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this issue.
This month we add a new column, authored by
Dahr Jamail who is an independent journalist currently stationed in Iraq.
Mr. Jamail submits his work to various publications around the world,
and also has a web site at http://dahrjamailiraq.com We welcome
Mr. Jamail as a columnist.
dispatches from Iraq
by Dahr Jamail
So much
loss…
December 07, 2004
Last weekend
alone, over 70 Iraqis were killed in violence around their country. Yet these
are only those reported as a result of spectacular, “newsworthy” incidents like
car bombs or clashes between the resistance and occupation
forces.
Iraqis are
dying everyday from other things, like violent crime, kidnappings where families
can’t afford to pay the ransom, stray bullets…
It’s all too
easy to lose sight of what this means by looking only at the macro headlines; 32
Iraqis killed by a car bomb, 8 Iraqi Police killed when Police Station stormed,
etc.
The numbers
don’t tell the story of families the dead are leaving
behind.
There are no
words to describe the sadness, nor the hopelessness felt, when meeting with a
family left behind when their 30 year-old father was shot by US forces this past
Fall.
In a small,
one room house in Sadr City lives Sua’ad, a widow of 8 young children
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album25&id=widow_with_kids
“I can do nothing but look at my children and cry,” she says while
weeping throughout the interview, “What are children to do without their father?
A mother can care for them, but it will be different. No matter what I do, it
will be different. Sometimes I need my husband for small things, and when he’s
not there I just want to cry.”
Her husband,
Abdulla Rahman, was killed when caught in the crossfire between occupation
forces and the Mehdi Army.
She
describes the day her husband was killed. US forces were attacking fighters in
the area of Sadr City where they lived.
“His last
day he worked his job of selling used clothing,” she said quietly. Abdulla had
come home for his break to eat with his family. He played with his 7 year-old
son, then went outside to see what was
happening
when fighting broke out.
He returned
shortly thereafter to tell Sua’ad he needed to go close his small shop. Roaring
jets thundered overhead as bombs dropped, and small arms fire was audible down
the street.
“His shop is
all we have,” explained Sua’ad, “I asked him not to go, but he said he would be
right back.”
But her
husband never came back home…
“Some men
told me he had been wounded, but when I found him at the head of the street he
was dead,” she said softly while weeping.
Abbas, a 17
year-old neighbor hobbles in on his new crutches http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album25&id=cluster_bomb
One of his
legs was amputated because of wounds received from a cluster bomb that fell near
his home.
Sua’ad’s
oldest child, Ahmed is just 14 years old. Their small house in the sprawling
slum of Baghdad is nearly empty. Aside from infrequent handouts from neighbors,
they have no income.
“He was our
father, and we are needing him so much,” she explains while holding her arms out
while a small child sits in her lap, “His house needs many things. His children
need many things. They are children. He was like my mother and my father and
everything in my life.”
She pauses
to catch her breath. She never stops weeping.
“We are
living alone now. I have four children with asthma. Sometimes they can’t breathe
and I can do nothing for them. All I do is stand with them and cry,” she
explains, “He was helping me by taking them to the hospital and bringing the
medicines, but now I am knocking on the doors of the neighbors. Now we are
really needing him.”
She looks
outside as tears http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album25&id=tears
run down her
cheeks. Remembering him, she continues while staring out the
window…
“He
sacrificed everything for his children,” she says softly, “This happens for all
the good people in the world, not just me.”
Her grief is
mixed with anger towards the occupiers of her country…
“What can I
say for the Americans? God will have the revenge for me. Now I have 8 orphans,
and I am the 9th. As they make us orphans, God is going to kick them out of our
country. All of these young men have been killed for nothing. They killed them
but they did nothing wrong. My
husband did
nothing.”
She sits in
silence. The room is quiet, aside from one of her baby who is crying in the next
room.
Sua’ad
offers food, but it is time to go.
She walks to
the front gate
<http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album25&id=home>
as we
leave.
I look back once more. She is still
weeping.
Reprinted herein with the
author's permission.
The Quiet of
Destruction and Death
December 02, 2004
It’s a late morning start today…as I’m waiting for Abu Talat,
who calls to tell me he is snarled in traffic and will be late once again, huge
explosions shake my hotel. Shortly thereafter mortars are exploding in the
“green zone” as the loud warning sirens there begin to blare across
Baghdad.
Automatic weapon fire cracks down the street.
