JO WILDING SYNC: Hi, this is a letter to Tony Blair to inform him that Julia and I are going to Iraq today. We’re going to gathering evidence on actual and likely breaches of the Geneva Conventions, because although the law is not the most important factor in the forthcoming war, if things were conducted in accordance with the Geneva Conventions there would be no war. There’s likely to be massive civilian casualties. So if you could just pass that on for me, I’d be very grateful. Thankyou.


JO WILDING SYNC: So I don’t know whether Tony Blair’s read the letter I sent him yesterday, or maybe he’s read it in the Financial Times!Dear Tony Blair I am leaving for Iraq today to act as a human rights observer. I shall be gathering evidence on breaches of the Geneva conventions and other humanitarian law for legal challenges being brought against the British government. I would draw your attention to the principle, under the fourth Geneva Convention, that the presence of a military objective within a largely civilian population does not deprive the population of its civilian character, whereby it is protected from attack. This war will cause the Iraqi people untold suffering. The country will be controlled through its debts for many decades to come, causing poverty and the crippling of Iraq’s economy far into the future. This war will not make the world a safer place.

It's quite surprising to see how normal life still is in Baghdad, because it just doesn't feel like there's about to be a war. And then you see the preparations people are makng, the food stock-piling and the water preparations and they are doing the best they can to prepare for war, but who knows whether it's going to be enough.
JO SYNC: This is a ration shop. There are 40,000 of them, and this is where Iraqi peole get their food rations from.So – they get the rice from the warehouses in these big sacks, and then they get broken up, so in there they’re weighing it into the appropriate sized shares.
VO: And Tony,I would draw your attention to the fact that 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, about 16 million people, are completely dependent on government food rations, which will not be distributed in the event of war.
JO SYNC: Picture this next time you’re in Sainsbury’s.You don’t have any choice, you just have this sack given to you. I mean Iraq was such a wealthy country before the sanctions.
VO:Malnutritional disease rates are high, particularly among children, who are dying of diarrhoeal illnesses in a country where, before sanctions, the main child health problem was obesity.

Perhaps even more frightening is the situation regarding water. Corrosion of pipes means that many people are still without clean water.
JO SYNC: They need wells because if the power stations are bombed, as they probably will be, the water pumping system won’t work so there won’t be water coming out of the taps.
VO:The likely effects on the civilian population are well documented. When such effects on the population are foreknown and inevitable, they cease to be collateral effects and become intentional, and are thus grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
JO SYNC: This is the student march from the Palestine Hotel to the UN headquarters in Baghdad. I’m just about to go down and join it. It’s a mixture of the international students that have come to this conference and the Iraqi students.

VO: Conspicuous by their absence from the peace march were 27 American students who had withdrawn at the last minute, apparently under pressure from the US State Department.
JO SYNC: They’re all chanting. That’s a pro-Saddma chant. I don’t know if you can hear it that clearly, but, you knowit’s just an expression of the fact that they don’t want to be governed by the US – unsurprisingly.
JO SYNC: I don’t know the words.VO: It was sobering to think that within a year some these students may have become resistance fighters.People talk to us when they know no one else can hear. CROWD: Down, down Bush! Down, down Bush!VO: The feeling is that they would prefer genuine democracy, greater freedom, but if the choice is Saddam or the USA, they will take Saddam.
VO: They do not believe, even when they speak freely, that the US and UK will be “liberating” them.
VO.: We wanted to talk to people openly about their real feelings about the war. One family bravely agreed and we slipped free of the government minders to meet them.
WOMAN SYNC: In 1991 it was the bombing on us and, you know, lots of houses damaged, and there’s no glasses on the windows, no water...It was really.... you know, you feel so angry. We thought that a chemical bombing will be thrown on us, so we got used to doing the – what do you call it? – masks.We used to do the masks by ourselves, you know because there’s no masks and you can buy it.Thanks goodness there was no chemicals on us, but we were frightened.Honestly, since we faced it in 1991, so we are not frightened anymore, honestly, because we suffered, so we are not frightened.
