Asheville marches against war
Police arrests ‘brutal’, park at Pack Square closed ‘indefinitely’

By Nicholas Holt and AGR staff

Asheville, North Carolina, Mar. 26 (AGR)-- On Thursday, Mar. 20, the day following President George W. Bush’s commencement of the US-led war on Iraq, citizens of Asheville, like those across the country and the world, took to the streets in protest.

In response to a call for a walk-out from work and a long-standing plan for a public gathering downtown the day the war started, hundreds gathered at Pack Square with signs and banners calling for peace.

A varied sample of Asheville residents stood together for peace: people dressed in torn black t-shirts stood next to people in suits, high school students with nursing home residents, and parents with children.

In the afternoon, protesters marched through downtown until they were intercepted by police, who arrested a number of demonstrators in a manner characterized by many as violent, excessive, and brutal.

In the late morning, five individuals later identified as Asheville High School students, were arrested after locking themselves down at the entrance to Asheville’s Federal Building to protest the war.

More than two hundred assembled at Pack Square around noon, some honoring the call for a strike, others simply to make known their objection to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war.

“I’ve got a daughter due on the 28th, and more than ever, more than at any time in my life, I’m thinking about what I represent and who I am, and the world that I want to see her live in,” said Kevin, a 35-year-old Asheville resident, when asked what had brought him to the rally for peace. “I don’t see any room for aggression. I believe it boils down to a principled decision. Either you believe in handling things with violence, whether it’s whipping the shit out of your kid every time they do something wrong, or beating your dog, or whatever.

“I can’t go along with it. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and there’s always better ways to handle something,” he said.

Downtown restaurant Rosetta’s Kitchen was closed, and a sign on the door read: “We decided to close today in solidarity with the nationwide general strike called in opposition to war against Iraq.”

“For the record, the employees were striking,” explained restaurant owner Rosetta Rzany, who was arrested during the protest march. “The called and warned me of this the night before.”

Long time Asheville resident Catherine Taylor, 26, explained, “I’m here because I have a cousin over there and I have some boys I went to school with over there, and they don’t see it as a justified war.”

Bush, she said, “is not a bigger man for sending other people’s children to die.”

Taylor, a teacher at the Bell School for People Under Six, attended the rally with three of her coworkers as suggested by their boss.

“She wants to be here, but she can’t, so she sent us instead,” she said.

A reporter for the Gannett corporation’s Asheville Citizen-Times was witnessed badgering and arguing with the protesters.

“This is murder,” said Kans Maré, a local writer. “There’s no other word for it. We’re committing murder.

“It’s a shame,” he added. “We are dishonoring everybody who’s ever fought for our wars, right now, with what we’re doing in Iraq.”

Demonstrators chanted, “Exxon, Mobil, BP, Shell, take your war and go to hell!” and sang the chorus to Edwin Star’s “War.”

“War! What is it good for?” the demonstrators shouted.

“Absolutely nothing!” they answered.

The protesters also held banners reading “Don’t use 9-11 as an excuse,” “Silly Bush, bombs are for terrorists,” and simply “Shame!”

Many drivers honked their car horns, or raised clenched fists or peace signs in support of the protesters.

A small number of drivers voiced their disapproval with raised middle-fingers, cries of “Hippies!” and one man blared the Star Spangled Banner from his truck stereo while staring straight ahead. A small group of pro-war demonstrators stood across the street beneath the Pack Square sign.

By late afternoon, the crowd grew to close to 600, and shortly after 6pm, many of the protesters moved into the street.

As the marchers moved down Broadway and onto College St., they were trailed by police cars from which sirens sounded and speakers blared “Move onto the sidewalk!”

Marchers moved through the streets and were eventually herded by numerous police cars down Walnut St., where police threw up barricades and began making arrests.

“There was an arrest being made in the middle of the street,” recalled AGR Editor Séan Marquis, who was himself arrested while taking photographs. “There was a man lying down and he was not offering any resistance and there were several officers on him.

