THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2003

Robert Fisk Reports - (from Occupied TerritorY.)
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!


.In June 2003, Democracy Now! host, Amy Goodman interviewed Robert Fisk, reporter with the Independent newspaper of London. He recently left Iraq where he was chronicling the rising resistance to the U.S. occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Robert Fisk, who just came out of Iraq ; Robert Fisk, can you talk more about what you found there?

ROBERT FISK: I don't think I've ever seen a clearer example of an army that thought it was an army of liberation and has become an army of occupation. It's important perhaps to say - I did mention it in [a recent] article - that a number of those soldiers who were attached to the 3rd infantry division were military policeman, American ordinary cops like one from Rhode Island, for example - they had a pretty shrewd idea of what was going on.

You got different kinds of behavior from the Americans. You got this very nice guy, Phil Cummings, who was a Rhode Island cop, very sensitive towards people, didn't worry if people shouted at him. He remained smiling. He just said that if people throw rocks at me or stones at me, I give them candies. There was another soldier who went up to a middle aged man sitting on a seat and he said, 'If you get out of that seat, I'll break your neck,' and there was quite a lot of language like that as well. There were good guys as well as bad guys among the Americans as there always are in armies, but the people who I talked to, the sergeants and captains and so on - most of them
acknowledge that something had gone wrong, that this was not going to be good.

One guy said to me, every time we go down to the river here - he was talking about the river area in Fallujah - it's a tributary of the Tigris - it's like Somalia down there. You always get shot at and you always get stoned. Some of the soldiers spoke very frankly about the situation in Baghdad. One man told me and I heard twice before in Baghdad itself, once from a British Commonwealth diplomat and once from a fairly senior officer in what we now have to call the coalition, C.P.A., ....(It's a coalition provisional authority I'm thinking of, the C.P.A.), they all say that Baghdad airport now comes under nightly sniper fire from the perimeter of the runways from Iraqis. Two of them told me that every time a military aircraft comes in at night, it's fired at. In fact some of the American pilots are now going back to the old Vietnamese tactic of cork screwing down tightly on to the runways from above rather than making the normal level flight approach across open countryside becausethey're shot at. There is a very serious problem of security.

The Americans still officially call them the remnants of Saddam or terrorists. But in fact, it is obviously an increase in the organized resistance and not just people who were in Saddam's forces, who were in the Ba'ath Party or the Saddam Fedayeen. There was also increasing anger among the Shiite community, those who were of course most opposed to Saddam, and I think what we're actually seeing, you can get clues in Iraq, is a cross fertilization. Shiites who are disillusioned, who don't believe they have been liberated, who spent so long in Iran, they don't like the Americans anyway. Sunni Muslims who feel like they're threatened by the Shiites, former Sadaam acolytes
who've lost their jobs and found that their money has stopped. Kurds who are disaffected and are beginning to have contacts, and that of course is the beginning of a real resistance movement and that's the great danger for the Americans now.

One of the problems with the Americans I think is that the top people in the Pentagon always knew that this wasn't going to be 'human rights abuses ended,' flowers and music for the soldiers, and everyone lives happily every after and loves America. You may remember when Rumsfeld first came to Baghdad,( something your president didn't dare to do in the end, he wanted to fly over in an airplane. ) He -Rumsfeld - made a speech which I thought was very interesting, rather sinister
in the big hanger at Baghdad airport. He said we still have to fight the remnants of Saddam and the terrorists in Iraq, and I thought, hang on a minute, who are these people? And it took me a few minutes to realize I think what he was doing, he was laying the future narrative of the opposition to the Americans.

If you were to suggest that it was a resistance movement, harakat muqawama, resistance party in Arabic, that would suggest the people didn't believe they had been liberated, and of course, all good-natured peace loving people have to believe they were liberated by the Americans, not occupied by them.

Also, what you're finding for example is a whole series of blunders by Paul Bremer, the American head of the so-called coalition forces,or coalition authority, in Baghdad. First of all, he dissolved the Iraqi Army. Well, I can't imagine an Army that better deserves to be dissolved. But that means that more than quarter of a million armed men overnight are deprived of their welfare and money. Now if you have quarter of a million armed Iraqis who suddenly don't get paid any more, and they all know each other, what are they going to do? They are going to form some kind of force which is
secret, which is covered; then they will be called terrorists, but I guess they know that, and then of course they will be saying to people, why don't you come and join us.

