Gorilla’s Guides

Now attend to me because this is important. The sheep are the short ones to the front of the photograph. The sheeple are the ones in the inadequately armoured vehicle towards the back of the photograph. The other difference is that thanks to Yankee Poodle Tony the sheep have a better chance of surviving an attack.

markfromireland

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some 80,000 Iraqis have fled their homes and registered with the government as refugees over the past two months, data showed on Thursday, taking the total in seven months of sectarian violence to a quarter of a million.

A spokesman for the Migration Ministry, Sattar Nowruz, told Reuters that figures for the end of September showed that more than 40,000 families were claiming aid after leaving homes since February 22, when the destruction of a major Shi’ite shrine at Samarra sparked heavy and continuing sectarian bloodshed.

The ministry estimates the average Iraqi family at six people, giving a current total of more than 240,000 people compared to 27,000 families and 162,000 people at the end of July. Nowruz acknowledged that many more people do not register with the ministry or have fled abroad, and so are not counted.

“The reason for this increase is that the security situation in some provinces has deteriorated considerably, forcing people to flee their homes in fear for their lives,” he said.

Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, had seen a particular increase in people escaping fierce conflict among militants from the area’s Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish communities.

On the other hand, security operations in parts of Baghdad, such as the southern district of Dora, had seen people moving back to homes they had abandoned, Nowruz said. The southern oil city of Basra had also seen people returning, he added.

The Turkmen Front Party Headquarters in Kirkuk was the target for a bombing attack today. One woman was killed by the blast and 10 people, including 4 children were injured. In the photograph one of the wounded is seen gesturing for help.

Also in Kirkuk two soldiers were killed and three others wounded in a mortar attack targetting an “Iraqi” army checkpoint. I say “Iraqi” because what the so-called “Iraqi” army units in Kirkuk are in fact is separatist peshmerga fighters loyal to one or other of the two dominant factions in Iraqi Kurdistan. They have a reputation for brutality and there are stong suspicions that they are actively involved in ethnic cleansing - particularly in Kirkuk.

markfromireland

I know an ever-dwindling number of doctors and nurses in Iraq. Those who have not been murdered or become “collateral damage” are fleeing in terror for their lives. In the last 8 months alone five people whom I knew. Three of them nurses two of them doctors have been killed in Iraq. In each of those murders those murdered were targetted because they were medical personnel. For three of those murders there I have reason to believe that they were murdered by Interior Ministry “special forces.” Back on July 10th Erdla posted this:

A waning professional class

A concurrent shortage of doctors and nurses has also been reported in Basra. According to Abdullah, there are no reliable statistics on how many doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses have left the area, but unofficial data suggests that at least 200 health professionals have left since January. Health ministry statistics also suggest that an average of 30 doctors and nurses per month have left Iraq over the past year after being targeted by criminal gangs.

The emergency unit in the Teaching Hospital was closed for five months after a number of doctors were killed by unidentified attackers while working there. Now many doctors and nurses refuse to go to work, fearing for their lives. “I have a family to look after,” said one paediatrician from the Teaching Hospital, speaking anonymously. “Even though it’s my responsibility to look after my patients, I can’t risk turning my sons into orphans - their father, also a doctor, was killed while doing his duty at the hospital.“

Nurses earning the equivalent of between US $150 and $200 per month say these salaries do not justify the tremendous risks they take. “We’ve asked the central government to review their salaries,” said Abdullah. “If salaries aren’t increased, we’re going to lose the nurses.

On June 11th I posted this:

“The third child Ibtisam Mahmoud is aged 9. She was injured by the bomb targeting a police patrol in the Al-Sadriya market. Her condition isn’t known but isn’t thought to be very serious. She’s being carried away from the hospital by her brother*. Ibtisam was not treated at the hospital. She was turned away. The hospital was too full to take any more patients so her brother had to carry her through a neighbourhood that’s now regularly bombed, on foot, in scorching heat, to see if he can find a hospital that will treat her.

