Door
recente droogte is Mosul weer onder de aandacht gekomen van de
internationale media, daar die droogte ervoor zorgde dat een oude ruïne bloot kwam te liggen van een 3.400 jaar oud paleis.
De
aandacht van de reguliere westerse media voor Mosul was tijdens ‘de
bevrijding’ van die stad vooral wat het VS leger en het Iraakse
bewind daarover te zeggen hadden. Zo was Hans Jaap Melissen* één
van de ‘journalisten’ die embedded waren bij de VS/Irak coalitie en
die verboden werd de stad in te gaan…… Deze zogenaamde oorlogscorrespondenten lepelden braaf op wat hen was voorgekauwd door de propaganda machine van die
coalitie……
Met name
‘de bevrijding’ van West-Mosul heeft een enorm aantal doden
gekost en waarbij de historische binnenstad werd vernietigd door
bombardementen van de VS…… Diverse mensenrechtenorganisaties en
zelfs de VN hebben de VS destijds gesmeekt te stoppen met die
bombardementen, daar de bewoners van de oude stad zo hutjemutje op elkaar woonden….. (de VS trok zich daar niets van aan….) Dit was dan ook de oorzaak voor het enorme aantal omgekomen burgers bij die bombardementen…….
Na ‘de
bevrijding’ van Mosul heeft het Iraakse leger niet gepoogd
slachtoffers te bergen, nee men koos ervoor de ruïnes te bulldozeren,
met de slachtoffers nog onder het puin. Er moeten tienduizenden
burgers zijn omgekomen (men houdt het officieel op het ongeloofwaardig aantal van 10.000; zie de links onder het hieronder opgenomen artikel), echter door het bulldozeren van de ruïnes zullen we nooit weten hoeveel slachtoffers terreurentiteit VS
heeft gemaakt met haar terreurbombardementen…..
Intussen
leven de teruggekeerde inwoners nog steeds tussen ruïnes en is er een
gebrek aan zaken als sanitaire voorzieningen waardoor ziekten de kop
opsteken, die de zo geplaagde bevolking nog verder in de ellende
storten……
In het
hieronder opgenomen artikel gaat de schrijver, T.J. Coles dieper in
op deze zaak, o.a. met het noemen van het enorme aantal bommen dat de
VS op Irak en Syrië heeft doen neerkomen, waarvan een aanzienlijk
deel op Mosul (en later op Raqqa in Syrië), voorts stelt hij nogmaals
dat de VS de hoofdverantwoordelijke is voor het ontstaan van IS, de
terreurgroep aan wie de VS zelf meermaals wapens en ander militair
tuig heeft geleverd…. (zie ook daarvoor weer de links onder het hieronder opgenomen artikel) Het artikel van Coles werd gisteren gepubliceerd op
CounterPunch:
Life
Among the Rubble: Mosul 18 Months after “Liberation”
by T.J.
COLES
Photograph
Source: Mstyslav Chernov – CC
BY-SA 4.0
Recent
news of drought has brought Mosul, Iraq, to the attention of Western
media; for the drought has led to the discovery of ancient ruins of
archaeological significance. But let’s not forget the other news:
the UN report on returnees. The refugees are returning to the carnage
wrought upon the city by the US and its allies under the pretext of
“liberating” it from Daesh: carnage that transformed much of the
city to modern ruins.
ANCIENT
RUINS DISCOVERED
Mosul
is a city in Iraqi Kurdistan with a population of
1.3 million; 60% of whom are Sunni Arabs, around 25% of whom are
Kurds. Ongoing drought has brought Mosul to the attention of Western
media, as receding water levels at Kemune reservoir reveals the ruin
of a 3,400 year-old palace. Researchers from the University of
Tübingen and the Kurdistan Archaeology Organization reckon that
the palace was part of the Mittani Empire (circa 1450-1350 BCE).
According to onearchaeological
history, “[Mittani’s] end as independent realm can be dated to
the time of Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I in the middle of the 14th
century BC.”
Echoes
of the conquests and rivalry of the ancient past haunt both recent
history and the present. The so-called Mosul
Question was
a territorial dispute in the early-20th century between the British
and Ottoman empires, with both parties wanting a share of the
region’s oil. In the latter-part of the 20th century, Iraq’s
one-time US-British-backed dictator
Saddam Hussein launched the Anfal genocide against Kurds who have
historic and ongoing links to the region. A couple of years ago, the
US-approved leaders of the central Iraqi government and the regional
Kurdish authorities squabbled over
control of Mosul, anticipating that Daesh would be defeated.
But
the discovery of ancient Mittani ruins coincides with darker news.
