>
>
>Dear People
>
>I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this Baghdad Diary to you. If
>you've 2 minutes, please read it and consider sending it on. Very
>brave writers and journalists are trying to get the truth out of
>Iraq.
>
>The BBC (The Bush Blair Corporation) is so "embedded" in the
>Anglo-American military that it's buried along with the truth.
>Indeed, the BBC has just sacked two leading Arab journalists - hence
>demos against the BBC in Manchester and London.
>
>The next big Stop The War Demo is in London on April 12th...
>
>In peace, anger and love, Rupert
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>ian i-contact
>To: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>Lacketvideo-pairlist.net
>Cc: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>tash-gn.apc.org
>Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 10:53 PM
>Subject: [lacketvideo] Baghdad diary - please help distribute
>
>hello cats
>
>i need your help.  Bristol peace activist Jo Wilding is in Baghdad
>witnessing the bombing. She's still managing to send daily reports
>of life in the city but she needs help getting her reports out.
>Below is the latest..If you can help distribute this then please
>feel free to do so - forward this far and wide. send it out on any
>e-mail lists / bulletin borads. If you are a journalist and wanna
>publish it then its free to do so on a non-profit basis (see below).
>The important thing is to get this out to as many people as
>possible. please take the time and help if you can ...much
>appreciated
>
>as jo said tonight
>
>"The main thing is just getting the info out - people have to know
>about this - it seems they're deliberately targeting civilians and
>farms in some places, whether as a general policy, as perhaps with
>the farms, or just pilots pissing about or bad aim I don't know
>...but there was a market hit today and lots of people killed - not
>sure of numbers, but it's all fucked up. If you can just forward the
>info as widely as poss and if there's anyone into pamphlets or zines
>or anything and getting it out on the streets that would be great."
>
>cheers
>ian
>==================================================================================
>
>http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire//
>
>tel 009641 7184290 or 7192303 room 506. Please don't ask us to call
>you back because we can't afford it and there's no such thing as
>collect calls. Phone lines are intermittent but please keep trying.
>Baghdad is 3 hours ahead of GMT.
>
>
>(more here :
>http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3477&group=webcast
>)
>
>============================================================================================
>
>March 25th - The Farmhouse at Dialla
>
>It's hard now to tell the bombings from the storm: both beat at the
>windows and thunder through the city, but after a missile explodes,
>flocks of birds fill the sky, disturbed by the shock waves. After a
>gust, they are replaced by a cornucopeia of rubbish, drifting in the
>smog of sand and dust and smoke which has turned the air a dirty
>orange so thick it blotted out the sun and everything went dark in
>the middle of the day. Even the rain was filthy: the cleansing,
>healing drops fill with grime on the way down and splatter you with
>streaks of mud.
>
>In the end three people died yesterday in the farmhouse which was
>bombed at Dialla, including the young wife, Nahda, who was missing
>in the rubble. She, along with Zahra, the eight year old daughter
>and her aunt, Hana, were buried this morning. People are taken for
>burial in coffins but are buried in shrouds and a pick up returned
>to the remains of the house with the three caskets, cobbled out of
>small pieces of wood, riding in the back.
>
>In fact the couple had been married just one week, not three as I
>wrote yesterday, and a neighbour showed us a flouncy pink invitation
>to the wedding festival. Omar, the bridegroom, sat silently crying
>on the floor in the hospital corridor, leaning on the wall, body
>bent, head in his hands.
>
>Neighbours said the bomb hit at 4pm yesterday. The plane had been
>flying overhead for a while, they said, when it fired three rockets,
>one of which demolished the entire upper storey of the house. It
>looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering
>through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to nothing.
>
>Small farmhouses sat between cultivated fields, the occasional cow,
>two or three compact plots, then another building. A couple of sheep
>held court over the empty marketplace as we entered the village,
>over the small Dialla Bridge across a slim branch of the Tigris.
>There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing which even
>looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming
>for. It made no sense. The villagers said the plane had been
>circling overhead. Its pilot must have seen what was there.
>
>The animal shelters behind the house were crumpled, the family's cow
>lying crushed under her roof. They wouldn't have known that yet,
>still in the hospital. The windows of sixteen houses nearby were all
>broken, the neighbours told us, and the blast made the children's
>ears bleed.
>
>Ration sacks were piled in the kitchen and there was a bowl of green
>beans which looked as if they were being prepared for an evening
>meal. Two or three of the neighbours invited us to eat in their
>homes. Humbling seems too small a word for the experience of being
>invited to share food and hospitality, by people with so little,
>while crouching in the rubble of their friends' and neighbours' home
>which was obliterated, with several lives, by my country, only the
>previous day.
>
>Hours earlier, in the Al Kindi hospital, we had gone to take a
>statement from another casualty. He was dying, his family around
>him, so we didn't go into the room. As we walked away one of the men