In the comments to that posting Maryam who recently did a guest posting here made the following comments:

“To come back to the point our Irish host who is a friend to Iraqis all of us despite the categories westerners want to put us into is making. Wounded people being turned away from hospitals is very common now. I work in an emergency department and we have no space. There are no beds in the wards. They are all taken with badly wounded people. We cannot get plasma. We cannot get drugs. We cannot even get normal saline. We have to wash surgical gloves that are meant to be thrown away after one use. The list is endless. I go home now and I am to exhausted and numb to do anything but sit and stare.

Just get the filthy murdering American PIGS out and we can start to cope until then they stop everything that would be good for MY PEOPLE from happening. We are Iraqis first. IRAQIS. Take your murdering PIG soldiers and your murdering exiles and GO!

and

You AMERICANS opened our borders to these fanatic criminals you AMERICANS are perfectly happy to let them murder our children when you are not murdering them yourselfs. Then you point and say “oh look the dirty Arabs we CIVILISED AMERICAN PIGS must stop the arabs from killing one another” IT IS YOU AND YOUR TRAITORS DOING THE KILLING OF OUR CHILDREN!!! TAKE YOUR CHALABIS AND YOUR ALLAWIS AND YOUR BARZANIS GO HOME TO AMERICA AND LET THEM HELP YOU SODOMISE YOUR OWN DISGUSTING COUNTRY!!!!

I am sorry Mark my friend for this language but they need to learn and I speak only whatevery Iraqi knows. They even HIDE behind our children they lure them with sweets and toys hoping to use them as shields.

PIGS PERVERTED THIEVING MURDERING AMERICAN PIGS.

GO!

On June 13th I posted a photo showing the conditions under which people like Maryam have to work. Today the doctors in Yarmouk hospital have gone on indefinite strike. They regularly get beaten up in the A&E department by interior ministry commandos. That’s the interior ministry that’s riddled with death squads. That’s the interior ministry whose “special forces” report directly to the US embassy official James Steele and American “counter-insurgency” specialist Steven Casteel. That’s the interior ministry special forces who get paid directly from American funds. Does this sound familiar?

“People are not just killed by death squads in El Salvador - they are decapitated and then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are forced to watch.” [ same location as immediately preceding link. - mfi]

Take a look at the photographs below and the supplied AP captions. The middle one is a death notice for a doctor who worked in Yarmouk hospital. No I’m not going to translate it for you. I’m too busy trying not to puke. And the tears of rage in my eyes are making it too difficult to focus:

Now read on. I’ve posted below in full an article written by an Iraqi doctor. It’s description of what Iraqi doctors’ lives have become under the American funded and led efforts to rip Iraq into pieces. He’s pulled his punches, I know from what I personally have seen and from what my friends in Iraq have told me that he’s pulled his punches quite considerably. You should note that despite the fact that he’s pulled his punches that he dare not give his name.

This is just one aspect of the blood-soaked miserable hell. That America has created in Iraq.

“It is Not a Miserable Life. It is Worse Then Miserable” - A Doctor’s Day in Baghdad

By Dr. ANON

Baghdad.

I have a big family. My eldest two are already dentists and both abroad. I have one daughter just married one month ago. so I am not yet a grandpa. Although I have perfect job satisfaction, Full Professor, with MRCP, FRCP and a couple more degrees from London and France, things are so unhappy here in Baghdad, there is no quality of life at all. There are no services: we are loaded with garbage, as it is not collected more than once every so many weeks, the garbage collectors are also afraid of being killed. We have almost no electricity, no fuel, bad water supply, and what’s more you could get killed whether you are Shiite or Sunnite, if you fall in the wrong hands. I nearly got killed on several occasions, I cannot count the sheep sacrified for my safety till now.

As for our colleagues, nearly none is with me from our medical class, all have left the country, the last one two months ago, to Oman. The only one left with me is XXXXX, he is a physician in the department of Medicine

It is not a miserable life. If there is a grade more than miserable, then it will be ours!

