R7

"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

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Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Giuliana Sgrena: My Truth

I'm still in the dark. Friday was the most dramatic day of my life. I had been in captivity for many days. I had just spoken with my captors. It had been days they were telling me I would be released. I was living in waiting for this moment. They were speaking about things that only later I would have understood the importance of. They were speaking about problems "related to transfers."

I learned to understand what was going on by the behavior of my two guards, the two guards that had me under custody every day. One in particular showed much attention to my desires. He was incredibly cheerful. To understand exactly what was going on I provocatively asked him if he was happy because I was going or because I was staying. I was shocked and happy when for the first time he said, "I only know that you will go, but I don't know when." To confirm the fact that something new was happening both of them came into my room and started comforting me and kidding: "Congratulations they said you are leaving for Rome." For Rome, that's exactly what they said.

I experienced a strange sensation because that word evoked in me freedom but also projected in me an immense sense of emptiness. I understood that it was the most difficult moment of my kidnapping and that if everything I had just experienced until then was "certain," now a huge vacuum of uncertainty was opening, one heavier than the other. I changed my clothes. They came back: "We'll take you and don't give any signals of your presence with us otherwise the Americans could intervene." It was confirmation that I didn't want to hear; it was altogether the most happy and most dangerous moment. If we bumped into someone, meaning American military, there would have been an exchange of fire. My captors were ready and would have answered. My eyes had to be covered. I was already getting used to momentary blindness. What was happening outside? I only knew that it had rained in Baghdad. The car was proceeding securely in a mud zone. There was a driver plus the two captors. I immediately heard something I didn't want to hear. A helicopter was hovering at low altitude right in the area that we had stopped. "Be calm, they will come and look for you...in 10 minutes they will come looking for." They spoke in Arabic the whole time, a little bit of French, and a lot in bad English. Even this time they were speaking that way.

Then they got out of the car. I remained in the condition of immobility and blindness. My eyes were padded with cotton, and I had sunglasses on. I was sitting still. I thought what should I do. I start counting the seconds that go by between now and the next condition, that of liberty? I had just started mentally counting when a friendly voice came to my ears "Giuliana, Giuliana. I am Nicola, don't worry I spoke to Gabriele Polo (editor in chief of Il Manifesto). Stay calm. You are free." They made me take my cotton bandage off, and the dark glasses. I felt relieved, not for what was happening and I couldn't understand but for the words of this "Nicola." He kept on talking and talking, you couldn't contain him, an avalanche of friendly phrases and jokes. I finally felt an almost physical consolation, warmth that I had forgotten for some time.

The car kept on the road, going under an underpass full of puddles and almost losing control to avoid them. We all incredibly laughed. It was liberating. Losing control of the car in a street full of water in Baghdad and maybe wind up in a bad car accident after all I had been through would really be a tale I would not be able to tell. Nicola Calipari sat next to me. The driver twice called the embassy and in Italy that we were heading towards the airport that I knew was heavily patrolled by U.S. troops. They told me that we were less than a kilometer away...when...I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier.

The driver started yelling that we were Italians. "We are Italians, we are Italians." Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately I heard his last breath as he was dying on me. I must have felt physical pain. I didn't know why. But then I realized my mind went immediately to the things the captors had told me. They declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me but I had to be careful, "the Americans don't want you to go back." Then when they had told me I considered those words superfluous and ideological. At that moment they risked acquiring the flavor of the bitterest of truths, at this time I cannot tell you the rest.

This was the most dramatic day. But the months that I spent in captivity probably changed forever my existence. One month alone with myself, prisoner of my profound certainties. Every hour was an impious verification of my work, sometimes they made fun of me, and they even stretch as far as asking why I wanted to leave, asking me stay. They insisted on personal relationships. It was them that made me think of the priorities that too often we cast aside. They were pointing to family. "Ask your husband for help," they would say. And I also said in the first video that I think you all saw, "My life has changed." As Iraqi engineer Ra'ad Ali Abdulaziz of the organization A Bridge For [Baghdad], who had been kidnapped with the two Simones had told me "my life is not the same anymore." I didn't understand. Now I know what he meant. Because I experienced the harshness of truth, it's difficult proposition (of truth) and the fragility of those who attempt it.

In the first days of my kidnapping I did not shed a tear. I was simply furious. I would say in the face of my captors: "But why do you kidnap me, I'm against the war." And at that point they would start a ferocious dialogue. "Yes because you go speak to the people, we would never kidnap a journalist that remains closed in a hotel and because the fact that you say you're against the war could be a decoy." And I would answer almost to provoke them: "It's easy to kidnap a weak woman like me, why don't you try with the American military." I insisted on the fact that they could not ask the Italian government to withdraw the troops. Their political go-between could not be the government but the Italian people, who were and are against the war.

It was a month on a see-saw shifting between strong hope and moments of great depression. Like when it was a first Sunday after the Friday they kidnapped me, in the house in Baghdad where I was kept, and on top of which was a satellite dish they showed me the Euronews Newscast. There I saw a huge picture of me hanging from Rome City Hall. I felt relieved. Right after though the claim by the Jihad that announced my execution if Italy did not withdraw the troops arrived. I was terrified. But I immediately felt reassured that it wasn't them. I didn't have to believe these announcements, they were "provocative." Often I asked the captor that from his face I could identify a good disposition but whom like his colleagues resembled a soldier: "Tell me the truth. Do you want to kill me?" Although many times there have been windows of communications with them. "Come watch a movie on TV" they would say while a Wahabi roamed around the house and took care of me. The captors seemed to me a very religious group, in continuous prayer on the Koran. But Friday, at the time of the release, the one that looked the most religious and who woke up every morning at 5 a.m. to pray incredibly congratulated me shaking my hand, a behavior unusual for an Islamic fundamentalist -- and he would add "if you behave yourself you will leave immediately." Then an almost funny incident. One of the two captors came to me surprised both because the TV was showing big posters of me in European cities and also for Totti. Yes Totti. He declared he was a fan of the Roma soccer team and he was shocked that his favorite player went to play with the writing "Liberate Giuliana" on his T-shirt.

