02-24-06,9:24am

In April 2004, the United States launched its first assault on Fallujah, the Sunni town west of Baghdad that had come to symbolize Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. The offensive came a few days after four American military contractors from the private security firm Blackwater were brutally killed in the city. The siege was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation. In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local guerillas resisted U.S. attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died and over 1,000 were wounded. While the U.S. military claimed at the time that the vast majority of those killed were members of the resistance, media reports from within Fallujah indicated a large number of civilians were among the dead.

Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the besieged city, and its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC. Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq were inside Fallujah, reporting unembedded from the streets for the entire siege. In this Democracy Now! exclusive, they speak about their experience for the first time in an in-depth interview. [includes rush transcript]

We sat down with them in Doha, Qatar earlier this month. The interview is translated by Al Jazeera interpreter Ali Matar. For our television audience, please be warned some of the images you are about to see are graphic.



Ahmed Mansur, Al Jazeera Correspondent Laith Mushtaq, Al Jazeera Cameraman



RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq were inside Fallujah, reporting unembedded from the streets for the entire siege. In this Democracy Now! exclusive, they speak about their experience for the first time in an in-depth interview. We sat down with them in Doha, Qatar earlier this month. The interview is translated by Al Jazeera interpreter Ali Matar. For our television audience please be warned some of the images you are about to see are graphic. This interview begins with Ahmed Mansur Speaking about his days in Fallujah.

AHMED MANSUR: Because time is not sufficient to describe what happened those days, but let me talk about the 9th of April, 2004. It was really like the day of judgment in Fallujah. We were under siege for two days from the U.S. forces and the snipers. We were unable to move, and we decided to take adventure and go to the middle of the city at any price. And we consulted among each other. Some of us said, “No, let's stay.” Then I said, “No, we have to move even if the snipers shoot us.”

When we left the place, we found that Fallujah entirely -- children, women, elderly, all lifting white flags and walking or in their cars leaving the city. It was really a disastrous day for us. When we reached the heart of the city at the hospital, I almost lost my mind from the terror that I saw, people going in each and every direction. Laith was with me and also another colleague, and I felt like we need 1,000 cameras to grab those disastrous pictures: fear, terror, planes bombing, ambulances taking the people dead. And I was shouting and yelling for Laith and my other colleague, and I was shouting, “Camera! Camera!” so that we can take pictures here and there.

At the end, I felt that I have to control myself. The fear was bigger than we could ever handle, and bigger than our journalistic capabilities. There's no reporters in the city. We were the only team that was able to enter the city; therefore, we have to transfer what's happening to the whole world. It was an extremely difficult mission. That was the fifth or sixth day we went un-sleeping at all. I didn't know how we were able to stand or move or talk. I used to look at Laith and feel that he is unable to even lift the camera because of the stress on him. Regardless, he was carrying the camera and going and coming. We were trying to move this picture to the whole world, and we felt that we are responsible for all these civilians being bombed from the planes and who are threatened with death, so we have to transfer this picture of suffering to the whole world. It was extremely difficult.

We wanted to be successful. We wanted to do our humanistic mission to move or transfer that picture to the whole world. And we were under a lot of stress, and Laith -- maybe I was moving by myself with the mic, but Laith was lifting a heavy camera and moving from place to place. It was a very long day. I think this day in my life equals to my entire life, even though I covered Bosnia and Herzegovina war and Afghanistan. But that particular day was the longest in my journalistic view, even for me as a human being.

AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the U.S. military, you being there? Did they say that Al Jazeera leaving Fallujah, you leaving Fallujah, was a condition of a ceasefire?

AHMED MANSUR: Yes, it was the first condition. And the same day, General Mark Kimmitt, the spokesman of the U.S. forces in Iraq, and he accused me directly by my personal name. This was the first time that a journalist is accused by name from a military spokesman, and he said, “Ahmed Mansur transfers lies from Fallujah.” So our colleague Hamoud Krishen asked him, “Ahmed only transfers pictures. Do pictures themselves lie, that accompany his reports?” He did not answer him. Kimmitt did not answer him. We always said pictures, and I told you previously, and I assure you now, we did not transfer the truth, but what we transferred is not even equivalent to 100% of what happened.

Laith, I think Friday or Saturday morning, the 9th or 10th of April in the morning, he left because he was unable to even stand. Seven days, no sleep, continuously, and he was under a lot of stress. We recognize that the negotiating team from the people of Fallujah, when they went to negotiate with the U.S. forces, we were told that the first condition to the ceasefire is Ahmed Mansur to exit the city. In the beginning, I said I will not leave the city unless I'm doing my duty. I cannot leave the city by this command, but when we consulted -- Al Jazeera administration talked to me and I consulted with my team, we came here for peace. If our leaving the city will bring about peace, then I will leave immediately. Indeed, when we were sure that the pressure for me to leave the city for the ceasefire, so I decided to leave the city and I indeed left the city at the same time.

AMY GOODMAN: What date was that?

AHMED MANSUR: 10th of April.

AMY GOODMAN: I'm looking at my colleague Jeremy Scahill's piece in The Nation. He said on April 11, senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared the stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies. And two days later, or four days later, on April 15, Donald Rumsfeld said that Al Jazeera's reporting is, quote, “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable. It's disgraceful what that station is doing.”