The good news is that interim prime minister Ayad Allawi has
announced a shortening of the curfew that most of Iraq is under. So now rather
than having to be off the streets by 10:30pm, we can stay out until 11pm before
we are shot on sight.
This past Sunday a small Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy was
allowed into Fallujah at 4:30pm. I interviewed a member of the convoy today.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, (so I’ll call her Suthir), the first thing
she said to me was, “I need another heart and eyes to bear it because my own are
not enough to bear what I saw. Nothing justifies what was done to this city. I
didn’t see a house or mosque that wasn’t destroyed.”
Suthir paused often to collect herself, but then as usual with
those of us who have witnessed atrocities first hand, when she started to talk,
she barely stopped to breath.
“There were families with nothing. I met a family with three
daughters and two sons. One of their sons, Mustafa who was 16 years old, was
killed by American snipers. Then their house was burned. They had nothing to eat. Just rice and
cold water-dirty water…they put the rice in the dirty water, let it sit for one
or two hours, then they ate the rice. Fatma, the 17 year-old daughter, said she
was praying for God to take her soul because she couldn’t bear the horrors
anymore.”
The families’ 12 year old boy told Suthir he used to want to be
a doctor or a journalist. She paused then added, “He said that now he has no
more dreams. He could no longer even sleep.”
“I’m sure the Americans committed bad things there, but who can
discover and say this,” she said, “They didn’t allow us to go to the Julan area
or any of the others where there was heavy fighting, and I’m sure that is where
the horrible things took place.”
She told me the military took civilian cars and used them,
parked in groups, to block the streets.
Suthir described a scene of complete destruction. She said not
one mosque, house or school was undamaged, and said the situation was so
desperate for the few families left in the city that people were literally
starving to death, surviving as the aforementioned family was.
Rather than burying full bodies, residents of Fallujah are
burying legs and arms, and sometimes just skeletons as dogs had eaten the rest
of the body.
She said that even the schools in Fallujah had been bombed.
Suthir also reported that the oldest teacher in Fallujah, a 90 year-old man,
while praying in a mosque was shot in the head by a US sniper.
The US military has not given a date when the hundreds of
thousands of refugees from Fallujah would be allowed to return to their city,
but estimated it would be 2 months.
The Minister of Education announced today that schools will
reopen in Fallujah next week.
“There was no reconstruction there,” Suthir added, “I just saw
more bombs falling and black smoke. There is not a house or school undamaged
there. I went to a part of the city that someone said was not bombed, but it was
completely destroyed.”
“The Americans didn’t let us in the places where everyone said
there was napalm used,” she said, “Julan and those places where the heaviest
fighting was, nobody is allowed to go there.”
She said that there were many military checkpoints, but most of
the soldiers she saw were not doing much.
“It was quiet, but this wasn’t the quiet of peace,” she told me,
“It was the quiet of destruction and death.”
As helicopters rumble overhead, she added with frustration and
anger, “The military is doing nothing to help people. Only the Iraqi Red
Crescent is trying to help-but nobody can help the traumatized people, even the
IRC.”
Later this afternoon, back in my room one of my Iraqi friends
stops by. We talk work until the sun sets, so she stands to prepare to leave as
she doesn’t like to be out after dark.
Pulling her jacket on she tells me, “You know, it is only
getting worse here. Everyday is worse than the last day. Today will be better
than tomorrow. Right now is better than the next hour. This is our life in Iraq
now.”
Posted by Dahr
Jamail at December 2, 2004 05:17 PM
Reprinted herein with the author's
permission.
Low Crime
Rate in Fallujah
November 30, 2004
Abut Talat and I,
snarled in the horrendous daily traffic of Baghdad, decide to laugh about it.
“Maybe we should consider a camel,” he ponders, “That way we don’t have to feed
it benzene!” We both start laughing while our car hasn’t moved for several
minutes.
An Iraqi Police truck
races by on the wrong side of the road, sirens blaring… to do
what?
“Plus, a camel is
better than a horse because it has 6 stomachs,” he adds, starting to sound
serious about this, “That way it can go for even longer!” I have tears now from
laughing so hard, while Abu Talat holds his hands up, signaling for me to wait,
“Or even better, each car should have two donkeys to tow it, so we never need
benzene again!”
We both lurch forward
in our seats with laughter as I bang my hands on the dash board. It’s either
laugh or cry in Iraq. Without our joking, we would have lost it a long time
ago.