“I stepped out into the street to get a photograph. There was no traffic because the police had already blocked off all the roads. There were other photographers in the street and as I was photographing the man being dragged away, an officer grabbed my arm and began to lead me away. I identified myself as a journalist, said that I was taking photographs for the Global Report. He said ‘I don’t care, you were in the street.’”

Bill Nolan, a 70-year-old former Jesuit priest, said he was protesting on Thursday because “This particular effort by the United States is immoral and illegal. Theologically and historically this is a mess, terrible.”

Nolan was arrested after he stepped into the street to complain to an officer that a group of policemen were being overly aggressive in their arrest of a female protester. “I felt that as a citizen, and I’m an elder citizen, I’ve got the right to tell these guys that their behavior is not correct. I’ll do it again, if it happens.”

Although some of those arrested were in the street when taken by the police, eye-witnesses and video recordings of the event indicate that many of those arrested were clearly taken from the sidewalks.

“I was in the streets and I was basically skipped,” said one demonstrator, who said that an officer went so far as to touch his arm, but instead moved on to grab someone off the sidewalk. “They were looking through the crowd. That’s what it felt like. And I don’t know what they were looking for.”

In one video record, Lt. John Kirkpatrick is seen pointing out a woman who is standing still on the sidewalk. Police immediately moved to arrest the woman.

Kirkpatrick is also seen with other officers dragging one protester off the sidewalk by his hair.

Others were thrown up against a wall, thrown to the street, put in choke holds, and sat on by police.

The Asheville Police Department did not respond to an AGR request for information about the arrests. According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, police made 23 arrests.

Protesters then moved back to Pack Square, where they were dispersed by police at 10pm. A woman remaining in solidarity with those arrested refused to leave the area and was herself taken to jail.

Most of those arrested were released between midnight and 1am. Most face charges of obstructing the street and resisting arrest.

Smaller daily gatherings of citizens opposed to the war on Iraq continued at Pack Square on a daily basis until Wednesday, when the police and Asheville Parks and Recreation Department announced in a press release that the park surrounding the Vance Monument was “closed to all pedestrians for an indefinite period.”

As of press time, police barricades now completely block pedestrian approach to the park.

Police have also issued a request that demonstrators opposed to the war on Iraq now gather at Pritchard Park and that those in support of the war gather at City-Council Plaza.

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‘Shock and Awe’ invasion met
with anger and resistance in Iraq

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Mar. 26 (AGR)— Fires lit the night sky over the capital of Iraq as bombs struck Baghdad at dawn last Thursday, less than two hours after US President George W. Bush’s deadline expired for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war. Soon after, the United States launched a ferocious, around-the-clock aerial assault on targets in Baghdad and other cities on Friday while invading ground troops penetrated 100 miles into Iraq. The Baghdad strikes were accompanied by aerial assaults on the northern cities of Kirkuk, Mosul and Tikrit — a campaign of 1,500 bombs during the first 24 hours.

Bush approved the cruise missile attack after receiving intelligence information that Hussein and his two sons were sleeping at a specified location. Fires raged inside Hussein’s palace compound and thick smoke from blossoming mushroom clouds enveloped the Iraqi capital.

“There had been nothing reassuring about the nightmare of the bombing. It was terrifying,” said IPS journalist Nasreen Al-Rafiq. “If President George Bush thought he is rescuing these ordinary Iraqis from Saddam, and that they would be forever grateful to the United States for this, he might just be making the greatest mistake that any American President has made.”

More than 200 civilians have been injured in the US-led bombing of Baghdad, Iraq’s information minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf said Saturday. The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that at least 100 people had been injured in the initial air strikes.

“In hospitals there are 207 people, women, children and other civilians. And we’ll take you if you like to visit them and see for yourselves,” al-Sahaf told journalists. “(US Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld said that they attacked military installations. We will show you the 207 military positions they hit lying in the hospitals.”