YOUNG MAN SYNC:We saw many people in England, in London, about 2 million, as I said, in the media, going and shouted against war – No War against Iraq, No War for Oil, No Blood for Oil.But I want to ask the people who are WITH the war, actually, and shouting for it. I want to ask them – why?
JO SYNC: I don’t know, before I came the TV company took me to have a debate with this woman, who’s son is in the Navy and he’s come over here, and she said:Well we have to save the people of Iraq.YOUNG MAN SYNC: From what?JO SYNC: From Saddam Hussein.We have to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction.And I said, well, how do you know, how do you know that you need to save them? How do you know they have these weapons? But because people get in the media, they say oh well that’s it.And it’s just the same line that you hear all the time – we have to this, we have to that, and you say – why?YOUNG MAN SYNC: So I’m going to tell this woman – leave us to manage our own business. If we are harmed here we are gong to liberate ourselves. Why do you make yourselves tired to cross the oceans and come to a strange land that you don’t know.Spending lots of money, for...Do you love us, to liberate us?
VO: Faith Fippinger had volunteered to be a Human Shield, a group of internationals committed to occupying essential facilities in Iraq to try to protect them from American bombing.
FAITH SYNC:We’re at the Ora Ora oil refinery.There are close to 3000 families, employees here. This is the community where they live. These are there wonderful wonderful children. Our house is kind of in the middle of the community, and we love being here. They’ve been so wonderful to all of us.This is why I’m here – to stop war – to stop the devastation of these people.War can’t happen. There’s no nation in the world that has the right to destroy another people. Yesterday I was with the babies at the nursery.They’re our future. We can’t destroy them.
FAITH SYNC: Did you write your name?VO: Faith was later jailed in the US for her anti-war activities.
VO:And TonyAccording to the Fourth Geneva Convention it is prohibited to attack or destroy objects indispensable to the civilian population.
FAITH SYNC:I am an American, and I have been so welcomed here. They understand that not all americans are for this evil thing that is about to happen any day now.
VO:We started hearing thudding and roaring outside, and we all went and stood on the balcony and up on the roof, and it was all just flashes everywhere, like the whole sky was sparkling with anti-aircraft fire.Just completely surreal.
VO:As the bombing started, we went to investigate incidents where civilians had been killed or severely injured. Day after day homes and lives were being shattered.

An early atrocity was the attack on the Al-Shaab marketplace. That morning all the shops were open and the market was busy. No one could think of a military target nearby.
Mohammed is a local garage-owner. He had left his shop for a minute and saw a plane flying over firing two missiles.
MOHAMMED AL-ZUBEDI SYNC: When the missiles hit one of our guys was under that car.It burst into flames and killed him.Four people in the restaurant died.There are no military bases nearby.No missile launchers, nothing.Why did we get attacked?We are losing too many lives.Why are we going through all this?
VO: In total nearly 20 people were killed in this attack. The US military blamed the incident on Iraqi aircraft missiles. They even tried to suggest it was a deliberate attack for propaganda purposes. GUY SYNC: This is the Quran, the holy book of Islam.
VO: The hospital was piling up with civilian casualties. Many, like this boy, were the victims of cluster bombs.MAN SYNC: It was a container.Of cluster bombs.It looks like a trailer, it looks like this.It exploded in the air.MAN in headdress SYNC:I beg you to send out our message to anyone who cares about humanity.VO: The boy's mother and all 7 of his brothers and sisters had been killed.
VO: And TonyI am aware that powerful countries such as Britain and the US feel able to flout humanitarian law with impunity, for the lack of institutions able to enforce them. Much humanitarian law arose from the wars of the 20th century in the hope that, if we must have wars, we could learn to conduct ourselves better. To ignore all that is a betrayal of all that people went through in those wars.
ANGRY DOCTOR: This is obviously a crime. Why should people take such punishment?Where are the United Nations?What crime has this country committed?What has this old man done?Has he attacked Bush?
