Kena interview

'Han buat soalan yang untuk ditanya dengan jawapannya sekali'

Itu 'arahan' yang saya terima lewat dua malam yang lepas. Soalan sendiri jawab sendiri? Hahaha rasa macam jadi pelakon, pengarah dan penerbit sendirian berhad pula rasanya. Macam satu wayang gambar yang pernah saya lihat kain rentangnya waktu saya masih beruniform baju putih dan kain biru muda. Dialah pelakon, dialah pengarah dan dialah penerbit. Eh, bukan Allahyarham Tan Sri P Ramlee ye :)

Saya tak biasa di temu bual. Selalunya sayalah yang jadi orang bertanya soalan sekarang terpaksa 'reverse role' pula. Hmm... nak tanya soalan apa pada diri sendiri agaknya? Kebetulan otak saya terlebih jem pula sejak kebelakangan ni. Ada esei yang saya tak tahu nak mula, di mana hujung dan di mana pangkal.

'Han jangan lupa pula sebut juga untuk soalan kuiz nanti.'

Oh, selain soalan jawab sendiri kena juga sediakan soalan kuiz untuk pendengar. Hmm... bolehkah saya tanya 'Agaknya bila saya akan jadi kaya?' Saya geleng kepala. Tak boleh. 'Berapa suhu di Glasgow sekarang?' Soalan tu releven tapi nanti pendengar terpaksa buat research pula. Pangkah dan buang, macam mengundi pula!

'Han ada apa-apa lagu yang nak minta ke? Boleh request nanti mereka boleh download dan siarkan.'

Aduh, saya sudah masuk kategori 'pelajar matang', agak-agaknya adakah mereka lagu-lagu zaman saya beruniform putih dan biru muda?

'Kak Khairyn nak lagu apa?' Tanya juruhebah Putra.fm bersuara ceria pada saya.

'Err lagu Sudirman ada?' Itulah saja yang terlintas di kepala. Lagu dari insan seni yang dilahirkan senegeri dengan saya. Mahu minta lagu Hajah Datuk Siti pun saya tak tahu.

'Lagu apa? Lagu Selamat Hari Raya pun ada.'

Errk... saya rasa macam sudah masuk kategori barang antik!

Dan hari ini saya sudah cukup haul. Bertambah antik lah saya hahahaha

Maafkan saya Amariyah

Sebenarnya terlalu ingin meletakkan artikel ini di sini bersempena bulan Febuari tapi kelemahan saya, terlupa.

Petikan ini saya ambil dari website Na'eem Jeenah. Seorang wartawan, ketua komuniti,, pelajar sarjana dan bakal meneruskan sehingga peringkat PhD. Beliau juga seorang pensyarah Kajian Politik di University of the Witwatersrand di Johannesburg.

http://users.adelphia.net/~craig_spaulding/Iraq/Images/Ameriyah-hole.jpg

Some people never see the light
Till it shines through bullet holes
- Bruce Cockburn


Al Amariyah - A Graveyard of unwilling martyrs.

I walked out of the building with a feeling of revulsion and disgust towards these creatures we call human beings and for the ease with which we allow ourselves to be less than human. But my overwhelming feeling was… a need to rush into a shower and perform ghusl – before I ate or drank or even touched anything! I needed to be cleansed. I suppose it was not as much a physical cleansing that I required as compared to a psychological and moral one.

I had just exited from what had been a civilian bomb shelter in the suburb of Amariyah in Baghdad. ‘Had been’ until two American bombers left it a shattered memory for thousands of people and a monument to the inhumanity of war.

The bomb shelter at Amariyah was one of 44 that had been built by the Iraqi government after an Iraqi nuclear plant was bombed by Israel in 1981. These buildings were supposed to protect those who took shelter within it, particularly from chemical and nuclear weapons or fallout. However, with their five-ton doors and walls that were constructed of metres of reinforced concrete, these shelters could withstand anything a war could throw at them. Well, that was the plan. Perhaps Amariyah is a good lesson that “you might plot and you might plan, but Allah too plans; and Allah is the best of planners”.

During the tragic Gulf War of 1991, the Americans decided to test exactly what it was that these bomb shelters could withstand. As part of their planning strategy for the war, the so-called Allied forces brought in as advisors people from various international companies that had worked in Iraq. Two of these companies were a Swedish and a Finnish ones that had constructed the Baghdad shelters. They supplied the Americans with the plans for the shelters which assisted in developing a strategy to bomb and destroy them successfuly.

The US military spent 16 days developing a special ‘spiro-bomb’ for the job. According to Time, preparations for the attack had begun months before.

On the 13 February 1991, at 4:00am, two Allied bombers flew over Baghdad on a special mission. Their target: Amariyah. The first bomber passed over the shelter – filled with residents from the neighbourhood who had sought its safety – and dropped its spiro-bomb on the weakest point. The ‘weakest point’ was three to four metres of reinforced concrete. The bomb rapidly drilled through the reinforced concrete before exploding in the main hall where people were sleeping. Six minutes later the second plane dropped a conventional bomb through the opening created by the first. Both bombs were laser-guided.

The U.S. military claimed there was a military communication center under the shelter, but when a reporter asked to see the evidence, the military refused to provide it. The reason they refused to provide the evidence is because it simply does not exist.

The two explosions slammed the five-ton doors shut and no one could escape. A few people were lucky to have been blasted out the door before it shut. By the end of the day, 408 Amariyah residents people had been killed; only 14 survived the attack. Most of the victims were killed by the first blast. The explosions were so powerful and hot that we saw foot and hand prints seared onto the walls and ceilings. With no electricity in Baghdad, the civil defence people had to use manual tools to open the doors. They worked for a long time trying to get in – with the screams of the people inside ringing in their ears. Within the shelter many had died immediately the explosions happened. Many others were burned to death. The explosions had also destroyed two huge water tanks in the basement. Those who slept in the basement – doctors and others who provided services for the residents – were boiled in the two metres of water that invaded their refuges. Bits of their skin and hair still cling to the walls below the water line as a testimony to the horror that took place here. The boiling water also flooded the top floor through the pipes.