It was very interesting that in Fallujah, the young men came out to see me from a shop just after the American searches there had ended and said some people came from the resistance a few nights ago and asked me to join. I said, what did you say, and he said, I wouldn't do that. But now, he said, I might think differently. I visited a Shiite Muslim family in Baghdad who moved into the former home of a Saddam intelligence officer. This family had been visited three nights previously by armed men who said, you better move out of this house. It doesn't belong to you unless you want to join us. The guy in Fallujah said that the men, the armed men who came to invite him to join the resistance had weapons, showed their mukhabarat intelligence identity card and said, we're still being paid and we are proud to hold our I.D. cards for the Ba'ath Party. So, now you have to realize that Fallujah and other towns like it are very unlike Tikrit, are very much pro-Saddam. Fallujah is the site of a great munitions factory, it gave people massive employment. They all loved
Saddam in the way Arabs are encouraged to love dictators or go prison to otherwise. But nonetheless, there is an embryo of a serious resistance movement now.


On top of this, you can see the measure of what I think is basically desperation ; and Paul Bremer now asks the legal side of the coalition provisional authority to set up the machinery of Iraqi press censorship. In other words, Iraqi newspapers are going to be censored. Controlled I think is the official word they use, but that means censorship. That is the kind of language that Saddam used. Iraqis are used to a censored press; after all, they lived with it for more than 20 years under Saddam Hussein. Now when you question the Americans about it, first of all they deny it. Then the British half accept it; then other people involved in the coalition say well it's probably true, yes, it is true.

But the problem is the wild stories appearing in the Iraqi press. Now, of course there's no tradition of western style journalism in Iraq. There are those that say it's a good idea, no tradition for example of letting the other side have a say, checking the story out, going back on the ground and asking the other side for their version of events. It doesn't exist. It's a little bit, but not much. What you get after saying that : " Americans are going with Iraqi prostitutes ", " American troops are chasing Iraqi women ", that " Muslim women are being invited to marry Christian foreigners ", and that this is " worse than it was under Saddam." I'm actually quoting from one particular newspaper called The Witness, which is a Shiite Muslim paper, basically that had its first issue the other day. Other newspapers carry reports of American beatings; and the opening of mass graves. They're not totally one sided against the Americans.

But you can see how the occupation forces, let's call them by their real name, are troubled by this kind of publication because it seems to them to provoke or incite animosity towards the liberators of Iraq, which it is not meant to do. But of course the problem is that the Imams in the mosques are saying the same thing about the Americans. Now, the last quote I read from American official said that it may be necessary to control what the Imams were saying in the mosques; well, this is
preposterous.

I sat on Rashid Street in Baghdad a few days ago and listened to the loud speaker carrying the sermon of the imam from within the mosque. I think he was saying the Americans must leave immediately, now. Well, under the new rule presumably he's inciting the people to violence. What are we going to do? Arrest all the Imams in the mosques, arrest all the journalists who won't obey, close down the newspapers? I mean what Iraqi journalists need are courses in journalism from reporters who work in real democracies.

You can come along and say, look, by all means criticize the Americans and put the boot in if you want to, but make sure you get it right. And if you also do that you have to look at your own society and what is wrong in it and how Saddam ever came about. He didn't just come about because America supported Saddam ,which, my goodness, they did. But Bremer is not interested in this. What Bremer wants to do is control, control the press, control the Imams, and it doesn't work.

GOODMAN: Robert, you were just talking about a lot of the attacks we're hearing about - what seems like a good number - on U.S. forces are not being reported.

FISK: A lot of the incidents taking place now, the violent incidents are not being divulged.... . I have a colleague, for example, who went down to Fallujah before the incident I was describing to you earlier, after two gunmen, one American had been killed in the fire fight. On his way back he was traveling past the town of Abu Garab a rather sinister place where the huge prison is where Saddam executed so many prisoners, including an Observer journalist back in the late1980's.... ......as the colleague was passing by the town, he saw a young man come up and throw a hand grenade at American troops in the Humvee. The grenade missed them and exploded in the canal and wounded six Iraqi children, he gave a very clear account of what happened. I rang the coalition
forces, the telephone didn't answer as it very often doesn't do. And no report ever emerged except in my paper that this incident had occurred.

Now, over and over again we keep seeing things, seeing small incidents occur, soldiers threatening people outside petrol lines because people are trying to jump the line and steal. And it just doesn't make it back into the coalition record of what's actually happening in Iraq. The danger here is not so much that we're not being told about it because we can see and find out for ourselves. The danger is that the United States leadership in Baghdad, and of course, especially back in the White House and Pentagon is also not being told about it. Or if it is, information is only going to certain people who can deal with that information..... if you try and if this information does go up the ladder, every bit of it, to people like Bremer...But, I'm not sure it all is - I think it should be - then you can see how the coalition doesn't represent the reality.

