Blank
Michael Schwartz on What We Don't See in Iraq
by Tom Engelhardt
TomsDispatch.com
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/1715
Since Guardian correspondent Rory Carroll was
briefly kidnapped in Baghdad and the paper recalled
its reporters while it reviewed the situation, there has
a lively debate in the English press about the nature
and limits of Western reporting in Iraq. Carroll himself,
since being freed, has insisted that Iraq remains a
story more capable of being covered than most people
realize; that even "Green Zone" journalism has a positive
side; and that "hotel journalism" is not the essence of
what's happening if you're a press journalist:
"When asked about the suggestion that British
journalists in Iraq just report from their hotel rooms,
Carroll said: ‘I get quite annoyed when that perception
is reinforced. For TV crews it is mostly hotel journalism,
because they are bulkier and more visible than print
people -- they have to travel in big convoys, and their
insurance and bureaucratic rules are such that it's a
huge deal for them to leave the hotel. The print guys,
and this applies to all the other British papers, we get
out of the hotel pretty much every day. Our security is
contingent entirely on invisibility, which is why we try
to blend in.'"
Peter Beaumont, his colleague at the Observer, also believes that reporting on Iraq,
while unbearably dangerous, remains "still just possible":
"You learn in large measure to deal with it, adapting your behavior to the different
kinds of threat. Many of the men grow beards, the women reporters wear abayas.
Traveling around Baghdad, you move ‘low profile' in tatty but well-serviced cars. I
take off my glasses as they look too ‘Euro' and wear stripy shirts that look
‘Mansour' -- the fashionable middle-class district of Baghdad."
On the other hand, veteran correspondent Robert Fisk, a man never lacking in
reportorial bravery, recently announced that, given the outsized dangers now inherent
in the situation, he wasn't sure he could still report from Iraq. He refers to what
he now does on his visits to Iraq as "mouse journalism."
"If I go to see someone in any particular location, I give myself 12 minutes, because
that is how long I reckon it takes a man with a mobile phone to summon gunmen to the
scene in a car. So, after 10 minutes I am out. Don't be greedy. That's what reporting
is like in Iraq… One of the delights of the occupying powers is that the journalists
cannot move. When I travel outside Baghdad by road it takes me two weeks to plan it,
because the roads are infested with insurgents, checkpoints, hooded men and
throat-cutters. That's what it's like."
Just the other day, I heard an American freelance correspondent on a panel at
Columbia University second Fisk on the sanity of his "12-minute rule." Similarly, the
exceedingly brave former war correspondent, Maggie O'Kane recently leveled a blast in
the Guardian at Iraqi coverage. Claiming she "lost nerve" in Afghanistan in 2002
after three of her colleagues were pulled from a car and, "in roughly the same amount
of time as it takes to boil a kettle," executed by the Taliban, she then commented on
present-day Iraq:
"The hacks are corralled in a single hotel where huge egos bang off the wall and each
other. After a week or two, the atmosphere becomes suffocating… Since Al-Zarqawi's
people started cutting off heads it is too dangerous for foreigners to go out. So,
instead, his poor Iraqi fixer is off to some hell hole to count the bodies and get
the pictures… And that is the great tragedy for war reporting now. We no longer know
what is going on but we are pretending we do. Any decent reporter knows that
reporting from Baghdad now does a disservice to the truth."
Increasingly, the fixers and translators have morphed into journalists -- and brave
ones at that -- while services like Knight Ridder (whose coverage of Iraq has been
outstanding) and Reuters have been hiring Iraqi reporters. Some of these reporters
have then found themselves in American jails for covering the Iraqi insurgents; and
almost 40 of them have died (without much note in our press) reporting the occupation
and the insurgency -- as well as one, Yasser Salihee, evidently killed by an American
sniper while driving to get gas on his day off in the low-level war zone that is much
of Iraq. Some of them, like photographer and reporter Ghaith Abdul Ahad, given a
chance to write under their own names in major papers, have done extraordinary and
daring work.