“This is real terrorism. Innocent people are sitting in their homes and bombs fall on their heads. I ask America, isn’t this terrorism?” said Hulayel al-Jekhafi, whose house was damaged in an attack on the Qadissiya neighborhood where six houses were demolished and 12 damaged in the raids.

In Washington, Bush announced, “We’re making progress” toward the goal of liberating Iraq, just after he sent lawmakers formal notification of his decision to send troops into combat.

In the heaviest bombing Baghdad has suffered in more than 20 years of war, from high-rise buildings, shops and homes came the thunder of crashing glass as shock waves swept across the Tigris river in both directions. Minute after minute the missiles came in.

On Sunday, Iraq’s state-run television broadcast a speech by Hussein. Despite a series of punishing US bombing attacks on Baghdad, a relaxed-looking Hussein mentioned the resistance of Iraqi forces in the south in an apparent attempt to dispel suspicions that he was killed or injured.

Quick victory in dispute

But one week into the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq, it is becoming apparent that the war coalition comprising the United States, Britain and Australia will probably not enjoy the luxury of a swift, smooth, decisive, victory — despite its overwhelming military superiority over Saddam Hussein’s forces.

The reported surrender of a whole division, perhaps two, of Iraqi troops late last week now appears to have been grossly exaggerated. A few senior officers and about 2,000 troops —far from the 8,000 originally reported— are now said to have surrendered.

The United States pledged a virtually bloodless, extremely swift war, its calculation being that it would inflict a decapitating strike on Iraq’s leadership. The invasion coalition, already politically isolated for violating the United Nations Charter, however, has been jolted by a series of early setbacks. Disturbing evidence is emerging that clusters of civilian houses were bombed in supposedly “high-precision” raids. Many of the injured are children: those under 15 account for half of Iraq’s population.

Perhaps the most worrisome military development for the war coalition is the resistance it encountered in virtually every town during its advance toward Baghdad. Thus, three days after Umm Qasr in the south was officially announced captured, US and British forces, backed by airpower and tanks, are still battling for full control over it.

No less significant have been battles in the towns of Nasiriya and Najaf, around Basra, and now Karbala.

The advance through the Iraqi desert took a heavy toll on the Western forces. After three days of routing Iraqi forces, US soldiers had a series of sobering engagements. Washington’s hopes that US-led forces would be welcomed into Iraq as liberators bled into the sand on Sunday, the fourth day of war, as Iraqi troops fought back with determination and guerrilla tactics. Allied forces confronted a shaken but combative foe in their advance through southern Iraq, suffering more combat deaths and the first US prisoners of war in an ambush. On the third day of the ground war, any expectation that Iraqi defenders would simply fold was gone.

Marines operating in Nasiriyah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, were caught in the ambush Sunday. Several soldiers who came under fire in that attack were either killed or captured by Iraqis, who later displayed bodies and five prisoners on television.

In addition to the ambush, the Marines found themselves in a six-hour gun battle there Sunday that ended only when fighters and attack helicopters were summoned to help. US military officials said ten Marines were killed and at least 64 were wounded in the fighting.

After Sunday’s fighting at Nasiriyah, US military officials conceded that they may have underestimated the resolve of Iraqi troops and paramilitary units and overestimated the greeting US troops would receive from the population.

One unit of Iraqi regular troops trapped US troops in what was described as a phony surrender, and some reportedly “disguised themselves in civilian clothes.”

Nevertheless, the images beamed around the world of US soldiers in stunned captivity, or dead in a makeshift morgue in southern Iraq, cast some doubt on the assumptions underpinning the US approach. Pentagon officials had expected US troops to be greeted almost universally as liberators, at least in the Shiite south. Instead, soldiers are not being welcomed as liberators but are often confronted with hatred.

