Friday, February 15, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, protests take
place in Iraq (including Baghdad), one American media outlet explores
Iraq, today was the 10th anniversary of the global protests, and more.
Your Call airs on the Bay Area's public radio station KALW Monday through Friday (ten to eleven in the morning Pacific Time).
Today host Rose Aguilar and the program offered something you rarely hear on American radio today: a discussion of Iraq. The guests were Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson.
Rose
Aguilar: It's been almost ten years since the US invasion and
occupation of Iraq. In fact today marks the 10th anniversary of the
historic global protests against the war that took place all over the
world. In 2003, today's guests photo journalist Kael Alford and Thorne
Anderson took photos of Iraqi citizens outside of the confines of the US
military's embedded journalist program. Their goal was to find out how
the war was effecting ordinary people. Their photos are on display at
the de Young Museum in San
Francisco. The description on a photo taken in Baghdad at a hospital on
April 9, 2003 says, "A pool of blood is left on the floor of the lobby
of the Saddam Medical Center after a man died on a makeshift operating
table. Located near the front lines, the hospital was overlowing with
patients." Another photo taken in Najaf on August 21, 2004 shows a man
holding his crying son. The description reads, "On the wrecked
outskirts of the old city, a father tries to cross the front lines with
his terrified child signaling to snipers to hold their fire. Father and
son crossed safely." Thorne Anderson began his work in Iraq in
October 2002 photographing the impact of UN sanctions on Iraqis. He
spent ten months of the last two years -- actually, that's not right.
He was last in Iraq in 2004. While covering the war from Baghdad, he
was arrested by Iraqi intelligence and expelled from the country. He
returned from Iraq as soon as the borders opened at the end of the war
and has covered the occupation resistance movements. He's also worked
in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine. He's taught photo
journalism at the American University in Bulgaria and his photographs
regularly appear in major American and international newspapers and
magazines. And Thorne joins us here in the studio. [. . .] We're also
joined by Kael Alfred, a freelance photo journalist who was based in
Baghdad during the US invasion in 2003. She was last in Iraq in 2011.
Her work focuses on the growing culture of resistance, religion and the
grassroots movements developing since the invasion. She has worked
extensively covering southeast Europe and the Middle East for many major
US and European magazines. She's currently working on a longterm
project about the environmental degradation of the landscape and culture
of the Gulf Coast.
At the top of each Friday show,
Your Call always asks their guests to note reporting that they found valuable and noteworthy that week.
Kael
Alfred: Well this isn't specifically -- It's not journalism but it's
reporting done by Human Rights Watch. They just -- every year they
publish this world report based on what happened in the last year. And
as I was researching and preparing to speak to audiences about Iraq, I
came across their report which goes into some depth about what's
happened in Iraq in the last year. And, although I was there in 2011,
it's nice to see -- or, it's not sort of nice, but it's confirmed in
this report what I saw in Iraq in 2011 which is that the leadership of
Iraq is, and I'm quoting the report here, sort of the intro to the
report, "is using draconian measures against opposition politicians,
detainees, demonstrators and journalists -- effectively squeezing the
space for independent civil society and political freedoms in Iraq."
Human Rights Watch said this today in their world report -- this was
just published at the end of January. And so it's -- There just isn't a
huge amount of reporting coming out of Iraq these days by western media
because budgets are shrinking. There are a lot of conflicts happening
all over the world and our attention shifts elsewhere. And, you know, we
were just speaking about this before the show, how tens years on, the
anniversary of this war, we don't really know what's happening in Iraq,
we don't know what it looks like.
Rose Aguilar: Right. I
remember on MSNBC, one of the hosts said, "President Obama has announced
that the war is over, the troops are leaving." Sort of 'end of
story.'
Kael Alford: Right.
Rose Aguilar: So you went
there last year. Just talk about when you go, where do you go and what
do you set out to do? What did you find this time around?
Kael
Alford: Well I-I had a short period of time to work there. I only had a
few weeks. And actually my time was even shortened by my having to get
my visa through. So I had this window to work and I decided that what I
would -- The best way to catch up with what had happened since I was
there last would be to take the photographs I had made and revisit as
many of the people as I could in these photograph -- people I had met in
the past and reported on in the past. So I searched systematically,
went searching for these people, and it was like detective work because
the country was so up-ended in the last years that I didn't know where
to find anyone, they weren't living in the same neighborhoods, they
certainly didn't have the same phone numbers --
Rose Aguilar: And these are the people you have gotten to know over the years?
