Update from Rahul Mahajan in Fallujah today 4/11

[anarchy1999]

April 11, 2:00 pm EST.Fallujah, Iraq

-- Fallujah is a bit like southern California. On the edge of Iraq's western desert, it is extremely arid but has been rendered into an agricultural area by extensive irrigation. The villages on the way to Fallujah are dirt-poor; Fallujah is perhaps marginally better off. Farmers constitute a significant percentage of the population. The town itself has wide streets and squat, sand-colored buildings. The way we took in, there didn't seem to be a great deal of bomb damage.

We were in Fallujah during the "ceasefire." We had heard all kinds of horrible things about what was going on. I think the current reports say something like 500-600 people killed in Fallujah, including estimates of 200 women and over 100 children (there are no women among the mujahideen, so all of the above are noncombatants. Many of the men who were wounded also told us they were just going about their business when they got hit). Here's a little bit of what we saw and heard.


snip to end:

The muj are of the people in the same way that the stone-throwing shabab in the Palestinian intifada were. A young man who is not one today may the next day wind his aqal around his face and pick up a Kalashnikov. I spoke to a young man, Ali, who was among the wounded we transported to Baghdad. He said he was not a muj but, when asked his opinion of them, he smiled and stuck his thumb up.

Al-Nazzal told me that the people of Fallujah refused to resist the Americans just because Saddam told them to; indeed, the fighting for Fallujah last year was not particularly fierce. He said, "If Saddam said work, we would want to take off three days. But the Americans had to cast us as Saddam supporters. When he was captured, they said the resistance would die down, but even as it has increased, they still call us that."

Nothing could have been easier than gaining the good-will of the people of Fallujah had the Americans not been so brutal in their dealings. Now, a tipping-point has been reached. Fallujah cannot be "saved" from its mujaheddin unless it is destroyed.

http://www.empirenotes.org/

[NMDemDist2]

1. OMG it just keeps getting worse and worse

how can you "snipe" a person in the head and not notice it's an 18 year old girl before you pull the trigger?

"Among them was a young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head." (ibid)

We will have another generation of psychically wounded young men, not even years of playing "Doom" can prepare you to look in the mirror after this.

[waldenx]

2. The occupation is EVIL

and anyone who supports the continuation of it is EVIL by proxy.

[NMDemDist2]

3. Kick

:kick:

[anarchy1999]

4. Kicking up for those who missed. Rahul is in Iraq through most of April.

He is an excellent source for what is really happening in Iraq.

www.empirenotes.org for his blog


http://www.rahulmahajan.com/bio.htm
Bio Highlights

Rahul Mahajan received his Bachelor's in Mathematics from Caltech and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a long-time campus and community activist, at the local and national level. He is a founding member of the Nowar Collective and serves on the National Board of Peace Action. His first book, "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" (April 2002, Monthly Review Press), has been described as "mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a handle on the war on terrorism." His latest book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond," just came out from Seven Stories Press. Mahajan writes frequently for mainstream and alternative media, in print and on the Web. His publications include articles in USA Today, Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, The Hindu (one of India's largest papers), the Jordan Times, and the Mideast Times in Cairo.

Longer Bio

Rahul Mahajan was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1969. He received his Bachelor's in Mathematics from Caltech in 1992 and received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin in August 2002.

He has been a campus and community activist in Austin ever since 1994. He has worked on a wide variety of issues, including alternative media, South Asia, affirmative action on the UT campus, and Enron, but has concentrated on antiwar and anti-corporate-globalization work. The sanctions on Iraq, the relations between Israel and the Palestinians, and U.S. Middle East policy have been his main specialty for the past five years -- and since 9/11 he has worked extensively on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, Central Asia, and South Asia.

He has also done organizing at the national level. He serves on the National Board of Peace Action, the nation's largest grassroots peace organization and served on the Coordinating Committee of the National Network to End the War on Iraq for its first year. He runs Iraq Update, the nation's largest email list sending out news and analysis about Iraq.

[sspiderjohn]

5. Disturbing -- soldiers just capriciously shoot/kill Iraqi citizens

What kind of peacekeepers are we? Do we just not like Arab people? Are our soldiers inherently afraid of or suspicious of anyone with tan skin?

[Blue_Chill]

6. Do you actually believe that?

Excuse me but I find that funny. heh. hahaha. sorry, but it is funny. It's absolute nonsense and because it fits in with some people little "we are bad" way of thinking it's accepted without evidence. Even Al Jizzeera (sp?) hasn't accused us of just killing civilians at random.

[sspiderjohn]

7. Underlying this haphazard result is a complexity of emotions . . .

Kind of like in 'Nam -- how can you tell who the enemy is? Any soldier in that situation is going to be acting with some element of fear, paranoia, understandable suspicion and perhaps increasing prejudice. This is understandable, yet the result in some cases, sadly, becomes increasing "dehumanization" of the local populace in the soldiers' minds and capricious, callous shooting and killing of innocents. And apparently that is what is happening in Iraq right now -- as happened too often in 'Nam. The peacekeepers are becoming the greater problem -- the peacekeepers are the ones haphazardly, callously shooting and killing innocent Iraqi citizens.