How Falluja fell off the map

In the process the distinction between the terrorist and the civilian is obliterated. Article 14 of the Second Protocol of the Geneva Conventions expressly prohibits the 8220;starvation of civilians as a method of combat8221; as well as the denial of drinking water, medical supplies, and the like. Yet, as the Washington Post has reported, over the last few months water supplies were turned off as part of military strategy and, over the last few days, attempts by the International Red Cross and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society to deliver food, medicines and water to Falluja were repeatedly frustrated by the US army. This lack of distinction between civilians and the guerilla fighters surfaced in the death estimates as well. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi claims that no civilian died in the offensive because they had all left. He can say this because the more than 1,200 Iraqis killed in this week-long operation have all been conveniently termed as 8220;insurgents8221;, including the children.

As the Falluja pattern is replicated in other cities like Mosul and Baquba, in the coming days, the non-Islamic world is unlikely to express its outrage. The silences in media coverage have assisted in bringing about this unconscionable acquiescence. Arguably, the US army8217;s biggest success in its 19 months on these desert sands is its capture of the media. It is a process that began innocuously enough when hundreds of US reporters participated in workshops organised by the Pentagon to acquire skills to survive in the battlefield in the run-up to the Iraq war and which fructified in the 8220;embedded journalism8221; that showcased the capture of Iraq by the 8220;liberators8221;. Today, in Falluja, the media takeover is almost total apart from an occasional feed that may emerge accidentally, like the NBC sequence of an unarmed 8220;insurgent8221; being shot pointblank.

An explanation for this extreme nexus has been raised. In Daya Kishan Thussu8217;s and Des Freedman8217;s War and the Media, BBC8217;s Nik Gowing explains why media professionals have come to rely on the military: it8217;s not just for information but for infrastructural support in situations that are just too dangerous for individual reporters and cable networks to function. Gowing terms it a Faustian bargain: 8220;It is a deeply uncomfortable situation which leads to questions about how much information the media really receive and how independent news organisations can really be.8221;

Of course, the independence of the media during war has always been suspect. But what we are seeing today is qualitatively different from the lack of critical distance that characterised, say, reporting by the US media during the Vietnam era. Today, as media scholars Thussu and Freedman point out, the military and the media have melded to the point that they can no longer be seen as separate entities. The media itself has become the 8220;surface upon which war is imagined and executed8221;.

The Pentagon seems to have learnt its lessons from the Vietnam war when Walter Cronkite8217;s observation on CBS that the war was a 8220;bloody stalemate8221; is believed to have caused President Johnson to say, 8220;it is all over8221;, and TV visuals of American casualties and injuries caused the tide of popular opinion to turn against the war. Today, the Pentagon has seized upon modern media technology to present what James Der Derian, professor of political science at Amherst, described as a 8220;virtuous war8221;, combining virtual technologies with a claim to embracing humanitarian motives in Iraq it8217;s about spreading democracy. It8217;s a war with 8220;bloodless8221; images, a war that looks good on TV.

All this makes it incumbent on those who value the role of the media as an unbiased observer of the human condition 8212; who regard the media as a public sphere which creates and is created by social responses 8212; to search for ways to retrieve the independence and commitment that is central to the media8217;s role. Here we need to commend the role of Lancet editor Richard Horton. Lancet, one of the world8217;s bestknown medical journals, recently chose to publish a new report by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health which claimed that Iraq had suffered a rise of 5-7 per cent civilian deaths in the last 18 months. The study concluded that there have been 100,000 8220;excess deaths8221; of civilians in Iraq since the US invasion. The figure embarrassed both Washington and London, with UK8217;s foreign secretary Jack Straw instituting an inquiry into how the casualty rates were calculated.

In an interview to the The Observer, London, some days ago, Horton acknowledged that this study was 8220;atypical8221; for Lancet, but added that when the Iraq situation is becoming ever more unstable, 8220;we have a choice: do we want the blood of Iraqi civilians and children on our hands or don8217;t we? The only way we know what has happened is by actually having scientists go and get the data.8221; It8217;s a principle media professionals should remember.