Spoetnik
11-01-05, 15:29
Hier is een verslag te lezen van de journalist die de reportage heeft gemaakt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html
Laatste 4 paragrafen:
A week after I arrived in London to make the film for Channel 4 News, the tape of the final interview arrived by Federal Express. It was the interview with Alzaim Abu, who had led the fighters in the Shuhada district of Falluja and fought the Americans in the early battles in the city centre. We had been been trying to track him down for nearly three weeks. Then Tariq had got a call from him the night I had left for London saying that he would talk.
There was a lot of bullshit in the interview; lots of bravado about how many Americans they had killed and about never surrendering and how Fallujans would win. He said that there were a few foreign fighters in the city, but none in his units; mostly, they were Fallujans.
But one thing stood out for me that explained the empty graveyard and the lack of bodies. He said that most of the fighters had been given orders to abandon the city by November 17, nine days after the assault began. "The withdrawal of the fighters was carried out following an order by our senior leadership. We did not pull out because we did not want to fight. We needed to regroup; it was a tactical move. The fighters decided to redeploy to Amiriya and some went to Abu Ghraib," he said.
The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.
Toen ik voorspelde dat het de Amerikanen te doen was om Iraq te vernietigen wilde niemand mij geloven, maar dat is precies waar ze mee bezig zijn.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html
Laatste 4 paragrafen:
A week after I arrived in London to make the film for Channel 4 News, the tape of the final interview arrived by Federal Express. It was the interview with Alzaim Abu, who had led the fighters in the Shuhada district of Falluja and fought the Americans in the early battles in the city centre. We had been been trying to track him down for nearly three weeks. Then Tariq had got a call from him the night I had left for London saying that he would talk.
There was a lot of bullshit in the interview; lots of bravado about how many Americans they had killed and about never surrendering and how Fallujans would win. He said that there were a few foreign fighters in the city, but none in his units; mostly, they were Fallujans.
But one thing stood out for me that explained the empty graveyard and the lack of bodies. He said that most of the fighters had been given orders to abandon the city by November 17, nine days after the assault began. "The withdrawal of the fighters was carried out following an order by our senior leadership. We did not pull out because we did not want to fight. We needed to regroup; it was a tactical move. The fighters decided to redeploy to Amiriya and some went to Abu Ghraib," he said.
The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.
Toen ik voorspelde dat het de Amerikanen te doen was om Iraq te vernietigen wilde niemand mij geloven, maar dat is precies waar ze mee bezig zijn.