Posted on 31-3-2003
Raw,
Devastating Realities That Expose the Truth About Basra
by Robert Fisk , Independent UK, Friday
28 March 2003
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.
A remarkable part of the tape shows fireballs blooming over
western Basra and the explosion of incoming and presumably British
shells. The short sequence of the dead British soldiers over
which Tony Blair voiced such horror yesterday is little different
from dozens of similar clips of dead Iraqi soldiers shown on
British television over the past 12 years, pictures which never
drew any condemnation from the Prime Minister.
The two Britons, still in uniform, are lying on a roadway, arms
and legs apart, one of them apparently hit in the head, the
other shot in the chest and abdomen.
Another sequence from the same tape shows crowds of Basra civilians
and armed men in civilian clothes, kicking the soldiers' British
Army Jeep and dancing on top of the vehicle. Other men can be
seen kicking the overturned Ministry of Defense trailer, which
the Jeep was towing when it was presumably ambushed.
Also to be observed on the unedited tape which was driven up
to Baghdad on the open road from Basra is a British pilotless
drone photo-reconnaissance aircraft, its red and blue roundels
visible on one wing, shot down and lying overturned on a roadway.
Marked "ARMY'' in capital letters, it carries the code
sign ZJ300 on its tail and is attached to a large cylindrical
pod which probably contains the plane's camera.
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.
A middle-aged man is carried into the hospital in pajamas, soaked
head to foot in blood. A little girl of perhaps four is brought
into the operating room on a trolley, staring at a heap of her
own intestines protruding from the left side of her stomach.
A blue-uniformed doctor pours water over the little girl's guts
and then gently applies a bandage before beginning surgery.
A woman in black with what appears to be a stomach wound cries
out as doctors try to strip her for surgery. In another sequence,
a trail of blood leads from the impact of an incoming presumably
British shell. Next to the crater is a pair of plastic slippers.
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.
Mohamed al-Abdullah, al-Jazeera's correspondent in Basra, must
be the bravest journalist in Iraq right now. In the sequence
of three tapes, he can be seen conducting interviews with families
under fire and calmly reporting the incoming British artillery
bombardment. One tape shows that the Sheraton Hotel on the banks
of Shatt al-Arab river has sustained shell damage.
On the edge of the river beside one of the huge statues of Iraq's
1980-88 war martyrs, each pointing an accusing finger across
the waterway towards Iran Basra residents can be seen filling
jerry cans from the sewage-polluted river.
Five days ago the Iraqi government said 30 civilians had been
killed in Basra and another 63 wounded. Yesterday, it claimed
that more than 4,000 civilians had been wounded in Iraq since
the war began and more than 350 killed.
But Mr Abdullah's tape shows at least seven more bodies brought
to the Basra hospital mortuary over the past 36 hours. One,
his head still pouring blood on to the mortuary floor, was identified
as an Arab correspondent for a Western news agency.
Other harrowing scenes show the partially decapitated body of
a little girl, her red scarf still wound round her neck. Another
small girl was lying on a stretcher with her brain and left
ear missing. Another dead child had its feet blown away. There
was no indication whether American or British ordnance had killed
these children. The tapes give no indication of Iraqi military
casualties.
But at a time when the Iraqi authorities will not allow Western
reporters to visit Basra, this is the nearest to independent
evidence we have of continued resistance in the city and the
failure of the British to capture it. For days the Iraqi have
been denying optimistic reports from "embedded'' reporters
especially on the BBC who gave the impression that Basra was
"secured'' or otherwise in effect under British control.
This the tape conclusively proves to be untrue.
There is also a sequence showing two men, both black, who are
claimed by Iraqi troops to be US prisoners of war. No questions
are asked of the men, who are dressed in identical black shirts
and jackets. Both appear nervous and gaze at the camera crew
and Iraqi troops crowded behind them.
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.
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