When Night Envelops Baghdad
BAGHDAD, August 30 (IslamOnline.net) In the recent past, Baghdad used to be a glamorous city and a hub for men of letters from the four corners of the Arab world, though paralyzed by international sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War. Now after 15 months of a US-led occupation, what does it look like at night?
Abu Fahd, an Iraqi whose pregnant woman was attacked by labor pains at mid night, knows very well that going out at this time means nothing but death by either bandits or US snipers.
But he had to take the risk and go to Al-Yarmouk hospital through the perils-ridden highway only to see three US all-terrain Hummers set on fire by roadside bombs amid crackle of machineguns and towering columns of heavy smoke toward the night sky.
To Abu Fahd, in a nutshell, it was the incarnation of everything to do with hell, but he only breathed freely when his wife gave birth to Mansour.
In the early morning hours, IslamOnline.net correspondents, who accompanied Abu Fahd in his odyssey, went back to where the US vehicles were in flame at night, but did not find even the faintest trace of an Iraqi resistance attack. They thought that it was nothing but a chimera.
Pastry seller, Al-Khodeir, who wakes up at dawn every day to make a living, however, cleared the whole mystery. To him, clean-up operations by the US military hard on the heels of resistance attacks have become routine, "even boring," to quote him.
"They [the US troops] don't leave a shred of evidence on any attack by Iraqi resistance fighters," he told IOL.
"Just 15 minutes into the attack, they appear all of a sudden and start cleaning up the entire area backed up by helicopter gunships. But this time, they were in such a rush as they left behind this crate," he said, pointing at a deep crate caused by the attack.
Al-Khodeir says at least four resistance operations occur at the same place every week.
"Those American soldiers must be dumb. They never learn the lesson. Everyday at the same time, the same place they tread in," he said laughingly.
Media Blackout
Another eyewitness, who identified himself only as Abu Aziz, has similar breathtaking incidents that often go unreported by western media.
"A week ago, I heard a shuddering explosion at mid night as a US military convoy was traveling along the Al-Khadraa street, west of Baghdad. The blast was so powerful that it lit up the night sky," he told IOL.
"As dawn broke, I only saw at the site of the attack twisted metal of a US military vehicle with its unmistakable color. As for casualties, the US evacuation unit was busy airlifting them."
Another attack left several US soldiers burnt beyond recognition and their two Humvees completely damaged, according to the eyewitness.
The resistance fighters creatively trapped a perished dog with explosives and detonated it via a remote control, according to eyewitnesses.
The residents of Al-Adel district in Baghdad were dying to know about a predawn heavy shooting.
Some locals spent a sleepless night to figure out. They say they saw masked men pouring large quantities of solar and kerosene on the highway, just minutes before a scheduled US patrol.
No sooner had the patrol stepped in that the fighters came from nowhere and started shooting at the military vehicles, setting ablaze two cars, four tanks, a personnel carrier and a Humvee.
"It was like a massacre for the American soldiers," one eyewitness told IOL.
But such incidents do not find a place among a torrent of breaking news and features carried by satellite channels and news agencies.
"The interim Iraqi government and the US occupation authorities adopt a zero tolerance with media outlets seeking either to expose their deadly raids into Iraqi towns or revealing such resistance attacks and the real number of US casualties," Munzir Al-Rawi, a political analyst, explained to IOL.
A case in point, he added, is the closure of all-news Al-Jazeera satellite channel by Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Reporting such incidents with its high death toll, according to eyewitnesses counts, would not for sure help US President George W. Bush in his re-election campaign, already under huge strains over Iraq war and the war on terror policies.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-08/30
/article03.shtml