While the humanitarian
crisis facing families who remain trapped inside Fallujah grinds on, US-backed
interim prime minister Ayad Allawi announced yesterday that the crime rate in
Fallujah was down after the US siege of the city. Remember that not long ago,
Allawi also announced that every person killed in Fallujah was a fighter, ie-not
one civilian was killed.
As heavy traffic of
Apache helicopters roars incessantly over Baghdad, fierce clashes continue
against the occupation forces while the interim prime minister is in Jordan,
attempting to persuade Iraqis living there to participate in the upcoming
elections.
With at least 134 US
soldiers killed in Iraq this month so far, yet another huge car bomb detonated
into a military convoy on the dreaded airport road. While witnesses reported
seeing several bodies lying on the ground at the scene, the military has yet to
announce any casualty counts. Another car bomb in Beji detonated near a US
patrol, killing 4 Iraqis and wounding at least 19, including 2 US
soldiers.
Allawi continues to
insist that violence in Iraq is decreasing since the
siege of
Fallujah.
After picking up some
friends, we are snarled in more horrendous traffic near the airport road on our
way to another refugee camp. Razor wire stretches across the road as helicopters
and military hardware are clustered just up the road. While the military cut
most of the trees http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album19&id=airrd2
along the road to
prevent attacks, car bombs are something they can’t stop.
Meanwhile, the military
refused to allow yet another aid convoy into
Fallujah. They were
turned back because the military personnel told them the Ministry of Health
would be allowed to send a relief convoy in “8 or 9 days.”
There are at least 150
families trapped within the city, and the military refuses to let
any of them out. While a few ambulances were allowed into one
section of the city a few days ago, there are at least three main
neighborhoods that the military is keeping a tight lid on. Refugees continue to
report the use of napalm and phosphorous weapons-of seeing dead bodies with
no bullet holes in them, just scorched patches of
skin.
More refugees at the
Amiryah bomb shelter camp in Baghdad are telling the same horror stories. A man
who fled the city says, “Fallujah is in a disaster!” He holds his hands out and
pleads, “We call on all NGO’s and aid organizations to help Fallujans! We just
want to return to our land; we know our homes are destroyed, but we’d rather
sleep in tents in our own city.”
The scene at the nearby
Melouki Mosque is chaos. Crowds of men stand outside gates holding their food
ration papers in the air to prove they are from Fallujah in order to receive
small heaters, stoves, foodstuffs and blankets. Thankfully, an international NGO
managed to donate funds to purchase much of these desperately needed supplies
for refugees.
Medicines have also
been purchased with the donations for Iraqi doctors to dispense to the
refugees. http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album21&id=med3
Sheikh Hussein who is
in charge of the relief effort at the mosque is
struggling to cope with
the crisis.
We stand in a small
courtyard behind the mosque away from the crowds talking. I notice a white
military surveillance balloon nearby, as helicopters rumble
overhead.
“Some people not even
from Fallujah are so desperate they are coming here to get supplies and
pretending to be refugees,” he tells us.
Women and children are
crying outside the gates as men grapple for the small heaters and
stoves.
I am reminded of what
occurred in Lidice, Czechoslovakia during World War II. Similar to what
the US military has done to Fallujah, the German Nazis leveled Lidice as payback
collective punishment for the death of a high ranking member of the German
security administration, Reinhard Heydrich, who was killed by Czech patriots in
1942.
Last March, four
mercenaries were brutally killed in Fallujah, which led to the first US siege of
the city in April as collective payback for the attack. Mostly for political
reasons that siege was ceased, which set the stage for the recent attack on the
city.
Similarly, Heydrich was
assassinated by Czech patriots who were accused of being aided by the village of
Lidice. Thus, Hitler ordered the village to be erased, and all men in the city
over the age of 16 were killed.
Musar, a woman at the
mosque standing nearby is weeping. “My 5 cousins and uncle are trapped there,”
she cries, “They are not fighters but the Americans won’t let them out. And now
the soldiers are coming to our refugee camp and detaining
people!”
Musar begins to plead
with us, “They took all the doctors out of the hospitals. My brother is a doctor
there and they made him leave his work.” She stops because she is sobbing, then
continues, “We have nothing! You must help us. I need my cousins and my uncle!
Where are they? I just want to see them. None of them are
fighters.”
(c)2004
Dahr Jamail.
All images and text are
protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to
reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice
and a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any other use of images
and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website,
copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel
free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email. Reprinted herein
with the author's permission.
Posted December 3,
2004
URL: www.thecitizenfsr.org
SM
2000-2011
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