V.O. The Iraqis call the sandstorm the orange weather.Some say it is on their side. It’s not even 5 o’clock but it’s dark outside. I half imagined the war being like this, the sky staying dark all the time, but without the orange. The darkness and the grime and the fierce cold wind lend an unnecessary sense of apocalypse to the flooded craters, broken trees, gaping windows and wrecked houses where the bombs have hit.
VO.: Yet another family had suffered an American bombing attack. The al-Jabouris had five members of their family injured and some more who were missing or dead.
YOUNG WOMAN SYNC:All of the girls have been hit by shrapnel.FATHER SYNC OOS: Where is Nahda?MOTHER (Fatima) SYNC: She’s in the operating theatre.She’s wounded in the leg.Where is Zahra?We don’t know where she is.I saw her carried in in a blanket and I don’t know where they took her.YOUNG WOMAN SYNC:Where are they?I don’t know where they are.There was only Nahda and me and they got us out.I felt nothing except being thrown into the garden.
MOTHER SYNC: I saw her in front of me. I don’t know if she’s dead.

MOTHER SYNC:We are just living in a village. There’s no targets near us.Just cows, donkeys, chickens. What do you call them in English?
VO:14-year-old Nahda was seriously injured.
My head hurts.Why did he do this to me, why?Why did he do this to me, Mum?
MOTHER SYNC:Why?We are not armed. There’s no force other than God with us.They attack this innocent child here.Could he harm the American people?He should just be playing. He can’t even play.Why? Truly, why?I just want one convincing reason.If you are doves of peace, then fly off.Take this message to the world.Ask them why they allow things like this to happen.
VO:Khalid, the young man seen here, was distraught over the fate of his new wife Nahda. They had been married for just one week.
She had been buried under the rubble of their devastated house.
VO.:The next morning we went to investigate how such carnage could have happened. We visited the farmhouse the Al-Jabouris had fled to to try to find safety from the bombing of Baghdad.
The house looked as if it had only ever been a bungalow until, clambering through the hallway, we came to the stairs, leading up to the naked sky. An American missile had removed the entire top storey. In the kitchen lay half-empty sacks of food rations and a bowl full of green beans for a family meal that never happened.The blast had made the childrens' ears bleed. There was nothing which could explain the attack: nothing around which even looked like a target that, perhaps, the pilot might have been aiming for. It made no sense.
Khalid's brother told us the plane had been flying overhead for a while, before attacking in broad daylight at 9am.
Which direction did they come from? BROTHER: From above. The plane was circling for a while and then it attacked us.
Who died?
BROTHER: My sister, my brother's wife and a young girl.My brother and his wife got married about a week ago.
VO:Now all that remained of them were three coffins and the wedding invitations scattered among the rubble.
JO SYNC:We’re in the town of Dialla Bridge, and we’re trying to find the house that we visited during the war, after we met the family that lived in it in the hospital when it had just been bombed.So I’m not exactly sure where we are but – In-sh’Allah – we’re on our way to their house.
VO:A year had now passed since the US invasion. The plan was to see how the Al-Jabouri family had fared after the American takeover of Iraq. Had they received any assistance or compensation since an American missile had killed and maimed them?
JO SYNC:I think it's this one just here. We’re going to go and see.
YOUNG MAN:This house was destroyed by an American missile.A lot of people round here were killed during the war.Most of the families were killed.
V.O. We had come to the wrong house. And now we saw that the bombing of people's homes was not just one isolated incident, even in the sparsely populated countryside.
OLD MAN:17 people died here.TRANSLATOR:Do you have family here?OLD MAN:Yes. My family and my brother’s family among them.My nephew is in Britain. Here they cut his family to pieces.This boy is the only member of the family left.
JO SYNC:He said there was an army base about three kilometres away and that was probably what he was kind of circling around.17 members of the family were killed. Most of his family, most of his brother’s family. And they said that no one has been to ask about them until us now. No one’s been to offer them help, nothing.It’s not good.
VO: At last we found the Al-Jabouris’ house.
JO SYNC:Are we all right to go in?
