouldn't mistake them for
insurgents. "We walked with our hands up,
expecting them to shoot at us anytime," said Ahmed
softly, "It was so bad for us at that time and
there were so many families trying to get out."
Those inhabitants still trapped in the
city had only two hours each day to emerge and try
to find food. Most of the time their electricity
was cut and water ran in the faucets only
intermittently. "Every night we told each other
goodbye because we expected to die," he said.
"Every night there was extremely heavy bombing
from the jets. My house shook when bombs hit the
city, and the women were crying all of the time."
In his mind he still couldn't shake the buzzing
sound of unmanned surveillance drone aircraft
passing overhead, and the constant explosions of
the "concussion bombs" (or so he called them) that
he claimed the Americans fired just to keep people
awake.
"I saw a dead man near our home,"
Ahmed explained, "But I could barely see his face
because there were so many flies on him. The flies
were so thick and I couldn't bear the smell. All
around his body, his blood had turned the ground
black. I don't know how he died."
The
sighting of such bodies, often shot by American
snipers, was a commonplace around the city. They
lay unburied in part because many families dared
not venture out to one of the two football
stadiums that had been converted into "Martyr
Cemeteries". Instead, they buried their own dead
in their gardens and left the other bodies where
they lay.
"So we stayed inside most of the
time and prayed. The more the bombs exploded the
more we prayed and cried." So Ahmed described life
inside Fallujah as it was being destroyed. Each
night the besieged city seemed, as he put it, to
oscillate between an eerie quiet and sudden bursts
of heavy fighting. "Even the mosques quit
announcing evening prayers at times," he said.
"And then it would be so quiet - except for the
military drones buzzing overhead and the planes of
the Americans which dropped flares."
It
was impossible, he claimed, to sleep at night
because any sound - an approaching fighter jet or
helicopter - and immediately everyone would be
awake. "We would begin praying together loudly and
strongly. For God to protect us and to take the
fighting away from our city and our home."
Any semblance of normalcy had, of course,
long since left the environs of Fallujah; schools
had been closed for weeks; there were dire
shortages of medicine and medical equipment; and
civilians still trapped in the city had a single
job - somehow to stay alive. When you emerged,
however briefly, nothing was recognizable. "You
could see areas where all the houses were
flattened. There was just nothing left," he
explained. "We could get water at times, but there
was no electricity, ever."
Ahmed's family
used a small generator that they ran sparingly
because they could not get more fuel. "We ran out
of food after they Americans started to invade the
city, so we ate flour, and then all we had was
dirty water ... so eventually what choice did we
have but to try to get out?
"Why do the
Americans bomb all of us in our homes?" asked
Ahmed, whose puzzlement was evident. "Even those
of us who do not fight, we are suffering so much
because of the US bombs and tanks. Can't they see
this is turning so many people against them?"
'I saw cluster bombs
everywhere'
Mohammad Ali, 53, who is living
in a tent city in Baghdad, was one of those
willing to address the suffering he experienced as
a result of the November bombings. Mohammad is a
bear of a man, his kind face belying his deep
despair as he leans on a worn, wooden cane. He
summed up his experience this way: "We did not
feel that there was an Eid [the traditional
feasting time which follows Ramadan] after Ramadan
this year because our situation was so bad. All we
had was more fasting. I asked God to save us but
our house was bombed and I lost everything."
Refugees aren't the only people ready to
describe what occurred in Fallujah as a result of
the loosing of jets, bombers and helicopters on
the city. Burhan Fasa'a, a gaunt 33-year-old
journalist, is a cameraman for the Lebanese
Broadcasting Co. He was inside the city during the
first eight days of the November assault. "I saw
at least 200 families whose homes had collapsed on
them, thanks to American bombs," he said. "I saw a
huge number of people killed in the northern part
of the city and most of them were civilians."
Like so many others who made it out of
Fallujah, he described scenes of widespread death
and desolation in what had not so long before been
a modest-sized city. Most of these resulted from
bombings that - despite official announcements
emphasizing how "targeted" and "precise" they were
- seemed to those on the receiving end unbearably
indiscriminate.
"There were so many people
wounded, and with no medical supplies, people died
from their wounds," he said. He also spoke of
cluster bombs, which, he - and many other Fallujan
witnesses - claim, were used by the military in
November as well as during the earlier failed
Marine siege of the city in April. The dropping of
cluster bombs in areas where civilians live is a
direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
"I saw cluster bombs everywhere," he said
calmly, "and so many bodies that were burned -
dead with no bullets in them."
A doctor,
who fled Fallujah after the attacks began and is
now working in a hospital in a small village
outside the city, spoke in a similar vein (though
she requested that her name not be used): "They
shot all the sheep. Any animals people owned were
shot," she said. "Helicopters shot all the animals
and anything that moved in the villages
surrounding Fallujah.
