Battle lines drawn through the web

By GEOFF CUMMING

At Al Kindi Hospital Emergency, Fatima Abdullah is screaming in outrage [at American aid workers]: "Why do you do this to us??!" Her 8-year-old, Fatehah is dead, two other daughters are on stretchers wounded by a missile that crushed her uncle's home where they are staying outside Baghdad, near the Diala Bridge.

An extended farming family, sanctions and economic devastation have reduced their stock of animals to one cow, a donkey and chickens. They are barely able to feed themselves.

Muhammed, the 4-year-old crying in Fatima's arms has cuts from shrapnel and debris criss-crossing the right side of his face and head, eyelids swollen shut. Nada Adnan, a 13-year-old schoolgirl, states: "I wish that God would take Bush. Why did he do this to us, to me?"

She has an open gash on her right cranium with underlying fracture and a large, deep shrapnel-gauged cut into her upper left thigh. She has no narcotic relief and cries out as aides press gauze into her leg wound.

The report comes not from the correspondents embedded with the British, American and Australian troops in Iraq, and nor will you see it on CNN. It was sent by April Hurley, a Californian doctor in Baghdad. Hurley files almost daily bulletins to Iraq Diary on ElectronicIraq.net, a website run by anti-war campaigners, Voices in the Wilderness.

Antiwar websites are experiencing unprecedented traffic as people become wary of one-sided television footage. While live satellite feeds of desert firefights and fireballs exploding over Baghdad make compelling viewing, the cameras largely miss the viewpoint of Iraqis waiting beneath the bombs and missiles.

The websites launched by independent media organisations such as Democracy Now and Z Magazine provide daily war updates from Arab and independent news agencies and link to comment pieces by Pentagon critics like Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky.

They chide the US and British "capitalist" networks for their lack of Iraqi perspective and for ignoring anti-war opinion. Yet the internet is not immune to censorship. Several websites reported that alternative news site Yellow Times.org was shut down by its internet service provider for carrying the photos of American POWs broadcast by Arab satellite television network al-Jazeera.

On Thursday, al-Jazeera's English-language website was brought down by hackers, and Russian website www.iraqwar.ru claims to have had numerous attacks by hackers. But are these "alternative" websites telling us anything we wouldn't learn from the mainstream media?

Certainly, they offer different perspectives from television and obtain reports from places where accredited correspondents cannot go. Before the bombing began, Democracy Now correspondent in Baghdad Jeremy Scahill warned of Iraqi plans to create a black cloud over Baghdad to confuse missiles by setting fire to oil poured into huge pits.

"Also, many Iraqis say they have heard that the army will dump oil into the Tigris River, which stretches past the main presidential palace and several key government buildings. The plan is to set fire to the Tigris to shroud the centre of power with thick black smoke."

The internet can also be quicker to decipher the truth. The US charge that Russian firms were supplying guided missiles and night vision goggles to Iraq was swiftly rebutted on the Russian website gazetta.ru.

Of course, there is equal firepower coming from pro-war sites, led by bigboots.com and francestinks.com, with links to conservative news companies and commentators including the Drudge Report and Conservative Sources.

But the internet offers more than just opposing viewpoints. It provides endless war coverage, comment, photographs and live video feeds. With its increasing availability for office workers, predictions have been borne out that the war could do for the internet what the 1991 Gulf War did for cable television. In the first week, most news sites experienced two or three times their normal number of hits.

News companies are extending their online products to match the surge in popularity, which coincides with improvements in broadband technology allowing clearer text and images.

"The internet has entered into a crucial and symbiotic relationship with the print and broadcast media," says Joshua Fouts, editor of Online Journalism Review. "Read the newspaper in the morning, surf the web during the day and watch television at night."

But obtaining this balanced picture can be time-consuming. On the fringes are the "webloggers" who maintain personal sites - www.dear_raed.blogspot.com, a weblog operated by a 29-year-old Iraqi using the pseudonym Salam Pax, has become one of the most visited for its portrayal of daily life in Baghdad. The most recent offering was dated March 23:

"Today before noon I went out with my cousin to take a look at the city. Two things. 1) the attacks are precise. 2) they are attacking targets which are just too close to civilian areas in Baghdad.

"There are no waving masses of people welcoming the Americans nor are they surrendering by the thousands. People are doing what all of us are, sitting in their homes hoping that a bomb doesn't fall on them and keeping their doors shut.

" ... The smoke columns have now encircled Baghdad, well almost. The winds blow generally to the east which leaves the western side of Baghdad clear. But when it comes in the way of the sun it covers it totally, it is a very thick cloud. We are going to have some very dark days, literally."

The Baghdad peace workers provide eye-witness accounts to anyone who asks. One comments: "Continuous media reporting has been exhausting, because the team has to repeat the same limited information over and over."

Diarist Cathy Breens reports that a children's hospital cancer ward has been emptied. "As a couple of us stood outside for a moment wondering when the next onslaught would begin, the call to prayer sounded outside. One Muslim woman began to weep and another got up to comfort her. An elderly man walked back and forth with a cane. This cannot really be happening I thought. It cannot be my country that is doing this. Dear God in heaven have mercy on us."

Back at Al Kindi Hospital, April Hurley reports that Rana Adnan, 9, needs oxygen for a lung contusion. She also has a head laceration, concussion and shrapnel in her left arm.

A 70-year-old man has a compound fracture of his left upper arm and a wound through his lung requiring a chest tube. "He has rage and opinions, just as the multitude of families do these days. How can I explain reasons to them? It's not easy being an American in a Baghdad emergency room seeing victims and their families."

* Some antiwar sites:

zmag.org/weluser.htm

ElectronicIraq.net

Iraqjournal.org

baghdadradio.com

antiwar.com

alternet.org

dearraed.blogspot.com


* For a pro-war slant:

francestinks.com

* * *

Herald Feature: Iraq