V.O. I was really anxious to know how the family was holding up after such a tragedy, especially Khalid who we'd seen grieving in the hospital over the loss of both his sister and his wife.
JO SYNC:Does he have any idea what they might have been aiming at when they hit the house?V.O. Khalid showed me the only pictures he had of them.
JO SYNC:This is Nahda – she was Khalid’s new wife.JO SYNC:That was where Nahda was?I remember seeing the wedding invitations, for his and Nahda’s wedding, in the rubble.
JO SYNC:This is Hana, his sister.
UNCLE SYNC:Since the situation has changed no one in authority understands you.Especially the new militias.They wander the streets from one area to another.Who they are, nobody knows.Even our own people will misunderstand us.
JO SYNC:They’re really scared. They’re really scared of being seen with foreigners, because they say that if you’re seen with foreigners people will say are you working with the Americans, how did they know about you? Why did they come to your house? So they were pleased that we’d come and pleased that we’d come to ask after them, and that we’d remembered them, but they were just scared.And they were talking about local militias, and about someone could tell the Coalition forces that you’re resistance, or someone could tell the resistance that you’re an informer, and that that’s happened to other people around.He said that weren’t told what to tell us before when we met them in the hospital, and they were less afraid then than they are now.
VO: Two weeks later this area became a resistance stronghold and a number of foreign journalists were killed just driving through.
VO: The war had left so many children traumatised. It was this that gave me the idea of bringing a circus to Iraq.
JO SYNC:We're at a school in Sadr City , which is the poorest part of Baghdad. We’re going to do a circus show here. We may have to do it twice if there are too many kids.But this is the Black Zone.The CPA where all the Americans and all the administrators are is the Green Zone, and it’s completely fortressed off. The rest of Baghdad is the Red Zone, and this is the Black Zone. (laughs)
VO:As part of the circus project, we set up links between schools in Iraq and Britain.
JO SYNC: There is a school in Leeds in the UK which wants to set up a link with the school here, so that the children can be communicating with each other.
JO SYNC:This time last year we were just waiting for the war to start.Do you remember the day that Ahmed came up the stairs and knocked on the door of our apartment:“I am sorry, the bombers are coming.”“No, no. We’re sorry. They’re our bombers.”
CIRCUS GUY SYNC:This one’s for America!
JO SYNC:I’d never walked on stilts in my life till I came to Baghdad, and I wasn’t intending to be in the circus, I was just intending to be the coordinator.But Amer arrived with two sets of stilts and got me to walk on them in our living room, which was a bit difficult with the fan up in the middle of the ceiling.
VO: The idea was just to get them laughing, and to displace the violent images in their minds with something vivid and fun.
JO SYNC:So the last sketch is, I’m a clown and I’m kind of doing the cleaning. I’ve got a cardboard box and it’s actually a magical music box and when you open it it starts making music.
JO SYNC:Lewis is the big bullying boss clown and he comes and shouts at me every time I’m having fun.
In the end he jumps up and down on it and destroys it.All the kids usually just end up being completely on my side, although they do laugh when he jumps up and down on the box because it’s funny.
And then they’re really pleased when I open the bin that he’s stuffed the music box into, the music box still works. We open the lid of the bin. It plays music again. Skipping off all happy. So basically it’s about standing up to bullies and going “piss off”. The teachers quite like it – “very educational, yes” – (laughs) – I’ve never been a good influence before.
VO: Within a month of this show, these kids and their families were being attacked by US helicopter gunships.
VO:We often took the circus to a refugee camp in one of the poorest areas of Baghdad.JO SYNC:This area’s called Al-Shuala, which means “The Flame”, and just over there is where we’re going. It’s a camp of about 125 families.This is the marketplace here, and on a warm day it smells pretty grim.
VO:This time we’d come to see the progress with the drainage project in the camp. It had been built and paid for by the refugees themselves with the help of donors from the UK.We’ve been here quite a few times now with the circus, so the kids all know us. They’re really nice people here, and they’ve kept the community feel from when they were living in the south. There’s still the same sort of tribal associations and everything.