Upstairs there was little hope for most of those who survived long enough for the civil defence unit to find its way into the building. When relief personnel did get in, they found bodies everywhere, some charred beyond recognition. We saw the image of a woman and her baby smoked onto the wall where they had been thrown by the explosion before being burnt to death.

Today the walls of the main section of the shelter are adorned by photographs and pictures of and tributes to the victims of that ill-fated night. Flowers punctuate the floor where relatives found bodies of their loved ones. While some Amariyah families had lost loved families, some families were completely wiped out by the tragedy. The houses of the latter are today unoccupied and boarded up.

After the Amariyah incident residents in many Baghdad suburbs preferred to take their chances in their homes during bomb raids. Shelters, as far as they were concerned, were more dangerous!

Saying to myself that this was the kind of thing that usually happens during a war was no consolation. Thinking that the Iraqi army also perpetrated atrocities in Kuwait made my state of mind even worse. That I could witness this – even in retrospect and just through a monument – still left me feeling unclean. And seeing the name ‘Tennet’ – the Finnish company that helped construct the shelters – on the massive door as I exited made me feel an even greater sense of disgust and anger. I still needed that ghusl!

na’eem jeenah
Al-Qalam
July 2001

Inilah kejadian sebenar yang diceritakan oleh wartawan Na'eem Jeenah dan yang telah saya fiksyenkan dalam Zahrah de Tigris.

Battle for Haditha

Dari MetroFocus January 31, 2008 - www.metro.co.uk

Entry ini dipetik dari akhbar Metro UK yang diedar secara percuma di kenderaan-kenderaan awam. Sebuah artikel yang sungguh menarik. Bacalah...

On the hunt for the truth

On the morning of November 19, 2005, a roadside bomb planted by insurgents exploded in the Iraqi town of Haditha, killing 20-year-old US marnie Miguel Tarrrazas. He'd been out on patrol in a convoy of four army vehicles.

With one dead and two wounded, the young marines retaliated with house searches in the area, resulting in the deaths of 24 civilians. The marine corps' initial statement reported that 15 Iraqis were killed by the original bomb blast and that in the ensuing gun battle marines killed eight insurgents.

It might have been left at that had amateur video footage not been passed to an Iraqi human rights organisation. Shot the day after the massacre, it showed bullet-ridden, blood-stained rooms and bodies of men, women and children.

Witnesses, including a nine-year-old girl whose parents and four other family members were killed, said soldiers went on the rampage to avenge their friend's death. Of the dead, at least six were children.

Time magazine later obtained a copy of the video and ran an article in March 2006, prompting a US army investigation, which is ongoing. A marine corps squad leader and seben others were initially charged in connection with the deaths.

Hate and distrust

The events are the focus of Battle for Haditha, the latest work by British film-maker Nick Broomfield, whose previous subjects include seriel killer Aileen Wournos and the deaths of Chinese cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay. Does his view what the marines did as murder?

"It's a complicated question, because marines are trained to kill," says Broomfield, though he doesn't excuse what they did.

"The marines I met all joined at the age of 17. They didn't understand anything about Iraqis, but they all seemed to hate and distrust Arabs, which you imagine they got in their training. And they were all desperately trying to stay alive and protect one another."

Tim McGiirk, who wrote the original Time article, is less sympathetic. "One of the rules of engagement is that you don't go to a house and shoot up civilians, women and children," he says. "But we should also ask, was there a cover-up? Did the marine commander know his men had killed civilians or did he just take their workd and let it slide?"

Coming on the heels of Abu Gharib prison abuse scandals, the Haditha massacre helped turn US opinion against the war. It also played into the hands of insurgents as a propaganda tool. Broomfield however, believes that the killing of civilans is more common than we think. "There have been many "Hadithas" in the Iraq conflict - some of them probably worse. I picked this up from marines, mostly: that there were executions and very strange things going on in the battle for Fallujah, which we'll probably never know about because they bulldozed half the city immediately afterwards."

Is this kind of thing still happening? "I've heard through military soruces that, after Haditha, there's much closer look being taken at civilian deaths at the hands of American servicemen," says McGiirk.

Broomfield isn't so sure. "General [James] Maitis, who's in charge of this inquiry, is on record as saying that killing can be fun. This attitudes are deeply ingrained. They're not going to change marine training or care about this kind of thing as long as they get away with it."

How do British forces try to avoid situations such as Haditha? "British forces, like coalition nations in Iraq, do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties," says an MoD spokesman.

"British operations are aimed against only legitimate military targets and our troops' rules of engagement allow them to use lethal force only if necessary."

Thrown out of court

The trial of Staff Sgt Frank Wuterich, who led the marine unit in Haditha, is seet for February 25 at Camp Pendleton in California. Many of the original charges against him and the other men involved, however, have already been dropped or reduced.

"The American authorities are doing everything possible to discredit the Iraqi witnesses," says Broomfield. "[Sanick] Delta Cruzm a marine who testified about what happened, was also regarded as unreliable so his testimony was thrown out of court. The American authorities need to be seen to be doing something but they're doing the bare minimum."

Lt Col Sean Gibson, spokesman for the US Marine Corps, says: "The incident at Haditha is the subject of an ongoing investigation and court martial process. Until this is complete, it would be speculative to suggest what lessons should be learned."

Battle for Haditha (15) is in selected cinemas from tomorrow.

Teringin pula hendak mendapatkan DVD filem ini.