We work no more than three days a week in the university, medical city, the one which was elegant and beautiful is now surrounded by garbage and barbwires and concrete blocks from all directions. We don’t spend more than three hours maximum at work, so that totals to nine hours a week. This is the maximum that anyone is working. In the afternoons most of my colleagues say that they have completely stopped going to their private clinics, for fear of death or abduction. I do no more than one and a half hours in the afternoon, I have to feed my big family. I come back rushing to my house after that, we lock our doors and do not leave at all.

What about shopping? What shopping? You must be joking! It is called Marathon Buying, for I try to spend no more than ten minutes getting all the needed vegetables, fruits and food items–this is on my way back from university, ie three times a week. I also spend another ten minutes in the afternoon on my way back from clinic buying gas (benzine, car fuel) for my home electric generator. It is all black market reaching four to five times the official price. If I need to get it legally, I have to spend overnight in line in front of the gas station, people bring their blankets, water, food, and sleep in the street in front of the gas stations. Of course sometimes I speak nicely to the guard of the gas station, presenting my ID and my buisness card and ask them if I could fill my car off-line. Sometimes they kick me out, othertimes I would get lucky and the guard has some rheumatic complaints, back pain or knees pains and bingo! I can fill my car off-line, with a promise to bring him medicines. Of course without any physical exam or investigations, if I was too lucky, and the stars where on my side that day, then I may even be allowed to get an extra 20 litres of gas for my generator.

A month ago, there were militia men with their guns, storming the dormitories of resident doctors in the medical city. They were particularly looking for doctors from Mosul or Anbar. There was a big fuss, and target doctors went into hidings, none was caught. Next day, two of them — rheumatology post-graduates under my supervision — asked me to give them leave to go to their hometowns and not be back except for their exams, and that even their training and teaching be taken there. I agreed, because they were leaving anyway. They would have been killed if they were caught, not because they have done any crime, but just because they are Sunni from Mosul and Anbar.

I believe that many doctors from southern parts of Iraq, who were Shiites, also left the dormitory on that day, because they feared that they are not safe anymore, and that next time it will be their turn, when maybe Sunni militia gunmen will come. So everyone left. Actually in that week I had prepared a lecture for post-grad doctors in the medical city. No one appeared, as all resident doctors had left. Of course many have come back again, but are terrified. Yet life has to go on.

The same applies for other hospitals, services are almost non-existant now. I was in Yarmouk hospital two days ago. The resident doctor whom I was visiting was living in a place in the hospital with broken, dusty furniture, wood and metal scattered all over, doors and windows broken. It looked like an animal barn. I was requesting a death certificate for a colleague. I went with him to the morgue where he kept the death registry. Outside the morgue there were the bodies of two young men, both shot in the head, laid on stretchers in the open air. The hospital was barricaded behind huge cement walls– the hospital itself had been targeted several times by car bombs. A few months ago, doctors in this hospital declared a one day strike because they were being regularly beaten and wounded by officers of the National Guard. The hospitals are frequently raided by militia men who pull the wounded out of their hospital beds and drag them to where they will be executed.

Attendance of patients to hospitals has dropped tremendously. We used to see an avrerage of 100 one hundred patients in our consultation clinic at Rheumatology every single day prior to 2003. We don’t see more than twenty these days. Don’t ask me where did the patients disappear to? Many are scared to leave their homes and go to the hospitals. The hospital used to provide medicines for the chronically ill, for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. We used to have a monthly blood check followed by a month supply of DMRDs. These supplies are now so infrequent, blood checking is not done. Because services are so irregular, most patients got fed up and decided it is no more worth it to attend hospitals. Even simple NSAIDs most of the times are not available to patients coming for acute complaints. Many who used to come from towns and cities away from Baghdad, for better treatment in the capital city, now think it is too risky and dangerous to travel to Baghdad for follow ups. Instead, patients stop their therapy altogether, or depend on local facilities and whatever simple resources they get where they are, regardless of whether it is efficient or not. The financial situation of most families in Baghdad has gone so much down, that many find it is a luxury to treat chronic illnesses. The priority is for food, fuel and staying alive.