VO:During the war these families had fled from the south after their home-town was taken over by militia gangs, making it one of the most lawless areas of Iraq. When the British arrived, they left the militia in charge. JO SYNC:I’ve got my little tribe of girls, look.
VO:The refugees had asked for protection for the camp from the American authorities, but all they received was this piece of paper.
JO SYNC:When we first came here, there was a huge pool of waste water and sewage, just lying in the camp over here. They had a plan to build a drain, but they didn’t have the money. It was going to cost them quite a bit.So we sent out an email explaining their project, and people sent the money for them to do it. In a couple of days we raised about three times as much as we needed for the drain.You see the reed hut just there. It was reflected. It was standing right on the edge of the water so you could see a perfect reflection of the hut, and now it’s gone.
VO:To understand what the people here needed we went to speak to the community leaders. Too often the US authorities had failed to do this, gravely insulting the community.
LEADER 1 SYNC:We want the school built, God willing.And the country to be stable.LEADER 2 SYNC:America is robbing us.Iraq has lots of blessings, but they are destroying this country.LEADER 1 SYNC:America, Bush and Saddam are all the same.
VO:This was a reconstruction project between ordinary people, without the US contractors Bechtel, and Halliburton being involved and taking profits. So in an indirect way, projects like this are a challenge to the occupation and who knows what seeds we plant for the future?JO SYNC:The idea is they roll the ball around the outside of the parachute.And it’s quite good for cooperation skills and communication because they have to work together to get it go round.It doesn’t generally work (laughs)And then they just play parachute football, which is a much better game in my opinion.
VO:By Spring of 2004, conflict with the Americans was rapidly escalating.GUY ON MARCH SYNC:Go faster, go faster.JO SYNC:This is the parades of Shia people for Ashura. It’s a period of mourning for the imam Hussein. They have grieving music the whole way through the period.DRIVER SYNC:Up here, the Iraqi flagAnd some Shia dressed in black.JO SYNC:The Shia have this as a really important festival, and the Sunni don’t like it at all.So whenever there’s a parade there’s a lot of men with Kalashnikovs about, because they’re all worried there’s going to be attacks on the parade.
V.O. Our next journey, to the city of Fallujah, was the most dangerous of all.Fallujah was now under siege from the US army.
JO SYNCWe're taking medical supplies to Fallujah, if that proves to be possible, and if there are still civilians waiting at the checkpoints trying to get out of Fallujah before the Americans flatten it, then we’ll try and bring back as many as we can.And the reason that I’m on the bus is that they feel it’s more likely to get the supplies into Fallujah escorted by the white Western face.I’d be lying if I said I felt totally sure about it.
JO SYNC (OOS):Has anyone got anything else white that we can wave?GUIDE ON BUS SYNC:Don’t wave a white flag.You’d be shot.JO SYNC:Oh marvellous!GUIDE ON BUS SYNC:I’m totally serious. A white flag is a shooting target.JO SYNC:Why?GUIDE ON BUS SYNC:Because they’ll think you’re resistance.JO SYNC:Oh – the Americans.
V.O. The first US army siege on Fallujah came after four private security agents for an American contractor were killed driving through the city centre.
V.O. Rana, a translator, had volunteered to come with us.RANA SYNC:These are the small villages near Fallujah, so we are really close to Fallujah.JO SYNC (OOS):Hey Rana, do you ever feel like a tour guide?RANA SYNC:Haha. Maybe.We are near the battlefield. Everybody, put on your flak jackets. We are in the battlefield!
VO: All along the route we saw signs of heavy fighting.
VO: Lorries were being attacked and anything carrying supplies was looted.
AMERICAN VOICE SYNC:Keep the cameras down!
VO:At the checkpoints, the US Army was now stopping all men under the age of 45 from leaving Fallujah. US SOLDIER SYNC:As soon as we get through with the bus, you all get to go.
VO:The strategy of going in with Westerners got the bus and the medical supplies through the checkpoints.
