Volume 6 number 1, January 2004 Dispatches from Iraq The following articles and photographs are by Dahr Jamail, an American freelance journalist and political activist from Anchorage, Alaska. He sends almost daily dispatches to from Baghdad, covering a range of topics on life and events in postwar Iraq. The articles published below are selected from these dispatches and arranged in chronological order. Soldiers arrest secondary school students, fire at school BAGHDAD, December 19, 2003 Teachers at a secondary school in the Al-Amariya neighborhood on the west side of the city expressed their anger this morning, a day after American troops came to the school and arrested sixteen students. Soldiers from the First Armored Division surrounded Al-Shahid Adnan Kherala School on Wednesday morning before coming into the school with pictures and names of students they said had been throwing rocks at soldiers during a demonstration in support of Saddam Hussein outside the school on Tuesday. Residents and a soldier standing guard at the school Wednesday said the protest was otherwise nonviolent. “We had some IP (Iraqi Police) here last night who took photos. They are going through the school to get the kids in the pictures,” the soldier said. The soldiers who entered the school were supported by a force that included helicopters, four armored personnel carriers, and at least ten Humvees. The arrests were apparently a preemption against a demonstration planned for the following day. “You must not attend the demonstration tomorrow that is to be held here. Please disperse and go away,” a translator working with the army said over a loudspeaker mounted on a Humvee while the police made the arrests. The students were then loaded onto a military truck and taken away from the school. Enraged students poured out of the school after the troops left, shouting and crying. “This is the democracy? This is the freedom? You see what the Americans are doing to us here?” one shouted. “They took several of my friends! Why are they taking them to prison? For throwing rocks?” another said through tears. The students quoted refused to give their names. As the soldiers left the school, two soldiers fired above the heads of the children standing outside. A boy holding a stone stood on the street, holding a rock. A soldier standing on a retreating tank pointed his pistol at the boy’s head until the tank was out of range of a stone’s throw. First Armored Division Public Affairs Officers Capt. Jason Beck said today that only five students were detained and later released to their parents. He refused to comment further on the matter. Paul Bremer, the head American civilian administrator in Iraq, issued a directive in June banning pro-Saddam demonstrations, but that rule has not been widely enforced. Soldiers have broken up many pro-Saddam demonstrations across the country this week, sometimes using live fire, but arrests have not been widespread, though some injuries and deaths have been reported. Many of the students did not show up for school today, and the ones that did were sent home to allow teachers to have a meeting, said Bakr Fadhil, the school’s headmaster. Fadhil and teachers received threats from the parents of the boys who were arrested because many believed it had been the school’s staff who had given the Americans their information. “We told the Americans they should not take students during school hours,” Fadhil said, adding that the Americans came back to the school early this morning. “They told us it is our responsibility to keep order outside the school. It is illogical to hold us responsible for what the students do outside of school.” Fifteen of the students were released later Wednesday and one was held until this morning because he is not Iraqi, said one of the boys who was arrested. The boy refused to give his name or even his age. He said the Americans were not rough in their treatment of the students but were verbally abusive, often shouting expletives. “I am humiliated,” he said. “I tried to run away when they came for me, but the soldiers cocked their guns, so I stopped. Then they dragged me away.” “Many of the students agreed not to come to school today because of what happened.” “They are afraid—most of their families did not let them come to school today,” said an English teacher at the school, who asked that his name not be printed. “Why do they do this? One of the children they arrested lost all of his family during the bombing in March.” The staff at the school were skeptical that all of the students had been arrested simply for throwing rocks. Some of the children who were arrested have parents who were former intelligence officers, one of the administrators said. “They treated the boys as though they were soldiers,” the English teacher said. “The Americans also took pictures of each of the teachers while they were here, but they did not say why. “The Americans came today not to apologize but to make a kind of threat,” he said. “But the pupils will continue to do the same thing if they are treated this way.” Teachers and the headmaster said only about forty of the 1,100 students at the school had participated in the demonstration, and that many of the students had initially been angry with the demonstrators because they were demonstrating in support of Saddam. “But now they stand with their colleagues, even the ones who were not at the demonstration,” an Arabic teacher at the school said, also asking that his name not be printed. “During the time of Saddam no one could take a student from school. They had to wait until after he left the school to arrest him,” the English teacher said. “For the Iraqis, school is a sacred house.” Food and Fuel December 21 2003