AHMED MANSUR: They did not stop those accusations leveled against us, but at the end we presented pictures for tens of kids and elderly and women killed and injured in that war. We reported pictures about hundreds of civilians lifting white flags, among children, calling upon the U.S. forces to stop firing until they leave the city. And we presented pictures, and Laith himself photographed it with his other colleagues for corpses of families of children and women. We presented it to the whole world. We did not bring anything. We were just reporting part of the truth, as I told you. We reported pictures and presented pictures to the world. If there's anyone who lies, then it is the person who belies those pictures that we presented to the world. Indeed, there was grave in Fallujah, about 500 civilian dead. The stadium for soccer also became a graveyard. If you go to Fallujah now, you will find the stadium as a graveyard for martyrs, women, children, elderly and civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: Laith Mushtaq, you were the cameraman that Ahmed is describing, holding your camera. When did you get to Fallujah?

LAITH MUSHTAQ: We went to Fallujah, I think, it was the 3rd of April. We went to Fallujah, and we were able to enter Fallujah before it was completely besieged. After we entered the city and before the siege took place, our feeling has become more eminent of responsibility, because there was no press there in the city. First, my going to Fallujah was voluntarily on my part as a photographer, and we were asked who was willing to go to Fallujah, so I did that, because I'm keen to transfer and report and picture and photograph. And secondly, I was anxious to work with Mr. Ahmed Mansur, because he is a prominent journalist in the Arab world, and it was my first experience to work with him in Fallujah.

When we entered Fallujah and the siege started of Fallujah, we were doing some consultative meetings as a team, that we distribute the duties amongst ourselves, and how we will move and go around because we were in a very difficult situation. The area we were in was the closest to the U.S. forces, because we were besieged, and we were able to move only for one day during the daytime. And we left and photographed after the clashes, and we tried to take pictures of the aftermath rampage.

And the first shot I took with my camera and the first photo as, Ahmed remembers, it was for a human being fired or burned completely. He was a wounded person. His family were transferring him to a hospital, which was close to the U.S. forces position, and it had the Red Crescent symbol and the Red Cross, because they put him in a pickup, so they put him in the outside in the pickup, and that was under fire. And I saw this person, the wounded person is torched, fired, burned. Even smoke was coming out of him. I was unable to go and see that scenery.

I left him to go alone, and I stood far, and my sight was really bad and terrible because on that day, when we went to the hospital, there was a lot of children in the hospital that were wounded. Some children were brought, and their families were dead already. Their fathers and parents were not accompanying them. That day made a terrible shock to me and shocked me extremely. I covered many wars, but every time you cover a war and you see corpses and dead people and children, believe me, every children I looked at, I remember my younger daughter.

I'm sorry, but in the end, I am a human being, and I have children. Every time I look at a wounded girl or who lost her family or is killed, I always remember my own little daughter. And I remember that I have to be here to protect those children. I have to report this to the whole world, so that the killing of all these children will stop, and all these vulnerable and simple people. This feeling destroyed myself, destroyed me completely. And I was overwhelmed, and I tried to separate between my career and my humanity, but sometimes I could not do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera's Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq. They were unembedded in Fallujah in April of 2004.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Al Jazeera's Ahmed Mansur and his cameraman Laith Mushtaq that we conducted in Doha, Qatar earlier this month. The two reported from inside Fallujah during the first U.S. siege of the city in April 2004, one of the bloodiest assaults of the occupation, 30 U.S. Marines and some 600 Iraqis killed. This is their first time speaking out about their experience in Fallujah. The interview is translated by Al Jazeera's Ali Matar. Laith Mushtaq, the cameraman, continues to tell the story.

LAITH MUSHTAQ: This was the first day. I stayed until the end of the siege of Fallujah. I left on the 10th, and I came back on the 12th, and I stayed inside the city. The 9th, which Ahmed spoke about, was similar to the day of judgment in Fallujah. It was a very harsh day, very hard, because we were coming out from a terrible experience of the two days of the siege. The first day of the siege -- the first two days, rather, we were unable to go even to the bathroom, because in Fallujah, the city is West Iraq, the bathroom is usually outside the rooms, so whenever we opened the door to go to the bathroom, we see the laser pointed at us, the sniper guns, and there's only 50 meters between us and them. Even some tapes, I photographed them from a window, and they were moving around in the street.

When we went to the hospital and reached the hospital, you cannot even imagine what my feeling was. First of all, I'm a human being. Second, I see corpses of children. I feel a responsibility, that a photographer or as a team, the only one here working, we are the only one who will write the history of what happened, and that's a great burden, and I was really tired. Ahmed was tired. The whole team was tired, but at the same time, who will photograph these people? And it was really amazing. The pictures come one after another.

I saw myself a lady -- I was sitting to smoke for a moment, and I saw an elderly lady coming with her children, going in a big truck to leave Fallujah or try to leave Fallujah. After a quarter of an hour, she came back as pieces, and even people, the -- when they opened the ambulance and I was photographing that, the minute the medics saw the body, they took us back stand from the gruesomeness of the scenery. One of them, I remember, was standing by. He said, in typical a Iraqi dialect, he said, “Be brave. Be honorable people. Imagine this is your mom. Will you leave her alone? Will you abandon her?” So people took her, and they tried to bury her.

The same day, I saw -- I'm sorry, after three days, it was the most difficult scene for me in my whole life. In Fallujah was the family of Hamiz. Hamiz is a person living in the neighborhood of al-Julan, which the U.S. forces tried to penetrate into it to go to the heart of the city. The family of Hamiz were gathered in the house of Hamiz, his sister and their family and their daughters. There was about four families in one place, children and ladies and women. Usually men leave to leave the -- some privacy for the children and the ladies. The planes bombed this house, as they did for the whole neighborhood, and they brought the corpses and bodies to the hospital. I went to the hospital. I could not see anything but like a sea of corpses of children and women, and mostly children, because peasants and farmers have usually a lot of children. So, these were scenes that are unbelievable, unimaginable...(To read whole interview click link )