Kael
Alford: Right. The people who I met in 2003 and 2004. And, you know,
I hadn't really kept in close contact with them, it was really
difficult, many of them don't speak English or don't write English and I
don't speak or read Arabic. So when I went back, I found these people
and just sort of asked them what's happened in the last eight years
since I was here last? How is your life? What are your concerns? And
almost universally, people's lives had gotten much, much harder. The
situation was violent. It was very divided. People couldn't live
safely in the places they'd lived before. The Sunni people I'd met, many
of them felt confined to specific neighborhoods. There really was this
ethnic divide, this ethnic cleansing, that targeted mostly Sunnis --
who are in the minority now -- were the subject of that. So Sunni
people were really living in much more cloistered circumstances than
they'd lived before -- if I could even find them at all. And-and
there's one woman. Her name is Karimah. She and her family, I'd spent
time at their house a lot in 2003 and 2004 and she's a widow and her
husband was killed in the Iran - Iraq War. She has a large number of
kids. And I went to visit her and her son, her oldest son, Aalee had
been picked up at a cafe in a raid. And there were these Iraqi security
forces who were looking for members of the Sadr militia. They picked
him up, detained him, didn't charge him with anything really and
interrogated him, extracting a confession from him and then proceeded to
sort of keep him in prison until the family sold everything they had
and could buy him out of prison basically. And that speaks to the state
of the Iraqi judicial system today. It's a confession-based sort of
system and people are frequently detained and not charged with anything
until people can just buy them out. And that's included in this Human
Rights Watch report. So it's really, the biggest concerns for the
people who are coming up from this new very sort of corrupt and
ineffective Iraqi government, in their words, in the way they described
it and also the infrastructure was just a mess.
Rose Aguilar:
Tell us more about that because we've done -- over the years we've done a
lot of shows about the infrastructure. And I remember when we used to
have a series Open Line To Iraq and we'd bring Iraqis on on a regular
basis and the first question was do you have electricity, do you have
water and it was so sporadic.
Kael Alford: So sporadic. I mean,
the grid supplies maybe six hours of power a day -- the national grid.
And otherwise, there are these neighborhood generators that are either
privately owned by one wealthy person in the neighborhood that sells
energy to everybody else -- produces it and sells it to everybody else
at whatever price they decide to set. At least when I was there, they
were talking about regulating this generator system but it wasn't
happening yet when I was there. And then sometimes a neighborhood would
go in together and buy a generator and they can be more of a
grassroots, sort of democratic use of the generator. And these are the
very large generators, like the size of shipping containers that would
sit every few blocks and were constantly running and spewing fumes --
they run on petroleum and they smell terrible and they're loud. And
then people would have a little generator at their house if they were
wealthy enough to have their own generator that they would run when both
those other systems weren't working.
Thorne Anderson: You
know, it's important to note, we're not talking about an earthquake or
some kind of natural disaster. What we're talking about here is just a
disaster of massive corruption because there have been billions and
billions of dollars that have been poured in for the rebuilding of
Iraq's infrastructure and that has not been realized. That money has
gone into Iraq but it hasn't gone into the infrastructure.
Kael Alford: That's a good point.
Thorne
Anderson: So we're not talking about a national disaster here. We're
talking about a really poorly managed transition of huge amounts of
money.The exhibit is entitled to "Eye Level in Iraq" and the exhibit continues to June 16, 2013 at the de Young Museum.
Kenneth Baker (San Francisco Chronicle) reviews the exhibit today observing:
Looking at these images, visitors who opposed the man-made human
catastrophe of Operation Iraqi Freedom before or after it began will
experience again some of the nauseating helplessness they felt a decade
ago at government deceit, lawlessness and ideology-driven aggression.
The
exhibition leaves it to viewers to connect the discredited neocon
foreign policy with draconian provisions of the 2013 National Defense
Authorization Act and with the killer drones now fatally realizing
abroad the nightmare concept of the world as a battlefield. A picture
such as one Alford took in Zafrania a month after the invasion suggests
the peril she must have faced daily from enraged Iraqis certain of her
foreignness but not of her relationship to the calamity engulfing them.
No
less chilling is a shot she took from behind on the same day of an
insurgent peering from an alley, a loaded rocket launcher on his
shoulder. Was he aware of her presence? What preceded and followed from
the image we see?
The
Your Call discussion
is a great one and hopefully we'll return to it next week. I'll also
note that Thorne Anderson is an associate professor at the University of
North Texas (Denton, Texas). And quickly, on the topic of photography,
AFP's Prashant Rao Tweeted:
Expand
Moving to Iraq.
