United Kingdom, al-Jazeera Senior Editor Faisal Bodi in the
Guardian
On March 23, the night the channel screened the first footage of
captured US POW's, al-Jazeera was the most searched item on the internet
portal, Lycos, registering three times as many hits as the next item.
I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the
western media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a
15-minute drive from central command, the view of events from here could
not be more different. Of all the major global networks, al-Jazeera has
been alone in proceeding from the premise that this war should be viewed
as an illegal enterprise. It has broadcast the horror of the bombing
campaign, the blown-out brains, the blood-spattered pavements, the
screaming infants and the corpses. Its team of on-the-ground,
un-embedded correspondents has provided a corrective to the official
line that the campaign is, barring occasional resistance, going to plan.
Last Tuesday, while western channels were celebrating a Basra
"uprising" which none of them could have witnessed since they don't have
reporters in the city, our correspondent in the Sheraton there returned
a rather flat verdict of "uneventful" - a view confirmed shortly
afterwards by a spokesman for the opposition Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq. By reporting propaganda as fact, the
mainstream media had simply mirrored the Blair/Bush fantasy that the
people who have been starved by UN sanctions and deformed by depleted
uranium since 1991 will greet them as saviours ...
Throughout the past week, armed peoples in the west and south have been
attacking the exposed rearguard of coalition positions, while all the
time - despite debilitating sandstorms - western TV audiences have seen
little except their steady advance towards Baghdad. This is not truthful
reporting ...
Amid the battle for hearts and minds in the most
information-controlled war in history, one measure of the importance of
those American PoW pictures and the images of the dead British soldiers
is surely the sustained "shock and awe" hacking campaign directed at
aljazeera.net since the start of the war. As I write, the al-Jazeera
website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the
provenance of the attack is the Pentagon. Meanwhile, our hosting
company, the US-based DataPipe, has terminated our contract after
lobbying by other clients whose websites have been brought down by the
hacking.
So far this war has progressed according to a near worst-case scenario.
Iraqis have not turned against their tormentor. The southern Shia regard
the invasion force as the greater Satan. Opposition in surrounding
countries is shaking their regimes. I fear there remains much work to be
done.
Iraq, Kanan Makiya's War Diary in the New Republic
Do not believe any commentator who says that a rising surge of
"nationalism" is preventing Iraqis from greeting U.S. and British troops
in the streets with open arms. What is preventing them from rising up
and taking over the streets of their cities is confusion about American
intentions and fear of the murderous brown-shirt thugs known as the
Fedayeen Saddam, who are leading the small-arms-fire attacks on American
and British soldiers. The coalition forces have an urgent need to send
clear and unmistakable signals to the people of Iraq that unlike in
1991, there is no turning back from the destruction of Saddam Hussein.
And in order to do this effectively they must turn to the Iraqi
opposition, which has so far been marginalized.
The United States needs to understand that Iraqis do not get CNN. They
have not heard constant iterations of how Saddam's demise is imminent.
More importantly, they have not seen it demonstrated. American forces so
far have been content to position themselves outside southern Iraqi
cities; they have only just began to disrupt Iraqi TV, which is Saddam's
principal tool of maintaining psychological control over Iraq; and,
above all, they have not allowed Iraqis to go in and organize the
population, a task which we are very eager to carry out ...
Iraqi State TV must be put out of commission, and permanently ...
Saddam rules through his face, through his ubiquitous presence in
day-to-day life. That is what his millions of larger-than-life wall
posters are all about. Every day that image is aired reinforces an aura
of invincibility ... But eliminating his image is not enough. The
coalition needs the Iraqi opposition--Iraqis who can sneak into the
cities and help organize other Iraqis, men from the same families and
social networks that hold these places together, who know how to
communicate with their entrapped brethren, who can tell them why this
time Saddam is finished, and who are able to root out his cronies when
they try to melt away into the civilian population.
