Word: iraqis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...television, Saddam has apparently convinced large segments of the population that the ever hostile West simply used the occupation of Kuwait as an excuse to attack Iraq: they see themselves as the victims. Saddam also seized on Bush's air strikes in January as evidence of Washington's vendetta. Iraqi TV director Faisal Yasiri produced a series of 56 installments on the Gulf War that portrayed the country as a victim. "People discovered by watching the programs," Yasiri says with a straight face, "that the target of aggression was Iraq. The liberation of Kuwait was only an excuse to attack...
Each morning the Iraqi artillery begin to find their targets. Deep in the standing reeds where the gunners cannot easily find them, black-robed women tend their children and few remaining buffalo in tiny makeshift clearings, while men, armed with old AK-47 assault rifles, crouch in hidden blinds along the waterways, waiting for Iraqi patrols. Only at nightfall, when the government troops return to their bases, can the men creep back to their families to sleep...
...months, according to captured documents and engineering plans now trickling out of Iraq, the government has nearly completed work on a huge project of four major canals and dozens of dams and embankments that will sap the water from the reeds and open the isolated rebel - strongholds to Iraqi tanks, possibly as early as this summer. "We no longer think of victory," says a Shi'ite leader based in neighboring Iran. "Our rifles are no match for his tanks. If Saddam falls, it will have to be to someone else. We continue to fight simply because...
Draining the swamps is only part of Saddam's campaign to subdue the south. Iraqi military units have effectively encircled the area, enforcing a near total economic blockade and cutting off escape routes into Iran. Government artillery regularly bombards the marshes, and mines have been strewn across the landscape. Army forays into the villages bring terror to the 200,000 local Marsh Arabs. A captured Iraqi document details the elements of the siege: "the withdrawal of all foodstuffs, a ban on the sale of fish, prohibiting means of transportation to and from these areas." The document also calls for mass...
...terrain, with its floating reed islands and 20-ft. tall forests of papyrus and rushes. But once the swamps are dry, the rebels fear not only enemy tanks but also fires, which would push them into the arms of troops surrounding the perimeter. In February three blazes set by Iraqi barrages scorched several hundred square miles of marshland and destroyed dozens of villages...