No
Regrets or Culprits, Just Cash
For Series of Random Killings
By Rory McCarthy
The
Guardian
27 November, 2003
For
more than an hour Siham al-Tamimi has been waiting in a muddy field
marked "holding area" at the entrance to an American military
base. A forlorn figure, she is surrounded on three sides by barbed wire
and sits perched on a small breeze block. She is dressed in black, her
head covered with a black scarf, her hands in small black gloves neatly
clasped together.
Siham has come, like so many others be fore her, to the headquarters
of the Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in south-western
Baghdad to understand why American soldiers shot dead her husband 12
days earlier.
In the months since
America's war in Iraq, an uncounted number of ordinary Iraqis have been
killed or maimed by the army that boasts daily of its swift "liberation"
victory.
The US military
has not punished any soldier for shooting an unarmed civilian and refuses
even to keep count of the civilians its soldiers kill. Yet for several
months now, American officers have been quietly paying out hundreds
of thousands of dollars in cash to relatives of the dead and injured,
offering polite but carefully-worded condolences and promising investigations
that lead nowhere.
In a report last
month, Human Rights Watch concluded that "US soldiers at present
operate with virtual impunity in Iraq" and accused them of over-aggressive
tactics, indiscriminate shooting and a quick reliance on lethal force.
It found that the
US military was not doing enough "to minimise harm to civilians
as required by international law". Human Rights Watch collected
evidence that the US military killed 94 civilians between May and the
end of September in "questionable circumstances. Taken as a whole,"
it said, "they reveal a pattern of alleged illegal deaths that
merit investigation."
It is a largely
unreported toll of death and injury, excused by the army's broad and
secret rules of engagement, but one that has pushed many once-accepting
Iraqi families into disgust at their occupiers.
Siham's case speaks
volumes of the arbitrary nature of death in the new Iraq. Her husband
Sami Shakir al-Safar, 57, was driving home at 9pm on October 31 in his
white Volkswagen Passat. In the front seat next to him was Emad, 25,
the eldest of the couple's four sons. In the back was the youngest boy,
Ammar, 11.
Sami, a physicist,
took his usual route past the al-Dorah police station in western Baghdad.
On the roof of the station house, as always, was a team of American
soldiers manning an observation post. Without warning, the car came
under fire. Two bullets hit Sami in his left side, blasting open a horrific
wound in his abdomen. Another bullet hit Emad, badly wounding him and
lodging four pieces of shrapnel in his diaphragm.
"We didn't
hear anything before the shooting started," said Ammar, who survived
unhurt. "Suddenly we heard a lot of shooting aimed at us. It broke
the windshield and hit my father and then it hit Emad." Though
he was losing blood fast, Sami managed to drive for a few minutes more
before he collapsed over the wheel. Emad, although badly wounded, took
over and drove home. "My father tried to walk into the house but
he fell down in the garage. Emad walked through the garden but fell
when he reached the kitchen," said Ammar.
Shortly after midnight
the boys' father died in hospital. Emad survived and is resting at his
uncle's house because his family have not dared tell him his father
is dead. No American soldier has come to the house to account for the
shooting.
"The Americans
came here to eliminate terrorism but they are causing terrorism. That
is why they killed a man who wasn't guilty of anything," said Siham.
First Lieutenant
Rafid Azideen, the Iraqi police officer at al-Dorah police station who
is investigating the case, said he believes the family was mistakenly
targeted and American soldiers fired the lethal shots.
Five mortars were
fired at the police station minutes before the shooting, he said. Sami
was driving from the approximate direction from which the shells were
launched and that may have encouraged the Americans to shoot. "I
believe it was the American soldiers who shot from the roof," he
said. "There was no one on the roof except them and I know the
shots were fired from the roof."
Bullets
Lt Azideen has a large file with witness statements on the case and
a piece from one of the bullets which he will send for testing. But
he holds out little hope of the case proceeding through the Iraqi courts.
He digs out a note written about a similar case in which the local judge
said he was powerless to rule on a case against the US military. Order
number 17 imposed this year on June 28 by the Coalition Provision Authority,
the US-led civil administration, grants the "coalition forces"
immunity from Iraqi courts.
Back at the 82nd
Airborne's base Siham is eventually taken inside to meet Captain Patrick
Murphy, a trained lawyer and the prosecutor for the Second Brigade.
He asks for sworn witness statements and promises that his own investigation
will follow. "We have been very responsive to people's claims,"
he says. "But there are two sides to every story."
More than 900 claims
have been filed with the brigade, which is responsible for 1.5 million
people in the al-Rashid district of Baghdad. Since July, Capt Murphy
has paid out an astonishing $106,000 (£62,500) in 176 different
cases. Payments are given for damage to cars and houses, injury and
death. The money frequently covers little more than the cost of the
traditional three-day funeral ceremony. Only rarely does the army admit
any liability. As Siham turns to leave, Capt Murphy tells her: "I
am sorry for your loss, madam."
