[News] Stories from Fallujah

[News at freedomarchives.org]

February 08, 2005

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000196.php#more


Stories from Fallujah

These are the stories that will continue to emerge from the rubble of 
Fallujah for years. No, for generations


Speaking on condition of anonymity, the doctor sits with me in a hotel room 
in Amman, where he is now a refugee. He’d spoken about what he saw in 
Fallujah in the UK, and now is under threat by the US military if he 
returns to Iraq.

“I started speaking about what happened in Fallujah during both sieges in 
order to raise awareness, and the Americans raided my house three times,” 
he says, talking so fast I can barely keep up. He is driven to tell what 
he’s witnessed, and as a doctor working inside Fallujah, he has video and 
photographic proof of all that he tells me.

“I entered Fallujah with a British medical and humanitarian convoy at the 
end of December, and stayed until the end of January,” he explains, “But I 
was in Fallujah before that to work with people and see what their needs 
were, so I was in there since the beginning of December.”

When I ask him to explain what he saw when he first entered Fallujah in 
December he says it was like a tsunami struck the city.

“Fallujah is surrounded by refugee camps where people are living in tents 
and old cars,” he explains, “It reminded me of Palestinian refugees. I saw 
children coughing because of the cold, and there are no medicines. Most 
everyone left their houses with nothing, and no money, so how can they live 
depending only on humanitarian aid?”

The doctors says that in one refugee camp in the northern area of Fallujah 
there were 1,200 students living in seven tents.

“The disaster caused by this siege is so much worse than the first one, 
which I witnessed first hand,” he says, and then tells me he’ll use one 
story as an example.

“One story is of a young girl who is 16 years old,” he says of one of the 
testimonies he video taped recently, “She stayed for three days with the 
bodies of her family who were killed in their home. When the soldiers 
entered she was in her home with her father, mother, 12 year-old brother 
and two sisters. She watched the soldiers enter and shoot her mother and 
father directly, without saying anything.”

The girl managed to hide behind the refrigerator with her brother and 
witnessed the war crimes first-hand.

“They beat her two sisters, then shot them in the head,” he said. After 
this her brother was enraged and ran at the soldiers while shouting at 
them, so they shot him dead.

“She continued hiding after the soldiers left and stayed with her sisters 
because they were bleeding, but still alive. She was too afraid to call for 
help because she feared the soldiers would come back and kill her as well. 
She stayed for three days, with no water and no food. Eventually one of the 
American snipers saw her and took her to the hospital,” he added before 
reminding me again that he had all of her testimony documented on film.

He briefly told me of another story he documented of a mother who was in 
her home during the siege. “On the fifth day of the siege her home was 
bombed, and the roof fell on her son, cutting his legs off,” he says while 
using his hands to make cutting motions on his legs, “For hours she 
couldn’t go outside because they announced that anyone going in the street 
would be shot. So all she could do was wrap his legs and watch him die 
before her eyes.”

He pauses for a few deep breaths, then continues, “All I can say is that 
Fallujah is like it was struck by a tsunami. There weren’t many families in 
there after the siege, but they had absolutely nothing. The suffering was 
beyond what you can imagine. When the Americans finally let us in people 
were fighting just for a blanket.”

“One of my colleagues, Dr. Saleh Alsawi, he was speaking so angrily about 
them. He was in the main hospital when they raided it at the beginning of 
the seige. They entered the theater room when they were working on a 
patient
he was there because he’s an anesthesiologist. They entered with 
their boots on, beat the doctors and took them out, leaving the patient on 
the table to die.”

This story has already been reported in the Arab media.

The doctor tells me of the bombing of the Hay Nazal clinic during the first 
week of the siege.

“This contained all the foreign aid and medical instruments we had. All the 
US military commanders knew this, because we told them about it so they 
wouldn’t bomb it. But this was one of the clinics bombed, and in the first 
week of the siege they bombed it two times.”

He then adds, “Of course they targeted all our ambulances and doctors. 
Everyone knows this.”

The doctor tells me he and some other doctors are trying to sue the US 
military for the following incident, for which he has the testimonial 
evidence on tape.

It is a story I was told by several refugees in Baghdad as well
at the end 
of last November while the siege was still in progress.

“During the second week of the siege they entered and announced that all 
the families have to leave their homes and meet at an intersection in the 
street while carrying a white flag. They gave them 72 hours to leave and 
after that they would be considered an enemy,” he says.

“We documented this story with video-a family of 12, including a relative 
and his oldest child who was 7 years old. They heard this instruction, so 
they left with all their food and money they could carry, and white flags. 
When they reached the intersection where the families were accumulating, 
they heard someone shouting ‘Now!’ in English, and shooting started 
everywhere.”

The family was all carrying white flags, as instructed, according to the 
young man who gave his testimony. Yet he watched his mother and father shot 
by snipers-his mother in the head and his father shot in the heart. His two 
aunts were shot, then his brother was shot in the neck. The man stated that 
when he raised himself from the ground to shout for help, he was shot in 
the side.

“After some hours he raised his arm for help and they shot his arm,” 
continues the doctor, “So after awhile he raised his hand and they shot his 
hand.”

A six year-old boy of the family was standing over the bodies of his 
parents, crying, and he too was then shot.

“Anyone who raised up was shot,” adds the doctor, then added again that he 
had photographs of the dead as well as photos of the gunshot wounds of the 
survivors.

“Once it grew dark some of them along with this man who spoke with me, with 
his child and sister-in-law and sister managed to crawl away after it got 
dark. They crawled to a building and stayed for 8 days. They had one cup of 
water and gave it to the child. They used cooking oil to put on their 
wounds which were of course infected, and found some roots and dates to eat.”

He stops here. His eyes look around the room as cars pass by outside on wet 
streets
water hissing under their tires.

He left Fallujah at the end of January, so I ask him what it was like when 
he left recently.

“Now maybe 25% of the people have returned, but there are still no doctors. 
The hatred now of Fallujans against every American is incredible, and you 
cannot blame them. The humiliation at the checkpoints is only making people 
even angrier,” he tells me.

“I’ve been there, and I saw that anyone who even turns their head is 
threatened and hit by both American and Iraqi soldiers alike
one man did 
this, and when the Iraqi soldier tried to humiliate him, the man took a gun 
of a nearby soldier and killed two ING, so then of course he was shot.”

The doctor tells me they are keeping people in the line for several hours 
at a time, in addition to the US military making propaganda films of the 
situation.

“And I’ve seen them use the media-and on January 2nd at the north 
checkpoint in the north part of Fallujah, they were giving people $200 per 
family to return to Fallujah so they can film them in the line
when 
actually, at that time, nobody was returning to Fallujah,” he says. It 
reminds me of the story my colleague told me of what he saw in January. At 
that time a CNN crew was escorted in by the military to film street 
cleaners that were brought in as props, and soldiers handing out candy to 
children.

“You must understand the hatred that has been caused
it has gotten more 
difficult for Iraqis, including myself, to make the distinction between the 
American government and the American people,” he tells me.

His story is like countless others.

“My cousin was a poor man in Fallujah,” he explains, “He walked from his 
house to work and back, while living with his wife and five daughters. In 
July of 2003, American soldiers entered his house and woke them all up. 
They drug them into the main room of the house, and executed my cousin in 
front of his family. Then they simply left.”

He pauses then holds up his hands and asks, “Now, how are these people 
going to feel about Americans?”

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at February 8, 2005 08:45 PM


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