With rare exceptions -- including the Washington Post's remarkable Anthony Shadid
(now in Syria), whose dramatic book on his time in Iraq, Night Draws Near, reflects
his superb reporting -- American reporters may be almost as crippled by not being
Arabic-speakers as by the dangers of Iraq. It remains an amazing fact that an
American occupation which began largely without Arabic-speakers -- it was going to be
too easy to stock up on people who actually spoke the language -- has since been
covered in our press mainly by reporters who can't communicate directly with the
people they're covering (unless, of course, they happen to speak English).
Still, there can be little question that in Iraq (and possibly elsewhere) the nature
of war reporting is undergoing some kind of sea change. Iraq is a war in which
correspondents disappear into detention or die not because they are covering
dangerous events and happen to be caught in a crossfire, but because they are often
prime targets themselves -- of guerrillas and terrorists, of gangs of for-profit
kidnappers, or of the American military. As a result, the war (and the Iraq) we see
in our newspapers, and especially on our television sets, is a distinctly constricted
one, often hardly wider than the nearest giant American military base or Baghdad's
well-fortified Green Zone. Perhaps reporters, bearded or not, slipping by as
anonymously as possible or in heavily armed security convoys, embedded with American
or even Iraqi troops, can make it to spots around Baghdad, or, on rare occasions,
elsewhere in the country (as part of military operations), but even for the bravest
Western journalists, this has to be a desperately limiting situation.
Not surprisingly, whole areas of Iraq remain beyond our view much, if not all, of the
time. Michael Schwartz picks one forgotten province where war and resistance, first
to Saddam Hussein and then to foreign occupation, have been a constant, and
reporting, in our press at least, an irregular, small miracle. He offers a modest
suggestion about the shape of what we don't normally see of Iraq. Tom
Forgotten Iraq
The War in Maysan Province
By Michael Schwartz
So much of the Iraq war operates below the radar screen of the mainstream media that
we rarely glimpse what is really going on -- either in the daily lives of Iraqis or
in the daily life of the war itself. The news we do get is generally filled with
moments when large numbers of soldiers, policemen, and civilians are killed in
suicide attacks; or with the surreal machinations of American and Iraqi politicians
so disconnected from Iraqi reality that they can hardly venture outside Baghdad's
hermetically sealed "Green Zone," even with convoys of armed guards.
In the meantime, Western reporters in Iraq are, by and large, locked into their own
little Green-Zone-style situations, held back from anything like normal reporting by
the dangers they face. Fortunately, there are significant exceptions to this rule.
Many reporters do venture outside their protective cocoons -- often at great peril to
themselves -- to chase down stories, do real investigative journalism, or explore as
best they can the daily lives of Iraqis and the nature of the Iraqi resistance. By
normal journalistic standards, their reports should be plastered across front pages
and dominate the TV news about Iraq; but, alas, they all too often are relegated to
the inside pages or obscure locations on the Internet. And most Americans
consequently get, at best, the briefest glimpses of any deeper Iraqi reality.
Nevertheless, some of the larger picture is out there, even if in hard to find places
and so accessible only to those of us with the time and persistence to dig it up.
Take, for example, Maysan province, a small Shia area in southeastern Iraq abutting
Iran. Maysan is not in the "Sunni Triangle," so it is not in the eye of the Sunni
resistance hurricane. It is not occupied by American troops but the British
Staffordshire Regiment, renowned for its non-aggressive approach to occupying Iraq.
The region's only claim to newsworthiness has been its status as the historical home
of the Marsh Arabs, infamously dispersed by Saddam Hussein when he drained the
marshes that cover a substantial portion of the province. In 2003, there was a brief
flurry of Maysan coverage when, just after the invasion, the marshes were partially
re-flooded and some of the Marsh Arabs returned to their ancestral home.
An Unnoticed Hotspot of Insurgency
Maysan is worth our attention for another reason: For the past two-plus years it has
been the site of a low-intensity, low-visibility war that may be a better measure of
the fate of the occupation than higher profile battles in cities like Falluja and Tal
Afar. It has been the subject of some excellent but little noted investigative
journalism, notably a magnificent recent report by Pamela Hess of United Press
International and an earlier background piece by Doug Struck of the Washington Post.