Last Friday
saw the largest turnout in the ongoing protests which now span three
months (December, January and February). Each week, the numbers grow,
but last week was a huge leap forward in participation. (I'm basing
that call on media coverage, on social media photos, on reports from
Iraqi community members by e-mail and two that I spoke with on the phone
as well.)
Nouri's forces infamously attacked the protesters in Falluja on
January 26th., killing at least nine (
Human Rights Watch noted
that 2 more of the wounded had died) with dozens left injured. And
this resulted in public condemnation -- though not from the US
government where the pathetic response from the State Dept was to have
Icky Vicky Neocon Nuland, Dick Cheney's former Deputy Advisor on
National Security, insist that both sides should not resort to
violence. (Number of protesters killed by Nouri's forces: at least 9.
Number of forces killed at protests: Zero.) But while Victoria and the
administration coddled, stroked and fondled their puppet Nouri
al-Maliki, prime minister and chief thug of Iraq, others were appalled.
The United Nations and the British government were among the most
publicly vocal. Nouri knows the world is watching and that's, for now,
prevented another assault on the protesters.
With the huge
increase in participants and with Nouri refusing to meet the demands --
which have been the same demands for months now and which are also
pretty much the exact same demands that the protesters were making in
February 2011 (demands Nouri swore he would meet if given 100 days -- he
didn't meet them, he didn't care, he lied to stall for time and to try
to stop the protests) -- the protesters decided maybe a stronger
presence was needed in the capital. From
Saturday:
Kitabat reports that yesterday some protesters in Anbar Province announced their intent to march to Baghdad next Friday. All Iraq News notes
National Alliance MP Qasim al-Araji is calling out the plan to stage a
sit-in in Baghdad. The Ministry of Interior (run by Nouri al-Maliki
since he never nominated anyone to head it) had its own announcement. Alsumaria reports
that today it was declared their intent to crack down on any protest --
anywhere in the country -- that they felt was a threat or lacked a
permit. Al Mada notes
that the spokesperson for the Anbar protests, Sayad Lafi, states that
the protesters have written Baghdad seeking permission to pray in the
city on Friday and return the same day.
And Nouri's response? From
Tuesday's snapshot:
In the failed state of Iraq, Nouri
al-Maliki is refusing to allow Iraqis from the west to enter their own
country's capital. We noted this development yesterday morning and in yesterday's snapshot.
The non-Iraqi press continues to ignore it with only one except[ion]: Jane
Arraf (see yesterday's snapshots for her Tweets) who reports for Al
Jazeera, the Christian Science Monitor and PRI. Today, she Tweets.
Alsumaria reports
that there will be a ban on 'roaming' in Baghdad starting Thursday and
that "security reasons" are being cited for the curfew that kicks off at
midnight tonight and for the refusal to allow 'outsiders' into Baghdad.
Dar Addustour adds
that security forces have been put on "high alert" and that there is
pressure on various mosques in Baghdad not to call for demonstrations on
Friday while i.d.s continue to be checked and people from western Iraq
are being refused access to Baghdad. The Iraq Times notes that two military brigades are being used to stop cars attempting to enter Baghdad.Why
is he allowed to use the military to prevent Iraqis from entering the
capital? Whether you agree with his call or not -- I don't -- why is he
repeatedly allowed to use the military on the Iraqi people? The
military is supposed to protect from external threats. Nouri also
controls the police. Why does he keep using the military? Juntas use
militaries to control the people. Thugs and dictators use militaries to
control the people. It it any surprise that the
Los Angeles Times' Ned Parker made this discovery:
Expand
Following the Falluja massacre last month, Nouri was
forced to pull the military out of Falluja by the provincial council
which demanded he stop using the military to police the people.
Baghdad's not in Anbar so the Anbar council has no power. But why is he
allowed repeatedly to use the military on the Iraqi people? The
Associated Press' Adam Schreck Tweeted this morning:
Nouri may have prevented western Iraqis from entering Baghdad but he didn't prevent protests. Not even in Baghdad, where,
All Iraq News notes
protests took place and that banners were
unfurled demanding the government respond to the demands and do so
promptly. Al Mada reports his preventing Iraqis from entering their own
capital was criticized in multiple provinces on Friday. Mosul's Sheikh
Badr al-Din al-Hayali is quoted declaring, "Baghdad is not the property
of the of rulers of armed forces gathered in the city and around it."