A sudden change in plans

On Monday, forward elements of the US invasion force pushed to within 50 miles of Baghdad, heading toward what was heralded to be a potentially decisive battle with Iraq’s Republican Guard. The plans for a dramatic sweep into Iraq’s capital were suddenly aborted though, due to fierce sandstorms, but more importantly the startling realization by war planners that they had underestimated the reach of Iraqi resistance.

US planes bombed heavily to weaken Iraqi defenses, but a formation of advanced Army Apache helicopter gunships that joined the attack was forced to turn back after running into a hail of small-arms fire. All 32 helicopters sustained some damage, Army officials said.

US artillery joined the warplanes in raining down explosives throughout the day around Karbala manned by Republican Guard divisions assigned to block approaches to the Iraqi capital.

One of the Army’s AH-64D Apache Longbows was shot down by an elderly peasant farmer and a number of others abandoned their targets.

The two-man crew from the Apache that went down was captured and displayed on Iraqi television without apparent injuries. That day, the Pentagon identified 11 of its personnel killed, and US Central Command acknowledged at least another 10 Marines killed in action near Nasiriyah on Sunday.

In Washington, US officials condemned video footage taken of the missing US troops as “a violation of the Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war.”

Under the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to parade prisoners of war on television or put them on display for the public, but a Red Cross official in Geneva, Florian Westphal, also pointed out that the coalition side has also shown television footage of POWs.

British forces also had to fight to regain control of two strategic areas — the Rumaila oil fields and the Faw peninsula in far southeastern Iraq — that at first had been listed as captured by US and British troops in the first two days of the war. The Iraqi resistance in the oil fields challenges US claims that southern Iraq is quickly falling under allied control.

In the northern end of the Faw peninsula, the Queen’s Dragoon Guard reported encountering a battalion of armor or mechanized infantry and engaged it in battle; they then pulled back and called in air support.

The battle in the oil fields was so fierce that an escorted tour for journalists was canceled by military officials, and civilian firefighters who were trying to put out eight well fires fled the area.

By Tuesday evening, allied forces announced that they had radically shifted the focus of their land campaign in Iraq to concentrate on defeating the Fedayeen and Iraqi citizen militias loyal to Saddam Hussein in the south before beginning the battle for Baghdad.

The initial American strategy had been to bypass Iraq’s southern cities and drive straight toward the capital to take on the Republican Guard and ultimately topple the government.

But the resistance from the militia groups to the rear of the advancing allies has been so stiff that commanders were forced to suspend an attack on the Guard while American and British forces fight in and around Iraq’s southern cities.

The principal opposition in the south was thought to come from Iraq’s regular army troops, whose role was thought to slow and weaken the Americans before they fought the Republican Guard around the capital.

In recent days, however, it became clear the paramilitary and citizen militia groups were a far bigger problem than the United States had anticipated.

Ominous signs for coalition in battle for Umm Qasr

US and British marines, backed by tanks and air strikes, fought for the third day on Sunday to secure full control of the Iraqi frontier town of Umm Qasr, in a small but politically significant battle that has become an embarrassment for the invasion force.

The scale of the resistance met by allied forces in Iraq’s only deep-water port stunned coalition forces. Intelligence officers had assured the US Marines that they would meet at most a handful of Iraqi diehards refusing to surrender when they marched into Umm Qasr, and on Friday allies spoke of “pockets of resistance.”

By Sunday night that assessment had proved so wide of the mark that Marine commanders, edging nervously through the backstreets of this decrepit port, refused to predict how many more gunmen might be waiting for them. One officer said: “The fighting has got worse with each day. So much for the walkover we were told to expect.”

Umm Qasr is home to just 4,000 people and lies within sight of the Kuwaiti border. The sound of machine gun exchanges and bombing raids by Royal Air Force Harriers was clearly audible on Sunday from Kuwaiti territory, in spite of repeated official assurances in recent days that control of the port had been or was about to be secured.

By Sunday the fighting had intensified, and coalition commanders were suggesting that a group of 120 Iraqi soldiers were still fighting against overwhelming odds.