Maysan Province has a rebellious history. Saddam was never able to bring it to heel
and this was a key motivation for draining the marshes and displacing the Marsh
Arabs. But even this draconian solution didn't pacify Maysan. For years, the Hussein
regime maintained an occupying force of 20,000 troops there, partly because of the
province's proximity to Iran and partly to suppress local guerrillas, who remained
active right up to the American invasion.
When the American attack became imminent and Saddam pulled his troops out of the area
to defend Baghdad, the local guerrillas immediately took control of the capital,
Amarah, and installed their own government. The British -- in charge of Southern Iraq
for the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority -- arrived five days later, and
local residents greeted them as invaders with no business in town. According to Capt.
Andy McLannahan, the British commander, the local attitude was, "What are you doing
here?" As far as the locals were concerned, "it was they who ousted Hussein's forces,
not the U.S. invasion." When the British imposed their authority and displaced the
insurgent government, the residents were bitter. As UPI's Hess put it, "In the local
eyes they had just traded one occupation for another."
Since then, the British have had no better success than Saddam in subduing the
province. The resistance there has evolved through several stages, each a response to
changing occupation strategies and their own capabilities. At first, insurgents
fought sporadic guerrilla battles with the British. This so strained the capacity of
the 1,000 strong occupation force that the British actually withdrew from Majar al
Kabir, the town with the most militant and aggressive resistance cells. During this
period, the province became a center of strength for the Mahdi Army, the military
wing of the Sadrist movement that would eventually fight major battles with the
Americans in Najaf and Sadr City, Baghdad's enormous Shiite slum.
In the spring of 2004, the poorly armed, poorly trained Sadrists felt strong enough
to challenge the British directly, and a 100-day battle commenced in the provincial
capital of Amarah. (There was little coverage of this, in part because the almost
simultaneous and far larger battle in Najaf drew so much attention.) The British
claimed complete victory -- 800 guerrillas killed without the loss of a single
British soldier -- but they also discontinued virtually all patrols in the city,
leaving local governance to the supporters of the resistance. This withdrawal also
marked an end to various ambitious reconstruction projects that had been promised and
scheduled by the occupiers. In January 2005, the Sadrists won the provincial
elections.
Finally, in April 2005, the British ordered the Staffordshire Regiment to pacify
Amarah and retake full control of the province. They utilized a strategy similar to
the one the Americans were applying in the Sunni areas of the country: Armed patrols
invaded rebellious neighborhoods and broke into the homes of suspected resistance
fighters (and their suspected supporters), arresting large numbers and killing anyone
who resisted. Construction began on 13 impregnable police stations in an attempt to
convert the police into a viable weapon against the resistance. According to the U.S.
Command in Iraq, these stations were to be the most imposing structures in town,
equipped with "guard towers, security walls, generator installation, exterior
lighting, bullet-proof glass, bars on exterior windows, steel exterior doors, and an
antenna." These, in turn, would "improve the morale of the police so they will do a
better job," and so, supposedly, deal with a pattern found in rebellious areas across
Iraq -- police unwilling or unable to fight the guerrillas.
At this point, the guerrillas abandoned their failed effort to confront the British
army directly and settled into the pattern that characterizes the war everywhere in
the country: IEDs by roadsides and hit-and-run attacks targeting the patrols of the
occupying power. By the middle of summer, the new strategy had begun to inflict
consistent casualties on the British, and Maysan province officially became a hot
spot of insurgency.
A Protracted War of Attrition
The ongoing battle in Maysan catches something of the nature of the guerrilla war in
other under-reported parts of Iraq. UPI's Hess pointed to the hallmark of guerrilla
warfare when reporting that, "despite the violence, the Iraqis here consider Maysan
to be safe and secure because -- unlike in the Sunni triangle -- local civilians and
police are not the targets of the insurgents." In other words, the local Shia
resistance is mainly in the business of expelling the occupation. They target British
soldiers, and mostly try to avoid civilian casualties. Because the police have not
attacked them, they usually do not target the police. They are for the most part (in
the classic guerrilla mode) defenders of the local order, and there would be little
violence if the British did not enter the towns and cities where the resistance is
strong. In these circumstances, the local population feels safe (when the British are
not around) because they do not expect attacks from the resistance.
