Deadly
fruits of Baghdad
By Peter
Ford and Scott Peterson
Christian Science
Monitor
16 April,2003
BAGHDAD
A two-inch-long black cylinder hangs on a white "stabilizer"
ribbon from the branch of a lemon tree, a deadly fruit in a leafy Baghdad
neighborhood. It's one of the unexploded cluster bombs fired by US forces
last week that still litter several residential areas of the city.
On this street
alone, residents say the controversial bomblets have killed four men.
About 100 unexploded cylinders lie under bushes and in the gutters of
houses in the district of Al Khouarneq, according to US bomb disposal
experts who were encasing them in plaster Tuesday or blowing them up.
The cleanup
marked one aspect of tentative efforts by US and Iraqi officials to
restore normality to the Iraqi capital of 5 million people Tuesday,
as citizens helped collect unexploded ordnance, opened a very few shops,
welcomed the return of electricity to a handful of streets, and worked
to mend local telephone exchanges.
Sporadic gun
fights and looting continued to make Baghdad decidedly unsafe, however,
and US troops in the center of the city beefed up their security measures.
But the homeowners
in southern Baghdad were more frightened of the little black cylinders
in their midst than looters.
"Bush and
Blair said they were looking out for the people, that they were not
going to hurt anyone, but there are bombs outside our houses,"
says Kawther Hussein, a mother of three who shook with fear as a loud
explosion rocked her normally placid suburban street.
US and British
media have reported several deaths and injuries in recent days resulting
from Iraqi civilians handling cluster bombs in other Baghdad neighborhoods.
The United States, like most other countries, regards cluster bombs
as legitimate weapons against concentrations of enemy troops or armor.
Asked about
the cluster bombs found in Baghdad, US Central Command spokesman Lt.
Herb Josey in Qatar replied that Saddam Hussein's "regime has in
many instances placed military targets near civilian areas to increase
the chances of collateral damage. In general, we try to target legitimate
military targets only. If cluster bombs are the best weapons to use
against a target, they are the weapon of choice. We take into account
the chances of civilian casualties all the time."
The quiet streets
of Al Khouarneq, lined with olive trees, bougainvillaea bushes, and
roses, are now pitted with the telltale pockmarks left by the shards
of metal dispersed by cluster bomb explosions. Neighbors say that four
civilian men died in the US attack early in the morning of April 7,
Rashid Majid and two of his sons, Arkan and Ghassan, and a neighbor,
Uday Kedr.
It was unclear
from local residents' accounts whether they were killed in the raid
itself, while going to help extinguish a fire in a nearby home, or whether
one of them set off an unexploded bomblet by picking it up. "I
heard a big bang, then a series of bangs, and everyone was terrified.
They were very astonished with fear," says Ahmed, a local resident
who declined to give his family name.
The submunitions
now lying around the area are of a type fired either by 155 mm artillery
or Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, says US Army Capt. Thomas Austin,
a combat engineer who was supervising the destruction of the lethal
bomblets Tuesday.
It was unclear
what the shells had been aimed at. Local people said Iraqi troops had
set up two antiaircraft guns by a highway 200 yards from the houses
that were hit and more than half a mile away are the ruins of an Iraqi
air-defense training center, residents say has been abandoned since
1991. Capt. Derek Mayfield, who is with US forces now occupying the
base, says his troops have found no unexploded US ordnance on the base,
indicating it wasn't a target.
Whatever the
intended target, the shells fell in the middle of a residential district
of two-story sand-colored houses with flat roofs, where people are now
fearful to sit in their gardens or walk the streets. The bomblet in
the lemon tree was outside No. 5, 19th Street. "I live at number
seven, and I am so afraid," says Hassan Samr, a computer engineer.
"So is my family."
A few doors
up, Qusay Abdel Majid showed reporters his front garden, treading lightly
around the three unexploded cluster bomblets that lay on the grass under
a palm tree to point out another under a rosebush.