"I saw one dead body
I remember all too well. My first where there were
bubbles on the skin, and abnormal coloring, and
burn holes in his clothing." She also described
treating patients who, she felt certain, had been
struck by chemical and white-phosphorus-type
weapons. "And I saw so many bodies with these
strange signs, and none of them with bullet holes
or obvious injuries, just dead with discoloring
and that bubbled skin, dark-blue skin with bubbles
on it, and burned clothing. I saw this with my own
eyes. These bodies were in the center of Fallujah,
in old Fallujah."
Like Burhan, while in
the city she too witnessed many civilian buildings
bombed to the ground. "I saw two schools bombed,
and all the houses around them too."
'Why was our family
bombed?'
Another glimpse of what it's like
to live in a city under attack from the air was
offered by two sisters, Muna and Selma Salim, also
refugees from Fallujah and the only survivors of a
family of 10, the rest of whom were killed when
two rockets fired from a US fighter jet hit their
home. Their mother, Hadima, 65, died in the attack
along with her son Khalid, an Iraqi police
captain, his sister Ka'ahla and her 22-year-old
son, their pregnant 45-year-old sister Adhra'a,
her husband Samr, who had a doctorate in religious
studies, and their four-year-old son Amorad.
Muna, still exhausted from her ordeal,
wept almost constantly while telling her story.
Even her abaya, which fully covers her,
could not hide her shaking body as waves of grief
rolled through her tiredness. She was speaking of
her dead sister Artica. "I can't get the image out
of my mind of her fetus being blown out of her
body," said Muna. Artica was seven months pregnant
when, on November 10, the rockets struck. "My
sister Selma and I survived only because we were
staying at our neighbor's house that night," she
said, sobbing, still unable to reconcile her
survival with the death of most of the rest of her
family in the fierce pre-assault bombing of the
city.
"There were no fighters in our area,
so I don't know why they bombed our home," cried
Muna. "When this happened there were ongoing
full-scale assaults from the air and tanks were
attacking our city, so we slipped out of the
eastern side of Fallujah and came to Baghdad."
Selma, Muna's 41-year-old sister,
recounted scenes of destruction in the city -
houses that had been razed by countless air
strikes and the stench of decaying bodies that
swirled through the air borne on the area's dry,
dusty winds.
"The rubble from the bombed
houses covered up the bodies, and nobody could get
to them because people were too afraid even to
drive a bulldozer!" She held out her hands as she
spoke, as if to ask her god how such things could
happen. "Even walking out of your house was just
about impossible because of the snipers."
Both sisters described their last months
in Fallujah as a nightmarish existence. It was a
city where fighters controlled the area, medicine
and food were often in short supply, and the
thumping concussions of US bombs had become a
daily reality. Rocket-armed attack helicopters
rattled low over the desert as they approached the
city only adding to the nightmarish landscape.
"Even when the bombs were far away,
glasses would fall off our shelves and break,"
exclaimed Muna. Going to market, as they had to,
in the middle of the day to buy food for their
family, both sisters felt constant fear of
warplanes roaring over the sprawling city. "The
jets flew over so often," said Selma, "but we
never knew when they would drop their bombs."
They described a desolate city of closed
shops and mostly empty streets on which infrequent
terrorized residents could be spotted simply
wandering around not knowing what to do. "Fallujah
was like a ghost town most of the time," was the
way Muna put it. "Most families stayed inside
their houses all the time, only going out for food
when they had to." Like many others, their family
soon found that it needed to ration increasingly
scarce food and water, "Usually we were very
hungry because we didn't want to eat our food, or
drink all of the water." She paused, took a deep
breath undoubtedly thinking of her dead parents
and siblings, and added, "We never knew if we
would be able to get more, so we tried to be
careful."
During the interview with the
two sisters in the Baghdad home of their uncle,
both of them often stared at the ground silently
until another detail would come to mind to be
added to their story. Unlike Muna who was visibly
emotional, Selma generally spoke in a flat voice
without affect that might indeed have emerged from
some dead zone. "Our situation then was like that
of so many from Fallujah," she said. "None of us
could leave because we had nowhere to go and no
money."
"Why was our family bombed?"
pleaded Muna, tears streaming down her cheeks,
"There were never any fighters in our area!"
Today fighting continues on nearly a daily
basis around Fallujah, as well as in many other
cities throughout Iraq; and for reporters as well
as residents of Baghdad, the air war is an
omnipresent reality. Helicopters buzz the tops of
buildings and hover over neighborhoods in the
capital all the time, while fighter jets often
scorch the skies.
Below them, traumatized
civilians await the next onslaught, never knowing
when it may occur.
Dahr Jamail
is an independent journalist who has been
reporting from Iraq since November 2003. He writes
for The Sunday Herald in Scotland, Inter Press
Service, the NewStandard Internet news site and
The Ester Republic among other publications. He is
the special correspondent in Iraq for Flashpoints
Radio, as well as reporting for Democracy Now!,
the BBC, Irish Public Radio, Radio South Africa,
Radio Hong Kong, and many other stations
throughout the world. This article appeared on
Tomdispatch http://www.tomdispatch.com and
is used here by permission.
(Copyright
2005 Dahr Jamail.) |
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