[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: Fallujah and Basra

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
Fallujah and Basra 
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1195361849.shtml


   Michael Totten [1]reports from Fallujah:

     Fallujah is so close to Baghdad it is almost a suburb, though
     technically it belongs to Anbar Province. Even so, I have heard
     almost nothing about the Anbar Awakening here. I've always thought
     of Fallujah as a place unto itself. The locals and the Marines
     think of it that way, as well. Ramadi is the real city of Anbar.
     Fallujah is Fallujah.

     Whatever else you might say about Fallujah, it's an original. For
     decades it has been the infamous bad boy city in Iraq.

     Author Bing West describes the place this way in No True Glory: A
     Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah. "Ask Iraqis about
     Fallujah, and they roll their eyes: Fallujah is strange, sullen,
     wild-eyed, badass, and just plain mean. Fallujans donât like
     strangers, which includes anyone not homebred. Wear lipstick or
     Western-style long hair, sip a beer or listen to an American CD,
     and you risk the whip or a beating."

     "Saddam rewarded Fallujah with money and recruited his secret
     police and fedayeen from here," Lieutenant Edwards said. âNow it is
     powerless.â It was also the backbone of the insurgency before it
     slagged off. Ramadi was the capital of Al Qaeda's so-called
     âIslamic State in Iraq. But Fallujah was, as the lieutenant put it,
     Al Qaeda's first club house.

     It isn't nearly as dangerous anymore. I would be foolish to say it
     is safe. You would not want to come here on vacation even if the
     Iraqi Police would let you inside its walls â and they won't if you
     don't live here and have the proper ID...

     "My number one concern remains security" Colonel Dowling told me.
     "My number two concern is education. I want the schools to be
     filled with kids. I want the schoolhouse teaching good
     information."

     "Is anybody monitoring the content of their education?" I said.

     "No," he said..

     ..."I make sure that my chaplain is out talking to the imams," he
     continued. "He goes out once a week and sits and talks to them
     about religion, values, orphanges, things like that. They see a
     different perspective from him than they do from the typical
     Marine. They see that we're very quick to help the poor, and that
     we'll readily give the shirt off our backs, particularly the
     Marines. And we back it up. I go to a school once a week just to
     see what's going on, and I've never heard any anti-coalition
     messages or anything like that. My Marines have never heard
     anything bad coming from the loudspeakers of the mosques. They
     either say coaltition forces are helpful, or a proverb, a direction
     on how to lead your life, or Thank God for the Iraqi Police. I
     prefer to hear a proverb and just erase or eliminate discussing
     anything about coalition forces, either good or bad."

     Aid for mosques is dependent on imams pitching jihad over the side,
     but the Marines don't force a point of view on the Iraqis. Still,
     the colonel's preference for no pro-coalition messages was
     counter-intuitive.

     "Why would you not want the imams saying something good?" I said.

     "They can do it inside the mosque,"â he said, "but I don't need
     them to announce it. I would rather have normalcy added back to
     their lives, so they can go back to the way they were 20 years ago
     or 40 years ago. That's what I'd like to see..."

   In contrast, this post by Dan Hardie, titled [2]Letting Them Die shows
   one result of the British mission in Basra:

     I've had emails from three people who claim to be - and who almost
     certainly are- Iraqi former employees of the British Government.
     All three say that they and their former colleagues are still at
     risk of death for their 'collaboration'.

     We'll call the first man Employee One. He worked for the British
     for three years: 'I started in the beginning of the war with
     Commandos (in 30 of March 2003) then continued with 23 Pioneer
     Regt, and in 08 / 07 / 2003 I have joined the Labour Support Unit
     (LSU)'. His British friends knew him as Chris.

     The British Government has announced that he can apply for help if
     he can transport himself to the British base outside Basra, or to
     the Embassies in Syria or Jordan. It doesn't seem to occur to
     anyone that there might be problems with this.

     I can email and telephone this man: so can any Foreign Office
     official. It should not be impossible to verify his story and then
     send him the funds he needs to get to a less unsafe Arab country.
     But that is not happening.

     Here's an email exchange we had the other day. My questions are in
     italics.

     1) Are you still in Iraq? 'Yes, I'm still hidden in somewhere in
     the hell of Basra.'

     2) Is there any reason you cannot travel to the British Army base
     at Basra Airbase to ask for asylum? 'Of course, we cannot travel to
     BIA (Basra International Airbase) due to the militia keep watched
     all the ways to BIA and they got their own fake check points there
     although, we claimed for asylum through the internet (we sent our
     application to the claim office at BIA) . But we afraid that the
     British are going to take a long time to process our claims also we
     are very worried if they will offer just some money instead of
     asylum, please sir inform all the British people that we looking
     for asylum and just the asylum will save our lives, also we can't
     travel to Syria anymore to claim for asylum there as the Syrian
     government issued new conditions for Iraqis who want to travel to
     their country.'

   British Major General Graham Binns has proudly declared that said that
   since the UK disengaged in Basra, [3]attacks on UK forces are down
   90%.

   [4]Steve Schippert at Threat Watch says:

     Applying this logic, attacks on British forces would be down an
     amazing 100% if they withdrew from Iraq entirely. Achieving a
     zero-attack level on forces is not the mission - in Basra or
     elsewhere.

   Obviously, Mr. Schippert doesn't understand the British mission...

References

   1. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001542.html
   2. http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/11/28/letting_them_die.php
   3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2217826,00.html
   4. http://threatswatch.org/rapidrecon/2007/11/brits-spin-basra-surrender-as/