Mosul – Most media are spreading the same deluding reports (Interview with Dr. Souad Naij Al-Azzawi)

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08.02.2017 | www.kla.tv/9909

On 23 January, the Western leading media said that the Iraqi army had completely conquered the east of Mosul. As a reminder: Since June 2014, Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, is in the hands of the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS). Three months ago, the major offensive by the Iraqi army and its allied militia started targeting the IS stronghold Mosul. The fighters are supported by airstrikes of the US-led international coalition as well as hundreds of military advisors behind the front. Mosul is said to be the last bastion of the IS in Iraq. If the terrorists lost the city completely, they would be militarily largely defeated in Iraq, mainstream media says. But what is really going on in the city of Mosul with over a million inhabitants and how complete is the picture that mainstream media conveys by its reporting? A person who ought to know is the Iraqi geologist Dr. Souad Naij Al-Azzawi. In the early 70s, she studied civil engineering at the University of Mosul. In the early 80s, she went to the USA and studied geology and environment engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. She earned her doctoral degree with a thesis on radioactive contamination of groundwater in Colorado caused by nuclear power plants. In 1991, she returned to her home country Iraq where she investigated the contamination of soil, water and air with depleted uranium (U-238) in 1995/96. According to her investigations, the depleted uranium demonstrably originated from uranium weapons that were used by American military in both gulf wars in Iraq (1980 – 1988 and 1990/91), in former Yugoslavia (1999) and in Afghanistan (since 2001). For her work, Dr. Souad Naji Al-Azzawi was awarded the “Nuclear Free Future Award” in 2003 – a prize “for a future free from nuclear weapons, nuclear energy and uranium ammunition.” In her latest interview published by the German newspaper “j Junge Welt” on 26 January 2017, she unambiguously judges the reporting by the Western press on the major offensive on the IS stronghold Mosul. She says that most media are spreading the same deluding reports. The truth being that for more than a week hundreds of airstrikes have been carried out by the US coalition day and night and long-range missiles come down over the residential areas they want to free. Nobody minds the crimes the US coalition is committing in Mosul. In other words, Dr. Souad Naji Al-Azzawi openly speaks what is hardly mentioned by mainstream media. This is yet another indication that the US-American warmongering policy is backed by Western news agencies and mainstream media and that they do not report neutrally. Now listen yourselves to what Dr. Souad Naij Al-Azzawi has to say. Question: If we hear anything in the German media about Mosul these days, then it is about the “fight of Mosul”, that “thousands flee” and that “the Iraqi army has conquered the east of Mosul”. Does this match what you hear from Mosul? (Al-Azzawi:) Most of the media spread the same misleading reports. They show pictures or video clips where you can see Iraqi soldiers and Peshmerga IS fighters chasing through the streets and how they take care of civilians in the areas they control. The truth is that for more than one week hundreds of airstrikes have been carried out by the US-coalition day and night and that long-range missiles come down over the residential areas they want to free. Hundreds of civilians die or are injured in the ruins of their homes. Others flee if they can. Whoever stays behind is kind of trapped in his house with no electricity, no drinking water, and no food. When they have destroyed most quarters like in Ramadi or Fallujah and when they are sure that the IS fighters have withdrawn from those areas, then the army comes with their cameras and present their “success” to the TV teams. In the meantime, the injured keep on dying in the ruins of their houses because there is no heavy equipment to salvage them. And even if the injured are rescued, there is no hospital nearby to treat them. Because the US coalition has destroyed all hospitals. I call that the intended extermination of the Iraqi civilian population. (Question): Do you know how many people still live in Mosul? (Al-Azzawi:) Since the beginning of the military operation, approximately 200,000 people have fled. Therefore, about 800,000 should still live in Mosul. (Question:) What do you know about their life situations, what does everyday life look like? (Al-Azzawi:) The situation in the city is horrible. There is no electricity, no clean drinking water, no petrol, no food. How are the people supposed to sleep with the horrendous noises of bombing, of fighter jets and the constant fear that their own flat, their own house could be destroyed next by the missiles? The families don’t know where to find secure shelter for their children or old and ill