It's very easy to say, well Iraq's been a great success we've got rid of a dictatorship, the weapons of mass destruction (which didn't exist )have now been destroyed ...or whatever interpretation you want to put on that...Human rights abuses have ended, certainly the Saddam kind. But one of the big problems at the moment is the Americans and, to some extent the British, particularly the Americans in Baghdad........ they're all ensconced in this chic gleaming marble palace, the largest, most expensive palace. There they sit with their laptops trying to work out with Washington how they're going to bring about this new democracy in Iraq.

They rely upon for the most part former Iraqi exiles who never endured Saddam Hussein, who are hovering around making sure that they get the biggest part of the pie if possible. When they leave the palace, when they go into the streets of Baghdad, the dangerous streets of Baghdad, they leave in these armored black Mercedes with gunmen in the front and back, soldiers, plain clothes guys with weapons and sunglasses.

One Iraqi said to me the other day, who did you think was the last person we saw driving through town like [this]? I said, Saddam Hussein? They all burst out laughing, of course, they said, exactly the same.

We are used to this just like they're used to press censorship. I think it's difficult - you need to be in Baghdad to understand the degree towhich there's been this slippage of ambition and slippage in the
ideological war. I was in small hotel called the Al Hama the other day -it has a swimming pool, 24-hour generators. Just going down to have a meal in the evening, I came across two westerners, one with a pump action shotgun, the other with a submachine gun passing me in the hallway.

I said, 'Who are you?'

One replied, 'Well, who are you?'

'I'm a guest in the hotel. You have guns. Who are you?'

He said, 'We work for D.O.D'.

'Department of Defense, right?' (But he was obviously English - he had aBritish accent.) 'Hang on a second you're not American.'

'No, we're a British company that is hired to look after D.O.D.employees in Baghdad. That's why we're armed.'

I said, 'Who gives you permission to have weapons?'

He said, 'The coalition forces, we're here protecting them.'

Now, how often have Iraqis seen armed plain clothes men moving in and out of hotels? They have, and for more than 20 years !!They are now seeing them again.Well, of course, these guys are not going to string them up by their fingernails and electrocute them in torture cells. But again, the image, the picture is the same. The armored escort, limousines in the street, soldiers kicking down the doors searching for, 'terrorists.' The press censorship plans. Plain clothes armed men going into a hotel asking who you are ...Immediately, by asking them who they are, the same system as before. It has this kind of ghastly ghostly veneer of the old regime about it The Americans are not Saddam, they're not murdering people - they're not lining up people at mass graves, of course they're not. But if you see through the eyes of the Iraqis, it doesn't look quite that simple.

GOODMAN : CNN is reporting today that Ahmed Chalabi who has addressed the Council on Foreign Relations is saying that Saddam Hussein is moving in an arc around the Tigris River starting northeast of Baghdad. He said finding Saddam would just be a matter of knowing whom to talk to. He says based on information from credible sources, he believes the former Iraqi president wants revenge and has obtained two suicide bombing vests for attacks on U.S. forces. Chalabi says Saddam is paying bounty for every U.S. soldier killed. Your response?

FISK: I long ago gave up putting any credit in anything that Ahmed Chalabi says. The real issue is not where is Saddam Hussein, he could be sitting in Minsk or Belarus or he could be sitting in Tikrit or in the Iraqi countryside somewhere. Obviously there were plans to hide him in advance. You know this goes back to another issue of the degree of real effort to find him. Just look back, the Americans wanted to arrest Valadich and put him in the Hague. We were going to capture Osama bin laden, he's still on the loose. We were going to capture Mullah Omar, he's only got one eye, not difficult to identify. But he's still on the loose. We can't get vice president Ramadan in Iraq or Uday Hussein, the sons of Saddam. We can't get Saddam himself.

I was sitting in a restaurant in Baghdad a week and a half ago, at the next table next to me was Saddam's personal translator. I sort of did a double take, I said, hi, how are you? I knew the guy. I'd known him for years and years. I said, are you okay? Fine, fine no problem, he was having a beer with friends. And he walked out. This is the same restaurant that later on I saw Paul Bremer walk into with several special forces men to protect him and his guests for dinner. I have to ask myself sometimes what's going on. Ahmed Chalabi says that Saddam is moving in an arc, he maybe moving in a circle or square for all I know but it's clear he's still alive. That's the point.
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