Kuwait Diary

Kuwait Diary -- April 8th, 2003

Day 20 of the 2nd Gulf War
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It’s been bright and sunny around Kuwait and visibility has been excellent. From my office window I was able to see the smoke from the Rumailla oil fires in Southern Iraq. The thick black smoke was visible rising like a huge funnel and then spreading right as a straight layer of cloud. Residents of Salmia have complained that they have noticed black dots on their white shirts or disdashas (Arabic dress). But, Southern Iraq is now relatively peaceful and the missiles have stopped coming into Kuwait.

The major action has moved north where the mother of all battles rages in and around Baghdad. US forces have been making short raids into the center of the city. This does not mean that they have taken the city, rather, they are testing the doors. Spokesmen of the ground forces have praised the fighters of the opposition who have come out and attacked modern tanks with nothing more than small arms fire. The casualties are enormous.

Coalition warplanes struck Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace in Baghdad as US tanks fought their way across the compound amid heavy exchanges of tank, artillery and gun fire. After five hours of intense clashes, two US Abrams tanks rolled out of the northern entrance of the compound and took up position on the adjacent Al-Jumhuriya (Republic) bridge.

Exchanges of fire then broke out with Iraqi forces on the east side of the river for the first time since US armour stormed into the city. Warplanes raided the massive complex which lies on the west bank of the Tigris river after fighting inside the compound. And for the first time a US air force A10 "tank killer" plane also attacked Saddam's main palace. Dark smoke billowed into the sky from several areas within the compound, mainly near the planning ministry, on a roundabout leading to the administrative district where the ministries of information and foreign affairs are located.

As expected the destruction of Baghdad continues. An explosion was also heard in the area of the al-Rashid hotel, a landmark in Baghdad, around which intensive battles have been raging since Monday. Witnesses reported that at least 14 civilians were killed when a bomb crashed into a residential neighborhood in the Iraqi capital on Monday. The explosion left a crater eight meters deep and 15 meters wide and destroyed four houses off Ramadan 14th, a main commercial artery in the al-Mansur area.

In all the confusion, US officials have said that there is a distressing lack of intelligence on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, his inner circle and the regime’s suspected stores of banned weapons. Intelligence out of Baghdad since the initial attack largely has dried up, despite expectations that the enormous military pressure bearing down on the regime would prompt a wave of defections and a flood of information by this point in the war.

One senior Pentagon official struck a blind pose, eyes closed, arms extended, when asked about the quality of intelligence war planners are getting. ‘‘Nobody can tell us where anybody is,’’ the official said. ‘‘Nobody can tell us what buildings they’re in so that we can bomb them. I’d call that weak.’’ Intelligence officials have disputed that characterization, but acknowledge they have had limited success in locating Saddam and other high-interest officials inside Baghdad.
The spy community’s most sensitive information is coming from a small number, perhaps a dozen or fewer, of Iraqi informants operating inside Baghdad on behalf of the CIA. The operatives were sent into Baghdad before the war with high-speed communications gear that enables them to send sensitive information through encoded satellite transmissions. Their job has proved difficult as Saddam Hussein is constantly on the move, using doubles and the inner circle is, at times non-existent.

Outside Baghdad, CIA case officers and members of its paramilitary Special Activities Division have been linking up with tribal leaders. Former agency officials said it is almost certain these operatives are doling out cash much the way they did in Afghanistan. ‘‘I’m sure we’ve got guys with 80-pound rucksacks full of $100 bills.’’
After staying out of the city of Basra since they arrived, British troops moved into the city and have taken 80% of the city under their control. Significantly and symbolically, the notorious ‘Chemical Ali’ is said to have been killed in an air raid. He is a cousin of Saddam Hussein and the general responsible for unleashing chemical warfare on Kurds.

Desperate to find chemical weapons, US troops finally found chemicals. Some were reportedly taken ill, but the chemicals were confirmed as pesticides. They were definitely not weapons grade chemicals and not weaponized. There is a strong suspicion that Rumsfeld and crew will ‘discover’ chemicals weapons, just to prove a point and as a public relations exercise. This is where the independence of UN inspectors was required. However US Marines driving onto Baghdad shed their chemical protection suits for the first time yesterday after being told the threat of a chemical or biological attack was no longer considered serious.

I saw images of large numbers of Arabs moving in from Syria and other neighboring countries into Iraq. The Egyptian religious authorities have given out an edict authorizing followers to fight in the ‘jihad’ on behalf of their Iraqi brothers. In Baghdad US forces have confirmed that non-Iraqi fighters have been fighting around Baghdad. The implications of this development can be far reaching. There is a genuine concern over indications that Muslim extremists from the Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Iranian Shiite groups have started entering Iraq. A major security concern in Iraq, once President Saddam Hussein is ousted, is not the remnants of the government, but the presence of such radicals who may owe their allegiance to neighboring regimes that have their own agendas. It is my contention that if Iraq is to operate as a democracy in future, these elements will pose a serious threat to any future administration with the possibility of continuous insurgency and low level warfare that any civilian government will find impossible to control. Perhaps even Saddam’s own regime has long term insurgency as a strategy, knowing fully well that they will never win a conventional war.