Captain Austin
says his men dealt with about 20 unexploded submunitions on Monday,
digging small dams around them, pouring plaster of Paris over the bomblets
to freeze the sensitive fuses, and then carrying the bombs in their
hardened cases away for destruction.
Short of plaster,
however, US soldiers were pulling bomblets out of gardens on the end
of long ropes by Tuesday, and destroying them with controlled detonations
in the streets. Austin says he expect to finish the job in this part
of the city within five or six days. "This is the worst place I've
seen myself," he says.
The use of cluster
bombs is controversial, given the difficulty of aiming them correctly
and the dangers they can pose to civilians both at the moment of attack
and later, in the form of duds that could go off at the slightest contact,
like a land mine.
Under the Geneva
Convention, attacks are prohibited if they cause incidental loss of
civilian life or civilian injury that is excessive in relation to the
anticipated direct military advantage of the attack.
If the intended
targets of the cluster bombs on April 7 were the two antiaircraft guns
near Mr. Majid's home, they could fall foul of the Convention's insistence
on proportionality.
The first additional
protocol to the Geneva Conventions also imposes a duty on armies to
"take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods
of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event minimizing, incidental
loss of civilian life."
Even as US troops
began removing cluster bombs, other units across the city to the west,
in Kadhmiya, enlisted Iraqi help as they cleared a palm grove in a residential
area of piles of unexploded ordnance.
Residents had
marked off the area with string, and hung signs that read: "Danger:
Cluster bombs." There were none found here but when the Bravo Company
of the US Army 317th Engineer Combat Battalion arrived Tuesday morning,
they had no shortage of Iraqi volunteers to load up unused Iraqi grenades,
mortar and tank rounds, and bullets.
For many of
the Iraqis, the hauling of the explosives to a collection point three
miles north of the airport was a first step toward normality. "The
Americans are helping us - this is a major concern for this neighborhood,"
says Salam Hamid, a merchant and former Iraqi Army officer who directed
his neighbors to help US troops load ammunition boxes onto trucks. "The
two most important things are peace and security. Definitely this is
a boost."
Another signal
that things were slowly getting back to normal were the street lights
in the next neighborhood, which flickered on for the first time on Monday.
"I felt so relieved, because this will help with security,"
says Mr. Hamid. "We want to go back to our safe society, and leave
behind our past."
US Army engineers
say their commanders met Tuesday with Iraqi municipal power officials,
to begin restoring electricity. Getting schools and hospitals up and
running are also a priority, they say - once classrooms are cleared
of ordnance.
Iraqi civilians
"are very helpful, and normally tell us of two or three other places
[where munitions can be found] before we can finish the first. They
are very scared that we are going to leave it, or blow it up in place,"
says US Army Capt. Doug Brinson.
In other security
measures, American commanders issued a message to the "citizens
of Baghdad" Tuesday, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and calling
on them to approach military positions with "extreme caution"
so as not to be mistaken for "terrorist or criminal elements."
Otherwise, the
message called on Baghdadis to reestablish "normal daily activity
as we work together to restore public services." The note pleaded
for firemen, medical staff, and police to report to US forces to restore
power and other utilities.
Some Iraqis
say that their "liberation" from the grip of Saddam Hussein,
as the US calls it, has yet to yield any fruit. Asked about any signs
of normalcy returning, student Hassanian Suhail replied: "None
until now."
Like many Iraqis
- who have even fewer sources of news, without electricity and television,
and suffering from a shortage of radio batteries - Mr. Suhail was unaware
that American officials Tuesday hosted a meeting of Iraqi exiles and
community leaders from inside Iraq to work on charting a future government.
"If this
meeting leads to security, we welcome it," Suhail says. "Even
if they come from outside the country," he adds.
Still, most
residents remain without water and electricity, and looters robbed a
bank and conducted gun battles on the streets of Baghdad Tuesday, despite
a lower number of incidents, and occasional patrols by Iraqi police.
"The new
government promises a better future, and we expect it," says Mohamed
Kadhim, a driver. "We don't want to get rid of a government, only
to have it replaced by one that is worse."