Another Day of Fire, Pain and Death

By Robert Fisk, The Independent, Al-Jazeerah, 9 April 2003

BAGHDAD, 9 April 2003—Day 20 of America’s war for the liberation of Iraq was another day of fire, pain and death. It started with an attack by two A-10 jets which danced in the air like acrobats, tipping on one wing, sliding down the sky to turn on another, and spraying burning phosphorus into the skies to mislead heat-seeking missiles before turning their cannons on a government ministry and plastering it with depleted uranium shells. The day ended in blood-streaked hospital corridors and with three foreign correspondents dead and five wounded.

The A-10s passed my bedroom window, so close I could see the cockpit perspex, with their trail of stars dripping from their wingtips, a magical, dangerous performance fit for any air show, however infernal its intent. But when they turned their DU shells—intended for use against heavy armor—against the already wrecked Iraqi Ministry for Planning, the effect was awesome. The A-10’s cannon-fire sounds like heavy wooden furniture being moved in an empty room, a kind of final groan, before the rounds hit their target.

When they did, the red-painted ministry—a gaunt and sinister building beside the Jumhuriyah Bridge over the Tigris which I have always suspected to be an intelligence headquarters—lit up with a thousand red and orange pin-points of light. From the building came a great and dense cloud of white smoke, much of which must have contained the aerosol DU spray that so many doctors and military veterans fear causes cancers. Then a set of F-18 jets swept so low over Baghdad that you could sense the confidence of their pilots. A single anti-aircraft missile soared into the gray skies, a bright red light moving at astonishing speed, but far too slow for the Americans jets.

It was around this time that I noticed the tanks on the Jumhuriyah Bridge. Two low-slung M1A1 Abrams, one in the center of the bridge, the other parking itself over the first stanchion. Just another little probing raid, the Americans announced, but it looked much more than that. For as the US 3rd Infantry Division settled into its occupation of the southwestern corner of the capital on the west side of the Tigris, its inevitable movement must be east, across the Jumhuriyah Bridge and then, no doubt, across the Rashid Bridge to the north and then the Ahrar Bridge.

I reached the eastern end of the Jumhuriyah Bridge an hour and a half later, a wide and deserted four-lane highway that soared out across the river, obscuring the American tanks on the other side. It looked grimly like that scene in A Bridge Too Far, Attenborough’s epic on the Arnhem disaster, in which a British officer walks slowly up the great span with an umbrella in his hand to see if he can see the Germans on the other side. But I knew the Americans were on the other side of this bridge and drove past the end at great speed.

Which provided a remarkable revelation. While American fighter-bombers crisscrossed the sky, while the ground shook to the sound of exploding ordnance, while the American tanks now stood above the Tigris, vast areas of Baghdad—astonishing when you consider the American claim to be in the heart of the city—remain under Saddam’s control. I drove past the Bab Al-Moadam Bridge, through Waziriya and down Maghreb Street and Antar Square all the way to Mansour where relatives of the 11 Iraqi civilians killed in Monday’s massacre of civilians—the Americans used four 2,000 bombs to dismember the mainly Christian families in the vain hope of killing Saddam—still waited for the unearthing of the last of their dead families.

And there were people on the streets, cigarette sellers, men and women queuing for bread and petrol, even a half-filled No. 55 corporation bus, and on every corner soldiers and armed policemen and militia guards and black uniformed members of Saddam’s Fedayeen. There were guns under overpasses—far too many guns under far too many overpasses—and military trucks which I avoided or drove past at speed. In all, I traveled 15 miles around Baghdad and even crossed the Tigris to the west of the city. And when I reached the point I was supposed to see the first American checkpoint in Mansour, there were no Americans to be seen.

On my way back past the Ahrar Bridge, I found a crowd of spectators idly standing on the parapet, watching the American tanks with a mixture of amusement and fear. Did they not know what was happening in their city, or—an idea that has possessed me in recent days—are the poor of Baghdad kept in such ignorance of events that they simply do not realize that the Americans are about to occupy their city? Could it be that the cigarette sellers and the bakery queues and the bus drivers just don’t know what lies down on the banks of the Tigris? My journey back to the Palestine Hotel was one of both anxiety and, again, great speed. The west side of the Jumhuriyah Bridge was guarded only by a single policeman. And as I arrived back at the Palestine Hotel, I saw the smoke of the shell which the Americans had just fired into the Reuters office. It was to take two lives, in addition to the reporter from the Arab Al-Jazeera satellite channel killed a few hours earlier by an American air attack on his office.

Despite two separate assurances from the US government that it would not be targeted, Al-Jazeera’s base of operations was destroyed. Just an hour later, one of the tanks on the Jumhuriyah Bridge fired a shell into the wreckage. Eighteen civilians—15 of them women—were reported to be still hiding in the basement last night with no immediate hope of rescue.

The International Red Cross had tried to arrange a convoy out of Baghdad; inexplicably, it was reported that the Americans had refused its passage from the city. At one point, Red Cross workers hoped to take a severely wounded Spanish television reporter with them—his leg had been amputated after the tank shell exploded below his office in the hotel—but he died during the afternoon. The American infantry divisional commander issued a statement that suggested the Reuters cameramen were sniping at the US tank, a remark so extraordinary—and so untrue—that it brought worldwide protests from journalists.

At dusk, the jets came back, two F-18s that flew repeatedly down the Tigris to bomb and re-bomb the much pummeled and long-destroyed Baghdad central telecommunications tower. Perhaps they intended to bring the entire structure crumbling to the ground. When the air raids momentarily ceased the smoke of shells and oil fires again closed in on Baghdad.

The muezzin’s recorded voice crackled down Sadoun Street. God is Great. God is Great. There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.

Then the dogs began barking.

I don’t know what it is about the street dogs of Baghdad, but they always know when the bombers are returning. Is there some change in air pressure, some high technological decibel that we humans can’t hear?

Always the dogs get it right. Every time they bay, you know the bombers are coming back. And they yelped and barked as night fell last night. And within 15 minutes, even we superior humans could hear the rumble of explosions from southern Baghdad.