According to a Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR-subsidiary of Halliburton) subcrontractor working with a Lebanese company in Tikrit, the lowest paid KBR employee in Iraq is a truckdriver. This position starts at $125,000 per year. Not including administration, the pay continues up the scale upwards to $250,000 per year for other jobs working for KBR. Along with the obscenely high pay scale comes risk, however. This is why over forty percent of the employees for KBR in Iraq have left the country. Thus, one of the many reasons KBR has been unable to perform reconstruction projects in Iraq is because they simply donít have the staff. With foreign workers in Iraq being killed or injured every week, and the situation having no immediate hope of improving, the prospects are looking a bit grim today. The subcontractor also went on to discuss how KBR is hiring what he referred to as TCNs (Third Country Nationals), and there are between 3-5,000 of these people currently in Iraq. He also estimates that his company is doing ninety-five percent of their work on US bases, leaving no time or workers for reconstruction projects. While the bunkers, roadblocks, and military barracks are growing, the remainder of Iraq remains in shambles. Meanwhile, the food costs continue to rise on nearly a daily basis. Here is a short list of price comparison from before the Anglo-American Invasion, to now, on basic food and fuel supplies:
With all the hoopla of the capture of Saddam Hussein already fading into the background, the grinding reality of the struggle of daily life in Iraq remains at the forefront of people's minds. For when the vast majority if Iraqis struggle daily to put food on their families’ plates, or some petrol in their car, worrying about where Saddam will be tried isn’t such a high priority. The 400 Souls in Amiriya Shelter December 26, 2003 The Amiriya Bomb Shelter in western Baghdad is a reinforced concrete building that sheltered up to 1,000 civilians throughout the first Gulf War. The walls are several feet thick, designed specifically to withstand the blast of many types of bombs. It was always regarded as a safe haven for the civilians in the area. Each time the air raid sirens of Baghdad sounded, women and children, sometimes complete families, would seek shelter within its walls. The Coalition waging war on Iraq had the coordinates to the shelter, along with the acknowledgement that it was simply a shelter for civilians. On February 13, 1991, at four in the morning, it was hit by two American bombs, which incinerated the building, including all but ten of the 400 women and children seeking refuge inside of it. People in the community today tell the horrible tale of the two bombs. They believed they were designed specifically to carry out the slaughter. The first gave off a terrible high-pitched whine as it spiraled its way into the reinforced ceiling, creating an entrance for the second bomb, which entered immediately behind the first, releasing the instant incineration of all those inside. It turned their safe haven into a fiery inferno for the group comprised primarily of women and children. Materially, all that is left inside are a selection of remaining pictures of the victims, scattered flowers, and a darkened hall with the palpable feeling of a deep, heavy sadness. The weight of the air presses in from all around. It is a deep silence, left dark by looters who made off with the lighting fixtures, which would work only intermittently at best even if they were there, as this area of Baghdad, like so many others, remains without electricity for much of the day. The hole in the ceiling remains completely intact, the implosion from the bombs entrance a sick blossoming of metal bars like twisted petals from a tortured flower of death. Steel plating of the ceiling is frozen from that terrible moment, literally peeled back from the blast and hanging in air. The crater inside the first floor is blown through, revealing the darkened basement below. Despite severe looting to the shelter after the Anglo-American Invasion, pictures of many of the victims remain, which includes several entire families who died in the slaughter. Shadows of women who died have been burned into the walls, similar to the infamous shadow of a man memorialized as it was flash-imprinted into concrete as he was vaporized by the atomic bomb of Hiroshima. A former caretaker of the shelter, Umm Ghadia, lost eight of her nine children in the bombing. Still visible is blackened human skin that was melted into the walls from the incineration, smooth and pasty to the touch. Of the remaining survivors, one is a man who is in an insane asylum in Baghdad. Another is an old woman who lives nearby, and a third is a woman who began working as a nurse after living through the attack. Two of the survivors live within sight of the shelter and are thus reminded of their nightmare each day of their lives. My dim flashlight illuminates the pictures, one at a time, of the victims as the echoes of my shuffling feet are lost in the surrounding darkness. The only light inside aside from my own is the circle of daylight let in through the bombs entrance. Less than ten meters from this hole in every direction the light is swallowed by the darkness, as all the walls are burned black. After walking around for several moments in shock at the magnitude of this slaughter, I was caught off guard by the tears running down my cheeks. It was from looking at the pictures of small children, a little boy in his innocence, his face captured by a camera. A photo of a baby. One photo set of an entire family. Another of a family. Most of all though, it is the feeling inside. I’ve never been in a building so empty, yet so full of, what is it? So full of souls, feeling, sadness, reverence. It is a holy place where words fail to describe the true feeling. One can only truly know it from entering this blackened hall of twisted metal and stand in the utter emptiness where so many souls sought refuge. There are three of us visiting the shelter, and we barely talk the entire time we are in it. I stand alone inside before leaving, staring at the silhouettes of twisted metal near the hole the bombs created and entered. I can feel them, the people. Eventually, the heaviness pushes me out. There were no military targets in the area, this even admitted by the US after