One cannot liberate a people--much less facilitate the emergence
of a democracy--without empowering the people being liberated ... It is
a million times easier for an Iraqi soldier to join his fellow Iraqis in
rebellion than it is to surrender his arms in humiliation to a
foreigner. To date, however ... the administration still adamantly
refuses to let the Iraqi opposition activate our networks to make the
fighting easier for the coalition in the cities, towns, and villages.
Why?
Malaysia, Sira Habibu in the Star
It is more frightening to watch images of the US-led coalition forces
invasion on television than to live in Baghdad, according to one of
three Malaysian students who had refused to leave the Iraqi capital.
Mohamad Abdullah Osman, who is pursuing his masters in Hadith at Saddam
University in Baghdad, said images of the heavily "bombarded" city shown
over television did not reflect the actual situation there.
"In my neighbourhood, I still see children playing football and women
going to the market as usual. "We do not hear loud explosions every day.
But clips of images by the foreign media showed as if Baghdad is heavily
bombarded," he said when contacted by telephone in Baghdad yesterday.
Besides Mohamad, the two others are Rozainy Ghazali of Terengganu
and Mohamad Manan Bajuri of Selangor.
Mohamad, who is staying in a rented house together with Manan, claimed
the foreign media failed to report the numerous missiles successfully
intercepted by the Iraqis. "My friends and I made it a point to check
out the neighbouring areas the coalition claimed to have bombed. Often,
we see those places still intact," he said. "But the explosion two days
ago in a neighbourhood about 1km from where I am staying was real. Six
civilians were killed, including a family of four ...
Mohamad described the massive sandstorm sweeping through Baghdad
and southern Iraq as a sign of divine intervention, "because in my eight
years in Baghdad, I have never seen a sandstorm of this proportion
before." He also said he declined to leave not because he was stubborn
but that he wanted to complete his course by January ...
Mohamad said the university authorities had informed him that
classes for masters students would resume on Saturday, adding that the
university was closed for about a week following the war alert.
Lebanon, Raghida Dergham in Al-Hayat
Regardless of how the war on Iraq will end, it is a turning point for
the Middle East as well as for the American administration, whose
president, George W. Bush has been implicated with a handful of
conservatives in invading Iraq and occupying it. The Iraqi President,
Saddam Hussein, has implicated his country and its neighbors in a number
of adventures, and now he has implicated himself in the last battles of
his regime. While Arab regimes are busy containing the rage among their
populations, or manage them or even outbid such feelings, they are aware
of the seriousness of what the American administration has implicated
them in through the invasion of Iraq, and the consequences such feelings
may have on them. Such consequences may be the result of the rage of
their own peoples, or due to visions that have been devised by the
forces of extremism in Washington.
Any criticism to such vision in America is being described as
anti-Semitism, because most of the planners of the war on Iraq are Jews.
Over the past week, an important event took place in the American
media when the TV press dared to speak of studies that had been prepared
and plans devised in order to realize the dream of the handful of
extremists. The Wall Street Journal wrote on its front page the
biography of that group and how it managed to hijack the heart and mind
of President Bush. The New York Times dared even to question the "dual
loyalty" of American Jews to America and Israel, and to work for the
benefit of the Jewish state at the expense of American interests ...
President George Bush deserves no pity for having fallen victim to the
thoughts and tactics of such group of "Machiavellians." He implicated
himself to an extent that he may lose his bid for a second term in
office, as he is a president who took America to an unnecessary war that
has suspicious aims known only to the extremist group of dual loyalty.
Bush believes that he is serving America by his vengeful demeanor, but
America remains divided, which is evident from the continuation of the
protests against the war ...
But other Arab countries have different ways to stop the war on Iraq ...
The problem is that some Arab countries are competing with one
another to appease the U.S. administration which has employed the
strategy of preemption with military strikes or creating confusion in
order to shake the status quo, including the ousting of regimes, with
the aim of ensuring America's greatness, and to secure the region
surrounding Israel against all potentials, as well as to subdue the
Arabs and keep them frustrated. And as long as there remain in the Arab
region those who are willing to compete in seeking America's good will,
no one in America will take the Arabs or their governments seriously.
