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The Changing Face of Occupation

By Eman Ahmed Khammas

International Occupation Watch Center
01 October, 2003

On April 10, 2003, the morning after Saddam’s statue fell in one of Baghdad’s central squares, an American soldier, chewing gum and blowing bubbles, sat atop his tank near the square and watched a young Iraqi man pushing a carriage full of medical equipment, computers, and an air-conditioner, all looted from the nearby al Sadoon hospital. Another soldier was standing on the roadside preventing people from approaching the square, holding up both hands and repeating “Go back, go back.” There were no Iraqis in the square behind him, only American tanks and vehicles. This very small scene tells a lot about the presence of the occupation forces in Iraq from the very beginning. They do not care about Iraq and Iraqis, they are afraid, and they only care about their own security.

However, after six months of war and occupation an essential change in the small scene described above has most likely occurred. The soldier on the tank will no longer expose himself to danger in the streets. Instead he has pulled back into hidden corners and surrounded himself with high sandbags and barbed wire. Baghdad’s main streets are now filled with ugly barracks, checkpoints, and high walls at the entrance to public buildings, blocking the traffic and creating many problems. Entering these buildings now takes longer and is more difficult.

The other soldier will no longer offer bare hands to prevent people from passing nor will he shout in a monotone “go back.” Instead he stands grim-faced, aiming his gun at passing Iraqis and using it unhesitatingly whenever someone fails to understand the message. Today there are hundreds of casualties in mistaken, random, and indiscriminate shootings; many of them are women and children. The most flagrant was the killing of 10 Iraqi policemen by American fire a week ago; this was the third time that Americans killed Iraqi policemen.

Baghdad today is another city. Everything has changed -- in the streets, buildings and squares that are void of women and almost deserted after 6 p.m., at the money-changing tables lining the main streets, among the homeless children or families squatting public buildings, with the camera- and notebook-laden foreigners looking for the next story, and at the fuel queues snaking out of the petrol stations. However, the most significant change is on Iraqi faces that articulate mounting bewilderment and shock.

The last six months in Baghdad have been too long, an age. For a nation that has been patient for decades and has undergone three wars, 13 years of sanctions, political repression, and continual outside threats, 6 months have been too long to wait for relief, to wait for positive changes.

Given the casualties of war, the mass deaths inflicted by bombing, the chaos of looting, the immolation of public buildings, the shock of the rapid fall of the state, people now understand the real face of the occupation, its true meaning: negligence, lies, arrogance and humiliation. In no time Iraqis have discovered that all the promises have led only to more empty promises, projected into some unforeseeable future.

The problems of daily life, exacerbated by the existence of the occupying forces, lay heavily on the Iraqi people: insecurity; the absence of effective Iraqi authority; unemployment and the fear of the future it brings; continuous shootings; the stories of indiscriminate firing upon civilians; thousands of haphazard arrests for unknown reasons, with detainees taken to unknown places for undefined periods of time. These new conditions have been added onto the existing realities of a deeply divided and impoverished Iraq, devastated by decades of sanctions and war.

In the midst of the current devastation, accurate statistics and numbers are illusive because the occupying forces deliberately attempt to conceal negative facts wherever possible and significant events or trends are not systematically documented.

Iraq Body Count, a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, said that 7798 Iraqis were killed during the war (2356 in Baghdad alone), and 20,000 injured (8000 in Baghdad). There are no statistics on the number of civilian casualties in Baghdad since May 1, 2003, the day President Bush declared the official end of the war. But the director of Baghdad’s forensic hospital, Dr. Faiq, said that, of the bodies brought to the morgue, the average number of people killed daily is 20-30. In July, for example, 720 people were killed, 470 of them shot. This was a 47% increase from July 2002. Guardian Journalist Peter Beaumont, writing on September 14, 2003 put the shooting-related deaths at 400/month.

The occupying authorities, officially known as The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), bear the responsibility for this dramatic rise in murders, even if some of the killings were not by their forces. According to the 4th Geneva Convention, these authorities are fully responsible for the protection of the civilian population.

Although the first order of the occupying authorities was to provide for local authority, insecurity is the most important problem facing Iraqis. This insecurity is partially due to the absence of real local authority, the inefficiency of the new Iraqi police who lack arms, the occupiers’ negligence, terrifying midnight raids on Iraqis, withholding of logistical information and authority, unwillingness to jeopardize their soldiers’ lives, and refusal to apply Iraqi law to the occupying countries’ citizens.

Lately, many new kinds of crimes, like daylight killings, armed robberies, kidnappings, rapes, and car hijackings, have appeared. Mr. Abdul-Razaq Al-Ani, judge of New Baghdad court, says that in the space of two weeks there were 50 killings, 176 car thefts, 4 robberies accompanied by killings, and 2 kidnappings for ransom. The occupying authorities deal with the issue by focusing on the need for their soldiers’ security. When Colin Powell was asked about security during a September 14 press conference in Baghdad, he spoke only of the personal security of US soldiers. To him and other occupiers, security means eliminating armed resistance and nothing else.

Another pressing problem facing Iraqis is the occupation forces’ power of arbitrary arrest. Often those arrested are unaware as to why they have been arrested. Their families know neither where their loved ones are nor how long they will be held. They do not even know what to do. There are approximately 30 Iraqi prisons according to Amnesty International. Baghdad Airport, Bucca in Basrah, and Tesfiraht are Iraq’s three largest official prison camps. The official detainee population stands at 10,000 according to the occupation authorities. The CPA lists do not necessarily represent all detainees, because these lists are infrequent and tens of people are arrested daily. From former prisoners, stories of torture, bad treatment, and the denial of human rights are prevalent.

The devastated economic situation creates the ideal conditions for crime to flourish. The World Food Program report of June 6, 2003 stated that 1/5 (one fifth) of Iraqis suffer chronic poverty. The Iraqi Union of the Unemployed says there are 10 million (approximately 60% of the working-age population) unemployed in Iraq now.

This year’s war has added misery to the already immiserated classes. In Al-Thawra (now Al-Sadr) district of 3 million inhabitants, mostly farmers who immigrated to the capital over the last 50 years, 4-5 families live in a house measuring an average of 200 square meters. Most of them are among the newly unemployed, widows, and disabled. The majority are ex-prisoners of war or ex-soldiers released from service because the Iraqi army was dissolved after the war. Many families are homeless or squatting in public, deserted buildings or schools. The schools squatted by families in deprived areas are inadequate buildings, basically large barracks, without any furniture. Eighteen families (120 individuals) with no running water and no private sanitation inhabit a school in section 37 of Al-Thawra. Section 76 practically floats over a sewage lake. Some families live in the garbage. These places became key centers of organized crime. The religious parties succeeded in reducing the number of thefts, but there are other uncontrolled crimes like the stealing of electric cables and the melting of these cable in open smelting areas, a process that emits black thick smoke and further contaminates the environment. From big diesel and gasoline tankers, people sell openly in the black market.

Given the lack of security, legitimate economic activity has been thwarted, prices have gone up, and gangs have been easily transformed into crime syndicates.

Added to all this and further complicating economic recovery is the absence of a national or even regional telecommunications system. For example, only three out of the nine districts in Baghdad have a working telephone system.

It is not difficult to identify all these problems, but is it really possible to convey the agony of being occupied?