Occupational hazards

If you've kept up with the news since Friday, March 4, then you've probably heard how U.S. soldiers in Iraq shot at a car carrying a just-released hostage as it approached a checkpoint outside an airport, killing the veteran Italian intelligence agent who had negotiated the release of the hostage. A state funeral was held for Nicola Calipari in Rome yesterday, and thousands of Italians, a majority of which opposed the war back in 2003, mourned for him.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu also visited Calipari's home on Friday, describing the agent as "the most true and human hero of this tormented story."

Calipari, who is about 50, was married and had a 19-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. He was a 20-year veteran of the police force, and before moving on to Italy's secret services he had headed the immigration office for Rome's police.

Friday's shooting was a terrible tragedy; a good man was killed. But, despite the media's myopic focus on how this will affect Italy-U.S. relations or the overall strength of the shrinking "coalition," I'm just reminded once again of the utter injustice and arrogance associated with this entire occupation, the military checkpoints being one of its most dangerous aspects. Probably because in this instance a European was killed, the checkpoints are being scrutinized a little more now. And yet, they have always been a source of constant heartache for ordinary Iraqis since the occupation began nearly two years ago.

(Remember this girl, and her dead parents? They were killed under similar circumstances: some soldiers on a routine foot patrol were under orders to stop and examine any oncoming vehicles, essentially creating makeshift checkpoints. The car that held the parents and six children was "speeding" towards the soldiers, so they shot at it, killing the parents and splattering their blood all over the children. I often wonder where this girl and her siblings are now, and how they are doing.)

The checkpoints are terrible, for both the troops and the Iraqis. While their contribution to the security of Iraq is certaintly questionable, they have a history of causing the deaths of innocent people. U.S. troops are told to err on the side of "safety" and are thus more inclined to shoot at oncoming cars, frequently resulting in the horrific tragedies described above, while at the same time, the checkpoints themselves provide excellent targets for suicide bombers. This article, which I found through this excellent blog, is a very telling firsthand account of what the checkpoints are like.

As an American journalist here, I have been through many checkpoints and have come close to being shot at several times myself. I look vaguely Middle Eastern, which perhaps makes my checkpoint experience a little closer to that of the typical Iraqi. Here's what it's like.

You're driving along and you see a couple of soldiers standing by the side of the road - but that's a pretty ubiquitous sight in Baghdad, so you don't think anything of it. Next thing you know, soldiers are screaming at you, pointing their rifles and swiveling tank guns in your direction, and you didn't even know it was a checkpoint.

If it's confusing for me - and I'm an American - what is it like for Iraqis who don't speak English?

In situations like this, I've often had Iraqi drivers who step on the gas. It's a natural reaction: Angry soldiers are screaming at you in a language you don't understand, and you think they're saying "get out of here," and you're terrified to boot, so you try to drive your way out...

Another problem is that the US troops tend to have two-stage checkpoints. First there's a knot of Iraqi security forces standing by a sign that says, in Arabic and English, "Stop or you will be shot." Most of the time, the Iraqis will casually wave you through.

Your driver, who slowed down for the checkpoint, will accelerate to resume his normal speed. What he doesn't realize is that there's another, American checkpoint several hundred yards past the Iraqi checkpoint, and he's speeding toward it. Sometimes, he may even think that being waved through the first checkpoint means he's exempt from the second one (especially if he's not familiar with American checkpoint routines).

The author goes on to recount her firsthand experience with the two-stage checkpoint complication. And not only that, but "under Saddam, idling was risky. This feeling is a holdover from the days of Saddam, when driving slowly past a government building or installation was considered suspicious behavior." Clearly, everything about the checkpoints increases the potential for disaster. The Iraqi civilians are confused and the troops are on edge. We can only speculate as to exactly why the troops fired at that family's car back in January; the military has kept the official 'rules of engagement' under which soldiers are to operate at all checkpoints classified. The parents who were driving cannot give us their perspective on what happened, because they were killed.