Baghdad belongs to the Iraqi people. Anbar spokesperson Said Lafi told
Al Mada that the protesters would scream loud to awaken Iraq from its
slumber. NPR's Kelly McEvers Tweets on the Baghdad protest:
-
-
-
Abu Hafina is a Sunni mosque in Bahgdad.
AFP reports, "Thousands of people in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq called on Friday for
the government's fall amid a spike in violence that has accompanied a
political stalemate two months before provincial polls."
Shafaq News pointed out yesterday,
"Demonstrations and sit-ins still continue in Iraq in protest against
Maliki's policies, as the sit-in in Ramadi had entered its 56 day.
Maliki's government is witnessing recently protests in several areas,
including Anbar, Fallujah, Kirkuk, Samarra, Mosul and a number of
neighborhoods in Baghdad to demand reforms and cancel laws that prohibit
some from participating in the political process, as well as cancelling
Article 4 of Anti-Terrorism Act and release detainees especially women
detainees and achieve balance in the institutions of the state."
Yesterday
Kitabat reported
that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has stated that the choice for the
government is to reform or resign. That's rather basic.
Alsumaria notes
"tens of thousands" turned out today in Ramadi calling for the detainees to
be released and for an end to marginalization and exclusion.
Alsumaria notes
that thousands continue protesting in Kirkuk. The protesters are
making their demands and criticizng Nouri's for show commission that has
so far accomplished nothing. Hawija Mohammed al-Jubouri tells
Alsumaria that over 20,000 protesters showed up in Haija and that the
calls included for Iraqis to be able to go into Baghdad -- a reference
to Nouri's refusal all week to allow western Iraqis into Baghdad --
using the military to prevent them from entering their own capital.
AP explains it this way, "Protestors had hoped to move their demonstrations from predominantly
Sunni provinces to Baghdad on Friday, but they backed off that plan
after the government rejected their request and imposed tough security
measures. Government security forces blocked roads leading from
Sunni-dominated provinces and sealed off all Sunni neighborhoods."
Al Jazeera, the
Christian Science Monitor and PRI's Jane Arraf Tweeted on the protests:
Expand
Expand
True or false, I have no idea, but there is a rumor in Iraqi social
media this evening that there will be a raid in Ramadi early Saturday
morning -- this alleged raid is an effort to end the protests. Again,
that's the big talk on Iraqi social media right now, I have no idea
whether it's true or false.
But I do know that Nouri's refusal to listen to the protesters is why the protests
continue. Nouri's refusal to govern -- let alone govern fairly -- is
why the violence continues today. Alsumaria reports
one person was injured in a Baquba arm,ed attack,
a Baquba car bombing has left four people injured (one an Iraqi solider), and an
Al
Zeera roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 Iraqi soldier and left
another injured (Al Zeera is a village to the south of Mosul).
All Iraq News adds that
1 police officer was shot dead in Baghdad and a Muqdadiyah suicide car bomber has left at least eleven people injured.
Today is the tenth anniversary of a historic day around the world.
At the Guardian, Patrick Barkham reports:
For some, 15 February 2003 will go down in history as the
final moment that Britons demonstrated a touching faith in parliamentary
democracy.
Henna Malik, a sixth-former at the time, painted her
face with the Stop the War logo and took the train to Waterloo with her
friends. She believed the millions chanting "George Bush, terrorist"
would persuade their MPs to vote against the war. "It was incredibly
empowering at the time," she says. When most MPs and the government
ignored this will of the people, Malik became a revolutionary socialist;
now she does not support any political party but is training to be a
human rights lawyer. "In retrospect we didn't stop the war so I became
quite disillusioned but it did shape my political beliefs and how I felt
I fit within society," she says.
It was an epic day of protest by
people who didn't usually do that sort of thing. "There were nuns.
Toddlers. Women barristers. The Eton George Orwell Society.
Archaeologists Against War. Walthamstow Catholic Church, the Swaffham
Women's Choir and Notts County Supporters Say Make Love Not War (And a
Home Win against Bristol would be Nice). They won 2-0, by the way," as
Euan Ferguson memorably noted in the Observer the next day. As night
fell, Jesse Jackson and Charles Kennedy made rousing speeches and
Ms Dynamite sung in Hyde Park.
Channel 4 News provides a video report which includes the reflections of four protesters. We'll do an excerpt noting Sarah Jewell and Henna Malik:
Sarah Jewell (Occupy Activist) : There was a genuine feeling of
unease in the west and certainly in Britain and in London. Communities
that I were a part of, we had a sense for a long time that something was
going to happen.