This is a small summary of what and how we are living.

Source

What of Maryam? Well I got one piece of good news today. My friend Maryam phoned me. She got another death threat the day before yesterday. A very detailed and specific death threat. It detailed every movement she’d made over the last few days, it detailed every one of the many different routes she took from her home to the hospital where she worked. It gave similar details for her widowed mother and for her children. It was so specific and so detailed that she knew it was time. She and what remains of her family didn’t bother to pack. They piled into their cars and drove hell for leather through the night. Through al-Anbar on what is the now the most dangerous highway in the world. They were shot at three times during that trip.

At least they made it. At least she’s alive.

markfromireland

Introduction: I’ve known Declan (’Deco’) for a long time. He was the best sergeant I ever had. He fell in love first with Lebanon, and then with a Lebanese girl, they got married and as he says himself the rest is “history.” It’s entirely typical of Deco that when everybody was fleeing the brutal Israeli/American assault upon Lebanon that he was making his way there, determined to rescue as many civilians as he could. His emails describing what he saw and heard and smelt awoke painful and bitter memories for all of us. His description of the wreckage he encountered, of digging his wife’s family from the ruins of their home and of his nephew’s and niece’s death were harrowing. I’ve known for some weeks now that he and his wife have decided to return to Lebanon permanently and that he would be resigning from the team here at “Guides” as he wants to devote all his time to winding up his affairs in Ireland and moving to his “new” home. He’s told me what he plans on doing. I’ve every confidence that he’ll be very successful.

As with all the guest postings I haven’t edited anything. I’ve marked up the XHTML, in this case to very precise instructions from Declan, and prepared the graphics - in this case to extremely precise instructions from Declan. The words are all Declan’s own. He’s a shrewd observer with a wealth of contacts. I take what he says very seriously.

There will be no further postings today.

markfromireland

Foreword

As long-time readers here know I fell in love with a Lebanese girl, we got married, had kids, the rest as they say “is history.” I’ve been in Lebanon since the war I got here during the war. This posting is long and it contains strong language, it also contains a lot of graphics so it might load slowly. If you don’t like what you read that’s just too bloody bad.

What I Did At The Weekend

Last Friday I was asked by my in-laws if I’d like to take part in a family outing. The outing was to hear Nasrallah’s speech at the Hizb’s victory rally in Beirut. Of course I said “yes.” That speech is going to make history. It’s not often that Juan Cole has the full text of the speech as translated by BBC Monitoring up on his site. I’d print it off and keep it if I were you.someone like me, I was only a sergeant, gets to see a big history changing event. Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away.

There’s a lot of crap being floated in the American media right now. Trying to re-write history. Trying to make American readers, and more importantly, American TV viewers believe that the Hizb lost. They didn’t. The losers were the Israelis and their American backers. Professionals in the IDF know it know it . They ain’t pleased about it and I don’t think they’ll let the politicians pin the blame on them. But that’s not what this posting is about. This posting deals with what I saw and heard last Friday and what I think it means for the county and people I’ve come to love just as much as I love Ireland. The country that’s going to be my permanent home in a few months time.

First off the rally was huge. I’ve seen all sorts of estimates of the size of the crowd. Take a loot at the photo to the right. That place is 37 acres. My hunch is that the estimates in the order of 800,000 are close to the mark.

People came from all over Lebanon. People came from outside of Lebanon. I spoke to several people who came from Dubai just to be there. I spoke to a Christian family who came from Paris. I spoke to two brothers who came from London. I’ve no idea how many people came back from Syria where they’d been forced to flee as refugees by the savage Israeli bombing campaign. I stopped counting after a while. But mostly the crowd came from Lebanon. They weren’t all Shia either and they weren’t all Hizb. There were Berri supporters (no surpise.) There were a lot of Sunnis and a hell of a lot of Christians. I spoke to people who were die-hard supporters of Awn’s there was a large group of Franjieh supporters close to where I was sitting.

