Page 1 of
2 Iraqi children are civilians
too By Dahr Jamail
"Sometimes I think it should be a rule
of war that you have to see somebody up close and
get to know him before you can shoot him." -
Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H
From
the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq,
air strikes and attacks by the US military have
only killed "militants", "criminals", "suspected
insurgents", "IED [improvised explosive device]
emplacers", "anti-American fighters",
"terrorists", "military
age
males", "armed men", "extremists" or "al-Qaeda".
The pattern for reporting on such attacks
has remained the same from the early years of the
occupation to today. Take a helicopter attack on
October 23 of this year near the village of Djila,
north of Samarra. The US military claimed it had
killed 11 among "a group of men planting a
roadside bomb".
Only later did a military
spokesperson acknowledge that at least six of the
dead were civilians. Local residents claimed that
those killed were farmers, that there were
children among them, and that the number of dead
was greater than 11.
Here is part of the
statement released by U.S. military spokeswoman in
northern Iraq, Major Peggy Kageleiry:
A suspected insurgent and improvised
explosive device cell member was identified
among the killed in an engagement between
coalition forces and suspected IED emplacers
just north of Samarra ... During the engagement,
insurgents used a nearby house as a safe haven
to re-engage coalition aircraft. A known member
of an IED cell was among the 11 killed during
the multiple engagements. We send condolences to
the families of those victims and we regret any
loss of life.
As usual, the version
offered by locals was vastly different. Abdul
al-Rahman Iyadeh, a relative of some of the
victims, revealed that the "group of men" attacked
were actually three farmers who had left their
homes at 4.30am to irrigate their fields.
Two were killed in the initial helicopter
attack and the survivor ran back to his home where
other residents gathered. The second air strike,
he claimed, destroyed the house killing 14 people.
Another witness told reporters that four separate
houses were hit by the helicopter. A local Iraqi
policeman, Captain Abdullah al-Isawi, put the
death toll at 16 - seven men, six women, and three
children, with another 14 wounded.
As
often happens, the US military, once challenged,
declared that an "investigation" of the incident
was under way.
And so it goes
On October 21, two days before that
helicopter strike near Djila, American soldiers,
again aided by helicopters, but this time in a
heavily populated urban neighborhood, claimed to
have killed 49 "armed men" in a "gun battle" in
Sadr City, a sprawling Shi'ite neighborhood in
eastern Baghdad. Then, too, the military initially
insisted "no civilians were killed or injured".
A Shi'ite citizens' council and other
Shi'ite groups responded that many innocent
bystanders had died. Among the 13 dead mentioned
in initial reports by local Iraqi police were
three children and a woman. Other Iraqi
authorities announced that 69 people had been
injured.
The US military had no
explanation for the widely varying American and
Iraqi tallies of casualties.
The official
American account went like this:
The operation's objective was an
individual reported to be a long time special
groups member specializing in kidnapping
operations. Intelligence indicates he is a
well-known cell leader and has previously sought
funding from Iran to carry out high profile
kidnappings. Upon arrival, the ground force
began to clear a series of buildings in the
target area and received sustained heavy fire
from adjacent structures, from automatic weapons
and rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs
[rocket-propelled grenades]. Responding in
self-defense, coalition forces engaged, killing
an estimated 33 criminals. Supporting aircraft
was also called in to engage enemy personnel
maneuvering with RPGs toward the ground force,
killing an estimated six criminals.
Upon
departing the target area, coalition forces
continued to receive heavy fire from automatic
weapons and RPGs and were also attacked by an
improvised explosive device. Responding in
self-defense, the ground force engaged the
hostile threat, killing an additional estimated
10 combatants. All total, coalition forces
estimate that 49 criminals were killed in three
separate engagements during this operation.
Ground forces reported they were unaware of any
innocent civilians being killed as a result of
this operation.
To be fair, the
military admitted that the target of this manhunt
was not, in fact, among those captured or killed.
After the "operation", television news
outlets broadcast images of grieving families in
the streets of Sadr City. One man reported that
his neighbor's six-year-old child had been killed,
and a two-year-old wounded. Arab television
outlets caught scenes of ambulances with wailing
sirens carrying the injured to the Imam Ali
hospital, the largest in Sadr City, where doctors
were shown treating the casualties, including
children.