United Kingdom, Robert Fisk in the Independent
Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl –
victim of an Anglo American air strike – is brought to hospital with her
intestines spilling out of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams
in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress.
An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in
central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in
Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape – filmed over the past 36
hours and newly arrived in Baghdad – is raw, painful, devastating.
It is also proof that Basra – reportedly "captured" and "secured" by
British troops last week – is indeed under the control of Saddam
Hussein's forces. Despite claims by British officers that some form of
uprising has broken out in Basra, cars and buses continue to move
through the streets while Iraqis queue patiently for gas bottles as they
are unloaded from a government truck ...
Far more terrible than the pictures of dead British soldiers,
however, is the tape from Basra's largest hospital that shows victims of
the Anglo-American bombardment being brought to the operating rooms
shrieking in pain ...
The al-Jazeera tapes, most of which have never been seen, are the
first vivid proof that Basra remains totally outside British control.
Not only is one of the city's main roads to Baghdad still open – this is
how the three main tapes reached the Iraqi capital – but General Khaled
Hatem is interviewed in a Basra street, surrounded by hundreds of his
uniformed and armed troops, and telling al-Jazeera's reporter that his
men will "never" surrender to Iraq's enemies. Armed Baath Party
militiamen can also be seen in the streets, where traffic cops are
directing lorries and buses near the city's Sheraton Hotel ... .
Of course, it is still possible that some small-scale opposition
to the Iraqi regime broke out in the city over the past few days, as
British officers have claimed. But, seeing the tapes, it is hard to
imagine that it amounted, if it existed at all, to anything more than a
brief gun battle.
The unedited reports therefore provide damaging proof that
Anglo-American spokesmen have not been telling the truth about the
battle for Basra. And in the end this is far more devastating to the
invading armies than the sight of two dead British soldiers or – since
Iraqi lives are as sacred as British lives – than the pictures of dead
Iraqi children.
Saudi Arabia, Editorial in the Arab News
As the Iraqi war moves into its eighth day, what is most extraordinary
are the absurd and unrealistic expectations that people have had of it.
That goes not only for public opinion, the media and politicians in the
US, but also for armchair pundits across the world. Regardless of which
side people support, if indeed they support either, they have apparently
been astonished by Iraq's resistance and the battering the Americans and
British have taken. Even those who support Saddam Hussein never really
expected the war to be anything but clinical and short. They, too,
thought that Iraqi cities would fall like ninepins, that Iraqi troops
would desert en masse and that allied forces arrive in Baghdad virtually
unscathed. Certainly that is what Americans had been led to think. If
truth be told, so did most Arabs, even those who hoped that the US would
be humiliated.
That people have been so shocked and amazed by pictures of dead
or captured US soldiers and helicopters shot down says much about the
unreal world we now live in. We have allowed ourselves to be mesmerized
and anaesthetized by the virtual reality of fantasy movies and computer
games where the worst that can affect us is mere sensation. We have had
a reality by-pass. But this war is for real ... and real wars are never
clinical and bloodless, let alone one-sided.
The reality of war is always death and destruction. It always
spews out dead bodies ... torn, twisted and charred bodies ... and
legions of injured and maimed. It always creates prisoners of war. It
always leaves in its wake homes reduced to rubble, lives blighted,
families destroyed. It always brings suffering and misery, disease and
hunger. It is not a computer game or a movie where, when it is over, we
can get up and go and have a meal and a laugh. It is horrible and evil
... which is why it must always be the very last resort ... something
that so many governments, so many people, told Washington and London,
but something that they ignored ... so convinced were they that it could
be played and won with computer-like efficiency.
In real wars, soldiers bleed, soldiers die, no matter which side
they are on. In real wars, nothing ever goes quite to plan. And in this
real war, the US made another grave miscalculation: It forgot that for
all that the Iraqis fear and hate the regime under which they suffer,
they are patriots ... and patriots are always at their toughest when
defending their homeland. But there is no point swinging like a pendulum
to the opposite pole and imagining that because the Americans and
British have discovered that events are not going quite to plan, that
they are going to lose this war. Saddam Hussein's boasts that he will
win a great victory have to be treated with the same scorn as his great
boasts in earlier wars.
