The Changing
Face of Occupation
By Eman Ahmed Khammas
International Occupation
Watch Center
01 October, 2003
On April 10, 2003, the morning after Saddams
statue fell in one of Baghdads 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. Baghdads 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 Baghdads 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 Iraqs 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 years
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?