The failure to secure Umm Qasr is particularly galling because the US-led coalition wants to bring in humanitarian aid through the port as quickly as possible to demonstrate its good intentions to the Iraqis and to world opinion, which remains overwhelmingly hostile to the war.

“We are going to prosecute this fight in a violent manner,” Maj. Gen. J. D. Thurman, the chief operations officer for the land war command, said. “We must make the people know we are prepared to take care of them.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqi exiles have been returning home over the past week from Jordan, with many insisting they want to defend their country against US and British “invaders.” Jordanian records show that 5,284 Iraqis have crossed the desert border overland into Iraq since Mar. 16, Col Ahmad al-Hazaymeh, director of Jordan’s al Karama border post, said.

Blood-letting as liberation

On Wednesday, in a rallying visit to Central troops in Florida, George Bush promised that coalition forces would be “relentless” in their mission. Bush said the troops have shown daring against “ruthless enemies” and decency to an “oppressed people.”

“The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world. It is God’s gift to humanity,” Bush told the troops.

That day, Bush also warned that the war in Iraq was far from over. “We cannot know the duration of this war,” Bush said as he requested an unprecedented $74.7 billion in supplemental funding for the war through June.

As Bush spoke, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters, “I’m getting increasingly concerned by humanitarian casualties in this conflict.”

Annan cited reports of a missile striking a market in Baghdad. The US missile attack killed 14 and injured 30 in the heavily populated northern neighborhood of Al-Shaab. Associated Press Television News footage showed a large crater in the middle of a street, a child with a head bandage, and bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting in a pickup truck. The streets were flooded after water pipes ruptured. Street lights toppled over, trees were uprooted and several cars were scorched and overturned. Western journalists who were on the scene in minutes said that they had counted at least 15 bodies.

“This is barbaric!” shouted resident Adnan Saleh Barseem.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, accused the US-British coalition of striking civilian areas in several cities, notably Nasiriyah, where he said more than 500 people were injured and 200 homes destroyed.

US Marines, moving through this still-contested city, opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians.

Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys.

US troops searching houses found one woman with her husband, who was wounded, and her two sons, who were dead. All had been hit by stray bullets.

A surgical assistant at the Saddam hospital in Nassiriya, interviewed at a marine check point outside the city, said that on Sunday, half an hour after two dead marines were brought into the hospital, US aircraft dropped what he described as three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing 10 and wounding 200. The man, Mustafa Muhammad Ali, said he spent much of the morning hauling dead and wounded civilians out of buildings that had been bombed by the Americans. He added that he had no love for Saddam Hussein, but said the American failure to discriminate between enemy fighters and Iraqi civilians had turned him decisively against the invasion.

“I saw how the Americans bombed our civilians with my own eyes,” Ali said, as he held up a bloodied sleeve to show how he had dragged them into the ambulances.

A 50-year-old businessman and farmer, Said Yahir, was driving up to the main body of the reconnaissance unit, stationed under a bridge. He wanted to know why the marines had come to his house and taken his son Nathen, his Kalashnikov rifle, and his money. In 1991, in the wake of Iraq’s defeat in the first Gulf war, Yahir was one of those at the time who had joined the rebellion against Saddam Hussein.

“What did I do?” he said. “This is your freedom that you’re talking about? This is my life savings.”

Although ground forces continued their march north beyond Nasiriyah, unconventional and unabated resistance hindered US and British military activity across a wide swath of southern Iraq.

Iraqi soldiers and citizens’ militia in residential neighborhoods held off British forces at the southern port of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city with more than 1million inhabitants. But British Forces beat a tactical retreat from Basra on Monday, as they abandoned hopes of taking swift control of the city.

A British soldier was killed near al-Zubayr, south of the city, as units of the 7th Armored Brigade, the Desert Rats, came under sustained mortar fire and unexpected resistance in areas outside the allied containment ring. The partial retreat from Basra underlined fears that troops could be dragged into prolonged and bloody urban warfare.