Whatever emotion those who back him may invest in the idea of the
Americans and British being defeated, the idea is wholly illogical.
America's massive military superiority makes Saddam's defeat inevitable.
Even now, despite the setbacks, that superiority is taking its toll.
Iraqi positions are falling although snipers will remain a problem, now
and at any time in the future. Even when the regime becomes history,
there will always be sufficient Iraqi patriots who see the British and
American soldiers as the prime enemy.
To have imagined anything else is Washington's and London's biggest
miscalculation.
India, C. Rahul Singh in the Times of India
A week into the Iraq war and a feeling of deep unease is spreading over
the Arab world. American and British troops, painfully making their way
towards Baghdad, are being looked upon as invaders, rather than
liberators. That is not how the script written by George Bush and Colin
Powell had read. They had imagined that their "shock and awe" tactics of
a massive bombardment of Iraq's capital would have "decapitated" the
Iraqi leadership. The advancing coalition troops would then be welcomed
with flowers and open arms by the Iraqi public, leading to the
installation of a new government ... Washington has grossly
miscalculated ...
The nightly bombardments of Baghdad are sickening the civilised
world. The so-called "smart" bombs have killed and injured hundreds of
civilians. For the first time, three Arab TV channels are operating from
Iraq: Al Jazeera, and two new ones, Abu Dhabi Television and the
recently set up Al Arabia channel. They have been beaming terrifying
images of women and children horribly burnt and maimed by the US
bombings.
Washington has got worked up about the coverage by these Arab TV
channels of American prisoners of war (POWs), citing violation of the
Geneva Convention. An American commander called the coverage
"disgusting". But what about the US treatment of PoWs in Afghanistan at
Mazar-e-Sharif and the 650 PoWs being held in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay? it
is being asked. At Mazar-e-Sharif, American and Northern Alliance troops
fired on .. and killed ... a large number of PoWs. Mary Robinson, the
then high commissioner for human rights, had called for an inquiry,
which was angrily rejected by the USA. The PoWs in Guantanamo Bay have
been blindfolded, shackled, chained and held in what can only be
described as cages. No Geneva Convention for them ...
The Americans came to Kuwait's help in 1991, not out of any great
love for the Kuwaitis but because of oil. And they want to take over
Iraq ... the second biggest producer of oil, after Saudi Arabia, in the
world ... for the same reason. Few people, even outside the Muslim
world, dispute that contention. There are also juicy contracts for
American industry to be had in the "reconstruction of Iraq". But, Mr
Bush, and those close to him, have a deeper, more sinister strategy
planned. The first step in that strategy was Afghanistan. Iraq is the
second. All in the name of fighting terrorism, after Sept. 11, but
actually intended to ensure US domination of the world.
Germany, Article in Der Spiegel
Other than the basic idea, the new peace movement today has little in
common with the activists who managed to get 200,000 demonstrators to
assemble in the Bonn Hofgarten during the last Gulf War. Missing are the
slogans thought up weeks before, the banners professionally designed for
maximum effect. Ideology is replaced by spontaneously expressed
feelings, sometimes also by a naive belief in "good."
And when like-minded people from Tokyo, Sydney, and Rome penetrate the
Berlin youth scene via e-mail chain letters, you get the feeling they're
helping turn the political setscrews on an international level ...
Anna, who has a Che Guevara flag draped around her hips, "because
he fought for freedom," doesn't have any grand illusions about the
effect her protest had on Bush. "But at least we didn't just accept it."
High school student Christian, 18, [said]... Of course you had to count
on war breaking out for quite a long time, "but you're still horrified
when it happens." And because he now thinks of America "not with greater
hostility, but more critically" he is demonstrating in front of the US
Embassy.
