bushgang turning Fallujah into "total institution" (sociologists term)

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL18Ak04.html


The failed US face of Fallujah


The chilling reality of what Fallujah has become is only now seeping out, as the US military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups such as the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting - only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting "in pockets" remains fierce (despite US pronouncements of success weeks ago) - and partly because of the difficulties military commanders have faced in attempting to prettify their ugly handiwork. Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least December 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.

With a few notable exceptions, the media have accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Fallujah. The ongoing fighting in the city, especially in "cleared" neighborhoods, is proving an embarrassment and so, while military spokesmen continue to announce American casualties, they now come not from the city itself but, far more vaguely, from "al-Anbar province", of which the city is a part. Fifty American soldiers died in the taking of the city; 20 more died in the following weeks - before the reports stopped. Iraqi civilian casualties remain unknown and accounts of what's happened in the city, except from the point of view of embedded reporters (and so of US troops) remain scarce. With only a few exceptions (notably Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post), American reporters have neglected to cull news from refugee camps or Baghdad hospitals, where survivors of the siege are now congregating.

-snip-

# Entry to and exit from the city will be restricted. According to Sattler, only five roads into the city will remain open. The rest will be blocked by "sand berms" - read mountains of earth that will make them impassible. Checkpoints will be established at each of the five entry points, manned by US troops, and everyone entering will be "photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards". Though Sattler reassured American reporters that the process would only take 10 minutes, the implication is that entry to and exit from the city will depend solely on valid identification cards properly proffered, a system akin to the pass-card system used during the apartheid era in South Africa.
# Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times. The ID cards will, according to Dahr Jamail's information, be made into badges that contain the individual's home address. This sort of system has no purpose except to allow for the monitoring of everyone in the city, so that ongoing US patrols can quickly determine whether someone is not a registered citizen or is suspiciously far from their home neighborhood.
# No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city. This is a "precaution against car bombs", which Sattler called "the deadliest weapons in the insurgent arsenal". As a district is opened to repopulation, the returning residents will be forced to park their cars outside the city and will be bused to their homes. How they will get around afterward has not been announced. How they will transport reconstruction materials to rebuild their devastated property is also a mystery.
# Only those Fallujans cleared through US intelligence vettings will be allowed to work on the reconstruction of the city. Since Fallujah is currently devastated and almost all employment will, at least temporarily, derive from whatever reconstruction aid the US provides, this means that the Americans plan to retain a life-and-death grip on the city. Only those deemed by them to be non-insurgents (based on notoriously faulty US intelligence) will be able to support themselves or their families.
# Those engaged in reconstruction work - that is, those who are working at all - in the city may be organized into "work brigades". The best information indicates that these will be military-style battalions commanded by the US or Iraqi armed forces. Here, as in other parts of the plan, the motive is clearly to maintain strict surveillance over males of military age, all of whom will be considered potential insurgents.

-snip-

It is not much of a reach to see that, at least in their fantasies, US planners would like to set up what sociologists call a "total institution". Like a mental hospital or a prison, Fallujah, at least as reimagined by the Americans, will be a place where constant surveillance equals daily life and the capacity to interdict "suspicious" behavior (however defined) is the norm. But "total institution" might be too sanitized a term to describe activities that so clearly violate international law as well as fundamental morality. Those looking for a descriptor with more emotional bite might consider one of those used by correspondent Pepe Escobar of Asia Times Online: either "American gulag" for those who enjoy Stalinist imagery or "concentration camp" for those who prefer the Nazi version of the same. But maybe we should just call it a plain old police (city-)state.
-snip-
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[anarchy1999]

1. I'm speechless. I've been off DU for almost four days. I come back

to this. I come back to Ticket Master selling tickets to the Parade Route for the inauguration parade to the A, B and C lists......

I'm speechless and brokenhearted and know now why I've stayed off DU for a number of days. "The Holidays" have been in years past tough enough, this is overwhelming. Keeping sanity is a tough grip. Celebrate? Celebrate what?

Love you all.
Anarchy1999

[fertilizeonarbusto]

2. Ah, Freedom on the March

n/t