the shelter was incinerated. One week after the bombing NATO admitted that it had made a mistake. To this date, there has been no compensation for the survivors, nor for the remaining family members of those killed in the shelter. Another Day 30 December 2003 I was lying in bed this morning, relaxing as I had no plans for the day. At approximately 8:30 a.m. a huge blast rattled my hotel windows for the second time in three days. Just a few blocks away on Karrada Street an IED had detonated between two Humvees, killing an Iraqi civilian in the busy shopping district. Yet another innocent Iraqi killed, reminding everyone in Baghdad that anyone, anytime, anyplace is subject to the same fate. Reminding us all that there truly is no security here. The crowd around the blast during the aftermath had mixed reactions. Many people were rightly questioning why the resistance fighters are so willing to jeopardize the lives of innocent Iraqis. But after a short time an older man asked to speak, and as everyone listened he pointed to the American soldiers milling about the blast sight and said, “Those are the terrorists! If they weren’t here to begin with, none of this would be happening!” Most in the crowd nodded in agreement. Then about twenty men and boys crowded around the American soldiers, who were waiting for nearly an hour for another patrol to come assist. The patrol who finally did show up had gone to “the wrong grid” of Baghdad. Such are the problems with bringing in fresh troops. In the three hours following this attack I heard three large blasts around Baghdad, none of which were reported. This evening, as I stood atop my hotel, a huge blast and flash caught my attention to the northeast of central Baghdad, again not reported. So it’s been an average day in occupied Baghdad; attacks on patrols, unreported blasts, automatic weapons fire in the streets at night, huge petrol lines, and flickering electricity. It makes me wonder how people in American would react under similar circumstances. How would people react to having to wait six to ten hours in a line to fill up their car or SUV? If they had to absorb gas prices that had risen 1,000% in less than a year? If they had flickering, unreliable electricity in their homes for months on end? If their city was occupied by a foreign military who were storming the homes of your neighbors who fought against the illegal occupation? If you didn’t want to fight them, but still faced the daily threat of being blown up by someone who was resisting? If you couldn’t send your kids to school because of the very real possibility of them being kidnapped, raped, or blown up? If America had sixty percent unemployment and it was rising? If you knew your occupier was going to stay indefinitely? How would Americans react? Just a thought. I learned that the Amiriyah Bomb Shelter has been closed by the Americans, due to the fact that an Islamic Fundamentalist group was keeping it open. I am glad I went when I did a couple of weeks ago, for when monuments/schools/buildings are closed and/or occupied by the Americans here, they have a tendency not to reopen. I also learned that the only reason the sixteen school children who were detained by the Americans in the same area were released within twenty-four hours because Sheikh Wadah Malek Alsdid of Amiriyah went and spoke with the Americans at their base. Meanwhile, the occupation of attrition continues to take its toll on US soldiers here. According to the Pentagon, the total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations from the invasion and occupation in Iraq is nearly 11,000. Also according to the Pentagon, 461 troops have died, there have been 8,581 medical evacuations for non-hostile causes, and 2,273 wounded. Many US troops are complaining of having literally no contact with the outside world. The soldiers I spoke with yesterday in Samarra asked me, “So what is going on? We don’t know anything.” They told me they don’t have e-mail or phone, and have no clue as to what is happening in the rest of Iraq, if other soldiers have died, let alone back at home in America. I’ve also heard so many complain that they feel like they are in a prison on their base, for the only time they can leave the base is to go out on a patrol, which is always, needless to say, extremely dangerous. They are working ridiculously long hours, having very little time off, and never have any idea when they will get to go home. Every time I’ve asked a soldier when they get to leave Iraq, they respond with either, “I have no idea,” or something like, “Man, why’d you have to ask that? I don’t even want to think about that.” Thus far the number of soldiers killed each week has not diminished since the capture of Saddam Hussein. In the first nine months in Iraq now there have been 461 US soldiers killed. From the years 1962-1964 in Vietnam, there were 392 US soldiers killed. We hear so much in the news about how many billions of dollars the occupation of Iraq is costing the US taxpayer, but this sounds so trite and frivolous compared to the human cost of innocent Iraqis dying every day, and US soldiers being killed or wounded every day. There have been the usual fighter jets flying over Baghdad today and this evening, the usual helicopters skimming the buildings at times, a huge Chinook rumbling low over Baghdad, and the ever-present random gunfire in the streets as the night pushes into the later hours. All this aside, it feels relatively calm, which for life in Baghdad means yet another storm of violence is near. Tomorrow, New Year’s Eve, already has a few of us rolling our eyes with dread and as a friend says, “I’m keeping my calendar open. Tomorrow my plans will make themselves, I’m sure of it.” Iraqis Taking Care of Their Own January 11, 2004 Mustafa, five years old, sits at a table in the Childhood’s Voice Art Therapy School, drawing a house. The colorful home he draws is large, with a nice triangular roof. When not at Childhood’s Voice, he lives with his parents inside a makeshift structure of loose bricks stacked