The unembedded truth
By Editor on May 28, 2008 11:02 pm
Beyond the Green Zone
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq
By Dahr Jamail \ New York: Haymarket \ 314 pages \ $20
Dahr Jamail rejects the fetters of embedded reporting to seek the truth about Iraq. What he finds squarely contradicts the mainstream media picture of insurgency and everyday life there, writes Amy Blyth.
DAHR JAMAIL’S Beyond the Green Zone offers a remarkable and terrifying insight into the lives of ordinary Iraqis struggling to survive in a war-ravaged country controlled by brutal American forces. Jamail reports from the other side of the occupation, the one we rarely glimpse from the mainstream media, the side of the Iraqi people – one that the reporters embedded within the relative safety of US army lines – for the most part rarely see, acknowledge or include in their discussions about the future of Iraq.
The book manages to reveal the injustice, the incompetence and the sheer bloodthirsty nature of the occupation. This is a war in which, Jamail reveals, over 65,000 Iraqis – mostly ordinary women, children and the elderly – have been killed, over 14,000 innocent men imprisoned and often tortured for imagined crimes, and snipers indiscriminately fire at old women hanging their washing out to dry on the roof. This is a war where, Jamail argues, unarmed crowds participating in peaceful protests are showered with bullets fired by US soldiers, one where Geneva conventions are ignored. Cluster bombs and depleted uranium litter the streets of Fallujah and ambulances that race to the scene are shot at and bombed. These are occurrences, Jamail points out, which are often denied by the military and left unreported by the mainstream media. These atrocities are part of a largely hidden war, which Beyond the Green Zone goes some way toward uncovering.
Jamail argues that above all else this is a war of misinformation, of propaganda and of suppression. While the occupying powers say they aim to install democracy, this claim, Jamail proposes, is fundamentally undermined by the lies, cover-ups, and biased official reports that the military feed to the mainstream media. Jamail reports that during the first four days of a siege in Fallujah, 300 Iraqis were killed and 500 wounded by US forces, many whilst trying to flee the city and then while being turned back at US checkpoints. These casualties were not reported in the mainstream news. What we saw instead were news stories derived from military sources who insisted that US soldiers were fighting to ‘liberate’ Fallujah. From talking to the residents trapped inside the city, Jamail finds out that what was actually being fought for by Iraqis was liberation from the American occupiers.
Jamail does however acknowledge that a small number of independent journalists and Arab media work tirelessly throughout the occupation to get alternative stories out of Iraq. He also acknowledges that some of the more critical sections of the Western press do question the military line, but he notes that these stories are almost impossible to hear amidst the all-encompassing mainstream media coverage. Largely responsible for this are the embedded reporters who take cover in US and British Humvees, who, in their bullet proof vests and hardhats enjoy the luxury of clean water and electricity in the Green Zone barracks. This media, far from acting as the fourth estate, the eyes and ears of the unknowing Western public, have instead become scared and lazy and have ensured that the full terrible truth of the Iraqi occupation is shielded from the public eye. Illustrating this, Jamail tells of arriving at an American checkpoint on the way out of Fallujah and encountering two embedded photographers. They inquire of him: “Did you see any bad guys in there?” To which Jamail replies: “No, I did not see any ‘bad guys’ inside the city. Perhaps you should have gone in to see for yourself.”
All but a few independent journalists, such as Jamail, dare to inhabit the Iraq outside of the Green Zone. Jamail states that his aim from the beginning of this mission was to create an alternative to the vast majority of US biased media. He says: “I chose to look for stories of real life and ‘embed’ myself with the Iraqi people. The US military side of the occupation is overly represented… I consciously decided to focus on the Iraqi side of the story”. However, Jamail recognises the complexity of media ‘truth’ telling and professes only to tell what he knows, which are some of the stories of the ordinary Iraqi people he meets. So, armed with camera, notepad and a deep-seated desire to let the voices of Iraqis be heard, he delivers reports of what everyday life is like in a country already suffering from the American attacks of 1991, the effects of years of extreme sanctions and Saddam’s brutal dictatorship.
Jamail set off from his home in Alaska to Iraq at the start of the occupation, frustrated and embarrassed by his country’s response to September 11th, the illegal war they had waged with Iraq and the pro-American propaganda which littered the mainstream news. What he found when he arrived were Iraqis pleased on the whole that Saddam’s regime was over and hopeful for the future. He describes talking to a group of young Iraqi boys by the roadside soon after his arrival; they are fascinated by Jamail’s tales of life in America. Over his subsequent months in Iraq, Jamail sees this innocent interest and sense of hope fade to bitterness and anger. A year after the occupation Jamail witnesses a similar group of boys aiming rocks at US tanks and shouting: “Down with America.” This shift in cultural attitudes toward the occupation hints at what many of us already suspect; that this war has merely increased animosity toward Western forces. What can be seen from Jamail’s observations of the Iraqi people is that violence breeds violence, and that for generations to come we will all reap the effects of this war.
It is not hard to see why this transformation in Iraqi opinion has occurred when you read Jamail’s tales of the countless people he meets. Most have relatives or friends who were killed by occupation forces, most have lost or badly damaged homes, many live without clean drinking water and electricity, which is routinely cut by the Americans as a form of collective punishment. Half the population are unemployed and in a country rich in oil, fuel is scarce and the black market thrives. American patrols ransack houses in the middle of the night, shooting first, reasoning and (often not) apologising later.
It is also not hard to see, as one Iraqi tells Jamail, why ‘all of Iraq’ has joined the resistance against the Americans. Jamail problematises the official category of ‘terrorist’ in the anti-US insurgency movement, offering proof that Al Qaeda groups often blamed for these attacks are actually often ordinary Iraqis driven to extreme measures in an attempt to rid their country of foreign forces. This is illustrated by one resistance fighter Jamail interviews, a former portrait photographer, who was opposed to Saddam and rejoiced when US military first arrived. However, as he tells Jamail, he grew angry as he watched more and more Iraqis killed, humiliated and tortured by the occupiers every day. This prompted him to join a resistance group which has been responsible for 250 attacks on Americans, 70 of which he was directly involved in. He claims that the resistance is made up of a mix of Shia, Ba’athists, Sufus tribalists and Arab fighters, telling Jamail: “I have been fighting for a year now, and I have not seen one Al-Qaeda fighter, nor have I heard of one fighting in the resistance… As more Iraqis are provoked, more are joining the resistance… the Americans are the terrorists, their military has killed millions of people all round the world, I will stop fighting when the last American soldier leaves Iraq.” This interview represents a perspective that the Western media often find easier to ignore. It is simpler to blame such unthinkable atrocities as suicide bombings on fanatics like Al-Qaeda than to recognise such acts as partly a reaction to what the West has done to Iraq’s culture and people.
Jamail does not give up his fight to bring this vital information back to the Western world – he is a true investigative journalist in a world of corporate, biased media. Despite suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and extreme threats to his personal safety, Jamail is plagued by the guilt he feels at being able to leave Iraq for safety whilst so many have no such option. What he does do for the people of Iraq, however, is to carry their stories out of the country and into the ears of the Western public.
Amy Blyth can be reached at amy.interjunction@gmail.com
Your Thoughts (0 Comments)
