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CounterPunch
November
4, 2002
Live from Basra
Iraq's Oil Belt Prepars for War
by JEREMY SCAHILL
Basra, Iraq's southern oil-belt, is preparing
for what many here see as an inevitable massive attack by Washington.
Small military bunkers, equipped with sandbags, barbed wire fences
and machine guns line the long stretch of highway heading north
out of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Army soldiers stand
guard on large concrete walls, stretching around military garrisons.
For hundreds of years, Basra was called
the Venice of the East. Sinbad the Sailor's adventures were launched
from its shores. The city is connected by a web of footbridges
and canals that empty into the Shatt Al Arab, a focal point of
the Arab sea trade for more than 1300 years. It endured both
Ottoman and British occupation and, more recently, 20 years of
war.
From morning until night, the waterfront
is crowded with the hustle and bustle befitting the country's
main port. Fishermen and ships line the boardwalk that houses
101 towering, individual bronze statues, each representing an
Iraqi Army soldier killed during the Iran-Iraq war. Each of the
figures is unique and contains intricate details on the faces
of each of the men. They stretch down the boardwalk for a mile,
all of them with their arms raised, fingers pointing accusingly
toward the Iranian border, some 6 miles to the east. Over the
last few months, amid threats from Washington, the soldiers have
been given a new coat of black paint.
Young boys sit at the base of the statues,
selling cigarettes and imitation Pepsi and 7-up. Old men play
dominoes on cardboard boxes, as ships move along the canal. But
the statues serve as a haunting reminder that Basra has long
ceased to be thought of as anyone's Venice. The city's strategic
location at the mouth of the Shatt Al-Arab, one of the most ancient
and busiest trade routes of the Middle East, has doomed the city.
Basra has been one of the most fought-over
areas in the world. It's a stones throw from both Iran and Kuwait
and suffered tremendously during both the Iran-Iraq War and the
Gulf War. Many buildings along the boardwalk remain riddled with
bullet-holes.
Though war has not been declared on Iraq,
Washington's warplanes regularly bomb in and around the city
under the guise of so-called no-fly zones. Officially, the Bush
administration says the planes are there to protect the Shi'ite
Muslims from the forces of the central government. But no one
in Basra says the missiles make them feel safer. These zones
have no basis in international law and were never authorized
by any body of the United Nations. Baghdad says that more than
1,300 civilians have been killed in these attacks.
Throughout Basra, people are paying very
close attention to what is happening at the UN Security Council
in New York. Many a street corner houses a gathering of older
men huddled around transistor radios. In addition to the state
radio broadcasts, they also get BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and other
Arabic language foreign broadcasts. This is certainly true throughout
Iraq as well, but in Basra people know that they are likely to
be living in a major frontline of any "new" war. This,
coupled with the regular sound of air-raid sirens and bombings,
has caused many residents to have nervous breakdowns. Several
people we spoke with, particularly women, reported having severe
emotional and psychological problems sparked by the sound of
American and British jets. While people are generally well informed
on the current developments and haggling at the UN, no one rules
out a surprise attack from Washington.
Throughout Iraq, Disaster Preparedness
Teams are training for responding to a US attack. An Iraqi who
is working on these teams in the south told <Iraqjournal.org>
that weekly meetings are being held and "pick-up" routes
are being plotted to gather members of the disaster teams in
various areas in the event of bombings. "Disseminators"
from the teams are holding workshops in factories, schools and
union halls to educate people on such things as how to cope with
a total absence of clean drinking water in the event that water
treatment plants are targeted as they were in 1991. Separate
from this, several people said that courses are also being conducted
in "civil-defense" to prepare for the possibility of
a ground invasion.
Indeed, in several rural locations outside
of Basra, we saw what appeared to be armed civilian militias.
Men riding on trucks or gathered on roadsides, dressed in traditional
Iraqi garments carrying automatic weapons. Already, most Iraqi
households have guns_and not just pistols. Several non-military
people have boasted to us that they have M-16s or other machine
guns in their homes.
This would seem to contradict the Bush
administration's assertion that the Iraqi government sees its
own population as a great threat. The weapons are certainly in
circulation for an uprising. But if the government viewed this
as a danger to its stability, it could easily ban the possession
of guns by private citizens. What is clear is that the government
knows well that regardless of what people think of Saddam Hussein,
they intend to fight a foreign occupier.
What is also significant is that these
armed militias are in the south of Iraq, one of the areas touted
by the Bush administration as a potential hotbed of anti-government
activity in the event of a US attack. In 1991, after the Gulf
War, Shi'ite guerrillas in the south heeded "Big Bush's"
call for the Iraqis to take matters into their own hands. For
days, a bloody rebellion ensued, resulting in the execution and
torture of members of the Ba'ath Party and other people considered
to be "collaborators." Despite numerous appeals for
assistance from the Bush administration, Norman Schwartzkopft's
forces stood idly by as Baghdad's forces mercilessly crushed
the rebellion. In fact, at the time, Washington even lifted its
ban on over-flights, allowing Iraqi attack helicopters to suppress
the rebellion.
This history is well remembered in the
south. Add to that the bloody toll the "no-fly zone"
attacks and sanctions have taken on the predominantly Shi'ite
population and one can see Bush's dreams of a Northern Alliance
type force floating slowly down the banks of the Shatt Al-Arab.
Another factor that cannot be ignored
when gauging potential support for the US in the south is the
unimaginable suffering caused here by the sanctions. Basra and
its surrounding area were the epicenter of Washington's use of
depleted uranium munitions and the hospitals are like virtual
morgues for children with leukemia and other treatable diseases.
In the words of one doctor in Basra, rampant congenital deformities
(birth defects) have parents "no longer asking the sex of
their children, but whether or not they will have a healthy child
or a child with a malformation."
While Basra is a poor devastated area,
the people are proud and dignified. Even in the poorest slums,
people speak of defending their homes against American invaders.
In some cases, these are rat-infested hovels with no plumbing,
running water or electricity. People are scared and anxious.
The military and militias are being prepared and once again families
brace for their children to be caught in the middle, as they
have been in Basra so many times through the centuries. Sadly,
one man told us that he doesn't need to talk to his children
about what may lie ahead, saying, "War is like daily bread
to them."
Jeremy Scahill
is an independent journalist, who reports for the nationally
syndicated Radio and TV show Democracy Now! He is currently based
in Baghdad, Iraq, where he and filmmaker Jacquie Soohen are coordinating
www.iraqjournal.org,
the only website providing regular independent reporting from
the ground in Baghdad.
Yesterday's
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Alexander Cockburn
Blowback,
Wellstone and Hitchens
Michael Neumann
Memo
to Christians
Re: Activism and the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Fran Shor
Militarized Masculinity and Homegrown Terrorists
Mary Hughes-Thompson
Olive
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Susan Davis
Proverbial Wisdom:
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Jason Leopold
False
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Adam Engel
Samson Agonistes:
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A Day
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John Stanton
Should States Secceed?
Gavin Keeney
Parting Shots
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: Episode 6. Talk Show Host
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The Children
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No to War Rap
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