This time, however, some adult passengers in the vehicle being shot at survived. Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian hostage who had just been freed, has described in interviews how Calipari shielded her with his body and died on top of her. She has also said, contrary to the military's version, that the vehicle was driving at regular speed and that there was no warning before the bullets began to rain down. U.S. forces had already been informed by the Italians that they were approaching the checkpoints, the car had already cleared previous checkpoints before being shot at. Here is a transcript of a recent statement by Sgrena:

[Translated from Italian] We were on our way to the airport, and we thought we were finally safe, because the area where we were was under the control of the United States. We therefore thought we had escaped the gravest area and entered into a more friendly area, although I was still nervous as my hostage takers had warned me to be careful, because it was the Americans who did not want me to be free, and returned to Italy alive. I just took that as a last threat from my hostage takers and did not really take it seriously. But then suddenly we found ourselves under an immense amount of bullets, something terrible, without any warning, and we realized that nearby there was an American tank which was shooting at us.

Sgrena has questioned whether she was deliberately targeted because the Italian government probably paid a significant ransom, in the millions of dollars, to the her kidnappers, the "Mujaheddin Without Borders." The U.S. and the military have made public their opposition to any negotiations or ransom-payments with hostage-takers.

I would add to the question of purposeful targeting the fact that Sgrena has written numerous anti-occupation reports, including detailed accounts of civilian casualties in Fallujah this past November and elsewhere, for her Italian newspaper. It's clear to me that U.S. forces in Iraq have not hesitated to kill journalists in the past:

Consider the events of April 8, 2003. Early that morning, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was reporting from the network's Baghdad bureau. He was providing an eyewitness account of a fierce battle between US and Iraqi forces along the banks of the Tigris. As he stood on the roof of the building, a US warplane swooped in and fired a rocket at Al Jazeera's office. Ayyoub was killed instantly. US Central Command released a statement claiming, "Coalition forces came under significant enemy fire from the building where the Al-Jazeera journalists were working." No evidence was ever produced to bolster this claim. Al Jazeera, which gave the US military its coordinates weeks before the invasion began, says it received assurances a day before Ayyoub's death that the network would not be attacked.

At noon on April 8, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters's Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco. The United States again claimed that its forces had come under enemy fire and were acting in self-defense. This claim was contradicted by scores of journalists who were in the hotel and by a French TV crew that filmed the attack. In its report on the incident, the Committee to Protect Journalists asserted that "Pentagon officials, as well as commanders on the ground in Baghdad, knew that the Palestine Hotel was full of international journalists."

The US military has yet to discipline a single soldier for the killing of a journalist in Iraq. While some incidents are classified as "ongoing investigation[s]," most have been labeled self-defense or mistakes. Some are even classified as "justified," like the killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, shot near Abu Ghraib prison when his camera was allegedly mistaken for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Also "justified" was the killing of Al Arabiya TV's Mazen al-Tumeizi, blown apart by a US missile as he reported on a burning US armored vehicle on Baghdad's Haifa Street.

Just because the military won't admit to repeatedly shooting journalists in Iraq doesn't mean it hasn't happened. If you're still not convinced that journalists have been deliberately targeted in the past, then try reading Steve Weissman's multi-part story about investigating the issue. I asked my journalism professor what he thought this past week, and he replied that it was obvious that journalists have become a legitimate target in Iraq for U.S. troops. He went on to say that the media industry will not complain too much because it derives its advertising revenue from the corporations with ties to Washington; witness Eason Jordan's recent resignation over the mere suggestion that journalists have been deliberately targeted during a public argument. The targeting itself is intended to intimidate journalists in Iraq from going out into the field and covering the carnage that comes with this war, all that "collateral damage" that the administration doesn't want you or me to see. Giuliana Sgrena was one such journalist, one who had written numerous graphic reports about civilian deaths in Fallujah for an Italian socialist newspaper that has long opposed the occupation. The shooting of her car at the checkpoint was designed to send a message: That she should not have been out in the field in Iraq covering the war, because 1) she was writing anti-war reports that "undermined" the occupation and 2) she ultimately caused the Italian government to negotiate with the "insurgents." The death of Calipari was probably an unintended side effect of the violent signal the military wanted to send. The war in Iraq, then, has also been and continues to be a literal war on independent and critical journalism, which makes it all the more egregious.

The occupation should end immediately for these and other reasons, so make sure you protest somehow on March 19. The date will mark the end of the second year of occupation and the two-year anniversary of when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. I'll be out in downtown Austin, marching.

Correction (made above): The war started in March 2003, so this has been the second year of the occupation, and the third year is about to begin. What the heck.