The British, like all historic occupation armies, have a great deal of trouble
dealing with (or even understanding) this strategy. One intelligence officer told
Hess: "Anything that smacks of the insurgency from the north [the police] jump on
quite quickly," But the British seem bewildered by the local police's "live and let
live" attitude toward the local resistance, an attitude captured by British commander
McLannahan:
"The local [Iraqi] army brigade patrols the rural areas of Maysan, interdicting
smugglers and insurgents. Police forces patrol inside the cities, and are less
likely -- because of tribal ties and local loyalties -- to crack down on militiamen.
However, they reliably turn up weapons caches. When you ask them if they caught the
people, they usually have 'just got away.'"
Hess sums up the British position thusly: "The British estimate that, like much of
Iraq, most of the locals only want to get on with the lives. It is a small minority
that is up to no good. ‘But the large majority allow the small number to carry on'
McLannahan acknowledged."
As in any low-intensity guerrilla war, the "large majority" allow the guerrillas to
continue to operate. The police and National Guard do their part by failing to
apprehend the local guerrillas, even when ordered to do so by their British
superiors.
It is clear that the resistance in Maysan has now dug in for a protracted war of
attrition. Their 2004 offensive, designed to expel the British entirely, failed while
producing many casualties. But the new IED-based hit-and-run tactics can undoubtedly
be sustained for as long as the British remain, just as the earlier campaign against
Saddam continued for years.
In the meantime, the occupation guarantees support for the resistance, not only by
arresting and killing suspected activists whose family and friends are then drawn
into the battle, but also by stoking the continuing crisis that prevents residents
from maintaining a viable local economy. During the brief five-day period when local
residents ruled the province, before the British asserted their control, they "broke
the earthen levees and opened the floodgates" that had kept the marshes dry. This
action, designed to restore their historic source of sustenance, was not successful
in restoring the local economy. Previous diversions of rivers north of Maysan (in
Baghdad and elsewhere) meant that there was insufficient water to refill the marsh
area. Later, constantly increasing pollution, thanks to destroyed sewage systems in
these same upstream areas, contaminated the re-flooded parts of the marshes, making
them unviable for cultivation.
This misfortune made clear, even to the most parochial locals, that the fate of
Maysan province rests on larger national reconstruction programs now largely in
abeyance. Virtually all of them blame the occupation for its failure to reconstruct
the country and for the constantly escalating crises that result from that failure --
the pollution of the marshes, the chronic electrical outages, the lack of medicine,
and the absence of other infrastructural necessities that even the Hussein regime had
delivered semi-reliably. As local resident Rahan Nahie told the Washington Post's
Doug Struck in early 2005, "All the babies are sick, and the environment all around
is bad. There are no fish here. We have no jobs. We need help,"
This discontent will continue to fuel the rebellion as long as the British, like the
Americans, respond to protests, both peaceful and violent, with military violence.
One British official expressed this imperial attitude perfectly when he told Struck,
"The province is clearly in need of a strong authority." The comment reflects a
British decision to continue to root out the resistance by military means, which in
turn guarantees both ongoing misery for the local population and a growing guerrilla
war.
Maysan is by no means a typical province, as the many elements in its history make
clear. But then, each province (and each city within each province) is similarly
unique. There are nevertheless enduring patterns here that catch something of the
experience of Iraqis -- with the exception of those in Kurdish areas of the
country -- under the American and British occupation. Uninterrupted economic decline
is an enduring pattern; brutal repression of dissent is another, as are the absence
of a responsive government and an ever more fervent local desire to expel the
occupation. Even where the war is largely invisible to us, there are resistance
movements in ever expanding areas that the occupation simply cannot control.
The high-profile battles, the suicide car-bomb offensives, and the constitutional
debates will have little impact on this inexorable drumbeat of occupation and
resistance.
-Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, has written
extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and
government dynamics. His work on Iraq appears regularly at TomDispatch, Asia Times,
ZNET, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and
Social Structure and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda. His email address is
Ms42@optonline.net@optonline.net.
* If you would like to get MediaChannel's FREE daily Media Savvy newsletter, click
here to subscribe.
This article is copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a
'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this
site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more
information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
.
|
