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Do-Gooders Confront Fallujah Snipers Who Donât Seem to Understand English
From Jihad Unspun, written by Donna Mulhearn, an Austrialian who went to Iraq as a human shield and went back last Nov to start a house for street kids in Baghdad..... We talked about how we could help. In the last mission a few days earlier, our friends had been successful in negotiating with soldiers in getting wounded people off the street and evacuating families from areas of cross-fire. The doctors asked if we could accompany an ambulance packed with food and medical supplies across town to a hospital that had been cut off. It was in the US controlled section of the town so it was not able to receive aid because of constant sniper fire. The doctors figured our foreign nationality could make a difference in negotiating the safe passage of the ambulance with the soldiers. It might seem a strange and unnecessary mission to help an ambulance drive from one place to another - anywhere else in the world itâs a basic thing, but this is Fallujah and this is war and nothing is as it should be, despite guarantees laid out in the Geneva Convention. The last time an ambulance went to this part of town it was shot at by US troops. I know this because two of my friends were in the ambulance at the time, trying to reach a pregnant woman who had gone into pre-mature labor. They didnât reach her, but the bullet holes in the ambulance are a testament to the fact they tried. So we packed the ambulance with supplies and got in the back. With me were three other foreigners: Jo, Dave and Beth - two British, an American and an Aussie, a good representation of young people from the "Coalition of the Willing" trying to counter-balance the military intervention of our countries with loving intervention. We donned bright blue surgical gowns and held our passports in our hands. A couple of medical staff were with us, as well as the drivers in the front. We drove slowly through the parts of Fallujah controlled by Iraqi fighters then stopped in a side-street that faced a main road. We could not go any further because the main road was under watch and control of US snipers. They had developed a habit of shooting at anything that moved. So we parked the ambulance in the side street and the four of us got out with the task of approaching the American soldiers, communicating with them and getting permission for the ambulance to continue to the hospital. The area was completely quiet. The silence was unnerving. We prepared the loudspeaker, put our hands in the air and held our passports high. Before we ventured onto the main road we called out a message from the side street. "Hello? American soldiers! We are a group of international aid workers. We are unarmed. We are asking permission to transport an ambulance full of medical supplies to the hospital. Can you hear us?" The reply was just a chilling silence. We repeated the message. Silence again. We looked at each other. Perhaps the soldiers were too far away to hear us? We had to walk onto the main road and take the risk that we would be clearly visible as unarmed civilians, and approach the soldiers with our hands in the air. I took a deep breathe and for a split-second thought that this was probably the most dangerous thing I had ever done in my life. As I exhaled, my heart gave me strength: I looked at the others and could tell we were all thinking the same thing: "If I donât do this, then who will?" Their courage inspired me as we all stepped out on the road together. We walked slowly with our arms raised in the air. My eyes scanned the tops of the buildings for snipers. We didnât know where they were set up so we walked in the direction of the hospital. We repeated the message over and over again on the loudspeaker, in the silence it would have been heard for hundreds of metres. It echoed eerily throughout the neighbourhood. I turned my head briefly and just in time. In the distance I saw two white flashes, then the loud bang of gunshots and the ugly realisation that they were shooting into our backs. It all happened so fast: ducking, hearing the whizz of the bullets above our heads, diving for cover off the side of the road against a wall. We huddled there for a moment behind a bush, then someone cried: "Letâs go". We crawled along the ground, at one stage I was walking low with my back hunched. In the scramble I fell. My hands broke my fall onto sharp gravel on the rough ground. I felt the sting of pain and could see the blood, but I had no time to stop and check what happened. We ended up in someoneâs back yard then made our way back to the ambulances by jumping fences and going through gates. My hands were covered with blood, my left foot cut and my passport was stained red, leaving an ever-constant reminder of the episode. We re-grouped, but we didnât want to give up. Now we knew where the soldiers were, we could walk towards them. We decided to go out again. Same drill: we called out the message first, then stepped out onto the road, this time facing the direction the gunfire had come from. "Hello! American soldiers. We are foreign aid workers- British, Australian, American. We are not armed. We are asking permission to transport an ambulance on this road." My injured hand was shaking as I held my passport now damp with my blood. I tried to work out what I was feeling: fear, anger, determination. I still donât know. We had only repeated the message twice and walked a few metres when our answer came. Two more bullets. By this stage I think I entered a state of shock. I had been shot at, not once, but twice by American soldiers after politely asking permission to transport aid to a hospital. I guess the answer was âNoâ. Jo got angry. We all did. We stepped back to the corner but Jo continued on the loud speaker. âDo you know it is against the Geneva Convention to fire at unarmed civilians and at ambulances?" she cried. "How would you feel if your sister was trapped in a hospital under siege without food or water?" .... We bundled in the back of the ambulance. It was a handy place to be with deep cuts and grazes on my hand. I bowed my head as someone tended to my wounds. .... PPS: Some people have asked: "how can you be sure it was American soldiers who shot at you?". The answer is that the area we were in was under the control of US soldiers for at least five days. Iraqi fighters did not have had access to the area the shots came from. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-28 |
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