Maybe that doesn’t sound important to you if you don’t know Lebanon. Believe me it’s important. Lebanon always regroups and re-forms from the bottom up. The composition of the crowd is a sign of a massive shift in Lebanese politics and society. It was happening anyway American and Israeli brutality have made sure that this shift is more profound, longer lasting, and more complete than the previous ones.

Two of a kind: Condi and Ehud both play the piano to drown out the screams of dieing children. My niece was 6 and dreamt of being a teacher. My nephew was 5 he wanted to be a soccer player. Mark prepared the graphic at my request. The sentiment is all mine and my family’s.
- DecoWhat I mean by that is that it’s going to be a cold day in hell before the Lebanese forgive or forget what was done to their children by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re not going to forgive or forget that the weapons used to slaughter their children and destroy their livelihoods were made in America, paid for by America, and calculatingly used against their children in a war planned for years by Israel, and launched with America’s blessing.

They’re not going to forgive or forget that America blocked all attempts to stop their children being massacred by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re never ever ever going to forgive or forget what that bloodsoaked slut Condoleeza Rice said about how the agonised deaths of their children were the “birth pangs of the new middle east.” They’re not going to forgive or forget that neither the “light unto the nations” nor the “shining city on the hill” gave a flying fuck about their children. It didn’t matter that a lot of the dead children were Christians all that mattered was that they were Lebanese, that they were Arabs, untermenschen and that it was worth killing them because the political calculation in America and Israel was that killing them would cause their parents to blame and hate their fellow Lebanese.

That was a big, stupid, and above all evil mistake. Between them Ehud and Condi finally conclusively ripped off the mask and exposed the cynical and vicious racism beneath. And speaking as someone with all the normal feelings about kids I hope that they and the people who voted for them get to suffer the consequences of their actions. I don’t believe in revenge, harsh retribution dished out to child murderers in a court of law is an idea that I can get right behind ‘though. I love the idea of every IDF soldier and every IAF aviator never being able to leave Israel even for a short break in case they get picked up on war-crimes charges. And don’t even think of giving me that shit about how the noble Israeli aviators deliberately missed targets. All the dead kids I saw didn’t get killed by accident. Not in those numbers.

“Hezbollah” - Deco

We got there a few hours early and after a good long while walking round and talking to people. I went back to my chair. The rally was organised down a tee. I’d hate to have been the guy in charge of the logistics, I will say that he and his team did a brilliant job, they rented what must have been every chair in Lebanon, and everybody got their free hizb baseball cap. The atmosphere was electric and very much a family affair. In a way I was reminded of a carnival or other celebration. They were there to show their support and their gratitude and they were going to enjoy doing it. Entire families turned up, three, and sometimes four, generations. There was face painting for the kids. Some like the kids in the photo to the left turned up ready-painted.

As I say very much a family affair, very much people who wanted to show their gratitude, their loyalty, their patriotism and yes their anger too. I sent Mark three photos and asked him to prepare a composite graphic that shows some of the cold burning rage that the people of Lebanon feel towards their American and Israeli tormenters:

From a professional point of view I’ll also say that the security was excellent. The Hizb are good at logistics and security and it showed. Very tight security - which I’m not going to talk about. Let’s just say that after looking around I felt very safe.

The speech itself was very well thought out. Go read the BBC translation on Juan Cole’s site. My spoken Arabic is good - it should be after being married to an Arab all this time, my written Arabic isn’t all that hot, but I know a good translation when I see it, and that’s a good translation - a hell of a lot better than any translation I could do. The crowd interrupted with applause repeatedly. There was a lot in that speech. Most of it was directed to Lebanese concerns. The crowd lapped it up:

“Brothers and sisters, we should today stress that this war was an American war in terms of decision, weapons, planning, and desire, and by giving several deadlines for the Zionists; one, two, three, and four weeks. What stopped the war is the failure of the Zionists. If you recall the last days, the largest number of tanks was destroyed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the largest number of the occupation soldiers was killed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the helicopters crashed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Therefore, the Zionists realized that if they had continued [the war], it would have been a disaster. The Americans intervened and even accepted the drafts [of resolutions] for the war to stop. They stopped the war not for the sake of Lebanon, not for the sake of the children of Lebanon, not for the sake of the blood of women in Lebanon, and not for the sake of beautiful Lebanon. They stopped the war only for the sake of Israel. They came to peddle it to us in Lebanon; namely, that our American friends stopped the war.