VO:All roads in and out of city had been sealed, so we had to take a back route in.
RANA SYNC:So don’t make any movement. There are snipers everywhere.
JO SYNC:I’m not quite sure how you do be careful of a sniper. Generally you don’t even see them before they’ve shot you.

VO:Soon after the occupation, US Marines occupied a school in Fallujah. Parents demonstrated, demanding the school re-opened, and the Marines shot dead 17 unarmed protestors. This led to the armed resistance in Fallujah.
VO: We were met by the local fighters. Our access had been cleared in advance.JO SYNC:That was our welcome to Fallujah, and I’m very glad those guns were not pointing at us.
VO:Earlier in the day, US snipers had shot to kill this ambulance's driver.
MEKHI - NGO WORKER SYNC:They shot the ambulance, and shot the driver after they checked his car, inspected his car, and knew that he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him.And then they shot the ambulance. Now I have no ambulance to evacuate over 20 wounded people.
VO:We piled the medicines in the corridor and the boxes were torn open straightaway.It wasn’t a hospital at all but a makeshift clinic. The American military had taken over Fallujah's main hospital, so teams of volunteer doctors opened day clinics and houses around the city to treat the hundreds of casualties. The clinics were hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with serious injuries.
MEKHI – NGO WORKER SYNC:We don’t have any operations, because it’s not clean here.JO SYNC:There’s no electricity here either.GUY from NGO:No, there’s no electricity. It’s a generator by the way. They cut the electricity for about five days now.
VO:100s of families were now trapped in their homes, in terror of the snipers watching over the streets from rooftops and mosques.
MEKHI – NGO WORKER SYNC:They said there is a ceasefire. They said 12 o’clock. People went out to do some shopping. Everybody who went out was shot and this place was full, and half of them were dead.
MORTUARY IMAM SYNC:This one is the martyr Hussam.This one, he’s very young. His name is Ali and he’s 18 years old.This is Hussein Mahmood.This one has no identification.All these in one day.All these in one day – 8th April.16 martyrs in one day, in one day.In a period of four hours, from midnight to 4am.And yesterday another five, and this morning three.And since yesterday they’re saying it’s a ceasefire.
VO:The sniper casualties kept on coming in.
JO SYNC:This lady has a bullet wound to her abdomen and one to her leg.
RANA SYNC:She said there was shooting in our neighbourhood, and we said that we should leave our house, because it was heavy shooting.So we decided to hold white flags.So she was in front of her house, and then in front of the door of the house they shot her.
JO SYNC:A sniper.
VO:The lights go out, the fan stops and in the sudden quiet someone holds up a battery torch so that the doctor can carry on operating.
VO:After days of the siege, people in Fallujah were desperate to leave. Many did not have their own transport and relied on volunteers ferrying them out.
VO:A family had been shot in their car by a US sniper as they tried to flee their home.OLD LADY 1 SYNC:I wish Allah would take it out on them.They forced us to go out.OLD LADY 2 SYNC:My God, six days we’ve been stuck in our house.Only just now our neighbours put us in the car.A round of bullets hit us, my God, my God.It was a nightmare.The Americans were standing above me.And then, my God, my God.
VO:The youngest boy, aged only 10, was seriously wounded in the head.
His 18-year-old sister had been shot in the neck.
DOCTOR SYNC:We haven’t even got a sucker vacuum.
VO:Brother and sister were rushed to Baghdad.RELATIVE SYNC:I swear I told them not to go out.VO:But this was not enough to save them, and they both died en route.
VO:We managed to take 6 injured people to the main hospital in Baghdad.
VO: The young boy and his sister are buried in martyr's graves in the Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad.
Almost the entire population of Fallujah are now refugees living in desperate conditions.I have seen just a few of the victims of Tony Blair’s war, and collected a little of the evidence of the breaking of humanitarian laws.The world has no institutions willing or able to enforce humanitarian laws against powerful countries or hold their leaders to account.
VO:Tony“Joint enterprise” means that you and George Bush share criminal responsibililty for a war you planned together.
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