Typically with such incidents,
those 49 dead "criminals" turned back into
civilians when local police began checking,
including two (not three) children in their final
count.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
vowed an investigation for which US military
officials offered to form a joint committee; but,
as is so often the case in such "investigations",
there have been no follow-up reports. In this
"incident", the US military, as far as we know,
still stands by its assertion that no civilians
were killed or wounded.
Two months
earlier, in a similar incident, the US military
claimed 32 "suspected insurgents" killed during an
air strike, also in Sadr City, a claim disputed by
Iraqis in the neighborhood, followed by the usual
promise of an investigation - of which, once
again, nothing more was heard.
'Tactical perception management'
For perspective, let me take you back to
Iraq in November 2003. I had been there less than
a week on my first visit to that occupied country
when the US military reported a raging firefight
between American forces and 150 of Saddam
Hussein's former paramilitary fighters. According
to General Peter Pace, then vice chairman of the
joint chiefs of staff, American soldiers, on being
attacked by the group, had responded fiercely and
killed 54 of them. "They attacked and they were
killed, so I think it will be instructive to
them," Pace had smugly observed.
Most of
the Western media simply chalked up the number of
"insurgent" dead at 54 and left it at that. Local
media in Baghdad, as well as outlets like
al-Jazeera, were, however, citing very different
figures taken directly from the hospital in
Samarra where the wounded were being treated.
Doctors there announced a count of eight killed in
the incident, including an Iranian pilgrim, and 50
Iraqis wounded.
I traveled to Samarra that
week, visited the morgue at Samarra General
Hospital, spoke with wounded Iraqis at the
hospital, and interviewed one of the leading
sheikhs of the city as well as several
eyewitnesses to the event. What I found was
general agreement that a US patrol had, in fact,
come under attack - but by only two gunmen while
delivering money to a downtown bank. Jumpy
American soldiers had responded with a spray of
fire that had killed neither of the attackers, but
eight civilians, while wounding 50 others. The
streets in the city center, where the firing took
place, were riddled with bullets.
The
military, nonetheless, stood by their figure - 54
dead - and insisted that the enormous force of
"insurgents" had attacked with mortars, grenades,
and automatic weapons.
A man I
interviewed, who had been in his tea stall in the
vicinity and witnessed most of the incident,
summed up the local reaction this way:
The Americans say the people who
fought them are al-Qaeda or fedayeen. We
are all living in this small city here. Why have
we not seen these foreign fighters and strangers
in our city before or after this battle?
Everyone here knows everyone, and none have seen
these strangers. Why do they tell these lies?
Another man, at the scene had drawn
my attention to a parked car scarred with 112
bullets. As I was photographing it, a man with two
children at his side approached. They were, he
said, the children of his brother who had been
killed by the gunfire.
This little boy and girl, their
father was shot by the Americans. Who will take
care of this family? Who will watch over these
children? Who will feed them now? Who? Why did
they kill my brother? What is the reason? Nobody
told me. He was a truck driver. What is his
crime? Why did they shoot him? They shot him
with 150 bullets! Did they kill him just because
they wanted to shoot a man? That's it? This is
the reason? Why didn't anyone talk to me and
tell me why they have killed my brother? Is
killing people a normal thing now, happening
every day? This is our future? This is the
future that the United States promised Iraq?
My life as an independent reporter in
his country was just beginning and his questions
felt like so many blows to the gut. Of course, I
was the only American reporter there to hear him
and I was then writing for an email audience of
under 200. This is what it means, in Pentagon
terms, to dominate not only the battlefield, but
the media landscape in which that battlefield is
reported. And that sort of domination was, it
turned out, very much on Pentagon minds in that
period.
Within days of the incident, for
instance, the New York Times published an article
about how the Pentagon had awarded a contract to
SAIC, a private company, which was to investigate
ways the Department of Defense could use
propaganda for more "effective strategic
influence" in the "war on terror". The Pentagon
referred to this potential propaganda blitz (which
would eventually come back to haunt secretary of
defense Donald Rumsfeld) as a "tactical perception
management campaign." The title of the document
SAIC produced was "Winning the War of Ideas".
On December 2, 2005, the US military would
admit that the Lincoln Group, which described
itself as "a strategic communications and public
relations firm providing insight and influence in
challenging and hostile environments", had been
hired
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