Every time he mentioned America or Condoleeza Rice there were boos. Heartfelt boos, enraged boos, there was a large bloc of Christians just behind us. They booed the loudest and there weren’t any cheerleaders around that I could see - they weren’t needed. One point that needs to be made is that the Hizb have been working round the clock on reconstruction. They’re way ahead of the government and they’re being straight up and honest about the reconstruction. They’ve even discriminated positively in favour of Sunnis and Christians when they were doling out grants-in-aid cash. That’s going to reap them big rewards in the future. Contrast that with the government insisting that all aid go through the (notoriously corrupt and used as a source of political patronage) Higher Relief Council (HRC) and you can see why a lot of donors are going the direct route. When you read his speech you’ll see time and time again his insistence on “no sectarianism” (the crowd loved it every time he did that you could see and hear the approval) and contrast it with how Hariri junior scooted out of Lebanon as fast as his fat little legs could carry him - but not before leaving instructions that refugees weren’t to be allowed on any of his property and you can see the hollowness of the “Cedar revolution.” He repeatedly criticised Siniora’s government calling it weak and ineffective and calling for a national unity government. I have a feeling he might get it. “Premier boo hoo” as he’s called in Lebanon - even by his supporters, hasn’t impressed anyone lately.

What I saw and heard on Friday was one of the Lebanon’s famous “bottom up” earthquakes. The Hizb rally and Nasrallah’s speech was the clearest sign yet that the Shia are going to to assert themselves more strongly in Lebanese politics. All the obfuscation in the world and all the hysterical press coverage in America can’t conceal that the Lebanese government as gor noted here have repeatedly referred to the Hizb as a resistance not a militia, a resistance, not a “terrorist” group. There isn’t a hope in hell of them being able to backtrack on that now. And there isn’t a hope in hell of either the UN forces or the Lebanese army especially not the Lebanese army being able to disarm the Hizb either. The Lebanese army doesn’t want to disarm them. For the record most of the Lebanese army privates and sergeants are Southern Lebanese Shia. Ohlmert and Rice can squeal all they like about this - it’s a measure of how thoroughly they’ve been defeated that they went to the UN in the first place. It’s not going to happen. There might be some face-saving “seizures” of clapped-out equipment that the Hizb don’t want anymore but that’ll be it. To my mind this was the most telling part of his speech:

“But, what is happening now? Instead of the Israeli leaving Shab’a Farms, he is extending the strip northward. Instead of the Israeli resolving the problem of the border points, he moves forward to Al-Khiyam and Marwahin. Instead of our benefiting from our legal right to the Al-Wazzani River, the Israeli builds pipes to steal the water. Is this how to protect the country and its resources?

Therefore, any talk about disarming the Resistance - to some people the word “disarming” is a bit heavy; fine, how about surrendering the resistance weapons? Any talk about surrendering the resistance weapons under this state, this authority, this regime, and the existing situation means keeping Lebanon exposed to Israel so it can kill as it wants, arrest as it wants, bomb as it wants, and plunder our land and waters. We certainly cannot accept that.”

What he was saying here and in the next few paragraphs is that even under the ceasefire the Israelis are acting with aggressive bad faith. That the solution is a national unity government with a strong Hizb component. I’ve a strong hunch the most Lebanese agree with him.

Here’s my take: The Hizb won you lost. You deserved to. Get used to it. Every time you’ve tried to impose your will by violence you’ve lost. You deserved to. Get used to it. Start dealing in good faith with your Palestinian population and with your neighbours. Yes they’re your enemies. Enemies are who you negotiate with. Get used to it.

Declan