I lived in an enclave in which I had no more certainties. I found myself profoundly weak. I failed in my certainties; I said that we had to tell about that dirty war. And I found myself in the alternative either to stay in the hotel and wait or to end up kidnapped because of my work. We don't want anyone else anymore. The kidnappers would tell me. But I wanted to tell about the bloodbath in Fallujah from the words of the refugees. And that morning the refugees, or some of their leaders would not listen to me. I had in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth in my face: "We don't want anybody why didn't you stay in your home. What can this interview do for us?" The worse collateral effect, the war that kills communication was falling on me. To me, I who had risked everything, challenging the Italian government who didn't want journalists to reach Iraq and the Americans who don't want our work to be witnessed of what really became of that country with the war and notwithstanding that which they call elections. Now I ask myself. Is their refusal a failure?

Giuliana Sgrena
da "il manifesto" 06 March 2005

Hizbollah Draws Vast Pro-Syrian Crowds in Beirut

Hizbollah officials and a pro-Syrian security source said one million people attended the rally and witnesses said the crowds were certainly in the hundreds of thousands

Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central Beirut Tuesday for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah that dwarfed previous protests demanding that Syrian troops quit Lebanon.

Hizbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah urged the Lebanese opposition to join a national unity government and to reject a U.N. resolution demanding Syrian troops leave Lebanon.

"We call...for the formation of a government of national unity and we ask the opposition to join it," he told the rally.

Nasrallah said no one in Lebanon feared the United States, whose troops left Lebanon in 1984, a few months after a suicide bomber killed 241 Marines at their Beirut headquarters.

"We have defeated them in the past and if they come again we will defeat them again," he said, drawing chants of "Death to America" from the demonstrators.

As the mainly Shi'ite Muslim crowds thronged Riad al-Solh square, a security source said Syrian forces had begun moving eastwards under a phased withdrawal plan announced Monday.

"The redeployment to the Bekaa Valley has started in line with the first phase," the Lebanese source said.

The huge Hizbollah rally was the first major show of popular support for Syria in Beirut since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri touched off daily anti-Syrian protests, mainly involving Maronite Christians.

Those protests, which drew tens of thousands Monday, take place in Martyrs Square, just 300 meters (yards) from the scene of the gathering organized by Hizbollah and its allies.

The rival demonstrations, each using the Lebanese cedar flag to show patriotism, reveal deep rifts in Lebanon over Syria's role and international demands for Hizbollah to disarm.

Hizbollah officials and a pro-Syrian security source said one million people attended the rally and witnesses said the crowds were certainly in the hundreds of thousands.

Nasrallah said he had no problem with a Syrian pullout under the terms of the 1989 Taif Accord that ended the civil war, but would have no truck with a U.N. resolution demanding that foreign forces leave Lebanon and militias lay down their guns.

"If the mechanism for Syria's stay or withdrawal is within the Taif Accord then we are agreed," he told the rally.

"But those who insist on (resolution) 1559, we say to them your insistence is a revolt against the Taif Accord... and that means a revolt against national consensus," he declared.

Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, condemned Hariri's killing but few joined Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslim critics of Syria's dominant role in the country.

Shi'ites and many other Lebanese are proud of Hizbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran (news - web sites), for forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

"I am here to express my opposition to resolution 1559 because it demands the disarming of the resistance. Hizbollah is not a militia. It deters Israeli aggression against Lebanon," 30-year-old demonstrator Mona Srour told Reuters.

Popular agitation in Lebanon, combined with intense world pressure, has prompted Syria to announce plans to end its 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbor.

The Lebanese source did not say which positions the Syrians were vacating, but witnesses reported troops on the move in several places on mountain ridges east of Beirut.

SYRIAN INTELLIGENCE AGENTS

The redeployment began after a Syrian-Lebanese military committee agreed on the details at a meeting in Damascus.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud agreed Monday to shift Syrian troops to eastern Lebanon by March 31. A statement said the Syrian and Lebanese military would then decide how long the Syrians stayed.

A Syrian official source in Damascus said Syrian security and intelligence men would leave along with the troops.

This would meet a key demand by the United States and its allies, as well as the Lebanese opposition, for the departure of Syrian intelligence officers they accuse of calling the shots in Lebanon behind a facade of Lebanese state institutions.

The United States has dismissed the Syrian plan for failing to set a deadline for a full withdrawal.

Hizbollah, dubbed a terrorist group by Washington, began as an anti-Israel militia but is now also a party with deputies in parliament and a network of charities.

Bearded young men in black took charge of security at the rally, searching streets and manholes for suspect objects.

"Thank you, Syria's Assad," a large banner said. "No to foreign interference," read another.

Opposition leader Walid Jumblatt called for dialogue with Hizbollah, but said Syria must declare a withdrawal deadline.

"We want a clear-cut timetable for the pullout of Syrian troops," the Druze chieftain told reporters after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin.

Syrian forces are credited with helping end the 1975-90 civil war that tore Lebanon apart. Christian, Muslim and Druze militias fought each other. Battles also erupted within rival communities. About 150,000 people are thought to have died.

Reuters
Nadim Ladki