A recent
report by
the UN International Organization for Migration documents the effects
of the US-led coalition bombardment of the city. It begins: “Entire
neighborhoods have not yet been rebuilt, basic services are
insufficient in some areas, and poor sanitation is contributing to
serious public health problems and the spread of diseases.
Furthermore,” the report continues, “reports of harassment and
violence against civilians by state as well as non-state actors are
undermining efforts to build trust in state institutions and
authorities.” Western-led humanitarian intervention is the price
that Iraqis pay for being an oil-rich, militarily vulnerable nation.
MAKING
ENEMIES
Daesh
(a.k.a., Islamic State) was largely the by-product of US-British
savagery in Iraq. Having left the nation politically and
infrastructurally decimated by
decades of unprecedented sanctions, military occupation, and
divide-and-conquer strategizing, the more extreme Islamic elements in
Iraq—backed by foreign powers for their own geostrategic
interests—sprouted from fertile ground. The US Army’s Strategic
Studies Institute launched an unusually scathing attack on the Bush
II administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and how it and
the succeeding Obama administration handled the occupation. Ignoring
moral questions and focusing solely on tactics, as well as blaming
the US-backed politician Ahmed Chalabi, the report (worth quoting at
length) says that
the growth of the Islamic State Organization (ISO):
“did
not occur in a vacuum … The ISO would not exist, or at this level
of severity at least, had the ruling Shia elements in Iraq following
the USG [US Government] occupation made the essential, painful
choices required to pursue a new social compact with the nation’s
Sunni population. Or, had the USG not operationalized Ahmad Chalabi’s
long-dreamt of goal of imposing a punitive de-Ba’athification,”
meaning
the dismantling of Iraq’s political, military, and policing
infrastructure. It goes on:
“Or,
had the USG not imposed the disastrous policy of dissolving the Iraqi
armed forces and security forces, numbering in the hundreds of
thousands; or had been prepared for a Sunni insurgency; or had
developed a realistic post-occupation, longer-term stabilization
policy based in a keen and learned awareness that the USG’s
decapitation, occupation, and empowerment of Iraq’s Shia would
profoundly destabilize an existing equilibrium in Iraq; or understood
that the decapitation of the Iraqi regime would profoundly alter the
terms of the broader Sunni-Shia rivalry inaugurated by the emergence
of a Shia revolutionary State in 1979, and thereby further energizing
proponents and antagonists who view this schism as a difference so
wide as that between God and the Devil; or, finally, had the USG not
first gone into Iraq the wrong way, and later repeated the error by
disengaging from Iraq the wrong way.”
Even
though US-British violence created Daesh, the US-British answer to
defeating Daesh was more violence.
AIR
AND GROUND WAR
In
June 2014, Daesh took Mosul, triggering a refugee flight of half a
million. According to the timeline, by
September ten Arab majority states announced their participation in
the US-led anti-Daesh coalition. Britain started bombing Iraq, again,
on September 30th with Paveway IV and Brimstone missiles. As well as
using Reaper drones in its anti-Daesh operations, the UK supplied 275
ground troops. By the end of the destruction of Mosul, the UK had 600
personnel on the ground in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Rupert Jones boasted that
“the UK was the second biggest contributor from a military
perspective in the campaign.” According to Forces.Net,
the British Army trained 75,000
Iraqi military personnel at Camp Taji and other bases. Many of those
who fought in Mosul committed war crimes, including torturing
and murdering alleged
Daesh members. In particular, the US-trained 16th Division
executed suspects, including
children.
These
atrocities pale in comparison to the devastation of the aerial
bombardments.
In
2016, the US-led coalition dropped 30,743
bombs on Iraq and Syria. In 2017, it dropped 39,577. In 2018, the
coalition dropped over 6,800 bombs. In February 2018, Pehr Lodhammar
of the UN Mine Action Service reported that
the “liberation” of Mosul had left 11 million tonnes of debris,
burying two-thirds of the unexploded bombs (UXB). The anti-mine,
anti-UXB operations will take the UN a decade to complete; assuming
that their budget isn’t reduced. It took the agency 12 months to
remove 25,000 explosive remnants in Mosul alone. The
BBC reported that
UK Ministry of Defence bombs “malfunctioned and strayed off target”
sometimes by “hundreds of metres,” adding to the civilian death
toll which reached up to 10,000; 11,000, according to the
same Forces.Net source
noted above. Mosul resident and civilian, Abdel Rahman Ali, lost five
children to the blitz. “Nobody destroyed us except the coalition,”
he told the BBC.
In
its written evidence to the British government, Amnesty
International says: “Our
field research constitutes prima
facieevidence
that Coalition strikes, which killed and injured civilians in Syria
and Iraq, violated International Humanitarian Law (IHL).”