relatives and neighbors so that they won’t be injured or killed when the missiles of the “liberators” strike their homes. There is a lack of medication, the hospitals are destroyed and so even simple, normally harmless, diseases can lead to the death of children and old people. (Question:) According to press releases of the central command of the US Air Force, the “anti IS alliance” had been attacking the University of Mosul for days since the beginning of the year. On 18th January, they said: “The liberation of the university takes away an important base from IS for its operations and research. It is culturally important for the inhabitants of Mosul and also an important landmark of the city as educational institution.” You studied in Mosul and you have contact to the faculties, what information do you have from there? (Al-Azzawi:) They (the US Air Force) of course said that to disguise their war crimes. They have attacked the entire civil infrastructure in Mosul: electricity supply, hydroelectric plants, hospitals, pharmaceutical industrial plants, food warehouses, all institutions of governmental supply, the banks and of course the university. If we include Fallujah and Ramadi, it is an intended and systematic destruction of all cities that resisted occupation. The US occupation called those three cities during the occupation of the Iraq from 2003 the “triangle of death”. Bombing residential areas, many deaths, destroying civil life and its institutions in the cities belonged to the US plan to make Iraq a “failed state”. No city is to be able to resist the intended separation of the country and to prevent that oil and other national resources of Iraq are taken. (Question:) The US military says that they liberated the University of Mosul. (Al-Azzawi:) I call it the destruction of Mosul, the university included. If they had wanted to liberate the city and to rescue the inhabitants, they could have used the guerilla tactics. But they decided differently and thousands of civilians were declared as “collateral damage”. What was done in Mosul at the university and to the people is war crime. (Question:) The peace movement, intellectuals, scientists from all over the world hardly comment on what’s happening in Mosul. Why? (Al-Azzawi:) Very simple: The masses of deluding media reports obscure the sight of what’s going on there. The liberation operation took place at a time where the entire world watched the presidential election in the USA. This surely was no coincidence; nobody was looking at the crimes that were committed in Mosul. Additionally, people who call things in Mosul as they are, are defamed to be terror and IS supporters. They are almost extorted. In Europe, they desperately want to get rid of the refugee problem. Killing innocent people in Iraq and destroying whole cities is considered to be a fair price in order to kill off the IS. The main point is, the refugees go back to their home country and can continue a happy life there. (Question:) The German media often emphasize that there is a “religious war” in Iraq. The Sunnites would fight the Shiites and the other way round. The Christians, Yazidi, Assyrians would defend themselves from all the others. Is that right? (Al-Azzawi:) The tensions between the religious groups were created by the occupation in order to conquer Iraq, to control and to take over all resources. They were promoted through a constitution written by the US-Americans and a forced confessional political process. The Iraqi had lived in peace for hundreds of years. What happens today is a conflict of interests among those who had occupied Iraq. This is presented by the media as “religious war”. (Question:) Religious minorities and ethnic groups like the Kurds are supported by Western states. France and Germany, for example, arm and train Kurd Peshmerga, the USA embattles Yazidi and Assyrian battalions. Iran supports Shiite militia and altogether, they promote the Iraqi army. Why? (Al-Azzawi:) The Iraqi people are a people of Mesopotamian civilizations, they are very different but still united in their civilization. When the US administration and the British government decided to bring all oil resources in the Middle East under their control, they also decided that Israel should be able to spread without hindrance in the region. They clearly knew that this would only succeed if they parted Iraq and broke it up into three or even more small areas. This fragmentation runs along different ethnic groups and religions fighting against each other. At the same time, all of them need the protection of the US Americans and NATO for their fights. What we see today is basically the “completion” of what they started in 1991 with the Iraq war, with the beginning of the UN sanctions and with the protection zone regime: It’s the destruction of Iraq.

from dd.

Sources/Links: http://www.srf.ch/news/international/irakische-armee-erobert-ostteil-der-is-hochburg
http://www.nuclear-free-future.com/preistraeger/preistraegerinnen/souad-naij-al-azzawi/
http://www.jungewelt.de/2017/01-26/012.php