Atrocities...
By Baghdad Burning
13 July, 2006
Baghdad Burning
It
promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but
it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the
heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses
which keep appearing everywhere.
The day before yesterday
was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter.
According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning
and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began
pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if
they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away
and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is
playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say
the number is nearer 60.
The horrific thing about
the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks
by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a
car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area
visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of
a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming
and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure
why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately.
They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre
happen.
At nearly 2 pm, we received
some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the killings. T. was a
26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of friends in a consultancy
bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. He had stopped
by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd brought along
with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a half-collapsed
school building outside of Baghdad.
He usually left the house
at 7 am to avoid the morning traffic jams and the heat. Yesterday, he
decided to stay at home because he'd promised his mother he would bring
Abu Kamal by the house to fix the generator which had suddenly died
on them the night before. His parents say that T. was making his way
out of the area on foot when the attack occurred and he got two bullets
to the head. His brother could only identify him by the blood-stained
t-shirt he was wearing.
People are staying in their
homes in the area and no one dares enter it so the wakes for the people
who were massacred haven't begun yet. I haven't seen his family yet
and I'm not sure I have the courage or the energy to give condolences.
I feel like I've given the traditional words of condolences a thousand
times these last few months, "Baqiya ib hayatkum… Akhir il
ahzan…" or "May this be the last of your sorrows."
Except they are empty words because even as we say them, we know that
in today's Iraq any sorrow- no matter how great- will not be the last.
There was also an attack
yesterday on Ghazaliya though we haven't heard what the casualties are.
People are saying it's Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army, behind the killings.
The news the world hears about Iraq and the situation in the country
itself are wholly different. People are being driven out of their homes
and areas by force and killed in the streets, and the Americans, Iranians
and the Puppets talk of national conferences and progress.
It's like Baghdad is no longer
one city, it's a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its
own form of violence. It's gotten so that I dread sleeping because the
morning always brings so much bad news. The television shows the images
and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show images of corpses
and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil war…
death… killing… bombing… rape…"
Rape. The latest of American
atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's
being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first
to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason
this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate
family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq.
Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing
whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges
of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté
of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities
is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape???
You raped the country, why not the people?
In the news they're estimating
her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14.
Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter.
Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the
girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her
parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American
heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your
troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should
be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to
the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served.
And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent
investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because
it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and
killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and
psychotic American troops.
It fills me with rage to
hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops
in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib,
the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look
at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself
to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they
make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about
the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself
to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at
them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more
they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will
they rape?
Why don't the Americans just
go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will
fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they
aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are
being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done
about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other
and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join
in with murder and rape.
Buses, planes and taxis leaving
the country for Syria and Jordan are booked solid until the end of the
summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse and most of them
are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here has become
unbearable because it's no longer a 'life' like people live abroad.
It's simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next
in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends- friends
like T.
It's difficult to believe
T. is really gone… I was checking my email today and I saw three
unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild, heart-stopping moment
I thought he was alive. T. was alive and it was all some horrific mistake!
I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds
before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails-
he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection
of jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third
was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted
a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the war…
And while I always thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities
in the world, I'm finding it very difficult this moment to see any beauty
in a city stained with the blood of T. and so many other innocents…