Henna Malik (Trainee Lawyer): I mean Iraq was a humongous issue. It
was everywhere. It permeated every aspect of society. You couldn't
walk down the street without seeing an Iraq War poster -- an anti-Iraq
War poster.
[. . .]
Henna Malik (Trainee Lawyer): I remember standing behind the
student banner surrounded by tens of thousands of students all chanting
in unison. It was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. I had my
face painted with the Stop the War logo on it. I was surrounded by a
lot of my friends and a lot of other students.
Sarah Jewell (Occupy Activist) : [. . .] because we were stuck at
Gallow Street for so long, we started singing. And we were singing
quite traditional, quite 1960s protest songs that people could join in
on. We were singing, "Step-by-step the longest march, can be won,
single stones will form an arch [the American Miner's Association Song]. Rich, poor, old, young, right-wing, left-wing, no wing, everybody was on that march.
We noted Laurie Penny's "
Ten years ago we marched against the Iraq War and I learned a lesson in betrayal" (
New Statesman)
earlier this week. For some reason, former Marxist Tim Stanley
(Telegraph of London) feels the need to hurl insults at Penny but he
really comes off looking like a fool:
Never mind that school children should be in school (that includes a
16-year old Laurie Penny). [. . .] “What changed in
2003 was that millions of ordinary citizens around the world finally
understood that the game was rigged, because only a few weeks after that
march Nato went to war anyway.” No, Laurie, Nato didn’t lead in the
invasion of Iraq and 2003 wasn’t the first time that a protest failed.
The Peasant’s Revolt? The Vietnam War? Perhaps it was a history lesson
that Penny missed the day she went to London.
Laurie Penny
went to London on February 15, 2003. If I was a pompous ass like Tim
Stanley, I don't believe I'd be lecturing Laurie Penny. But maybe a
pompous ass gets off on the world laughing at him? Tim, if that's what
gives you an orgasm, prepare to moan. Your idiotic assault on Laurie
and how she missed school that day? February 15th was chosen precisely
because it was a Saturday and most people would not be at work or at
school. Do you get that, Tim Stanley? You've mocked Laurie and chided
her but you're the big idiot because the sarcastic point of your bad
column is that she should have been in school that day learning and the
reality is there was no school that day.
Other coverage of the world protests ten years ago?
Ishaan Tharoor (Time magazine),
Philip Maughan (New Statesman),
Ned Simons (Huffington Post UK),
these letters to the Guardian newspaper,
Philip Kane (Socialist Resistance),
Symon Hill (Ekklesia),
Ben Quinn (Christian Science Monitor),
Dan Hodges (Telegraph of London), Rabble's "
F15: Assessing the legacy of the largest protest in world history," Press TV's "
Why was the biggest protest in world history ignored?," and "
The Feb. 15 Call for Global Protests for Democracy, Solidarity and Justice" (War Is A Crime).
We're nearly out of space.
Michael
Dakduk: Well, Mr. Chairman, I want to acknowledge that since the system
has been rolled out that there has been an increase in the processing
of GI Bill claims so that should be acknowledged. But I would also say
that at the beginning of the semesters, that's when we see an influx of
delays. and that's when we receive most of our complaints at Student
Veterans of America. So we have a concern when we talk about troops
returning home from Afghanistan and the Dept of Defense estimate over
the next five years one million troops will remove the uniform and make
the transition into civilian society. Many of them are going to use
this Post-9-11 GI Bill. So we want to make sure that the Dept of
Veterans Affairs is ready to handle that influx of military veterans on
college campuses. At the beginning of semesters is when we see a high
number of delays.That's
Student Veterans of America's
Michael Dakduk testifying to Congress yesterday. We'll cover it next
week, there's no space tonight to do it justice. We'll close with this
on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee:
Committee
on Veterans’ Affairs
United States Senate
113th Congress, First Session
Hearing Schedule
Tuesday, February 26, 2013 2:00
p.m. 345 Cannon HOB (House Side)
Joint Hearing on the legislative presentation of
Disabled American Veterans (DAV)
Thursday, February 28, 2013 10:00
a.m. SD-G50
Joint Hearing on
the legislative presentation of Military Officers Association of America,
Retired Enlisted Association, Non Commissioned Officers Association, Blinded
Veterans Association, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Wounded Warrior
Project, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, American Ex-Prisoners of
War
Heather L Vachon
Chief Clerk
Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
SR-412 Russell Senate Office Building
202-224-3923iraq the san francisco chronicleall iraq news
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Prashant Rao
jane arraf
Ned Parker
Adam Schreck
Kelly McEvers