Atrocities Continue To Mount
By Haifa Zangana
07 March, 2005
The GuardianBehind the facade of post-election political process, despite Tony Blair's desire to move on and George Bush's attempt to mend fences with Europe, in Iraq the atrocities continue to mount. Some, like the Hilla attack, are Zarqawi-style, with hundreds dead and wounded. Others are more mundane and sustained, like US warplanes bombing suspect houses in Ramadi, Hit, or Mosul, roadblock killings in Najaff, or post-curfew hunting by snipers in Sammara.
Despite all the rhetoric about "building a new democracy", daily life for most Iraqis is still a struggle for survival, with human rights abuses engulfing them. A typical Iraqi day begins with the struggle to get the basics: petrol, a cylinder of gas, fresh water, food and medication. It ends with a sigh of relief: Alhamdu ilah (thanks, God), for surviving death threats, violent attacks, kidnappings and killings.
For ordinary Iraqis, simply venturing into the streets brings the possibility of attack. Most killings go unreported. With no names, no faces, no identities, they cease to be human beings. They are "the enemy", "collateral damage" or, at best, statistics to argue about.
In March 1989, Iraqi and Arab writers contributed to a book called Halabja, to condemn Saddam Hussein's regime for using chemical weapons against civilians in the city. At the time of the attack, Saddam was still the darling of the west.
In my introduction to the book, I wrote: "They say 5,000 people died. Others say 10,000 died. We say: in Halabja, within minutes, Rasul, Piroz, Ahmed, Khadija, Sardar, Amina _ have been killed. In Halabja, eyes no longer shine."
Now, we continue to watch life draining out of our country. Almost two years on from the beginning of the occupation, eyes no longer shine in many Iraqi cities. Thousands of civilians have been killed. One of them was Hazim Ahmed al-Obaidi. On January 16, Hazim, 57, left his house to go to work. He had a cash-and-carry shop, for fruit, vegetables and dates, in Mosul.
Before leaving, his wife reminded him to get some paraffin, if possible. He laughed loudly, hugging his four-year-old daughter, Manar, who wanted to go with him. He waved goodbye to his mother and his children: Dalal, 17, Shahad, 12, Maha, 9, and Zayed, 11.
Hazim never came back. He was shot, according to eyewitnesses, by a US patrol. His car was burned and, because of the curfew, his family had to wait until the next morning to start looking for him. Two days later, his charred and barely recognisable body was found. To the bewilderment of his family, US troops stopped them after they had collected the body, uncovered it and took photos.
Hazim was not a "terrorist"or a "Saddamist". He was a cheerful family man who was wounded in the Iran-Iraq war, and survived the harshness of the sanctions years by selling fruit and vegetables. Who is going to investigate his killing, compensate his family, and help his children to make sense of their tragedy? Will it be the Iraqi interim government, or the US-led occupation? Judging by the human rights records of both, the answer is that neither of them will investigate Hazim's killing, or any other. Human rights under occupation have proved to be a mirage similar to WMD.
In his message broadcast to Iraqis last April, Tony Blair said: "Our aim is to help alleviate immediate humanitarian suffering, and to move as soon as possible to an interim authority run by Iraqis ... which represents human rights and the rule of law and spends Iraq's wealth not on palaces and WMD, but on you and the services you need."
So much for illusions. Charred bodies, the massacre of children in a wedding party, the killing of detainees, shootings at demonstrations, kidnappings of civilians - these are the features of that "better future".
Occupation troops are responsible for an increasing list of abuses, including the torture and killing of Iraqi prisoners. Seeing a corpse photographed with grinning US soldiers at Abu Ghraib shocked the moral sensibility of people around the world. Taking snaps of Hazim's charred body has shaken his family's belief in the humanity of the Americans, as well as the British and the Iraqis working with them.
Following the US and British governments' line on human rights, members of the interim Iraqi government have sought to play down the violations committed by occupation troops - either by recalling that similar abuses were committed under Saddam's regime or by labelling the victims as terrorists.
Under Iyad Allawi's regime, the newly trained Iraqi police are torturing detainees. Last week, leaders of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq accused the police of torturing and killing three of their members because of their political and religious affiliations, and demanded an immediate investigation.
Facing these daily atrocities, what do we expect an oppressed Iraqi to do?
· Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi-born novelist and former prisoner of the Saddam regime [email protected]