Helping Siham with
her case is Faiz Alwasity, 41, a former pilot with Iraqi Airways, who
now works for the aid group Civic, the Campaign for Innocent Victims
in Conflict, which has won assistance for civilian victims of US military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is working on dozens of similar
cases and is deeply distressed by what he has seen.
"This hurts
a lot. I know the American soldiers are not inhumane because I saw them
when they first came and they be haved well," he said. "But
now they have changed and I don't know why. They are becoming more aggressive,
maybe because they are frightened. I am afraid this is creating more
resistance against them."
Privately senior
American officers say the rules of engagement are so broad that troops
know they will not face punishment even if civilians are accidentally
killed as a result of their gunfire. In the face of a mounting guerrilla
insurgency, commanders have gone to great lengths to defend their soldiers'
aggressive conduct. This week Major General Chuck Swannack, commander
of the 82nd Airborne Division, heaped undiluted praise on his men. "At
one moment they are a warrior and the next they are the most compassionate
individual on the face of the earth," he said.
Yet the view from
so many Iraqi families is disturbingly different. In some cases grief
has spilled over into anger and threats of revenge. On October 24 at
around 3pm Mohammad Kahdum al-Jurani was driving home with his wife
Hamdia and their three young daughters, Bara'a, 21, Fatima, seven and
Ayat, five. Again the family were in an old Volkswagen Passat. As they
drove down a main highway in western Baghdad, an American Abrams tank
suddenly drove out across the lanes of traffic and crushed their car.
Mohammad and his wife were both killed and the three girls were seriously
injured. Outside their house the twisted wreckage of the car is testament
to the crushing force of the impact.
Again a police investigation
has confirmed the family's account of the incident. Sargeant Ali Tariq,
at Khadra police station, was at the scene as the bodies were being
pulled from the car. He believes the incident was triggered when a rocket-propelled
grenade was fired at a tank near the highway. A second tank positioned
across the road raced over to help, bursting through the metal crash
barrier in the centre of the road and straight over the family's car.
"I am quite sure what happened. I spoke to the witnesses and I
saw the tracks of the tank in the road," said Sgt Tariq. "The
tank didn't see the car and it just smashed over it and left them there."
Mohammad's son Uday,
31, is left to care for his three sisters. As he describes the accident,
young Fatima, her leg broken in the accident, is lying on the floor
in the front room of the family house, surrounded by dolls given by
friends and relatives. Again no American soldier has been to the house
to account for the deaths. "We were hoping a big change would come
to Iraq and that things would be better," said Uday. He talks quietly
and coherently, but only just holds back a fierce and mounting anger.
"Now I am thinking of some kind of revenge. The Americans know
very well they made a big mistake and killed innocent people but they
didn't even come to apologise. I am not going to stay silent."
Such anger is common
and little eased by the condolences reluctantly offered and the money
paid out by the military.
In Aadhamiya, a
northern suburb of Baghdad, Faiz Alwasity has helped another family
secure a $11,000 payment from the First Brigade of the US Army's First
Armoured Division.
Adil Abdul Karim
al-Kawaz, his son Haider, 19, and daughters Uda, 17, and Mervet, eight,
were shot dead by an American unit as they drove down the road leading
from their house. The unit had been called into the area on the evening
of August 7 and had positioned their vehicles at one end of the street
as part of an operation. There was no checkpoint and no warning before
the family car was riddled with bullets. Only Adil's wife, Anwar, who
was pregnant with her son Hassan at the time, and her remaining daughter
Hudail, 14, survived the attack.
Payment
After weeks of negotiations with the US military, the local council
and a sheikh from a nearby mosque, Anwar, 34, eventually received the
payment. The military asked her to sign a document giving up her rights
to future legal action but she adamantly refused. She still guards in
her purse the printed receipt she was given on September 24. It describes
the money as a "Solatia payment from Cerp," meaning no liability
was admitted and that the money came from the local commander's discretionary
funds, the Commanders' Emergency Response Programme. The receipt showed
the money was ordered by a Captain Casey Doyle and paid out by a Captain
Robert Brewer.
For Anwar, the payout
appears to have fuelled her resentment. The $11,000 was only a little
more than she had already spent on the traditional, three-day mourning
ceremony for her husband and three children.
"They said
there was no mistake, just that it was their bad luck that they were
driving there at the time," she said. "What kind of logic
is that? They killed our family. Even if I was to receive a lot of money
it is not going to compensate for the souls of my family. But if the
same incident had happened in America how would they behave and what
kind of compensation would they pay for an innocent family? Is this
what a human being in Iraq is worth?"
Copyright: The Guardian.