>came after us with a tin of sweets to offer us. "Thankyou for
>coming," he said in English. These people constantly overwhelm me
>with their dignity, their kindness, their gentle grace and warmth.
>
>
>March 26th
>
>
>The Iraqis call it orange weather: some say it is on their side.
>It's not even 5 o'clock and the sun won't set till nearly seven but
>it's dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky
>staying dark all the time, but without the orange. It stinks as
>well, of smoke and oil and I don't know what else. The darkness and
>the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of
>apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and
>wrecked houses where the bombs have hit.
>
>I know I'm not supposed to understand this, so I won't bother
>telling you I don't. Today I met Essa Jassim Najim, a 28 year old
>first-year engineering student from a farming family near Babylon.
>He couldn't speak because of shrapnel wounds to his head and neck
>but his father explained that three days ago they were attacked by
>two groups of Apache helicopters. The first group attempted to land
>and the farmers resisted them with guns, aided by the Civil Defence
>Force. The second group of helicopters attacked the house,
>destroying it with a missile.
>
>Another farming community in Al Doraa also reported an attack by
>Apache helicopters at 4pm on Saturday. Atta Jassim died when a
>missile hit his house. Moen, his eight-year-old son had multiple
>bowel and intestinal injuries from shrapnel: part of his intestine
>had been removed. His six-year-old brother Ali and mother Hana were
>also injured by shrapnel.
>
>Saad Shalash Aday is another farmer, from Al Mahmoodia in South
>Baghdad. He had a fractured leg and multiple shrapnel wounds
>including a ruptured spleen, perforated caecum, colon and small
>bowel, abdominal and leg wounds. Two of his brothers, Mohammed and
>Mobden, were also injured and ten year old twin boys Ahmed and Daha
>Assan were killed in the same house when a bomb exploded two or
>three metres from the building. The doctor, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, said
>two other men were killed in the same attack around 6pm yesterday
>(Tuesday): Kherifa Mohammed Jebur, a 35 year old farmer and another
>man whose name nobody present knew.
>
>Eight houses and four cars were destroyed and cows, sheep and dogs
>were killed. The eyewitnesses described two bombs, each causing an
>explosion in the air, and cylindrical containers cluster bombs, some
>of which exploded on the ground. Others did not explode. The two
>explosions were about 300 metres apart, with a few minutes between
>them. From first hearing the plane overhead until the second
>explosion, they estimated, took about 10 minutes.
>
>"Is this democracy?" the men demanded to know, gathered by Saad's
>bed. "Is this what America is bringing to Iraq?"
>
>At 9 this morning a group of caravans was hit with cluster bombs,
>according to the doctors. A tiny boy lay in terrible pain in the
>hospital, a tube draining blood from his chest, which was pierced by
>shrapnel. They said he was eight, but he looked maybe five. The
>doctors were testing for abdominal damage as well. I'm not sure
>whether he knew yet, or could understand, that his mother was killed
>instantly and his five sisters and two brothers were not yet found.
>His father had gone to bring blood for him and his uncle, Dia, was
>with him.
>
>Rusol Ammar, a skinny ten year old girl with startling eyes,
>flinched occasionally when breathing hurt her she had multiple
>injuries from glass and shrapnel, as well as a fractured hand. Dr
>Ahmed explained that, at the velocity caused by an explosion, even a
>grain of sand could cause injury to a child Rusol's size. They
>weren't yet sure what was in her chest.
>
>Her dad said something hit their street and exploded. They were in
>their house and tried to close the door against the fireball but the
>windows blew in and the glass and shrapnel flew everywhere. His
>other children were unhurt. Rusol smiled the most gorgeous smile
>when we told her how brave she is, and that it will give courage to
>children everywhere when we tell them how brave she is.
>
>Her dad asked the same question we'd heard before. "Is this democracy?"
>
>Dr Ahmed is Syrian but has lived and worked 27 years in Iraq. He
>wasn't working yesterday but estimated about 30 casualties came into
>Al Yarmouk hospital. That's just one hospital and yesterday was a
>fairly light day of bombing. It makes no sense for me to speculate
>about the plans and intentions of the US/UK military, because I
>don't know, but several incidents of attacks on farms have been
>reported to us.
>
>Farms are not a legitimate target, even if you want to land your
>helicopter on them. From the legal perspective, the presence of a
>military objective within a civilian area or population does not
>deprive the population of its civilian character, even if you can
>call landing a helicopter a military objective. You cannot bomb an
>area of civilian houses knowing that people in the vicinity are
>likely to be hurt by flying glass and shrapnel.
>
>More than that though, more than the illegality of it, this is
>wrong. It's desperately, horrifyingly, achingly wrong. I don't mean
>this to be a casualty list, never mind a body count I couldn't even
>begin and I've no intention of describing blood and gore to you, but
>take this as an illustration, as a small picture of what's happening
>to people here, of what war means.
>
>The internet connection is down today. I don't know whether it's
>because of the sandstorm or the bomb damage or the attempt to
>control information. Phone lines are moody even within Baghdad. The
>Iraqi TV station was hit last night. Friends in the south of the
>city said there was no water or electricity when they woke up.

--


Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/

Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/