Criticizing what it calls a “crisis in accountability,” Save the
Children’s written evidence notes that
$700 million-worth of damage was wrought on each of Mosul’s 54
residential districts. Save the Children concludes: “In Mosul, the
UN Security Council also found that at least 4200 civilians were
killed by EWIPA [explosive weapons with wide-area effects in
populated areas] between October 2016 and July 2017. Research
undertaken by the UN suggests that in such settings, over 90 percent
of the casualties are civilians.”
IN
CONCLUSION
Instead
of being decapitated and immolated by Daesh, thousands of inhabitants
of Mosul were blown to pieces and incinerated by US-British bombs. UN
International Organization for Migration’s recent
report notes that,
at its peak, nearly one million residents fled the city. By now,
350,000 or so remain “internally displaced persons” (IDPs). “Many
IDPs are unable to return because their houses have been destroyed,
either by [Daesh] or during the battle, and renting or buying new
property is prohibitively expensive.” They are some of the millions
of refugees generated by the US-British imperial war machine. Mosul
is a small part of a much larger tragedy: one of US global hegemony
in the age of Full Spectrum Dominance.
More
articles by: T.J.
COLES
Dr.
T. J. Coles is
director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author
of several books, including Voices
for Peace (with
Noam Chomsky and others) and the forthcoming Fire
and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks
Nuclear War in Asia (both
Clairview Books).
====================================
Nog even over de gifgasaanvallen in de 80er jaren van de vorige eeuw door Saddam Hoessein: zakenman van Anraat werd veroordeeld voor het leveren van grondstoffen voor dat gifgas, echter zijne VVD kwaadaardigheid Bolkestein, die destijds tegen advies van deskundigen in, toestemming gaf voor de export van die grondstoffen, een oorlogsmisdaad van formaat, waarvoor deze VVD ploert nooit werd vervolgd……
* Melissen blaast nu weer regelmatig op Radio1 over zijn bezoeken aan Syrië, waar deze plork eerder embedded was bij een terreurorganisatie, die hij loofde als gematigde oppositie, maar die later door de mand vielen als een afschuwelijke terreurorganisatie……. Onbegrijpelijk dat er nog iemand is die deze zakkenwasser serieus neemt….. (voor meer berichten met Melissen, klik op het label met zijn naam, direct onder dit bericht)
Zie ook:
‘Misvormde kinderen in Irak door gebruik van verarmd uranium in VS munitie‘
‘9/11 voorkennis verzwegen in officiële rapporten‘ (deze link daar de illegale oorlog van de VS tegen Afghanistan, in feite de voorloper is van die tegen Irak; zie ook de andere links in dat bericht naar 9/11)
‘CIA valt nogmaals door de mand als wapenleverancier van IS…….‘ (zie ook de links in dat bericht over VS wapenleveranties en training van terreurgroepen >> je gelooft je ogen niet…)
‘Kinderen in Irak vermoord middels VS terreur…….‘
‘Mosul: minstens 40.000 gedode burgers in 9 maanden tijd, ofwel VS terreur op grote schaal…..‘
‘Mosul, stad van lijken: vele honderden doden onder het puin‘
‘Mosul, het verschil in berichtgeving vergeleken met de bevrijding van Oost-Aleppo………..‘
‘Raqqa, een strijd als om West-Mosul, echter met geheel andere media aandacht……….‘
‘Bombarderen was een probleem in Mosul, maar niet bij het nieuwe Iraakse/VS offensief…….‘
‘Mosul ‘zal met precisie ontdaan worden van de terroristen, inclusief een minimum aan burgerslachtoffers…….’‘ (een ongelofelijk en ongeloofwaardige belofte….)
‘VS vermoordde met bombardementen in augustus 433 burgers in Raqqa………. Westerse media alweer stil…….‘
‘Hennis-Plasschaert hoopte nog zo, dat IS de bevolking van Mosul niet als schild zou gebruiken……..‘
‘Honderden burgerslachtoffers in Mosul door VS bombardementen, ofwel grootschalige terreur……‘
‘Mass Media Siege: Comparing Coverage Of Mosul and Aleppo‘ (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)
‘After Mosul’s “Liberation,” Horror of US Siege Continues to Unfold‘ (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)
‘Mosul (bijna) bevrijd: ‘een positief verslag’ van de BBC‘
‘Mosul ‘bevrijd’ en BBC anti-Assad propaganda……….‘
‘Mosul is ‘bevrijd’ zo stelt de VS, daar zijn echter wel wat aanmerkingen op te maken………‘
