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Diving Into Falluja
To Hell and Back with
S.B. Documentary-Maker Mark Manning
story by Nick Welsh • images by Mark Manning
Deep sea diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning asked if I had six minutes to spare — a strange request, considering we’d already spent two hours talking about Manning’s recent trip to Falluja, the heart of Iraq’s bloody Sunni triangle. Six minutes more was nothing, so Manning queued up a short video of footage he’s shot in Iraq and hit play. Accompanied by the Tom Waits lament “Day After Tomorrow,” the screen filled with images of bombed-out buildings, dead animals, uniformed men with guns, twisted metal, heaps of rubble, and everywhere children — a Greek chorus of flat-eyed Fallujan kids, bearing not so much silent witness as unspoken accusation. Manning said it was the searing looks from the kids that disturbed him most. More than once, recounted Manning, he had to look away — and this after traveling thousands of miles and risking his life to look at the war in Iraq through their eyes.
By delivering medical supplies to Iraqi refugees, Manning said he was able to conduct dozens of interviews — videotaped clandestinely — amassing some 25 hours worth of tape. Speaking with Iraqi citizens - men, women and children - who’d witnessed firsthand the fury of war, Manning asked: “What do you want to tell the American people? How can there be peace between our countries? What has your life been like since the war began?”
Their answers, Manning said, were nearly always the same: Peace was possible, the Iraqis told him, but time was running out. American citizens, said the Iraqis, need to wake up to what their government is doing. Manning was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja that described American forces deploying — in violation of international treaties — napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and “bunker-busting” shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.
Because of incidents like these, Manning said, the resistance has grown from about 5,000 to 250,000. “Everybody’s in the resistance. You don’t ask them directly; that wouldn’t be wise. But everybody’s in the resistance,” he said.
<www.independent.com >
Every single American should read this article. It is beautifully written and is quite an experience.
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