together and a leaky tarp pulled over the top. Childhood’s Voice is an Iraqi NGO that established Season’s Art School where Mustafa and almost two hundred other children come to develop their creative and social skills through team-based art education and art therapy projects. One of the goals of this school is to improve the critical sense and self-image of Iraqi children, so as to increase their ability to deal with problems, and raise them up from this bitter reality under the shade of the wars that have lasted for so long in Iraq. The free services help children suffering from PTSD, poverty, and other traumas and disabilities by teaching them equality and respect with peers. Emad Abbas, the project coordinator and theater arts director, tells me that UNICEF assisted the school, but after the UN building was bombed in Baghdad, UNICEF had to pull out. It is now supported by private donations and NCA, a Norwegian NGO. As two US military helicopters rumble over the small school, we watch several students drawing at the table alongside Mustafa. “We give them art supplies, and just let them sit and draw whatever they like. Inevitably we are able to tell through their art what their troubles are, and how we can best help them,” says Mr. Abbas. Fautma, a six-year-old girl wearing a tiny yellow backpack, draws a scene of verdant forests and lakes as another helicopter rumbles overhead. A little boy with a great smile sits slumped in a chair watching his peers. Four years old, Hussan can only walk with assistance. He smiles as various children walk over to speak with him, and bring him some juice. Another boy with a speech impediment is pointed out as being the best artist in the class. As we walk into a room with several students working on computers, Mr. Abbas goes on to explain that there are two psychologists at the school, along with music, theater, computer, and visual arts departments, and several volunteers who work to help the children at Childhood’s Voice, which was established August 3, 2003. Rasha, a woman who has been volunteering at the school for two weeks, says, “With each of these departments we work to teach them how to work together, respect each other, and help one another.” Monthly art exhibitions are held as a means of supporting the school, as well as expanding public awareness of the program. Initially designed to help eighty students, it now serves 180, and the number is growing rapidly. While the students go to educational school for study, this organization is more like an “after-school school,” assisting children in need of this healing environment. Meals are served when funding permits and donated clothing is provided when available. There are three such schools in Baghdad, but Mr. Abbas believes a hundred are needed to treat the vast number of children in Baghdad who have been psychologically and physically traumatized by the wars, sanctions, and now current difficult situation in Iraq. Up some stairs there is a small stage with several rows of plastic chairs. We watch students acting out scenes teaching them about respecting nature and respecting one another. The kids are smiling and well behaved, hands raised eagerly in the air to be called on to participate in the next scene on the stage. Ghazwan, a skinny fifteen-year-old boy, stands on the stage enacting a scene teaching about respecting people in his community. I am told he had been brought to the school after being kidnapped. He was found naked in a water tank with cigarette burns all over his body, and most likely had been sexually abused. He was completely withdrawn, but even after a couple of weeks began to open up to his peers, and has made great progress with assistance from psychologists at Baghdad University. Back downstairs it is snack time. Students file into the small kitchen for juice and rolls, then outside into the sun and a small playground. There is much laughing and playing amidst the relaxed atmosphere as two children bring rolls and juice to Samir, a boy who uses a wheelchair. Out on the playground Hussan is helped to a slide. He then uses the side bars to gingerly pull himself up the steps, swinging his legs up one at a time while bracing himself as he does so. I grow concerned and go to steady him as he stands atop the slide, but one of the staff lets me know he can, and should, do this for himself. With a big smile he pushes his arms straight on the bars and swings his legs out in front of him, plops himself down, and laughs as he whisks down the slide where another staff member helps him walk to another slide. The school is not without challenges. Mr. Abbas says that with the constant threat of kidnappings, looting, checkpoints, military raids on homes in the neighborhood, and struggles for funding, the future is always uncertain. “With the unstable situation here, especially the security, we take all the help we can get. Many families didn’t trust us at first, since we don’t charge any money. But as they have seen that we are helping the children and that we are run by Iraqis, they are beginning to support us more,” says Mr. Abbas. The school is open to any volunteers who are willing to help, and donations can be made by wiring money to a bank in Amman, Jordan. As the school is not yet an officially registered NGO, due to the long registration process mandated by the CPA, an account has been set up under the name of a person affiliated with the school. The name of the bank is the Arabic Bank, and the name on the account is Abdel Al-Sahib, account number 166812-91718. All funds are transferred directly to Childhood’s Voice. As I walk around the small playground before we leave I am inundated with hugs from the children and small kisses on my cheeks. Haida, a six-year-old boy who speaks a little English, laughs with me while teaching me some Arabic words. Knowing I’m from Alaska, he pulls a chair into the shade so I can sit out of the warm sun. He tells me, “I love you. We are friends. All our families can be friends. When are you coming back here to visit us again?” | ||
 | | |