Basra has been besieged since the weekend, but there was no sign that the Iraqi defense was about to crumble quickly. Nor did it appear that the civilian population was ready to welcome the troops with open arms.

Basra is a largely Shia city where the Iraqi people first rose up against Hussein in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.

Its inhabitants have suffered more than most Iraqis under the 12 years of United Nations sanctions and it is also a place that remains scarred, not only by the fighting during which the uprising was ruthlessly suppressed, but by the eight years of war with Iran.

On Saturday, US Gen. Tommy Franks had boasted that allied war plans had allowed commanders to “attack the enemy on our terms,” using munitions on a “scale never before seen.” Asked about Basra, Franks defied most reports, saying: “What we have seen is that the Iraqis are welcoming” allied forces as they move through the country. He said they expect the same reaction when Basra falls.

Top British military officials Tuesday said they now regarded Basra “a military target” to “ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid” for its residents.

“We were expecting a lot of hands up from Iraqi soldiers and for the humanitarian operation in Basra to begin fairly quickly behind us, with aid organizations providing food and water to the locals,” British military spokesman Captain Patrick Trueman said. “But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.”

On Wednesday, US warplanes dropped bombs on central Basra while British forces on the edge of the city waged artillery battles with more than 1,000 Iraqi citizens’ militia.

Al-Sahhaf said that coalition forces had destroyed a power station in Basra. “They struck the stations and they tell the media that they are trying to supply the city with clean water and electricity,’’ he said.

The city’s electricity was knocked out Friday during bombing. That in turn shut down Basra’s water pumping and treatment plants. The UN Children’s Fund estimated up to 100,000 Basra children under 5 were at immediate risk of severe disease from the unsafe water.

Civilians streamed out of Basra, in lorries and battered cars crammed with household belongings. The sound of machine-gun and artillery fire echoed behind them.

There are unconfirmed reports that as many as 77 civilians have died in the battle for Basra already – the highest figures anywhere in the country. Horrific images of Iraqi civilians killed by the coalition bombing of Basra were being shown on the Arabic news station al-Jazeera this week. Several Arab media outlets described the civilian deaths there as a “massacre.”

Al-Jazeera’s footage included an Iraqi child with the back of its head apparently blown off and wounded people covered in blood being treated on the floor of a hospital. The station apologized for showing disturbing pictures but said: “The world should know the truth and what is going on.”

The Pentagon would not comment on the reports.

Most of world reacts with dismay, condemnation

Condemnation and regret rippled across the world this week as the start of the Operation “Iraq Freedom” campaign drew protests from several world leaders who accused Washington of acting outside international law and raised fears the campaign could cost thousands of lives and risk terrorist reprisal attacks.

The conflict has sharply divided the international community. Russia and Chinese foreign ministers reasserted their view that the invasion has no legal basis and asked for an immediate halt.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the war as a “serious political mistake,” saying, “If we install the rule of force in place of international security structures, no country in the world will feel secure.”

In China, the Foreign Ministry said the strike was “violating the norms of international behavior.”

Mexico, a Security Council member heavily solicited for support during the UN diplomatic drive, came down against its northern neighbor, with President Vicente Fox stating: “We are against the war.”

In Beirut, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud warned: “We see this aggression today plunging the world into a tunnel where one cannot see the end.”

A summit of Arab foreign ministers demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq. The Arab League ministers meeting in Cairo passed a resolution declaring the war on Iraq a “violation of the United Nations Charter” and a “threat to world peace.”

The resolution was adopted unanimously by the 22-member League except for key US ally Kuwait amid heated rhetoric, with Libya hailing “Iraqi heroism.”

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, CBS, CNN, Financial Times (UK), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Miami Herald, New York Times, Qatar News Agency, Reuters, Times (UK), United Press International, Washington Post

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