With war entering urban areas, civilian casualties are mounting. The earlier concern about avoidance of civilian damage, has all but disappeared except in official news briefings. Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned and blowing off both his arms.

‘‘It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant,’’ the traumatized boy said at Baghdad’s Kindi hospital. ‘‘Our neighbors pulled me out and brought me here. I was unconscious."

In addition to the tragedy of losing his parents, he faces the horror of living handicapped. Thinking about his uncertain future, he timidly asked visitors whether he could get artificial arms. ‘‘Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands?’’

‘‘We didn’t want war. I was scared of this war,’’ said Abbas. ‘‘Our house was just a poor shack, why did they want to bomb us?’’ said the young boy, unaware that the area in which he lived was surrounded by military installations. With a childhood lost and a future clouded by disaster and disability, Abbas poured his heart out as he lay in bed with an improvised wooden cage over his chest to stop his burnt flesh touching the bed covers. ‘‘I wanted to become an army officer when I grow up, but not any more. Now I want to become a doctor, but how can I? I don’t have hands.’’

Abbas’ suffering offered one snapshot of the daily horrors afflicting Iraqi civilians. At the Kindi hospital, staff were overwhelmed by the sharp rise in casualties since US ground troops moved north to Baghdad Ambulance after ambulance raced in with casualties from around the capital. Victim after victim was rushed in, many carried in bedsheets after the stretchers ran out. Doctors struggled to find them beds. The staff had no time even to clean the blood from trolleys. Patients’ screams and parents’ cries echoed across the ward. With many employees unable to reach the hospital due to the bombing, doctors worked round the clock performing surgery, taking blood, giving injections and ferrying the wounded.

Doctor Osama Saleh al-Duleimi, an orthopaedic surgeon and assistant director at Kindi, said they were overloaded and facing a shortage of anaesthesia, painkillers and staff. Doctors who treated Iraqi victims of two previous wars say they are taken aback by the injuries they have seen. Most suffered massive trauma and fatal wounds, including head, abdominal and limb injuries from lethal weapons, they said.

‘‘I’ve been a doctor for 25 years and this is the worst I’ve seen in terms of the number of casualties and fatal wounds,’’ said Dr.Duleimi who had witnessed the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait. ‘‘This war is more destructive than all the previous wars. In the previous battles, the weapons seemed merely disabling; now they’re much more lethal.’’

There have been casualties suffered by nearly every news agency reporting the war. German, Australian, British and American reporters and cameramen have died in this war. Journalist casualties are mounting. Today it was the turn of the Arabic satellite net work Al Jazeera, which was only yesterday blamed by the Iraqi information minister as having sold out to the West.(they've been thrown out by the New York stock exchange too) The television network reported that one of its journalists was killed when its Baghdad office was hit during a US bombing campaign. Tareq Ayoub died after suffering serious wounds, the network announced, describing him as a "martyr of duty" and a "dear and loyal colleague." The network aired footage of the cameraman whose chest was covered in blood. The Abu Dhabi TV office in Baghdad was also affected by US bombing, the station reported. A group of people were seen on carrying a wounded man to a jeep belonging to Abu Dhabi TV. He was then rushed to hospital. These are all civilians sucked into the vortex of a devastating war. For a while, the sword is mightier than the pen. There is nothing really to rejoice about.

Yesterday, U.S. warplanes struck a convoy of allied Kurdish fighters and U.S. Special Forces during a northern battle in one of the deadliest friendly fire attacks of the war. At least 17 Kurdish fighters, 5 US marines were killed and more than 45 wounded, including senior Kurdish commanders. Injured in the attack was BBC’s famous journalist John Simpson who went on broadcasting while blood poured out through his nose and ears and there were blobs of blood on the camera lens which was wiped off as the transmission progressed.

Among the wounded were a brother and son of Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which runs half the Kurdish autonomy zone. A translator for the BBC, died in the bombing from blood loss after losing his legs.

It was said that the mistaken bombing could have been caused over a confusing and changing battle scene between Pir Dawad and Dibagah, 25 miles southwest of Irbil. Kurdish and U.S. forces called for close air support after a column of Iraqi tanks tried to turn back advancing coalition soldiers. The convoy was near disabled Iraqi tanks when it was struck. The warplanes may have "mistaken some of the tanks that the (Kurdish)fighters had taken with the new column of tanks. This was a war situation and these things happen."

At the scene, BBC correspondent John Simpson reported that the convoy contained 8 to 10 cars, two of which carried U.S. Special Forces troops. "This is just a scene from hell here," Simpson said. "All the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around. ... The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people... saw people burning to death in front of me.”

War is a dirty and uncertain business and death lurks around the corner. If this is now becoming a preferred and legitimate means of decision making in international affairs, have we really progressed from the days of Genghis Khan or the Spanish conquistadors decimating populations in South America in search of colonies to exploit?